Beth let out a long slow breath, trying to get herself back into somewhat normal condition. She was tired and worn and completely confused. Coffee no longer helped. She needed a bath, too.

She stood, wobbling a little. “Tananareve said more, Cap’n. I could tell. What?”

“We’ve got a deal. They’ll resupply us.”

Gasps. Redwing shrugged and smiled, bobbing his head when the entire bridge burst into applause. “Uh, yes. There’s more. They want some of us, maybe enough to avoid inbreeding, to stay on the Bowl. The ones who actually run this place aren’t those Folk at all. Those are like the local police on the beat, or middle managers in a bureaucracy. This thing is so old, something needs to live long enough to run it.”

“Some aliens we didn’t see down there?” Beth asked, her vision bleary, bones aching now. “Some kind of—”

Redwing shrugged, as though he should have known all along. “Ice Minds move slowly because they’re cold. They keep the memories and experience, Tananareve said. They work with something called the Diaphanous, who manage the jet and the star.”

“Plasma stuff?” Karl said. “Those were what made those sounds, that created those discharge arcs, that—”

“Killed Clare,” Beth said. “Trying to stop us from kinking the jet.”

“The cold works with the hot, then,” Karl said. “The Folk are just local managers.”

“They sure don’t think so. They imagine they’re the whole show,” Beth said. “Funny, really.”

“So why did the Ice Minds, or whatever, let us live at all?” Fred said. He had been silent the whole time but now seemed happy, smiling, eyes dancing.

“They need help with Glory,” Redwing said. “We can get there first, going full blast. We can reconnoiter. And talk to the Glorians, who think we humans are running the Bowl. They got our radio and TV, and since they were along the same line of sight, thought the Bowl was ours.”

Beth frowned. “We have to?”

“Part of the deal.” Redwing smiled. “Tananareve said it’s pretty much take it or leave it.”

Karl laughed. “No question, I’d say. We take it.”

“They do want us to straighten out that standing kink. It’s rubbing against the Knothole and it’s gonna stay that way. But if we fly through it the right way, maybe we can bust it loose.”

Karl said dryly, “There are better ways to put that, more precise. But I think with the fluences we have, and Beth as pilot, we can.”

Beth laughed, a bit dry. “Beth the perfect pilot thinks she needs sleep. Lots of it. Then more coffee.”

Redwing smiled and finally sat down in his deck chair, more relaxed than she had seen him in a long while. He looked at the walls showing their situation and said, “If we run down the jet, fix the Knothole plasma stall, then out—well, we can loop around and come back into simple orbit.”

Beth scowled. “Back into the cold sleep vaults?”

“Some stay here,” Redwing said. “The Ice Minds want some new species to give the Bowl some stability. The Folk couldn’t handle us, so they’re out of the policing business. We get that.”

Beth nodded, knowing her piloting days were very nearly over.

FORTY-EIGHT

Tananareve was tired when the incessant images and thoughts finally started to taper away. The Ice Minds had much to convey in their cool, gliding manner, but it was all so big and strange, she could not really think what to say. Mostly she just digested. Which was exhausting in itself. But one thing did puzzle her, and she asked about it.

“Why was your jet open to attack? I mean, it and the star and the Bowl—it’s an unstable system, has to be adjusted all the time or it falls apart. Anybody wants to do you harm, the jet is an open target, the heart of the system.”

Some confusion and delay. Soft pictures floated into her mind. The jet’s filmy twisting strands working out from the star. Sometimes it snarled a bit, but the plasma clots called the Diaphanous adjusted that. They made the jet smooth out and glide tight and sure through the Knothole. All was well. Nominally.

“What’s the idea of letting it be so vulnerable? I mean, we just came alongside you and slipped in, rode up the jet. We could’ve damaged it then, even by accident. But other kinds, other aliens, they might want to bring you down.”

Some did.

“What was your strategy then?” She was tired, but what she learned could be useful. Redwing would want to know every damn detail.

Imagine a simple army’s task, under imminent attack. They must find the part of their landscape best suited to strengthen their position when fighting in open battle. The answer is to fight on the edge of a sharp cliff. This gives their soldiers just two choices—to fight or retreat, and in retreating to go over the cliff and die. Their enemy has different options—to fight or flee. That option to flee makes the enemy’s attack less likely to persevere. Placing yourself in peril makes you appear fearless. It gives your opponent cause to consider breaking off the battle.

She found this strange. “So you put your backs to the wall and that’s a defense?”

We prefer to dissuade. We regret that the Folk, or rather one of them, used our final defense. Our Lambda Gun is immensely powerful. Luckily it was ineptly used. We have stopped its use and will punish those who erred so grievously.

Tananareve said nothing. She felt a rising, apprehensive note strike through her mind, and realized it was coming from the Ice Minds. They said, The Diaphanous now speak to those who caused this deep error. You should hear as well. A somber, rolling voice came then, not so much spoken as unfurled.

Who is this that wrecks our province without knowledge?

Do you know the sliding laws of blithe fluids?

Were you here when the great curve of the Bowl shaped true?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds of stars?

Do fields unseen report to you?

Can your bodies shape the fires of thrusting suns?

Have you ever given orders to the passing stars or shown the dawn its place?

Can you seize the Bowl by the edges to shake the wicked out of it?

Have you journeyed to the springs of fusion or walked in the recesses of the brittle night?

Have you entered the storehouses of the Ice Minds and found there tales of your long past?

Can you father events in times beyond all seeing?

Your answer to all these cannot justify your brute hands upon machines of black wonder.

Nor shall you ever chance to be so able again, for you shall be no more.

The space and time you sought to dissolve shall reckon without you hence.

Tananareve knew somehow this came from the invisible ones who dwelled in the jet. She did not understand any of this. She just sighed and put such troubles away as she gratefully slipped into sleep.

FORTY-NINE

Memor watched the great floods sweep across lands that had held towns and forests and would now be swamps. Great constructions from far antiquity were undermined and slumped. Under great magnification, from this satellite view, she studied the rooftops of homes and city centers. There were no survivors awaiting rescue. A few boats bobbed here and there, but not many.

“It is a tragedy, indeed,” Bemor said. He looked tired, surely from the work of keeping the Ice Minds in touch with the primates, funneled through the mind of the poor Tananareve. “But we are demanded at the leaving ceremony. Come.”

“Who demands this? I do not wish to witness such.”

“The Ice Minds command. Their attitude has changed substantially. I do not sense their goodwill toward us any longer.”