After an hour or two, a fresh building stood two stories tall. The floors were rough and there was no clue how the inhabitants could get water or electricity, but the oval curves of its walls and sloping floors of the interior were elegantly simple. The roof sported an odd array of sculptures that imitated Sil body shapes and cups pointed at the horizon.

In the entire growth of the home, Cliff felt a tension between order, as seen in the room gridiron pattern, and a spontaneous, discontinuous rhythm to the wrinkled walls and oblong windows. It had just enough strangeness to be expressive, though he did not know what the Sil made of it. They seemed to think it played a role in reconciling them to their lost friends and shattered city.

Nomadic, Cliff guessed. Each generation set up shop in a new area, hunted and gathered, devised their own kind of town. A species with a wandering curiosity, alighting on interesting parts of their environment. The Bowl was big enough to accommodate that style. But buildings as messages? “Do the Bird Folk read your building messages?”

“Think not.” Quert made a rustling sound in its big chest and said quietly, “I-we lost many. Sil like you, many parts, all lost.”

There was a sadness in the long, sliding words. The self-forming building seemed to play a role in their reconciling what had happened. Yet none cast glares or stares at the humans. He could imagine no reason why the Sil should forgive the humans for bringing all this upon them. But then he was yet again seeing them as thinking like humans, and they did not.

The talk continued for a while as Cliff listened intently, trying to judge how Quert saw the world. Having an alien who had already learned Anglish was an immense advantage, but Quert’s short, punchy sentences gave only a surface view of the mind beneath.

“If I were a lizard, I’d be a belt by now,” Irma said at one point, and for the first time they saw Quert laugh. Or something like it—barks that could just as well have been a summons, but accompanied by eye-blinks and sideways jerks of the head. As Quert did this, the eyes watched the humans, and there came a moment of—Cliff grasped for the right word—yes, communion. A meeting of minds. This cheered him up a great deal.

Then Quert said there were meetings to go to, clearly meaning to end on a high, light note. They broke up and returned to the cavelike place the Sil had given over to the humans. It was a rude warren built of rocks rolled together to form corridors and rooms. A thick tentlike sheet drawn over the top of the whole sprawl of rock made a roof. At certain places detachable patches let in sun for the rooms, and were easily pegged back in place for sleep. Utilitarian and, Cliff realized, quite portable—just roll up the sheet and find another field of boulders. The Sil apparently used whole gangs to move the rocks, a communal effort.

The whole team was tired and somehow the Sil dirge had quieted them. They went to their rooms. Cliff took a side corridor to his own small cubbyhole; Irma gave him a smile he could feel in his hip pocket.

Cliff had never fancied himself much of a lover, but since they had been taken under the protection of the Sil, they were at it every sleep period. This was no exception. They slept awhile then, and when he woke up she was looking at him. With a lazy smile she said, “When the chemistry is right, all the experiments work.”

“I’m more of a biology type.”

“That, too. Y’know, you’ve learned how to keep this pack of people together, too. I watch you do it. You’ve learned how to pull their strings.”

“Um—yours, too?”

“Not so much. Learning to pull men’s strings is one of a woman’s major skills, of course. I can see you do it in your own guy way.” She softened this, though, with a grin.

He felt uneasy thinking about being manipulative, but— “I learned on the job.”

“You let everybody have their say, then let them do the calculation. Who’s with them, who’s not. Most of the time that solves the problem.”

“Well, they think I have your vote already.”

She laughed. “Touché! But not because of fun in the sack.”

They were indeed in a sack, of sorts. The open, braced hammock fiber somehow stayed flat though it hung from straps, a smart carbon sheet. He didn’t like discussing how to manage their little team, though. He now trusted his intuition and was relieved not to think about it. He leaned over, kissed her. “What do you think we should do next?”

“If you keep caressing my leg, I’ll tell you.”

Cliff laughed and kept up a smooth, steady stroking of her tawny leg. He hadn’t noticed he was doing it. “I don’t see how we can find Beth or stay away from the Folk, much less figure out this place.”

Irma shrugged. “I don’t either. Yet.”

“What makes you think we can?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s us. And we have smarts.”

“Smarter than what built this contraption?”

“Well, there’s street smarts on Earth—remember that phrase? Means you can get around on your own. Maybe here we have planet smarts.”

“Which means?” A pretty obvious way not to give away what he thought, but people didn’t seem to notice it.

“This place seems to be deeply conservative. You have to be, to keep a contrivance like this running. Hell, even at first glance, I knew it wasn’t stable. If the Bowl gets closer to the star, the biosphere heats up and starts to fall toward the star. To correct that, I’d guess the locals have to fire up the jet stronger, propel the star away, and get back to the right distance for heating. Then there’s the problem of what to do if I stamp my foot and the Bowl starts to wobble. It must be they have correction mechanisms in place. On a planet, inertia alone, and Newton’s laws, keep you going if you do nothing. Not here.”

“Ah, the spirit of an engineer. You didn’t answer my question.”

She chuckled. “You noticed! I’d say stay here, try to get back in touch with SunSeeker. Let Redwing figure a way to help us.”

“He doesn’t seem to have a clue. Unless you’re down here, it’s hard to get a grip on the quiet, odd ways this place is so different from a planet.”

“Such as?”

“It’s impossibly big, but it’s mostly vacant. Why?”

“It suits the Folk mentality, must be. Lots of natural landscape—okay, not natural, but it’s shaped to feel natural. It’s a park, really. The Sil fit in here, too.”

“Nomad habits of mind, right. And the Bowl is a nomad, too. Wanderers living on a wandering artifact. A big, smart object.”

She pursed her lips. “Smart? Because it has to be managed all the time, kept from falling into its star?”

“It moves forward in a dangerous way, just like us. Any two-legged creature has to fall forward and catch itself. Aside from birds, there aren’t many Earthside animals that do that. The most common two-legged one is us.”

She considered this. “The Bird Folk are two-legged, in a way. Though I saw them move on all fours, too, since the forearms can help them for stability. Maybe they’re concerned about not falling, because they’re massive.”

“So they have the same gut instinct—move forward, even if it’s tricky. I—”

Shouting in the distance. Irma got up and pulled on her rather tattered uniform, stuck a head out through the curtain of her chamber. “Quert? What’s—?”

The alien came into the room in the quick, sliding way the Sil made look so liquidly graceful.

“Come … they.”

Cliff hauled out of the hammock, feeling his joints ache and eyes sticky. His fingers fumbled as he got dressed. Irma went with Quert. By the time he got to the entrance, they were all staring up at something humming in the sky. Not the balloon creature that had fired on them all, something smaller, faster. It skimmed low, wings purring. A slim, winged thing of feathers and a big crusty head that scanned the land below systematically. Its big glittering eyes saw the Sil settlement and turned toward them.