Once, as an arrogant boy of ten, an idea took root in his head-to sneak behind the Egg and take a sample.

It all began one jubilee year, when Nelo the Papermaker set out for Gathering to attend a meeting of his guild, and his wife, Melina the Southerner, insisted on taking Lark and little Sara along.

“Before they spend their lives working away at your paper mill, they should see some of the world.”

How Nelo must have later cursed his consent, for the trip changed Lark and his sister.

All during the journey, Melina kept opening a book recently published by the master printers of Tarek Town, forcing her husband to pause, tapping his cane while she read aloud in her lilting southern accent, describing varieties of plant, animal, or mineral they encountered along the path. At the time, Lark didn’t know how many generations had toiled to create the guidebook, collating oral lore from every exile race. Nelo thought it a fine job of printing and binding, a good use of paper, or else he would have forbidden exposing the children to ill-made goods.

Melina made it a game, associating real things with their depictions among the ink lithographs. What might have been a tedious trip for two youngsters became an adventure outshadowing Gathering itself, so that by the time they arrived, footsore and tired, Lark was already in love with the world.

The same book, now yellow, worn, and obsolete thanks to Lark’s own labors, rested like a talisman in one cloak-sleeve. The optimistic part of my nature. The part that thinks it can learn.

As the file of pilgrims neared the Egg’s far side, he slipped.a hand into his robe to touch his other amulet. The one he never showed even Sara. A stone no larger than his thumb, wrapped by a leather thong. It always felt warm, after resting for twenty years next to a beating heart.

My darker side. The part that already knows.

The stone felt hot as pilgrims filed by a place Lark recalled too well.

It was at his third Gathering that he finally had screwed up the nerve-a patrician artisan’s son who fancied himself a scientist-slinking away from the flapping pavilions, ducking in caves to elude passing pilgrims, then dashing under the curved shelf, where only a child’s nimble form might go, drawing back his sampling hammer. …

In all the years since, no one ever mentioned the scar, evidence of his sacrilege. It shouldn’t be noticeable among countless other scratches marring the surface up close. Yet even a drifting mist didn’t hide the spot when Lark filed by.

Should he still be embarrassed by a child’s offense, after all these years?

Knowing he was forgiven did not erase the shame.

The stone grew cooler, less restive, as the procession moved past.

Could it all be illusion? Some natural phenomenon, familiar to sophisticates of the Five Galaxies? (Though toweringly impressive to primitives hiding on a forbidden world.) Rewq symbionts also came into widespread use a century ago, offering precious insight into the moods of other beings. Had the Egg brought them forth, as some said, to help heal the Six of war and discord? Or were they just another quirky marvel left by Buyur gene-wizards, from back when this galaxy thronged with countless alien races?

After poring through the Biblos archives, Lark knew his confusion was typical when humans puzzled over the sacred. Even the great Galactics, whose knowledge spanned time and space, were riven by clashing dogmas. If mighty star-gods could be perplexed, what chance had he of certainty?

There’s one thing both sides of me can agree on.

In both his scientific work and the pangs of his heart, Lark knew one simple truth—

We don’t belong here.

That was what he told the pilgrims later, in a rustic amphitheater, where the rising sun surrounded the Egg’s oblate bulk with a numinous glow. They gathered in rows, sitting, squatting, or folding their varied torsos in attentive postures. The qheuen apostate, Harullen, spoke first in a poetic dialect, hissing from several leg vents, invoking wisdom to serve this world that was their home, source of all their atoms. Then Harullen tilted his gray carapace to introduce Lark. Most had come a long way to hear his heresy.

“We’re told our ancestors were criminals,” he began with a strong voice, belying his inner tension. “Their sneakships came to Jijo, one at a time, running the patrols of the great Institutes, evading wary deputy globes of the Zang, hiding their tracks in the flux of mighty Izmunuti, whose carbon wind began masking this world a few thousand years ago. They came seeking a quiet place to perform a selfish felony.

“Each founding crew had excuses. Tales of persecution or neglect. All burned and sank their ships, threw their godlike tools into the Great Midden, and warned their offspring to beware the sky.

“From the sky would come judgment, someday — for the crime of survival.”

The sun crept past the Egg’s bulk, stabbing a corner of his eye. He escaped by leaning toward his audience.

“Our ancestors invaded a world that was set aside after ages of hard use. A world needing time for its many species, both native and artificial, to find restored balance, from which new wonders might emerge. The civilization of the Five Galaxies has used these rules to protect life since before half of the stars we see came alight.

“So why did our ancestors flout them?”

Each g’Kek pilgrim watched him with two eyestalks raised far apart and the other two tucked away, a sign of intense interest. The typical urrish listener pointed her narrow head not toward Lark’s face but his midriff, to keep his center of mass in view of all three black slits surrounding her narrow snout. Lark’s rewq highlighted these signs, and others from hoon, traeki, and qheuen.

They’re with me so far, he saw.

“Oh, our ancestors tried to minimize the harm. Our settlements lie in this narrow, geologically violent zone, in hopes that volcanoes will someday cover our works, leaving no evidence behind. The sages choose what we may kill and eat, and where to build, in order to intrude lightly on Jijo’s rest.

“Still, who can deny harm is done, each hour we live here. Now rantanoids go extinct. Is it our fault? Who knows? I doubt even the Holy Egg can tell.”

A murmur from the crowd. Colors flowed in the rewq veil over his eyes. Some literalistic hoon thought he went too far. Others, like the g’Kek, were more comfortable with metaphor.

Let their rewq handle the nuances, Lark thought. Concentrate on the message itself.

“Our ancestors passed on excuses, warnings, rules. They spoke of tradeoffs, and the Path of Redemption. But I’m here to say that none of it is any good. It’s time to end the farce, to face the truth.

“Our generation must choose.

“We must choose to be the last of our kind on Jijo.”

The journey back skirted dark caves, exhaling glistening vapors. Now and then, some deep natural detonation sent echoes rolling from one opening, then another, like a rumor that dwindled with each retelling.

Rolling downhill was easier for the g’Keks. But several traeki, built for life in swampy fens, chuffed with exertion as they twisted and turned, striving to keep up. In order to ease the journey, hoonish pilgrims rumbled low atonal music, as they often did at sea. Most pilgrims no longer wore their exhausted rewq. Each mind dwelled alone, in its own thoughts.

Legend says it’s different among machine intelligences, or the Zang. Group minds don’t bother with persuasion. They just put their heads together, unify, and decide.

It wouldn’t be that easy convincing the common citizenry of the Six to go along with the new heresy. Deep instincts drove each race to reproduce as best it could. Ambition for the future was a natural trait for people like his father.