“Live in this moment. Give in this moment.”

“Ritual reprocessing is too good for those who undermine stability,” Asenath said, spitting out the words. “They endanger us all.”

“So may we,” Memor said, and at once regretted it.

Asenath shot back, “Not if we exterminate the humans as we have these!”

They had apparently forgotten that the primate sat among them, Memor saw. Tananareve’s head jerked up for a moment; then she bowed it … which meant, Memor knew, that the primate had learned some of their speech. Had understood Asenath’s remark. These creatures were smarter than she knew.

There was a long silence after the ceremony, hanging in the heavy air.

Bemor said softly, “We Folk must conquer our own festering anxieties, as well. These reprocessings are necessary for stability and for life itself. We Folk in our own wide variety, along with the multitudes of Adopted, should accept the hard, simple fact that we ourselves and all we encounter are transitory, ephemeral, beings of the moment. We matter little. We should embrace the beauty and pleasure of the world, knowing it will cease for us, inevitably. We are not the Ice Minds. Such is the Order of Life.”

Memor added her agreeing fan-display to that of Asenath and other Folk within range of Bemor’s deep bass voice. For her it was a satisfying moment. Bemor could make these matters far more resonant and inspiring than she; just another sign of his ability range. When they were both young, cared for by their long dead Principal Mother, he had early on shown his ability to handle higher-level abstractions and find the nugget of wisdom in passing moments. She admired him.

But Asenath would not let it be. She said, “These primates do not see such wisdom. They are an expansionist species, such as has been seldom seen in the Bowl for great ages. Their ship has maneuvered below range of our defense gamma ray lasers. Their parties afoot elude us. It is time to marshal efforts to eliminate them.” A pause and vigorous fan-rattle. “Obviously.”

Bemor gave an agreeable rainbow flourish with mingled eye-frets, but then said soberly, “There have been, down through the vast generations, uncounted acts to restore stability. All these carried a penumbra of drownings, starvation, sad sickness, massacre, looting, ethnic scourges, laser conflagrations, air-cutting slaughters, assisted group suicides, expulsions into vacuum—the list trudges on.”

“You seem saddened by this,” Memor said—a bit presumptively, but after all, she was his identical.

Bemor yielded on this with an embarrassed flutter. “I recall when young—you were spared this, my twin—assisting the more militant among us. We walked on corpses, sat on wrecked bodies to rest, stacked them as they stiffened to provide us a momentary table to eat upon. The delay in recycling them into the Great Soil meant they had to be assembled and even defended, against predators both feral and intelligent. But it had to be done.”

Memor said kindly, in mellow tones, “Brother, I do not follow—”

“The Bowl grows errant beliefs like mutant species. There were obscure faiths and ethical theories that held the body was some kind of holy vessel, whose owners had not yet departed. Or else such spirits would require the body, even though rendered into dust, to be made animate again. So they resisted return to the Great Soil, a true sin.”

He looked around at nearby Folk, who regarded him with varying displays of doubt. “You flutter your fan-feathers with disbelief, yes—but I have seen this in historical records, and even in person. Sad sights I regret witnessing now.” Bemor sagged a bit as if borne down by history, his feathery jaws swaying. “Alas, my memory is long and I cannot erase those laid down with such feeling.”

Crowds come to witness now shuffled out of the Vault. Other Folk dispersed until it was Asenath, Bemor, and Memor, plus of course the primate.

Asenath said, “Your report is due, Memor. Your hunt for the bandit crew still loose among the Sil continues?”

Memor duly reported finding the Late Invaders among the Sil. With a quick air display of images, she told of the attack upon the Sil city, the vast destruction.

“Approved by upper echelons?” Asenath asked severely.

“I ushered it through,” Bemor said mildly, eyeing Asenath but making no feather-display at all. Lack of fan-signal was a subtle sign of coolness, but Asenath missed this and rushed ahead, eager with a point to make.

“And they are dead?”

Memor suppressed her usual feather-rainbow to convey irked response and said, “No. I had surveillance auto-eyes study the Sil buildings. While they are rebuilding themselves, they involuntarily shape new messages in their forms. This is not a language but a gesture-speak. The influence of building style plainly shows a vagrant presence among the Sil, and I deduce that the humans survived the assault.”

Asenath pressed forward with full fan-clatter. “So. You failed.”

“I did not command the skyfish. Those who did not achieve their goals were demoted. But recently one fast-fly craft caught this.” Memor flicked an image into the air surrounding them. A down view showed a primate running between recently shaped buildings. A pain beam rippled over it, and the figure crumpled. The beam stayed on and the writhing thing kicked and thrashed and then lay still.

“A single kill?” Asenath said with downcast tones.

“We now know we can hurt them at will over distance. My primate here”—a gesture at Tananareve—“was our test subject. But I found also that the Sil have secured access to my own surveillance.”

Bemor said, “So the Sil are watching you, too?”

“I withdrew immediately, of course. In that interval the primates made their way toward a nearby mirror zone.”

Asenath brushed this aside, pressing on. “Memor, we have not heard your report on this primate of yours. I take it she has been well fed and often exercised?”

Memor puzzled at Asenath’s apparently friendly tone, suspecting something. “Of course. I brought her here to higher gravities, for her health. Her species was clearly not made for lightness—indeed, their bone and joint structures suggest a world of heavier gravitation than even the Great Plain.”

Bemor asked, “You have read her mind structures enough? Your reports mentioned this odd character, inability to see her own Undermind.”

“Yes, obviously an early evolutionary step. Imagine building a large, coherent society of individuals who could not know their own impulses, their inner thoughts! Touring her mind was instructive. I got most of what I need.”

Asenath fluttered with appreciation. “I shall depend upon your ability to monitor this primate. We will need her cooperation to convey our response to their ship’s attempts at contact.”

Memor hid her surprise. “Now?”

Asenath said sternly, “We must deceive the Glorians about who commands the Bowl. Your primates can do this for us, if properly handled.”

PART VII

CRUNCHY INSECTS

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

—JOHN STEINBECK

TWENTY-TWO

“These snakes are incredible,” Beth said to Karl. It was pleasant to have time to relax and just watch without feeling endlessly responsible. She had gotten used to that on the Bowl.

“If you’d asked me before I saw them, I’d have said more like improbable.” Karl could not take his eyes from the screen. “Hard to see how evolution worked out skills like this.”

They were watching some aft zone electronic repairs carried out in the narrow spaces near the magnetic drive modules. The snakes wriggled into spaces that would have taken her and Kurt hours to unsheath, disconnect, monitor, diagnose, and fix.