“Chimps are like children. Naturally we sent them away from possible danger.”

Ling looked left and right. “Do you see any danger?”

Lark almost burst out with sardonic laughter. In Ling’s eyes danced a complexity of things he could only guess. But some thoughts were clear without being spoken aloud.

You know that I know. I know that you know that I know. And you know that I know that you know that I know…

There is another emotion that can overcome hormonal lust, or the fury of anger.

Respect.

He nodded to his adversary, meeting her gaze full on.

“I’ll let you know if we pass near any chimps, so you can see for yourself.”

Ling had extremely sharp vision and proved it frequently by spotting movements Lark would have missed — forest creatures foraging, browsing, hunting, or tending their young. In this, she reminded him of Dwer. But Ling also owned many tools, which she brought swiftly to bear on whatever crawling, flitting, or ambling thing caught her attention.

She must really have studied those old Buyur records, for their progress was slowed by frequent sighs of recognition, when she would classify a species of shrub, tree, or four-winged bird, then ask Lark to add whatever quaint name the locals used. Lark gave cautious answers — just enough to support his value as a local expert.

Sometimes Ling would pause and mutter into her ring, as if contemplating what she had learned. Lark realized with a shiver that she must be in contact with her base. This was speech at a distance, not like semaphore, far-casting, or even rare psi-telepathy, but the high-tech kind mentioned in books, perfect and reliable. The voice of the person at the other end could barely be made out as a whisper. He guessed it must be projected somehow, compactly, to the region near her ear.

At one point, Ling murmured in a dialect form of Anglic, rather hard to follow.

“Yea, yea… Oright. A’ll try to speed ip. But yigotta chuz — distince er ditail.”

The other party must have been persuasive, for Ling picked up the pace when the march resumed — until the next excited discovery caused her to forget her promise and go right back to dawdling over some intriguing detail. Lark found this character flaw — how easily she was distracted by the sight of living things — the first thing he honestly liked about her.

Then Ling spoiled it by patronizing him, defining — in slow, simple words — what “nocturnal” meant. Lark quashed resentment. He had read enough adventure novels as a kid to know how a native guide was supposed to act. So he thanked her respectfully. There might be future advantages to be had in letting her maintain her stereotypes.

For all of Ling’s enthusiasm and keen eyesight, she was no hunter like Dwer. Even to Lark, the surroundings frothed with signs-footprints and broken stems, feces and territory marks, wisps of fur, scale, feather, and torg. Any child of the Six could read such stories, found along the path. But Ling seemed aware only of what was currently alive.

Thinking about Dwer made Lark smile. By the time he gets back from his mundane glaver hunt, I’ll be the one with wild stories to tell, for a change.

At intervals, Ling unfolded an instrument with twin “holio screens,” one showing a forest scene that rippled and moved as Lark stared over her shoulder, showing someplace nearby, he could tell from the foliage. The other screen displayed charts and figures he found indecipherable-which was humbling. He had read nearly every biology text in Biblos and figured he should at least understand the vocabulary.

Maybe the “Yes, bwana” routine isn’t such an act. Turns out I may be illiterate, after all.

Ling explained this was data from one of the robot probes, climbing the same path some distance ahead. “Could we move faster now?” she asked eagerly. “The robot has subdued some interesting specimens. I want to reach them before they deteriorate.”

She had been the one dawdling. Still, Lark only nodded.

“Whatever you say.”

The first specimen was a hapless wuankworm whose burrow had been sliced open with scalpel-smoothness. A web of fibrous stuff defied repeated battering by the worm’s bony head, as it fought futilely to escape.

Ling spoke into her ring. “This feral form seems related to ore-gleaners the Buyur imported from Dezni, three aeons ago. Dezni-evolved organisms should estivate after injection with clathrate of methane. We’ll try a larger dose now.”

She aimed a device that sent a slender tube flashing like a resolute predator, piercing a crease between two armor plates. The worm flinched, then slumped, quivering.

“Good. Now let’s see if encephalization has changed during the last megayear.” She turned to Lark and explained. “That’s to see if they have more brain matter.”

Now that I knew, he thought, but restrained himself and remarked instead,

“How perfectly amazing.”

Lark learned to pass instruments, draw blood, and assist his employer as required. At one point the raspy tongue of an angry longsnout whipped between the strands of its cage and would have torn strips off Ling’s arm, if he had not yanked it away in time. After that, Ling seemed to realize her “native guide” had uses beyond toting, carrying, and being impressed whenever she spoke.

Though the robot’s specimens were “brainy” types, living by their wits as hunters or omnivorous gatherers, Lark thought none of them likely prospects for uplift. Maybe in ten million years, when this galaxy is reopened for legal settlement. By then, longsnouts or leap raptors may be ready, tested by evolution and Ifni’s luck, primed for adoption by some kindly elder race.

Yet, watching her use sorcerous rays and probes to appraise a mangy-looking carrion snorter, Lark could not help but imagine the beast responding by rearing up on its hind legs and reciting an ode to the comradeship of living things. Ling’s group clearly thought they might find something precious, emerging on Jijo ahead of schedule. Once potential is there, all it takes is help from a patron to set a new race on the Upward Path.

A few texts in Biblos disagreed. A birth does not always need a midwife, they claimed.

Lark chose to follow up that idea during the next part of the trek.

“A while back you implied Earthlings aren’t known as wolflings anymore.”

Ling smiled enigmatically. “Some still believe that old myth. But others have known the truth for quite a while.”

“The truth?”

“About where we came from. Who gave humanity the boon of thought and reason. Our true patrons. The Rothen mentors and guides we owe everything we are, and ever will be.”

Lark’s heart beat faster. A few tomes on the subject had survived the fire that ravaged the Biblos xenology shelves, so he knew the debate was still raging when the sneakship Tabernacle left for Jijo, three centuries ago. In those days, some speculated that humanity had been helped, in secret by clandestine benefactors, long before the historical era. Others held out for the model of Darwin — that intelligence could evolve all by itself, without outside help, despite the skepticism of Galactic science. Now Ling insisted the debate was settled.

“Who are they?” Lark asked in a hushed voice. “Did some Rothen come to Jijo with you?”

That smile returned, a knowing look, tugging her high cheekbones. “Truth for truth. First you tell me the real story. What’s a pack of humans doing here on this dreary little world?”

“Uh… which pack are you talking about? Yours or mine?”

Her silent smile was his only answer, as if to say — “Go ahead and be coy, I can wait.”

Ling followed tracers left by the relentless robot, leading from one sedated creature to the next. As the day waned, she picked up the pace until they reached the crest of a long ridge. From there, Lark saw several more plateaus to the north, slanting up toward Rimmer peaks. Instead of the usual covering of native trees, the nearest mesa bore a blanket of darker green, a dense sward of giant boo — stems so huge that individuals could be made out even from where he stood. A few streaks of stone, and one of water, broke the expanse of gently swaying tubes.