"Yes, in a ship."

             Cley's temper flared despite her efi^orts to maintain the easy calm of a Supra. "What? I could have zipped out here in a ship?"

             "Well, yes." Alvin seemed surprised at her question.

             She whirled to confront Seeker. "You made me go through all this?"

             Seeker worked its mouth awkwardly. "I perceived that as the correct course."

             "It was damned dangerous. And you didn't even consult me!"

             "You did not know enough to judge," Seeker said uncertainly.

             "I'll decide that!"

             Seeker backed away. "Perhaps I erred."

             ''Perhaps? You—"

             "Do not be hasty," Alvin said mildly. "This animal is clever, and in this case it showed foresight. It was lucky for you that I did not convey you outward by our planned route. We thought it intact. Yet several craft carrying needed Ur-human passengers were destroyed after leaving Earth, and you could well have been among them."

             "What?" Cley's flare of anger guttered out. "My people?" Cley was so excited she lost her grip on a vine and had to catch herself.

             "Not exactly. We grew them from your helix."

             "You mean they're—they're me?""

             "Some, yes. Others we varied slightly, to get the proper mix of abilities."

             Cley had feared the Supras would do this. Would such cooked-up

             Ur-humans be zombies, shorn of culture, mockeries of her kind? Such disquiets had propelled her to escape.

             "I ... I want to see them."

             "You can when all this is over."

             "No! I have a right to be with my own kind."

             "Are you not content with our company?" Alvin gestured and Cley saw that while she was so intent a group of Supras had quietly infiltrated the bowers around them. Seranis stood nearby, one eyebrow cocked, studying the leafy cascades with evident distaste. Her clothes had been torn and blackened—in the same engagement as Alvin? Already the rips were healing. Smudges dissolved, digested by the glossy fibers.

             Cley sighed. "I'm out of my depth with you Supras. You aren't human."

             We are more than human, in your manner of speaking, Seranis sent.

             "If you have any sense of justice, you'll let me see my people."

             Justice will come in time, Seranis sent with a tinge of blithe unconcern.

             Cley looked at Seeker but it seemed to be absorbed in picking mites from its pelt. "How long will that be?" she asked.

             "Our struggle has already begun," Alvin said. "It is best that you stay with us for the time being."

             Cley blinked. "The fight's already going on?"

             "In a sense it has been going on for long before your own birth," Alvin said, cooly gentle.

             Cley saw the chinks in his armor now, though—a tilt of his solemn mouth, a refractory glint to his eyes. "Where?"

             "The final engagement has begun on the outer rim of the solar system. It now converges here, where the strength of the Jovian magnetic fields can shelter us somewhat, and our reserves are greatest."

             Cley suddenly felt strongly the skittering, frayed skein of talent-talk that flitted among the Supras from Lys. Time had enlarged her ability, for she could now trace faint threads of flittering ideas, currents and implications that came and went in gossamer instants.

             "What can I do in all this? I—"

             As if years of preparation had focused on a single point in time, an answer leaped through her mind. Seranis was the channel for this, Cley felt, but she had a sense of an assembly of voices behind the massive intrusion. A wedge of thought drove itself through her. They were telling her much, but it was like trying to take a drink from a firehose.

             "I ... I don't understand . . ."

             "It will take a while to unsort itself in your mind, I'm told," Alvin said.

             "So much . . . What is the Black Sun?"

             "An ancient term. 'Black Hole' is a better one." Alvin carefully chose his words, obviously talking down to her. "Our legends held that the Mad Mind was imprisoned at the edge of the galaxy, when in fact the Black Hole sits at the center."

             "Pretty big error."

             "A flaw in notation, apparently." His earnest precision reminded her that his first love had been Diaspar's library. "History was correct about the Mind's devastation, though. It knows a way to eat the plasma veils which hang in the galactic arms, leaving great rents where suns should glow. Legend held that the Mind and Vana-monde would meet among the corpses of the stars, but we find now that the collision must occur here, near Earth, where matters started and must finally end."

             Cley shook her head, trying to clear it. "I can't possibly amount to much in all this."

             "So I would have said as well, once." Alvin had settled on a branch and even in the low spin-gravity the lines in his face sagged. "But you do matter. You Ur-humans had a hand, along with more advanced human forms and alien races, in making both magnetic entities."

             "Us? Impossible."

             "I admit it seems extremely unlikely. Yet the deep records of Diaspar are clear, if read closely."

             "How could we make something like smart lightning?"

             "You may come to understand that in the fray that approaches."

             "Well, even if we helped make V^anamonde, what's that matter now? I don't know anything about it."

             Alvin looked at Seeker, but the big creature seemed unconcerned.

             Cley got the feeling that all this was running more or less as Seeker expected, and it was never one to trouble itself with assisting the inevitable.

             Alvin spread his hands. "Deep in Vanamonde lies a set of assumptions, of world view. They depend on the kinesthetic senses of Ur-humans, upon your perceptual space."

             "What's that?"

             "What matters is that we cannot duplicate such things."

             "Come on," Cley said bitterly. "I know I'm dumber than anyone here, but that doesn't mean you can—"

             We do not delude you. Seranis gazed at Cley somberly. The makeup of a being circumscribes its perceptions. That cannot be duplicated artificially. We tried, yes — and failed.

             Alvin said, "We find communicating with Vanamonde exceedingly difficult. We have struggled for centuries to no avail."

             "Why?" Cley asked. "I thought you people could do anything."

             We cannot transcend our world view, any more than you can, Seranis sent.

             "That is always true of a single species," Seeker said casually.

             Alvin's forehead knitted with annoyance. "And you?"

             "There has been some tinkering since your time," Seeker said.

             "This is our time!" Alvin said sharply.

             Seeker leaned back and did not reply.