PART FOUR

BREAKING THE MOLD

I

Few communities on the planet were more isolated than the settlement at Neesos, a dark-and-a-bright's swim from the mainland. Once the island had been linked to it by a narrow isthmus passable even at high tide, but the Great Thaw had drowned that along with most of its fertile land, and for scores of years it was visited solely by fisherfolk riding kyqs with their trained gorborangs perched on the saddle-branches like dull red fruit. There were still sandbanks, though, and tradition held that in the past such sand had furnished excellent glass. A certain Agnis eventually made an expedition thither and, finding the tale correct, set about producing magnifiers.

However, he did so at a time when a chillward shift in the weather had led to a revival of religion. Made hungry by the failure of staple crops, the folk were as ever victimized by those who, by starving themselves voluntarily, claimed to obtain visions of a higher reality. In truth, so Agnis charged, what they craved was power over others, and they hoped to gain it by preventing the public from directly consulting the Jingtexts, wherein might be sought solutions to all worldly woes... not, naturally, that every humble person might aspire to read the ancient teachings without guidance, for they were couched in archaic symbols, a far cry from the crisp and simple script used for modern messages, and the speech itself had changed almost beyond recognition.

This did not content the relidges, eager as they were to draw down everybody to that mental level where reason was indistinguishable from dreamness. Sight was the first mode of perception to be diminished by famine, as weather-sense was the last, but it was in vain for Agnis to argue that by providing artificial aid he was encouraging the spiritual advancement of the folk. The relidges countered by saying it made them more vulnerable to the rationalist writings now being distributed in countless copies thanks to the invention, by some foreigner beyond the horizon, of a vegetable which could be made to ooze blackish stains on a dry absorbent leaf in exact imitation of any mark inscribed on its rind.

Images had long been fixable, at least in one color; soon, it was claimed, means would be found to reproduce them as well.

Despairing, Agnis gathered his family and a few supporters and made for Neesos with the town's entire stock of burnable wood. The cool phase of the climatic shift, far from enough to reinitiate the Northern Freeze, did not prevent the sky being bright over this region for almost half the year, and when the sun was up its rays could be focused. Using his pilfered fuel, Agnis cast a giant mirror and with it melted colossal quantities of sand. This served to fabricate spyglasses of outstanding quality, such as lured not only fisherfolk but even the all-powerful People of the Sea. Shortly his village was better off than the town its inhabitants had quit, since the latter had little left worth trading for.

Sometimes the settlers found relics of the far past in the shallow waters around Neesos, and they too served for trading purposes, mysterious though their nature might be to the modern mind. In consequence, it was into a community more prosperous than its isolation might have suggested that Tenthag-half a score of generations in direct succession from Agnis himself-was budded in the year called Two-red-stars-turn-blue.

But the community was so small that the People of the Sea were rarely able to trade what they most wanted and needed at Neesos: stock with which to cross-breed themselves. They had sampled every genetic line on the island, and every line, in turn, was already spiked with some of the travelers' ichor.

Long-lived, reasonably content, the folk of Neesos were resigned to budding being rare. It was not until three quarter-score of years had slipped away that they began to notice:

There has been no new bud since Tenthag.

As soon as they realized he was “special” the folk of Neesos started to pamper the boy, which he found no fun at all, for it meant he was forever being prohibited from doing the things the other young'uns enjoyed. The old'uns said “protected,” but it amounted to the same boring thing.

Yet his slightly older companions were contemptuous of his youth, and very shortly there was only one left for him to play with. The rest had gone on to the pretence of being grown-up, although their matings led to no offspring. Tenthag wished achingly that they would, to release him from his confinement in a web of concern.

Still, his father Ninthag was a perennial optimist and, despite the pleas of Sixthon who had budded Tenthag for him and never childed with anybody else, he was happy to turn a blind eye when his son did what in olden times all young'uns were accustomed to-go swimming out of storm-season on the northern coast-along with Fifthorch, who was next-to-youngest.

Here there were beaches sown with rocks defining the trace of what had been Prefs, the port serving crag-beset Thenai in the days before the water-level rose a score of padlongs. Great ocean-going briqs and junqs had unloaded here, revealing marvels brought from half the world away, and sometimes odd bits and pieces that had proved unsalable had been tossed overside before the fleets returned to sea. Young'uns sought for them, trapping as much air as possible beneath their mantles before they dived, in the hope of retrieving artifacts intact. But that had been in the old days. Now only scraps were to be found, at least at any level they could reach.

Nonetheless Fifthorch spent as much time as he was spared from his apprenticeship at the general trade of glassworking, plunging and basking around the northern shore, and perforce Tenthag tagged along. He did not really like Fifthorch, but there was no alternative; he so hated being fussed over and petted by the old'uns.

Eventually, they all assumed, he would fall into the standard pattern of the island's folk, and were its population to die out, someone else would take it over. That was the way it had been since time immemorial, and even though a few stars might turn color, life down here was not expected to alter very much. The age of changes seemed to be long past, bar the occasional shift of weather.

It did sometimes puzzle Tenthag why, if nothing was to change worth mentioning, there should be so many relics of a different past lying just off shore. But when he tried to talk about this to the old'uns they were always busy with something else, and if he voiced his private anxieties to Fifthorch, the latter mocked him, quoting what he had been told by his own father, who despised the Jingtexts.

“The form of now is permanent,” he would insist. “If there were changes in the past, it must have been because what passed for people then were only animals. We were set here by the Evolver to use and exploit the lower orders. Now we know how to do it-we have gorborangs to catch fish for us, we have kyqs to ride on when we put to sea, we eat enough to let us tell reality from dreamness, we live a proper life that must not be disturbed! And nothing can, and nothing will, disturb it!”

Thereat, becoming bored, he would propose a diving expedition, and- not wanting to seem ungracious, nor to become bored himself-Tenthag would once more risk the effect of salty water on his tegument.

He relished the experience of plunging through the ocean shallows, as his ancestors must once have plunged through air from branch to branch of forests now lost beneath the waves, but he could never quite rid himself of awareness of what nightly he saw marked out on the sky. Since he quit infancy and was able to erect himself and raise his eye to the zenith, he had been fascinated by those brilliant spots and streaks... and started to wonder why his elders never paid them any attention except when there were unusual displays, and seemed almost to welcome the dull season-regardless of its storms-when clouds closed over land and sea alike. Did not the Jingtexts refer to changes which...?

But “change” and “Jingtext” were incompatible, they said, one necessarily contradicting the other. If a scripture spoke of change, it must be taken metaphorically, as parable. The year of his birth, when two stars turned to blue, was dated in the manner of a nickname.

And so it went, with Tenthag defeated at all turns, until the year whenafter the world could never be the same.

II

It wasn't kyqs that year which swam into the bay as soon as the spring hail died away, but junqs and briqs far grander than ever had been seen before at Neesos. Moreover, they arrived without the slightest warning.

Led by Ninthag and his deputy, Thirdusk, the folk assembled on the shore in mingled wonder and apprehension. Even the People of the Sea did not boast such magnificent steeds, so finely caparisoned with secondary life-forms. Who could these strangers be?

Very shortly the explanation spread, and generated universal amazement. Those who had come hither were not any sort of common trader, though prepared to pay for what they took; they hailed from a city far to the south, called Bowock, and they went by a name whose roots were drawn from Ancient Forbish, “archeologists”-which some of the more learned of the folk patronizingly rendered into today's speech for the commonalty, making it “pastudiers.”

What they wanted, they declared, was to explore the underwater ruins, and they would offer either food and tools for the privilege, or new kinds of seed and animal-stock, or something abstract known as “credits” which allegedly would give the folk of Neesos privileges in return if ever they were to visit Bowock. Since nobody from here in living memory had voyaged further than the horizon, the latter were turned down at once, but the rest appealed, and a bargain was struck with which the majority of the folk were in agreement. What little wariness remained soon melted when the newcomers exclaimed over the fineness of the local glass and ordered magnifiers, microscopes and new lenses for a strange device used to find relative positions, hence distances otherwise impossible to measure. These they exchanged for the right to deepwater fish caught from their junqs and briqs.

Almost the sole person who continued to grumble about this intrusion was Fifthorch, because the strangers had occupied his favorite area for swimming.

Not wanting to lose his only friend, or what passed for one, Tenthag dutifully agreed with him, even though his pith wasn't in it. He was fascinated by the newcomers, above all because, for people concerned with the past, they had so many new gadgets and inventions at their disposal. They had set up a mainland base, where they were necessarily treating with the folk of the town the Neesans' ancestors had fled from- though time had healed most of the old wounds-and made some sort of connection with it to carry news faster than the swiftest briq could swim. A cable like a single immensely long nerve-strand had been laid along the sea-bed between the two places, and covered over with piles of rock carefully set in place by divers wearing things called air-feeders: ugly, bulging, parasitical organisms bred from a southern species unknown, and unhappy, in these cool northern seas, which somehow kept a person alive underwater. Also they had means to lift even extremely heavy objects, using some substance or creature that contracted with vast force.

Such matters, though, the Bowockers were secretive about. To those who asked for information concerning them they named an impossibly high price. Anyway, there was scant need for such devices here.

Otherwise they were not unfriendly, and came ashore by dark to chat, share food and otherwise socialize; a few of them knew songs and tales, or played instruments, and became tolerably popular. Inevitably, too, there were pairings, but none resulted in a bud, although Tenthag desperately hoped they might. He was tired of being the permanently youngest.

The same problem apparently beset Bowock, though. Now and then the divers, ashore to recover from the toll exacted by their work, would grow confidential after sampling the powerful local araq, and admit that at home there were too few buds to keep up the population, despite contacts with other cities and the People of the Sea. Some went so far as to wonder aloud what they were doing all this for, if in a few score-of-score years there might be no one left to enjoy the knowledge. But they kept on regardless.

What precisely the knowledge was that they hoped to garner from the broken fragments they brought up, the folk of Neesos could not imagine. Little organic material resisted the erosion of salt water; tides and currents had scattered what did endure, like blades, lenses and the burnt-clay formers used to compel houseplants to grow into the desired shape. Within a couple of months most people stopped wondering, and treated the strangers as a familiar feature of the locality.

Tenthag was almost the only exception.

Nonetheless, the day came when some most exciting discovery was made-to judge by the noisy celebrations the pastudiers spent a whole dark in-and shortly afterwards a single rider arrived mounted on a sea-beast such as nobody had ever sighted in these latitudes before. She was unbelievably swift in the water, casting up a snout-wave that broke in rainbow spray, and nearly as large as the smaller junqs, but with a tiny saddle and virtually no secondary plants. She had an appetite of her own, though, and a huge one. Cast loose to browse in the next bay to where the pastudiers were working, she gulped and chomped and gobbled and gulped again the whole dark long. When they were asked about her, the strangers said she was an unpithed porp, specially bred for high-speed travel.

The idea of a porp, even a tame one, in the local waters was not calculated to appeal to the folk of Neesos. Schools of such creatures were reputed to strip vast areas clear of weed and drive away the sorts of fish the folk depended on. However, the Bowockers promised that she would leave again at dawn, carrying important news. What kind of news, they as usual declined to say.

By now there was a feeling among the folk that they should be entitled to a share in the pastudiers' discoveries, and Fifthorch's parents were among the loudest with complaints, although they personally did nothing to cultivate the visitors' acquaintance and laid all the responsibility on Ninthag and Thirdusk. The night when the porp was feeding, Tenthag grew sufficiently irritated by Fifthorch's automatic repetition of his father's arguments to counter them with some of Ninthag's. The result was a quarrel, and the older boy went storming off.

Alone in the dark, under the bright-sown canopy which was as ever shedding sparkling starlets, Tenthag turned despondently towards the beach. He was so lost in a mix of imagination, memory and dream that he was startled when a female voice addressed him.

