“Pardon my inquisitiveness—” Philby began.

Your inquisition?” Tatsumi interrupted with a faint smile. He returned her smile, but with slitted eyes and an ironic nod.

“Believe me, I represent no religious authority on Earth. We are England’s last vanguard, but England is hardly a religious state.”

“Of course not,” Tatsumi said.

“I’m wondering just what your position is on these settlers.”

“Earth will keep sending them,” Tatsumi said sadly. “There is nothing we can do. Dialogue takes decades. The people back home have apparently made the Murasaki Sys-tem into a symbol of ...

manliness? National prestige? Earth in particular. They purchase broken-down starships, and they flee the solar system to die in darkness. Some survive. We cannot fight such a thing.”

“There are two more ships nearby,” Philby said. “They’ll be here in a year or so.”

Tatsumi nodded. “We hope they are as enlightened as your own expedition.”

Irony? “Thank you,” he said.

“But since dialogue with the solar system is so diffi-cult, we wonder where you derive your authority.

You rep-resent no church, and any government is too far away to instruct you. Who gives you orders to quell the Quantists?–

Philby shook his head. “Nobody outside of the Mu-rasaki System.”

‘Then you perform your duty autonomously?”

“Yes.”

“Self-appointed.”

He flinched, and his face reddened. “Your people should remember the nastiness of a cultural plague.

The nineteenth century... Admiral Perry?”

“Nobody forces the Ihrdizu to accept our commercial products. There are none yet to force upon them. And the West came to Nihon before Perry. We had had Christians in our midst for centuries before Perry. They were perse-cuted, tortured, murdered by their own people... yet fifty thousand still lived in Japan when Perry arrived.”

“What Carrot wants to force upon the Ihrdizu could lead to war, death, and destruction on a colossal scale.”

“Carnot seems to want to reestablish the ancient links between Chujo and Genji, to teach them to build great cities once again, and recognize their brotherhood,—Tatsumi said. “A kind of interplanetary nationalism, no?”

Thompson, who had listened attentively and quietly in the seat behind Tatsumi, leaned forward.

“We’re here to preserve Ihrdizu self-rule. Carnot is a missionary. We can’t allow the kind of violation of native cultures that happened on Earth.”

“Oh, yes, that is true,” Tatsurni said. She appeared mildly flustered. “I do not wish to be flippant, Mr.

Philby, Mr. Thompson.”

“They’re out of their minds,” Philby said, grimacing. Listening to Thompson, though, he realized how much his people sounded as if they were mouthing a party line, re-hearsed across years in space; how much it sounded as if they might be the persecutors, then inquisitors, as Tatsumi had so pointedly punned.

“They really are.”

“A cultural plague,—Tatsumi said, attempting to mol-lify when in fact no umbrage had been taken.

“Precisely,” Philby said. What Kammer said. Have the Japanese spoken to Kammer?

Sheldrake had kept his silence, as always, a young man with a young face, born on the journey and accelerated to manhood, but still looking boyish.

“What do you think, Mr. Sheldrake?” Tatsumi asked him.

Sheldrake gave a sudden, sunny smile. “I’m enjoying the landscape,” he said in his pleasant tenor.

“This is very like Mars. But I’ve never been to Mars....”

“Please be open with us,” Tatsumi pursued, very un-characteristically for a Japanese, Philby thought.

“It’s not their war,” Sheldrake said, glancing at Philby. “It’s ours. No matter what we do, we’re imposing. I think we just have to reduce that imposition to a minimum.”

“I see,” Tatsumi said. “Do you know the story of a man named Joseph Caiaphas?” she asked him.

“No,” Philby said. She queried the others with a look as they seated themselves in the tiny cockpit.

None of them did.

Across the channel between the two worlds, on heavy, storm-racked Genji, Robert Carrot walked around the. te-menos, watching the Ihrdizu workers stalk on strong rep-tilian legs through the sporadic pounding rain, carrying bricks and mortar and covered buckets of paste-thick paint. He rubbed his neck beneath the seal, wondering how much longer this shift before he could take a rest, lie down. He disliked Genji’s gravity and climate intensely. His back ached, his legs ached, his neck and shoulders ached from the simple weight of his arms. The pressure produced shooting pains in his skull. The hydrogen-helium mixture in his tanks hissed; twice now the valves had allowed in more oxygen from Genji’s thick atmosphere than was strictly healthy at this pressure, and his throat was raw. With the Ihrdizu, he deliberately turned off the electronic modulator that brought his helium-shrill voice back to nor-mal human tones; they seemed to prefer the shrillness.

He looked longingly up at the point in the sky where Chujo would be, if they could see it through the rapidly scudding gloom. Compared to Genji, Chujo was heaven . and even the Genjians thought so.

Strangely, there were strong hints that the Chujoan Masters—so called by the Japanese who had witnessed Chupchup bioloons—regarded Genji as a kind of heaven, or at least a symbol of ascendancy.

The boss of the temple construction crew, a sturdy female named Tsmishfak, approached him with a pro-nounced swagger of pride. It was good that they should feel proud of what they had accomplished; their pride was good, not the civilized, stately antithesis of resentment that had so often brought Carrot’s kind low.

“Tzhe in spatch endED,” Tsmishfak told, him, four red—brown eyes glancing back and forth on her sloping fish head, facial tentacles curled in satisfaction. The Ihrdizu had adapted quickly to this kind of pidgin, much more merciful to their manner of speech than to the humans’. The Japa-nese had never thought of creating a pidgin; the rationals would despise Carnot for doing so.

“Tzhe in spatch finitchED?” he asked, using an Ihr-dizu inquisitive inflection.

“FinitchED,” Tsmishfak confirmed.

“Then let me see, and if it matches the Chujoan di-mensions—which I’m sure it does—we’ll begin the con-secration, and I can move on to the next temenos.”

Tsmishfak understood most of this high-pitched, duck-squawk unpidgined speech.

She guided him through the fresh rain—each drop like a strike of hail—to the site he had laid out two weeks before. The temple’s exterior was still under construction; when completed, the walls would be smooth and white and square, sloping to the broad foundations to withstand the tidal inundations Tsmishfak’s region experienced every few Genjian years. Muddy rain fell along the unplastered bricks in gray runnels; clay scoured by clouds from the high mountains above the village’s plateau. He would be a Go-lem-like mess before this day was over.

The in spatch—inner space, interior—was indeed finitchED. Within the temple, out of the sting of clayed rain, the walls were painted a dreadful seasick green, the paint pigments mixed from carpet-whale slime and algoid dyes. Tsmishfak had assured him this was a most desirable and sacred color to the Ihrdizu. Carnot pretended to admire the effect, then noticed he was dripping mud on the clean green floor. Tsmishfak was as well.

“Lengd it,” Carnot said, which meant simply, “I will length it,” or “I will measure it.” Tsmishfak backed away, awed by this moment.

Carnot wiped mud from his faceplate and produced a spool from his pocket. String unwound from the two halves of the spool into two equal lengths; he had made up this device several months before, aware that the temples were nearing completion and some sort of masonic service would , be useful.

By lifting the spool toward the ceiling, Carnot indi-cated that it came from Chujo. That was a lie. No matter. What was important, was the spiritual import.

He laid one string along the north wall, found it matched precisely, then laid the second string along the east wall. The second wall was the same length as the first. He then produced a simple metal protractor Wand measured the angles of each corner. Ninety degrees. A fine square box painted sick green. Perfect.

He raised his hands. “In the name of the Great Ground of all Existence, that which is called Continuum, which breathes with the life of all potential, which creates all and sees all, in the name of the human Kammer who has sur-vived the bonding of human and Chujoan, in the name of the Ihrdizu Christ called Dsimista, who tells us that all worlds shall be one, I consecrate this temple, which is well-built and square and essential. May no one who does not believe in the Ground, in Kammer, and in Dsimista enter into this place. May a new community start here, that the lo-Ihrdizu will gather in villages, and then cities, and gather in strength, as well.”

Tsmishfak found this eminently satisfactory, particu-larly as she understood only about a third of what Carrot had said. She echoed, in pidgin, his last commandment, stalked around the walls, then clacked her jaws to summon workers. The workers cleaned up the mud and the in spatch smelled of Ihrdizu, a not-unpleasant smell to Carnot, though pungent.

“Ny mer dert,—Tsmishfak promised him as they re-turned to the exterior. The clayed rain had let up; now there was only drizzle. Like living at the bottom of a fishbowl.

“No more dirt, that’s fine,” Carnot said. “You’ve din guud, akkrsha hikfarinkr.”

Tsmishfak accepted this with a slight swagger. Good, good, all is well.

“Must move on now,” he said in plain English, walk-ing to the edge of the plateau and trying to find his wife and the ship’s second officer in the crowded beach area below. “Ah. There are my people.” He nodded cordially to the solicitous Tsmishfak. “Must go.”

“Dthang u,” Tsmishfalc said. “Dum Argado.”

She was using both English and the Japanese she had acquired.

“You’re most welcome,” Carnot said. He felt he would die if he could not soon rest his leaden arms and relieve the weight on his back.

Tsmishfak bounced off on spring-steel legs to her workers near the temple, swagger lessened but tentacles waving enthusiastically. Big lumbering thing. Something out of Bosch; fish with legs, but eyes above and below the jawline... . anatomically improbable. Not easy to love them, but I do, Jesus, I do.

Carnot switched on his modulator and found his wife by the ichthyoid pens, standing with the second officer on a wicker, frame, nodding to some point of technicality being explained by a small male Ihrdizu.

Not much call for the kind of work she was skilled in, helping poor natives feed themselves. The Ihrdizu did well enough at that. But scratch beneath their quiet strength and you found a well of an-guish; paradise lost and set high in the sky. Connections broken with their distant relations, the Chujoans, millennia past ... Desire to rise to Heaven and be one with another race. Another species. Or so he interpreted their stories.

What if his theories were correct? The rationalists would, never accept that intelligent cultures—technological cultures—could rise and fall like fields of wheat coming in and out of season.

Perhaps that was why they were looking for him, why he was finding it necessary—through the in-ner suspicion of aching instinct—to hide from Philby, his persistent, annoying, and finally infuriating debater between the stars.

Madeline saw his wave and gently broke off their con-versation with the pen manager. It seemed eternities as they made their way back to the ship along the beach. The trans-port’s struts were awash with thick swells of water—no spray under these conditions, only a fine mist like smoke around the sharp rocks. They waded through the swell, more eternities, then the second officer lifted the transport from the beach, its name becoming visible as it rose to a level with him: 2T Benevolent. Second transport of the star-ship Benevolent. These transports—and the large lander that waited for them in the mountains—were among the few things on the Benevolent that had proven trustworthy. Blessings of small favors.

They touched down again near the lip of the plateau overlooking the beach, and he climbed through the door, wheezing. “Enough,” he said. “They’ll do fine without us. Let’s move on.’

‘

Madeline touched him solicitously. “You’re hurting, poor dear.”

“I’m fine,” he said, but her touch and sympathy helped. Madeline, thin small strong Madeline, so perfectly adapted to life aboard the Benevolent, could crawl into cub-bies where large, lumbering Camot could not hope to find comfort. Cramped starship, crowded with pilgrims. Made-line who had married him en route and did not share in the sexual-spiritual profligacy, even when her new husband did.

Madeline of the bright intense gaze and extraordinary sym-pathetic intelligence; his main crutch, his main critic. Why did he not love her more? He smiled upon her, and she smiled back like a tough-minded little girl.

“I’d enjoy studying their fish farming,” she said. “We might be able to give them benefit of our own ex-periences on Earth.”

The second officer, a thin African-Asian, Lin-Fa Chee by name, did not share Madeline’s interest.

“They don’t farm fish, madam,” he observed. “And these people have farmed the ichthyoids for who knows how many thousands of years.”

“Tens of thousands, perhaps,—Carrot said. “Lin-Fa is right, Madeline.”

“Still, they need us in many ways,” Madeline said, staring through the window as the transport lifted and flew out across the oily rain-dappled sea. “They need you, Rob-ert.” She smiled at him, and he could read the unfinished message: Why shouldn’t they need me, as well?

“Look,” Lin-Fa said, pointing from his pilot’s seat. “Carpet whales.”

Carnot looked down upon the huge multicolored le-viathans with little interest. Carpet whales.

Himatids, hih-MAH-tids, some called them, from the Greek himation, a kind of cloak. Great flat mindless brutes. Not even Madeline would wish to help them_

Suzy Tatsumi watched the distance lessen between the orbital shuttle and Genji. To no Chujo grew as small as a basketball held at arm’s length, visible through the shuttle’s starboard windows. She pushed her covered plate of food—sticky rice and bonito flakes topped with thick algal paste—down the aisle between the twenty seats, plucked it deftly from the air, and sat beside Thompson, who had already eaten from a refillable paste tube.

‘Truk yogurt,” he said, lifting the empty tube discon-solately. “Supplemented. All we brought with us.”

“I would gladly share ...” Tatsumi said, but that was forbidden. They were still not sure of all the vectors a new wineskin plague might follow. Intimate contact between those who had lived long on Chujo, partaking of its few edibles—or the transfer of food possibly grown on Chujo-was against the rules.

Casual contact had not yet shown itself to be danger-ous among those protected against the plague, but even

SO .

“I know how your people conquered the pla-gue,” Philby said to her “A remarkable piece of work.

But how did Carnot and the last of his people sur-vive?”

Tatsumi shook her head. “We doubt they had any na-tive ability to resist. We still do not know....

They were already cured by the time our doctors went among them. But they had suffered terrible losses, on the planet and on their ship.... There are only twenty of the original two hundred left alive.”

“Could they have found the same substances you did?” Thompson asked.

“They did not have our expertise. Nor did they equip themselves with the sophisticated biological equipment we carried ... the food synthesizers, large molecule analyzers, and the computer programs to run such devices. They ar-rived here in a weakened state, their ship crippled. We do not know how they survived.”

“They get along with the Ihrdizu,” Philby mused. “Maybe the Ihrdizu helped them.”

“The Ihrdizu have not the biological mastery of the Chujoans,” Tatsumi said. “And the plague originated on Chujo.”

“Still, there might have been a folk remedy, some-thing serendipitous.”

