"Do not speak. They will smell your stomach lining and plunge down your throat."

             She shut up and closed her nostrils as well. The clasping cartilage in her nose had been useful in staving off water losses in the desert of an ancient Earth only dimly remembered by even the Keeper of Records. Now it kept out drumming mites as she held her breath for long, aching moments, wondering what the succulent scent of her digestive acids was. She squeezed her eyes shut, gritting her teeth. If she could only have the luxury of screaming, just once—

             The fog hesitated, buzzed angrily, and then purred away in search of more tasty banquets.

             "They seek to find and alter," Seeker said. "Not merely eat."

             "How can you tell?" she asked wonderingly.

             "In my age there were many forms which lived by chemical craft. They work on molecules themselves, transforming crude minerals into elegant usefuls."

             Cley shivered. "They make my skin crawl."

             "These are obviously designed to aid the lichen in their gnawing, preparing the ground for life."

             "I never saw them before."

             "They ferret out their molecular cuisine at the edge of the forest. Your kind inhabited the deep woods."

             "I hope—"

             "No more talk. Quickly now."

             They ran hard. Seeker stopped often and crouched forward, listening to the ground. Cley needed the time to adjust her blood chemistry. The rhythms of walking helped key in hormonal cues to stop her menstrual cycle and increase endurance. She kept glancing at the sky where the galactic center was rising. Its gossamer radiance was unwelcome; she felt exposed.

             Loping along a steep hillside. Seeker said, "They come now."

             "The Supras?" she asked.

             "More than them."

             "You can tell that from listening to—"

             Seeker crouched, its snout narrowing, ears flaring. It was absolutely still and then was instantly moving, even faster this time. She ran to catch up. "What—"

             "Ahead," it called.

             Her breath rasped as they struggled up a narrow draw. A deep bass note seemed to come from everywhere until she realized that she felt it through her feet. A peak above them cracked open with a groan and abruptly a geyser shot straight up. Tons of water spewed high in the air and showered down. Fat raindrops pelted them.

             Seeker called, "A fresh river. The rock strain has grown for days and so I sought the outbreak. It will afford momentary shelter."

             The droplets hammered at Cley. Seeker made an urgent sign. Through the spray of water overhead she saw rainbow shards of radiance cascade across the sky.

             "Searching," Seeker said.

             "Who is?"

             "What, not who. That which destroyed the Library."

             They watched as a filigree of incandescence stretched and waxed. Through the geyser's mist the shifting webbed patterns glowed like a design cast over all humanity. Cley had seen this beautiful tapestry before—seen it descend and bring stinging death to all she loved. Its elegant coldness struck into her heart with leaden solidity. She had managed to put aside the horror but now here it was again. Those luminiscent tendrils had tracked and burned and nearly killed her and she longed to find a way to strike back. War. The ancient word sang in her thumping pulse, in flared nostrils, in dry taut lips.

             She stood with her clothes sticking to her in the hammering rain, hoping that this momentary fountain had saved them. How long could the mists shield them?

             But now among the flexing lightning darted amber dots—craft of the Supras, spreading out from the Library. She had long expected to see them pursuing her, but they were not searching the ground. Instead they moved in formations around the gaudy luminescent ripples.

             Seeker looked bedraggled, its coat dark with the wet. "Down," it said firmly.

             They scrambled into a shallow cave. The river-forming geyser spread a canopy of fog, but Cley adjusted her sight to bring up the faint images she could make out through the wisps. She and Seeker watched the intricate dodge and swerve of Supra ships as they sought to enclose and smother the downward-lancing glows.

             "Water will hide us for a while," Seeker said.

             "Are they after the Library again?"

             "No. They seem to—there."

             A streamer broke through an amber pouch spun by Supra ships. It plunged earthward and in a dazzling burst split into fingers of prickly light. These raced over the mountains and down into valleys like rivulets of a tormented river in the air. One orange filament raced nearby, ripe with crackling ferocity. It dwelled a moment along the way they had come, as if sniffing for a trail, and then darted away, leaving only a diminishing flurry of furious pops.

             The Supras seemed to have caged in the remaining bright lacings. The thrusts broke into colors and roiled about the sky like quick, caged fire turned back by flashes from the Supras.

             Then the sky ebbed as if a presence had left it. The amber Supra ships drifted back toward the Library.

             "We are fortunate," Seeker said.

             Cley said, "That was a cute trick with the water."

             "I doubted it would work."

             "You gambled our lives on—?"

             "Yes."

             "Good thing you don't make mistakes."

             "Oh, I do." Seeker sighed with something like weariness. "To live is to err."

             Cley frowned. "C'mon, Seeker! You have some help, some connection."

             "I am as mortal as you."

             "What're you connected to?" she persisted.

             It lifted one amber shoulder in a gesture she could not read. "Everything. And the nothing. It is difficult to talk about in this constricted language. And pointless."

             "Well, anyway, that'll keep the Supras busy. They've already figured out how to fight the lightning."

             "It searched for us, knowing we had escaped."

             "How could it?"

             "It is intelligence free of matter and has ways we cannot know." Already Seeker moved on, slipping on some gravel and sprawling, sending pebbles rattling downslope. But it got back up, fatigue showing in its eyes, and moved on in a way that was once called "dogged," but now had no such description, for there were no longer any dogs.

             Scrambling over the ridgerock, Seeker added, "And should not know."

25

             They made good time. The geyser sent feathery clouds along the backbone of the mountain range. These thickened and burst with rain. The air's ferment hid them and brought moist swarming scents.

             The parched Earth needed more than the water so long hidden in deep lakes. Through the roll of hundreds of millions of years its skin of soil had disappeared, broken by sunlight and baked into vapor. The Supras had loosed upon these dry expanses the lichen, which could eat stone and fart organic paste. Legions of intricately designed, self-reproducing cells then burrowed into the noxious waste. Within moments such a microbe corps could secrete a rich mire of bacteria, tiny fungi, rotifers. Musty soil grew, the fruit of microscopic victories and stalemates waged in every handful of sand around the globe. Soil itself flourished like a ripe plant.