“Hello! Come to admire my porp? I understand you people don't tame any sea-creatures but kyqs, right?”

Taken aback, he glanced around and spotted the person who had spoken: a she'un only some half-score years his senior, relaxing in a pit in the sand.

This was the rider who had made so spectacular an entry into the bay? But by comparison with the monstrous beast she rode, she was puny! Even erect, she would be a padlong below him, and he was not fully grown.

“We-uh-we don't know much about them,” he forced out as soon as enough pressure returned to his mantle. “Certainly taming porps is a new idea to us.”

“Oh, where I come from there's never any shortage of new ideas! Our only problem is finding time to put them all into practice. Are you going anywhere, or would you like to talk awhile? I'm Nemora of the Guild of Couriers, in case you hadn't guessed. And you are-?”

“Tenthag,” he answered, feeling his courage grow. “And... Well, yes, I'd love to talk to you!”

“Then make yourself comfortable,” she invited. “You've eaten, drunk, and so on?”

“Thank you, yes. We feed well here, and all the better”-he thought of the compliment barely in time-”because of the Bowockers who bring us deepwater fish.”

“Yes, normally you only work the shallows, I believe. Well, here's something from my homeland which may tempt you even if you're not hungry. Try some yelg; it's standard courier ration, but I have more than enough for this trip because my lovely Scudder is so quick through the water.”

What she offered was unfamiliar but delicious, and within moments he felt all temptation to slip into dreamness leave him. He was in full possession of himself.

“I hope I'm not keeping you from your friends,” he said.

“Friends? Oh, you mean the archeologists! No, I don't know them. Anyhow, they're too busy to be bothered with a mere courier. They hadn't finished preparing their reports and packaging what they've found, because they figured I wouldn't be here until tomorrow. But, like I said, Scudder is the record-breaking type... Oh, there goes a beauty!”

A wide and brilliant streak had crossed the sky, to vanish behind low cloud on the eastern horizon. For a moment it even outshone the Major Cluster, let alone the Arc of Heaven.

“There isn't much to do when you're a courier,” she said musingly, “except to watch the weather and the sky. Yet I wouldn't trade my job for anyone's.”

“I don't believe I ever heard of the Guild of Couriers before,” Tenthag admitted.

“Really?” She turned to him in surprise. “I thought we'd pretty well covered the globe by now-but come to think of it they did warn me I was going to a very isolated area. Well, essentially what we do is keep people in touch with one another over distances that nervograps can't span, and transport bulky items which briq and junq trade would delay or damage. That's why I'm here, of course: they found what they were looking for, and the relics are extremely fragile. But you must know about that.”

“I'm afraid they don't talk to us about what they're doing,” Tenthag muttered. “Not even to the old'uns, let alone someone of my age.”

“Oh, that's absurd! I'll have to mention it when I get home. We couriers have strict instructions from the Order of the Jingfired to maximize trade in information. The Guild was originally founded to spread news of the musculator... but I sense you aren't following my meaning.”

By now Tenthag was emitting such a pheromone-load of incomprehension he was embarrassed. Nemora, in contrast, exuded perfect self-confidence and, impressed by her tact, he was shortly able to respond.

“The word is new to me,” he confessed. “Same as-what was it you said?-nervograp?”

“Hmm! No wonder you still only hunt the shallows! But you must have seen the musculators working here, and you could trade something for a brood-stock. They say you make good glass, and-Oh. Never tell me these 'friends' of mine have bought your entire supply for much less useful goods!”

“I believe,” Tenthag answered, quoting what he had heard from Fifthorch, “they've commissioned a whole summer's output.”

“For supposedly dedicated students of the past, they're far too mercenary, then. I'll report that, definitely. Well, a musculator is what you get when you breed a particular type of shore-living creature for nothing but strength-not even mobility, nothing else except the power to contract when one end is in fresh water and the other in salt. You feed it a few scraps, you can breed from it in turn, and you use it for-oh-pumping water where it's needed, lifting heavy weights, hauling a load across a mountain gorge where mounts can't go, and things like that. And a nervograp... But there's one in operation between here and the mainland, isn't there?”

“A way of signaling?”

“Ah, you know about that, at least. That's much newer than musculators, of course-in fact, so new that we're still stringing them overland between cities, and I think this is the first-ever underwater connection. I hope it's being done in time, that's all. We've got to link up everybody on the planet if we're ever to get away.”

There followed a long baffled silence. Reacting to it, Nemora said eventually, “I'm sorry about that. I was just so stunned to realize you had no idea what I'm referring to. Aren't the Jingtexts available on Neesos?”

“Not many people can read them,” Tenthag muttered. “I've never been allowed even to study the language of them.”

“But this is awful!” She erupted out of her sitting-pit in a single graceful surge, and Tenthag had his first chance to see her entire. He was embarrassed all over again. She was perfectly lovely, and there was no way he could hide the exudate that signaled his reaction. Luckily she took it as a compliment.

“Hold that for a while, young'un!” she commanded. “There are some things more important than pairing, you know! You really haven't been told that our sun and all its planets are being drawn into the Major Cluster, and if we don't escape we shall wind up fueling a celestial fire? My goodness, how old are you?”

He had to answer frankly, though he could have wished to pretend he was older. Lying was pointless with anybody who had a weather-sense as acute as Nemora's... and would not someone who piloted a porp single-clawed across great oceans have been selected for precisely that talent?

“I was born in the year called Two-red-stars-turn-blue.”

“Then you really ought to be better informed! Why did they turn blue?”

“People here don't pay much attention to the sky,” he said defensively.

“That's obvious! Well, the answer is this.” Padding up and down, so that her mantle rippled in curves it almost hurt him to watch, she launched into the sort of lecture he had always dreamed of being given by someone older and wiser than himself. “The fixed lights in the sky are suns like ours, but far away. We have records showing that some of them, the nearest, are moving apart; this proves that we're approaching them. I don't mean the ones that move visibly. They're planets like ours, revolving around our sun, and the ones that spill out of the sky are just odd lumps of nothing much which heat up when they fall into our air. But there are too many of them for comfort. We think we're drawing closer to a volume of space where there are so many of these lumps that some must be very big indeed, big as the nubs of comets, and if one of them falls on a city, or even in mid-ocean-! And eventually we think our whole world may be drawn into a sun and go up in another star-turned-blue. The more fuel you put on a fire, the hotter it gets, right? And we don't want to be burned!”

Once more there was a period of silence, but this time it was for reflection. Tenthag felt as though he had been afflicted with acute mental indigestion, but what Nemora had said made excellent sense. Besides, how could someone as ignorant as himself challenge her?

He wanted to ask another million questions, but suddenly one became more urgent than any other. He said faintly, recalling what he had heard about the Bowocker divers, “Just now you told me there were some things more important than pairing. But suppose we don't breed, and there aren't enough people left when we find out how to-what did you say?-escape? In any case, I don't see how we could! First we'd have to learn to fly like cloudcrawlers, and then...”

Speech failed him; he sat dumbstruck.

With a deep chuckle she dropped beside him, so close their mantles touched.

“There are people working on means to fly better than cloudcrawlers,” she murmured. “One of these days I hope to carry the news of somebody's success in that endeavor. But you're perfectly correct. There must be people to enjoy the benefit of what we're doing now. Would you like to pair with me? I guess it may be your first time, and they do say a first tune can be fruitful.”

When she departed after dawn, she left behind a transformed Tenthag, who knew beyond a doubt what he wanted to make of his life. To the dark with glassworking! He was determined to be like Nemora: a courier.

III

Later Tenthag concluded ruefully that if he'd realized how much he had to learn, he would probably have changed his mind. Life on Neesos had not prepared him for the complexity of the modern world, and particularly not for Bowock with its eleven score-of-scores of people, its houses every one of which was different (for the city itself served as a biological laboratory and experimental farm), and its ferment of novelty and invention.

Despite its multiplying marvels, though, which rendered public notice-slabs essential-announcing everything from goods for trade through new discoveries seeking application to appeals for volunteer assistance- there was a taint in Bowock's air, an exudate of anxiety verging on alarm. It was known that scores-of-scores-of-scores of years remained before the ultimate crisis, and few doubted their species' ability to find a means of escape, were they granted sufficient time.

In principle, they should be. Disease was almost unknown here and in other wealthy lands; crop-blights and murrains were held in check; everyone had food adequate to ensure rational thinking; maggors and wivvils and slugs were controlled by their own natural parasites-oh, the achievements of the Bowockers were astonishing!

But Nemora had not taken his bud, or anyone's. His first frightened question, so long ago, so far away, on the dark beach of Neesos, was one which everybody now was asking. Indeed, it had been Nemora's commendation of his instant insight which had secured him his appointment as a courier-to-be.

Hence his excitement at the challenging future he could look forward to was tempered by the sad gray shadow of a nearer doom. He tried to lose himself in training and caring for the porp assigned to him, modestly named Flapper, but even as he carried out his first solo missions-which should have been the high point of his life so far-he was constantly worrying about the folk he had left behind on Neesos, condemned to grow old and die without a single youngling to follow them.

He felt a little like a traitor.

“It is Neesos that you hail from, isn't it?” said the harsh familiar voice of Dippid, doyen of the couriers.

Tenthag glanced round. He was in the pleasant, cool, green-lit arbor of the porp pens, formed by a maze of root-stalks where the city's trees spanned the estuary of a little river. Porps became docile automatically in fresh water, a fact first observed at Bowock when one of them was driven hither from the open sea for an entirely different purpose, and between voyages they had to be carefully retained.

Alert at mention of his home, he dared to hope for a moment that he was to be sent back there. Giving Flapper a final caress, he swarmed up the nearest root-stalk to confront Dippid... who promptly dashed the notion.

“The stuff that Nemora brought back from the trip when she met you: it seems to have borne fruit. You know about the work that Scholar Gveest is doing?”

Tenthag scoured his pith, and memory answered. “Oh! Not much, I'm afraid--just that he's making some highly promising studies on a lonely island. It's an example of information, trade in which has not been maximized,” he added, daring.

But it was a stock joke, and Dippid acknowledged it with a gruff chuckle.

“People's hopes must not be inflated prematurely,” was his sententious answer. “But... Well, we've had a message from him. He believes he's on the verge of a breakthrough. What he needs, though, is someone from Neesos to calibrate his tests against.”

“Why? What sort of tests?”

“You know what it was that they recovered from the sea-bed at Prefs?”

“I'm not sure I do. I-ah-always got the impression I was supposed not to inquire. Even Nemora was elusive when I asked about it. So...”

Dippid squeezed a sigh. “Yes, you judged correctly. I sometimes wish I didn't know what Gveest is working on, because if he fails, who can succeed? But enough of that.” He drew himself up to a formal stance.

“Here's your commission from the Council of the Jingfired, boy. You're to make with all speed for the island Ognorit, and put yourself at Gveest's entire disposal.”

“Did you say Ognorit?”

“I did indeed. What of it?”

“But that's south of the equator, isn't it-part of the Lugomannic Archipelago?”

“You've learned your geography well!”-with irony. “But I've never been into the southern hemisphere before!” “There's a first time for everything,” Dippid snapped, and clacked his mandibles impatiently. “And if what Gveest is doing turns out wrong, it would be a great advantage to have the equatorial gales between us and Ognorit! Don't ask what I mean by that. Just put to sea. You'll find out soon enough.”

It was by far the longest voyage Tenthag had undertaken, and he often wished that Flapper were as swift as Scudder. But each bright-time she pursued her steady way, and each dark she fed and gathered strength anew. She might not be particularly quick, but she was trustworthy, and never turned aside, not even when all her instincts tempted her to run off with a school of wild'uns, or follow a sharq's trail of murder across a shoal of errinq, or flee from the suspected presence of a feroq, the traditional enemy of porps. Little by little he was able to relax.