Tatsumi was not familiar with that word. Her trans-lator quickly explained it to her: fortunate, unexpected. “Perhaps,” she said. “It was serendipitous that we found our own remedy in Chujo’s deep lake muds. An antibiotic grown by anaerobic microbes, used to defend their territo-ries against other microbes, and not poisonous to human tissues ... Most unexpected. We thought we would all Philby smiled. “Luck favors those who are prepared. ... Which is why all of Camot’s people should have died. They’re as innocent as children.”

Tatsumi raised her eyebrows. “You admire their strength and their luck?”

Philby lifted an eyebrow dubiously. “What I admire has nothing to do with what damage they can do here.”

“No, indeed,” Tatsumi said, dreadfully aware that she had irritated this strange man yet again. She had met Carrot only once, when the Benevolent first arrived in orbit around Genji, a year and a half past, but she thought these two were well-matched as opponents. Determined, opinionated, they might be brothers in some strange Western tale of Cain and Abel, or East of Eden, which she had read as a girl back on Earth.

“Do you believe Genji and Chujo are so closely con-nected, biologically?” Thompson asked. •

“They must be,” quiet Sheldrake said from behind them all.

“What circumstance would bring organisms from Chujo to Genji?” Philby challenged with professorial glee. Tatsumi had noted that these people enjoyed debating, and seemed not to dhderstand boundaries of politeness in such discussions. She had heard them argue violently among themselves without anyone losing face or apologizing, even when ranks were greatly disparate.

“Besides the rocket balloons from Chujo “

Thompson said.

“I don’t yet accept those as fact,” Philby said. He glanced at Tatsumi. “Your people didn’t actually see rock-ets ... just balloons. Bioloons. And those could have been a natural phenomenon.”

“It seems pretty certain the elder Chujo civilizations were capable of some kinds of rockets,”

Sheldrake said. Tatsumi was attracted by the young tenor’s calm, confi-dent reserve. A child quickly, artificially raised to man-hood in space ... What strange wisdoms might he have acquired in those years?

“But I was thinking of cometary activity—”

“Rare in the Murasaki System,” Thompson noted.

“Or even extreme volcanic events. Chujo’s ejecta might have carried spores into the upper atmosphere ... and beyond.”

“Not likely,” Philby snorted. “Such a journey would almost certainly kill any living thing, or any spores. There’s no easy mechanism, none that doesn’t stretch credibility.”

“Nevertheless,” Tatsumi said, perversely enjoying the spirit of this debate, “the genetic material is closely related in many primitive organisms on Chujo and Genji.”

“There’s no denying that,” Philby said. “I wish your people had solved .this riddle before we arrived

... there are too many other problems to take care of.”

“You did not come here to find and solve such problems?”

“I did,” Sheldrake said. “I’m not sure Edward did....”

“Essence of crap profane,” Philby said, not unpleasantly.

“What’s that?” Thompson asked. Philby was not usu-ally so expressive.

“Something Kammer said. He said his mouth tasted like essence of crap profane. After he expectorated red and green saliva.”

Tatsumi wrinkled her nose despite herself. “Our bi-ologists would love to be allowed to study him,”

she said. “His use of the snug-rug. How he managed to survive radiation-induced leukemia. What he eats, if he eats ... We might have saved lives, had we been allowed

“I don’t think anybody’s going to study him without killing a lot of Chujoans,” Philby said. “And that we will not allow.”

A planetary consciousness ... Something that united both worlds, something only vaguely felt by either the Ihr-dizu or the Chujoans. If he could prove its existence, as one might prove the psychic link between two twins, then all of his beliefs would fall into place....

Carnot tossed in his weightless bed within the Benev-olent, drifting slowly between the cylindrical wall of the elastic net. He felt it was important to return to the starship every couple of weeks, important that he maintain direct contact with the ship’s captain, who had suffered horribly from the plague, and might even now be insane.

When Camot thought of what they had lost, of the price paid by 183 of the Benevolent’s crew, he felt a sick darkness rise inside him. Not all the faith, not all the con-viction of his service to Jesus the Ground of All Being could erase his sense of loss. From here on, his life would be a scarred, dedicated emptiness; he knew he would be little more than•an efficient shell; the old Carrot had been burned out, leaving fire-hardened wood.

He could not even find the fierce love he had once felt for his wife. He rotated to view her sleeping form beside him. He needed her, admired her enormously, but they paid each other the minimum due of affection, all each seemed to require now. She, too, had been burned hollow. Sex be-tween them was at an end. Sex had always been a kind of play, and this close to the truth, this close to the death and disfigurement of their people, no play could be allowed.

And now to be hunted ...

He closed his eyes tighter, hoping to squeeze a tear or some other sign of his humanity between the lids, but he could not. The shooting pains in his skull had subsided; his backaches and strained muscles had improved in the two days in orbit, breathing shipboard air.

He thought of the Earth and his young adulthood and the simple miseries that had filled him then. Had his people suffered any more than others had suffered for their faiths? Was he being pressed any harder than ahy other leader of peoples who believed in pattern and justice and order? These events had been enough to drain him of the pleasures of simply existing; was that the sure sign of his ultimate weakness, that he could no longer take satisfaction in serv-ing Jesus? That he could no longer take satisfaction in hav-ing a wife, in breathing in and out in not being hungry or in having survived that which had turned so many of his people into corpses or pain-racked monsters?

Now he found his one tear, and he let it bead beneath his left eye, then break free to float before his face, a true luxury. Deep inside, a younger voice said, You’re goddam-ned right you’ve had it hard.

Space was supposed to be clean and clear-cut, with sharp dividing lines between life and death, a beauty of pin-sharp stars and mystic nebulae. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, tending this horrible leaky tub across nine shipboard years, and then arriving on the inconceivably far shore and finding disease and hid-eous death. Not, supposed to be that way at all You’ve been pushed.

Don’t expect joy when you’ve been pushed this hard; do not be so demanding as to expect joy after what you’ve experienced.

Carnot opened his eyes and saw Captain Plaissix float-ing in the open hatchway. Beyond Plaissix, through the transparent blister of the central alley’s cap, Carnot saw Genji’s blue-gray surface fall perpetually beneath them.

“The Japanese have sent a message,” Plaissix said. “They wish to speak directly to you.”

Half of the captain’s face had crumpled inward. The wineskin plague had been made up of Chujoan bacterioids particularly well-adapted to living on minerals; they had devoured much of the calcium in his bones, and in his nerves, as well.

“All right,” Carrot said, giving up yet another at-tempt at sleep. He slipped from the net, glanced at Made-line, sleeping soundly, and floated past Plaissix, who tracked him with off-center haunted eyes.

The ship’s communications center was in a constant state of repair. George Winston, the last remaining engi-neer, moved to one side to give Carrot room. The image of a young Japanese woman floated a few hands away from its expected position. Winston shrugged in apology: best he could do with what they had. Her voice was distant but clear.

“Carrot here.”

“My name is Suzy Tatsumi,” the woman said. “I’ve just traveled to Chujo and back with Edward Philby. We would like to arrange a meeting between your group and his.... To settle your disputes.”

Carnot smiled. “1 don’t believe we’ve met, Tatsumi-san. I’ve been working with Hiroki-san of Station Hokkaido on Genji.”

“He has transferred his responsibilities to me.”

Apparently the conflict between Carnot’s expedition end the rationalists was beginning to worry the Japanese. Until now, they had been content not to intervene in any disputes. Had this Tatsumi woman already been poisoned by Philby and his representatives?

“1 have no time to meet with the rationalists,” Carnot said quietly. “They are physically stronger than we are. They would have attacked us by now, if it weren’t for their lack of offensive weapons.... They cannot harm our ship in orbit.” Actually, he was not sure of that.

“Your problems do not seem nearly so ... unsolva-ble,” Tatsumi said. “Nor violence so near. I think it would be good for you to begin speaking to each other.”

“You have remained neutral until now,” Carnot said through tight lips. “I can only trust you will not join up with them, against us.”

“There are many problems we can resolve, Mr. Car-not. We are very far from home. and it is ridiculous to fight among ourselves, when we have faced so many common dangers.”

“Tatsumi-san, you underestimate the depth of divi-sions between our kind. I have already had my dialogues with Edward Philby. We spoke while still traveling here ... in deep space. We talked to each other like students in a philosophy class, sharing opinions, until he accused me of wanting to destroy Murasaki’s natural systems. He be-came intransigent. We know where we stand. If you will not take sides—” And damn you, if you stay neutral! “-then please leave ‘us to our histories,” he fumbled for what he wanted to say, “our destinies. For what lies ahead.”

Tatsumi regarded him with sad, serious eyes. “Mr. Carrot, Edward Philby has spoken with Kammer.

He says that Kammer tried to kill you. If the man you consider so vital a link, if he himself believes you are wrong ... “

Carnot laughed sharply. “Please do not argue my faith with me, Tatsumi-san. He struck me with his stick. He did not kill me.”

Tatsumi said nothing, puzzled into silence, trying to riddle this human mystery.

“His stick, Tatsumi-san,” Carnot repeated, surprised they had not guessed by now. “He blessed me with his greatest gift. Because of that blow, some of my people are alive now.” He was too weary to waste his time with her any longer. “Good-bye, Tatsumi-san. If you wish to offer us help, we are not too proud to accept.”

He ordered Winston to end the transmission. The engineer did so and stared at him as if awaiting more instruc— tions. Captain Plaissix had come, into the communications room and simply floated there, his deformity an accusation. Carnot had applied the crushed and writhing balm of a patch of Kammer’s symbiotic snug, embedded by the stick in his own skin, first upon his wife, and then upon the others. By circumstance Plaissix had been last. Surely by circumstance and not by Carnot’s own subconscious planning. Plaissix had been the most doubtful of his reve-lation regarding Kammer. The one most likely to frustrate their designs, after they had come so far ...

Casual contact with the avatar was death; the Japanese had learned that much. But to arouse the avatar’s passion, and be struck by him, was to live.

“Who is the fanatic, then?” Eiji Yoshimura asked. “And who is the aggressor?” The director of Hokkaido Station rose from his squat stone desk, cut from Genji’s endless supply of slate, and stood by a rack of laboratory equipment. By trade Yoshimura was an agricultural biolo-gist; he had never wished to be a politician, but deaths at the station during the plague had forced this circumstance upon him.

Tatsumi tried to say something, but Yoshimura was angry and raised his hand. “They are all fools.

This Eng-lishman Philby, by what right does he dictate his phil-osophies?”

–1 regret Philby’s determination—” Tatsumi began.

“They are all troublemakers!” Yoshimura ranted.

“Director, please hear me out,” Tatsurni said, her own voice rising the necessary fraction of a decibel to break through her superior’s indignation.

“My apologies,” Yoshimura said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “I am not angry with you, nor critical of the work you have done.”

“1 understand, sir. Philby’s fears are well-founded. Al-ready Carnot has spread his religious beliefs to nine Genji associations. Already nine temples to their version of Jesus, and to Kammer, have been built, and villages established. Carnot will soon have a broad enough base of support to endanger our own mission, should he so choose—using Ihrdizu as his soldiers. His success is quite remarkable, and I would not put it past him, at some point ... “ She paused, wondering how much of Philby’s attitude had penetrated her. “He might do so,” she concluded, dropping her gaze.

Yoshimura considered this with deep solemnity. “Do you truly believe Carnot will go that far?”

“He has been pushed very hard,” Tatsumi said. “By the plague, and now by the rationalists.”

“I once would have counted myself among the ration-alists,” Yoshimura said. “But I have never tried to impose my will upon those who disagreed. Has Carnot made any converts in our camp?”

Tatsumi reacted with some surprise to this question, which had not occurred to her. “Not to my knowledge,” she replied,

“I will inquire discreetly. You look shocked, Suzy.”

“I find it hard to believe any of our people would believe such drivel.” She spoke with more heat than she had intended.

Yoshimura smiled sagely. “We are human, too. We are in a strange land, far from home, and we can lose our bearings as quickly as anyone else. We do have some Christians among us—Aoki, for example.”

“Aoki is very circumspect,” Tatsumi said “Besides, traditional Christians would hardly recognize the beliefs of the God the Physicist Church, as preached by Carnot.”

“Such an awkward name,” Yoshimura said, making a monkey face. “Still, I would hate to fight an army of Ihrdizu—led by the females, no doubt” His expression slumped into solemnity again, and he seemed very old and tired. “Try to reason with Carnot again. If he is still un-willing to meet with Philby, then ask him if he will meet with our people—with you.”

“I do not believe he will. He is exhausted and de-pressed, sir.”

“Do you know that for certain?”

“It’s obvious.”

“Then he’s even more dangerous,” Yoshimura said. “But we will try anyway.”

Tatsumi sighed.

Six kilometers above sea level, perched on Mount Ni-itake, the first Genji station of starship Descartes overlooked a vast, broken deck of clouds, a muddy blue-gray horizon spotted with deep thunderheads, and to the north, a magnificent vista of ragged hogback ridges.

In the gymnasium, Philby stood up under Genji’s ex-cessive affection, muscles aching from the hour.

of accli-matizing exercise. With most of his time spent on kinder, simpler Chujo, the storms and thickness and pull of Genji was like being immersed in heavy sleep; but here was the core of their problem, among the apparently gullible Ihr-dizu, who were building temples to Kammer—and to Car-not’s Jesus. And who were changing thousands of years of tradition by banding together into makeshift villages.

Theresa O’Brien joined him in the gymnasium, dressed in exercise tights, short hair frizzed with the inev-itable moisture. Theresa was the Lorentz’s female captain, nominally in charge of shipboard activities only, but still highly regarded, and still Philby’s superior. “How’s the tummy, Edward?” she asked.

“Ah, tight as a drum,” Philby responded, thwupping his abdomen with a thumb-released finger. “I’ve never been in better shape.”

O’Brien shook her head dubiously. “You’ve always inclined to more muscle than you needed, then neglected, then to gut. I watched you put on and take off at least three crewmember’s masses during the journey.”

“Brutal Theresa,” Philby said dryly, continuing his leg-lifts.

“When are you leaving for the Showa Bay temple site?”

“In four hours,” Philby said.

“I’ve come from Diana’s bungalow,” O’Brien said. Diana Cicconi was the expedition’s First Director, directly above Philby in the chain of command. O’Brien squatted carefully beside him. Exercise on Genji seemed ridiculously slow; anything faster and they might injure themselves. She sat and watched his red face. “Don’t overdo it.”

“The exercise, or ... ?” Philby didn’t finish.

“We don’t like what Carnot’s doing any more than you,” O’Brien said. “But the Japanese concern us, too.

