Now a third report, in a region housing old intelligences. The portal near the Kahalla shrine had triggered an abnormality alert. This signal came to the attention of resident monitors for the Zone. Since Memor had a tag on such genetic identifiers, she heard of this just a short while ago, when already in the long magnetic train tube network with Bemor.

“They move in crafty fashion,” Bemor had observed. “Doubtless this is not a signature of Late Invader cleverness. They do not know our territories. They must be guided by the Sil.”

Memor sent a fan-array in a flutter of subtle, doubting yellows. “I doubt the Sil have such abilities either. We have contained them in their urge to expand for a great long time now. Many generations have passed since Sil could roam in exploring parties.”

Bemor considered this. “They are also a rambunctious species, still. Some longlives ago, they sought access to the strictly nonsentient Zones.”

“I do recall.” Memor quickly accessed her Undermind, and the memory unfolded for her quick review. “Outright demands for territory, claiming that their species had spread quickly over their homeworld due to a mixed genetic and social imperative.”

“Quite. Note that seems, from your own work, to be a signature heritage of your Late Invaders.”

The implications of this struck Memor only now. But her Undermind quickly sent a link that showed she had been mulling over these Late Invader–Sil resonances. But only vaguely. Bemor, on the other hand, had seen it immediately.

Memor turned to Tananareve. “Your origins are how far back in your own measure?”

The primate took her time. Her eyes swept from Memor to her brother as she kept her mouth stiff. Then, “Several hundred thousand orbitals.”

Bemor had not ingested Memor’s concept-map of her studies of the Late Invaders, for he said, “She must not know the correct sum.”

“No, this fits with her supporting frame-referencing knowledge. I read it directly from her long-term memory.”

“Unreliable. We do not know the topology of her Undermind.”

“We will. But more important, I asked her. She gave a detailed history of their species traumas. Detailed and odd, but plausible. They were several times forced into small surviving parties, due to climate shifts. At one point they were barely above levels to avoid inbreeding in a cold place near an ocean. This built in a desire to expand—almost an assumption, I would say, that the lands far beyond the hills they saw could be better.”

Bemor huffed and shifted his bulk uneasily. In close quarters, his musk flavored the air and rankled her nose. She sniffed as a rebuke. “It is rare to proceed up through the stages of mental layering you describe. I cannot believe it would occur in so few orbitals of an ordinary star.”

“As I recall, the Sil also evolved high intelligence and tool use in a short while.” Memor fished up the details and sent them to Bemor.

A long moment of brooding inspection, a rumbling in his chest, wheeze of slowly expelled breath. “So they did. This explains their intuitive alliance with the Late Invaders.”

Memor said, “We have new data that the Sil have been privy to our general messages about the Late Invaders. They may have sensed this as their opportunity.”

Bemor turned to Tananareve. “You know of the Sil?” he asked in something resembling Anglish.

“Only what you have said of them,” she said.

“They are with the other escaped Late Invaders.”

“We were not invaders at all!” This animated the primate. “We came as peaceful explorers.”

He rumbled with mirth at this, but a quick startled expression on Tananareve’s face showed she thought it an aggressive sound. “Your peacefulness is surely moot, is it not? You of course we retained, but some others of you escaped.”

“We do not like being unfree.”

“And we—who of course did not fear any warlike abilities such as your kind might have—do not savor intrusion. We avoid having new influences introduced into our Bowl without adequate wise supervision.” Bemor said this slowly, as if speaking to a child, or to some of the slower Adopteds.

“I think by now all of ‘our kind’ would like to just get away from this place. We have another destination.”

“As well we know,” Memor said, flashing a humor her fan-signal to Bemor. “But that is also why we cannot allow you to arrive there first.”

A nod. “That’s how I figured it.”

“Can you also give an opinion of why your companions are allied with the Sil?”

Tananareve smiled. “They need help.”

“And why together a band of these is moving through the Bowl, using fast transport and undersurface methods?” Bemor huffed, drawing nearer the primate—who then shrank back, nose wrinkling.

“They’re on the run. Been running so long, maybe it’s a habit.”

Memor suspected this was a gibe but said nothing. Bemor persisted, his sour and salty male odor rising in their compartment. “Nothing more?”

She looked up at them both with a level, assessing gaze. “How about curiosity?”

“That is not a plausible motive,” Memor said, but saw that Bemor gave off flurry-fan-signals of disagreement.

“I fear it is,” Bemor said. “We try not to allow such facets of a species’ character to rule their behavior.”

Tananareve smiled again. “That’s what becoming Adopted means?

“In part,” Bemor conceded.

“Then you will savor our destination,” Memor said. “It will show you creatures you have never seen and quite probably cannot imagine.” No point in not using a touch of anticipation, was there? Some species appreciated that.

The primate said, “Try me.”

PART X

STONE MIND

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

—MARK TWAIN

THIRTY

Cliff watched the sleeting, tarnished-silver rain slam down from an angry, growling purple cloud. This was like a more ferocious form of the cool autumnal storms he had waited out while hiking in the high Sierra Nevada, with crackling platinum lightning electrifying half the sky’s dark pewter. Crack and boom, all louder and larger than in the Sierra, maybe because it came from an atmosphere deeper and more driven, sprawling across scales far larger than planets. This violence was casually enormous, with clouds stacked like purple sandwiches up the silvered sky until they faded in the haze. The stench of wet wood mingled with a zesty tang of ozone, sharp in his nose and sinuses. He tasted iron in the drops that splashed on his outstretched tongue, and salt in the rough leaves they’d just eaten, plus a citrus burn in the vegetables they’d managed to scrounge from some trees nearby, before the hammering rainstorm arrived. Tastes of the alien lands.

“Rain near done,” Quert said. “Need go. Soon.”

Cliff could scarcely believe this prediction. “Why?”

“Folk find us.”

“You’re sure?”

“They know much. Even stones—” A gesture to distant sharp peaks, emerging from cottony clouds as the storm ebbed. “—speak to them. Always know.” A grave nod of Quert’s bare head said much.

Cliff nodded. Rain pattered down and smoke stained the air and it was hard to think. Quert made sense. The whole Bowl was deeply wired in some way. Its lands were vast but not stupid; there had to be a smart network that wove all this together. Still, most of the Bowl had to run on its own. No one or no thing could manage so huge a space unless the default options were stable, ordinary, and would work without incessant managing. Still …

No security from prying eyes would last for long. Their only advantage was that the Bowl was, while well integrated, still so vast. Even light took a while to cross it—up to twelve minutes, from the edge of the rim to the other edge. The delays sending text or faint voices across it, to Redwing on SunSeeker, were irritating. Especially when you could lose contact at any second.