Cronthid went by, and Hegu, and Southmost Cape, and another day saw them entering the Worldround Ocean, that huge sea where currents flowed around the planet uninterrupted by continental masses. Once it had been different; the Great Thaw had altered everything. Tenthag watched the patterns in the sky change as they drove south, and felt in his inmost tubules, for the first time, that he did truly live on a vast globe adrift in space.

He had to apply all his navigational skills to the correction of Flapper's course; her impulse was to follow odor-patterns and temperature-gradients. He was obliged to ply his goad more often than he liked, but she responded, though she grew a trifle sullen.

Stars he had never seen were their guide now. But he had been well taught, and felt relieved to find his instructors' maps reflected in reality.

Islands loomed and faded, but he ignored them save to check his calculations. Then came a major problem: rafts of rotting weed, each alive with its own population of wild creatures, and uttering pestilential swarms of mustiqs. Someone had forgotten to advise him that it was the southern breeding-season... though, of course, he should in principle have known. Itching, swollen, worried by the way they clustered on Flapper's mantle, he was overjoyed when he raised a squadron of free junqs belonging to the People of the Sea. They were much less pleased than he by the encounter, for they regarded the Bowocker courier service as having cheated them of their ancestral rights; for scores-of-scores of years it had been their sole prerogative to trade in information, ever since the days of the Greatest Fleet created by Admiral Barratong.

Tenthag, though, was empowered to issue certain credits redeemable at Bowock and its allied cities, and some of them ensured the chance of pairing. Like every other branch of the folk, the People of the Sea were growing frightened at the fewness of their buddings, so he was able to convince them to part with a couple of spuderlets. Within half a day Flapper was protected from prow to tail by a dense and sticky web, and so was he; it made life easier to watch the baffled mustiqs fidget and struggle in their death-throes. Also they were a useful adjunct to his stock of yelg, and rather tasty.

Then came a storm.

It blew and poured and pelted down for a dark and a bright and a dark, and when it cleared Tenthag was more scared than ever he had been in his young life. He had clung to Flapper-who seemed almost to exult in the violence of the waves-and his stores were safe under her saddle and the spuderlets had made themselves a shelter out of their own web-stuff, and all seemed properly in order but for one crucial point:

Where had the tempest driven them?

There were islands low on the horizon when dawn broke. It was self-insulting for a courier to ask the way, but there seemed to be no alternative. He goaded Flapper towards a cluster of small barqs putting to sea under the wan morning sky, their riders trailing lines and nets for fish.

When he hailed them, they said, “Ognorit? Why, it's half a day's swim due south!”

Half a day? The storm had done him favors, then! Even the fabled Scudder-growing old now-could have brought Nemora to this spot no quicker!

He was already preening when his porp rushed into a narrow bay between two rocky headlands, and an old, coarse-mantled figure padded into the shallows to shout at him.

“You'll be the courier from Neesos that I asked for! It's amazing that you're here so soon-though I suppose you actually started from Bowock, didn't you? Welcome, anyway! Come ashore! I'm Scholar Gveest, in case you need a name to tell me apart from all the animals!”

IV

The meaning of that cryptic statement was brought home to Tenthag as soon as he had set Flapper to browse-a duty he discharged meticulously despite Gveest's obvious impatience.

Then, heading inland in the scholar's pad-marks, he found himself assailed by hordes of wild creatures. Some leapt; some slithered; some sidled; some moved with sucking sounds as they adhered and freed themselves. Gveest was not afraid of them, and therefore Tenthag was not. But what could they possibly be?

Abruptly he caught on. He recognized them, or at any rate the majority; it was just that he had never seen more than one or two of them before in the same place. Whoever heard of six vulps in a group, or nine snaqs, or a good half-score of jenneqs, or such an uncountable gang of glepperts?

His tubules throbbed with astonishment. Whatever Gveest was doing, it had resulted in a most amazing change of these species' usual habits!

And the house he was taken to, on a crest dominating the whole of the island, reflected the same luxuriance. There were trees and food-plants massed together in quantities that would not have shamed Bowock itself, or any rich city in the north. Suddenly reacting to hunger despite his intake of yelg and mustiqs, Tenthag could not help signaling the fact, and Gveest invited him to eat his fill.

“Be careful, though,” he warned. “Some of the funqi in particular may be rotten.”

Edible food, left to rot? It was incredible! Was Gveest here alone? No, that couldn't be the explanation; here came two, three, five other people whose names he barely registered as he crammed his maw.

Belatedly he realized that his journey had made him sufficiently undernourished to exhibit bad manners, and he quit gobbling in embarrassment, but Gveest and his companions reacted with courteous tolerance.

“You got here with such speed,” the scholar said, “we can't begrudge recuperation time. My colleague Dvish, the archaeologist, informed me that the courier who brought away his precious discoveries from Neesos also surprised his party. The efficiency of the Guild remains admirable.”

Though as soon as they learn to string nervograps from continent to continent, and convey images along them...

Tenthag clawed back the thought. It was bitter for him to admit that, in his amazement at the greater world, he had committed his life to what might shortly become an obsolescent relic of the past. But pretense was useless when dealing with a weather-sense as keen as Gveest's; the scholar must be a match for Nemora, for he was going on, “And despite your worries, there will be need for courier-service for a long, long while. Regardless of the principle of maximizing trade in knowledge, some things are too fraught with implications to be turned loose... yet. That's why you're here.”

Confused, Tenthag said, “I expected to bear away news of some great discovery you've made!”

The party surrounding Gveest exchanged glances. At length one of them-a woman, whose name he faintly recalled as Pletrow-said, “It's not what you're to take away that matters right now. It's what you brought!”

“But I brought nothing but myself!”

“Exactly.”

After a pause for reflection, Tenthag still found no sense in the remark. Moreover she, or someone, was exuding a hint of patronizingness, which in his still-fatigued condition was intolerable. He rose to full height.

“I am obliged to remind you,” he forced out, “that a courier is not obliged to wait around on anyone's convenience. Unless you have data in urgent need of transmission-”

“We sent for you not because you're a courier but because you're from Neesos!” Ill-tempered, Pletrow strove to overtop him, and nearly made it. The air suddenly reeked of combat-stink.

“Calm!” Gveest roared. “Calm, and let me finish!”

Always there was this sense of being on the verge of calamity, and for no sound reason... In past times, so it was taught, only male-and-male came into conflict; Pletrow's exudations, though, were as fierce as any Tenthag had encountered. But a timely breeze bore the stench away.

“We had expected,” Gveest said in an apologetic tone, “that any courier sent here would be fully briefed about our work.”

“Even the chief courier told me he wished he didn't know about it,” Tenthag retorted. “So I didn't inquire!”

“Then you'd better make yourself comfortable, for when I explain you'll have a shock. The rest of you, too,” Gveest added, and his companions swarmed to nearby branches, leaving a place of honor to Tenthag at the center.

Lapsing into what, by the way he fitted it, must be his own favorite crotch, the scholar looked musingly at the patches of sky showing between the tangled upper stems of his house. The fisherfolk's estimate of half a day's swim had been based on the southern meaning of “day”- one dark plus one bright-and the sun had set about the time Tenthag came ashore. Clouds were gathering, portending another storm, but as yet many stars were to be seen, and some were falling.

“Are you surprised to find so many animals here?”

“Ah... At first I was. I wondered how this island could support so many. But now I've seen how much food you have-some of it even going bad-I imagine it's all the result of your research, on plants as well as animals.”

“You're quite correct. It seemed essential to improve the food-supply before-” Gveest checked suddenly. “Ah, I should have asked you first: do you know what Dvish recovered from the underwater site at Prefs?”

“The people who dived there wanted too much for the information,” Tenthag answered sourly. “And since I joined the Guild the Order of the Jingfired have decreed it a restricted question.”

“Hmm! Well, I suppose they have their reasons, but I for one don't accept them, so I'll tell you. During the years prior to the Great Thaw, the people there-presumably having noticed that ice could preserve food for a long time against rotting-became sufficiently starved to imagine that living creatures, including the folk, could also be preserved and, at some future time, perhaps resurrected. Nonsense, of course! But they were so deranged, even after the Thaw began, they went right on trying to find ways of insuring a dead body against decomposition. And one of their late techniques, if it didn't work for a whole body, did work for individual cells. We found a mated pair, sealed so tightly against air and water that we were able to extract-You know what I mean by cells?”

“Why, of course! The little creatures that circulate in our ichor and can be seen under a microscope!”

“Ah, yes-your people make good magnifiers, don't they? Good, that saves another lengthy exposition... Excuse me; it's been so long since I talked to anyone not already familiar with our work.” Gveest drew himself inward, not upward, into a mode of extreme concentration. Frowning from edge to edge of his mantle, he continued, “But that's only one kind of cell. Our entire tissue is composed of them. And even they are composed of still smaller organisms. And, like everything else, they're subject to change.”

This was so opposed to what he had learned as a child, Tenthag found himself holding his pulsation with the effort of paying attention.

“And the same is true of all the creatures on the planet, that we've so far studied. Above all, there was one enormous change, which judging by the fossil record-You know what I mean by fossils?”

There had been few at Neesos, but other couriers had carried examples around the globe, including, now Tenthag thought of it, some from this very island. He nodded.

“Good. As I was about to say: there was one gigantic change, apparently around the time of the outburst of the New Star, which affected all creatures everywhere. We came to Ognorit because it's one of the few peaks of the pre-Thaw continents where many relics of lost animals can be dug up. Better still, some local species endured and adapted. They offer proof that we're descended from primitive life-forms. Marooned on islands like this one, creatures recognizable in basic form on the continents are changing almost as we watch, in order to fill niches in the ecology which were vacated by other species killed off by the Freeze or the Thaw. We mainly haven't changed because, thanks to the People of the Sea, we were protected against the worst effect of those disasters. But even though we don't know how some event far off in the void of space can affect our very bodies, something evidently did. There was a brief period when we were multiplying rapidly, owing to the miscegenation which the Thaw engendered. It served to disguise a terrible underlying truth, but now there's no more hope of fooling ourselves. We are afraid- aren't we?-that we may die out.”

Hearing it put in such blunt terms, Tenthag could not prevent himself from shrinking.

Rising, starting to pad back and forth like Nemora on that distant beach at Neesos, the scholar continued with a wry twist of his mantle.

“Yet for a species that has the power to reason about a doom written in the stars, it's an unjust fate! Have we not thought-not dreamed, but reasoned-about surviving even if our planet goes to fuel a star? Have we not contemplated that destiny since the legendary days of Jing and Rainbow? That's what drove me here to work on my theory... which, I hope against hope, has proved to be valid.”

Calm again, Pletrow said, “You're right, if anybody can be absolutely right in this chaotic universe.”

“Thank you for that reassurance. But we must clarify our reason for demanding samples of a Neesan mantle.”

“Mine?” Tenthag could achieve no more than a squeak.

“Yes, Master Courier: yours. It is imperative.” Gveest turned half-aside, as if ashamed, although his exudates continued to signal arrogant self-confidence. “You are of the only stock on the planet isolated enough to let us make the comparisons necessary if we are to advance our success with lower animals and improve the reproduction of our own kind. We must know exactly what sort of changes have taken place, because we intend to reverse them.”

Tenthag sat stunned. It was as grandiose a notion as he had ever dreamed of, and he was hearing it stated in real time, in real life, as cold potential fact.

He husked at last, “I'm not sure, even yet, what it is you want of me!”

“About as much of your mantle as Pletrow could scrape off with one claw... Ah, but a final and important question: do you recognize this lady as one of your own species?”

Gveest came to a halt directly confronting Tenthag, and waited.

“Of-of course!”