We’re making an impression here, not just with the Ihrdizu and the Chujoans—with our fellow humans, as well.”

“They seem to be on our side, certainly more than on Carrot’s side,” Philby said, stopping to devote his full at-tention to their conversation. “I hope. Diana’s not rethink-ing our plans.”

‘It seems to some of us that you’re the one doing the rethinking.”

“Diana put me in charge of relations with the Benev-olent. We’ve all agreed they’re dangerous: I’m following through.”

O’Brien nodded. “Edward, it sometimes seems you’re the aggressor, not them. What will the Ihrdizu think if ...” She shook her head and didn’t finish.

If C.arnot’s made such an impression on them, and we constrain him?– Philby finished for her. She raised her chin in the slightest nod, as if wary of him.

“I apologize, Theresa,” Philby said. “You know my temperament better than anybody. I’m thorough, but I’m not a loose beam. Reassure Diana for me.”

“She’s arranging for a reception. The Japanese are coming—and she tells me they’re trying to get Carrot to come, as well.”

“Cm always a man for dialogue,” Philby said He replaced the padded bench and weights and wiped his face with a towel. “But Carnot ... I think he is not.”

“Will you listen to Carnot if the. Japanese convince him to come?”

“What will he ... “ Philby realized he was being ex-cessively contrary, and that more argument might tip the balance in O’Brien’s eyes. “Of course. I’ll listen.”

She turned to leave, and he could not restrain himself from saying. “But, Theresa, there must be constraint on their part. That should be clear to all of us. We are pro-tecting the Ihrdizu from the worst parts of ourselves.”

“Are ‘we?” O’Brien asked over her shoulder.

“Yes,” Philby said after a pause. “Any doubts on that score and we might all be lost.”

“I do not doubt Carnot is a danger,” O’Brien said, and closed the door behind her.

That evening, as Philby checked in with the Lorentz for up-to-the-minute map upgrades, the communications manager told him they had received a signal from two light-years out, from the first expedition, and that among the messages was something extraordinary. Philby read the newest message again and again, feeling both exhilarated and sad, and the wheels began to turn in his mind.

If he must meet with Carrot, then he wanted to be able to shatter that little plaster prophet once and for all. Now, he might have the hammer to do so.

When traveling at close to lightspeed, our geometry is distorted, such that, to an outside observer, we reveal as-pects of our shapes that are not usually seen . . . around curves, edges. We are warped in ways we cannot feel. ... Is this also not true of our souls?

Carnot inspected the eleventh finished temple, his legs and feet aching abominably. He used two canes now to support his weight; to the Ihrdizu, he called them “Katrunerstaffs.”

He had long since spread the story of Kammer’s strik-ing him. He had found an interesting analogy to his con-tretemps with Kammer in Ihrdizu storytelling, a resonance he could take advantage of.

Indeed, this was the very association of lo-Ihrdizu, so said Ihrdizu legend, where the angelic Szikwshawmi had landed in ancient times and struck the female warriors with staffs of ice to give them superior strength. At the same time, the Szikwshawmi had frozen the tongue-penises of the males, making intercourse in both senses of the word impossible. The females had gone out in their frustration and gathered in new males from distant villages, leaving frustrated females in those villages to go forth and do like-wise ... and so on, a great wave of Sabine rapes.

It was hardly a precise analogy. In some respects it was embarrassingly inappropriate; but the Ihrdizu found it compelling, and when searching for mythic roots, one had to bend and to be bent.

The temple, constructed in a thick patch of beach forest like giant, thick-stumped manzanitas, deep in a shadowy hollow filled with drifting mist and sea spray and dark tidal pools, was certainly the gloomiest that had been built so far. The Ihrdizu in this association, which spread from the shore to over ten ldlometers inland, were, larger, more sul-len, more suspicious than any they had encountered before. The females certainly seemed to be brusquer and more dominating. There was also less monogamy here than else-where; females took two males as mates about half the time, reflecting recent depredations because of warfare with another association to the east along the coast.

This region had been visited by the Japanese only once, years before. Yet still the stories of Jesus and Kam-mer and Carnot and the Chujo connection had spread into these shadows and taken, root. In this Carnot took substan-tial satisfaction. He had hooked into the myth, and the shoots would spread of themselves. Even if I die.

The temple matched the necessary specifications. Car-not performed the ritual blessing and walked on the sticks to the !ander. The females watched him closely, beautiful agate eyes totally open, all membranes removed. The males were hiding. Sight of him was not for the weak and small. He• was powerful. He was their reawakening.

“You have done well,” Carnot told the chief females, who bounced and swaggered solemnly on their large rear legs, horizontal bodies quivering. He cringed inside at this unseemly alienness, craving the company of humans, wish-ing to be relieved of this burden; ashamed of his prejudice, he retreated on his Kammerstaffs to the ship, where Ma-deline and Lin-Fa Chee waited.

He took his seat in the transport and lay down the crutches. Madeline massaged his arms and shoulders. He lost himself in thought, ignoring her ministrations.

There was a disturbing trend. Five associations had so far refused Carnot. All of these had been visited by Philby and his agents, spreading rationalist doctrine. Carnot had heard, only bits and pieces of this, antithesis to his thesis: Philby was apparently feeding them visions of a future when Genji and Chujo would be united, not in any mystical sense but politically, in league with human advisers.

A dry, deadly sort of myth, Carnot thought. To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure what role humans would play in his own scheme; perhaps none at all. There were so few of his people left. They could find comfort in a small corner of Chujo, perhaps acting as spiritual advisers, setting up a center for pilgrims.

They would certainly not stride hand-in-hand into a bright future with the rationally corrected and technologically equipped Ihrdizu and Chujoans....

And yet still the Japanese tried to arrange a meeting, and still Philby’s people visited the Ihrdizu associations, creating territories where Carnot could not operate.

It was—a war.

Carnot realized how reluctant he had been, until now, to accept that fact. He had always felt hunted, opposed; he had always pictured the conflict in terms of a personal ven-detta by Philby or some other; he had never devised a strat-egy whereby he might counterstrike. But it was clearly becoming necessary.

“Another message from the Japanese,” Madeline said quietly when they were settled and the transport had lifted off. The ship’s engines made a high-pitched whickering noise and the starboard side settled as they rose; Lin-Fa Chee corrected, and the transport gained altitude, but more slowly. The transports were well-made, but they were ag-ing; there were not enough people on the Benevolent to run the machines necessary to make parts to maintain all the equipment.

“Of course,” Carnot said, his face pale, eyes shifting between the window and the pilot.

“The captain thinks we should talk to them.” Carnot lifted an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“We need to barter,” Lin-Fa Chee added. “We need spare parts.”

“The captain has spoken with the Japanese, with Suzy Tatsumi. She says they will manufacture spare parts for us, in trade.... Madeline’s voice trailed off, watching her husband’s reaction.

“Generous,” Carnot said, closing his eyes again. He hoped his authority was not being undercut. If he could be said to be responsible at all, Captain Plaissix was responsible only for the Benevolent; Carnot was in charge of mak-ing policy on the planets.

–They’ll only trade if we meet with them, and with the rationalists,” Madeline said.

Carnot pretended to sleep.

“Robert, we have to make a decision soon,” Madeline said, a note of worry in her voice. “There’s a lot at stake.”

“We’ll meet,” he said softly. “How many more temples?”

, –Three. I think ... Perhaps more next week.”

“I want to see the ceremonies completed.” He could speculate on the dimensions of the human conflict—small and bitter, perhaps never escalating to violence, but deadly to his cause—their cause—all the same. But what would the dimensions of a conflict between the Ihrdizu be? If Ihr-dizu could not encompass contradictions in human doctrine, how would they react? What alien catharsis would their unplumbed psychologies demand?

Suddenly he was feeling very mortal—with more than a suspicion that what lay beyond mortality was not what he most fervently desired.

Philby walked slowly toward the loose line of twelve trolls. His hydration suit reeked of Chupchup protective scent. The trolls lifted their heads, each standing over two and a third meters high. They sniffed the air casually, re-mained where they were. Surely they could, see he was not Chujoan; surely they had minds enough to recognize that scent alone did not guarantee his belonging. But they re-strained themselves, and once again added to the mystery of how they functioned in Chujoan society.

He passed between two of them, barely a meter on each side from their claws, their razor fangs barely con-cealed behind slack, lips.

The shamans formed the next loose line. Beyond them lay the edge of the cluster of yurts that had been erected for this temporary settlement. Between the shamans and the main cluster squatted the yurt that Kammer had taken, or had been assigned, who, could say which. He was on the outskirts, rather than in the center; that might be significant. Perhaps he was not as important to the Chujoans as this peculiar reception ceremony implied; perhaps Chujoan rit-ual went beyond the simple analogy of enfolding and pro-tection, and put their most valuable icons on the edge rather than the center of their loose and mobile village.

Perhaps he didn’t understand Kammer’s meaning at all.

A loose dry breeze blew dust between the spindly legs of the shamans. The line parted, as if Philby had ordered the breeze as a signal. He could feel the casual, unreacting presence of the bullyboys behind him. He was coming to prefer Kammer’s name to –trolls.” It was so much more descriptive, evocative.

The work he had done in the past week to make this meeting useful—to be able to ask the question he would now ask of Kammer—had taxed his patience to its limit.

Now he approached the shamans, wearing only a hy-drator; taking his chances without the isolation suit.

He had asked five of his ship’s biologists, and three of the Japanese doctors and biologists, how much of a risk Kammer might pose to crews if they were actually exposed to his physical presence.

None had been willing to give a straight answer at first; fear of the wineskin plague had distorted simple rational judgments, leading to hedged bets, hems and haws, a reliance on very fuzzy statistics.

Finally Philby had been able to draw a consensus from the scientists and doctors: Kammer was not much of a threat now. If indeed the wineskin plague had begun on Kammer, which was almost universally accepted, then it was likely that they had protected themselves against all possible varieties he might have generated.

Kammer could walk among them, if he so chose. Philby stood outside the plaited reed walls of the yurt. “Hello,” he said. Nothing but silence within.

“Hello,” he called out again, glancing over his shoul-der at the shamans, shivering despite himself.

Which was worse—to be ignored as if one didn’t exist, or to be recognized by something so intrinsically alien? In some re-spects, now that he was familiar with the two species, the humanoid Chujoans seemed much more alien than the Bos-chian Ihrdizu....

“Doing you here?”

Kammer came around the other side of the yurt. Philby started, turned slowly, trying to regain dignity, and faced Kammer.

—I’ve brought a message,” he said.—From your star-ship, on its way back to Earth. They’re about five light-years out now. They intercepted Japanese reports that you had been found alive.... “

1 Kammer glanced up at the sky speculatively with one pale eye, lips moving. “Must be about two years ship time,” he said. “Doing fast by now. Bit-rate way down. Bandwidth doing the very narrow.”

“A woman who held you in high regard sends a mes-sage to you,” Philby said. This, he hoped, was the shock that would jolt Kammer back to some human sense of re-sponsibility. “It’s rather personal, and I regret springing it on you like this, but its reception by our ship—and the Japanese ship, simultaneously—was hardly private. I thought I should tell you first.”

“Something to be read, or just spoken?” Kammer asked. Philby interpreted that question as a promising sign. Curiosity, plain English syntax, a tone of some concern.

‘You can read it if you wish.”

Kammer’s mummy mask slanted, wrinkled in some-thing between a smile and puzzlement. “I know her. I did life with her.” He tapped his leathery pate. “In dreams.”

‘Her name is—”

“Nicole,” Kammer said.

Philby said nothing for a few seconds, watching the brown, tortured face reflect some inner realization, some reawakening of old memories. “Right. Nicole.”

“What does she say?”

Philby held out a slate. Nicole had convinced the pow-ers that be—apparently her husband, Captain Darryl Wash-ington—that a message of several hundred words was necessary. This had required considerable diversion of re-sources—turning antennas around, readjustment, expendi-ture of valuable communications time. Philby had read the message several times. He had no idea what Kammer would make of it. If he had been Kammer—a long shot of sup-position—Philby would have been deeply saddened.

Dearest Airy,

I cannot believe what we have heard. That you are alive! By what miracle is not clear to us; we have only been able to receive about three-quarters of the transmissions from Murasaki, and only since we stopped accelerating, turned off our torch. We all feel incredibly guilty about leaving you behind. There was no chance of your survival—we knew that, you must believe we knew that! I grieved for you. I punished Darryl for years. This has been cruel to all of us, but especially I think to him. Whom I punish, I feel the most sympathy for....

What are you now, after so many years with the Chujoans? Do you still think of us, or have they changed you so much you have for-gotten? I cannot tell you all that has happened to us. ... We feel like such cowards, such fools, having left Murasaki just when the rush from Earth was beginning. We should have stayed, but we did not have the heart. Darryl wanted the riches; we wanted the riches and fame before we were too old. So we didn’t finish our job. What reception we will return home to, I cannot say.. .. Perhaps the reception reserved for (L.O.S. 2.4 kb?).

... were the better man. I chose you. Know that about me now, Aaron, that in the end, I chose you, my body chose you. Darryl has lived with this, and I think I admire him more now, despite my punishments and inward scorn, for having lived with it.

We have a son, Aaron. You and I. He is your boy. He was born five months ago. I have named him after your father, Kevin. He is healthy and will be a young man when we return to Earth.

He will be told that you are his father. Darryl insists, especially since we’ve learned you are alive.

That knowledge grinds Darryl down more each night Who can understand the grief of strong men?

1 love you, Aaron.

Nicole

Kammer let the slate drop to the ground, then swayed like an old tree in a slight breeze. “I am not that same person,” he said throatily. “He did the dying.”

“I think that person is still here,” Philby persisted. “You remember Nicole. You remember who you were. And you knew that Carnot would cause great damage. You hit him to stop him.”

“I hit him to save him,” Kammer said with a sudden heat “Could not see them all do the dying.–

“I don’t understand,” Philby said, eyes narrowing.

“They gave me this,” Kammer said, lifting the stick covered with patchy snug. “Long times past.

Years, maybe. I thought 1 was going to die. I felt as if I had died. Then I recovered, and then I began to die again. I did the bloating, too, and the filling with liquids, skin turning wine red, the twisting of bones.

This,” he indicated his contorted trunk and limbs, “was not from breaking my back. I did the sickness myself. Body like a skin full of wine. They gave me the stick, and the snug took me over. It found what was making me sick, and it killed them, or tamed them. I got better.”

