uranian throne - episode seventeen

the scared logician

by
robert gibson

For the story so far, see:

volume I: the terran heir
1: Dynoom; 2: Hyala;
3: the nebulee; 4: Exception;
5: the lever of power;
6: the infrastructure throbs;
7: the claw extends;
8: the brain-mist writhes; 9: the last card;
10: the londoner; 11: the terran heir;
12: the city cracks; 13: the validator rips;
14: the heartland beckons; 15: zyperan

volume Ii: the golden cloak
16: confluence at ao

[ + links to: Glossary - Timeline - Maps - Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav
- Index of proper names - guide to published stories ]

The smoothness of that region known as the Moraar is broken by peculiar crags, shaped rather like chisels.
Their generic name (flonga stap), however, means "Razor-Ridge".
A multitude of these formations glower upon the salty wetness which surrounds each individual ridge. Visitors' moods are most affected by the flatness of the miles between each jut, rather than by the crags themelves; hence the term the "Plain" of the Moraar. Truly the plain dominates, as you raise your eyes to take in the myriad sweeps of moss and beds of scrub, reflected in the many glistening shallows, blurring into a yellowish distance.
Dampness like this is an unusual condition among the landscapes of Ooranye, a planet on which the average temperature is below freezing. Yet on a world of this size the exceptional can reign to the limit of vision in the regions where it holds sway.
This was understood and accepted by the tall Stranger who trudged through the seemingly limitless icy slush.
Tirelessly he plodded, yard after yard. His boots were stained with the salt that prevents the upper inches of the Moraar from congealing into solid ice. His broad shoulders were swathed in two cloaks; the outer cloak laden in every pouch with additional supplies taken from his abandoned skimmer.
For he had been overtaken by that doom which every Uranian wayfarer dreads. A vehicular malfunction had marooned him in the wilderness.
  Nevertheless he expected to survive. He knew roughly where he was, and though this eerie plain looked empty of human life, a handful of settlements the size of towns were known to exist within its area: a few million square miles bounded at four corners by the cities of Ao, Dmara, Skyyon and Hoog.
Most importantly, the Moraar was in Syoom, not Fyaym. Thus the region counted as a part of civilization's reach, and not as the utter unknown.
  Therefore he simply needed to keep going. Grim-featured yet confident, like one who recognizes the return of an old enemy whom he has beaten once before and will defeat again, he possessed the fortitude of a good Wayfarer, the patient readiness to take what comes.
Yet, although by and large the Stranger's personality was as strong as iron, his past had left him with one weak point within himself.
He would have kept his eyes downcast, for that would have been one defence against what threatened him the most, except that only a crazed Wayfarer would cease to be watchful; so, whatever the risk, he must continue to gaze around.
Fortunately he was tougher and far more experienced now than he had been when, as a very young man, he had last fallen victim to nebulation.
He did not count himself entirely safe from a recurrence. Whenever he looked towards the horizon's smudged ribbon of crags, a threat hovered over his consciousness, some arching infinity poised to blow his mind as had happened to him on one dire occasion in his youth thousands of days ago. Perhaps one day it would get him again.
That did not mean he would skulk with bowed head for the rest of his life. In defiance of the risk he raised his eyes to scan the closest flonga stap: a Razor-Ridge which reared just over half a mile ahead.
This, though he did not know it yet, was the Krokkembar.
It was tent-shaped, a triangular prism of grey rock perhaps two miles from end to end. It was somewhat larger than its neighbours in his field of view. With further scrutiny his interest was sharpened by a couple of signs of habitation. A domed building was perched on the very summit, while sprawling on the ground at the foot of the slope was a more ramshackle structure: this, if he mistook not, was an inn.
Yes, an inn. What relief! The entire landscape seemed all of a sudden tinged with welcome.
He soon noted signs of pathways in the middle distance, and a few half-visible huts and cleared patches amid the scrub; the likelihood was, he would soon see people, and told himself to be prepared, wondering what he would say if they asked him his name.
For that raised a difficulty.
Not exactly "nebulation", no, but related to his spell as nebulee long ago: it was because he had escaped from that, and such an escape was something which was supposed never to happen - he might now be facing a sort of revenge for his cheating of Fate.
That could be, probably was, the reason for the strange thing that had happened to him.  He had had many names, and the revenge exacted now was that he had forgotten them all. He was a Stranger even to himself.

