He shot back, “That is a specialist question, beyond the concerns of—”

“You do not know, do you?”

“I did not say that. I think it beside my point.”

“Let us note the Profound did not answer the question.”

“Halt!” the Packmistress ordered. “We are getting away from the reason for your appearance here, Memor, and I note you are using this diversion to delay our proper considerations.”

Memor saw she had gone too far and so made the ritual bow with coronations of dutiful apology—three fan-trills and a rainbow display of self-dismay. The attendees nodded in approval and a few even sent quick fan-toasts at Memor’s performance of a difficult salute. That seemed to calm everyone, but Memor knew it was mere polite manners.

The Profound said slowly, voice filled with deep sour notes, “Memor here has allowed to escape the only of these aliens our Security had captured! They are far away from the other primates, who escaped immediately when they entered.”

“How did that occur?” a senior figure asked.

“Inexcusable oversight. I might add that the commanders responsible have been recycled.”

“That seems brutal,” a voice at the back called. “We are unaccustomed to invasion, and do not have anyone living who has experience.”

The Profound said slowly, “As well it might, but word of recyclings spreads, and aids in discipline.”

Silence. A senior member said, “We still cannot find those, the ones who got away at the air lock?”

“No, and that is the salient threat. These primates are vicious—they have killed some of us!—and at a demonstrably lower stage of evolution. But they are infernally hard to find, catch, and kill.”

“We have none in captivity?” The senior figure rustled head feathers in surprise.

“Exactly so—” The Packmistress’s head swiveled. “—due to Memor. The only dead primate we have found, left behind by his companions as they fled, apparently died from a large predator—which the other primates then killed. All this occurred during their escape from Memor.” She ended with a long stare at Memor, aided by fan stirring of rebuke at her shoulders.

Memor disliked such smug orations but kept still.

The entire body turned and looked at Memor. She decided the best tactic was to stare right back.

The Profound did not hesitate. “There is a further issue. These are not truly rational minds. They cannot view the Underminds and so do not know themselves.”

Gasps, frowns. Memor started to object to this intrusion into her own area. “Ah, I—”

The Profound waved her off. “For these primates, there is always a silent partner riding along in the same mind. It can get in touch with their Foreselves. Yes—we do owe this discovery to Memor, I’ll grant. But! Their Underminds can speak to them only through dreams during sleep. Memor showed that they have ideas that come to them out of ‘nowhere.’ Not words or exact thoughts, just images and sensations.”

“Surely these cannot be significant ideas?” a senior asked. “They are unmotivated.”

The Profound shook his head sadly, a theatrical move that made Memor grind her teeth. “Alas, I must report to you—again, due to Memor’s work—that this primate ‘silent partner’ is the wellspring of their primitive creativity.”

“But that is inefficient!” the senior Savant insisted.

“Apparently not, on whatever strange world these tree-swingers came from in their crude ship. Evolution must have preferred to keep their minds divided between the conscious self and the silent.”

The Savant looked incredulous—eyes upcast, neck-fan puckered red, snout cocked at an angle. “Surely such disabled creatures, even if they have technologies, are no threat to us.”

The Profound flicked a command, and the dome above them popped with an image—the alien primates gathered around a campfire. The audience rustled. “These look quite helpless,” the Savant said.

“They are not,” the Profound said, and cut to an image of three Folk sprawled, their bodies stripped of gear. Burns at their necks and heads had singed away many feathers. Brown blood stained the sand around them, and surprise lingered in their staring eyes.

“And now we turn to the cause of these events,” the Profound said quietly.

Memor recognized the images she had sent in reports. Of course, the Profound had put his own interpretation on her brainscan data, slanting it to his pointed ends. Memor stood. “I am not the cause, my Profound. I am the discoverer.”

“Of what?”

“The sobering implication that these primates undermine our understanding of our own minds.”

“That is nonsense.”

“You are a male, my dear Profound, and so should be more open to ideas, since you are young as well. These events imply a painfully fresh insight. These creatures somehow avoid the risks of an unfettered intelligence. The implications—”

“Are many, but the threat is clear,” the Profound snapped. “You let them escape. The only concrete knowledge we have comes from the single corpse they left behind—being primitives, I would have expected them to at least try to bury it. Studying that body explains their archaic origins. They have organs that barely function, some clearly vestigial, particularly in their digestive tracts. Natural selection has not had time to edit out these simple flaws. And, tellingly, there is no sign of artificial selection.”

Clucks of doubt greeted this news. An elder asked, “How could they become starfarers without tailoring their bodies?”

“They were in a hurry,” Memor said dryly.

The Profound’s eyes narrowed. “They must come from quite nearby, to reach us in such simple craft. Yet I checked with the Astronomers, and there are no habitable planets within several light-years.”

Memor saw this digression was to mollify the crowd, by seeming reasonable. She said, “They caught up to us and slowed to board. They obviously do not come with an attitude of awe, as with prior aliens. Customarily we pass by a star, and any intelligent, technological life-form comes to us with great respect for the Bowl, its majesty. I doubt these, who apparently found us by accident, will join the Adopted without great trouble.”

The Profound’s eyes glistened as he saw an opportunity. “Then you agree they should be killed?”

“Of course. But the implications they bring—”

“Will not matter when they are dead, yes?”

“You speak of that as an easy thing. My point is that it will not be simple. They have resources I cannot fathom.”

“But that is subject to demonstration, yes?” The Profound yawned elaborately, amused.

“If we muster—”

“I assure you we are receiving reports from varying Folk communities. I have not gotten reports from the party you let escape, alas.” With this, he gave a derisive feather-flicker. “But other Folk do glimpse the primates who stole an aircar. They’ve been sighted as they pass in the distance.”

“Then you— Wait, why do the Folk not attack them?”

“They proceed through a zone of low habitation. None who sighted them had weapons of such range, for obvious reasons.”

The Folk communities had only low-power armaments. Large explosives could breach the shell and open the Bowl to vacuum. If such were used by the infrequent Adopted rebellions, disaster would follow.

Memor could sense the shift in the audience. A senior Savant said, “If you are correct, our Profound, we must use those who know these strange primates.”

The Profound turned, puzzled. “I have made a case for extermination—”

“But only Memor knows how they think, yes?”

Memor said, “I cannot pretend to know, but I can at least sense how they respond.”

The senior was puzzled and asked for explanation with a classic ruffle and coo.

“I can predict many actions of these primates, yet without understanding their motives.”

The Profound sent his crown feathers into a circling pattern of blue and gold. “I think Memor has proved she does not know how—”