Philby’s eyes widened, and for the first time in Kam-mer’s presence, he felt a shiver of awe. What did the Chu-joans know—what could they do? He slowly turned to survey the shamans, uncaring and implacable in their loose line between the two humans and the bullyboys.

“Hit him, to save him, if he had the brains to know what it was I gave,” Kammer said. “I see he did.”

Kam-mer’s gaze was intense, his eyes seeming darker, more human now. “Perhaps, that was when he did the prophet. Bent body, bent mind, Saved from death. Knew, knew.”

Softly, shivering slightly. Philby said, “He wanted to be a prophet before they reached Murasaki. But you ... blessed him, I suppose is the word.” Philby sighed. All of his errors, his misinterpretations; was it due to arrogance? How much of his arrogance had poisoned the debate be-tween the stars? How much had he driven Carrot to his hard positions, his fanaticisms? “We’re going to meet with the Quantists, with Carnot. I think it’s important that you talk with him.”

“Can’t go back and do the human thing,” Kammer said. “Being this. Knew, knew.”

“If you believe his distortions: are dangerous—and you must, Aaron, you must!—you cannot refuse us this. Talk with him, tell him what you know. Try to make him stop this insanity. He could destroy all the Genjians have in the way of—culture, language, independent thought:.

“Never did them,” Kammer said.

“Aaron... “ Philby stepped forward, hands beseech-ing. He removed his hydrator. to speak directly with Kam-mer. The cool dry air felt like dust in his throat, and he coughed.

Two trolls shoved him roughly away and spilled him on the ground. His mask flew high into the air and came down six or seven meters away. A troll loomed over him, baring its teeth, seeming to grin, examining his form as if it might be a long diversion from the troll’s normal mind-less boredom.

Kammer stood back, stick lifted as if to defend himself as well against the trolls, and said nothing.

The shamans moved in around Philby. He tried to get up, but the troll casually kicked his arm out from under him and he fell back. He prepared himself to die, but first he triggered the emergency signal in his belt. That would bring Sheldrake and Thompson; they were armed. If he was dead, they would do nothing but try to retrieve his body; but if he was still alive, they would carve their way through trolls and shamans alike to save him.

He considered this for a moment, realized what an ugliness might spread from another such incident—realized that what the Japanese had done, years before, might still linger between Chujoans and humans—and shouted to Kammer, “For God’s sake, Aaron, this is awful! Stop them!”

He saw part of Kammer’s twisted leg between the legs of a troll. The leg moved, then the stick came down with a thud. More snug dropped away from the stick. Fascinated, anesthetized by his terror, Philby watched the fallen patches of growth twist about and crawl along the ground, back to the stick.

“There isn’t much I can do,” Kammer said. “Lie still.”

“Damn it, you’re sacred to them! Tell them to stop!”

–I’m hardly sacred,” Kammer said. The troll stepped aside, and Philby saw Kammer clearly. He backed away from the trolls, who showed their teeth to him with as much apparent enthusiasm as they did to Philby. “I thought you were smart enough to see. I’m an experiment, and nothing more.”

The trolls turned suddenly on Kammer and shoved him rudely, knocking him from his feet. He struck out with his stick, but they ignored him. Another group of trolls loped to his yurt and began to tear it apart, tossing sticks, mud, and thatch in the air. In minutes, as they both watched from the ground, trolls looming but not striking them any more, the yurt was demolished and the dirt beneath it kicked over.

Kammer seemed to be, laughing weakly. The shamans shooed the surrounding trolls away from the men with wav-ings of wands and noisy expectorations. They surveyed Kammer intently, one shaman squatting beside him, and lift-ing, his right arm. Kammer accepted this with no apparent resentment, still chuckling.

“We’re lucky we’re not doing martyr,” he said to Philby. Philby tried to get up, but a shaman kicked out with a foot, delivering a blow more informative than painful, and he remained on the ground.

She!drake and Thompson stood a dozen meters away, calling to Philby.

“Stay where you are—don’t do anything unless they set the trolls on us again!” Philby shouted.

“What’s happening?” Thompson asked.

don’t know!—The shaman kicked him again. “Son of a hitch,” he exclaimed. Sheldrake raised his weapon but did not fire.

“Be still,” Kammer called. “If you want me, you have the all of me. if I’m still alive, I’m yours.

“What are they doing?”

–Finishing, I think,” Kammer said. The shamans turned him over on his stomach, prodded him with their own sticks, and finally pushed and kicked and rolled him until he was within a couple of feet of Philby. Kammer regained his breath, his entire bent body shuddering, and moaned, leathery lips still wreathed in a smile. “You’ve made a lot of nasty noise. I’m not worth it any more I think the experiment is over.”

“They are the goddamnedest most arrogant sons of bitches,—Philby shouted, pounding the bulkhead behind the transport cockpit. She!drake grinned ruefully and edged past him. Their new passenger sat gingerly in a rear seat. Thompson stayed well clear of him as he closed the hatch and stowed the weapons.

All but Philby remained in their isolation suits. Lack of conviction in their science: rational thought giving in to fear. They had their prize, but hardly knew what to do with him.

Philby gradually controlled his rage, glanced back at Kammer; and edged down the aisle to sit in the seat across from him. Philby could hardly restrain his urge to retch, though Kammer’s odor of flowers was stronger than his odor of unwashed humanity. Constrained within the trans-port, contrasted with the clean technological lines of seats and walls, Kammer seemed even more of a ruin.

The transport lifted away. They would take Kammer

to

the nearest

Japanese

station—Hokkaido—and leave him in quarantine there, if the Japanese gave permission, and they almost certainly would. There was hardly time enough to take Kammer up to the Lorentz, and not nearly enough of their own equipment on Genji to examine him. The Jap-anese would have to be the ones to benefit from this windfall.

Sheldrake was informing them of the circumstances now.

“Welcome back,” Philby said to Kammer.

“Doing the anger bit,” Kammer commented, nodding at the bulkhead and then at Philby, milky eyes blinking slowly. “Don’t blame you.”

“I hadn’t expected this,” Philby told him. “Expected it for many times,” Kammer said. “I don’t sleep.

I eat very little. But I’ll die.”

Philby stared at Kammer, wondering what he meant. “You need special nutrition... your snug needs something special?”

Kammer’s head bobbed on his neck and the snug slith-ered about his body. “I’m not like you now.

Test-tube specimen. Can you save me?”

“We’ll certainly try.”

“Not so profound. Not so... able to die happy. After all this. Christ, Philby, can I learn to speak again?”

“I hope so,” Philby said, anger suddenly changed to sadness. Kammer seemed so subdued, in shock almost.

am an ugly thing,” Kammer said. “I have a son. Nicole sends messages to me. She punishes him. Ah, the memories of that, Philby. I’m decompressing. Coming up from the depths again.”

“Why did they reject you?”

“Learned what they needed to know,” Kammer said. He began to choke or cough, then looked around with lips pursed, Philby promptly produced a specimen bag from his kit, and Kammer expectorated red and green saliva into it. “Crap profane.”

Philby took the bag from him, sealed it, and marked it before stowing it in the transport biologicals box. Kam-mer looked through the port beside his seat at purple sky and wide pale-yellow desert.

“Did they send the plague?” Philby asked as he seated himself again.

“Not deliberately. I don’t think,” Kammer said. “Can you understand me? How’s my grammar?”

“Good,” Philby said.

“Good. I’m not human, Philby.”

“Don’t worry about that. The Japanese call them the Masters. They are, aren’t they? Masters of biological engineering?”

“Not engineering. Farming. They farmed little things. Made spaceships out of organisms. Everything alive. We wondered about that long ago, in our youth; could such things be.”

“And now?”

“Fallen, but still mighty. No more spaceships.”

“Why are they so aloof?”

“Philosophy,” Kammer said. When Philby pressed him, he seemed reluctant to explain further, but finally he said, “They’re in the endgame. Doing the dying. They’re meditating, I think. Want to go soon.

Would have gone long ago.”

“Chujo will stay livable for tens of thousands of years yet,” Philby said. “Why are they so fatalistic?

We can help them—give them the technology necessary to save their planet.”

Kammer’s torso shook. “Carnot would’ understand better,” he said.

Philby wondered if he had just been laughed at. “But I’m serious. In a century, we’ll be able to bring—” He caught himself. He had been about to say, “Bring ice from the asteroids,” but there were no ice asteroids and few comets in the Murasaki System. He had lapsed back into Earth-think.

Kammer regarded him expectantly, saying nothing. “We can bring water up from Genji, replenish Chujo.”

“Maybe you can,” Kammer said. “But they’ll die anyway.”

Philby slapped his fist on the seat arm. “Why, god-darrunit? Why such fatalism?”

“They’re not you,” Kammer said. “They do them-selves only.”

Sheldrake tapped Philby on the shoulder. Philby an-gled his torso around to peer through the helmet at him. “Suzy Tatsumi gives permission to bring Kammer to Hok-kaido; seems quite excited by the prospect. And she says that Carnot will meet with all of us—our people and the Japanese.”

“Good,” Philby said. His original plan was not in ruins after all.

Through thick panes of glass, Suzy Tatsumi watched the doctors work on Kammer in the isolation room of the Hokkaido Station hospital. Kammer lay on a low table. stick clutched in one hand beside him, staring off into noth-ingness. His expression made her shudder. Dr. Nogura emerged after several hours of intensive examination and confronted her with weary but astonished eyes.

“He’s a mess,” Nogura said. “He shouldn’t even be alive. The snug has worked its way into almost every part of his body. He’s a symbiont now-with two different bi-ologies cooperating. We have no idea what to feed him. He says he does not eat. He no longer has a urinary tract or an anus. He seems to excrete by spitting.”

Philby entered the observation room. “What’s the prognosis?” he asked in English. Tatsumi was irritated that he could not speak Japanese, did not even think to tune his translator to Japanese.

Tatsumi spoke English very well, but Dr. Nogura did not. Her eyes narrowed and she sighed. “Dr.

Nogura is telling me now.”

“Can Kammer attend the meeting?”

“I do not know. Mr. Philby. Please be patient.” Philby sat in a small chair, his big frame making it squeak in protest.

“Please continue, Doctor,—Tatsumi said.

“He is adapted to conditions on Chujo, that much we know,” Nogura said He could apparently survive in the open on Chujo indefinitely, if what he says is true—and I have no reason to doubt him.”

Tatsumi passed this along to Philby, who nodded im-patiently. “What about his psychological state?”

“He is calm, speaking clearly, though 1 do not per-sonally speak English well.... My colleagues have been interpreting for me. They say he appears contented, but he is certain he will die soon. There is a possibility he will die if removed from Chujo.... Although ... and here 1 hesi-tate, Tatsumi-san, because none of this is certain. But it appears that his body is adapted to high-pressure conditions as well.”

Tatsumi asked what good that would be, on Chujo.

“None at all. On Genji, however, it would be very useful. Professor Hiraiwa is conducting tests now on spec-imens of Mr. Kammer’s ‘snug.’ to discover their reaction to Genjian conditions.”

Tatsumi translated for Philby, who wore a look of al—most comic befuddlement. “Why would they do that? Give him abilities he’d never need?”

Philby, you contemplate taking him to Genji, do you not?” Tatsumi asked.

“They wouldn’t know that.”

I am much less certain about some things than, you are.”

“They’d have to expect us to take him there.... Philby mused, crossing his arms. “They couldn’t, do it themselves.”

“At one time, they could have gone to Genji.... Probably did go, and very often,” Tatsumi said.

“That’s a Japanese team conclusion we don’t yet sup-port,” Philby said.

“Please do not be stubborn or devious with us, Mr. Philby.” Tatsumi said sharply. “Kammer has told us his thoughts, and surely he has told you, as well. He says they could have once built spaceships, biological spaceships.”

“He told me that,” Philby admitted. “Do you believe him?”

“They might have used their bioengineering skills to adapt themselves to life on Genji,” Nogura said, catching only part of the English conversation.

Philby looked at Kammer through the window, shaking his head and frowning. Time to give in.

Time to begin accepting the obvious. “It’s hard to be skeptical when I look at Kammer, But what about the plague?”

Dr. Nogura said, “The plague originated with Kam-mer, as we suspected. However, it appears that Kammer saved the remaining members of the Benevolent crew by striking Mr. Carnot with his stick.

The snug contains chem-icals that can regulate Chujoan bacteroids ... or destroy them. These chemicals are similar to the chemicals we dis-covered ourselves, and used to protect our team members.”

“But he only struck Carnot!”

“Mr. Carnot must have been a very intelligent man,” Tatsumi said. “Perhaps he conferred protection upon his surviving colleagues. We must ask him when we all meet.”

–How long before you can make a decision about Kammer?” Philby asked.

Tatsumi deferred to Dr. Nogura. “Two days,” Nogura said. “There is a great deal more to study. We have an incredible opportunity....”

“There may be a problem,” Tatsumi told Philby as she escorted him out of the lab. “Kammer is insisting he be taken to Genji. He has been looking through our texts, on a notebook loaned to him by Dr. Hiraiwa. He wonders if you want him to meet with Carnot, and says he will only meet with Carrot on Genji.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

Tatsumi shrugged, slightly embarrassed. “1 am not used to dealing with so many unreasonable people at once,” she said glancing at Philby as if expecting him to blow up.

“I see,” Philby said. “Your doctors are sure he can survive there?”

–Perhaps better than we, Tatsumi said.

“You have trouble dealing with me. I have trouble dealing with all these ideas,” Philby said, making an at-tempt at placation. Clearly Tatsumi was angry with him, with the entire situation; he did not want to antagonize her beyond her limits. He rather liked her; she would be an asset on any team.

“We must adjust quickly,” Tatsumi said. “A crisis has been provoked. Carnot is establishing and sanctifying temples as fast as he can. Your people are trying to wall off his influence by going from association to association with their own stories. It is already a kind of war; the Ihr-dizu are being changed by both sides.”

Philby did not disagree. There was really nothing to say; it was true.

—I’d like this resolved soon.” he told her. “It’s very painful to all of us:”

“I can arrange for a meeting,” Tatsumi said. can set up a spot on Genji, near a large Ihrdizu whaling asso-ciation that has not been touched by either of you. There you can meet with Carnot, and there Kammer can ... do whatever it is he plans to do.”

