Laughter.

The Stranger sat up, eyeing the gathered passengers and crew. He gaped at Jomah, the exploser’s son, who had climbed Blade’s broad back, clasping the head-cupola jutting from the qheuen’s blue carapace. Blade had always been gentle and popular with the kids of Dolo, so Sara thought little of it. But the Stranger sucked breath, pointed, and guffawed.

He turned and saw a sailor feeding tidbits to a favorite noor, while another hoon patiently let Prity, the chimpanzee, perch on his broad shoulder for a better view. The Stranger let out a dry, disbelieving cackle.

He blinked in puzzled surprise at the sight of the g’Kek scriven-dancer, Fakoon, who had spun over to rest wheels between Pzora and the urrish tinker, Ulgor. Fakoon ogled the injured human with a pair of waving eyestalks, turning the other two toward his neighbors as if to ask — “What’s going on?”

The Stranger clapped hands like a delighted child, laughing uproariously as tears flowed tributaries down his dark, haggard cheeks.

Asx

It was as if a century’s enlightenment by our Holy Egg — and all the earlier hard work to establish the Commons — were forgotten in the aftermath. Few rewq could be seen anywhere, as suspicion-poisons drove them off our brows to sulk in moss-lined pouches, leaving us to rely on mere words, as we had done in ages past, when mere words often led to war.

my/our own folk brought samples of recent noxious rumors, and i laid our base segment over/upon the vileness, letting its vapors rise up our central core, bringing distasteful understanding of these odious thoughts—

—our human neighbors are not trustworthy anymore, if they ever were.

—they will sell us out to their gene-and-clan cousins in the foray party.

—they lied with their colorful tale of being poor, patronless wolflings, scorned among the Five Galaxies.

—they only feigned exile, while spying on us and this world.

Even more bitter was this gossipy slander

—they will depart soon with their cousins, climbing to resume the godlike life our ancestors forsook. Leaving us to molder in this low place, cursed, forgotten, while they roam galaxies.

That was the foulest chattering stench, so repugnant that i/we vented a noisome, melancholy steam.

The humans… might they really do that? Might they abandon us?

If/when that happened, night would grow as loathsome as day. For we would ever after have to look up through our darkness and see what they had reclaimed.

The stars.

Lark

The forayer biologist made him nervous. I Ling had a way of looking at Lark — one that kept him I befuddled, feeling like a savage or a child.

Which he was, in comparison, despite being older in duration-years. For one thing, all his lifetime of study wouldn’t fill even one of the crystal memory slivers she dropped blithely into the portable console slung over her one-piece green coverall.

The dark woman’s exotic, high cheekbones framed large eyes, a startling shade of creamy brown. “Are you ready, Lark?” she asked.

His own pack held four days’ rations, so there’d be no need to hunt or forage, but this time he would leave behind his precious microscope. That treasure of urrish artifice now seemed a blurry toy next to the gadgets Ling and her comrades used to inspect organisms down to the level of their constituent molecules. What could we tell them that they don’t already know? he pondered. What could they possibly want from us?

It was a popular question, debated by those friends who would still speak to him, and by those who turned their backs on any human, for being related to invaders.

Yet the sages charged a human — and a heretic at that — to guide one of these thieves through a forest filled with treasure. To begin the dance of negotiating for our lives.

The Six had one thing to offer. Something missing from the official Galactic Library entry on Jijo, collated by the Buyur before they departed. That thing was recent data, about how the planet had changed after a million fallow years. On that, Lark was as “expert” as a local savage could be.

“Yes, I’m ready,” he told the woman from the starship.

“Good, then let’s be off!’’ She motioned for him to lead.

Lark hoisted his pack and turned to show the way out of the valley of crushed trees, by a route passing far from the cleft of the Egg. Not that anyone expected its existence to stay secret. Robot scouts had been out for days, nosing through the glens, streams, and fumaroles. Still, there was a chance they might mistake the Egg for just another rock formation — that is, until it next started to sing.

Lark’s chosen path also led away from the canyon where the innocents had been sent — the children, chimpanzees, lorniks, zookirs, and glavers. Perhaps the plunderers’ eyes weren’t omniscient, after all. Maybe precious things could be hidden.

Lark agreed with the sages’ plan. Thus far.

Clots of spectators normally gathered at the valley rim to watch the black cube drink sunlight without reflections or highlights. When the two humans reached those heights, one group of urrish onlookers backed away nervously, hooves clattering like pebbles on hard stone. They were all young unbrooded females with empty mate pouches. Just the sort to have an itch for trouble.

Conical heads bobbed and hissed, lowering toward the humans, displaying triangles of serrated teeth. Lark’s shoulders tensed. The rewq in his belt pocket squirmed as it sensed rancor in the air.

“Stop that!” he warned, when Ling started pointing an instrument toward the milling urs. “Just keep walking.”

“Why? I only want to take—”

“Of that I’m sure. But now’s not a good time.”

Lark held her elbow, urging her along. From first contact he could tell she was quite strong.

A rock shot past them from behind and struck the ground ahead. An aspirated shout followed.

“Skirlssss!”

Ling started to turn in curiosity, but Lark kept her moving. Added voices joined in.

“Skirls!”

“Jeekee skirlsss!”

More stones pelted around them. Ling’s eyes showed dawning concern. So Lark reassured her, dryly, “Urs don’t throw very well. Lousy aim, even after they learned about bows and arrows.”

“They are your enemies,” she observed, quickening the pace on her own accord.

“That’s putting it too strong. Let’s just say that humans had to fight a bit for our place here on Jijo, early on.”

The urrish rabble followed, easily keeping up, shouting and stoking their nerve — until one of their own kind galloped in from the east, swerving suddenly in front of the throng. Wearing the brassard of a Proctor of Gathering, she spread her arms wide, displaying two full mating pouches and active scent glands. The mob stumbled to a halt as her head bobbed bold, aggressive circles, snapping and shooing them away from the two humans.

Law and order still function, Lark thought, with relief. Though for how much longer?

“What were they shouting at us?” Ling asked after marching farther under a canopy of fine-needled vor trees. “It wasn’t in GalSix or GalTwo.”

“Local dialect.” Lark chuckled. “Jeekee was originally a hoonish curseword, now in common use. It means smelly — as if those randy little unwed urs should talk!”

“And the other word?”

Lark glanced at her. “Insults are important to urs. Back in pioneer days, they wanted something to call us. Something humans would find both offensive and apropos. So, during an early truce, they very nicely asked our founders to tell ’em the name of an animal familiar to us. One that lived in trees and was known for being silly.”