"That picture is sharp," the visitor whistled.
The fascination was unfeigned and sincere. Cartographer Strao Gheren was genuinely impressed. A marvel of technology, was this spy-gadget adorning the Logician's lair.
His tight-lipped host nodded curtly and kept his eyes on the scanscope's circular screen.
A yard in diameter, the screen glowed with an image of the Marescent Wood. Not as the naked eye might see it from the observatory window, the Wood appeared closer, as if the viewer were actually wandering among the trees. Strao Gheren, peering, felt that the dead leaves which clung to the branches were about to tickle his ears.
He added, waving at the picture, "It's as if I were there, except that it's even more vivid than that - somehow, I don't know, like it's harder than reality, so to speak." Talking thus, the cartographer was too busy admiring the screen to notice that the Logician winced.
Dry and colourless, the response came: "Yes... it is effective. It enables me, between the visits of clients, to keep watch over the neighbourhood... as a hobby."
Gheren repressed a smile. Hobby? Who would have expected Laro Hing the Logician to have a hobby?
By repute a cold, austere thinker, long dedicated to a sparse, fanatical existence ensconced up here atop the ridge, Laro Hing was regarded as a recluse whose only joy was the fierce pursuit of Truth. He looked the part: lean of torso and wiry of limb, with a taut visage framed by ragged grey hair, and lit by eyes that gleamed a determination to follow any argument wherever it might lead.
Not somebody whom one would normally expect to get personally fond of the pictures he scrutinised, or invite a guest to admire them.
Strao Gheren turned his gaze from the scanscope and ventured a probing remark. "Quite spectacular, especially the... embellishments..."
"Can you be specific?" The question was sharp, though the tone remained flat and neutral.
"Oh," replied the cartographer, "it's like I was trying to say... just that the colours on the screen seem stronger than in real life; and the shapes, well, I do get the impression that the 'scope somewhat exaggerates."
"You are saying that it does more than simply provide a magnified view of the landscape down below."
Strao Gheren smiled away the topic, for now he could see the alarm that peeped through the fellow's eyes.  "Seems we're agreed that you're getting a kind of artistic view of your target. Which is good for you, Logician! Like framing a picture which has sentimental value - "
Laro Hing for the first time showed some heat as he interrupted, "You are implying that although I may be a poor fellow who spends his life up here on a bare summit, at least I keep fond watch on the surface of the land where I was born and bred."
Gheren reflected that it was quite hard to imagine that this haunter of the Razor Ridge, this fixture of the barren summit, had ever been born. In that sense Laro Hing was a 'poor fellow'. "The words are yours, sponndar L-H," the cartographer replied. He wondered if he had gone too far, yet bluntness of speech was a cultural characteristic of the Moraar's inhabitants.
In the event, the Logician apparently took no offence. Instead he stooped and twiddled some knobs on the scanscope's control-box.  "Now watch the picture move," he murmured. "Imagine that you are walking through the Wood."
Drawn again to peer, the visitor was indeed able to imagine himself on the move among the knurled branches and the leaves which dangled like burst balloons. He actually went as far as to lift a hand as if to part those leaves so that they would not brush against his face.
Then his eyes caught glints of the hanging golden fruit which meant wealth for the townsfolk of Oblannerad. He knew where they grew, knew that he ought not to be able to spot them yet.