“He’s on our side.” Philby said.

“He saved Carnot,—she reminded him.—He is hardly even human now. You cannot say whose side he is on.”

Her, anger had, if anything, increased. Philby inwardly saw himself as Tatsumi must have seen him.

His neck mus-cles twitched, and he turned away. “I am not a zealot, Tatsumi-san,—he said.

“You think you are antibody, don’t you?” she asked, walking around to stand before him. “Antibody for all of the Murasaki System, to prevent contamination by human folly. Well, we are here also, and we are human also, Mr. Philby.” Her face was stiff, eyes wide. “The meeting will be neutral, Mr. Philby. We will give you no advantage. Kammer will be in the care of our biologists and physi-cians. You will speak with him no more. No more prompt-ing. We will not take part in a war, even if it is to be without weapons!”

Philby regarded her, face flushed. They were taking Kammer away from the Lorentz. There was nothing he could do about it. “All right,—Philby said quietly. “You think you can afford neutrality. I understand that.—He stepped around her and pushed open the door to the air lock.

Tatsumi raised her fists to the ceiling, felt the tears start in her eyes, and shook her head furiously, alone in the corridor where nobody could see her.

Chujo and Genji moved across the hours around each other, in Lady Murasaki’s novel brothers-in-law, but in planetary terms husband and wife, gravitational lovers, condemned to never touch, growing farther apart centi-meters each year. Yet they had touched, once tens of thousands of years ago, through the proxies of their chil-dren. Perhaps for a thousand years they had remained in communication. And then...

Tatsumi lay in her bunk, trying to sleep after the pas-sage from dry lightness to wet and heavy darkness, from Chujo to Genji. Breathing the damp cool air of the high-land base at Honshu Station, she had felt her sadness deepen. and wondered if perhaps, after so much time on Chujo, Genji was working a kind of seasonal depression on her, like a plunge into winter in Japan.

Absurdly, she was saddened by the image of worlds apart, like lovers. Her parents had been forced by their sep-arate employers to live apart for years. in a strange and even feudal struggle to keep families loyal to one corpo-ration, one zaibatsu... .Only after her father had attempted seppuku while on a business trip to United Korea had his corporate parents relented, and the family had become one. Ten years of such misery.

She had traveled so far to escape the injustices of Earth, only to find an analogy, a myth of her own making perhaps, that saddened her. She saw—perhaps irration-ally—that Philby wished to prevent a reunification of Chujo and Genji, facilitated by humans, but reunifying nonethe-less. She saw as clearly as Philby that reunification was merely a blind for Carnot, who was playing, midwife, living a spiritual myth vicariously, but also conceiving and deliv-ering a child whose shape no one could predict.

These disturbing thoughts echoing unity and apartness had plagued her for several hours already, but she refused to induce sleep. So much was artificial about her existence: the food, she ate, the air she breathed, the daily round of her existence. Surely she could enjoy natural sleep!

In less than two hours, she would interview Kammer one last time, then escort him and the biologicals team to the fishing association on the coast below Honshu Station. Carnot had agreed to come meet there.

Dr. Hiraiwa had agreed to provide spare parts and sup-plies to the Quantists.

Edward Philby, speaking for the male and female cap-tains of his ship, had agreed to the ground rules for the meeting.

Now, to put the last piece of the puzzle together, she had to see what Kammer’s state of mind would be. He had agreed tacitly to everything so far. He looks upon me with those pale eyes, and he is sad as well. Philby was cruel to tell him about his son, to give him his lover’s message. They are separated now, by circumstances neither can overcome.

She felt the bunk shift beneath her, liquid-filled mat-tresses adjusting to prevent skin lesions.

What about my own separation? Can one be apart from somebody one has not yet chosen?

In time she did sleep, but only for an hour and a half. Genji’s clouded night still lingered and snow fell around Honshu Station as she dressed in the crew lounge, prepar-ing herself for the long sojourn in the planet’s heavy deeps.

Two hundred kilometers from Honshu Station, the Ihr-dizu fishing shelter of Kiariakchou!ck stood on an artificial rock plateau some twenty meters above the beach. Only fishing shelters for the seasonal whalers and fishers, boat launches, and wide racks draped with the skins of harvested carpet whales had been erected along the shore. Storm surges and tides could wipe out these structures at regular intervals.

To protect their resources, the fishers and whalers had constructed a strong stone shelter on a plateau over-looking the shore, and given it an almost unpronounceable name.

Only fishing associations left large permanent struc-tures on Genji. Fishers and whalers from associations hun-dreds of kilometers around gathered here to harvest the seas, as a kind of migrant community. Sometimes they chose mates here: sometimes fresh associations were born in the minds of various females, and they took their new mates outside the boundaries of the old associations to start new fishing centers.

A storm was brewing now to the south, and it looked to Tatsumi—observing from the window of her transport—that it might be a strong one, strong enough to make the Ihrdizu withdraw from the shore, dismantle their huts, roll their himatid skins and squirrel them away in the stone-walled shelter above. She pointed this out to Dr. Hiraiwa and Dr. Nogura. Hiraiwa consulted the transport’s radar and a Japanese satellite picture.

“It’s at least five hours away, which should allow plenty of time for the meeting,” he concluded. He glanced at Aaron Kammer, who sat quietly in the rear of the trans-port. “If we have arranged things properly. Who knows how to handle such volatile people? They are alien to me. ... And I used to live among English and Americans, be-fore I volunteered for this journey.”

Dr. Nogura smiled. “They are irritating, but they are not incomprehensible. Each—has his motives, each his out-look ... like ourselves.”

“We strive for unity of purpose,” Dr. Hiraiwa said testily.

“The role of a maker of compromises is not dishon-orable,” Nogura said, shrugging slightly.

Tatsumi checked her notebook for time. They were less than ten minutes away from the village. She unhooked her seat belt and walked back carefully to where Kammer sat.

“We’ll be there soon.” she said “How are you?”

“Heavier,” Kammer said. “Not uncomfortable.”

Tatsumi looked on him with undisguised wonder. Kammer was the genuine mystery in the midst of all this sordid conflict. Dr. Hiraiwa’s biologists had monitored him for three days, taken tissue and snug samples, analyzed him from gnarled toes to leathery bald snug-covered crown, but they had not been able to measure Kammer’s mental state, or come to understand his reasoning. Why did he wish to venture onto the surface of Genji? He seemed to know his abilities, as a bird might know that it is built to fly; they could not constrain him in a helmet or suit—his snug would die if they did, and he would die with it—but the consensus among the biologists was, he could survive indefinitely without aid in Genji’s thick lower atmosphere, the only human who could do so. And he knew it.

He had politely refused their offers to let him see the association and shelter in their vid and photo collections. He had used the notebook loaned to him, but only to access and read text novels from the twenty-first and twentieth century—romances, chiefly, in English and French. He had ignored the preparations, paid little attention during all the attempted briefings, answered few questions.

“Are you ready?” she asked him. The odor of flowers and stagnant moss—and an odor of wet dog—assaulted her nose. Kammer twisted his head back, the snug crawling around his neck, and gave her a gray-toothed, cracked-lip smile.

“You do the understanding, the standing between, don’t you?” he asked in English.

It was the first question he had asked her directly. try,” she said. She had no doubt about what he meant

“Learned much myself on Chujo about understanding and standing between. Masters and slaves.

Everybody’s right, everybody’s wrong.”

This was much less clear. She sat, buckled herself in, said nothing, willing, to just let Kammer talk even if he rambled. Nogura and Hiraiwa listened as well. No doubt recorders were on; Kammer had no private existence. He did not seem to notice or mind.

“Have there been any more messages?” he asked. “From who?”

“From Nicole. From my . . . “ He coughed. “Family.”

“Mr. Philby hasn’t mentioned any to us, and our ships haven’t received any.”

“When this is over, I’d like to send a message to them. Is that possible?”

“I think so,” Tatsumi said.

“I’d like to tell them a few simple things, set their minds at ease.” He smiled again, that ghastly, corpse-of-old-man grin. –That I think of them, even though every-body assumes... I’m doing the missing me.”

Tatsumi frowned in puzzlement. “I beg your pardon?”

“Assumes I’m not here. Who would be here?” He tapped his head. “After all I’ve seen. Years among the Masters. Aloof sons of bitches. Good reason, too. Doing the endgame.”

Tatsumi nodded.

“Carnot will be there?” he asked.

“He says he will be.”

“This is a large village, near the shore?”

“Yes,” she said. “Not a village, actually. An asso-ciation of fishers and whalers. Whaling now, this season.– “We can take boats out on the water?”

This was something new. “I don’t know about that,– she said. “We’ve made no arrangements. We have no boats of our own there.–

–All right,” Kammer said. “Just curious.”

The transport passed through a bumpy high-pressure ridge lying offshore on its curving path to approach the association from the sea. Kammer looked through his port intently, ignoring Tatsumi. She kept her seat, however, in case he should speak some more.

“Boats,—Kammer said. “Fishing boats.” He pointed through the window. A flotilla of Ihrdizu boats lay some ten kilometers offshore. Tatsumi saw that they were carpet whalers. There did not seem to be any of the himatids vis-ible. Somehow, she was relieved; the whaling disturbed her on an instinctive level; never expressed. Japanese had sav-aged the very different whales of Earth’s seas for decades longer than they should have; there was still controversy about that historical episode.

“Brave creatures, doing the sea,” Kammer said softly. They passed low and slow over the shore. and landed a hundred meters from the tide line.

“Carnot’s ship is here,” Dr. Hiraiwa observed. “At least this much is accomplished.”

Tatsumi looked through the port and frowned. He was not supposed to arrive early; Philby might interpret that as a breach. Perhaps it is a breach. What has he, done? Has he spoken to the Ihrdizu here, proselytized? The culture team will have prevented that... I hope.

All but Kammer donned helmets with helium/hydrogen mix tanks for the excursion. Hiraiwa and Nogura watched anxiously from _within their helmets as the transport’s air-lock pressure completed the slow equalization that had begun since they left. Honshu Station. Kammer stood steady against the weight and the inrush of Genjian atmosphere, thick and moist. The air lock filled with steam, which vanished imme-diately as the outer door opened. Hiraiwa stepped out first, then Kammer, with Nogura and Tatsumi following.

Kammer stood on the fiat slate stones of the upper beach, turning this way, then that, as if getting

,

accustomed to a place he had been away from for a long time, but a place he knew nonetheless. He did not betray any distress.

The three Japanese stood around him anxiously awaiting an adverse reaction. Kammer reached out with a twisted arm and touched Tatsumi’s shoulder, patting it as if in reassurance. His voice sounded softer but more res-onant as he said, “They did their work well. I’m comfortable.”

“Good,” Tatsumi said. Her own voice sounded high and squeaky in her ears; the helmet modulator deepened its tone for the others.

“Where is Philby?” Nogura asked. “He should be here.”

A group of four humans walked along the beach to-ward the Japanese transport, followed by a straggle of ten female Ihrdizu carrying ritual drapes of ocean weed. With some concern, Tatsumi realized these were members of Carnot’s party, and no Japanese had served as mediators between them and the Ihrdizu. “How long have they been here?” she asked.

“Not long, I hope,” Hiraiwa said. –Where is our cul-ture team?”

Tatsumi felt a sudden chill. “Something’s wrong,” she said. She made connections through her helmet with the transport’s communications system and sent a query to their ship in orbit. Kammer simply stood on the beach, rocking gently back and forth, waiting.

Carrot’s party was barely a dozen meters away when she received her answer.

“Japanese culture team met Philby’s party to arrange for rendezvous. Carnot’s party was not there; they must have gone ahead to the village.”

“Against our request?” Tatsumi said, face growing hot. She stared at the approaching group of four.

“Culture team reports they cannot advance to village now. There is a storm moving in rapidly. They are digging in for the next few hours; Philby’s party cannot leave, either.”

Tatsumi shut off the link in disgust. Not going at all well. She quickly explained to Nogura and Hiraiwa.

Kammer did not move forward to greet Carrot and his party. He leaned on his staff, still swaying back and forth.

“We could not land at the rendezvous,” Carnot ex-plained, coming forward, stopping two meters from Kam-mer, as if undecided where to go next. “There was a big storm coming in....1 believe your team and Mr. Philby are going, to be there for some time.”

How convenient, Tatsumi thought.

“We haven’t spoken with the Ihrdizu here, other than to exchange greetings,” Carnot continued.

“We’re trying to observe the terms of this meeting as much as possible.”

The Ihrdizu, staring at Kanuner, had withdrawn a dozen meters and stood on the shingles. bobbing back and forth. Nogura broke away from Tatsumi and Hiraiwa and walked up to them, stepping carefully on the rounded stones. He spoke to them through the translator.

“Excuse me,” Kammer said. “There’s something I need to see.” He walked away from Tatsumi, toward the ocean and the racks covered with himatid skins. Tatsumi glanced at Hiraiwa and followed him.

“Please, Mr. Kammer, we need to stick together. We should return to the ship and wait for the others to join us....

“Big storm, Carnot said. Not for hours, maybe longer. I need to see something.”

Tatsumi shuddered again at a sudden chill. Keep him away from the beach. But she could not simply grab him and hold him. Instead, she followed at his side, noting with fascination above her apprehension that his snug was ac-tually getting greener the longer he stayed in the Genjian atmosphere.

The snug was growing thicker; he seemed less like a mummy now and more like a vegetable man out of folklore, someone made of trees and moss.

With a start, Tatsumi realized that Carrot was walking on her right. He had left the rest of his party to stand in embarrassed silence with the Japanese. She looked back and saw three of the Ihrdizu also following, attention fo-cused on Kammer. “We should go back, all of us, please,” she said.

“Mr. Kammer,” Carrot said. “I am most happy to see you again, and startled to see you here.”

“Doing the shock bit,” Kammer said. “What are those things?” He raised a gnarled hand and pointed to the racked skins.

“Are you well? I did not know you could leave Chujo, or I would have—”

“Nobody knows what those are?” Kammer asked, turning to query Tatsumi. His pale eyes lingered on the Ihrdizu for a moment, then he faced forward again.

“They are skins, carpet-whale skins,” Tatsumi said. “This is a fishing and whaling association.”

Kammer stopped, seemed to breathe deeply, then con-tinued, Tatsumi and Carnot tagging along.