“But I'm not,” said Pletrow, and descended from her branch to stand by Gveest.

“But I could pair with you!” Tenthag exclaimed, beginning to be more afraid than even at the height of the storm on his way hither.

“That's so. But we wouldn't bud.”

“How can you be sure? I know mostly it doesn't happen nowadays, and I myself was the last on Neesos, but-Oh, no!”

Fragments of what he had learned by chance during his time as a novice courier came together in memory and made terrible sense. He waited, passive, for the truth to be spelled out.

Gveest announced it in a rasping voice.

“Here, and elsewhere around the planet, we have tasted the fossil record. We hunted above all for our common ancestors. We haven't found them. What we have found, and the discovery at Neesos was its final proof, is two separate species which evolved in total symbiosis. You and I, Tenthag, can't reproduce without the mediation of that species which evolved with us and gradually took over the role of bearing our young. We must have been in the closest competition, craws of years ago, equally matched rivals for supremacy. One species, though, opted for acceptance of the other's buds, while mimicking to perfection its behavior-as far as speech, as writing, as intelligence! And we aren't alone in this! Why, for example, does one only tame female barqs-briqs-junqs-porps? Those are the malleable, the pliant ones, who adopted the same course as what we call our females, at about the same time in the far past as we were establishing our rule over dry land! We are the highest orders of what some folk are pleased to call 'creation'-though if indeed some divine force called us into existence, I personally would have been glad to give that personage a bit of good advice!”

He was pulsing so hard, Pletrow turned to him in alarm and laid a friendly claw on his back. In a moment he recovered, and spoke normally.

“Well, anyway!” he resumed. “We hypothesize that in the early stages it was approximately an even chance whether implantation of a bud resulted in offspring for the 'male' version, the implanter, or the recipient, whose hormones were provoked into reproductive mode by impregnation and sometimes outdid the invader, thereby budding a female. We know parasitic organisms, especially among jenneqs, which still depend on the host's hormones to activate their buds; sometimes they lie dormant for a score or more of years!

“But at just about the tune the New Star is said to have exploded, wherever and whatever it may have been-I'm no astronomer, but they say it was somewhere around the Major Cluster-something provoked the 'female' species into yet another round of mimicry. It must have been a valid defense technique at some point in the far past, but extending it has cost them and us our reproductive capability. Tenthag, when Pletrow confronted you, were you not shocked at how male her exudates appeared?”

“I was,” said Pletrow before Tenthag could answer. “It's the survival of us all that is at stake. New friend!”-she spoke as she advanced on Tenthag, mantle open in the most intimate of all postures-”do help Gveest! Don't turn him down! I cringe before you and invoke your aid!”

Suiting her actions to her speech, she shrank to two-fifths of her normal height, and bent to touch the courier's pads.

“It is other than my familiar duty,” Tenthag achieved at last. “But I was instructed to put myself at Gveest's disposal absolutely, so-”

Pletrow uttered a cry of joy, and as she rose scratched the underside of Tenthag's mantle, which by reflex he had opened as to greet her. Before he could even react to the trivial pain, the threatened storm broke over Ognorit, and the house's retracted leaves unfolded, shutting out the sky, so as to channel the precious water to the ditch around its roots.

Instantly there was a clamor from the animals outside, for they knew this gift from heaven would result in an explosion of funqi and other food.

“Long ago,” said Gveest, during the brief dark before the house's luminants responded, “there must have been a clash between symbiosis and extinction. Our ancestors preferred symbiosis, so we have to accept it. But the natural system was so delicate, so fragile, that even the explosion of a distant star could ruin it. It's up to us to create a better, tougher one. And this gift from you, Tenthag”-he held aloft the scrap of mantle-skin which Pletrow had passed to him-”may provide us with the information that we need. If it does,” he concluded dryly, “they'll remember you one day as a savior like Jing!”

“And if it does,” Pletrow promised as the luminants grew brighter, “I'll make amends to you for that small theft of your own substance. I want-oh, how I want!-to bear a bud!”

She clutched him to her for a moment, and then the company dispersed, leaving Tenthag alone with his mind in tumult.

V

In its way, Ognorit proved to be a greater wonderland for Tenthag even than Bowock on the day of his arrival there. Never had he seen a place where everything was so single-mindedly dedicated to one common goal. The island was a maze of experimental farms, pens for livestock, streams and rivers dammed to isolate breeding populations of fresh-water fish, salt-water pools above tide-level kept full by musculator pumps... and everywhere there were exposed fossils, revealed when thin sheets of compacted clay or slate had been painstakingly separated. He was able to taste for himself how ancestral forms differed from modern ones, though the faint organic traces were evaporating on exposure to the air.

“If only we left behind something more durable than claws and mandibles!” said Pletrow wryly; to compensate for her irascibility she had undertaken to act as his guide, and was proving an agreeable companion. Gveest, once possessed of the tissue-sample he had asked for, had vanished into his laboratory, barely emerging for a bite of food at darkfall. “Suppose,” she went on, “we'd had solid shells like mollusqs, or at least supporting frames like gigants! But I suppose the lesson to be learned is that the plastic life-forms do better in a changing environment. Once you develop rigidity you're at risk of extinction.”

But aren't we? Tenthag suppressed the thought, and merely requested evidence for Gveest's amazing claim about the male and female of the folk actually being separate species.

Much of what Pletrow offered in answer, Tenthag had already partly grasped. Until he went to Bowock, he had been unacquainted with ideas like “symbiosis” and “commensalism”; however, as soon as they were spelled out in terms of, for example, the secondary growths on a junq's back, he instantly recognized how well they matched ordinary observation. And the notion of plasticity was not at all foreign to him. Since childhood he had known about creatures which seemed not to mind what part of them performed what service. If one took care not to dislodge it from the rock where it had settled, one could literally turn a sponqe inside-out, and the inner surface that had been its gut would become a mantle, and vice versa. But he was astonished by a demonstration Pletrow performed for him with a brollican, a mindless drifting creature from the local ocean, avoided by the folk because of the poison stings that trapped the fish it preyed on. To indicate how far back in the evolutionary chain symbiosis must reach, she carefully peeled one of the things apart, dividing it into half a score of entities so unalike one could not have guessed at a connection between them. Then she tossed food into the pool, and within a day each portion had regenerated what it had been deprived of.

“But if you split them up so completely, how is that possible?” demanded Tenthag.

“Because you can't split them up completely. Enough cells from each of the components enter the common circulation to preserve a trace of the whole in every segment, but they remain dormant so long as suppressor chemicals are circulating too. When they stop, the cells multiply until they once again reach equilibrium. I'll show you under the microscope.”

Sometimes dazed, sometimes dazzled, Tenthag thereupon suffered through a crash course in modern biology. On the way he learned about the invention of musculators and nervograps-a web of the latter, connected to various sensitive plants, reported results from outlying pens and plots and pools-and about the buoyancy of cloudcrawlers, whose gas-distended bladders had furnished the earliest proof that air was not one substance, but a mixture, and about a score of other matters he had previously felt no interest in.

Clacking his mandibles dolefully, he said at last, “And this incredibly complex, interlocking system could be put in danger by something happening out there in the sky?”

“Ridiculous, isn't it?” agreed Pletrow. “Almost enough to drive one back to astrology! But every line we pursue leads us to the same conclusion. Now we think it may have to do with the fact that some kinds of light can burn. You've used burning-glasses?”

“Well, naturally! I grew up with them.”

“But do you realize there are kinds of light too wide to see, and also too narrow?”

After proving her point with a small fire and a black filter that allowed no visible light to pass, yet transmitted heat without any direct contact, she introduced him to mutated creatures from the rest of the Lugomannic Archipelago. This was her specialty, and she waxed eloquent over the creatures she kept in pens on the north shore: vulps, snaqs and jenneqs all somehow wrong-lopsided, or looking as though one end of an individual did not belong with the other, or missing some external organ, or boasting an excess of them. Tenthag found the sight repulsive, and with difficulty steered her away from the subject, back towards the crisis facing the folk.

If anything, what she told him next was even more disturbing, for she illustrated it with cells cultured from his own mantle, and invited him to compare them with those recovered from Prefs-and then calmly took a sample of her own tegument to complete the argument. All his life, like virtually everyone in the world, Tenthag had been conditioned against bringing anything sharp towards his own, or anyone's, body. A claw-scratch, such as she had inflicted on him, was nothing, but the risk of having a major tubule punctured, with consequent loss of pressure, was terrifying; it could lead to being permanently crippled. Among glass-workers this was a particularly constant danger. Yet here she was applying a ferociously keen blade to her own side-to judge by the scars already surrounding the area, not for the first time!

Sensing his disquiet, she gave a harsh chuckle.

“They say Jing's Rainbow was deformed, don't they? It can't be too disastrous to lose a little pressure... but in any case I've had a lot of practice. There we are! Now you can compare one of my cells with one from the female they found at Prefs. You'll notice it's far more like the male's, or, come to that, your own, than it is like hers.”

Struggling to interpret the unfamiliar details exposed to him, Tenthag sighed.

“I'm going to have to take your word for it, I'm afraid. I simply don't know what to look for. Can't you tell me, though, what became of our original-uh-females?”

“There never were any,” was the prompt response.

“What?”

“Females-that's to say, versions of what we're used to thinking of as females-seem to have occurred very early in the evolutionary process. But prior to their appearance, as is shown by primitive creatures like the brollican, the standard pattern was well established: clusters of simple organisms banded together for mutual advantage and shared a circulation, a chemical bath, which controlled the reproduction of them all. That, though, works only up to a certain level of complexity. If I chopped a claw off you, you couldn't regrow it, could you? And reproduction is only an elaborate version of regrowth. But-and here's the main problem-within any single organism there's always decay going on. To renew the stock, without aging, and to evolve, calls for some sort of stimulus, some infusion of variety; what, we don't yet know, but we're sure about the principle. We assume it comes from the use of the symbiotic species, whose chemical makeup is much more unlike the donor's than outward appearance would suggest. Or at least it used to be. Now we're back to the change dating from the New Star, and the latest outburst of mimicry, which seems now to be going clear to the cellular level. At all events”-Pletrow briskened, evading the subject that was closest to her pith-”there never were specific females for the folk. Our species evolved together from that stage, craws of years ago, when it became impossible for either of us to continue providing the necessary variant stimuli from our own internal resources. So to say, we'd become so completely efficient as a single organism that we could no longer be peeled apart, and identity had supplanted variety. Probably you males”-with a wry twitch of her mantle-”were essentially parasitic, but you must have been amazingly successful, or you'd never have attracted such a promising species as us females into dependence!”

Controlling himself with extreme effort, Tenthag said, “If Gveest's research is successful, and his techniques can be applied to-to us, what will it involve?”

“Modification of another permanent symbiote that will survive transmission into our own bodies by way of the food we eat, and then restore the original bud-reaction.”

For a moment the scope of the plan took the air from Tenthag's mantle. Eventually he husked, “But what about numbers? Gveest himself has said it will be necessary to build up the food-supply-that he had to do it here before trying his methods on vulps and snaqs and so on. Suppose we do suddenly find we can produce buds, if not every time, then twice as often as before, five times, half-a-score times: might we not outstrip our resources?”

“Gveest plans to give us new delicious foods. You've tasted some. But in any case...”

She fixed him with so piercing a glare it transfixed him to the inmost tubule, and her voice was like a prong as she concluded:

“Let the future take care of itself! I only know one thing! I mean to bear a bud before I die!”

VI

After so long a delay that Tenthag was afraid he might lose control over Flapper, who should either have departed on a new voyage or been retamed in fresh water, Gveest emerged weary but triumphant from his laboratory to announce he had no further need of Tenthag's presence.