"You're certainly not bound," he commented, "by the limits of line-of-sight observation."
  "Be assured this is no recording, nor is it a tv transmission in the normal sense."
  "How is it done?" Gheren murmured.
The voice behind him said, "You think I know for sure? I would assume an elastic plasma leash, maximum range several miles, to provide such extensions of view. But naturally there's no way of knowing, short of taking the thing to bits to find out how it works - and how often is one able to do that with an ancient machine? It may belong to a pre-human cycle, it may even be of interplanetary origin."
Once more Gheren whistled. It was time he took his eyes off the screen. "I could go on with this for hours," he said, straightening, "but I shan't take up so much of your time. I assume that your mastery of this gadget is a fair sample of the re-animations you undertake for your clients."
"That is correct. People bring me artefacts they've found; I theorize and deduce, on abstract grounds, the way in which they must function; then, by exterior manipulation, I set them to work."
"Which is what I came here to ascertain. And you have done better than to tell me: you have shown me. I'm glad I happened along while you still had this one in your possession."
"Actually it's staying right here."
"Oh? The client...?"
"The 'scope is not a loan but a gift," explained Laro Hing, "from the Noad of Jador, Sungon Dlaa. After using it for a while he decided he no longer wished to keep it, so on his second visit he left it with me."
Following that anecdote, and encouraged by the Cartographer, the Logician talked some more about his work. He expanded upon the leaders and experts who came from all over Syoom to seek his advice on problems of Ghepion physiology and Fyayman relics; the scores of official skyships which had anchored on the ridge to disgorge their problematic cargo; and how, every time, the various gadgetary conundrums, which had made a snarled mess of others' practical efforts, yielded to the purity of method which was the secret of Laro Hing.
Strao Gheren, as he stowed these accounts in his own capacious memory, reflected that he was being amply rewarded for the arduous climb up the long zig-zag path to the summit of the Krokkembar. He had wanted to gauge the business, and he had.
Only, he was left mildly puzzled by the Logician's underlying melancholy. Every word the man spoke seemed tugged by a hint of a sigh. Oh well, Gheren inwardly shrugged, it can't be much fun living alone up here and perhaps I too, if so situated, would become clouded with nervous gloom.
Just imagine, - his train of thought pursued the idea - being isolated in this wind-battered building day after day, with a view of that secretive Marescent Wood, and, beside it, the area of plain which the locals call the Nefforlank (though nobody can tell me what gave it that name of "Worst Place").
The work, to be sure, must be endlessly fascinating. To be known throughout Syoom as an expert in the reanimation of ancient gadgets, was to be assured of an inexaustible supply of adventurous tasks. But that, too, would tinge one's lifestyle with a certain awesome melancholy. The history of the Nenns on Ooranye reached back across eighty-nine eras; three hundred and fifty million days; fourteen thousand consecutive human life-spans. Full contemplation of the accumulated culture layer during that colossal spate of Time must stun any sensitive mind, quite apart from speculation on what may have come before.
Ah yes, that was the real hitch, was it not?
To be sure, Uranians had grown used to their position atop so much history. They mostly lived with it easily enough, not allowing the weight of it to upset their mental balance, but (one had to face it) certain regions existed, of which the Moraar was one, which challenged one's poise.
