But not here, not on this world.

Lark felt encouraged by this morning’s meeting. We’ll convince a few this year. Then more. First we’ll be tolerated, later opposed… In the long run, it must be done without violence, by consensus.

Around noon, a mutter of voices carried up the trail — the day’s first regular pilgrims, making an outward show of reverence while still chattering about the pleasures of Gathering. Lark sighted white-robed figures beyond some vapor fumaroles. The leaders called greetings to Lark’s group, already returning from devotions, and began shuffling aside to give up right of way.

A crack of thunder struck as the two parties passed alongside, slamming their bodies together and flapping their robes. Hoons crouched, covering their ears, and g’Kek eyestalks -recoiled. One poor qheuen skittered over the edge, clutching a gnarled tree with a single, desperate claw.

Lark’s first thought was of another gas discharge.

When the ground shook, he pondered an eruption.

He would later learn that the noise came not from Jijo, but the sky. It was the sound of fate arriving, and the world he knew coming abruptly to an end, before he ever expected it.

Asx

Those within the starship induced a small opening in its gleaming side. Through this portal they sent an emissary, unlike anything the Commons had seen in living memory.

A robot!

my/our ring-of-associations had to access one of its myriad moist storage glands in order to place its contours, recalling an illustration -we/i once perused in a human book.

Which book? Ah, thank you my self. Jane’s Survey of Basic Galactic Tools. One of the rarest surviving fruits of the Great Printing.

Exactly as depicted in that ancient diagram, this floating mechanism was a black, octagonal slab, about the size of a young qheuen, hovering above the ground at about the level of my ring-of-vision, with various gleaming implements projecting above or hanging below. From the moment the hatch closed behind it, the robot ignored every earthly contour, leaving a trail where grass, pebbles, and loam were pressed flat by unseen heaviness.

Wherever it approached, folk quailed back. Just one group of beings kept still, awaiting the creature of not-flesh. We sages. Responsibility was our cruel mooring, so adamant that even my basal segment stayed rigid, though it pulsed with craven need to flee. The robot — or its masters in the ship — thus knew who had the right/duty to parlay. It hesitated in front of Vubben, appearing to contemplate our eldest sage for five or six duras, perhaps sensing the reverence we all hold for the wisest of the g’Kek. Then it backed away to confront us all.

i/we watched in mystified awe. After all, this was a thing, like a hoonish riverboat or some dead tool left by the vanished Buyur. Only the tools we make do not fly, and Buyur remnants show no further interest in doing so.

This thing not only moved, it spoke, commencing first with a repeat of the earlier message.

“Surveying (local, unique) lifeforms, in this we seek your (gracious) help.

“Knowledge of the (local) biosphere, this you (assuredly) have.

“Tools and (useful) arts, these we offer in trade.

“Confidentiality, shall we (mutually) exchange?”

Our rewq were useless — shriveling away from the intense flux of our distress. We sages nonetheless held conference. By agreement, Vubben rolled forward, his roller-wheels squeaking with age. In a show of discipline, all eyestalks turned toward the alien device, though surely oversurfeited with its frightening stimulus.

“Poor castaways, are we,” he commenced reciting, in the syncopated pops and clicks of formal Galactic Two. Although our urrish cousins find that language easiest and use it among themselves, all conceded that Vubben, the g’Kek, was peerless in his mastery of the grammar.

Especially when it came to telling necessary lies.

“Poor castaways, ignorant and stranded.

“Delighted are we. Ecstatic at this wondrous thing.

“Advent of rescue!”

Sara

Some distance below Dolo village, the river felt its way through a great marsh where even hoon sailors were known to lose the main channel, snagging on tree roots or coming aground on shifting sandbars. Normally, the brawny, patient crew of the dross-hauler Hauph-woa would count on wind and the river’s rhythmic rise-and-fall to help them slip free. But these weren’t normal times. So they folded their green cloaks — revealing anxious mottles across their lumpy backbone ridges — and pushed the Hauph-woa along with poles made of lesser-boo. Even passengers had to assist, now and then, to keep the muddy bottom from seizing the keel and holding them fast. The uneasy mood affected the ship’s contingent of flighty noor, who barked nervously, scampering across the masts, missing commands and dropping lines.

Finally, just before nightfall, the captain-pilot guided the Hauph-woa’s ornate prow past one last fen of droopy tallgrass to Unity Point, where the river’s branches reconverged into an even mightier whole. The garu forest resumed, spreading a welcome sheltering canopy over both banks. After such an arduous day, the air seemed all at once to release passengers and crew from its moist clench. A cool breeze stroked skin, scale, and hide, while sleek noor sprang overboard to splash alongside the gently gliding hull, then clambered the masts and spars to stretch and preen.

Sara thanked Prity when her assistant brought supper in a wooden bowl, then the chimp took her own meal to the side, in order to flick overboard the spicy greens that hoon chefs loved slicing into nearly everything they cooked. A trail of bubbles showed that river creatures, feeding on the scraps, weren’t so finicky. Sara didn’t mind the tangy taste, though most Earthlings wound up defecating bright colors after too many days of shipboard fare.

When Prity later brought a pair of blankets, Sara chose the plushest to tuck over the Stranger, sleeping near the main hold with its neatly stacked crates of dross. His brow bore a sheen of perspiration, which she wiped with a dry cloth. Since early yesterday, he had shown none of the lucidity so briefly displayed when the ill-omened bolide split the sky.

Sara had misgivings about hauling the wounded man on a hurried, stressful trek. Still, there was a good clinic in Tarek Town. And this way she might keep an eye on him while performing her other duty — one rudely dropped in her lap last night, after that frenzied conclave in the Meeting Tree.

Pzora stood nearby, a dark tower, dormant but ever-vigilant over the patient’s condition. The pharmacist vented steamy puffs from the specialized ring that routinely performed ad hoc chemistry beyond the understanding of Jijo’s best scholars or even the traeki themselves.

Wrapping her shoulders in another soft g’Kek-spun blanket, Sara turned and watched her fellow passengers.

Jomah, the young son of Henrik, the exploser, lay curled nearby, snoring softly after the excitement of leaving home for the first time. Closer to the mast sat Jop, the bristle-cheeked delegate of Dolo’s farmers and crofters, peering in the half-light at a leather-bound copy of some Scroll. Over by the starboard rail, Ulgor, the urrish tinker who had spoken at the village meeting, knelt facing a qheuenish woodcarver named Blade, one of many sons of the matriarch, Log Biter. Blade had lived for years among the sophisticated Gray Qheuens of Tarek Town, so his choice as representative of Dolo Hive seemed natural.

From a moss-lined pouch, Ulgor drew a quivering rewq symbiont, of the type suited for lean urrish heads. The trembling membrane crawled over each of her triple eyes, creating the Mask-That-Reveals. Meanwhile, Blade’s rewq wrapped itself around the seeing-strip bisecting his melonlike cupola. The qheuen’s legs retracted, leaving only the armored claws exposed.