"You cannot regain time."

             Alvin nodded with wan fatigue. Cley knew fragments of his history and saw that he had changed in the several centuries since as a daring boy he had altered human fortunes. One of her own people would have passed through wisdom and died in the time this man had enjoyed; another sign of the unknowable distance between the species. Alvin's spirit visibly ebbed, as if this flight had taken him momentarily away from a fact he could not digest.

             The ship was landing beside a wall of black that she at first took to be solid. Then she saw ash-gray coils rising through sullen clouds and knew that this was the smoky column she had seen for days.

             "The Library of Life," Alvin said. "They attacked it with something like lightning. Bolts that struck and burrowed and hunted. They found the treasure that ages of wearing winds had not discovered."

             "An underground library?" Cley asked. Her tribe had once laughed at a Supra who told them of this practice, the attempt to imprison meaning in fixed substance. People who lived and worked in the constant flux of the deep woods saw permanence for the illusion that it was.

             "A legacy separated from Diaspar," Alvin said kindly. "The ancients knew its storehouse would not be needed in my crystal city. But the urge to preserve was profound in them and so they buried deeply."

             "A recurrent human feature," Seeker said.

             "The only way to understand the past," Alvin countered sharply.

             "Meaning passes," Seeker said.

             "Does transfinite geometry?"

             "Geometry signifies. It does not mean."

             Alvin grunted with exasperation and kicked open the hatch. The sharp bite of smoke made Cley cough but Alvin took no notice of it. They climbed out into a buzz and clamor of feverish activity. All around the ship worked legions of robots. Supras commanded teams that struggled up from ragged-mouthed tunnels in the desert, carrying long cylinders of gleaming glass.

             "We're trying to save the last fragments of the library, but most of it is gone," Alvin said, striding quickly away from the guttural rumble of the enormous fire. Smoke streamed from channels gouged in the desert. These many thin, soot-black wedges made up the enormous pyre that towered above them, filling half the sky.

             "What was in there?" Cley asked.

             "Frozen life," Seeker said.

             "Yes," Alvin said, his glance betraying surprise. "The record of all life's handiwork for over a billion years. Left here, should the race ever need biological stores again."

             "Then that which burns," Seeker said, "is the coding."

             Alvin nodded bitterly. "A mountain-sized repository of DNA."

             "Why was it in the desert?" Cley asked.

             "Because there might have come a time when even Diaspar failed, yet humanity went on. So the Keeper says."

             The teams of robots moved in precise ranks that even the hubbub of fighting the fires could not fracture. They surged on wheels and legs and tracks, churning the loose soil as they pushed large mounds of grit and gravel into the open troughs where flames still licked. She could see where explosions had ripped open the long trenches. Now the fire scoured the deep veins of the planet's accumulated genetic wisdom, and the robots were like insect teams automatically hurrying to protect their queen, preserving a legacy they could not share. Cley could scarcely take her eyes from the towering pyre where the heritage of numberless extinct species was vanishing into billowing wreaths of carbon.

             The machines automatically avoided the three of them as they walked over a low hill and into an open hardpan plain. In oblivious tribute to the perfection he knew in Diaspar, Alvin did not bother to move aside as batallions of robots rushed past them. Seeker flinched visibly at the roar and wind of great machines, dangerously close.

             Cley saw that feelers of grass and scrub trees had already advanced here, resurgent life licking at the dead sands. Supras hurried everywhere, ordering columns of machines with quick stabs at hand-held instruments.

             "The fight goes no better," Alvin said sourly. "We are trying to snuff it out by burying the flames. But the attackers have used some inventive electromotive fire that survives even burial."

             "The arts of strife," a woman commented sardonically.

             Cley turned and saw a tall, powerfully built woman some distance away. Yet her voice had seemed close, intimate.

             "Alvin!" the woman called and ran toward them. "We have lost a phylum."

             Alvin's stern grimace stiffened further. "Something minor, I hope?"

             "The Myriasoma."

             "The many-bodied? No!" Despair flitted across his face.

             Cley asked, "What are they?"

             Alvin stared into the distance, emotion flickering in his face. "A form my own species knew, long ago. A composite intelligence which used drones capable of receiving electromagnetic instructions. The creature could disperse itself at will."

             Cley looked at the woman uneasily, feeling an odd tension playing at the edge of her perceptions. "I never saw one."

             "We had not revived them yet," Alvin said. "Now they are lost."

             Seeker said, "Do not be hasty."

             Alvin ignored it. "You are sure we lost all?"

             "I hoped there would be traces, but . . . yes. All."

             Cley heard the woman and simultaneously felt a deeper, resonant voice sounding in her mind. The woman turned to her and said, "You have the talent, yes. Hear."

             This time the woman's voice resounded only in Cley's mind, laced with strange, strumming bass notes. I am Seranis, a Supra who shares this.

             "I, I don't understand," Cley said. She glanced at Seeker and Alvin but could not read their looks.

             I’ve have re-created you Ur-humans from the entries in this Library. We further augmented you so that you could understand us through this direct talent.

             "But Alvin didn't—"

             He is of Diaspar and thus lacks the talent. Only we from Lys have the threads of microwave-active magnetite laid down in skull and brain.

             They twine among your — and our — neurological circuitry. When stimulated by electrical activity, these amplify and transmit our thoughts. Seranis took Cley's hands and held them up, palms facing, then slowly brought them to Seranis's temples. Cley felt the voice strengthen. I am antenna and receiver, as are you.

             "I could never do this before!" Cley said loudly, as if the new talent made her doubt her older voice.

             The talent must be stimulated first, since it is not natural to Ur-humans. Seranis smiled sardonically. It might have helped your species in your age. We of Lys have it because for so long we lived for the whole, for our community. This knits us together.

             "And Alvin?"

             Diaspar is the master of urban mechanism, Lys of verdant wooded majesty. Their art escapes their boundaries, while ours sings of our time and community. Diaspar rejected the enveloping intimacy of the talent, though it is an unending pleasure. And we of Lys pay the price of mortality for this.