A roar of approval yanked her back to the present. At first she could not tell if it came from the party wanting quick action, or from those resolved not to wreck nine generations’ work on the mere evidence of their own eyes.

“We have no idea what it was we saw!” her father declared, combing his beard with gnarled fingers. “Can we be sure it was a spaceship? Perhaps a meteor grazed by. That’d explain all the noise and ruckus.”

Sneers and foot-stamps greeted this suggestion. Nelo hurried on. “Even if it was a ship, that don’t mean we’ve been discovered! Other vessels have come and gone- Zang globes, for instance, come to siphon water from the sea. Did we wreck everything then? Did the older tribes burn their towns when we humans came? How do we know it wasn’t another sneakship, bringing a seventh exile race to join our Commons?”

Jop snorted derisively.

“Let me remind the learned papermaker — sneakships sneak! They come under the shadow of night an’ cloud an’ mountain peak. This new vessel made no such effort. It aimed straight at the Glade of the Egg, at a time when the pavilions of Gathering are there, along with the chief sages of the Six.”

“Exactly!” Nelo cried. “By now the sages should be well aware of the situation and would have farcast if they felt it necessary to—”

“Farcasting?” Jop interrupted. “Are you serious? The sages remind us over an’ over again that it can’t be trusted. In a crisis, farcasts may be just the thing to attract attention! Or else” — Jop paused meaningfully — “or else there may have been no calls for a more terrible reason.”

He. let the implication sink in, amid a scatter of gasps. Almost everyone present had a relative or close friend who had taken pilgrimage this year.

Lark and Dwer — are you safe? Sara pondered anxiously. Will I ever see you again?

“Tradition leaves it up to each community. Shall we shirk, when our loved ones may’ve already paid a dearer price than some buildings and a stinkin’ dam?”

Cries of outrage from the craft workers were drowned out by support from Jop’s followers. “Order!” Fru Nestor squeaked, but her plaint was lost in the chaos. Jop and his allies shouted for a vote.

“Choose the Law! Choose the Law!”

Nestor appealed for order with upraised hands, clearly dreading the dismemberment of her town-its reduction to a mere farming hamlet, rich in reverence but little else. “Does anyone else have something to say?”

Nelo stepped up to try again but wilted under a stream of catcalls. Who had ever seen a papermaker treated thus? Sara felt his shame and dishonor, but it would be far worse when his beloved factory was blown to oblivion before an all-destroying flood.

Sara had a strange thought — should she sneak up to her old attic room and wait for the wave? Who had prophesied right? Dwer and Lark? Or those images she had foreseen in dreams? It would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to find out.

Resumed chanting tapered off as someone new moved forward from behind the crowd of pale hoon sailors. It was a centauroid figure with a long sinuous body of mottled suede that branched into a pair of stubby shoulderless arms and a powerful snakelike neck. The narrow-pointed head contained three black eyes, one of them lidless and faceted, all set around a triangular mouth. It was an urrish tinker Sara recognized from past visits to Dolo, buying scraps of glass and metal, selling simple Buyur tools reclaimed from some ruin. The urs stepped daintily, as if worried her hooves might catch in the rough floorboards. She had one arm raised, exposing a glimpse of the bluish brooding pouch underneath, an act that might have different connotations in a meeting of her own kind, but Fru Nestor took it as a request to speak, which she granted with a bow.

Sara heard a human mutter — “hinney!” — a rude callback to days when newcomer Earthlings fought ur-rish tribes over land and honor. If the tinker heard the insult, she ignored it, carrying herself well for a youngish urs with just one husband pouch tenanted by a squirming bulge. Among so many humans, the urs could not use a plains dialect of Galactic Two but made do with Anglic, despite the handicap of a cloven upper lip.

“I can ve called Ulgor. I thank you for your courtesy, which is vlessed among the Six. I wish only to ask questions concerning the issues discussed tonight. Ny first question follows-

“Is this not a natter vest decided vy our sages? Why not let those wise ones rule whether the great tine of judgnent has arrived?”

With an exaggerated show of mannerly patience, Jop replied, “Learned neighbor, the Scrolls call on all villages to act independently, to erase all signs that might be seen from the sky! The order’s simple. No complicated judgment is needed.

“Besides,” he concluded. “There’s no time to hear from the sages. They’re all far away, at Gathering.”

“Forgive,” Ulgor bowed her forelegs. “Not all. A few linger in residence at the Hall o’ Vooks, in Vivlos, do they not?”

There was confusion as people looked at one another, then Fru Nestor cried out, “The Hall of Books, in Biblos! Yes, that’s true. But Biblos is still many days away, by boat.”

Again Ulgor bent her neck before dissenting. “Yet I have heard that, fron the highest tree in Dolo, one can see across the quicksand narsh to the glass cliffs overlooking Vivlos.”

“With a good telescope,” Jop acknowledged, wary that this was sapping the crowd’s passionate momentum. “I still don’t see how it helps—”

“Fire!”

Faces turned toward Sara, who had shouted while the thought was still half formed.

“We’d see flames as the library burned!”

Muttering, the crowd stared at her, till she explained. “You all know I used to work at Biblos. They have a contingency plan like everyone else. If the sages command it, the librarians are to carry off what volumes they can, then ignite the rest.”

This brought on a somber hush. Wrecking Dole’s dam was one thing, but loss of Biblos would truly signal an ending. No place was more central to human life on Jijo.

“Finally, they are to blow the pillars holding up the roof-of-stone and bring it down on the ashes. Ulgor’s right. We could see any change that big, especially with Loocen rising at this hour.”

Fru Nestor spoke a terse command. “Send someone aloft to see!”

Several boys leaped up and vanished through the windows, accompanied by a string of hooting chimpanzees. A nervous murmur ensued while the crowd waited. Sara felt uncomfortable under the regard of so many, and lowered her eyes.

That was the sort of thing Lark would do. Boldly taking over a meeting at the last minute, compelling others to act. Joshu had that impulsiveness, too — till the sickness took him in those final weeks…

Gnarled fingers grasped hers, halting the bleak gyre of her thoughts. She looked up and saw that Nelo had aged in the last hour. Now the fate of his beloved mill rested on news from above.

As the slow duras passed, the full import of her prediction sank in.

Biblos.

The Hall of Books.

Once already, fire had taken a terrible toll there. Even so, the remaining archive was humanity’s greatest contribution to the Commons and a cause of both envy and wonder among the other races.

What will we become, if it’s gone? True pastoralists? Gleaners, living off remnants swiped from ancient Buyur sites? Farmers all?

That was how the other five had seemed, when humans first came. Bickering primitives with their barely functioning commons. Humanity introduced new ways, changed the rules, almost as much as the arrival of the Egg several generations later.

Now shall we slide downslope faster? Losing the few relics that remind us we once roamed galaxies? Shucking our books, tools, clothes, till we’re like glavers? Pure, shriven innocents?