But she had to consider the possibility.

Was it really true? What if the birds knew what they were doing, to the Sun? Oh, the precise form of their intelligence — their awareness — didn’t matter. They might even be some form of group consciousness, like the Squeem. The key question was their intent.

Could the wildest speculations of Superet be, after all, correct? Did the birds represent some form of malevolent intelligence which intended to extinguish the Sun?

Were they smothering the Sun’s fusion fire by design?

And if so, why?

Brooding, she sank deeper into the flock, watching, correlating.

They reached the Superet Planners’ Temple in Sector 3.

The little party slowed. Arrow Maker and Spinner seemed to have coped well with the sights and sounds of their journey so far, but the glowing, tetrahedral mass of the Temple, looming above them, seemed to have awed them at last. Morrow found it hard to control his own nervousness. After all it was only a few shifts since his own last, painful, personal interview with Milpitas; and now, standing here, he wondered at his own temerity at coming back like this.

Garry Uvarov stirred in his cocoon of stained blanket, his sightless face questing. When he spoke his cheeks, paper-thin, rustled. “What’s going on? Why have we stopped?”

“We’ve arrived,” Morrow said. “This is the Planners’ Temple. And — ”

Uvarov snorted, cavernously. “Temple. Of course they’d call it that, Arrow Maker,” he snapped. “Tell me what you see.”

Arrow Maker, hesitantly, described the tetrahedral pyramid, its glowing-blue edges, the sheets of glimmering brown-gold stretched across the faces.

Uvarov’s head quivered; he seemed to be trying to nod. “An Interface mockup. These damned survivalists; always so full of themselves. Temple.” He twisted his head; Morrow, fascinated, could see the vertebrae of his neck, individually articulating. “Well? What are we waiting for?”

Morrow, his anxiety and nervousness tightening in his chest, moved forward toward the Temple.

“Milpitas? Milpitas?” Uvarov’s gaunt face showed some interest. “I knew a Milpitas: Serena Harvey Gallium Harvey Milpitas…”

“My grandmother,” Planner Milpitas said. He sat back in his chair and steepled his long fingers, a familiar gesture that Morrow watched, fascinated. “One of the original crew. She died a long time ago — ”

Uvarov’s chair rolled, restlessly, back and forth across Milpitas’ soft carpet; Arrow Maker, Morrow and Spinner were forced to crowd to the back of Milpitas’ small office to avoid Uvarov. “I know all that, damn it. I didn’t ask for her life history. I said I knew her. Glib tongue, she had, like all Martians.”

Milpitas, behind his desk, regarded Uvarov. Morrow conceded with a certain respect that the Planner’s composure, his certainty, hadn’t been ruffled at all by the irruption into his ordered world of these painted savages, this gaunt ancient from the days of the launch itself.

The Planner asked, “Why have you come here?”

“Because you wouldn’t come out to meet me,” Uvarov growled. “You arrogant bastard. I should have — ”

“But why,” Milpitas pressed with patient distaste, “did you wish to meet me at all?” Now he let his cold eyes flicker over the silent forest folk. “Why not stay in your jungle, climbing trees with your friends here?”

Morrow heard Spinner-of-Rope growl under her breath.

Uvarov’s nostrils flared, the papery skin stretching. “I won’t be spoken to like that by the likes of you. Who’s in charge here?”

“I am,” Milpitas said calmly. “Now answer my question.”

Garry Uvarov raised his face; in the subdued, sourceless light of Milpitas’ office his eye sockets looked infinitely deep. “You people were always the same.”

Milpitas looked amused. “What people, exactly?”

“You survivalists. Your blessed grandmother and the rest of the crew she fell in with, who thought they were the only ones, the sacred guardians of Superet’s mission. Always trying to control everybody else, to fit us all into your damn hierarchies.”

“If you’ve come all this way to debate social structures, then let’s do so,” Milpitas said easily. “There are reasons for devising hierarchical societies — purposes for devising bureaucracies. Did you ever think of that, old man?” He waved a languid hand. “We’re confined here — obviously — within a finite environment. We have limited resources. We’ve no means of obtaining more resources. So we need control. We must plan. We need consistency of behavior: a regulated society designed to maximize efficiency until the greater goal is reached. And a bureaucracy is the best way of — ”

“Power!” Uvarov’s voice was a sudden rant.

His head jerked forward on its stem of neck. “You’ve built walls around the world, walls around people. Consistency of behavior my arse. We’re talking about power, Milpitas. That’s all. The power to flatten and control — to impose illiteracy — even to remove the right to reproduce. You’re damned inhuman; you people always were. And — ”

Milpitas laughed; he seemed completely unperturbed. “How long have you been isolated up there in the trees, Dr. Uvarov? How many centuries? And have you cherished this bitterness all that time?”

“You’re obsessed with control. You survivalists… With your perverted vision of the Superet goal, your exclusive access to the truth.”

Milpitas’ laughter faded, and a cold light came into his eyes. “I know your history, Dr. Uvarov. It’s familiar enough. Your rejection of AS treatment, your bizarre experiment to breed longevity into your people — your victims, I should say… And you talk to me of obsession. Of control. You dare talk to me of these things…”

In his brief time with the forest folk, Morrow had learned of Uvarov’s eugenic ambitions.

Uvarov had rejected AS treatment — and any artificial means — as the way to immortality. To improve the stock, it was necessary to change the species, he argued.

Humans were governed by their genes. They — and every other living thing — were machines, designed by the genes to ensure their own — the genes’ — survival. Genes gave their hosts life — and killed them.

Genes which killed their hosts tended to be removed from the gene pool. Thus, a gene which killed young bodies would have no way of being passed on to offspring. But a gene which killed old bodies after they’d reproduced could survive.

So, perversely, lethal genes in older bodies could propagate.

Uvarov had come to understand that senile decay was simply the outcome of late acting lethal genes, which could never be selected out of the gene pool by breeding among the young.

After two centuries of flight, Garry Uvarov had determined to improve the stock of humanity the starship was carrying to the future. AS treatment used nanobotic techniques to eliminate aging effects directly, at the biochemical level, but did not challenge the genes directly.

Even before AS treatment had started to fail him, Uvarov had declared war on the lethal genes which were killing him.

He and his followers had occupied the forest Deck, effectively sealing it off. He sent his people into the forest and told them that they would have a simple life: take nourishment from the forest, make simple tools. AS treatment was abandoned, and within a few years the forest floor and canopy were alive with the voices of children.

Then, Uvarov banned any reproduction before the age of forty.

Uvarov had enforced his rule with iron discipline; stalking through the forest, or ascending, grim-faced, into the canopy, Uvarov and a team of close followers had performed several quick, neat abortions.