Cley felt a surf of consternation roll over the sea-deep swell of Seranis's mind. "And next?" Seranis asked.

             "No cage holds forever."

             "Will you help us?"

             "I have a higher cause," Seeker said quietly.

             "I suspected as much." Seranis raised one eyebrow. "Higher than the destiny of intelligent life?"

             "Yours is a local intelligence."

             "We spread once among the stars—and we can do it again."

             "And yet you remain bottled inside your skins."

             "As do you," Seranis said with cHpped precision.

             "You know we differ. You must be able to sense it." Seeker rapped the cranial bulge that capped his snout, as though knocking on a door.

             "I can feel something, yes," Seranis said guardedly.

             Cley could pick up nothing from Seeker. She shuffled uneasily, lost in the speed and glancing impressions of their conversation.

             "You humans have emotions," Seeker said slowly, "but emotions possess you."

             Seranis prodded, "And your kind?"

             "We have urges which serve other causes."

             Seranis nodded, deepening Cley's sensation of enormous shared insights that seemed as unremarkable to the others as the air they breathed. They all lived as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time's sheer mass shaded every word. Yet no one spoke clearly. Dimly she guessed that the riverrun of ages had somehow blurred all certainties, cast doubt on the very categories of knowing themselves. History held counterexamples to any facile rule. All tales were finally slippery, suspect, so talk darted among somber chasms of ignorance and upjuts of painful memory as old as continents, softening tongues into ambiguity and guile.

             Seeker broke the long, strained silence between them. "We are allies at the moment, that we both know."

             "I am happy to hear so. I have wondered why you accompanied Cley."

             "I wished to save her."

             Seranis asked suspiciously, "You just happened along?"

             "I was here to learn of fresh dangers which vex my species."

             Seranis folded her arms and shifted her weight, an age-old human gesture Cley guessed meant the same to all species: a slightly protective reservation of judgment. "Are you descended from the copies we made?"

             "From your Library of Life?" Seeker coughed as though to cover impolite amusement, then showed its yellow teeth in a broad, unreadable grin. "Genetically, yes. But once you released my species, we took up our ancient tasks."

             Seranis frowned. "I thought you were originally companions to a species of human now vanished."

             "So that species thought."

             "That's what the libraries of Diaspar say," Seranis said with a trace of affronted ire.

             "Exactly. They were a wise species, even so."

             "Ur-human?" Cley asked. She would like to think that her ancestors' saga had included friends like Seeker.

             Its large eyes studied her for a long moment. "No, they were a breed which knew the stars differently than you."

             "Better?"

             "Differently."

             "And they're completely lost?" Cley asked quietly, acutely aware of the shrouded masses of history.

             "They are gone."

             Seranis asked suspiciously, "Gone—or extinct?"

             "From your perspective," Seeker said, "there is no difference."

             "Seems to me extinction pretty much closes the book on you," Cley said lightly, hoping to dispel the tension which had somehow crept into the conversation.

             "Just so," Seranis said evenly. "The stability of this biosphere depends on keeping many species alive. The greater their number, the more rugged Earthlife is, should further disasters befall the planet."

             "As they shall," Seeker said, settling effortlessly into its position for walking, a signal that it would talk no more.

             Damned animal! Seranis could not shield this thought from Cley, or else did not want to.

             They left the Library of Humanity in a seething silence, Seranis deliberately blocking off her talent so that Cley could not catch the slightest prickly fragment of her thoughts.

23

             That evening Alvin presided over a grand meal for three hundred with Cley as guest of honor. Robots had labored through the day, extruding a large, many-spired banquet hall which seemed to rise up groaning from the soil itself. Its walls were sand-colored but opalescent. Inside, a broad ceiling of overlapping arches looked down on tables that also grew directly from a granite floor. Spiral lines wrapped around the walls, glowing soft blue at the floor and shifting to red as they rose, circling the room, making an eerie effect like a sunset seen above an azure sea. Tricks of perspective led Cley into false corridors and sometimes there appeared to be thousands of other guests eating in the distance. At times holes would gape in the floor and robots would rise through them bearing food, a process she found so unsettling that thereafter she stayed in her seat. Despite the cold night air of the desert the room enjoyed a warm spring breeze scented like the pine forests she knew so well. Her gown scarcely seemed to have substance, caressing her like water, yet covered her from ankle to neck.

             They ate grains and vegetables of primordial origin, many dating back to the dawn of humanity. These had already been spread through the emerging biosphere, and this meal was the boon of an ample harvest, brought here from crops throughout the globe. Cley savored the rich sauces and heady aromas but kept her wits about her in conversation with her hosts.

             Often their talk went straight by her, arabesques of talent-meaning sliding among percussive verbal punctuations. The Supras of Lys tapered their rapid-fire signals to make them comprehensible to Cley. Those of Diaspar used only the subset of their language which she could follow. They tried to keep the din of layered cross-references simple in deference to her, but gusts of enthusiasm would sweep their ornate conversations into realms of mystifying complexity.

             She felt their remorse and anger underlying a stern resolve to recover what they could. Yet Alvin made jokes, even quoting some ancient motto of a scholarly society from the dawn of science. ''Nullius in verba, " he said dryly, "or 'don't take anyone's word for it.' Makes libraries seem pointless, wouldn't you say?"

             Cley shrugged. "I am no student."

             "Exactly! Time to stop studying our history. We should reinvent it." Alvin took a long drink from a chalice.

             "I'd like to just live my life, thanks," Cley said quietly.

             "Ah," he said, "but the true trick is to treasure what we were and have done—without letting it smother us."

             Alvin smiled with a dashing exuberance she had not seen among the other Supras. He waved happily as what appeared to be a flock of giant scaly birds flew through the hall, wheeled beautifully, and flew straight through the ceiling without leaving a mark.