“The right to live is tentative,” Vubben chanted in a voice that seemed to caress the soul.

“Material things are limited, though the mind is free.

“Of protein, phosphorus, nor even energy is there ever enough to slake all hungers. Therefore, show not affront when diverse beings vie over what physically exists. Only in thought can there be true generosity. So let thought be the focus of your world.”

Vubben’s voice had a calming way with our people. The slim-boled welpal trees seemed to resonate his words, tuned as they are to the music of the Egg.

And yet, while Vubben spoke of equanimity, my/our basal segment kept trying to stop, turn its feet around, and carry us away! Dimly, that bottommost ring realized that danger lay ahead, and sensibly voted to flee. Our upper tiers had to apply scent-throbs to urge it onward.

i/we find strange how fear functions in non-traeki. They say it infuses all parts of a body, and hence must be fought everywhere at once! Once, i/we asked Lester Cambel how humans keep calm in times of crisis. His answer was that generally they don’t!

How strange. Humans always seem so much in control. Is it just a grand act, to fool both others and themselves?

Do not digress, Oh Asx. Stroke the wax. Go on. Go on toward the ship.

Sara

Henrik seemed reluctant to set off his charges. At first this surprised Sara. Wasn’t this crisis what an exploser always dreamed of? A chance to make things go boom? To destroy works that others spent their lives building?

In fact, Henrik seemed less avid than many of the citizens crowding the Meeting Tree in panic that night, after witnessing a fireball rattle the forest to its ancient roots. Two gardeners and a worker chimp had fallen from high branches to their deaths, and scores of others had had narrow escapes. The farmers were in a state.

Carved from the spacious heart knot of a grandfather garu, the great hall was crammed with nearly every sapient adult within a rapid day’s hike. Like a steaming minnow pie, the room seemed stuffed with perspiring humanity.

A cluster of other folk were also present-hoon sailors mostly, their pale scaly skins and shaggy white leg fur offset by dark green cloaks, cinched with wooden brooches below their puffing throat sacs. Some also wore trembling rewq over their eyes, to help interpret this stew of human emotions.

Near the north entrance, where it was less humid, a few urrish tinkers chafed and stamped, uneasily switching their braided tails. Sara even spied one forlorn g’Kek pilgrim, anxious green sweat dripping from a single eye-stalk, while the other three lay curled like socks in a drawer, hiding from the raucous ferment.

Doctor Lorrek had been wise, it seemed, volunteering to spend the evening watching the wounded Stranger.

Pzora, the town pharmacist, had a defense against having ers lower rings trampled. If pressed too closely, the traeki just vented a little pungent steam, and even the most agitated citizen gave er room.

No doubt it was like this wherever folk had seen the dread specter in the sky. Right now human visitors were attending qheuen or hoon assemblies and even urrish tribal conclaves, beside roaring fires on the open plains.

The Great Peace is our finest accomplishment, Sara thought. Maybe it will weigh in our favor, when we’re judged. We’ve come far since the days of war and slaughter.

Alas, from the rancor of tonight’s meeting, the Commons still had a long way to go.

“Minor repairs?”

Chaz Langmur, the master carpenter, protested from the stage, normally used for concerts and theatricals. “We’re talking about losing everything below the flood line, and that don’t count the dam itself! You ask how many years to rebuild, if this turns out to be a false alarm? Let’s talk lifetimes!”

Merchants and craft workers supported Langmur with shouts but were opposed by cries of “Shame!” from many wearing the gray garb of farmers. Overhead, excited apelike shrieks joined in. Though not voting citizens, tradition let local chimps clamber up the wall tapestries to observe from slit vents high above. How much they understood was debatable. Some screamed lustily for whichever speaker seemed most impassioned, while others were as partisan as Sara’s father, who clapped the carpenter’s back with encouragement.

It had gone this way for hours. Angry men and women taking turns citing scripture or bemoaning costs, each side waxing ever louder as their fear and irritation grew. Nor were humans the sole partisans. Log Biter, matriarch of the local qheuenish hive, had spoken urgently for preserving Dolo Dam, while her cousin from Logjam Pond proclaimed it a “gaudy monstrosity.” Sara feared a mêlée would ensue between two huge armored matrons, until the chief elder, Fru Nestor, interposed her small human form, the rewq on her brow flashing soothing colors until both qheuens finally backed down.

The audience was no better. A woman stepped on Sara’s foot. Someone else must not have bathed this week, comparing badly to Pzora’s worst secretions. Sara envied Prity, a tiny figure perched high on a windowsill next to several human kids too young to vote. Unlike other chimps, she seemed to find her notebook more engaging than the shouting speakers, tugging at her lower lip while she studied lines of complex mathematics.

Sara envied Prity’s escape into abstraction.

One of the tree farmers rose to speak-a dark man named Jop, whose pale yellow hair curled around his ears. He clenched two large hands, knotty with lifelong calluses.

“Penny pinching and farsightedness!” Jop dismissed the carpenter’s plea. “What would you preserve? A few workshops and docks? Passing toys like plumbing and paper? Dross! All dross! Some paltry comforts that our sinner ancestors let us poor exiles keep for a while, softening our first steps on the road toward grace. But the Scrolls say none of it will last! It’s all destined for the sea!”

Jop turned to his partisans, clutching both hands together. “It was planned long ago-what we’re sworn to do when starships come. Or else, why’ve we supported a guild of explosers all this time?”

Sara glanced again at Henrik and son, seated at the back of the dais. The boy, Jomah, betrayed unease with a slow twisting of his cap between nervous young hands. But his pa might have been a statue. Henrik had remained silent throughout, except to report tersely that his charges were ready.

Sara always pictured their craft as a frustrating profession, probably unique to Jijo. After so many years of preparation — performing endless tests in a small canyon in the hills — wouldn’t they hanker to see it all finally put to use? I know I would.

Long ago, she and Lark and little Dwer used to sit in their attic room, watching moonlight spill over the rumbling water wheel and thrilling each other with lurid tales of what they might see if ever the moment came when Henrik lit his fuses. With delicious mock-terror pounding in their chests, they counted down heartbeats until — kablam!

Dwer loved making sound effects, especially the pretend detonation that finished off the dam, accompanied by waving arms and lots of saliva. Sara’s younger brother then gleefully described the wall of water tossing proud boats like trifles, smashing Nelo’s drying racks, and driving toward their bedroom window like a fist.

Lark took over then, thrilling and terrifying the younger kids as he portrayed their attic being sheared off by a watery blast, sent careening through the garu forest while farmers stared down in pity. Each pretend near-miss made Sara and Dwer cry out till they leaped on their laughing older brother, pummeling to make him stop.

And yet — after Dwer and Lark had done their best to scare her, they would toss and turn, while Sara never had nightmares. When she did dream about the dam bursting, she used to picture a great wave simply taking them in the palm of its gentle hand. As froth concealed all of Jijo, it magically transformed into the fluffy, charged substance of a cloud. Always, the fantasy ended with her body lighter than mist, fearless, soaring through a night radiant with stars.