“We've successfully established a reproducible strain of your cells,” he explained. “That will furnish us with all the data we require. You've performed an invaluable service, Master Courier! Permit us, in return, to re-equip your porp.”

“Thank you, but I'm content with the growths that she already bears,” was Tenthag's stiff reply. “Besides...”

He hesitated, not wanting to be tactless to this elderly scholar who was, after all, an uncontested genius and on the verge of a breakthrough which might benefit the whole planet.

Might...

It was pointless, though, trying to elude Gveest's weather-sense. Dryly he said, “You're concerned about the probable success of my work. Pietrow told me. That's why I'm disappointed that you won't let me refit your porp. Now we shall have to signal the People of the Sea and let them spread the first stage of our techniques.”

“I-I seem to have misunderstood something,” said Tenthag slowly.

“So you do, and I'm surprised.” Gveest turned to pad up and down along the stretch of beach where they had met, glancing now and then towards Flapper, fretful at her long confinement in the shallows. “I know as well as anybody that, unless we vastly increase our food resources first, doubling or trebling the rate of budding could lead to dreadful consequences. But we're not the only people who've been working on this problem, you realize. There are outstanding scientists among the People of the Sea, just to begin with, who may be more anxious than we are for personal glorification because their traditional role has been undermined by couriers.”

Tenthag clenched his mantle as the implications struck him.

“You want to start by publishing your methods of improving crops,” he suggested at length.

“Naturally. But the People of the Sea don't keep farms, do they-save on certain islands that they use as temporary bases when the weather's bad? Besides, we landlivers far outnumber them now.”

“Is that true? I had the impression-”

“Oh, yes. We've confirmed it over and over. Harvesting what they're used to thinking of as the inexhaustible resources of the sea, they grew very numerous indeed so long as they were benefiting from the interbreeding that followed the Great Thaw. But little by little their population has dwindled, too. Had it not, would there have been a chance to set up the Couriers' Guild, or a need to do so?”

“I've heard that they no longer recruit as many junqs and briqs as formerly,” Tenthag admitted.

“They aren't there. Those are life-forms almost as advanced as we ourselves, and subject to the same worldwide problem. What we must do is publish news of what we now know how to do to mounts and draftimals-because unproved transport will be imperative-and also to the creatures which our ancestors once used as food.”

He uttered the concluding words softly and with reluctance. Tenthag instantly recognized the logic underlying them, but his inmost being was revolted.

“Are we to go back to the ways of savages?” he cried. “I know folk sometimes do in the grip of famine, but for scores-of-scores of years we've fed well enough from civilized resources-”

“You eat fish and wingets, don't you?”

“Well, yes, but they're as mindless as plants! I'd never kill a land-creature for food-or a porp like Flapper!”

“We may well have no choice.” Gveest was abruptly stern. “We must decide between extinction-slow, but certain-and an increase in our breeding-rate. If we opt for the latter, we must make provision to save ourselves from famine due to overpopulation. Think, think! If twice as many buds appear in the next generation, those raising and catching food will just suffice to keep us all well fed-assuming, as I mentioned, better transportation. But if the figure isn't twice, but half-a-score times more... what then?”

Tenthag's pulsations seemed to stop completely for a moment. He said in an awed whisper, “You think your work has paid off so completely?”

“Think?”-with a harsh chuckle. “Beyond my wildest dreams! I now see how to grow a bud from every pairing!”

“This is because of me?”

“Yes, what we learned from you made all the difference. You haven't seen Pletrow the past few days, have you?”

“Ah-no, I haven't! She said she was busy with some new research, and I'm used to being by myself, so...”

“She, who never took a bud before, has taken mine, and it's a female, exactly as my theories predicted. Now will you let us re-equip your porp? I should remind you: you're bound by the couriers' oath to distribute whatever information you are given, and there are folk the world around who could learn just by looking at what we plan to graft on her a means to multiply a score of different food-plants! We want-we need to have that information running ahead of any news about transforming animals... like us!”

A terrible chill bit deep into Tenthag's vitals, but his voice was quite controlled as he replied.

“It is not, as you point out, my place to act as censor. I'll leave that to the Order of the Jingfired. I'm amazed, though, that you want to send off one courier, not laqs of us! Surely this is something every expert in life-studies ought to hear of right away!”

“All the experts on the planet may not be enough, but if we fail... Who'd care, if an unpeopled globe crashed on a star? We must have seen it happen countless times! Maybe the New Star itself was some such event! Come, bring Rapper to the fresh-water pool on the east coast. She will be tamer there, and you can retrain her while the grafts are taking.”

And, as Tenthag numbly moved to comply, he ended, “But what I said about certain people being able, just by looking, to judge our achievement where plants are concerned, may also hold good for animals and for ourselves. The news you spread will be enough to bring the People of the Sea hither in a year or two. I hope it won't be sooner. The resources of the ocean are no less limited than those of the land, and I greatly fear what would happen were our nomads, already saddened by the fading of their ancient glory, to seize on my techniques before they understood the repercussions. For the time being, therefore, you will be our sole link to the outer world, and Bowock the sole place where all the facts are known.”

“But,” Tenthag confessed to the Council of the Jingfired a month later, “all Gveest's wise precautions went for nothing. On my outward voyage, beset by mustiqs, I had traded Bowocker credits for a pair of spuders, as you know. Returning, I was accosted by the same fleet, and it appears that rumors of Gveest's success had already reached them. I was faced with the choice between redeeming Bowocker credits against new knowledge-which, I respectfully remind the councilors, is the ultimate justification for their existence-or attempting to dishonor them, and Bowock, by making my escape. The fleet consisted of about a score of junqs, and a few were young and very fast. Not only would I have been trapped for certain; my action would have brought the credibility of Bowock into disrepute. I maintain I had no alternative but to honor the Bowocker pledge.”

He fell silent, and waited trembling for the verdict. It was very quiet here in the Grand West Arbor of Bowock; the plashing of waves underpad, where only a mat of roots separated the assembly from ocean ripples, was louder than the distant sound of the city's business. A few bright-colored wingets darted from bloom to bloom; otherwise there was no visible motion beneath the canopy of leaves.

Until the Master of the Order stirred. He was very old, and spoke in a wheezing tone when he spoke at all. His name was known to everyone- it was Iyosc-but this was the first time Tenthag had set eye on him. For years he had been sedentary, like an adult cutinate, incapable of mustering pressure to move his bulk unaided. Yet, it was said, his intellect was unimpaired. Now was the time for that opinion to be confirmed.

“It would have been better,” he said at last, “had the credibility of Bowock gone to rot.”

A unison rush of horror emanated from the company. Tenthag could not stop himself from cringing to half normal height.

“But the courier is only a courier,” Iyosc went on, “and not to blame. It is we, the Order of the Jingfired, who have failed in our duty. We, who supposedly have the clearest insight of all the folk, equipped with the best information and the most modern methods of communicating it, should have foreseen that a solitary courier crossing the Worldround Ocean might be accosted twice by the same squadron of the People of the Sea. Where is Dippid, chief of the couriers? Stand forth!”

Dippid complied, looking as troubled as Tenthag felt.

“We lay a new task on you,” Iyosc husked. “Abandon all your others. News of what can be done, thanks to Gveest's research, with food-plants and-yes!-animals must outstrip news of what can now be done to people! I speak with uttermost reluctance; like Barratong, who forged the Greatest Fleet in the years before the Thaw, and created the foundations of the modern world, I have hankered all my life after the chance to plant a bud... and always failed. Now it's too late. But the notion of two, three, five taking in place of one fills me with terror. Long have I studied the history of the folk; well do I comprehend how, when starvation looms, our vaunted rationality flows away like silt washing out of an estuary, to be lost on the bottom mud! Nothing but our powers of reason will save us when the claws of the universe clamp on our world and crack it like a nut! For the far-distant survival of the species, we should have risked loss of confidence in the credits that we issue. Now we are doomed beyond chance of redemption!”

A murmur of furious disagreement took its rise, and he clacked his mandibles for silence. It fell reluctantly.

“Oh, yes! There are many among you who are young enough to benefit-as you imagine-from Gveest's achievement! But are you creating the farms and fields, the forests and the fish-pens, which will be needed to support the monstrous horde of younglings that must follow? Where would you be right now, if you had to support five times the population of Bowock from its existing area? And don't think you won't! As soon as the word gets abroad that the secret of fertility is known here, won't crowds of frustrated strangers quit the countryside and the service of the sea, and concentrate here to await a miracle? We're none of us so absolutely rational as to have forgone all hope of miracles! Besides, by this time it's beyond doubt that the People of the Sea must have landed on Ognorit and appropriated Gveest's techniques.”

“No! No!” Tenthag shouted, but realized even as he closed his mantle that Iyosc had seen deeper than he to the core of the matter.

The Master of the Order bent his bleary old gaze on the young courier.

“Yes, yes!” he responded with gentle mockery. “And I still say you were not to blame. You weren't brought up, any more than I or the rest of us, to react in terms such as the People of the Sea are used to. We tend to think more rigidly; we draw metaphors from rock and glass and metal, all the solid changes in the world that fire can wreak. Theirs is the universe of water, forever in flux, forever fluid. They will not heed the strict conditions we'd apply; they'll rush ahead as on the back of a swift junq, and exclaim with pleasure at the sparkle of her snout-wave. Yet some of them are clever scientists. I'll wager it won't be longer than a year before we learn that they are trading Gveest's discovery to just those poor communities which are least fitted to fill extra maws!”

VII

And those isolated settlements, naturally, were the ones the couriers must leave to last...

Obeying Iyosc's directive, the Guild mustered in force to distribute Gveest's data concerning food-plants and-against their will-animals that had once been used for food. Scores of volunteers were impressed to make more and ever more copies, enclose them in waterproof capsules, bind them to the saddles of the porps. Meantime the nervograps were exploited to their utmost and beyond; the two which stretched furthest overland shriveled and died. Therefore old techniques had to be revived, so messages were sent by drum, or tied to flighters, or to bladders cast loose on the ocean currents.

“It must have been like this during the Thaw,” Tenthag said suddenly as he, Nemora, Dippid and other couriers readied their porps for departure. Dippid glanced round.

“How do you mean?”

“For the rising waters, put the People of the Sea.”

“Oh, yes!” said Nemora with a harsh chuckle, giving Scudder a final tap on her flank before ascending the saddle. “Eating away at our outlying coasts, while we make desperate shift to salvage what we can on the high ground! I've always been in love with open water, but for once I wish I could be a landliver, doing something direct and practical to stem the tide!”

“There's nothing more practical than what we're doing!” Dippid snapped. “No matter how much land you cultivate, no matter how many animals you help to breed, you can't withstand the onslaught singleclawed! We must alert the world, not just a chosen few!”

“Oh, I know that.” She sounded suddenly weary as she secured her travel-harness. “But I have this lust for something basic instead of abstract! I want to puddle in the dirt and watch a chowtree grow! I want to see more life come into existence, instead of darting hither and thither like some crazy winget that doesn't even drop maggors!”

Her voice peaked in a cry, and to the end of the porp-pens other people checked and gazed at her.

Tenthag, remembering Pletrow at Ognorit, said soberly, “You mean you want a bud.”

“Me?” She shook herself, like one emerging from a swim, and curled her mantle's edge in wry amusement. “No, since you I've grown too accustomed to my solitary life! But what I would like is a bud from Scudder. Never was there such a swift yet docile porp, and now she's old, and I must train a new one to replace her... Had it not been for this emergency, I'd have asked leave to try and breed her with a wild male. Probably it wouldn't take, but I'd have liked to try, regardless. As things are, however-Oh, never mind my dreams! There's work to do!”

And, shouting farewells, she plied her goad and drove the porp to sea.

Watching her go, Dippid said softly, “That's one problem I hadn't thought of.”