“I would like to speak with you about what I’ve been doing, on your behalf,” Carrot said Two of the Ihrdizu cut in front of Tatsumi, blocking her progress down the beach. They did not stop Carnot or Kammer. She tried to go around them, but they swiftly sidled to block her again.

‘Please let me pass,” she said, first in Japanese and then using the translator.

The Ihrdizu female who seemed to be senior in the party of three said, in Ihrdizu and very choppy Japanese, “We have heard of this human. Whalers bring stories from other regions.... You have told us nothing. Is he from Heaven?”

“He is human,” Tatsumi said.

“He walks without a suit, and does not die.”

So little time to explain. “Please, let me pass—”

“Has this one come to *judge* us?” The translator was struggling for the closest word. The other females gath-ered around Tatsumi, waiting for her answer.

“He isn’t here to judge anybody,” Tatsumi said, but it was obvious the translator did not express her meaning clearly.

“This one is from Heaven?” they repeated, three speaking at once. The translator squealed its inability to cope.

“Is this the human who bears messages from Heaven?” asked another female behind Tatsumi, speaking quite good Japanese. There were two males in her train, small and obsequious. “The other in the suit, who calls himself Carnot.”

“I can’t answer these questions,” Tatsumi said, lifting her hands, spinning to face all the Ihrdizu in turn.

“Please, let me bring them back to our ship.”

The first three females blocked her when she tried to walk to the shoreline. “The judgment must come.”

Horrified, Tatsumi switched on her link with the trans-port. Another team must come down, now; there was some-thing wrong here, and her group was not sufficient to handle it.

Eyes wide, she watched Kammer and Carnot proceed alone down to the racks of skins. Beyond them, the gray-blue sky, thick with rain and clouds several kilometers beyond the shoreline, pulsed with thick oily lightning dis-charges. The sound arrived moments later, pushing at them. “Please!” she begged.

The Ihrdizu bunched closer in front of her, a solid wall.

Kammer glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowing at a burst of wind and sound. Carnot followed with pained diligence, hunched over slightly, eyes eager through the faceplate. “I’ve been spreading your story to the Ihrdizu, to tell them about their ancient past, about the return of Christ to these worlds.... “

Kammer ignored him.

“They’ve listened and built temples. There are tem-ples all over Genji now, awaiting your sacrament, your sig-nal, to become villages, and then cities. We can give them back all that they lost, thousands of years ago.”

Kammer stopped three meters from the closest rack of skins. Three immature himatid skins—the upper portions of the whale, that is, less, skins than flensed plates of tis-sue—lay draped over many crossbars mounted on sticks carefully thrust into the shingles. They were not so much drying as curing; rain had pooled in their hollows and folds. A rainbow sheen glowed around the highlights of the wrinkles.

“My God,” Kammer said, raising his hands, dropping them.

“I beg your pardon?” Carnot said. He lifted his own arms tentatively, as if following some ritual gesture. “What have they done? What are they doing?”

“Is there something wrong?” Carnot asked.

“These are the creatures in the sea. The brave beasts.” Kammer fingered his snug, then ripped away a patch of it and offered it for Carnot’s examination. Carnot stepped for-ward, saw the layering in the snug, the way it writhed in Carnot’s fingers like something with its own independent life.

“I see it now,” Kammer said. “I’m doing the under-standing now, the standing between. There’s real ignorance here, all forgotten, all abandoned.... Real evil here! Sadness!”

“Yes,” Carnot said, enthused, bobbing his helmeted head. “You need to stay here and teach them, complete the link with Chujo.”

“They were slaves!” Kammer screamed at him. “They don’t want the Masters here! They were used like

They did the ... He could not finish. “And now they have their revenge. All the work of the Masters, all the planning, the genius ... “

He shook his hands at the racked skins. “My God, my humanity!” Kammer reached up and tore a long strip of snug from his face. Blood trickled from raw pink skin be-neath the thickest patches of snug.

Carnot turned, confused, and saw forty, fifty, sixty Ihr-dizu coming in a broad line down the beach toward them. The other hurnans were pushed close to their ships by burly females armed with Henning knives and clubs. He saw Madeline and Lin-Fa making broad gestures, Madeline bowing and raising her arms in fear and frustration, to no avail. ‘Mr. Kammer,” he said. “We must be careful. We should go back now.”

Kammer threw the ripped snug onto the shingles and reached his hands out to caress the ragged edge of a skin. A dense cloud of scent rose from the skin, and he inhaled. “The small young, the mobile ones. I’m remembering now.

“They are trained by the Ihrdizu, they work with the Ihrtlizu, some of them,” Carnot said. “I think there’s going to be trouble—”

“And the old ... He passed between the first few racked skins, to stand beside a huge skin, some fifty meters long and twenty across, like a mountain range in miniature: shiny black and green, dead. He touched this skin and more scent rose, and he screamed again. Up the beach, the Ihr-dizu doubled their pace.

“Mr. Kammer,”. Carnot said. “Please...

Kammer kicked out at the nearest pole and smashed his foot. Oblivious of the pain—if indeed he felt any pain—Kammer tried to pull the skin from the rack, but it was far too large, too tough, too heavy.

Now the scent of the skins came through Carnot’s helmet, through the oxygen-intake filter, and it was strong, and it made his eyes sting.

The horde was upon them, in a clearing surrounded on one side by immature skins, on the other by the single huge skin. They circled Kammer and Carnot, singing in their dreadful manner, feet pounding the shingles. Camot’s translator did not work well; it hummed and squealed al-ternately. Kammer ignored them, struck out with his staff at one close female, hit her on the crown between her upper eyes. The blow must have been slight, but she fell to the shingles nonetheless, and writhed there, foam pouring from her mouth.

“No!” Camot screamed, horrified. “We must go back! Kammer, no!”

“You goddamned butchers!” Kammer shouted, strik-ing again at another. The Ihrdizu went down, rolled over, kicked its legs in the air. “They’re the ones! They’re the ones, and you’re killing them!”

Again and again he struck out, and more females fell to the stone beach, not dead, perhaps not even injured, but motionless, Carnot had a horrible realization that this was ritual and he did not know its, purpose, or its end. He was seeing lights dance now, streamers of color surrounding the prostrate Ihrdizu, Kammer. He was having a revelation. He did not want a revelation now.

“Stop!” he cried, but his helmet muffled him. “Stop this, for the love of Christ!”

“We are judged!”

The Ihrdizu song reached a pitch, repeating this phrase again and again, and he heard the translation.

He was on his knees, then on his hands and knees. Strong limbs grabbed his helmet and ripped it away, seals separating, baring his skin. His nose began to bleed. The residual hy-drogen and helium in his lungs turned his screams into squeaks. He heard nothing now but a roaring. He saw Kam-mer with wings, the Ground of All Being a buzzing many-caverned hollowness behind, the face of Jesus rising from the clouds, approving, his nose bleeding.

“We are judged!” the Ihrdizu females cried, lifting Carrot above their heads. Naked, bruised and torn, blood dripping onto the shingles, he was carried, around the giant himatid skin, and then propped against two poles erected in the shingles. His head lolled; he looked with pain-glazed eyes on the Boschian monsters dancing around him, his back a single-splintered lance of pain, his shoulders loose under the burden this world imposed, his hands scraping against the rocks. One arm was mobile; with it

,

he picked up a flattened stone, tried to throw it at one of his tormen-tors, but his head lolled to the opposite side. He considered the death of Christ and the return to the Ground of All Things, which he could feel so clearly, his soul leaking below the Planck length, all things being equal there and fertile and unexisting. The stone rolled from his hand.

“Kill the judges!”

Tatsumi heard this cry, and wept; she knew this ritual. She knew its finish. Expiation for the act of hunting the himatids. Cleansing and renewal; rejection of the ultimate judgment, for the whalers were whalers, and must continue, but they must feel shame, they must face judgment. She could not see Kammer or Carnot, but she saw the stones filling the air like a cloud.

After just a few minutes, the Ihrdizu around her strag-gled away, leaving her on her knees, unharmed.

All the Ihrdizu, females and males, returned to the high shelter pla-teau, mounted the steep stairways, and were gone from the beach. All that remained were the skins; she still could not see Carnot or Kammer.

Dr. Hiraiwa helped her to her feet. He could not wipe the tears from his eyes, behind his faceplate.

Dr. Nogura stood a few paces away, repeatedly striking his hip with one hand and cursing in Japanese and English, a continu-ous, meaningless stream, interlaced with “Not again. Not again.”

Tatsumi knew he was remembering the deaths on Chujo, years past.

It was not fair, but she could not keep the thought from her head: now damned English rational Philby had what he wanted all along.

Edward Philby walked along the beach, between the soaked and ruined skins, in the presence of mystery. A Genjian night had passed, with rare clear skies and Chujo high in the murky heavens, and this was the middle of the next day.

They had broken free of the storm, flying out in a sudden calm. The storm had bypassed this shore; the whale skins had been abandoned to the storm’s powerful tides, however. The tides had washed them inland past the high embankment and walls, ground the skins with their racks onto the greater rocks and matted, thorned vegetation be-yond, dragged them back to the low-water mark and wrapped them around the remaining racks and poles.

He had seen Carnot’s body, retrieved by Nogura and Tatsumi.

But for a patch of soaked and dead snug, there had been no trace of Kammer. The Ihrdizu would not come down from their shelter, nor would they let anybody in; he had tried to enter and had been repelled by fierce females at the gates, screaming and wielding flensing knives. The females had scored

,

their long horizontal thoraxes and legs and were bleeding profusely.

This was not what he had wanted. He had seen sense-less accusation in Tatsumi’s eyes, and it burned; this was not what he had wanted, but it was what he had feared.

The odor rising from the demolished skins reminded him of Kammer’s smell. Odor of sanctity. He sniffed and adjusted his filter to reduce the smell, but not before he saw flashes of color. Kammer stood on the beach beside him, drowned, dead-looking. Then Kammer was not there.

Philby shook his head and cursed. The carpet-whale smell was drugging him, making him see things.

That, had to be the explanation. He backed away, trying to keep his calm, finish his analysis.

An hour before, the silent Japanese woman had given him copies of tapes. In his own transport, he

,

had watched and listened to the recordings made by Tatsumi’s cameras. He had boosted the audio and replayed Kammer’s last words. He had magnified the last few moments of Carnot’s existence, and seen what he thought was Kammer—an en-hanced but still-blurred image—wading into the sea beyond the Ihrdizu horde and the carpet-whale skins.

Philby shook his head, beyond sadness. He knew what would happen next. Word would spread among the Ihrdizu, from village to village. It would reach Carrot’s temple sites. The story of Carnot and Kammer, who had received their martyrdom and apotheosis, would spread; how far, who could say?

Ultimately, it might fade, for it was alien, and the Ihrdizu might have cultural immunity.

Kammer’s last words echoed in his thoughts as Philby retreated from the ruined racks and tide-scattered shreds of himatid skins. He had called the Chujoans “Masters,” but with special meaning.

Kammer had surmised something, or confirmed some-thing. and had made a discovery on the beach.

What had he discovered or confirmed? His words were, tantalizing but not at all clear. “They’re the ones. They’re the ones, and you’re killing them!” Surely he didn’t mean the carpet whales?

Thompson’s footsteps on the shingles brought Philby out of his reverie.—The Japanese investigation team has arrived; they were caught in another arm of the storm and delayed. They’re holding a conference soon, and Tatsumi wants to... talk with you.”

Philby nodded. She would not be pleasant to face. She saw herself as caught between two stones, dead Carnot and live Philby, who in their battle had provoked the Ihrdizu in ways neither could have specifically predicted but anyone could have intuited.

One last shred of skin lay on the upper beach. Ad-justing his filter to reject all Genjian atmosphere for the time being, he stooped to pick up the shred with his gloved hand. In Genji’s higher gravitation, it weighed ten or twelve kilograms, water-soaked. Examining its layers, running his gloved finger along the divisions of tissue, feeling the thick vascular tubes between the layers, he shivered as if engaged in some blasphemy.

Neck hair still on end, Philby lay the shred gently, reverently, on the wet gray stones. He slowly pushed to his feet, scanned the empty sea, and followed Thompson up the beach to the Japanese transports.

Tatsumi awaited him, polite and very, very cold.

language

by Poul Anderson

“He’s crazy,” they warned her at Okuma Base. “Buried his wife ten years ago and been a hermit since.” They meant Earth years, of course. Under the guise of practicality, did they cling to each possible reminder of the world that few among them would see again, or ever? “Ask any of the pilots who’ve flown there. Don’t go there alone.” You, a woman, they implied.

“I’m supposed to find out whether support for his re-search should be continued,” Rita Byrne reminded them. “That involves staying a while. You can’t spare two people that long. Also, Ell do better without a third party cluttering the scene.”

As shorthanded as the scientific enterprise was, and the damned mystics claiming more and more of its scanty resources, nobody argued much with her. Besides, Malchiel Holden was, at the very least, eccentric and irascible; but he’d scarcely get violent, would he? Nonetheless, Byrne felt glad that a flyer’s outfit included a pistol, against the oc-casional carnivore that didn’t know it couldn’t digest hu-man flesh.

The caliber was only .22, but the slugs were explosive.

Wishing to reach Farland fairly early in the morning, she took off about midnight. The mountain bleakness, little relieved by scrub growth and huddled buildings, turned into grandeur as she rose above it, crags, peaks, gorges dappled white by snowfields and glaciers. Nearly full, like a huge tawny moon mysteriously emblazoned, Chujo turned the cloud deck over the lowlands into a sea of milk washed with pale gold.

After she leveled off, however, it was just to purr along on robot for almost thirty hours, nearly halfway around the globe. She ate a meal and sought her bunk. Always grab a chance to rest. Born and raised on Genji. she handled herself readily enough, but her kind had evolved to weigh two-thirds what it did here.

Murasaki rose, broad and fulvous. Chujo, already wan-ing, seemed abruptly dim against the sunlight.

The com-panion planet fell beneath the horizon. Still the aircraft flew, under a plum-dusky day sky, over the ocean that cov-ered starside. When the hemisphere’s single continent ap-peared, multitudinously yellow, through rifts in the overcast, Byrne had been through a full circadian cycle. She had occupied her waking hours by accessing data on her goal for review, together with background music, and felt entirely.

fresh.

