Unlike Danel Ozawa, who seemed sadly resigned to their mission, Jenin appeared almost avid for this adventure, especially knowing it might be their destiny to preserve the human race on Jijo. When he saw that zealous eagerness in her eyes, Dwer felt he had more in common with the sturdy, square-jawed Lena Strong. At least Lena looked on all this much the way he did — as one more duty to perform in a world that didn’t care about anyone’s wishes.

“It’s… rather surprising,” Danel replied, lowering the glasses and looking upset. “I thought it wasn’t possible for glavers to eat red meat.”

“Adaptability,” Lena commented gruffly. “One of the hallmarks of presentience. Maybe this means they’re on their way back up, after the long slide down.”

Danel seemed to consider this seriously. “So soon? If so, I wonder. Could it mean—”

Dwer interrupted before the sage had a chance to go philosophical on them. “Let me have those,” he said, taking the glass-and-boo magnifiers. “I’ll be right back.”

He started forward at a crouch. Naturally, Mudfoot chose to tag along, scampering ahead, then circling repeatedly to stage mock-ambushes. Dwer’s jaw clenched, but he refused to give the beast the satisfaction of reacting. Ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away.

That hadn’t worked so far. Jenin seemed thrilled to have Mudfoot as a mascot, while Danel found its tenacity intriguing. Lena had voted with the others, overruling Dwer’s wish to send it packing. “It weighs next to nothing,” she said. “Let it ride a donkey, so long as it fetches its own food and stays out of the way.”

That’ it did, scrupulously avoiding Lena, posing for Danel’s pensive scrutiny, and purring contentedly when Jenin petted it by the campfire each evening.

In my case, it acts as if being irritated were my bean’s desire.

While creeping toward the wadi, Dwer kept mental notes on the lay of the land, the crackling consistency of the grass stems, the fickleness of the breeze. He did this out of professional habit, and also in case it ever became necessary to do this someday for real, pursuing the glaver herd with arrows nocked and ready. Ironically that would happen only in the event of good news. If word came from the Slope that all was well — that the gene-raiders had departed without wreaking the expected genocide — then this expedition would revert to a traditional Mission of Ingathering — a militia enterprise to rid this region of all glavers and humans, preferably by capture, but in the end by any means necessary.

On the other hand, assuming the worst did happen out west and all the Six Races were wiped out, their small group would join Rety’s family of renegades as exiles in the wilderness. Under Danel’s guidance, they would tame Rety’s cousins and create simple, wise traditions for living in harmony with their new home.

One of those traditions would be to forbid the sooners from ever again hunting glavers for food.

That was the bloody incongruity Dwer found so hard to take, leaving little option or choice. Good news would make him a mass-killer. Contrariwise, horrible news would make him a gentle neighbor to glavers and men.

Duty and death on one side. Death and duty on the other. Dwer wondered, Is survival really worth all this?

From a small rise, he lifted the binoculars. Two families of glavers seemed to be feeding on the gallaiter, while others kept watch. Normally, such a juicy corpse would be cleaned down to a white skeleton, first by liggers or other large carnivores, then hickuls with heavy jaws for grinding bones, and finally by flyers known simply as vultures, though they looked like nothing in pictures from Old Earth.

Even now, a pack of hickuls swarmed the far periphery of the clearing. A glaver rose up on her haunches and hurled a stone. The scavengers scattered, whining miserably.

Ah. I see how they do it.

The glavers had found a unique way to live on the steppe. Unable to digest grass or boo, or to eat red meat, they apparently used cadavers to attract hordes of insects from the surrounding area, which they consumed at leisure while others in the herd warded off all competition.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves, holding squirmy things before their globelike eyes, mewling in approval, then catching them between smacking jaws. Dwer had never seen glavers act with such — enthusiasm. Not back where they were treated as sacred fools, encouraged to root at will through the garbage middens of the Six.

Mudfoot met Dwer’s eyes with a revolted expression.

Ifni, what pigs! All right if we charge in there now? Bust ’em up good, boss. Then herd ’em all back to civilization, like it or not?

Dwer vowed to curb his imagination. Probably the noor simply didn’t like the smell.

Still he chided Mudfoot in a low voice.

“Who are you to find others disgusting, Mister lick-myself-all-over? Come on. Let’s tell the others, glavers haven’t gone carnivorous, after all. We have more running ahead, if we’re to make it out of this sting-grass by nightfall.”

More word arrives from the far south, sent by the smith of Mount Guenn Forge. The message was sparse and distorted, having come partly by courier, and partly conveyed between mountain peaks by inexperienced mirror-flashers, in the partly-restored semaphore system.

Apparently, the alien forayers have begun visiting all the fishing hamlets and red qheuen rookeries, making pointed inquiries. They even landed in the water, far out at sea, to badger the crew of a dross-hauler, on its way home from holy labors at the Midden. Clearly the interlopers feel free to swoop down and interrogate our citizens wherever they dwell, with questions about “strange sights, strange creatures, or lights in the sea.”

Should we make up a story, my rings? Should we fabulate some tale of ocean monsters to intrigue our unwanted guests and possibly stave off fate for a while?

Assuming we dare, what would they do to us when they learn the truth?

All that morning, Lark worked next to Ling in a state of nervous tension, made worse by the fact that he did not dare let it show. Soon, with luck, he would have his best chance to line things up just right. It would be a delicate task though, doing spywork at the behest of the sages while also probing for information he needed, for reasons of his own.

Timing would be everything.

The Evaluation Tent bustled with activity. The whole rear half of the pavilion was stacked with cages made by qheuenish crafters out of local boo, filled with specimens brought from all over this side of Jijo. A staff of humans, urs, and hoon labored full-time to keep the animals fed, watered, and healthy, while several local g’Kek had shown remarkable talent at running various creatures through mazes or performing other tests, supervised by robots whose instructions were always in prim, flawless Galactic Two. It had been made clear to Lark that it was a mark of high distinction to be asked to work directly with one of the star-humans.

His second airborne expedition had been even more exhausting than the first, a three-day voyage beginning with a zigzag spiral far out to sea, cruising just above the waves over the dark blue expanse of the Midden, then hopping from one island to the next along an extended offshore archipelago, sampling a multitude of wildly varied life-forms Lark had never seen before. To his surprise, it turned out to be a much more enjoyable trip than the first.

For one thing, Ling grew somewhat less condescending as they worked together, appreciating each other’s skills. Moreover, Lark found it stirring to see what evolution had wrought during just a million fallow years, turning each islet into a miniature biological reactor, breeding delightful variations. There were flightless avians who had given up the air, and gliding reptiloids that seemed on the verge of earning wings. Mammiforms whose hair grew in horny protective spikes, and zills whose coatings of fluffy torg shimmered with colors never seen on their bland mainland cousins. Only later did he conclude that some of the diversity might have been enhanced from the start, by Jijo’s last legal tenants. Perhaps the Buyur seeded each isle with different genetic stock as part of a very long scale experiment.