A moment later, she sighed.

Silly thing. It’s only men riding donkeys. Ifni! This darkness would make anything ordinary seem mysterious, especially after all we’ve been thr—

She blinked and stared again.

They were big donkeys. The human riders’ feet did not drag but perched high off the ground, astride great torsos that seemed to pulsate with raw animal power.

“It’s them!” Jomah cried. “They’re real! They weren’t all killed off, after all!”

To Sara it felt like witnessing dragons, or dinosaurs, or stag-griffins come alive off the pages of a storybook. A dream made real — or a nightmare to some. The Urunthai prisoners let out a howl of anger and despair when they realized what was stepping into the firelight. This meant their one great achievement — their league’s sole claim to fame — was in fact a failure. A farce.

The riders dismounted, and Sara realized they were all women. She also saw that several more of the great beasts followed behind, bearing saddles but otherwise unburdened.

No, she thought, realizing what was about to be asked of her. They can’t seriously expect me to climb onto one of those things!

The nearest beast snorted as the Stranger reached up to stroke its mammoth head. The creature easily out-massed four or five urs, with jaws big enough to swallow a person’s arm, whole. Yet, the man from space pressed his cheek against its great neck.

With tears in his eyes, he sang again.

It is a strange universe.

He ponders this without putting it in words. It’s easier that way.

Lately, he has found quite a few means to express ideas without the swarm of busy, smacking, humming, clattering noises that used to run through all his thoughts.

Music and song. Numbers. Pencil sketches. Feelings. And the strange colors cast by those funny living-visors people sometimes wear on this world.

Rewq.

He can think the name of the beasts and is proud of the accomplishment.

As he slowly gets better, he finds he can contemplate important names more clearly.

Sara, Jomah, Prity…

And some other words, occasionally two or three at a time.

Memory, too, is becoming more clarified. He can recall the scoutship, for instance, blasted as he tried a futile diversion, attempting to draw a hunter ship away from its prey.

He failed, taking a jolting series of blows, and there had followed a period that was still a blur to him, a vague impression of rapid movement and change… after which he found himself plummeting, on fire, crashing—

No, no. Think of something else.

Riding. That was a much nicer thing to muse upon.

Riding a saddled animal. A spirited horse. The heady, surprising joy of it, with cool wind in his face, bringing a thousand amazing smells.

How strange to find so many things to like about this new world! About a life robbed of the one thing that makes most humans human. A command of words.

And now he remembers. Something very much like this injury of his happened before. To a friend.

To his captain.

An image swirls through his mind. A handsome, sleek-gray figure. Flukes thrashing through water filled with tiny bubbles. A narrow, bottle-shaped jaw, filled with pointy, grinning teeth. A brain, wounded, but still profoundly wise.

Silently, he mouths three syllables.

Crei… dei… ki…

And all at once this triggers more memories. More friends. A ship. A mission. A need.

An image of watery depths. So deep and black that no light could ever penetrate — a hiding place, but no sanctuary. In all the vast cosmos, there is no sanctuary.

But now, as if released from the prison of his illness, one more thing swarms through his mind, surprising him with sudden recognition.

A name.

My… name.

Slippery from pent-up frustration, it shoots out from wherever it had lain, dammed up for so long. Caroming back and forth, it finally settles down within reach.

It ought never have gone away. It should be the most familiar word in a person’s life, yet only now does it return, as if to say “welcome back.”

Riding through a night washed with exotic moonlight, surrounded by curious beings and a culture unlike any he had ever known, he now laughs aloud, ecstatic to be able to do this simple thing. This one, cherished act.

My… name… is… Emerson.

For those familiar with my other work, this volume may seem a departure from my normal custom of trying to write novels that stand on their own. That was my intention this time, but the story kept growing, evolving beyond even the length of huge tomes like Earth and Glory Season, leaving me no alternative but to “go the trilogy route.” There is no shame in the practice-trilogies have their own lavish, wide-screen, Technicolor attraction. But in future I trust that I’ll plan better.

I hope to bring out volumes two and three promptly.

I’d like to thank the following people for helping with their comments and criticism to make this complicated story work, among them — Gregory Benford, Anita Everson, Joy Crisp, Mark James, Dr. Bruce Miller, Jim Richards, Prof. Jim Moore, and Dr. Steinn Sigurdsson. Also, my gratitude to members of SPECTRE, the Caltech science fiction club: Aaron Petty, Teresa Moore, Dustin Laurence, Damien Sullivan, Micah Altman, John Lang-ford, Eric Schell, Robin Hanson, Grant Swenson, Ruben Krasnopolsky, and Anita Gould. Special thanks are due Stefan Jones and Kevin Lenagh for helping enhance and embellish my poor efforts. My deep appreciation also goes to Jennifer Hershey, Ralph Vicinanza, and Cheryl Brigham, for their dedication and wisdom.

David Brin, March 1995

In Memory of Dr. James Neale, Kiwi third-baseman, healer and friend.

DAVID BRIN is the author of eleven previous novels, Sundiver, The Uplift War, Startide Rising, The Practice Effect, The Postman (which was adapted for film by Warner Brothers), Heart of the Comet (with Gregory Benford), Earth, Glory Season, Brightness Reef, Infinity’s Shore, and Heaven’s Reach, as well as the short-story collections The River of Time and Otherness. His most recent work of nonfiction is The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? He has a doctorate in astrophysics and has been a NASA consultant and a physics professor. He lives in southern California, where he is at work on his next novel.