“Or they could be bragging,” Cliff said. Nobody laughed.

They watched as the words faded and a long series of still pictures followed. Each came in at an easy pace, as though there were all the time in the world to show images of planets—crisp and dry, cloudy and cool, cratered yet with shimmering blue atmospheres—and stars, sometimes in crowded clusters, at times seen close-up and going nova in bright, virulent streamers, or in tight orbits around unseen companions that might be neutron stars or black holes. Wonders the Bowl had seen while driven forward by its jet. Portraits of the early Bowl years, Cliff gathered—the jet flaring and trembling in tangled knots of ruby and sharp yellow as the vast cup got under way.

For these ones that Quert termed Ice Minds there was indeed all the time in the world. The screen visions streamed on and the humans sat with backs against the rough walls to watch them. Strange landscapes loomed.

“They call us warmlife,” Quert added as the screen showed an iceworld. Against a black sky odd lumps moved, in a lake lit by a smoldering red light. There were dune fields, ponds, channels. The lake sat in a convoluted region of hills cut by valleys and chasms.

Aybe said, “I’d say that looks kind of like Titan, Saturn’s moon.”

“There was small life there,” Irma said. “Microbial, some pond scum, nothing more.”

“There’re moving forms on that screen,” Terry said. For this view the screen showed sequential shots. The lumps seemed like knots of fluid, assisted by sticks that crossed through the globular bodies. Blobs that somehow used tools like rods? These coherent colloids moved across bleak fluid that might be hydrocarbons like ethane. On the beach the lumps moved ashore with viscous grace, pulling themselves forward with extruded feelers that managed the sticks. “They’re clustering around that domed thing that looks like a termite mound,” Irma said. “Even blobs can build.”

“Those forms we saw in the shadows out there—” Terry gestured to the ice plains beyond. “—might have some connection to these. Except these are on a planet.”

“Life adapts,” Irma said. “A big leap, from a Titan-like cold around a hundred degrees Kelvin, with high atmospheric pressure, to those vacuum flowers and the rest of it, all holding on to the outside hull.”

“A big jump,” Terry said. “But there must have been incremental steps, and they had billions of years to do it.”

By this time the image had faded, replaced by a view of a dense jungle. This one, though, had spiral trees, whipped by high winds against a purple sky of shredded clouds. The stilled storm had a big beast in the foreground, something like a dirty brown groundhog, its head tucked in against the wind.

The show went on and then on some more. After a while even exotic alien landscapes became repetitious: blue green mountain ranges scoured by deep gray rivers, placid oceans brimming with green scum, arid tan desert worlds ground down under heavy brooding brown atmospheres—

“All planets,” Terry said. “They’re not showing us comets. Not showing us themselves.”

—iceworlds aplenty beneath starry skies, grasslands with four-footed herds roaming as volcanoes belched red streamers in the distance, oceans with huge beasts wallowing in enormous crashing waves, places hard to identify in the swirling pink mists. Life adapts, indeed.

After a while, the slide show was over and more Anglish words appeared.

You warmlife now learn to journey from star to star.

We have seen your kind before.

You expand outward at great cost to you, for fleeting quicklife reasons.

Most warmlife comes in small ships, as do you.

The dream of this Bowl enticed us with its capacity. Its slow progress fits our minds, our style. Over eons we have seen little need to change its design.

Through voyages we gain passengers warm and cold. This is only part of us. Other ice minds live elsewhere in the Bowl’s shadow.

We deeplife are one in fluidity.

We address you now because this is an unusual time. This Bowl approaches a fresh world. As do you.

We have no reason to intervene in warmlife affairs. We act when the Bowl faces threats to its stability and endurance.

You will help us.

“We will?” Aybe said.

“They’re probably listening in some way, y’know,” Cliff said sternly.

Aybe blinked and said loudly, “Ah, yes, we will. If we know how.”

Irma stood and gazed out at the dim icelands where the vacuum flowers still held Beth’s image. She fanned her laser and said, “Those blobs, they’re moving, all right.”

“Maybe these Cold Minds keep those forms around because they’re related by mutual evolution?” Terry asked. “Hard to know. If these Cold Minds are as old as they say, there’s not much that can be new to them.”

Cliff said, “And even less that’s interesting.”

Liquid life-forms? he thought. Trying to think on huge time scales was hard. Maybe warmlife is just a buzzing, frantic irritant to them. And there is something in their manner, dealing with us warmlife, that suggests immense distance. These things had probably evolved in the outer fringes of solar systems. They could travel on comets, maybe, bouncing from star to star. So maybe they freely roamed the galaxy while the most advanced warmlife consisted of single-celled pond scum.

None of this was reassuring.

“What did you have in mind?” Irma addressed the screen.

TWENTY-ONE

Memor watched Tananareve carefully as their party entered the chamber for the Justice Rendering. The primate studied the walls and ornamental traces with a quick and ready eye, as though cataloging all she saw. Quite natural for an explorer, who expected to report back to her superiors. That might well not happen, but no need to give the primate a hint of that.

They sat in high rows above the steeply inclined vault. Above them hovered ancient tapestries of gold and ivory, while the funnel at the vault’s floor was an ominous jet black. Bemor sat higher than Asenath, Memor, and the primate, as fitted his rank. He spoke with the Highers, even the Ice Minds. Memor knew—and envied, of course. Though Bemor was her twin genetically, but for those genes that expressed sex, he had been reared to deal with long-term thinking and abstractions at a level Memor had not. Perhaps that explained, Memor thought, the tenor of irritation that crept into his sentences when discussions flagged or failed to reach a sharp point of usefulness. Male traits indeed, she recalled.

A clarion call sounded deep and long in the vault. It comprised some high trills, playing against long strumming bass notes that Memor knew were resonant with the body size of Folk, and so would be felt rather than heard. Such musics instilled an uneasy impression of immensity and whole-body involvement, a tool persuasive yet hard to recognize. It instilled an apprehensive awe.

Tananareve watched and listened, saying nothing. Her eyes darted with quick intelligence. Only her tight pale lips told of some inner tension.

Resonant chords came from the music walls. At a signal, a team of brawny Folk strode from the witnesses gathered on the lower level. With prods, these forced each of the Maxer Cult members forward … closer to the edge … their legs slipping in the slime … then at the teetering brink … as a deep voice extolled their violations of the Great Pact. At a second hooting call, the Folk thrust the Maxers into the pit. Some flailed in resistance. Others turned with resigned shrugs and jumped. Cries, shouts, shrieks.

“This is a most useful spectacle,” Asenath said mildly. “Well done, too.”

The music rose to a triumphant chorus, high notes rejoicing. Barely audible beneath the sound was a chanting—