“But I don’t see what that tells me!” Fiben protested.

The oldest rabbi raised his hand, and the others all went silent.

“The dream stands for none of those things. The symbolism should be obvious,” he said.

“It comes from the oldest book…”

The sage’s bushy eyebrows knotted with concern.

“… And Adam, too, ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge…”

“Uh,” Fiben groaned aloud, awakening in a sweat. The gritty, smelly capsule was all around him again, and yet the vividness of the dream lingered, making him wonder for a moment which was real after all. Finally he shrugged it off. “Old Proconsul must have drifted through the wake of some Eatee probability mine while I slept. Yeah. That must be it. I’ll never doubt the stories they tell in a spacer’s bar again.”

When he checked his battered instruments Fiben found that the battle had moved on around the sun. His own derelict, meanwhile, was on a nearly perfect intersect orbit with a planet.

“Hmmmph,” he grunted as he worked the computer. What it told him was ironic. It really is Garth.

He still had a little maneuvering power in the gravity systems. Perhaps enough, just maybe, to get him within escape pod range.

And wonder of wonders, if his ephemerides were right, he might even be able to reach the Western Sea area … a bit east of Port Helenia. Fiben whistled tunelessly for a few minutes. He wondered what the chances were that this should happen. A million to one? Probably more like a trillion.

Or was the universe just suckering him with a bit of hope before the next whammy?

Either way, he decided, there was some solace in thinking that, under all these stars, someone out there was still thinking of him personally.

He got out his tool kit and set to work making the necessary repairs.

Uthacalthing knew it was unwise to wait much longer. Still he remained with the Librarians, watching them try to coax forth one more valuable detail before it was time at last to go.

He regarded the human and neo-chimpanzee technicians as they hurried about under the high-domed ceiling of the Planetary Branch Library. They all had jobs to do and concentrated on them intently, efficiently. And yet one could sense a ferment just below the surface, one of oarely suppressed fear.

Unbidden, rittitees formed in the low sparking of his corona. The glyph was one commonly used by Tymbrimi parents to calm frightened children.

They can’t detect you, Uthacalthing told rittitees. And yet it obstinately hovered, trying to soothe young ones in distress.

Anyway, these people aren’t children. Humans have only known of the Great Library for two Earth centuries. But they had thousands of years of their own history before that. They may still lack Galactic polish and sophistication, but that deficit has sometimes been an advantage to them.

Rarely. Rittitees was dubious.

Uthacalthing ended the argument by drawing the uncertain glyph back where it belonged, into his own well of being.

Under the vaulted stone ceiling towered a five-meter gray monolith, embossed with a rayed spiral sigil — symbol of the Great Library for three billion years. Nearby, data loggers filled crystalline memory cubes. Printers hummed and spat bound reports which were quickly annotated and carted away.

This Library station, a class K outlet, was a small one indeed. It contained only the equivalent of one thousand times all the books humans had written before Contact, a pittance compared with the full Branch Library on Earth, or sector general on Tanith.

Still, when Garth was taken this room, too, would fall to the invader.

Traditionally, that should make no difference. The Library was supposed to remain open to all, even parties fighting over the territory it stood upon. In times like these, however, it was unwise to count on such niceties. The colonial resistance forces planned to carry off what they could in hopes of using the information somehow, later.

A pittance of a pittance. Of course it had been his suggestion that they do this, but Uthacalthing was frankly amazed that the humans had gone along with the idea so vigorously. After all, why bother? What could such a small smattering of information accomplish?

This raid on the Planetary Library served his purposes, but it also reinforced his opinion of Earth people. They just never gave up. It was yet another reason he found the creatures delightful.

The hidden reason for this chaos — his own private jest — had called for the dumping and misplacing of a few specific megafiles, easily overlooked in all of this confusion. In fact, nobody appeared to have noticed when he briefly attached his own input-output cube to the massive Library, waited a few seconds, then pocketed the little sabotage device again.

Done. Now there was little to do but watch the wolflings while he waited for his car.

Off in the distance a wailing tone began to rise and fall. It was the keening of the spaceport siren, across the bay, as another crippled refugee from the rout in space came in for an emergency landing. They had heard that sound all too infrequently. Everyone already knew that there had been few survivors.

Mostly the traffic consisted of departing aircraft. Many mainlanders had already taken flight to the chain of islands in the Western Sea where the vast majority of the Earthling population still made its home. The Government was preparing its own evacuation.

When the sirens moaned, every man and chim looked up briefly. Momentarily, the workers broadcast a complex fugue of anxiety that Uthacalthing could almost taste with his corona.

Almost taste?

Oh, what lovely, surprising things, these metaphors, Uthacalthing thought. Can one taste with one’s corona? Or touch with one’s eyes? Anglic is so silly, yet so delightfully thought provoking.

And do not dolphins actually see with their ears?

Zunour’thzun formed above his waving tendrils, resonating with the fear of the men and chims.

Yes, we all hope to live, for we have so very much left to do or taste or see or kenn…

Uthacalthing wished diplomacy did not require that Tymbrimi choose their dullest types as envoys. “He had been selected as an ambassador because, among other qualities, he was boring, at least from the point of view of those back home.

And poor Athaclena seemed to be even worse off, so sober and serious.

He freely admitted that it was partly his own fault. That was one reason he had brought along his own father’s large collection of pre-Contact Earthling comic recordings. The Three Stooges, especially, inspired him. Alas, as yet Athaclena seemed unable to understand the subtle, ironic brilliance of those ancient Terran comedic geniuses.

Through Sylth — that courier of the dead-but-remembered — his long-dead wife still chided him, reaching out from beyond life to say that their daughter should be home, where her lively peers might yet draw her out from her isolation.

Perhaps, he thought. But Mathicluanna had had her try. Uthacalthing believed in his own prescription for their odd daughter.

A small, uniformed neo-chimpanzee female — a chimmie — stepped in front of Uthacalthing and bowed, her hands folded respectfully in front of her.

“Yes, miss?” Uthacalthing spoke first, as protocol demanded. Although he was a patron speaking to a client, he generously included the polite, archaic honorific.

“Y-your excellency.” The chimmie’s scratchy voice trembled slightly. Probably, this was the first time she had ever spoken to a non-Terran. “Your excellency, Planetary Coordinator Oneagle has sent word that the preparations have been completed. The fires are about to be set.

“She asks if you would like to witness your… er, program, unleashed.”

As Uthacalthing’s eyes separated wider in amusement, the wrinkled fur between his brows flattening momentarily. His “program” hardly deserved the name. It might better be called a devious practical joke on the invaders. A long shot, at best.