“You make it sound pretty fine,” Redwing said in a flat voice, no inflection at all.

Her tongue darted out, and she looked uncertain. “It is, in its way.”

“We all have to come down? Leave the ship in some orbit?”

She paused. Redwing now sensed a presence near her, the target of her glances. Somehow from the small sounds of muffled movement, shuffles, and long slow breaths, he felt something nearby. The source of that strange voice, yes. Maybe more of them, several aliens watching, listening, no doubt knowing through their technology what he meant as soon as he said it. And what else would they get from this conversation?

“I … suppose so. They do want to study SunSeeker, they say. There are some aspects of the magnetic throat and drive they might be able to use. One of the Folk—a big one who seems in command, though it’s hard to tell, really—says the techniques we use may have been known a long time ago, and lost. So they’re interested.”

“Lost? How old is this Bowl?”

“They won’t say.” She frowned. “Maybe they don’t know.”

Beth and the others kept quiet as Redwing’s face furrowed with thought.

“And if we don’t like to stay long? And give over a lot of our people?”

“They say this aspect of our interactions is not negotiable. They must acquire some of us.”

“No deal,” Redwing said sharply.

“Then … there will be … suffering, they say.”

“We’ve come to threats pretty quick, haven’t we?” Redwing said with lifted eyebrows.

She gave him a quick nod. Then the screen went blank.

They sat in Redwing’s cabin a long time, watching to see if the signal came back on. It didn’t.

PART VIII

COUNTERTHREAT

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

—ANAÏS NIN

TWENTY-FOUR

“They seem as recalcitrant as you implied,” Asenath said, leaning toward Memor and fluttering irked yellows about her neck. Her harsh warm breath rippled Memor’s ruff feathers, an unpleasant sensation.

Bemor added, “More so.”

They were ensconced in a shadowy side chamber after the transmission to the alien ship. The dark rock walls were of truly ancient times, furrowed with past attempts at adornment—panoramas that once depicted vast sagas of civilizations, long vanished. These had nearly worn away, leaving the striations and sparkles of the original grit-soil substance from which the Bowl was first built. The air of great, chilly expanses of time clung to them.

Tananareve, the last remaining Late Invader prisoner, was bending, flexing, pulling her foot to her forehead, sitting up and lying down over and over with a weight on her straightened hind limbs. The motion was distracting. They were flexible creatures, indeed. Memor told herself that the primate was doing it for her health and tried to ignore it.

Asenath restlessly gave an agree-flutter. “I do not enjoy negotiating with those who can see so little of their true position.”

Memor gave a fan-salute of agreement but said, “They are new to all this. No doubt they wish to take their best possible outcome as a beginning position.”

Bemor gave no feather-signals at all, but let his voice range down into low registers. “They are not negotiating from strength.”

“I think they imagine they are,” Memor said.

“I could not diagnose that from their speech,” Bemor said with a casual, superior sniff.

Memor still felt uncomfortable around Bemor, and tried to tell herself that his dismissive murmurs and small feather-displays were not meant to offend her. Perhaps they were mannerisms he had evolved to deal with staff and lower workers? Stiffening her resolve with this thought, she allowed herself some of what the Folk termed “lubrications” on what she had learned, using images of the primate cast on a shimmering wall projection. “I have studied their ‘tells,’ their limited visible methods of adding meaning beyond their words. They communicate, process, and fully feel emotions by mimicking the facial expressions of others nearby. So I studied the subtle shifts in their Captain’s eyes, mouth, even the slight expansions and contractions of his nostrils. Apparently they have no ability to signal with their ears.”

“Ah, their Captain is male? Unusual.” Bemor looked skeptical.

“Bemor, there have been other Invaders who had male hierarchy leadership, yes?” Memor felt this appeal to his greater range of knowledge would mollify her brother. And give a nod to the very idea of male leadership, too—though he knew well that his prominence at high levels was a planned aberration in Folk social structures.

“Of course, though we managed them throughout their Adoption to cleanse them of that destabilizing structure. They are now all proper matriarchies.”

“But not the Sil,” Asenath said.

“They are young, not fully formed,” Bemor countered.

Asenath gestured outside the Citadel, toward where the primate was hanging from a tree limb, her legs raised to form a V. She remained in that position as the moments passed, but her eyes were on her captors. Distracting. “And that one—you watched her during the talk with Captain Redwing? She gave some facials.”

“Of course. Tananareve is under therapy: well fed, often exercised. This local gravity is closer to her home world, too. A fairly simple creature, she is. And she used no unusual signals, as I could see.” The Late Invader was still watching her, but surely Tananareve could not follow the swift, layered Folk speech. Simple commands, yes, but nothing sophisticated. She might overhear a word or two, but never the feather-nuances.

“The eyes,” Bemor said. “What does a slow wink mean to them?”

“Puzzlement, I believe,” Memor said.

“Nothing more?”

“Uh, I believe not.”

“She used a long slow wink when questioned by that male Captain about the whereabouts of their other party.”

“I noticed, but how much can a single small gesture convey?”

“Could it be a sexual signal?”

They all found this amusing, since sex among the Folk involved ritual feather-displays lasting through several mealtimes, classic dancing and cadences, song-trills of expectation and mutual agreed definition, then the ultimate mounting, all with urging songs and the completing union—not a matter to be taken lightly or often.

Memor was pleased that this remark drew amusement; she was known for her humor. “They are storytelling creatures, transferring useful knowledge from short-term into long-term memory, with assigned significance, all by telling a narrative to themselves.”

Asenath said, “They constantly update this?”

“Without complete fidelity to the original, yes. Remembering a narrative alters it.”

Bemor said mildly, “So they know their inner selves as fictional characters, written by themselves? Then rewritten?”

After more agreeable and incredulous laughter, and then a timely arrival of small tasty animals served on sticks by the attendants, Asenath said, “I fear that adds to their lack of realism. We should remind them of it.”

Bemor looked skeptical, with purple rushes at his neck. “That would be…?”

“Memor, fetch forth your primate.”

When Tananareve came hesitantly through the arch, the contrast of her spindly, pale skin and dull-toned clothes with the three large full-feathered Folk was striking. Her feet slapped the bare cold stones in her frayed boots and her breath wheezed as she got used to the moist, salty scents of life within a Citadel. She was only a bit larger than the attendants who sat dutifully near Asenath, Bemor, and Memor, their faces always tilted upward hopefully in the ivory light, watching to see what their superiors might need.

“How do you think, little one?” Bemor addressed the primate with his rumbling voice.