According to tradition these special places harboured secrets so mind-bogglingly ancient as to date from before the first known era. That is, beyond the thread of historical narrative which extended unbroken back to Day One of Era One when the first Nenn, Lrar Verzak, had emerged from the prebiotic Lake of Dmara.
Pastward from that point the continuity of history was lost. Nothing but murk was continuous further back, with smudgy hints of legend glimmering occasionally.
Strao Gheren, while Laro Hing spoke on, listened with one ear while an unwelcome accompaniment in his thoughts glided towards those dark pre-Nenn times. There was for example the legend of an invasion from Yimdi, the Ringed Planet. If that tale were to be believed, the Triple-Brained Horrors of Yimdi had gained a beachhead on the Moraar before being forced underground, inconceivable aeons ago.
When pestered with thoughts of that kind, one needed to kick them back downstairs. Don't correlate stuff; don't join the dots - just kick 'em. They smelled unacceptable.
However, the cartographer was beginning to doubt whether the Logician was wise enough to perform that reflex-rejection. There were moments when the poor man appeared quite twitchy.
...Laro Hing's account reached a full stop. "Has this been the kind of exposition you wished to hear?"
"Perfectly," replied Strao Gheren. "I recognize in you a kindred spirit. We are both at the top of our respective professions."
"You are not from Oblannerad?" the Logician inquired politely. "That is my home town, and from long observation I can recognize just about all the local folk."
"No cartographers live in Oblannerad," smiled Gheren. "I am from Sombax; not exactly close, but after all it is the next town."
"And you are here on behalf of the folk of Sombax?"
"No, the reason I am here is because a top-rank cartographer, such as myself, must chart not only the common and obvious but also the outstanding and unique. Like for instance the lair of an unusual savant atop the Krokkembar!" A waggish reply, and surely a sufficient one. Yet to his own surprise Ghered did not stop there; his tongue ran on, "Though the townsfolk might have hired me, if..." (Now where the flaming flunnd was this about to take him? Oh well, more bluntness was in order.) "...The townsfolk might have hired me," he continued, "if they had known about the scanscope."
"In such hypothetical case," the Logician remarked, "your townsfolk would have expected you to accomplish - what, exactly?"
Gheren's suavity did not desert him. "Well," he drawled, "they might have hoped that as a fellow philosopher I could, possibly, restrain you."
Laro Hing's lips parted and he said gently, slowly, "Restrain??"
"Out of respect for your own good."
"Restrain me from looking too much through the scanscope, you mean."
"I hadn't heard of the gadget till my visit today," Gheren pointed out.
"What then? You have my attention, sponndar." Folding his arms, and leaning against a window-frame, the Logician kept Gheren and the landscape both in view. "This is serious, yes? You can tell me something relevant, no?"
"Relevant to what everybody may soon feel about the plain of the Moraar? Yes, sponndar L-H, maybe I can, though I didn't expect..."
"Now that you have begun, continue!" A dire promise in the configuration of the Logician's brows and lips cauaed Gheren queasily to summon a mind-spell against overwhelm, standard discipline for survival on a baffling planet -
That man is about to form the syllable 'moss' -
  "Mossongunain," said Laro Hing.
  Mossongunain. The Five-Minute Term. Brief liberty to say what normally ought not to be said. The principle was: 'Give the thing five minutes and then forget it - '
Oh well, the Cartographer sighed to himself, we're in for it now.