“You mean her wanting to raise a youngling of Scudder's as a-what's the word?-surrogate?” Tenthag suggested.

“Exactly. I suspect there may be many cases like hers, as soon as the implications of what the People of the Sea are doing have sunk in.”

“But they don't take porps, only briqs and junqs,” said Tenthag, missing the point. “So even if they multiply-”

“Of course they don't!” Dippid retorted. “Porps are what we couriers have made our own, of all the creatures on the planet! But even before Gveest's discovery, we were looking forward to our own abolition. Have we not envisaged nervograps across the deepest oceans? Have we not heard of means to transmit images as well as symbols? And are there not scholars as brilliant as Gveest working on the idea of actual flight, with gas-bladders and musculators to carry folk aloft? Oh, I know what you'll say to that-I've heard it often from the youngest couriers! Given that our ancestors were flying creatures, we could adapt to the air! Maybe you could. Not me, not Nemora. Yet it would be something to have passed on certain skills, in navigation, for example... But that's not what threatens us now: not simple obsolescence. It's actual disaster, the risk that in two or three generations' time there won't be enough sane folk to make new discoveries, there won't be any news to carry, there won't be any reports to publish, there won't be scholars anymore, but just a pullulating mindless mass, alive enough to breed but not well fed enough to reason and to plan.”

“It cannot happen,” Tenthag said obstinately.

“Don't you mean: you won't admit it's likely?”

Dippid's self-control had slipped. Meantime, silence had fallen over the whole area of the pens, and everybody was listening to the argument. Abruptly aware of anger-stink, Tenthag strove to prevent his voice from shaking.

“Even though I did let the People of the Sea redeem their credits-and nineteen in every score of us would have done the same!-I still say things won't be that bad. It calls for intelligence and planning to apply Gveest's treatment. Without that, our bud-rate will drop back to what it has been.”

“But how long would it take before we could restore our food-supplies? One explosion in one generation would suffice to set us back a score-of-score of years, at least!” Dippid pulsed violently. “Have you not seen the madness due to famine?”

“No, never,” Tenthag admitted.

“If you had, you wouldn't treat what you've done so casually! I saw it, when I was no older than you are now. There had been a crop-blight at the Southmost Cape. You know about that dreadful episode?”

“I've heard it mentioned, yes.”

“That's not enough! You had to be there. I was among the couriers who brought away samples of infected food-plants for Scholar Vahp to study-the same Vahp who taught Gveest, by the way. And the folk were so desperate, we had to land with an escort of prongers because they didn't want us to take even a leaf, even a stalk, infected or not. They were just aware enough to remember that they needed more food, and they were prepared to fight for it. Yes, fight! Tear gashes in each other's mantles, slash each other's tubules if they could! They say everyone's entitled to one mistake, Tenthag, but it's given to few of us to make an error as immense as yours!”

“But I...!”

The attempted rejoinder died away. Turning to mount Flapper, he said humbly, “Only time can judge whether it was as grievous as you claim. Deliver my commission and let me go.”

Memory of the hostility that had overwhelmed him haunted Tenthag until he was well under way. Objectively he knew that he was not at fault-Iyosc himself had exonerated him-but that didn't alter the impact he had had on the lives of his companions in the Guild... and everybody else.

He delayed long before studying his commission, afraid it might be some sort of punishment. On the contrary: the route assigned him was through familiar waters and to familiar ports, and the tour actually concluded at Neesos. Would the People of the Sea have reached his old home before him? He dared to hope it was unlikely. They would have started by selling the knowledge they stole from Ognorit among the islands of the southern and equatorial zones; perhaps they would not get as far as Neesos this summer. He cheered up.

But his optimism faded as he made his assigned stopovers, delivering to the local savants messages concerning plants and animals. Rumor, if not precise information, had outrun the couriers; wherever he called, the folk were impatient to the point of rudeness, and tossed aside his dispatches.

“We want to bud!” they shouted. “We want Gveest's secret of fertility! There are five-score fewer of us than this time a score of years ago!” Or “two-score” or “half a score”... but always fewer. It was in vain to insist that before more buds were brought forth there must be extra food. Even the wisest old'uns were in the grip of passion; they dismissed everything he said with a wave of one casual claw.

“We'll take more from the sea!” was a typical answer, or, “We'll go back to wild plants like our ancestors!” Sharply he said, “It looks as though you already decided to!” For everywhere he saw the symptoms of decline: parasitic weeds hanging about the eaves of the houses, blocking the sap-run on which depended edible plants and funqi; mold spoiling swatches of good fruit; clamps and copses abandoned in the surrounding countryside as all the folk converged on ports where the latest news was to be expected. The air was full of a dreadful expectation, and the reek had so permeated everyone, they no longer cared to plan for anything except that miraculous day when they too-even they-would parent buds.

Explanations of the dual-species theory met with mockery. Reasoned arguments about numbers versus resources met with boredom. Here and there a few people still remembered sanity and begged to be taken away on Flapper's back, but the couriers were forbidden to carry passengers, and anyhow it seemed better to leave them where they were in the hope that sense might after all prevail. At Klong, a month after leaving Bowock, Tenthag first encountered an outburst of religion, and trembled to the core of his pith. So dreamness could take a new grip on the folk even before the actual onset of the population explosion. Mere rumor had sufficed, at least in this one land...

He fidgeted with the urge to make for Neesos, but defied it. He must make his own obeisance to reason-his own sacrifice, whatever a sacrifice might be.

By dark especially, while Flapper broke the water into glowing ripples as she fed on drifting weed and occasional fish, he stared achingly at the sky wherever it was clear of cloud and wondered about voyages across space. Were there living creatures in that ocean of oceans? Watching a comet bloom out of a dim and distant blur, it was hard not to make comparison with a plant sprouting under the influence of summer. Marking the dark-by-dark progress of the planets, it was tempting beyond belief to imagine other beings capable of transforming inert matter into something that could feel, and react, and devise and plan and-make mistakes...

In ancient times, he had been told, some folk held that when the welkin shed its fleeting streaks it was a means of signaling, which no one here below could understand. With all his pith he wished he could send back a message of his own:

“Help us, strangers! Help us! We're in danger!”

Budded in the year called Two-red-stars-turn-blue, Tenthag sought comfort in the unaltered patterns of the sky, and found none. For they weren't unaltered.

As though to harbinger the shock the folk must bear, the dark before the bright that saw him at his bud-place was lighted by a singular event.

One of those very stars, on the fringe of the Major Cluster, which had gone to blue from red, changed yet again. A hint of yellow touched it. It seemed brighter... but a cloud drifted across it, and there was no way of being sure about the outcome before dawn.

VIII

But where was everybody?

Goading Flapper into the bay that covered the site of Prefs, Tenthag surveyed the vicinity with his telescope. Normally by dawn the fisherfolk would be launching gorborangs, and sand-collectors loading raw material for the glass-furnace. Because it had been so long since he left here, he had been prepared for some changes, but not for this feeling of vacancy which set his weather-sense to full alert.

Leaving the porp to browse, he waded ashore carrying the last of his copies of Gveest's food-data. As soon as he was clear of the water, he shouted with all the force of his mantle.

There was no answer.

Becoming more and more alarmed, he padded along familiar tracks- how often had he come this way with Fifthorch, to swim from the gentle beach and sometimes dive for relics?-noting with dismay how well-tended clusters of food-plants had been let run wild. He came across sleds of the kind used to bring home sand, abandoned by the path; creepers were twining over them in a way that indicated they must have been dumped a moonlong ago, at least. And his forebear's mirror, source of Neesos's prosperity, was pointing at nowhere.

Shortly, breasting a rise, he came in sight of the little town at the center of the island, sheltered in a hollow against the worst of winter weather. Here at last were people, though nothing like as many as he would have expected. Draped on slanting branches, or lying under rocky overhangs for protection against the morning sunlight, they were listening to someone talking in a loud rough voice. Before he drew close enough to make out what was being said, Tenthag had already discerned that they were surrounded by all the goods they could assemble, be it foodstuffs or glassware or seed-stock or objects salvaged from Prefs.

Something prompted him to great caution. Lowering to minimum bearable height, he stole among shadows cast by bushes until he reached a rocky niche where he could look on unobserved. Fortunately the wind prevented anyone from scenting him... but the stink it bore to him from the crowd was enough to make him quail. It uttered a whole history of greed and jealousy, and the speaker at the middle of the group was fomenting it.

And the orator was-

Recognizing him, Tenthag was almost snatched by dreamness. It was Fifthorch.

Who was saying, “-so of course they want to keep the secret for themselves! It's lucky for us that the People of the Sea aren't under the pads of the Bowockers and their precious Order of the Jingfired! Jing was never real! Jing was a figment to keep young'uns quiet! Well, some of us grew out of childhood tales! I wish we all had! The fact that supposedly adult people right here on Neesos still claimed that the Jingtexts must be truth-until we drove them out as they deserved!-isn't that enough to curdle your maw? It certainly did mine! Be thankful for the People of the Sea, who are coming to our rescue! I'm sure we've brought together enough goods to make them give us the secret of fertility! They care about the fact that we've been left without a single new bud since traitor Tenthag ran away! They aren't cold and cynical and cruel like the Bowockers, who weren't content to take our most valuable possessions from beneath the Bay of Prefs, but stole our youngest young'un as well! And what did they leave in exchange? Rubbish! Scraps and oddments any one of us could have got by making a voyage to the mainland! Things you trade for common seed or common glass! Not glass like ours, the finest on the planet! Did they offer musculators and nervograps? Did they give us anything useful? No, they robbed us of what we didn't even realize we owned, and laughed when they went away! Taking our last new-budded youngling with them, what is worse!”

His memory echoing with Nemora's comment about the archeologists who were far too mercenary for her liking, Tenthag found that more than he could endure. Rising to normal height, he padded forward, shouting, and all eyes turned on him with amazement... save for Fifthorch's, which was full of hate.

“I never dreamed you'd miss me so much, Fifthorch!” he roared. “Did it not suit you to become the youngest when I left-not stolen, but of my own free will?”

His diet of yelg, in spite of his lonely and inactive life aboard a porp, kept him fit and well pressurized; he was able to overtop Fifthorch without effort. Taking station higher on the branchway, where he could continue to dominate the other, he filled his mantle with air for the loudest possible shout. These people looked as though they needed to be startled back to reality.

But a shrill voice took the pressure out of him with a single question.

“Are you one of the People of the Sea, who are going to show us how to breed again?”

He turned, seeking the source of the inquiry... and was instantly deflated.

“Ninthag!” he blurted, scarcely recognizing the old, bloated, half-blind shape that clung to a slanting bough befouled with tatters of wild orqid- colorful, but unfit for food. “Ninthag, don't you know your own sole bud?”

“Are you pretending to be Tenthag?” the old man wheezed. “I'm not such a fool as to believe you! He went away, long, long ago, stolen by the Bowockers! I see him in visions now, and he's laughing at us-laughing at the poor folk he left behind while he rejoices in the best the world can offer! We stay here, wondering when if ever another bud will come among us, and-Keep away from me!”

Tenthag was scrambling towards him, but on the instant half a score of others rose to block his way. Their exudates took on the taint of combat-stink.

Slowly Tenthag retreated, recognizing what he had encountered at Klong and sundry places since. These folk were starved into dreamness... of their own volition.

He said, “Aren't you ashamed to deny your own? Fifthorch knows me-why don't the rest of you?”

“We know what we want to know,” said one of them, and there was a rumble of agreement.

“But you can't! You're underfed, you're going crazy! Yet there's food all around you!” Tenthag clenched his claws in impotent rage.

“We have to keep everything we can spare to trade with the People of the Sea,” said Ninthag obstinately. “Who knows how much they'll demand for the secret of fertility? We must be sure that there's enough.”

