Even that was too much for some people.

“Arrog’ance!” muttered Jop, the tree farmer, who had chosen to come along when he learned of this expedition. “It all has to go, if we’re ever to be blessed.”

“In time, it must,” Ariana Foo nodded, leaving vague whether she meant next week, or in a thousand years.

Sara saw fresh clay smeared over holes at the base of several great pillars. Just like back home, she realized. The explosers are making sure all is ready.

She could not help turning to glance behind Jop. Taking up the rear were the last two Gopher passengers, young Jomah, Henrik’s son, and his uncle, Kurt. The elder exploser bent to point out structural features to the boy, using hand motions that made Sara think of tumbling chunks of ancient granite. She wondered if the Stranger, staring about in apparent delight, had any idea how little it would take to turn all this into rubble, indistinguishable from a hundred other places demolished by the Buyur when they departed, leaving the planet to revert to nature.

Sara felt a return of the old tightness in her shoulder blades. It hadn’t been easy, at first, being a student in this place. Even when she had taken her books to the forest up top, to read under the shade of a homey garu tree, she could never shake off a sense that the whole plateau might shudder and collapse beneath her. For a while, the nervous fantasies had threatened her studies — until Joshu came along.

Sara winced. She had known it would all come back if she returned to this place. Memories.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Jop added as they neared the Athenian portico of Central Hall, unaware how stingingly the words struck Sara’s private thoughts.

Ariana agreed. “Ifni insists on it. Nothing can resist the goddess of change.”

If the elder sage meant the remark to be sardonic, Sara missed her point. She was too deep in reminiscence to care, even as they neared the giant double doors — carved from the finest wood as a gift from the qheuen race, then bound with urrish bronze, lacquered by traeki secretions and painted by g’Kek artists. The work towered ten meters high, depicting in ornate symbolism the thing most treasured by all, the latest, best, and most hard-won accomplishment of Jijo’s Commons in Exile.

The Great Peace.

This time, Sara hardly noticed when the Stranger gasped in appreciation. She couldn’t share his pleasure. Not when all she felt within this place was sadness.

Asx

The portraitist did not even ask to rest after the long, hard trek from Kandu Landing. He set to work at once, preparing his materials — caustic chemicals and hard metals whose imperviousness to time make them suspect under Commons law — yet ideal for blackmail.

Others of his guild were already here, having come to Gathering in order to sell paper photographs of visitors, guildmasters, winners at the games — anyone vain enough to want a graven image keepsake to last out a lifetime, maybe two. A few of these skilled likeness-peddlers had offered to secretly record the invaders, but to what purpose? Paper portraits are designed to fade and rot, not last aeons. Better not to risk the aliens catching them in the act, and so discovering some of our hidden arts.

But Ariana, Bloor, and young Sara Koolhan appear to have come up with something different, have they not, my rings? Despite exhaustion from the road, Bloor appeared at once before us to show off the daguerreotype. An implausibly precise image stored on etched metal, centuries in age. Ur-Jah trembled as she fondled the accurate depiction of a great tattooed chieftain of old.

“If we attempt this, secrecy is essential. Our foes must not know how few pictures were taken,” Phwhoon-dau pointed out, while privacy wasps swarmed our hidden tent-of-conclave, fluttering drops of bitter color from their glowing wings.

“The sky-gods must imagine that we have scribed hundreds of plates already safely hidden far from here, in so many deep places they could never find them all.”

“True,” Vubben added, his eyestalks “weaving a dance of caution. “But there is more. For this to work, the portraits cannot simply show the human invaders’ faces. Of what use will that be as evidence, a million years hence? They must include the aliens’ machines, and clear Jijoan landmarks, and also the local animals they inspect as candidates for ravishment.”

“And their costumes, their garish garb,” Lester Cambel inserted urgently. “Any identifiers to show they are renegade humans. Not representatives of our sept on Jijo, or of Earth.”

We all assented to this last request, though it seems futile to satisfy. How could a few etched plates express such fine distinctions to prosecutors so long after we are gone?

We asked Bloor to consult with our agents, bearing all these criteria in mind. If anything comes of this, it will indeed be a miracle.

We believe in miracles, do we not, my rings? Today, the rewq in our/my pouch came out of dormant state. So did that of Vubben, our Speaker of Ignition. Others report stirrings.

Is it possible to call this cause for hope? Or have they only begun awakening, as rewq sometimes do in the last stages of illness, shortly before they roll up and die?

Dwer

The trail over the Rimmers was steep and broken. That never mattered during Dwer’s prior trips into the eastern wilderness — survey sweeps sanctioned by the sages — carrying just his bow, a map, and a few necessities. The first time, right after old Fallon’s retirement, he got so elated that he ran down to the misty plains letting gravity yank him headlong, yelling as he leaped from one teetering foothold to the next.

There was none of that now. No exhilaration. No contest of youth and skill against Jijo’s ardent hug. This was a sober affair, coaxing a dozen heavily laden donkeys over patches of unsteady footing, using patient firmness to overcome the animals’ frequent bouts of stubbornness. He wondered how Urrish traders made it look so easy, guiding their pack trains with shrill, clipped whistles.

And they say these things come from Earth? he wondered, dragging yet another donkey out of trouble. Dwer wasn’t warm to the idea of being a close genetic cousin to such creatures.

Then there were the human charges he must also shepherd into the wilderness.

In fairness, it could have been worse. Danel Ozawa was an experienced forester, and the two women were strong, with their own unique skills. Still, nothing back on the tame Slope compared to this kind of trekking. Dwer found himself frequently moving up and down the train, helping his companions out of jams.

He wasn’t sure which unnerved him more, the stolid indifference of Lena Strong or the gawky friendliness of Jenin Worley, frequently catching his eye with a shy smile. They had been obvious choices, since Jenin and Lena were already at Gathering to lobby for their “tourism” idea — hoping to enlist Dwer’s help, and approval from the sages, to start taking groups of “sight-seers” over the Rimmers.

In other words, bright people with too much time on their hands, overly influenced by notions they found in old Earth books.

I was going to fight it. Even same-sex groups risked violating the anti-sooner covenant.

But now — I’m part of a scheme to break the law I’m sworn to uphold.

He couldn’t help glancing repeatedly at the two women, the same way they were surely appraising him.

They sure looked… healthy.

You’re a true wild man now. Learn to prize the-honest virtues of wild females.

There would be women in the Gray Hills, too, but Rety said most of them began childbirth at fourteen. Few kept more than half their teeth past age thirty.