Two young women workers, wrapped in gum-stained cloaks and smelling of resin, sat sipping in their usual niche under the polished beams of the Niffomb Ollog.
That venerable inn, built of "carrion trunks" which have died a natural death, lies along the base of the Krokkembar at a point roughly mid-way between the Marescent Wood and the town of Oblannerad.
During the period of this history the inn was the only such halt available for the town's workforce on their way to and from their silvicultural labours. Moreover it was a haven for anyone in this region of the Moraar, anyone who might need rest, or sustenance, or a trysting place.
However, the women currently nursing their drinks were not in the happiest of moods. The man who had agreed to meet them had not arrived.
They reacted to this disappointment in different ways.
Estunu, humble and petite ("cute", in Terran terms) was resigned to waiting. Though she watched the door, her daydreaming smiles welled from imagination, not hope. Her eyes twinkled solely with amused reproof at her own feelings: her expectations being at zero, she could at least relax and laugh quietly at herself.
Her friend Devlel was less patient. She glared, her cheeks puffed with a tauter sheen. Fingers twitching round her glass, she murmured against the quirk of fate that had allowed her heart to be set aflutter by a slick two-named forg. It was looking more and more as if the fellow had aimed to get rid of her. He had spurned her offer to accompany him to the Ridge's summit; he'd promised that he would be back down by the fifth hour of morningshine. "Was that not clear enough?" she complained out loud, tensed like an athlete listening for a postponed starting-shot.
"He'll be back before too long," ventured Estunu.
"Haah," snorted Devlel and took a swig. Her gaze flounced to the door, the ceiling and back. "He will or he won't." She clamped her teeth at the very thought of ever admitting to distress should sponndar Strao Gheren decide never to return.
The background folk of the Moraar are imbued with fathomless disdain for anything that may smack of foregrounder pretension. In this respect the two women, though rivals in love, were of one accord.
Estunu, nevertheless, was more inclined to see other sides to the story. She suggested, meekly: "He's shown himself a staunch friend to our town." "During what - a few tens of days?"
"That's long enough to get to know a man, I think."
"It might be for you," Devlel replied with a touch of a smile, "but I don't have your lyrical soul."
A moment later the door began to swing open.  Estunu caught her breath; Devlel glanced at her while her eye enjoined, If it is he, don't let us look too glad... then, seeing how little her friend needed this advice, re-focused on the threshold.  The door opened wider and a figure stepped in. Yes, it was the man himself: the prestigious cartographer safely returned from the Logician's lair.
"Here!" waved Devlel to attract him to their corner.
Strao Gheren waved back. Yet he did not approach straight away. He seemed abstracted. Rather than hurry to where the women sat, he first put out a hand to pet the inn's mascot, the tame pentapod that revolved on its mat by the entrance. The beast, delighted at the attention, spun faster on its pivotal leg. The man murmured to it, "Good ranna, Laffut; good ranna." Devlel blinked away a tear of exasperation. This was not at all how things were supposed to happen. Gheren ought to have stridden eagerly towards her, without delay, full of the news he must have to tell.
Estunu, for her part, smiled tenderly and sadly. What difference, after all, did the delay make to her, resigned as she was to the prospect that when he did approach he would have eyes merely for Devlel?
This however turned out not to be true, for when Gheren finally approached the women he smiled equally at both.
We must explain to our Terran readers that the number three is a threshold-number for the customers of a Uranian inn to start paying their dues to the social atmosphere. That is why it happened on this occasion, that upon the entrance of a third patron a knot of mindwaves began to form in the Niffomb Ollog, whereby all who were present began to sense the silhouette of the others' thoughts... not enough to read them as messages, but enough to show Gheren's sincerity: he really did feel kind towards both of his admirers.
"Are you fixed for drinks?" And when they nodded at him, he went to buy his own.
Having made that purchase, he placed an additional coin on the counter, whereupon the host pressed a button on the music-box, which then struck up the tune,

