And he didn't care, or so it seemed. He did his work in the fields, but he no longer had any ideas about what others should do. He simply did what he was asked. He worked hard. He exhausted himself, in fact. But he still seemed invisible.

I killed him, thought Eiadh.

Or maybe, just maybe, I took the first step toward healing him.

She would cling to that hope, she decided. This puzzling, quiet, withdrawn personality was just a stage in his development into a mature, wise, self-restrained, good man.

A man like Nafai.

TWELVE - FRIENDS

Shedemei asked Volemak for a meeting of all those involved in dealing with the two sentient species. "There are decisions to be made," she said, and so when the evening meal was done, they gathered in the ship's library: Volemak and Shedemei, of course, and along with them Nafai and Luet, Issib and Hushidh, and Oykib and Chveya. "I invited Elemak," Volemak explained, "because he had so much experience back on Harmony, dealing with strange cultures and foreign leaders. He declined to come, but I'm still going to ask him to work with the diggers, at least. They're the ones who are living practically on top of us-"

"Actually, we're living on top of them" said Nafai.

Volemak paused for a moment of patience, as if saying silently, When will the boy grow up enough not to make jokes during serious discussions? Luet leaned over to Nafai and jabbed his leg with her finger He grinned stupidly at her.

Volemak went on. "And it's imperative that we reach a workable living arrangement. I don't know about you, but what I saw the night of the kidnapping was a seriously conflicted digger society-an abduction organized by the son of the blood king, contrasted with the worship from the wife of the war king. The very fact that the wife-what's her name?"

"Emeezem," said Oykib.

"The fact that Emeezem succeeded where, um... ."

"Mufruzhuuzh."

"Where Muffle-whatever had failed may have weakened him. Therefore we can count on there being a faction that wants to rid the Earth of human beings, and perhaps two-Mufya's and the plotters who did the actual kidnapping. I think Elemak can be valuable in reaching some kind of understanding with the hostile ones."

"If he'll do it," said Hushidh. "He isn't very closely bonded right now with anyone. Not even Protchnu, since the boy couldn't keep himself from bragging to his father about how he was the one who discovered the entrance to the digger city up in a tree. It wasn't a welcome topic at home."

"You saw this domestic scene?" asked Volemak.

"I heard about it from an eyewitness," said Hushidh.

"So it's gossip," said Volemak.

"First-generation gossip," said Hushidh, "Very accurate. The best quality."

Volemak smiled, then repeated firmly. "Gossip."

Nafai spoke up. "I think Elemak's the natural choice to work with the diggers."

"There won't be just one," said Volemak. "And do us all a favor, Nafai. Don't let it be known that you favor the idea of Elemak having such an assignment."

Nafai nodded, suddenly serious. But Luet was not impressed. She knew that he understood, intellectually, that it was a bad idea for him to keep trying to be nice to Elemak. Just yesterday Luet had tried to explain it to him again, and he had interrupted her and explained it right back. "Elemak doesn't see my eagerness to give him authority as trust or kindness, he sees it as condescension and gloating, I know. But it's not gloating and it's not condescension, Luet. I really do admire his abilities and I trust him to do an excellent job of whatever he's doing. I can't help wanting to reach out to him."

"From your end it looks like reaching out," Luet explained, patiently-for the fiftieth time, she was sure. "From his end it's more like rubbing in."

Nafai knew that he should simply remain silent on any issue regarding Elemak, but he couldn't stand it. "Then everybody will think I'm sulking or that I don't want him to do anything. I really do want him to do things, and so I have to say so, don't I? So everybody knows there's no hard feelings."

"Can't you just trust me?" said Luet. "Can't you just trust me and shut up?"

He had given her his solemn vow-again-that he would say nothing to or about Elemak's role in the community. And here he was in this meeting, not a day since the last time she had pleaded with him and he had remade his promise to her, doing exactly what he had vowed not to do.

Volemak was taking the meeting back to its main subject. "Anyway, we won't have just one person working with the diggers. We have to have as many different perspectives as possible-even as we work to raise crops and get food and seeds stored away for the dry season. All of this is just a preamble, though. This meeting is Shedemei's. I assume this means she has a report on digger and angel biology, and that's as good a starting place as any."

"It's not really a report," said Shedemei. "It's more like a list of questions. The initial scan showed that like all the other animals and plants we've examined since we arrived, the diggers and angels show only the normal sorts of evolutionary changes from their ancestors of forty million years ago. Diggers were a species of field rat common in southern Mexico, and angels were a common species of bat. The genetic variation is on the order of only five percent from the original in both cases. It will be ages before we can even begin to examine the fossil record, but here you can see how the digger body has changed to be able to support a heavier head and the hands have evolved for grasping big heavy tools-while not losing the raw power of digging, climbing, and, I must add, killing with no tools at all."

She switched from the rat and digger skeletons on the computer display to the bat and angel skeletons. "The angels had a more complex job-to retain flight, support a heavier brain, and develop the manual strength to use tools. Their compromise is to keep the use of their feet as strong hands. Standing on one foot, these hip joints give them enough rotation to swing a hand axe. But their arms, which in bats have only vestigial hands, have evolved back into good manual instruments. They can't bear much weight, and as we learned through an unfortunate incident, the arms break easily enough in a strong grasp. So the hands aren't used for gross physical activities. Rather they're used for very delicate, fine work."

She sat and regarded them steadily.

Luet finally realized what she was indicating. "You mean that the statues down in the digger city were made by the angels?"

"The digger hand is simply incapable of doing the fine work you described," said Shedemei. "I've tested the diggers when they were semi-conscious. They can't do work that doesn't require a lot offeree. When you sculpt in soft clay, you have to be very restrained, press only so hard. The diggers are incapable of that. They would mash the clay to a pulp."

"Perhaps," said Issib, "you've only been examining soldiers and manual laborers."

"Did you notice any dimorphism underground?" Shedemei asked Nafai and Oykib.

"None," said Nafai.

"And they admitted that they didn't make the sculptures themselves," added Oykib.

"But those are their gods," said Chveya. "Gods which they worship by offering the bones of dead baby angels to them. It seems a little incongruous."

"Yes, it does," said Shedemei. "But that strikes at the heart of the most important questions. The first one is, Why did two intelligent species develop virtually in each other's laps like this, without one destroying the other? According to the records in the library, several sentient species evolved along with humans from the same stock-robusts and heidelbergs, they called them-but the erects essentially erased the robusts, and the moderns wiped out the heidelbergs."