“But here I am, who was at Ognorit where the secret was discovered, and I bring data due to Gveest himself-free of charge!”

With that shouted boast Tenthag broke through their apathy. They reared back and gazed at him with pitiable eagerness. Even Fifthorch was taken off guard, and gapped his mandibles.

“Is it truly you?” whispered Ninthag, staring wearily. “Your voice, your scent... But it has been so long!” He summoned a last trace of his old authority. “Show what you've brought, then! Not to me, for my sight has failed. Where's Thirdusk?”

“He betrayed us!” shouted Fifthorch. “He fled with the cowards who were prepared to let Neesos die!”

That statement made everything clear to Tenthag. He could picture how it must have been: one faction, the more rational, counseling that life go on as normal, with enough food eaten and enough new crops planted for the next year; the other so obsessed with the lack of new buds as to forget the need to provide for them if they happened, ultimately seizing the goods of their rivals and driving them away. It was much like what had happened at his other ports of call. But in his pith he had hoped that his own homeland might be a little different, a little better...

He'd been wrong. He knew that even as he proffered the documents he had brought, and a half-score of greedy eyes fixed on them as Fifthorch spread them out.

“There's nothing here to touch the folk!” the latter yelled. “It's all to do with plants and animals!”

“But if there's not enough food-”

“We manage well with half the food we used to gobble! We must save the rest to pay the People of the Sea! You're a coward like Thirdusk! You're a traitor!”

All at once they were pelting him with insults and trampling his precious message underpad. He could do nothing but turn and flee, or they would have torn him torso from mantle in their fury.

Luckily-luckily!-they were too weak to overtake him on his way to the bay where he had left Flapper. By the time he stumbled into the shallows, he also was weakened by his efforts, and his perception was diminished. Had it not been, he would have reacted to what was happening on the skyline before he remounted his porp and turned her seaward.

Only then, though, and much too late, did he realize what was looming towards Neesos.

Here came the visitors the relic of the folk were waiting for: five junqs, four briqs, with bright banners on poles to tell the world-

WE HAVE THE SECRET OF FERTILITY! AND IT'S FOR SALE!

He crumpled on Flapper's saddle, utterly dispirited, and offered no resistance when they detached him from his travel-harness, dragged him aboard the commander's briq, and lashed Flapper to her side with yells of triumph.

He was too busy mourning for a world that never was.

IX

The commander of this raggle-taggle fleet still wore ancient symbols of rank on thongs crossed about his body: a spyglass lacking its objective, a briq-goad worn to a stump. Crusty-mantled from bad food and long exposure to the elements, he interrogated Tenthag about Neesos, wanting to know whether any folk were left, or whether they had all fled as from so many other lonely islands.

“They might as well have run away,” was Tenthag's bitter answer. “They took leave of their senses long ago. But why ask me? I'm just a visitor, and there they are who can answer for themselves!”

He pointed. Those who had rushed in pursuit of him were milling about on the beach, amazed at the sight of the fleet, and he could almost hear the arguments over who must return to town and collect trade-goods.

“Hah!” said the commander with satisfaction. “Let's go see what they can offer worth the taking! You!”-handing a prong to a nervous she'un-”keep watch over him, hear me?”

And, surrounded by his sub-commanders, headed landward.

More miserable than ever, Tenthag was compelled to look on as the Neesans delivered everything they owned for the visitors' inspection. Meantime, however, a suspicion began to gnaw at the back of his mind. At first he was too despondent to react; by degrees it overcame his depression, and he roused himself enough to survey the close-clustered briqs and junqs.

They still bore their complement of old'uns and she'uns. But not a single one among the latter was in bud...

The monstrosity of the deceit these nomads were perpetrating stabbed him to the pith, and he almost made a leap for Flapper. But the she-guard was ready to spike him, and he was in no hurry to become an underwater banquet.

He must match their deception without giving off a betraying odor, therefore. Would anger-stink cover up a lie?

Well, by now experience had made him cynical enough to try...

He and the guard were isolated near the briq's after end; the rest of her riders were gathered forward. He said softly, “What's your commander's name?”

She hesitated; then, finding no reason to refuse the information, muttered, “He's called Sprapter.”

“And he is a good person to serve under?”

“He does well by us. He's clever. The proof's around you.” Her tone was curt, but uneasy, as though she feared a trap.

Tenthag saw nothing special about the accoutrements of the briqs and junqs-indeed, they could have been matched by any kyq from his youth, and the latter would have been set about with useful gorborangs, as well-but now was no time to be patronizing. He said hastily, “And you are...?”

“Veetalya.”

“Do you believe it to be part of Sprapter's plan that I must parch to death?”

Taken aback, she said, “You heard his order to me!”

“So I did. It made no mention of my being denied water. Oh, I know the People of the Sea hate us couriers nowadays, but our lives have much in common, and I take it that if Sprapter ordered you to guard me he'll expect to find me fit and well when he returns,”

Alongside the briq Flapper was growing restive, as always in salt water. Why had they not turned her loose, or stripped and killed her? Did Sprapter cherish grandiose dreams of adding a porp to his little fleet? Or did he think she might prove useful for trade purposes when they headed south in search of the secret they claimed to possess, but did not? Whatever the reason, it was a stroke of luck. Tenthag said in his most wheedling tones, “Your drink-bladders are bulging, aren't they? And if there's one thing a porp lacks, it's adequate drink. A briq is far superior in that regard. You People of the Sea know ancient tricks that we ought really to have studied, but of course, as you know, we tend to be arrogant. With a few exceptions, like myself for example. But isn't that a fault you too display?”

She was nervously tightening her grip on the prong. With a reflex glance at the drink-bladders, she said, “I don't know what you mean!”

“Oh, it's plain as sunlight! You're not in bud, although your folk possess the secret of fertility, and I can only explain the fact by assuming that you angered Sprapter, and he refused to let you have a bud until you'd made amends for some offense you'd given. Well, if you give me drink, I'll speak up on your behalf when he returns.”

By this time, as he had dared to hope, she was thoroughly confused. Providentially, a shout rose from the beach at the same moment. The distance was too great for Tenthag to make out exactly what was being said, but a fair guess suggested that one of the Neesans had complained about all their best possessions being taken, and one of the visitors had demanded what price was too high to pay for fertility.

The same might be asked concerning freedom. Accustomed, like almost everybody else, to imagining that the risk of being stabbed through a major tubule was sufficient to make anyone sit quiet, Sprapter had relied on Veetalya's possession of a good sharp prong a padlong distant to ensure his captive would obey her. But he had seen Pletrow calmly cut her own body with a far keener blade, and heard her casual dismissal of the risk...

“Oh, come now!” he said, as Veetalya glanced towards the row on shore, and took a stride that brought him within the range of her prong. “A drink is not too much to-”

And snap. At maximum pressure his claws closed on the prong and broke it off, and he was all over her, trusting to his greater weight to force her backward. She wasted her spare pressure on a scream, and that sufficed. He trampled on her as though she were not there and swarmed over the briq's side into Flapper's saddle, which the People of the Sea had not found time to dismount. With claws and mandibles and the stub of the prong he slashed at the bonds restraining her, and before the startled crewfolk at the forward end could get to him, he had weakened them enough for the porp to break the rest with one great heave and surge. Half-swamped in a deluge of water, he clung valiantly and jabbed her back with the prong in lieu of a goad. With all her well-fed force she rushed for open water, leaving his captors to fret and curse and hurl obscenities.

The breeze bore him one furious shout: “Well, a courier's no loss to us, any more than a porp!”

Wrong, promised Tenthag silently. I'm going to cost you more than you can possibly afford!

After so long a period of forced inaction, Flapper rushed straight for the horizon, and he let her go, glad that his provisions had not been pilfered. He drank a lot and ate a little, restoring his normality while calculating how long it would be before the trading on the beach came to an end. If tradition were anything to go by, it would last until dark, and some kind of celebration would follow. The People of the Sea would not dare risk departure without the regular formalities, or even in their debilitated state the Neesans might suspect the trick that had been played on them. Therefore he should have time to swing around on a long circular course and bring Flapper back to the island just after darkfall, when her return was least likely to be noticed.

Cold anger colored his mind gray. Stark facts like distant mountains marked the boundary of his thinking. He was possessed, for the first time in his life, by lust for vengeance.

As darkness fell, he sought the star which had caught his attention at the fringe of the Major Cluster. There was no mistake. It had turned yellower and brighter. Perhaps someone who had not watched the sky from the lonely vantage of a porp's back in mid-ocean might have overlooked the change, but to Tenthag it was past a doubt.

In ancient times they'd said the stars reflected what went on below. He was too well informed to swallow such deceits. But the image, nonetheless, was powerful, and struck chords in that level of his mind where dreamness ruled.

Perhaps that star was shedding bright new light on what had been dead planets, conjuring the force of life from them. It didn't matter. For him it was a symbol, and a challenge. He must cast light of his own on his own folk...

Luminants faintly outlined the island, but there were wide gaps where they had not been properly tended and he was able to steal ashore without being spotted. He left Flapper to fend for herself. If he came back by dawn, she would probably still be here; if not, she would shed her saddle as soon as it rotted, but with luck keep the secondary plants Gveest had bestowed on her, which would be an example to any other of the folk who ran across her later on. Maybe, if she bred in the wild, some of them might cross-take on her bud...

Who, though, would help the porps if the Guild of Couriers all met the same doom as Tenthag? In a few years, following the population explosion, they would surely be hunted down for food!

Repressing all such horrible previsions, he crept over the hill-crest on which stood the derelict solar mirror, and found his guesses accurate. Reluctant to leave before sharing refreshment with the local people, the visitors were sitting under arbors of luminants and pretending to be polite. Fifthorch, recognizable by scent and voice, was lavishing on them what food and liquor remained, while others waited in shadow, exuding the stink of greed... or was it from the outsiders? At this distance he could not be certain.

But that was irrelevant. Hastening down the old familiar path, he headed for the crowd-and was brought up short, so that he clutched his sole weapon, the broken prong, and spun around with a hiss of terror. He had abruptly caught a waft of death, and there were overtones to it that he recognized.

Beside the path, clearly having collapsed as he moved away from the town, leaking his stale ichor on the ground after a major rupture of a lower tubule... Ninthag.

He who had been the town's elder for so long, its guide and counselor: left here to rot unheeded! Had he been stabbed? But a quick tactile check confirmed that he had simply died from stress. Well, that was a relief, of a sort-but still an insult!

Tenthag drew himself together and put on the best imitation he could contrive of his father's appearance. Maintaining it, while imitating an old'un's hobble, he let himself show in the circle of brightness shed by the town-center lights.

It was Sprapter who first noticed him, accepting a shell of araq. He was so startled that he tilted it and cursed as the biting liquid spilled down his torso. Before he could speak, while others were still turning to gaze at him, Tenthag said loudly enough to be heard by everyone, “Have they shown you a female with a bud?”

Fifthorch, offering more araq to another of the People of the Sea, started so violently he almost slumped, and Tenthag, still posing as his father, padded towards him. In a thin voice he repeated, “A female with a bud-have they shown you one?”

“Drive him off!” Sprapter cried, struggling to full height.

“Why?” Tenthag countered. “You have the secret of fertility, or so your banners claim! That means you must have buds and young'uns in your fleet!”

“Of course they have the secret!” Fifthorch shouted, while the hunger-sluggish minds of those around him registered what Tenthag was saying. “They've sold it to us, and on fair terms, what's more!”

“But have they shown a single young'un, or a she'un budding?” Tenthag abandoned his disguise and strode to take station at Sprapter's side, his prong leveled. “I say they haven't even met the southern fleets which raided Ognorit, but stole everything you could offer in the hope that when they do they'll get the secret! Truth, Sprapter-tell the truth!