Taking the pilot’s seat, she switched to manual control and slanted downward. Once below the clouds, she com-pared the map display with what she saw. Gray, green, purple, foam-streaked, the waters marched from the west to break in monstrous cascades and geysers on land that here-abouts reared granite cliffs against it Flying on throttled engines, she caught a murmur that was the roar of yonder surf. A canyon, cleaving the shore, made a fjord, protected by outlying skerries. Magnifying in a viewscreen, she spied houses on the heights and vessels tied at a floating dock. Yes, that would be the Gash. Given all the uncertainties still plaguing navigation, her robot had done well. Then Rockridge lay about ninety kilometers south. She swung in its direction.

Most names on the map had been bestowed by Hol-den over the years—some, Byrne supposed, by his wife before she died. Who better, indeed who else at all, when a handful of people were trying to know an entire world? Certain names were obvious attempts at rendering Ihrdi-zuan ones; others were probably translations into the man’s native English; others might be personal creations, bearing what freight of memories? Suddenly, more sharply than before, Byrne realized how ignorant she was, even of this small and detached undertaking that she was to pass judgment on.

Ringed by sheer hills, Gunnunggung Bay glimmered sixty kilometers from north to south, forty from west to east. Islands dotted it. There were more in the sea outside, and countless rocks and reefs. White fury churned among them. That, and the narrow strait that was its opening, kept the bay reasonably calm, at least in fair weather. Turbu-lence did roil about its holms, and at the north end where a great brown river emptied. The tide appeared to be just past high, ebbing rapidly. Rock and mud, down which wa-ter foamed, made a rim of darkness under the xanthous vegetation that covered the upper slopes. Wildlife was abundant, wings storming in their thousands above swim-mers that grazed mats of pelagic weed_

Rockridge Thorp clustered atop the highest hillcrest at the eastern shore. A windbreak of squat trees surrounded a dozen beehive-shaped homes and as many hemicylindrical utility structures. Building materials were stone, brick, tile. Perhaps no fire-resistant wood grew in this part of oxygen-rich Genji; Byrne recognized yet another gap in her infor-mation. The human dwelling was unmistakable, a boxy metal T-shape equipped with air locks and glass ports. Steam vented from the power plant in one crossarm. It stood about a hundred meters outside the settlement. A tar-and-gravel spot nearby must be the landing place.

As she descended, Byrne glanced west. The coastal range fell away in rolling valleys. She glimpsed roads that connected other communities, plowland, pasture, lakes and marshes devoted to the more important aquaculture, mills and smithies gathered smoky near a rninehead. How many centuries since the first Ihrdizuan explorers discovered Far-land, the first colonists followed? They were still rather isolated and primitive here.

She came down vertically. The engines hummed to a silence through which beat the noises of the water, a kilo-meter or more distant but carried loud. She unharnessed, fetched her mask, donned it and snugged it tight. This was the newest model. A headband formed the casing of the little motor and contained both pressure-reduction intake and forced-draft exhaler. A retractable rocker arm enabled her to run the unit by hand, should its battery give out and no replacement be available. Air at three bars is inadvisable for humans to breathe. Molecular adhesion along the edges held a self-cleaning blinkie visor and the stiff fabric beneath to her skin, while allowing enough play to leave her mouth free. There she could insert a stopcocked drinking tube or push solid food through a slit whose cling prevented any significant amount of gas from entering.

Ihrdizu scuttled from the thorp toward the jetplane. Their big, torpedo-shaped, sleekly blue-gray bodies lent a touch of familiarity to the foreignness encompassing her. The four eye sockets around each mouth were telescoped outward and the snorkel trunks pointed straight ahead, as if reaching for maximum sensory input. Both three-digited tentacles waved to and fro. Tail flukes flapped. Excitement, oh, yes.

A servomotor opened the door for her. Outside air gushed in. Her ears twinged for a moment before adapting to the higher volume of sounds. Heat and damp enveloped her, They weren’t too bad, here beside the ocean, and she was used to odors that newcomers found rank. In fact, a clean tang blew off the bay.

She climbed out. The Ihrdizu arrived. They stopped a short way off and stared. A female waddled forward, to sit upright on hind legs and tail while offering a forepaw. “Welcome.” She coughed. Byrne could barely understand the dialect. “1 am (harsh noise). But to him I am—” Did she really say

“Wilhelmina”? She added,—You call us what you want. How can we help?”

Touched, Byrne shook hands. Clumsy though it felt to her, the paw had enough dexterity to work effectively in conjunction with the tentacles. am Rita,” she replied. They could come closer to voicing that than her surname. She wondered if they perceived any individuality in her. Already she saw their differences from each other, but she had known many Ihrdizu. These were familiar with no human but Holden. The supply pilots came seldom and briefly. Did the Rockridgers identify her as a slender young woman, with black hair and blue eyes, or were all her kind alike to them, except the one?

She forced forth the best, crude approximation of Gen-jian sounds she could make. “Where is the male who lives here?”

Wilhelmina followed her better than she had antici-pated. “You are female? Do you seek a mate?

That would be good. His is long dead.” A tentacle pointed. Byrne saw a crudely chiseled slab behind the house, doubtless the wife’s headstone. “He has gone to his (whistling noise; must mean “himatids”) as he always does, most days more than once and often at night. You wait.”

Byrne needed a while to work out what that had meant. Then she couldn’t help laughing. “Is it a match-maker you’d be?” she asked in English. Wilhelmina and the rest stiffened a bit. Maybe they thought she made fun of them. Byrne hastened to stumble on in their language. “No. I do have business with him, I will stay a while, but then I go back.”

Mate... She’d avoided any real ties so far. For a mo-ment she wished Carlos Villareal were at her side.

Somebody in the group hooted. “Och-h’ng, he comes,” Wilhelmina exclaimed. “He must have seen your boat and turned back.” It seemed the locals referred to Holden exclusively by the pronoun. In northeastern Nigh-land that was a mark of respect,tut farther south it implied coolness, emotional distance. Which, if either, was it here?

Holden had evidently been on a trail downhill to the water. The strides were long and quick that bore him up to the ridge. They wasted energy; but they gave outlet to an-ger, Byrne thought. She braced muscles and spirit. If he tried to browbeat her, he’d make a bad mistake.

When he reached her, he loomed. Shabby coverall and worn deck shoes covered a rawboned height. His pressure container was outmoded, a transparent globe on a collar gasketed to chest, shoulders, upper back. Fitted with wipers, defogger, and sound amplifiers, it had provision for a water tube but none for eating. On the other hand, a long snorkel, now coiled around the rear-mounted pump, allowed him to stay submerged. Gray hair and beard bristled on the head within. The nose was bladelike, eyes bullet-colored, skin furrowed, leathery, but even more mushroom-white than that of most Nordics, Celts, and Slays on Genji.

Byrne reached out her hand. “How do you do, Dr. Holden,” she said. “1 am—”

He ignored the gesture and snapped her greeting across. ‘1 know. They phoned me you’d arrive this eve-ning. Why didn’t you? I’m not ready.”

Byrne told herself that she shouldn’t let him anger her. “I’m ,sorry. It happened I completed another mission un-expectedly early. Rather than stay idle forty or fifty hours, I thought you, too, would like me to begin here at once.” She couldn’t refrain from adding, “My services are much in demand, you know.

We’ve a great deal to do on moon-side, and not many people to do it.”

“Well, the result is, you’ll cool your heels till sun-down or later. I’m not about to stop and talk. The research opportunity today comes once in ten or fifteen years.” Doubtless he meant swings of the planets around Murasaki: in other words, about two or-three Terrestrial. “All right, get yourself settled in the house. The croakers will unload and store the supplies. You did bring what I ordered, didn’t you?”

“Yes.’’ She was sorely tempted to point out that fur-ther shipments might well depend on his conduct toward her. But no. If he’d forgotten what common courtesy was, that ought to be his problem alone.

“What are your im-mediate plans... may I ask?”

“To observe, inquire, and not stand here chattering any longer.” Holden glanced at the Ihrdizu. “Karl, Otto, Friedrich, see to my goods.” He barked it in English. “This person will take care of her things.”

Impulse burst up and congealed into decision. “One moment,” Byrne said “Why don’t I come with you?”

Surprise became scorn. “You’re not prepared, that’s why. I tell you, this is an important day. I can’t waste it dragging your weight around. And if you drown or some-thing stupid like that, it’s my ass will be in the teeth.”

Byrne rejoiced at having reason to put a whiperack in her voice. “For your information, Holden, I’ve retrieved everything you ever put in the main database, I’ve talked with the pilots who’ve flown this route, and my whole ca-reer has been in the Exploration Corps. Did you think they’d send a schoolgirl to evaluate your work? Let me grab some rations for myself, and the two of us can com-mence our mutual business. The sooner begun, the sooner done, correct?”

For a second he glared. Then, shrugging: “We’ll try it. Bring food for forty-eight hours; we may not get back till after dark. Life jacket. Sleeping bag. Warmer clothes than you’re wearing, and several changes. It’s cold on the water, and you’ll be drenched repeatedly. You’ll have to separate out your stuff when we return. The croakers will put everything in the storerooms. Quick, now!”

She sought the aircraft and did what was needful in a few minutes. Show that bastard. Strap the pistol back on over the new outfit; opposite it hang a Sony audiovisual recorder the size of her hand.

Lash bag to packframe, stuff everything else inside, slip arms through straps, secure the bellyband, step forth again. “Quick enough?”

Holden stopped pacing. Most of the Ihrdizu were gone. They had work of their own. Three males lingered. “Get busy,” he told them, and set off.

Byrne took pleasure in matching his pace, burdened as she was. She could spare breath for speech, too. “Aren’t you pretty arrogant with them? And that word ‘croaker’—we don’t consider it polite.”

“You’re not at Okuma Base, and those aren’t your hangers-on.” Fre didn’t look at her. Admittedly, you’d bet-ter watch your step on a downslope. Carelessness broke a lot of bones. “Here they respect power.”

Beneath the mask and the tropical air, she felt her cheeks heat. “The power belongs to our administration and council, sir. We do not use it for bullying. A few thousand people on an entire planet, two decades from Earth, can’t afford to antagonize the inhabitants.”

“Did I ever scream for help? I’ll protect myself.”

“I’m here, among other things, to find out what kind of relationship you maintain. If nothing else, future gener-ations of us will be dealing with the Farlanders.”

“God damn it, I don’t abuse them! Did they seem terrified? You don’t know how often I’ve forced myself to stay my hand—But not against the Rockridgers. I tell you, we have a perfectly reasonable arrangement. They’ve come to count on the tools and materials I requisition for them. In exchange, they assist me when I need it. But they are slobs. I have to make it quite clear to them, in as few and simple words as possible, what I want, else nothing would get done right.”

“English words?”

“They’ve learned. Why should I ruin my throat man-gling their language? Besides, it’s hopelessly vague and long-winded.”

“You’d come to know them better.”

“That isn’t what I’m here for. My purpose is to dis-cover something about the himatids, remember?”

“You could at least show the Ihrdizu the respect to address them by their proper names.”

“They don’t mind. My wife bestowed them. She was German. Those were pet names she gave them, and they knew it. She... liked them.”

As you don’t, Byrne thought.

“We named individual himatids, too, according to a different system, and I’ve continued that,”

Holden went on. “Sheer necessity there. How could a human keep a set of clicks and twangs straight in his mind? Not that I believe they have any concept corresponding to anything we’d rec-ognize as nomenclature.”

“So you’ve reported. But have you considered the possibility that an individual may use a variety of different names according to circumstances, and frequently drop some or adopt new ones? It was the practice in Japan of the Heian period.”

He gave her a brief regard. “You really have studied my work,” he said slowly, “and thought about it.”

“How else could I judge what you’re doing?”

His voice hardened. “Yes, I tried to analyze my data on the theory you mentioned. Failure. You think the ... Ihrdizu are unlike us. Compared to the himatids; they—and those Chupchup vags—are our kissing cousins. Look sharp, now!”

Byrne obeyed. They had reached steepness. For a while the trail switchbacked among stiff yellow bushes that rattled in the wind. At high-water mark, the hillside turned into what was nearly a cliff. Only bare rock remained, un-der a blackly gleaming layer of ooze. Seaweed, dead ieh-thyoids, shells, less identifiable debris littered it. Flying creatures strange to her wheeled and whistled in their hun-dreds, landed to feast, flapped off again in alarm. Water ran down every channel. Close to receding sea level, it made a stream, centimeters deep, of the path the Ihrdizu had carved. Unhampered, they could climb freely about, but here they generally carried loads. It was well that they had corrugated the surface.

Holden went ahead, often halting, ready to help Byrne. She picked her way cautiously. De-spite the breeze, sweat soon dripped off her skin. Several times she almost fell. Damn if she’d give him the satisfac-tion, though.

Waves hacked, foam leaped, but there was no surf on the bight. Like the colonists of the Gash, the Rockridgers kept a pontoon dock moored some distance off. They swam to and fro, or used lighters to transfer freight. Several boats were tied up, together with a pair of ships about forty me-ters long. Their rigs were fore-and-aft, gaff-headed; on Genji, you’d best keep your center of action low. Holden’s craft lay closer in, a twelve-meter turbo cruiser with a crane and capstan forward of the deckhouse. When he spoke into a radiophone he took from his pocket, the vessel heaved, its anchor, drew close, and extended a gangplank.

As she boarded, Byrne noticed corroded bronze letters on the bow: EMMA. She nodded at them.

“Your wife’s name?” A possible approach through his hostility.

“Daughter,” he said. “Died in infancy.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It happens.”

Too often among humans on Genji, even where med-ical care was available. Sometimes Byrne wondered why they were on the planet, what sense it made. Yes, yes, the historical reasons, science, prestige, politics, superstition: quite a few people came voluntarily, though they knew it would be a one-way trip, hoping for freedom or challenging work or whatever they hoped for; the old reproductive in-stinct whispered, “Under these conditions, children = the fastest means of increasing our numbers =

improved chances for bettering our lot”—yes, yes. But were they actually just building new pyramids, waging a new Cru-sade, investing their dreams in a-new cargo cult? Suppose they beamed Home a petition for an end. Suppose Earth was willing to pay the cost of bringing them back.

What the hell was there for her on Earth?

Only one grave behind, yonder house. May the small coffin still have been sound when Holden opened the soil for his wife. Genji lacked the right bacteria and worms to reduce a human corpse to clean bones.

Byrne stowed her gear in the cabin, which was crammed full of apparatus. A locked cabinet held pistol, automatic rifle, and grenade gun. Were there large, danger-ous animals in this vicinity?

