Sara lifted the sketch, showing a man and a woman, unmistakably human, caught unawares by a hidden artist as they looked down haughtily on Jijo’s savages.

“Our lives mean nothing,” she said, tasting bitter words. “We were doomed from the moment our ancestors planted their outlaw seed on this world. But these” — she shook the paper angrily — “these fools are dabbling in an ancient game no human being could possibly know how to play well.

“They’ll perform their theft, then slay us to erase all witnesses, only to get caught anyway.

“And when that happens, the real victim will be Earth.”

They have found the valley of the innocents. We tried hard to conceal it, did we not, my rings? Sending them to a far-off vale — the glavers, lorniks, chimpanzees, and zookirs. And those children of our Six who came to Gathering with their parents, before the ship pierced our lives.

Alas, all efforts at concealment were unavailing. A robot from the black station followed their warm trail through the forest to a sanctuary that was not as secret as we hoped.

Among our sage company, Lester was the least surprised.

“They surely expected us to try hiding what we value most. They must have sought the deep-red heat spoor of our refugees, before it could dissipate.” His rueful smile conveyed regret but also respect. “It’s what I would have done, if I were them.”

Anglic is a strange language, in which the subjunctive form allows one to make suppositions about impossible might-have-beens. Thinking in that tongue, i (within my/our second ring-of-cognition) understood Lester’s expression of grudging admiration, but then i found it hard to translate for my/our other selves.

No, our human sage is not contemplating betrayal.

Only through insightful empathy can he/we learn to understand the invaders.

Ah, but our foes learn about us much faster. Their robots flutter over the once-secret glen, recording, analyzing — then swooping to nip cell or fluid samples from frightened lorniks or chimps. Next, they want us to send individuals of each species for study, and seek to learn our spoken lore. Those g’Kek who know zookirs best, the humans who work with chimps, and those qheuens whose lorniks win medallions at festivals — these “native experts” must come share their rustic expertise. Though the interlopers speak softly of paying well (with trinkets and beads?), there is also implied compulsion and threat.

our rings quiver, surprised, when Lester expresses satisfaction.

“They must think they’ve uncovered our most valued secrets.”

“Have they not?” complains Knife-Bright Insight, snapping a claw. “Are not our greatest treasures those who depend on us?”

Lester nods. “True. But we could never have hidden them for long. Not when higher life-forms are the very thing the invaders desire. It’s what they expect us to conceal.

“But now, if they are smug, even satiated for a while, we may distract them from learning about other things, possible advantages that offer us — and our dependents — a slim ray of hope.”

“How can that ve?” demanded Ur-Jah, grizzled and careworn, shaking her black-streaked mane. “As you said — what can we conceal? They need only pose their foul questions, and those profane rovots gallop forth, piercing any secret to its hoof and heart.”

“Exactly,” Lester said. “So the important thing is to keep them from asking the right questions.”

His first waking thought was that he must be buried alive. That he lay — alternately shivering and sweltering-in some forgotten sunless crypt. A place for the dying or the dead.

But then, he wondered muzzily, what stony place ever felt like this? So sweaty. Threaded by a regular, thudding rhythm that made the padded floor seem to tremble beneath him.

Still semi-incoherent — with eyelids stubbornly stuck closed — he recalled how some river hoons sang of an afterlife spent languishing within a narrow fetid space, listening endlessly to a tidal growl, the pulse-beat of the universe. That fate seemed all too plausible in Dwer’s fading delirium, while he struggled to shake off the wrappers of sleep. It felt as if fiendish imps were poking away with sharp utensils, taking special pains with his fingers and toes.

As more roiling thoughts swam into focus, he realized the clammy warmth was not the rank breath of devils. It carried an aroma much more familiar.

So was the incessant vibration, though it seemed higher-pitched, more uneven than the throaty version he’d grown up with, resounding through each night’s slumber, when he was a boy.

It’s a water wheel. I’m inside a dam!

The chalky smell stung his sinuses with memory. A qheuen dam.

His rousing mind pictured a hive of twisty chambers, packed with spike-clawed, razor-tooth creatures, scrambling over each other’s armored backs, separated by just one thin wall from a murky lake. In other words, he was in one of the safest, most heartening places he could ask.

But… how? The last thing I recall was lying naked in a snowstorm, halfway gone, with no help in sight.

Not that Dwer was astonished to be alive. I’ve always been lucky, he thought, though it dared fate to muse on it. Anyway, Ifni clearly wasn’t finished with him quite yet, not when there were still more ways to lure him down trails of surprise and fate.

It took several tries to open his heavy, reluctant eyelids, and at first the chamber seemed a dim blur. Tardy tears washed and diffused the sole light — a flame-flicker coming from his left.

“Uh!” Dwer jerked back as a dark shape loomed. The shadow resolved into a stubby face, black eyes glittering, tongue lolling between keen white teeth. The rest of the creature reared into view, a lithe small form, black pelted, with agile brown paws.

“Oh… it’s you,” Dwer sighed in a voice that tasted scratchy and stale. Sudden movements wakened flooding sensations, mostly unpleasant, swarming now from countless scratches, burns, and bruises, each yammering a tale of abuse and woe. He stared back at the grinning noor beast, amending an earlier thought.

I was always lucky, till I met you.

Gingerly, Dwer pushed back to sit up a bit and saw that he lay amid a pile of furs, spread across a sandy floor strewn with bits of bone and shell. That untidy clutter contrasted with the rest of the small chamber — beams, posts, and paneling, all gleaming in the wan light from a candle that flickered on a richly carved table. Each wooden surface bore the fine marks of qheuen tooth-work, all the way down to angle brackets sculpted in lacy, deceptively strong filigrees.

Dwer held up his hands. White bandages covered the fingers, too well wrapped to be qheuen work. He felt hesitant relief on counting to ten and gauging their length to be roughly unchanged-though he knew sometimes frostbite stole the tips even when doctors saved the rest. He quashed an urge to tear the dressings with his teeth and find out right away.

Patience. Nothing you do now will change what’s happened. Stabbing pins-and-needles told him that he was alive and his body was struggling to heal. It made the pain easier to handle.

Dwer kicked aside more furs to see his feet — which were still there, thank the Egg, though his toes also lay under white wrappings, if there were still any toes down there. Old Fallon had gone on hunting for many years, wearing special shoes, after one close call on the ice turned his feet into featureless stumps. Still, Dwer bit his lip and concentrated, sending signals, meeting resistance, nevertheless commanding movement. Tingling pangs answered his efforts, making him wince and hiss, but he kept at it till both legs threatened cramps. At last, he sagged back, satisfied. He could wriggle the critical toes, the smallest and largest on each foot. They might be damaged, but he would walk or run normally.