          The richness of the way,
          The richness of the way,
          The richness of the way,
               plorl-orm...

          Candle-bright thought,
          Candle-bright thought,
          Candle-bright thought,
               plorl-orm...

          Myyix and bejeh,
          Myyix and bejeh,
          Myyix and bejeh,
               plorl-orm...

          The richness of the way,
          Candle-bright thought,
          Myyix and bejeh,
               plorl-orm...

"I just fancied that soother," remarked Strao Gheren as he carried his glass to the women's table. Picking up the scarf which they had left for him on a chair back, he sat down.
The music-box repeated the "soother" while Devlel levelled her silent gaze at Gheren. While her mouth kept shut, her omitted words lurked darkly in her expression, a silhouette of her annoyance.
Gheren's awareness shaped into a shield equally unmistakable. His was the confidence of a man equipped with an excuse.
Devlel flinked a fingernail on her glass of myyix, and finally sighed, "How did you get on with Laro Hing?"
Gheren swallowed a strong mouthful and replied: "He deserves his reputation. He gave me what I hoped for. My visit was a success."
"You look a bit nervous, though."
"No... I just need... flunnd," Gheren swore, suddenly interrupting himself. They were no longer alone. A tall, heavily-cloaked figure was stepping across the threshold of the Niffomb Ollog. Now the customers numbered four...
The new arrival was nobody they recognized. Chances were, he was a complete stranger to the area. A formidable-looking sponndar, with fine though rather haggard features, the fellow swept the Niffomb's interior with an inscrutable glance. Then with impeccable courtesy he made his way to a table not too far from, and yet not too close to, the one already occupied by Strao Gheren and the women.
Evidently this fellow was at ease with the unspoken rules.
In a lower tone than before Gheren remarked, "Never seen him before. We won't mind him. And now, I'll tell you how it went with the Logician."  He proceeded with an account of his visit to the summit of the Krokkembar; in particular he enthused over the "fascinating scanscope, of unknown make, which provides a viewpoint-in-motion, by which the user feels part of the scene at which it is aimed."
This glowing description aroused in the women the melancholy thought, It sounds as though Strao has obtained everything he wants. He has collected the data he sought and will soon return to Sombax.
Well, nothing could be done about that, thought Estunu.
Devlel likewise thought it sadly clear, that the cartographer regarded today's trip as a successful climax of his study of the neighbourhood. The job done, he would go home, leaving a void in her heart.
Trying to face the worst, she bluntly remarked: "So, if I understand you right, sponndar Strao, you've got all you came for, and you need lodge no longer in Oblannerad?"
Gheren agreed brightly. "I've enjoyed my time with your people."
"A pleasant interlude in the 'gum town'," Devlel remarked.
"Very true," was his even response that washed away her pinch of sarcasm. "And today's visit to Laro Hing was a good note to end on. Though..." his voice went up in pitch, "it's funny, right at the end, uh, I can't remember the details - "
"Something you can't remember, you with your perfect recall?" whistled Devlel, irony being all that was left to her. "That in itself is amazing! How did it come about?"
"You may well ask. On arrival at the observatory, I was sure of my own motives: I wished to gauge the Logician's achievement so as best to depict the place on my charts. And that went well. But after a while, all of a sudden, I began - I'm not sure what possessed me - to press him on the topic of the Moraar. As though he could do something about... about what we all know. And, well, he, er, did do something," Gheren finished with a shrug; " - he uttered mossongunain."
Their ears gulped and their minds echoed: Mossongunain. A word which bounced from wall to wall.
It throttled the passing seconds; it put a freeze in the air. Not a sound, not a breath could compete. Devlel paled; Estunu likewise. The others in the room - the landlord at the counter, the stranger at his own table - likewise experienced the stopper.
The women's recent hurt was quite wiped out; they no longer dwelt upon Gheren's lateness; it had acquired an excuse which could not be questioned.  You do not probe further when talk has become wrapped in a coating of mossongunain.
Presently, though, Devlel wondered aloud: "But what was the aim?"
"You ask me that?!" reacted Gheren sharply. "When the whole point of... that word... is to relieve tension by the temporary airing of an un-airable topic!"
"I know that," said Devlel equally sharply, "but I wasn't asking what the Logician said during those sealed five minutes. I simply wonder why you triggered the thing in the first place."
Glooming at the table-top, Gheren muttered, "We have times in which none of us know why we do what we do."
Devlel rolled her eyes and remarked, "Oh well, the wave has got us, whatever it is."
Meanwhile the stranger who had entered a few minutes ago, and who had remained quiet, was now shifting in his chair -

