Static again filled the displays.

“No, I can’t head over there right now. It’s half a mictaar from here. My guide and I would flounder in the dark. It’ll have to wait till—”

Listening again, Ling sighed. “All right, I’ll ask him.” She lowered her ring and turned.

“Lark, you know this country. Is there a trail—”

She stopped, and stood up quickly, peering left, then right.

“Lark?”

She called into the night, now a velvet blackness dusted with the winking luster of this galaxy’s third brightest spiral arm.

“Lark! Where are you?”

Wind stirred branches overhead, brushing the forest silence. There was no way of knowing how long it was since he had left, or in which direction.

With a sigh, Ling lifted her hand and reported the abandonment.

“How should I know?” she replied to a curt query. “Can’t blame the nervous monkey for spooking. Never saw a robot’s cut-beam at work before. He may be halfway home by now, if he stops before the coast—

“Yes, yes. I know we hadn’t decided about that, but it’s too late now. Hardly matters, anyway. All he got away with are a few hints and clues. We’ve got plenty more to bribe the natives with. And there’s more where he came from.”

Dissension grows.

The Commons writhes against itself like a traeki whose rings were cruelly stacked, without nurturing rapport between the married toruses.

Word arrives by galloping urrish courier from settlements downslope, where anxiety and chaos reign like despotic qheuenish empresses of old. Some villages topple their water tanks, their grain silos, solar heaters, and windmills, claiming authority in the sacred Scrolls, overruling the rescript that our sage council sent in haste the day the ship came — a policy urging that all folk wait-and-see.

Meanwhile, others protect their barns and docks and weirs, laboring to pile concealing vegetation — and violently repelling angry neighbors who approach their precious property bearing torches and crowbars.

Should we not do better here at Gathering? Did not the finest of the Six come together here for yearly rites of union? Yet poison also roils in this place.

First discord — foul suspicion of our youngest sept. Might our human neighbors be allied with invaders? With plunderers? If not now, could they grow tempted, in time?

Oh, dire notion! Theirs is the highest grasp of science among the Six. What hope have we, without their aid, ever to pierce the deceits of godlike felons?

So far, some faith has been restored by the noble example of Lester and his deputies, who swear devotion to Jijo and our Holy Egg. Yet do not rumors and odious doubts still fly, like whirling soot, amid these gentle glades?

Dissension multiplies. A harvest team returns from one of the deep caves where wild rewq breed, to find the cavern walls deserted, no rewq to be seen. And the ones within our pouches languish. They will not sup our vital fluids, nor help us share the secrets of each other’s souls.

Further discord — in each race many are tempted by a siren song. Sweet utterances by our unwelcome guests. Unctuous promises, words of comradeship.

And not merely words.

Do you recall, my rings, when the star-humans spread word they would heal!

Under a canopy brought over from the festival grounds — shaded by their dark, cubic outpost — they call forth the lame, sick, and hurt. We sages can but watch, helpless and confused, as queues of our wounded brethren limp inside, then amble out elated, transformed, in some part cured.

In truth, many seemed palliated only in their pain. But for some others — miraculous change! Death’s door is transmuted, now a portal to restored youth, vigor, potency.

What can we do, forbid? Impossible. Yet what profuse samplings do the healers gain! Vials brimming with specimens of our diverse biologies. Whatever gaps once filled their dossiers, they now know all about our strengths and weaknesses, our genes and latent natures.

Those returning from the healing, are they well-greeted? Some call their own sept-mates traitor. Some perceive defilement, turning away in hatred.

So we divide. In fresh enmity, we subdivide.

Are we a gathering any longer? Are we a Commons?

Did not you, my/our own third basal ring — ailing for a year with the ague known as torus plaque — did you not attempt to twist this aging pile toward that green pavilion where wonder cures are offered, though not unselfishly? If dissension infests this entity which others call Asx, can a society of individuals cohere any better?

The heavens above have always been our dread. But disharmony now swarms these very meadows, filling our frustrated days and nights until Jijo’s soil now seems as fearsome as her sky.

Can we hope, my rings?

Tonight we do pilgrimage. The most sage of the Six shall travail under darkness, arduously, past fuming pits and misty cliffs, to reach the place of the Holy Egg.

This time, will it answer us? Or shall the fell silence of recent weeks go on?

Can we still hope?

There is a sensation we traeki have learned to describe only since meeting humans on Jijo. Yet never till now have i felt this pang so terribly. It is a desolation not well rendered in Galactic languages, which emphasize tradition and close relations, subsuming thoughts of self to those of race and clan. But in Anglic the feeling is central and well known. Its name is — alone.

They took turns rescuing each other. It wasn’t easy. Consciousness kept threatening to own under surges of pain from his many cuts and burns. To make matters worse, Dwer suspected he was deaf.

Rety kept stumbling, yet she would not use her arms for anything except to clutch her treasure tightly to her breast.

That prize very nearly finished them both off, a while ago, when she plunged screaming back into the maelstrom of fire and acid steam, desperately seeking remnants of her precious “bird” amid smoldering stumps and glowing wreckage of the horrible machine that fell from the burning sky.

Dwer had just about had it by the time he got her out of there a second time.

You go back in again, and you can stay for all I care.

For a distance of two arrowflights, he had carried her with aching lungs and scalded skin, fleeing the burning mulc-spider till the worst stench, heat, and suffocating vapors lay well behind. Finally, he had put her down by the muddy creek at the lake’s outlet and plunged his face and arms into the cooling stream. The slaking liquid cut his agony in half, and that was almost more shock than his system could bear. Gasping some water into his lungs, he pushed back, gagging and coughing. When his hands slipped, he fell into the muck, floundering weakly. If Rety had not caught his hair and dragged him out, he might have drowned right there.

A hiccup of ironic laughter joined his hacking cough.

After all that… what a way to go…

For some time they lay there, exhausted and shivering side-by-side, stirring only to scoop mud and slather it over each other’s seared nakedness. It coated raw nerves and offered some small guard against the deepening night chill. Dwer thought of the warm clothes in his pack, nestled amid the boulders somewhere back there amid the fires.

And my bow, left on a boulder. He suppressed that worry with a silent curse. Forget the damn bow! Come back for it later. Now just get out of here.

He tried to gather strength to rise. Rety was pursuing the same goal, with identical results, sagging back with a moan after each effort. Finally, Dwer managed to sit up. The stars swayed as he teetered, pushed by a “wintry wind.