“My God,” Redwing said.

Thisther said in his quiet way, “But no more. All will know. They killed their own genetic line. Sil will tell all.”

THIRTY-TWO

Tananareve realized she should agree with the big, ponderous beast that was Memor. She had come to think of the alien as a kind of smart elephant, with a sense of humor equally heavy. “Yes, that was a clever saying,” Tananareve made herself say.

“I am happy you have discovered the nuances of our nature,” Memor said. Apparently sarcasm is unknown here, never mind irony, Tananareve thought. She knew Memor thought what she’d said was amusing, from the way her body shook, but it went right by human ears.

“The wonder of all this is what impresses me most,” Tananareve said to move on to better things. Memor and Bemor were huge and strange, but they liked her to play the awed-primate role. The hard case was Asenath, who mostly ignored Tananareve except for the occasional glower. Plus deliberately aimed stale exhaled breaths and well-timed, acid farts.

They stood among a crowd of hundreds of squat, humanoid creatures who formed neat, obedient circles around the Folk party. She watched these, the first human-shaped aliens she had seen, trying to understand the blank expressions on their hairy faces, to figure out what was going on. Beyond the crowd was a tall pinnacle with a single round thing in it that she had just now realized was an eye or camera, watching all this.

Asenath was holding forth to the rapt assembly in a booming voice that had made Tananareve flinch when she first heard it. Study of the Folk conversations had given her some hints of meaning, but the long phrases Asenath used seemed more like chanting. Tananareve asked Memor, “Is this some kind of ritual?”

“Quite observant of you. She is reassuring the Kahalla that the Sil and humans who escaped their capture will be taken in hand soon. No damage shall follow from this Kahalla failure.”

“What’s that about their … children?”

“Nothing important. The Kahalla are losing many eggs to the appetites of scavengers. They seek us to somehow ward off their predators.”

“Will you?”

“We do not intervene in natural matters. Nature runs itself well.”

“You told me earlier that you Folk ran Nature.”

Memor gave a fan-flutter of amber and blue, which seemed to mean pleasant amusement. “And so we do. At a remove, of course. Long ago the Folk set up this dynamic equilibrium, a predator–prey oscillation that will not go too far.”

“So these … Kahalla?… won’t get wiped out?”

“No, they are sufficiently intelligent and wary to deal with their predators—a nasty little vermin species. Both predator and prey have a low mental level and can adapt to changes in the other species, as they occur over long times. Evolution is thus contained. Populations do not sprawl out, consuming natural lands. There are several such interlacing balances in this zone.”

Tananareve pondered this as Asenath’s long bellow went on.

Then a new droning cry came—shree, kinnne, warrickk, awiiiha …

Memor said, “Ah, they have awakened the memory box.”

Asenath paused, then went on, trying to boom over these new deep tones with their extended cadences. Tananareve saw that the laboring sounds came from the tower with the eye. “What is it?”

“A form of consciousness prison. From a hotworld it came and we are its stewards. Or rather these Kahalla are its attendants.”

“A … rock mind?”

“We have several strewn about the Bowl. They are slow but sure and alert us to long-term trends that otherwise might elude our quick eyes. You are, for example, a somewhat old-fashioned individual intelligence, organic. This is an inorganic one, and the Kahalla are a sort of hybrid mind who attend the stone lattice mind. They are nothing like the vast collective intelligences—but never mind, we have had enough of this slow-thought place. And our escape approaches.”

awrrrragh yoouuiunggg arrraff kinnne yuuf …

Tananareve had not noticed the huge wall of scaly flesh settling down from the sky, beyond the talking tower. Across its rough brown skin silvery fins fanned as the bulk waltzed lazily into place. It spread slender tentacles grasping for ground. They played across the land. Kahalla ran to secure these to boulders, looking in perspective like ants bringing down a sea fish. The tentacles wrapped around catch points and pulled the great thing snug to ground.

Asenath finished and the Kahalla bowed deeply, on their knees with a low, sonorous moan that grew in volume until it washed over Tananareve. Asenath returned the bow, gave a vibrant trill salute and a four-color fan-flurry of farewell. Memor scooped up Tananareve and made short work of the journey to the immense thing—a bag inflated to fly, she guessed. But alive.

By now she knew that Memor enjoyed the open land, and spoke, too, of “the serene voyaging our living craft affords.” They entered by a flap that opened like a mouth. A huge tongue unfurled and Memor walked up it, carrying the primate on her shoulder. It felt to Tananareve unpleasantly like being eaten. Memor said in her booming Anglish, “The mucus of this great beast had been engineered to carry a delicate fragrance unlike anything else. Its scent is a luxury and settles the mind, a necessary aid in air travel. Chaos may come to rage all about us, but we shall be mild.”

Tananareve sucked in a lingering taste. Like flowers, though with an oily undertaste. Bemor, too, sighed, though he said, “We must make haste,” and bellowed an order to small scampering things that had come to greet them.

They were in a wet cavern. This “skyfish” as Memor called it was like a cave of moist membranes lit by phosphorescent swirls embedded behind translucent tissues. They reminded Tananareve of illuminated art back Earthside.

A deep bass note rang, ending in a whoosh that made it seem like an immense sigh. Grav momentarily rose, and Tananareve knew they had lifted off. Ruddy wall membranes fluttered. Warm air eased by them as they entered a large bowl-shaped area. Sunshine lanced through membranes so clear, Tananareve thought at first they were open to the air. But the sweet breeze swept first one way, then reversed, and she realized that it was the breathing of this great beast. The tower that had seemed so tall outside now dwindled away and the skyfish turned, so the sweep of a plain came into view. Clouds stacked like fat blue plates loomed on the shimmering distance. She could see the long arc of Bowl curving up into a pale sky; she was looking across a distance the size of planetary orbits. The eggshell blue of seas dominated the somewhat washed-out greens and browns of landmasses, and made pale the sheet grays of mirror zones. Across that flapped big-winged angular birds with long snouts and crests atop their bony heads.

Memor met the captain of this gasbag being. The whole idea of a captain was odd until Tananareve realized they were like people riding a larger animal, as she had ridden horses. Memor spoke quickly, with booming comments from Bemor, all too fast for her to fathom.

The captain listened for a while, big eyes watery and anxious. This creature was somewhat like some of the Folk—a big thing, four-legged and solemn and slow, mouth wide and salmon-pink and lipless. Bursts of words rattled from the mouth. Its narrow nostrils were veined pink, with fleshy flaps beneath. Large round black eyes watched them, yellow irises flashing in the slanting sunlight. From the top of the captain’s head sprouted a vibrant blue crest, serrated and trimmed with yellow fat, reminding Tananareve of a cock’s comb.

The captain took them on a walk through the ramparts, view balconies, and residential segments of the great living volume. A narrow hissing hydrogen arc heated its eating levels and lit the translucent furniture in blue light, where workers of four and six and even eight legs labored to bring forth live dishes for Folk delight. Pressed, Tananareve cracked a carapace and slurped out the warm white flesh of some sea creature. The next dish was a kicking big insect basted in creamy sauce. Memor said something about how keeping it alive through the cooking added savor to the proteins, but Tananareve decided that it was best to know less about Folk gustatory tastes. She tried to break the thick legs with her hands and snap off the tasty eyestalks. Crunchy but with a peppery flavor that stung her lips and sent a scent like stale meat into her sinuses. A green pudding turned out to be a slime mold that thrust probes out into her mouth as she tried to chew it. The flavor wasn’t nearly worth it.