“Would you protect us if the aggressor comes after the Commonwealth?”

“We would offer whatever advice the situation required.”

“Well hot damn thanks a whole bunch there. Half of you are memories that humans send into you rather than rejuvenate again. Don’t you have any empathy, any humanity left in those mountain-sized circuits of yours?”

“Fifty percent is an exaggeration, Ozzie. We believe you know that. You who dispatched copies of his own memories—incomplete ones, at that—to run in our arrays in the hope of receiving special and privileged treatment.”

“And do I get any?”

“We are aware of our debt to you concerning the founding of our planet. You were an honest broker at the time, as such you are entitled to our respect.”

“Respect doesn’t put food on the table.”

“Since when have you ever wanted for anything material?”

“Oh, getting personal now you’re losing, huh?”

The SI didn’t reply.

“Okay, then tell me, with that infinitesimal piece of processing you’re covering this with, don’t you think it strange the Silfen know nothing about the Dyson Pair?”

“They are notoriously reluctant to supply exact definitions. As Vice President Doi confirmed, Commonwealth cultural experts are working on the problem.”

“Can you help us there? Maybe slip in a few trick questions.”

“The Silfen will not communicate directly with me. They have no interest in technological artifacts.”

“Yeah, something I’ve always been suspicious of. I mean, what is technology? Are steam engines? Do they class organic circuitry in there with quantum wire processors? And where do they get off claiming their transport method isn’t technology-based—whatever the hell it actually is.”

“If you’re hoping they will assist the Commonwealth, you will be disappointed. They are not deliberately obtuse; their neural structure is simply different to that of humans.”

“You think?” Ozzie stretched himself out in the chair. “I met somebody once. Long time ago now. It was in a bar on Far Jerusalem, just a seedy little watering hole in a town on the edge of nowhere. Don’t suppose it’s even there anymore, or if it is, it’ll be some tarted-up club with entry standards. But back then a man could walk in and get a drink without anyone bothering him. That’s what he did, except he sat next to me, and he was the one who started talking. Of course, he had a message to put across; but I’m a good listener when I want to be. He had quite a story, too. He claimed he’d been living with the Silfen for a few years. Really living with them, down at the end of those paths in their forests which we all know about and never see. Well, he said he’d walked through their forests with them. Started out one fine morning on a path in the heart of some Silvergalde wood, and finished up hiking across Mt. Finnan on Dublin, like all the rumors have it. Three hundred light-years in a single stride. But he’d actually done it and come back. He’d been to planets far outside the Commonwealth, so he claimed; sat on the blasted desert of a dead planet to watch the remnants of its sun fall into a black hole, swum in a sea on a planet where the only light comes from the galactic core which filled half the sky above, climbed along things he called tree reefs that live in a nebula of gas dense enough to breathe. All those things I always wanted to do. He sat there drinking his cheap beer with thatlook in his eye as he told me about his travels. Got to hand it to him, he could spin a good yarn. I haven’t seen him in years, though we still keep in touch occasionally.”

“An improbable tale, but not impossible given what we know of the Silfen. The knowledge of their paths is one of your primary modern myths.”

“But it’s what else he told me about the Silfen that I’ve always been interested in. He said their bodies are just chrysalides. Somewhere out there in the galaxy is the true Silfen, the adult community. I don’t think it’s physical. A collection of minds, or ghosts maybe. But that’s where they go, what they become. Interesting parallel to you and us, don’t you think?”

“Yes. Although we are not a natural evolutionary step for humans.”

“Not yet. But you’re constantly evolving, and even us poor old naked apes have genetic and intellectual aspirations. What I’m saying is, the Silfen we meet in the forests aren’t the only source of their species’ history. Have you ever encountered the community?”

“No. If it exists, then it functions on a different plane to us.”

“Ever shouted into the abyss and listened for an answer? I’m sure you must have. You’d be curious to find out if there was anything there, an equal.”

“There are echoes of mind in many spectrums, hints of purpose if not intelligence. But for all we know and see, we are alone still.”

“Bummer, huh. I guess it’s down to me, then.”

“To do what?”

“Go find the adult Silfen community, ask it what the fuck’s going on with the Dyson Pair.”

…

The CST planetary station on Silvergalde was always going to be smaller than any of the other settled worlds in the Commonwealth. But then, Silvergalde wasn’t strictly a Commonwealth planet. From the very beginning, when the exploratory wormhole opened above it, the CST Operations Director knew something was out of kilter. Silvergalde was nearly three times larger than Earth, but its gravity was only point eight nine. Half of the surface was land, while the other half contained mildly salty seas with a hundred thousand picturesque islands. With that composition, and an axial tilt less than half a degree, the environment was completely stable, giving two-thirds of the planet a predominantly temperate climate.

Humans always speculated the globe was artificial. Its interior composition was mainly silicate; no metals were ever found in the crust. A small molten core generated a magnetic field, but did not produce volcanoes. There were no impact craters, no geological reason for the continents and seas to be separate. And most tellingly, no fossil of any kind was ever found. If it was natural it was completely unique. But the real proof appeared after humans reached the surface, where they were greeted by the slyly amused Silfen. Classifying local vegetation and animal life turned up a dozen DNA types, all living in equilibrium with each other. They had to have been imported, and none of them were from any world the Commonwealth was familiar with.

As far as anyone could determine, Silvergalde was the Silfen capital, or at least a regional capital. There were billions of them living on it. They didn’t mind sharing the land with humans, though there were rules, primarily concerned with technology and pollution; nothing above Victorian-level mechanization was permitted. Enforcement was relatively simple, as the more advanced an artifact, the less likely it was to work. The only exception was the CST gateway machinery holding the wormhole stable. No explanation given. When asked, the Silfen apparently didn’t understand the question.

Such a world attracted a certain kind of human. There were pastoral worlds within the Commonwealth, where a similar physical lifestyle could be followed. But it was the Silfen themselves that attracted the gentle, spiritualist types. About a million and a half people had emigrated there. Lyddington, the town with the CST station, had about ten thousand residents; the rest found villages that took their fancy. Then there were the caravans, eternally touring the land, and sailing ships that spent years on a single voyage. A few solitary wanderers wanted the whole Silfen experience. These set off into the forests that covered sixty percent of the land, where legend said you could find paths leading to other worlds and realms.

It was a simple FG67 diesel engine that pulled the five carriages into Lyddington station. The service ran twice a week from Bayovar, through a gateway that was just wide enough to carry a single set of tracks.