But what if Ling was lying? Might the zealots lose their best chance to strike, for nothing?

On the other hand, suppose no one believed Ling, but she really was telling the truth? The zealots might attack, and fail, only to goad the very response they feared!

At the opposite extreme of radicalism from the fiery zealots, some of the most radical heretics actually favored their own destruction, along with the rest of the Six. Some hoon and urs members of Harullen’s society yearned for a time of transcendent ending — the urrish apostates because of their hot blood, and the hoon precisely because their passions stirred slowly, but once whipped, they stopped for nothing.

If our extremists think Ling’s folk haven’t the guts to do the job, they may plot to provoke genocide! This despite his speech, urging that the Six cede their place on Jijo by consensus and birth control.

Then there was this scheme to try blackmailing the forayers. Lark had helped Bloor set up candid shots, but were the sages aware of how the scheme might backfire?

Did they think they had nothing to lose?

Lark rubbed his stubbled chin, feeling wearier than his years. What a tangled web we weave, he pondered. Then he licked the tip of his pen, dipped it in the ink, and began to write.

This place makes him want to laugh. It makes him want to cry. So many books — he even remembers that word for them — lay stacked high all around him, in row after mighty row, vanishing around corners or up twisty, spiral ramps. Books bound in the leather of unknown animals, filling the air with strange scents, especially when he cracks some volume taken off a shelf at random and inhales the fumes of paper and ink.

It jolts something within him, dredging up memories more effectively than anything since he regained consciousness.

Suddenly, he recalls a cabinet of books like these, in his room when he was very young… and that brings back the pinch and crinkling flex of paper pages, covered with bright pictures. Grown-ups did not use books very much, he remembers. Adults needed the constant flash and jangle of their machines. Machines that talked at you faster than a child was trained to hear, or cast flickering beams directly at the eyeball, filling it with facts that faded the moment you blinked. That was one reason he used to like the solid promise of paper — where a favorite story would not go away like smoke, or vanish when the info-screens went dark.

Another image leaps out from childhood — holding his mother’s hand while strolling in a public place filled with busy, important people. Several walls were rimmed with bound volumes, much like the books surrounding him right now. Big books without pictures, filled with black, unmoving dots. Filled with words and nothing else. Hardly anyone used them anymore, his mother had explained. But they were important nonetheless, as decorations lining many of the places most sacred or important to human beings.

They were reminders of something… of something he cannot quite recall right now. But it must have been important. That much he knows.

Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.

Patiently, he waits for the two women — Sara and Arianafoo — to finish their meetings and return for him. Passing the time, he sketches on a pad of rich, almost luminous paper, first refining some of his drawings of the machinery aboard the steamship, then trying to capture the eerie perspectives of the stone cavern where all these odd wooden buildings lay sheltered from the sky — under a cave whose roof is propped up by incredible, massive stone pillars.

A few names are coming easier now, so he knows that it is Prity who brings him a cup of water, then checks his dressing to make sure it’s still tight. Her hands seem to flutter and dance before her, then his do likewise. He watches, fascinated, as his own fingers make movements independent of his will or command. It might be frightening to behold… except that Prity suddenly grins broadly and slaps her knee, chuffing hoarse, appreciative chimpanzee laughter.

He feels a wash of pleasure to know his joke had pleased her. Though it puzzles and slightly miffs him that his hands never saw fit to share the humor with him.

Well, well. The hands seem to know what they are doing, and he draws some satisfaction from their work. Now they pick up the pencil once again, and he lets time slip away, concentrating on the moving pencil, and on the stretch and tilt of line and shadow. When Sara returns for him, he will be ready for whatever comes next.

Perhaps it might even be possible to find a way to save her and her people.

Maybe that was what his hands had said to Prity, just a little while ago.

If so, no wonder the little chimp broke out in wry, doubtful laughter.

One thing always struck me about the way tales are told in Anglic — or any of the other Earthling tongues I’ve learned — and that’s the problem of keeping up suspense.

Oh, some human authors of Twencen and Twenty-One had it down cold. There’ve been times that I stayed up three nights straight, taken with some yarn by Conrad or Cunin. What’s puzzled me, ever since I got the notion of becoming a writer myself, is how those old-timers managed it.

Take this account I’ve been scribbling lately, whenever I get a chance to lie down on this hard deck with my notebook, already gone all ragged at the corners from the places I’ve taken it, scrawling clumsy hoon-sized letters with a chewed-up pencil clutched in my fist. From the very start I’ve been telling my story in “first person” — like in a diary, only with all sorts of fancy-gloss tricks thrown in that I’ve picked up from my reading over the years.

Why first person? Well, according to Good Fiction by Anderson, that “voice” makes it a whole lot easier to present the reader with a single, solid-feeling point-of-view, even though it means my book will have to be translated if a traeki’s ever to understand it.

But the trouble with a first person chronicle is this — whether it’s real-life history or a piece of make-believe, you know the hero survived!

So during all of the events I’m about to relate, you who are reading this memoir (hopefully after I’ve had a chance to rewrite it, have a human expert fix my grammar, and pay to have it set in type) you already know that I, Alvin Hph-wayuo, son of Mu-phauwq and Yowg-wayuo of Wuphon Port, and intrepid explorer extraordinaire, simply have to escape alive the jam I’m about to describe, with at least one brain, one eye, and a hand to write it all down.