"Eyes are never dimmed by friendship, Counselor Latranesto," Manta said quietly. "Friendship, love, and loyalty are what enable the eyes and heart to see better."

"Many others do not agree," Latranesto said again. "That was the reason this grand idea was abandoned and you were condemned to exile. Some believe you will always be human in heart and mind, and will forever serve as their agent."

"And I've told you that I won't," Manta repeated. "I wish I knew a way I could prove it to you."

"Do you?" Latranesto countered. "Do you really?"

Manta felt his breath catch in his throats. There had been something in the way the Counselor had said that.... "Yes," he said. "Tell me how."

For another ninepulse Latranesto hesitated. Then, his eyes drifted off into the distance. "Allow me to remember in your presence," he said. "Do you know what first attracted the Qanska to your people, Manta?"

Manta grimaced. "I thought it was you running into Chippawa and Faraday's tether line."

"No," Latranesto said, his tails undulating slowly in deep memory. "It was afterwards, after the Leaders and the Wise had examined them and sent them back to Level One. Our plan was for one of the Protectors to break the skin of the Counselor who carried them, drawing some of her blood. The Vuuka who responded would, we hoped, tear away the rest of the skin that covered their machine and permit them to escape."

Manta thought back over the history of that voyage. "It worked, too," he said.

"Yes," Latranesto said. "And if that had been all that happened, we might never have opened a conversation with your people.

"But it wasn't all. What caught our attention was that the humans inside had already created a plan of their own. It was a method that used a power we had never seen before."

"Fire," Manta murmured.

"That was the word," Latranesto confirmed. "The machine had already shown your people were a race who had methods and abilities far beyond ours."

His eyes suddenly focused on Manta again. "What the plan and the fire showed was that you were a race of problem-solvers."

Manta felt something prickling across his skin. Problem-solvers? "Are you telling me," he asked carefully, "that you have a problem?"

"A very serious problem, Breeder Manta," Latranesto said solemnly. "One which the Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise have decided must not be revealed to you."

"I see," Manta murmured. "But you're going to tell me anyway?"

Latranesto twitched his tails. "I am placing my own life between your teeth," he said, his voice heavy with reluctance. "You see, you swim between two opposing winds, Breeder Manta. There are those of the Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise who believe you have become truly Qanskan, and have lost all your human abilities. They believe you can't help us. In the other wind are those who believe that you are still human, and that you therefore remain a threat to the Qanska. They believe you won't help us. Both sides thus agree that you must never know the true reason you were asked to come into our world."

"And what about you?" Manta asked. "What do you believe?"

"I believe that you are a unique creature," Latranesto said. "That your loyalties have become Qanskan, but at the same time your mind and abilities remain human."

He lashed his tails again. "And I am prepared to risk my own life on that belief. For if it is revealed that I told you, your same punishment will also fall upon me. Or perhaps something worse."

"I understand," Manta said, a bad feeling beginning to wrap itself around his throats. What in the world could be happening here that would be this serious? "I'll do everything I can to help."

"What's the problem?" Pranlo asked.

Latranesto sent him a startled look, as if his swim through the past had made him forget that he and Manta weren't alone. For a pulse Manta thought he might order the other two away; but with a twitch of his tail, he merely turned back to Manta. Perhaps he realized he'd already said too much. "It's our world, Breeder Manta," he said, waving his fins to encompass the air around them. "Our entire world."

"What's wrong with it?" Manta asked.

Latranesto seemed to sigh. "It's dying."

Drusni gave a little gasp. "Dying?" Pranlo demanded. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that the ancient pattern has returned," Latranesto said solemnly. "The pattern that has followed us to every new world we've ever found."

Manta's heartpulse sped up with reflexive excitement. Every new world... "Then it is true," he said.

"You did come from somewhere else, as the humans believe. How long have you been here?"

"Not very long," Latranesto said. "Perhaps twenty-two Qanskan lifetimes. One hundred and seventy suncycles, as the world counts the passage of time."

"A hundred and seventy suncycles," Manta murmured, savoring the irony of it. A hundred and seventy Jovian years. Two thousand years, in Earth measurement.

Yet Faraday's argument for a Qanskan stardrive had been based on the fact that none of Earth's probes had ever spotted a Qanska until his own fateful Skydiver expedition. The humans had reached the correct conclusion, but for a completely wrong reason. "That's a pretty good stretch," he said.

"Perhaps as the humans count time," Latranesto said. "Within the span of Qanskan history, it's not much more than a nineday."

Manta thought back to the long and sometimes boring story circle sessions, where the history of the Qanska had been passed on to the new children in the herd. If their life here was just a nineday, the storytellers had clearly hit only the high points. "Tell me about this ancient pattern," he said. "How does it work?"

"It begins when the Wise arrive at their new world," Latranesto said. "They begin to populate, as do all who have come alongside them. And for perhaps the first twenty lifetimes all goes as it should."

He lashed his tails restlessly. "But then the life pattern begins to change. Food plants disappear from the Centerline, as do some of the smaller animals. Small predators, cousins of the Sivra, die or go away. One day, the Brolka vanish from the birth pattern."

Manta flicked his own tails, remembering the differences in flora and fauna he'd observed in the northern and southern regions. "And it always starts in Centerline? In every world you've come to?"

Latranesto hesitated. "I don't know how it's been on other worlds," he admitted. "But in this place, and at this time, it has certainly happened that way."

"There are still Brolka being born in the outer regions," Manta pointed out. "I've seen them."

"So have I," Latranesto said. "But that gives no comfort. Once the pattern has started, we know of no way to stop it. The balance fails, and the fading of life continues. Eventually, many suncycles from now, the ancient pattern will encompass the entire world."

"And then?" Drusni asked quietly.

"Then all who are still alive on that dayherd will slowly die," Latranesto said sadly. "All except those who are able to make the journey to another world. But though they may leave, the ancient pattern will follow them."

"And this has been going on for how long?" Manta asked.

"As long as the story circle of the Qanska can remember," Latranesto said. "A very long time."

"I see," Manta said quietly. In his mind's eye he could see a long line of Qanska stretching into the misty past, and another stretching forward into the future. All of them trying to escape the leisurely curse haunting their race.

All of them failing.

"What else do you know about it?" he asked.

"I can list for you the details of the pattern, and the order in which the plant and animal vanishings occur," Latranesto told him. "We know them all too well. But what it all means, or why it happens, I can't tell you."