Lark
Dear Sara,
The caravan bearing your letter took some time to get here, because of troubles on the plains. But how wonderful to see your familiar scrawl, and to hear you’re well! And Father, when you saw him last. These days, there are few enough reasons to smile.
I’m dashing this off in hopes of catching the next brave kayak-courier to head down the Bibur. If it reaches Biblos before you leave, I hope I can persuade you not to come up here! Things are awful tense. Recall those stories we told each other about the dam, back home? Well, I wouldn’t sleep in that attic room right now, if you smell my smoke. Please stay somewhere safe till we know what’s happening.
As you asked, I’ve inquired carefully about your mysterious stranger. Clearly the aliens are seeking someone or something, beyond their goal of illicitly adopting a candidate species for uplift. I can’t prove your wounded enigma-man isn’t the object of their search, but I’d bet he’s at most a small part of the picture.
I could be wrong. Sometimes I feel we’re like kitchen-ants peering upward, trying to comprehend a human quarrel from the stir of shadows overhead.
Oh, I can picture your look right now! Don’t worry, I’m not giving up! In fact, I have a different answer to the question you’re always asking me… Yes, I have met a girl. And no, I don’t think you’d approve of her. I’m not sure this boy does, either.
Smiling ironically, Lark finished the first page of the letter and put down his pen. He blew on the paper, then picked up his portable blotter, rolling the felt across the still damp lines of ink. He took a fresh sheet out of the leather portfolio, dipped the pen in the ink cup and resumed.
Along with this note you’ll get a hand-cranked copy of the latest report the sages are sending throughout the Commons, plus a confidential addendum for Ariana Foo. We’ve learned some new things, though so far nothing likely to assure our survival when the Rothen ship returns. Bloor is here, and I’ve been helping him put your idea into effect, though I see potential drawbacks to threatening the aliens, the way you recommend.
Lark hesitated. Even such veiled hints might be too much to risk. In normal times it would be unthinkable for anyone to tamper with someone else’s mail. But such things used to be done by frantic factions during ancient Earthly crises, according to historical accounts. Anyway, what good would it do Sara to worry? Feeling like a wastrel, he crumpled the second sheet and started fresh.
Please tell Sage Foo that young Shirl, Kurt’s daughter, arrived safely along with B—r, whose work proceeds as well as might be expected.
Meanwhile, I’ve followed up on your other queries. It’s delicate questioning these space people, who always make me pay with information useful to their criminal goals. I must also try not to arouse suspicion over why / want to know certain things. Still, I managed to bargain for a few answers.
One was easy. The star humans do not routinely use Anglic, or Rossic, or any other “barbaric wolfling tongue.” That’s how Ling put it the other day, as if those languages were much too vulgar and unrigorous for a properly scientific person to use. Oh, she and the others speak Anglic well enough to converse. But among themselves, they prefer GalSeven.
He paused to dip his pen in the cup of fresh ink.
It fits our notion that these humans do not come from the main branch of the race! They aren’t representatives of Earth, in other words, but come instead from an offshoot that’s bound in loyalty to the Rothen, a race claiming to be the long-lost patrons of humankind.
Recall how Mother used to have us debate the Origins Question? One of us arguing the Danikenite side and the other supporting the Darwinists? At the time it seemed interesting but pretty pointless, since all our facts were out of texts three hundred years old. Who would think we’d live to see an answer proclaimed on Jijo, before our eyes?
As to the validity of the Rothen claim, I can’t add anything to the report except that Ling and the others seem passionately to believe.
Lark took a sip from an earthenware cup of springwater. He dipped the pen again.
Now for the big news everyone’s excited about. It seems we’re about to get our first glimpse of one of these mysterious beings! Within hours, one or more Rothen are scheduled to emerge from their buried station and join a pilgrimage to the reawakening Egg! All this time, we never guessed their starship had left any of them behind with Rann and the others.
The Commons is tense as a violus that’s been strung too tight. You could cut the anxiety here with an overused metaphor.
I’d better wrap this up if I’m to slip it in the mail packet.
Let’s see. You also asked about “neural taps.” Do the aliens use such things to communicate directly with computers and other devices?
I was going to answer yes. Ling and the rest do carry tiny devices that bring them voice and data information, arriving as if by magic from afar.
Then I reread your account of the Stranger’s injury and reconsidered. The forayers command their machines by voice and gesture. I never saw anything like a brain-direct computer link, or the sort of “instant man-machine rapport” Ariana spoke of.
Now that I think about it
Lark dipped the pen again, poised to continue, then stopped.
Footsteps clattered on the gravel path beyond his tent. He recognized the heavy, scrape-ratchet of a gray qheuen. Nor was it the casual, unpretentious rhythm of Uthen. This was a stately twist-and-swivel cadence, using a complex ripple of alternating feet — a difficult aristocratic step, taught by chitinous matriarchs who sometimes styled themselves royal queens.
Lark laid down his pen and closed the portfolio. A low, wide silhouette loomed against the tent flap. Harullen’s voice was accompanied by fluting sighs from three speech vents, each singing a different note in a high qheuenish dialect of Galactic Six.
“Friend Lark, are you within? Please greet me. I come bearing precious gifts.”
Lark lifted the flap, shading his eyes as he emerged from dimness to face the lowering sun, poking sharp rays between rows of forest giants. “I greet you, Harul-len, faith-comrade,” he replied in the same language.
Harullen wore pilgrim’s robes draped across his pentagonal carapace, leaving the central cupola uncovered. The g’Kek-woven finery shimmered under glancing sunshine. It took a moment for Lark’s adapting eyes to spot what else was different — something wound around the qheuen’s ash-colored cupola.
“Aha,” he commented, slipping into a more relaxed sevenish dialect. “So it’s true. The mask renews its offer.”
“To take nourishment of our bodies in exchange for revelation of the soul. Indeed. The mask returns among us. Caves which had seemed barren now swarm with labile young rewq, even as the Egg resumes its patterning song. Are these not good omens? Shall we rejoice?”
With a snap of one claw, Harullen signaled to a lornik, which had been crouching out of view behind its master. The small servant creature hurried around the qheuen’s great flank, scuttling and twisting in a four-legged imitation of Harullen’s own stately walk. With small, three-fingered hands it bore a box of polished wood, showing fluted traces of personal tooth-carving.
“From among this crop of cave fledglings, there were many shaped for noble human brows,” Harullen continued. “Please accept these to choose from, as offerings of deep esteem.”