She joined Holden in the ample cockpit. He had taken manual control. The cruiser growled swiftly outward. It rocked and bucked in the chop. Spray flew over the bows. Gunmetal whitecaps ran to the western steeps and the gate between them. Wind skirled, as chilly as he had warned. Clouds swept low and gray upon it. Occasionally a sun-beam struck through and flared off a patch of water. In this weather it was red.

“You did remember to put on your life jacket,” he grunted.

She sat down on the starboard bench beside the wheel and drew a long breath. “Why do you act like this?” she demanded. “I’ll try to enter a fair report in spite of your insults, but you could make things easier for both of us.”

He peered straight ahead. “Should I pretend I’m over-joyed? I’ve lost the knack of pretending. But no, I didn’t mean any insult. I’m only trying to speak frankly and clearly. Don’t be so thin-skinned.”

She clung to her patience. “I can understand if you’re piqued at having, the value of your work questioned. Well, nobody denies that what you, and your wife accomplished was extraordinary. You pioneered whole new fields of science.”

He barked a laugh. “Indeed? When you don’t recall her name?”

“Jesus Christ!—Uh, I’m sorry. It escaped me. Can’t you see what a shipload of information I had to acquire in a short time, if I was to do my job right? They thought about sending a fellow scientist who might better talk your language. But as you yourself remarked, the himatids are so different from the Ihrdizu. Nobody was professionally qualified except maybe Li Yuan, who’s old and frail. All the others have their hands full, anyway. And then, we’re concerned about more than just the science. Relationships with the autochthons, for instance. In the end, they settled on me. I’m ... a kind of generalist.” She waited a little before adding, “We’re stuck with each other. Let’s make the best of it.”

“Why must they send anybody? What’s the complaint been?”

“You know perfectly well. No complaint. Certain dis-turbing hints the pilots brought back. A couple of them speak fluent Ihrdizu and managed some conversation with the Rockridgers. Your overbearing attitude. Your outright threats against the community to the north, in the Gash. We want to forestall any possible trouble.”

“I told you,” he rasped, “I get along with the Rock-ridgers. I don’t fawn on them, as apparently a lot of you moonsiders do on your croakers, but we get along. As for the Gashers, don’t you realize that they still hunt himatids? They gave up enslaving calves two or three generations ago simply because it no longer paid. Instead, they ate them. Not a one left there. They go after wild calves along un-colonized shores and carpet whales at sea.”

“Is it that important? Oh, I know the arrival of the Ihrdizu was catastrophic for the himatids, but the horrors were phasing out already before humans reached Murasaki.”

“Not because of any goodness in croaker hearts. En-slavement became uneconomic. It’s easier for the Rock-ridgers to get their local himatids to do odd diving jobs in exchange for cheap iron knives that soon rust away and need replacement. As for whaling, the Rockridgers never were real seafarers; they just trade up and down this coast_ The Gashers.. they are bold sailors. They like hunting, and the meat.”

“I know. You’ve described it often and bitterly in your reports. But you admit it isn’t a real Gasher industry. They take opportunities, which aren’t common enough to threaten the species. They never hunt in this bay, do they?–

“No. I’d blow them out of the water if they tried.”

“I’ll agree the situation is deplorable. However, we can’t impose our will on beings who do us no harm and outnumber us a rnillionfold and in this case live half a planet away. Besides, Rockridge and the Gash belong to the same society. How would you like it if a foreigner at-tacked neighbors of yours?

How well would you cooperate with him afterward?”

“The Rockridgers would, for the sake of my trade goods. Croakers have rudimentary consciences, if any.”

Indignation snatched at Byrne. “So you say! I don’t. And certainly, humans care. Especially when we know the Ihrdizu are intelligent beings, and it’s far from proven that the himatids are.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Holden said sullenly. “Unless you’d forbid me to express outrage.”

Byrne calmed somewhat. “I’m not accusing you, sir. You asked if there were complaints against you.

I listed certain matters that headquarters feels should be cleared up. I’m sure you can do that. Don’t be so thin-skinned.”

His short-lived grin surprised her. “Ha!”

“The major question—” Byrne broke off.

“Ye?—he prompted.

She sighed. was searching for words. But if you want a moratorium on tact, all right. You know quite well what the problem is. You receive messages as well as send them. Your replies have been...

unsatisfactory. Resources for scientific research on Genji are more tight than ever, what with Chujo studies competing. Your station is a sig-nificant drain on them. A single man, true—but he needs food,

,

clothes, medicines, spare parts, new equipment, everything, first produced, then flown around the globe.

Plus the hazard. You remember, I hope, how Antonio Si, monetti lost his aircraft and barely escaped with his life on a flight to you. You may not have stopped to think what the rescue operation cost.”

“Do you mean that what we do should be cost-free?” he gibed. “If so, I have news for you.”

“Oh, of course the outlays were justified earlier”—she paused for half a second—“when your work was ep-och-making. But what has it become, these last several Earth years? Your reports have grown more and more per-functory, repetitious, concerned with trivial details. Identi-fication of another kind of weed the himatids make rope from. Isolation of another combination of sounds, with clues to suggest it might mean a specific rock at a certain point of ebb tide. Is that sort of thing worth maintaining you, when we could perhaps unravel that wonderful system of kinship among the Flowery Mountain Ihrdizu?”

.

“Which you claim matters more than getting to un-derstand an entire different race?” he snapped.

“Or is it simply easier?”

Abrupt, unexpected sympathy touched Byrne. “I re-alize this has been your lifework,” she said. “But you are growing old, Dr. Holden. And maybe you’re at the limits of what one man, even a young man, can discover alone. Maybe your himatids will have to wait for a proper xen-ological team, someday, that’ll build on what you’ve dis-covered. You needn’t rusticate on moonside, you know. There’s never a dearth of problems to tackle.

“I don’t claim, right now, that that is the case. I’m here to find out what is, and make recommendations. that’s all. Won’t you please help? You’ll find me wide open to whatever you want to say or show.–

“Then pay attention,” he, answered.

She bit her lip and fell silent, gazing about her. Afar she spied a schooner, if that was the right term, that had rounded the northern headland and was bound in the gate. Tiny at their distance, sails spread like wings before the sea wind. Its deep whittering was well-nigh lost in the rush and boom of water close ahead. There a reef lay near a sparsely begrown islet. Waves broke on both, riptides churned and spouted between. And; yes, two himatids were present. One swam in the channel, visible to her as a ribbon that occa-sionally reared up out of the foam. The other was picking berries on the holm. Byrne’s look sought it eagerly. Hith-erto she had seen the creatures only in visuals.

This calf must be rather young; perhaps ten Earth years had passed since it came here from ashore and ceased to be a tad. She gauged by size. The body, a few centi-meters thick, was about two meters long and half a meter wide, a sinuous wet obsidian shading to gray-white on the belly where the many tiny mouths were, each with its claw-tooth. Between the fifteen pairs of flexible arms she made out glints off the eyes. The two arms flanking the blunt point to which the ribbon came remained idle; they could grasp things if necessary, but were specialized for making sounds. Farther back, digits held fast to the slippery surface. The last third was submerged, taking up moisture and dis-solved oxygen. That didn’t matter to Byrne; the ends were exactly alike.

The swimmer lifted itself again and—stared?—in her direction. It was older, twice the size of its companion. After a moment it oscillated toward the boat.

Holden had set the engine to idle and taken an optical from its case beside the wheel. He peered.

“Japheth,” he said. “And, hmm, that’s Ishmael ashore.”

Byrne recollected that he had his own names for them. “How can you tell?” she asked.

He cast her a disdainful glance. “Markings, propor-tions, style of motion and body language. It takes experi-ence, patience, time that can’t be accounted for in any properly academic report.” After a moment he added, think that more than half of himatid communication is by signs. The most important half, at that—emotion, art, what’d give us a little insight into their psychology. How am I supposed to learn it from them, let alone talk it with them? If Okuma would send the equipment for decent sim-ulations—But no, they’d rather bitch at me for not produc-ing more reports.”

“They’ve explained that both the hardware and the program would have to be developed practically from scratch,” Byrne retorted. “If you refuse to believe—Never mind.” Conciliate him. “Yes, you are handicapped. We all are, on Genji. Just the same, you’ve done a remarkable job of getting to know these beings.” Well, it was his obses-sion, his reason for remaining alive. “Seems like that fel-low has something to say to you. Or is it simply curious, or what?”

She saw how the man tensed. “I hope to find out. Get a hint, anyway. They often wait for me here.

At least, I often find some here. I told you this is a special time.”

Her pulse quickened. “How?”

“A pod of carpet whale are passing offshore, bound north, after budding. That’s always a great occasion, like a holy day.” Holden made a mouth. “Except that it isn’t superstitious. This epiphany is real.”

“But how do the calves know? I thought juveniles and adults had nothing to do with each other.”

Contempt flared. “Carpet whales mate, hermaphrodit-ically, when they’ve built up adequate tissue reserves. There’s no fixed time for that, but after they’ve reached these waters and budded off, the young swim ashore to take up life on land. The calves notice the tads coming in. They’re not stupid, whatever the croakers claim.”

Byrne flushed hot. She barely controlled her reply. “I’m not stupid either, sir. If you were dumped down in a totally new environment, a fact or two might fail to pop out of your memory at once. Or do you deny that?”

Was he a trifle mollified? He didn’t apologize, but did say, rather quietly, “1 suspect the cues are more chemical than visual. The new-budded tads are so small, and come in randomly. Himatids give off their wastes through the skin, as liquids and gases, you know; and they appear to sense with their entire bodies. It’s nothing like what you and I experience.”

No. she thought, absolutely not. The whole cycle—Mindless little thing like a caterpillar, prey for every larger animal, but adding neuronal tissue as well as size till it was too big for existence on land. The tough, wary, lucky, min-uscule minority that survived, seeking out tidewater regions where calves dwelt and coming under their wtelage. No concept of family; but the little ones could hunt and gather in crannies where larger, older individuals could not In exchange they got protection, training, education in what-ever passed for tradition among himatids—It wasn’t any-thing a human would ever really comprehend. Did the effort to do so make him, in the end, unhuman? Byrne thought of a mystic striving to know God. But Holden spat on any such ideas.

He pointed. “See that trident Japheth’s carrying?” he remarked. “Pure native work, shell, bone, wooden shaft, rawhide lashing. I’ve never seen a calf with metal when the whales are passing by. Ritual, or what?”

The great form drew alongside and rose above the port rail. Feet braced wide on the swaying cockpit floor, Holden tilted his head back, looking up toward the foremost hands. Byrne had a fleeting fantasy of an ancient savage before some idol, about to make sacrifice. Digits rubbed over tex-tured palms and against each other. Stridulations went loud through wind and water noises. Holden uttered harsh sounds—meant to imitate?—and made gestures. Byrne reached for her recorder.

Odors welled from the himatid. They weren’t offen-sive, they were pungent, bittersweet. Dizziness swooped. Byrne gasped. There’d been something buried in the mass of briefing material, yes, narcotic effect on humans: and here she was, less than two meters downwind.

Holden saw. “Get below!” he yelled. “Quick, before you’re so looped you walk overboard!”

She scrambled. Having closed the cabin hatch, she stumbled to the bow port, opened it, and breathed deep. Her head cleared. The dose had been slight.

But she was stuck here till the himatid left. Holden’s air intake held a chemical filter. He must take it for, granted after these many years. His visitor’s need didn’t occur to him. Well, now he’d better not sneer at her for being for-getful. He didn’t have to cram everything into his head in a couple of Genjian days. No, he’d been told to expect her, if not quite this soon, and make things ready. He couldn’t be bothered. The wretch.

Huddled in racketing gloom, Byrne waited. It seemed long before his voice reached her, faint and dull through the hatch. Nonetheless, she heard the excitement.

“I’m going off with Japheth. It has ... invited me ... to witness something, I think. Sit tight. Don’t fool with the boat. It’ll keep station by itself.”

She let fury flare, though she spoke the words under her breath. When she had finished and emerged, she was alone. The berrypicker had filled a woven basket and de-parted. Byrne settled onto a bench and glowered across the whitecaps. The schooner had drawn nearer.

Time dragged by. The murkiness under the hills grew higher as the enormous tide receded. When the mud flats were exposed, they’d be full of stranded sea life and the Ihrdizu would come down to scavenge. Doubtless they had long since wiped out competing animals. In many respects they resembled humans. Was that why Holden disliked them? He couldn’t reasonably blame them for what their ancestors did to his beloved himatids—to the himatids on which he was fixated.

Not that the creatures weren’t fascinating. What did they think, feel, dream, create? Had such questions any meaning?

Once. Byrne had read about a flurry of enthusiasm on Earth a few centuries ago, for a notion that the cetaceans, the big aquatic mammals, possessed intelligence compara-ble to the human. Facts soon killed it. Was Holden similarly deluding himself? Most Ihrdizu who thought about the sub-ject at all maintained to this day that the himatids were merely clever animals. True, they made simple tools; but other beasts made nests, burrows, traps, artifacts often in-tricate, designs cunningly adapted to ambience. Need the himatids be more sentient than, say, Australopithecus was? That would explain why Ihrdizu who tried—whether as slavers or otherwise—never managed to communicate be-yond the most elementary signals, never got more perfor-mance than a skilled trainer could get out of a dog.

Certainly the himatids had nothing like a brain. How much thinking was possible in that diffuse a nervous system?

Some Ihrdizu did believe the carpet whales, the sex-ually mature stage, attained mystical insights during their long lives at sea. (How long? Unknown.) What was Hol-den’s opinion? Byrne smiled. She could well imagine. On the other hand, could he plausibly claim that the adults kept anything of calf culture, even of calf sapience? Pasturing on equivalents of krill and plankton, too huge for natural enemies except hypothetical disease germs, synapse paths grown fifty or more meters long, wouldn’t they placidly lose whatever consciousness they once had? In truth, they showed scant wits when Ihrdizuan hunting ships came upon them. Harpooned, held fast, they were cut to pieces. Oc-casionally a seine trapped one in shoal water till the tide went out; then the Ihrdizu began eating it while it was alive.

Byrne grimaced. She had seen visuals taken from aloft by early explorers. If Holden hated the cruelty, she agreed, and regretted the infeasibility of putting a stop to it. How-ever, she suspected his resentment was of interference with his research. The more himatids for him to study, the better; and their numbers were shrunken.