And for every lie I'll let the pressure out of one of your tubules!” He jabbed the commander's torso, just enough.

Terrified, Sprapter babbled, “I swear we would have kept our bargain! We needed to buy the secret and we'd have come back and-”

“You mean you didn't give it to us?” Fifthorch said, belatedly reacting to the commander's reek of guilt and shame.

Without compunction Tenthag slit a minor tubule in the trickster's torso, forcing him to fold over and compress the leak until it sealed.

“I don't know what they clawed off you,” he said mildly, “but as I tried to tell you earlier, I was at Ognorit, and learned from Gveest himself what must be done. On the briq where I was captive, I met a she'un who was ripe for budding, and she had no bud. I saw not a single bud or young'un in this fleet that claims to sell the secret! What do you make of that, you fools who left Ninthag to leak away his life on that path yonder? Who'd have the secret merely to sell to others, without using it to benefit themselves?”

A pulsation later he was frightened by the forces he had loosed, for Fifthorch roared with mindless rage and launched himself at Sprapter. Before the two could be separated the commander was as dead as Ninthag, and the air was foul with the stench of drying ichor and loud with screams of pain.

But within moments the seafolk were cowering to the ground, emitting the odor of surrender, and finding themselves about to slash or stab with whatever weapon came to claw, the Neesans recovered enough of their normal awareness to realize what they had done, and be horrified at it. Weak, but calm, they began to mutter among themselves that Tenthag had been right, and they were stupid not to have insisted on being shown a budded she'un before parting with their goods.

Suddenly Tenthag found them all looking to him for guidance, seafolk and Neesans alike... except for Fifthorch, who faded into the dark moaning about the need to wash off Sprapter's ichor.

He said after a pause for reflection, “Eat what there is. Give nothing more to the seafolk. You must restore your strength of mind and body both, because you're going to make these liars pay for their deceit. Not only are they going to return what they cheated you out of; they're going to be set to work recovering the plants you've let run wild, ridding the town of mold and orqid, bringing fish from deep water, and laying up great stores of food against the time when the real secret of fertility is brought hither. It won't be long, I'm sure. But there must be food first!”

The seafolk whispered among themselves. Eventually one sub-commander rose to normal height.

“It's fair judgment,” he admitted sullenly. “I'm Loric. I've been chosen as Sprapter's successor. I'll abide by your terms, but I'll ask one thing in return.”

“You don't deserve anything,” Tenthag snapped. “Feel free to ask, though, as I shall to refuse.”

“You do owe me something,” Loric insisted. “Sprapter wanted to kill your porp, or at any rate drive her to open water. But I've been in charge of our food-plants for years, and I saw new ones on the porp which gave me ideas. That's why I insisted on her being lashed alongside the briq. I wanted to study and adapt them. They told us that was how you were able to escape, though I must admit none of us expected you to return. It was a brave thing to do, and your countryfolk ought to be proud of you. Instead, they described you as a traitor and a runaway, especially Fifthorch, and in the end they made us believe it, so you took us completely by surprise... Don't you owe me something, though, for saving your porp?”

“I guess so,” Tenthag admitted gruffly. “Very well. When you leave here, which won't be soon, you'll have grafts of Gveest's new food-plants to help you on your way. But it may take months before there are enough for both Neesos and your fleet, and in spite of being foolish my people are still my people, and they get first call. By that time you'll have learned a lot about food-plants on land, I promise you.”

“You're an honest man in spite of being a courier. You won't regret striking this bargain. How do you think I was able to persuade your folk that we did truly have the secret of fertility? Could I have convinced them without considerable understanding of all sorts of life-forms? Oh, I'm not a Gveest; I'm more the practical type. But if there's any connection between his work with plants and lower animals, and what he's discovered that will make us breed, then don't be surprised if I figure out the secret for myself eventually. I'd like to, obviously. It'd save us a trip south, into waters where there are already too many of us for the junqs and briqs available, not so?”

It was impossible not to be won over by this fellow's audacity. Tenthag tried to stop himself quirking into a smile. Loudly he said, “Work, then, if you want to clench the deal! We have two funerals to conduct immediately. Then we must tell the rest of your company the fate in store.”

X

What Tenthag was doing was not in accord with his commission; he should have returned directly to Bowock. But after the hostility he had met on the day of his departure, he was in no hurry. Besides, his actions were consonant with his courier's oath, at least in his opinion. By summer's end there would be at least one fleet-small, admittedly-in possession not of the secret of fertility but of information far more essential, which it could then trade to supplement the couriers' efforts. And the seafolk would need to trade if they did begin to multiply; one bud per she'un would require at least two extra briqs or another junq, complete with food-plants, and this far north there were few young wild'uns nowadays.

He occupied himself not only with supervising the restoration of Neesos's fortunes, but with retaining and exercising Flapper, whom he took to sea almost daily with the fleet on its fishing-trips. Once they had grown resigned to the failure of their intended fraud, the seafolk proved to be friendly enough, and of course they had far more in common with couriers than they were usually prepared to admit. In the end even Veetalya recovered from the shame she felt at having let Tenthag escape, and their relations became very friendly. Loric, too, turned out to be likable, and interested not only in life-study but star-study also. Together they pondered the possible meaning of that star which almost nightly shone yellower, brighter, hotter. Through a good telescope it could be seen to be surrounded by a sort of aura, like drifting smoke.

“That's some of the cold matter massing to block our way to the future,” Tenthag explained soberly. “But before we get that far, more of it will doubtless turn into stars, more will be drawn into our own sun, more will tumble out of space and crash into the oceans, raising huge waves, or smash down on land and burn forests to ash... Oh, Loric, we are caught in a trap worse than a gigant's claw! On the one side, the risk that there won't be enough of the folk for us to save ourselves; on the other, that there may be far too many!”

“Don't you think we'll make it?” Veetalya asked timidly.

Tenthag shrugged with his entire mantle. “When I see what we can do when we combine our efforts, as here on Neesos, I feel very optimistic. But when I remember how nearly my own people went insane, and how you tried to take advantage... Who can say?”

Turning the telescope curiously in all directions, for it was superior to any he had used before, Loric suddenly stiffened.

“Another fleet!” he whispered. “Look! See the glimmer on the water?”

“Where...? Oh, yes! Give me the telescope... But those aren't junqs or briqs! They're porps-you can tell by the way they move! And none but couriers use porps, and that must be half the complement the Guild can boast! Quick, to the beach, and signal!”

As he incontinently led the way, hoping no loose rock would betray his steps in the dark, he wondered silently what disaster had brought this about.

Within a very short time, as all the folk of the island gathered on the beach, he learned the terrible truth. First to land was Dippid himself, followed by Nemora, and then another score of his friends and colleagues. When they had got over their astonishment at finding Tenthag alive and well, they told their story.

“We thought you must be dead,” Dippid rasped. “Many of the couriers have been attacked for not possessing the secret of fertility, by people convinced they did but were holding out for the highest price. It's a rumor started by the Major South Fleet. Iyosc was right; they did raid Ognorit and now they're trading what they're pleased to call 'the right to bud'... against everything they can lay their claws on, especially seed and food-plants!”

Tenthag exchanged glances with his companions, who by now included Fifthorch. He said slowly, “What's the situation like at Bowock? Have you been driven away?”

“Yes,” was Nemora's simple answer, and she turned aside in grief. Dippid amplified.

“Iyosc was right about that, too. She'uns in bud and their companions, deprived of all their food-stocks by the greed of the People of the Sea, naturally started heading for the cities, not just Bowock, but any place where it looked as though there were still plenty of victuals. Bowock has been the chief magnet, obviously, because of that rumor that we were withholding the secret. And I regret to admit...”

He hesitated. Recovering, Nemora said curtly, “Some of the Jingfired betrayed their trust. Either they got hold of Gveest's technique, or they were able to work it out from what was already known. Anyhow, they applied it to themselves. It was impossible to keep that secret. As soon as the news got out... Well, you can imagine its effect. We clung on as long as we could, but when we learned that couriers were being hunted down and killed we decided to flee. I remembered coming to Neesos, all those years ago, and as near as we could calculate we believed it must still be well beyond the sweep of the Major Fleet. Besides, the closer we got, the more we heard rumors that the people of lonely islands like this one were abandoning their homes and making for mainland cities, where the bud-right might be theirs all the sooner.”

“Some of the folk did leave here,” Tenthag muttered, and went on to explain what he had found on his arrival.

“You were very sensible not to return to Bowock,” Dippid pronounced at last. “It may not have been what you were supposed to do, but it's turned out for the best.”

“Do you have the bud-secret?” Loric demanded suddenly.

There was a pause like the interval between the lightning and the thunder. At last Dippid heaved a sigh.

“Yes. We had to bring something we could trade for food.”

“That's liable to draw crowds of crazy folk to Neesos, then!” cried Fifthorch, indicating how much he had learned about the real world since Tenthag's return. “We must think of ways to defend ourselves-”

“We must think of ways to feed ourselves,” Tenthag corrected stonily. “Sane, well-nourished folk are always our friends and allies. Only the crazy ones are a threat. And now we have a vast stockpile of precious knowledge; couriers are as well informed as anybody short of the Jingfired themselves, or scientists like Gveest. Is there news of him, by the way?”

Dippid clacked his mandibles. “Report has it that he and Pletrow and the rest are captives with the Major Fleet. But nobody knows for certain. It may just be another rumor put about to encourage folk to pay extortionate prices.”

“I hope for his sake he's not,” Tenthag said softly. “I got to know him pretty well while I was at Ognorit, and I'm certain he would be horrified to see the dreadful impact his discovery is having. He knew about it, he tried to guard us against it, and through ill-luck I was the one who was obliged to undermine his precautions.”

“Iyosc forgave you for that,” Nemora said, laying a claw friendly on his mantle-edge. “And what you're doing here is making further amends. What's more, perhaps the star-”

“We've been over that!”-morosely from Dippid. “More likely it's a harbinger of catastrophe, like the old New Star.”

“It can't be! It's not at all the same!” Nemora hunched forward. “We know the other one outshone the Major Cluster, to begin with. No, I think this is more likely a stroke of good fortune. Changes like that going on in the sky are just what people will need to keep reminding them of Jingtruths. Things must have been equally bleak when the Northern Freeze began, and again at the time of the Great Thaw-yet here we are, and we have some achievements of our own to boast of!”

“There's no comparison,” Dippid maintained. “This time we're breaking the very mold we were cast in by our evolution!”

Tenthag thought of Pletrow's collection of mutated animals, and shuddered as the chief courier went on.

“No, it's going to be a different world. Even during the famine at Southmost Cape I never saw anything as horrible as what's now happening at Bowock. For all we can tell, there's something in the radiation from the stars that drives us crazy now and then, and what can we do to withstand that? Grow a roof over the entire planet?”

“What use would a roof be against what's sure to fall on us one of these days?” said Tenthag wearily, and forced himself to full height. “No, we dare not try and hide from our doom. The universe will not permit it. We must carry on somehow, preserving at least a nucleus of reason... There's a tale about the legendary Barratong. When he realized the Thaw was bringing more and more of the planet under his people's sway, he didn't rejoice or boast about it. He accepted the duty which the past had laid upon the present. Do you remember what he said?”

“Of course,” said Loric as he also rose. “All we People of the Sea are brought up to regard it as the finest principle of our heritage, though since it led to the foundation of Bowock and the Guild of Couriers- Never mind! This is not a moment for squabbling over what's past and done with. Barratong said, in fact, 'We are the Jingfired now!' “

“It's our turn to say the same,” said Tenthag, and padded miserably away towards the first glint of dawn, wondering how much sorrow and insanity the sun must shine on before the folk recovered from the shock of being multiplied.

And if they would.