Lark had been ordered back down to the Glade before his brother could confirm the story. He knew he shouldn’t worry. Danel Ozawa was qualified to tend Dwer’s wounds. Still, he deeply resented the recall order.

“Will you be needing me for another expedition?” he asked Ling.

“After you abandoned me the last time? We found human tracks when we finally got to where our robot went down. Is that where you rushed off to? Funny how you knew which way to go.”

He shouldered his pack. “Well, if you don’t need me, then—”

She swept a hand before her face. “Oh, never mind. Let’s move on. There’s plenty of work, if you want it.”

Lark glanced dubiously at the lab tables. Of Jijo’s Six, all three of the races with good hand-eye coordination were employed. Outside, hoons and qheuens also labored at the behest of aliens whose merest trinkets meant unimaginable wealth to primitive savages. Only traeki were unseen among the speckled tents, since the ringed ones seemed to make the raiders nervous.

Sepoy labor. That was the contemptuous expression Lena Strong had used when she brought Lark new orders at Tooth-Slice Shavings’ Dam. An old Earth term, referring to aborigines toiling for mighty visitors, paid in beads.

“Oh, don’t look so sour.” Ling laughed. “It would serve you right if I put you to work staining nerve tissue, or shoveling the longsnout pens… No, stop.” She grabbed Lark’s arm. All signs of mockery vanished. “I’m sorry. There really are things I want to discuss with you.”

“Uthen is here.” He pointed to the far end of the tent, where his fellow biologist, a large male qheuen with a slate gray carapace, held conference with Rann, one of the two male forayers, a tall massive man in a tight-fitting uniform.

“Uthen knows incredible detail about how different species relate to each other.” Ling agreed with a nod. “That’s not easy on a planet that has had infusions of outsider species every twenty million years or so, for aeons. Your lore is impressive, given your limitations.”

Had she any idea how far Jijoan “lore” really went? So far, the sages had not released his detailed charts, and Uthen must be dragging all five feet, cooperating just enough to stay indispensable. Yet the aliens seemed easily impressed by sketchy glimmers of local acumen, which only showed how insultingly low their expectations were.

“Thanks,” Lark muttered. “Thanks a lot.”

Ling sighed, briefly averting her dark eyes. “Crampers, can’t I say anything right, today? I don’t mean to offend. It’s just… look, how about we try starting from scratch, all right?” She held out a hand.

Lark looked at it. What was he expected to do now?

She reached out with her left hand to take his right wrist. Then her right hand clasped his.

“It’s called a handshake. We use it to signify respect, amicable greeting, or agreement.”

Lark blinked. Her grip was warm, firm, slightly moist.

“Oh, yes… I’ve rea— heard of it.”

He tried to respond when she squeezed, but it felt so strange, and vaguely erotic, that Lark let go sooner than she seemed to expect. His face felt warm.

“Is it a common gesture?”

“Very common, I hear. On Earth.”

You hear? Lark leaped on the passing phrase and knew it had begun again — their game of hints and revelations, mutual scrutiny of clues and things left unsaid.

“I can see why we gave it up, on Jijo,” he commented. “The urs would hate it; their hands are more personal than their genitals. Hoons and qheuens would crush our hands and we’d squash the tendrils of any g’Kek who tried it.” His fingers still felt tingly. He resisted an urge to look them over. Definitely time to change the subject.

“So,” Lark said, trying for a businesslike tone of equality, “you’ve never been to Earth?”

One eyebrow raised. Then she laughed. “Oh, I knew we couldn’t hire you for just a handful of biodegradable toys. Don’t worry, Lark; you’ll be paid in answers — some answers — at the end of each day. After you’ve earned them.”

Lark sighed, although in fact the arrangement did not sound unsatisfactory.

“Very well, then. Why don’t you tell me what it is you want to know.”

Each day we strive to mediate stress among our factions, from those urging cooperation with our uninvited guests, to others seeking means to destroy them. Even my/our own sub-selves war over these options.

Making peace with felons, or fighting the unfightable.

Damnation or extinction.

And still our guests question us about other visitors! Have we seen other outsiders lately, dropping from the sky? Are there Buyur sites we have not told them about? Sites where ancient mechanisms lurk, alert, still prone to vigorous action?

Why this persistence? Surely they can tell we are not lying — that we know nothing more than we have told.

Or is that true, my rings? Have all Six shared equally with the Commons, or are some withholding vital information, needed by all?

That i should think such a thing is but another measure of how far we are fallen, we unworthy, despicable sooners. We, who surely have farther yet to fall.

Under a smaller, shabbier tent, in a dense grove some secret distance from the research station, Rety threw herself onto a reed mat, pounding it with both fists.,

“Stinkers. Rotten guts an’ rancy meat. Rotten, rotten, rotten!”

She had good reason to thrash in outrage and self-pity. That liar, Dwer, had told her the sages were good and wise. But they turned out to be horrid!

Oh, not at the beginning. At first, her hopes had shot up like the geysers back home in the steaming Gray Hills. Lester Cambel and the others seemed so kind, easing her dread over being punished for her grandparents’ crime of sneaking east, over the forbidden mountains. Even before questioning her, they had doctors tend her scrapes and burns. It never occurred to Rety to fear the unfamiliar g’Kek and traeki medics who dissolved away drops of clinging mule-fluid, then used foam to drive off the parasites that had infested her scalp for as long as she could remember. She even found it in her to forgive them when they dashed her hopes of a cure for the scars on her face. Apparently, there was a limit even to what Slopies could accomplish.

From the moment she and Lark strode into the Glade of Gathering, everyone seemed awfully excited and distracted. At first Rety thought it was because of her, but it soon grew clear that the real cause was visitors from the sky!

No matter. It still felt like coming home. Like being welcomed into the embrace of a family far bigger and sweeter than the dirty little band she had known for fourteen awful years.

At least it felt that way for a while.

Till the betrayal.

Till the sages called her once again to their pavilion and told her their decision.

“It’s all Dwer’s fault,” she muttered later, nursing hot resentment. “Him an’ his rotten brother. If only I could’ve snuck in over the mountains without being seen. No one would’ve noticed me in all this ruckus.” Rety had no clear notion what she would have done after that. The oldsters back home had been murky in their handed-down tales about the Slope. Perhaps she could make herself useful to some remote village as a trapper. Not for food — Slopies had plenty of that — but for soft furs that’d keep townfolk from asking too closely where she came from.

Back in the Gray Hills, such dreams used to help her pass each grinding day. Still, she might never have found the guts to flee her muddy clan but for the beautiful bright bird.

And now the sages had taken it away from her!

“We are grateful for your part in bringing this enigmatic wonder to us,” Lester Cambel said less than an hour ago, with the winged thing spread on a table before him. “Meanwhile though, something terribly urgent has come up. I hope you’ll understand, Rety, why it’s become so necessary for you to go back.”