"We could lose you Ur-humans," Alvin said with what she now saw was indulgent patience. "Your species records were obliterated in the attack. All other Ur-humans were burned to a crisp. You, Cley, are the last remaining copy."

22    

             She worked for long days in the shattered ruins. The robots cleared the heavy wreckage, but there were innumerable places where human care and common sense could rescue a fragment of the shattered past and she was glad to help. The severed finger on her left hand had regrown but was still stiff and weak so she wanted to exercise it. And she needed time to clear her head, to climb out of an abyss of grief.

             The attack had been thorough. Livid bolts had assaulted one wing of the Library with particular attention, she learned. Shafts had descended again and again in brilliant skeins of color, hanging for long moments like a malevolent rainbow whose feet shot electrical arrows into the soil.

             That wing had housed the Library of Humanity. The Ur-humans had been the oldest form lodged there, and now they and all the many varieties of humanity that had immediately followed them were lost—except for Cley.

             The impact of this was difficult for her to comprehend. The robots gave her awkward, excessive deference. The Supras all paid her polite respect, and she felt their careful protection as she worked. In turn, without being obvious, she watched the Supras commanding their robot legions, but did not know how to read their mood.

             Then one day a Supra woman suddenly broke off her task and began to dance. She moved with effortless energy, whirling and tumbling, her feet flashing across the debris of the Library, hands held up as if to clasp the sky. Other Supras took up the dance behind her and in moments they were all moving with stunning speed that did not have any note of rush or frenzy.

             Cley knew then that she was watching a refinement of Ur-human rituals that went far beyond anything her tribe had used to defuse inner torments. She could glimpse no pattern to their arabesques, but sensed subtle elements slipping by in each movement. It was eerie to watch several hundred bodies revolve and spring and bounce and glide, all without the merest glance at one another, without song or even faint music. In the total silence she could pick up no signals from the talent; they were utterly quiet, each orbiting in a closed curve. The Supras danced without pause or sign of tiring for the rest of the day and through the night and on well into the next morning.

             Cley watched their relentless, driving dances without hope of comprehending. Without meaning to, the Supras told her that she was utterly alone. Seeker was no company, either; it gave the Supras only an occasional glance and soon fell asleep. She longed for her own people and tried to leave the Supra compound, but as she approached the perimeter her skin began to burn and itch intolerably. While the tall, perfect figures whirled through the night she remembered loves and lives now lost down death's funnel, tried to sleep and could not.

             And then without a sign or gesture they abruptly stopped . . . looked around at each other . . . and wordlessly returned to work. Their robots started up again and there was never any mention of the matter.

             The next day, as work resumed, Seranis took samples of her hair, skin, blood and urine. For the Library, Seranis explained.

             "But there isn't one anymore."

             Come.

             Seranis led her and Seeker down through a shattered portal. Cley had lived all her life in the irregular beauties of the forests, where her people labored. She was unprepared for the immense geometries below, the curling subterranean galleries that curved out of sight, the alabaster helicities that tricked her eye into believing that gravity had been routed.

             Already we rebuild.

             Teams of bronzed robots were tending large, blocky machines that exuded glossy walls. The metallic blue stuff oozed forth and bonded seamlessly, yet when Cley touched it a moment later the slick surface was rock-hard.

             "But for what? You've lost the genetic material." She preferred to speak now rather than use the talent, for fear of giving away her true feelings.

             We can save your personal DNA, of course, and the few scraps we have recovered here. Other species dwell in the forests. We will need your help in gathering them.

             Currents from Seranis gently urged her to use her talent exclusively, but Cley resisted, wanting to keep a distance between them. "Good. You've read my helix, now let me go out—"

             Not yet. We have processes to initiate. To re-create your kind demands guidance from you as well.

             "You did it without me before."

             With difficulty and error.

             "Look, maybe I can find some of my people. You may have missed—"

             Alvin is sure none remain.

             "He can't be certain. We're good at hiding."

             Alvin possesses a surety you cannot know.

             Seeker said in its high, melodious voice like sunlight dancing on water, "Alvin moves in his own arc."

             Seranis studied the large creature carefully. "You perceive him as a segment of a larger topology?"

             Seeker rose up on its hind legs, ropes of muscle sliding under its fur, and gestured with both its forelegs and hands, complex signals Cley could not decipher.

             "He first resolved the central opposition between the interior and exterior of Diaspar," Seeker said in its curious, light voice. "This he did by overcoming blocks of cultural narrowness, of unknown history, of his people's agoraphobia, of the computers. This inside-outside opposition he then transformed by breaking out, only to meet its reflection in the oppositions between Lys and Diaspar. To surmount this, his spirit convolved it into the opposition of the provincialism of Earth versus the expansiveness of the galaxy itself. And by confronting the Diaspar computers with a paradox in the blocked memory of one of the service robots of Shalmirane. This act led him outward again, in a starship."

             Seranis gaped, the first time Cley had ever seen a Supra impressed. "How could you possibly know—?"

             Seeker waved aside her question. "And so beneath the Seven Suns he found another barrier, the vacant cage of something great beyond humanity. This spatial barrier he now confronts in his own mind, and seeks to turn it into a barrier in time."

             "I ... I don't understand . . ." Cley said.

             "I do." Seranis studied Seeker warily. "This beast sees our motions in another plane. It has pieced together our conversations and ferreted out much. But what do you mean, a barrier in time?"

             Seeker's broad mouth turned downward, the opposite of a human smile. Cley suspected that Seeker was conveying something like ironic amusement, for its eyes darted with a kind of liquid, skipping joy. "Two meanings I off^er. He delves backward in time, to evolution's edge, for the Ur-humans. As well, he seeks something outside of time, a new cage."

             Cley felt a flash of alarm in Seranis, who stiffly said, "That is nonsense."

             "Of course," Seeker said. "But not my nonsense." It made a dry, barking noise that Cley could have sworn was laughter carrying dark filigrees beneath.