To the others present this slight restlessness of the dark-browed newcomer came as a reminder that for several minutes there had been four customers in the inn; the idea brought with it a sharpening of all thought: a mood, greater than the sum of the personalities involved, and felt as a mutual mind-sniffing.
Yet it was not the stranger who spoke to break the silence. Instead, words came from behind the counter: the landlord, bolster-shaped Therff, blinked with sad eyes and said:  "I foretell we must take heed!"
"'We'?" asked Gheren.
Therff replied, "Yes, every one of my customers! - though I don't know how well you understand us, Gheren of Sombax."
"Why should I not understand you?" snorted the cartographer. "We each have our business to attend to. That's what we have in common - hard work."
"But you are an intellectual with a library of maps; we of Oblannerad, on the other hand, toil in the open air. Thus we endure more than our fair share of the Moraar's curious itch."
At that point the nameless stranger muttered an indistinct assent.  Therff heard it, and turned to address him -
"You, sponndar, you feel it too?"
"Certainly," said the heavy-cloaked man.
"And we mean the same thing? A part of the world that possesses an 'itch'?
The man sought words of his own: "The area feels... transparent."
"Oaaaah, it takes a foreigner to put it so well. But listen, stranger, we'd rather you didn't put it TOO well. If you've heard what we Moraar folk are like, you know what we don't like to hear."
Strao Gheren interceded, "Drop it, Therff. Don't expand on it."
"I have my reasons," the landlord insisted. "Sponndar," he addressed the stranger, "perhaps you've heard of our reputation in other lands. Folk think we're stupid believers in infantile legends; they think we think that for instance Yimdian invaders from way back are still lurking underground; homesick invaders who spill dream-pictures of a Yimdian megalopolis named Yirisoa. All right - " (seeing a gesture of exasperation by Strao Gheren), "I know I am foolish to dwell on all this stuff; yet given that there is, in fact, truly some odd mind-achy feel about the Moraar, as if some intruding space is about to ooze into it, what else can you expect? I'll be frank with you, stranger - this land is humiliated by a surfeit of legends. Our cup of toleration is just about full. Now tell us who you are."
The others became aware, as the stranger bowed his head, of his private agony of embarrassment. It wasn't hard to guess that the poor fellow, like many a newcomer to the region, had forgotten who he himself was. They, unlike he, knew it was a temporary condition. The comradeship of the inn was even now about to provide a cure.  Then - Skies! it always was a gladdening sight - they watched his face brighten with relief! The problem was slinking away; the amnesia dissolving with the aid of conversation.
With smiles encouraging him, the man breathed calmly and was able to tell them:  "I am Yadon, a voyager from Ao."
"Welcome, sponndar Yadon," said Therff amidst the others' greetings, and waited for more.
"I was a culler, in a netter crew," Yadon explained. "Had some luck; helped catch a few evidencer clouds, but after a while I wanted a change, so I left my ship, and here I am."
This whetted their appetite; they expected him to recount tales from his journeys, or show interest in their lives in some respectful way, to pay more of his social due.
"Sponndar Therff," Yadon addressed the landlord, "allow me, first of all, a question about this troubled place. What do you wish to happen?"
Therff's reply was blunt. "My view is that we ought to get out."
This was so plain-spoken, that all eyes swung to aim at the landlord. Yadon was forgotten as demands were fired at Therff: "What are you on about?" "What do you mean, 'get out'?"
"I mean, literally, leave the area," Therff replied. "Permanently."
"Leave, after we've lived here all our lives?" asked Devlel, and similarly Estunu cried, "Abandon our homes? Break our hearts..."
"Plok," said Therff rudely. "We shall never lack a home. All of Syoom is our home."
"But our livelihoods," began Devlel.
"Look, people may say - " (Therff frowned at Gheren) "that Oblannerad is a 'gum town', dependent upon the Wood. Be it so; but we needn't be dependent on the town! There are others like it, other areas which depend upon silviculture but which aren't stuck like we are in a district of plaguey effects. We could even start up an entirely new settlement all for ourselves - I'm sure that not all of the marescent woods are taken. We have skills, in short, that could be used elsewhere to earn us a living. I say, let's leave. We can do better than this. We don't have to stay where people will always think of us as credulous children."
Yadon alone remained silent while they argued. He did not know the background to the dispute but, in hearkening to his mind's lower regions where listening becomes watching and where the deep eye roves, he could range around sensing the silhouettes of attitudes, aims, desires and fears that swipe and edge and poke at each other in a blind effort to comb out their tangled fates...
A spectacle; and at first that was all. He wished these people well, but their community's problems were not his.
Only after some ten minutes of discussion had gone by did he begin to see himself as a shape in the picture. And in some way his "shape" in it was important, to judge from the stolen glances in his direction... Underneath the strident arguments, was a muffled throwing of emotional pillows; grumbles of anxiety less fraught than they sounded; whiffs of pretend-despair. It all amounted to fantastic proof that their hopes were being pinned upon something -
Upon a chance arrival -
Namely, himself.
A fate-current had picked on him. Such was the way things happened on Ooranye.
Well, he had best conform, if he wished to retain their goodwill. For now it had become more than a mere matter for his curiosity. Having rested, having recovered his memory, he woke to the practicalities. He was a grounded wanderer who had lost his skimmer and needed material help.
A marooned sponndar was entitled to expect help; it was the unwritten law of the plains. But it was also the unwritten law that he ought to do what he could to earn that help.
He sniffed also a further, enticing chance, that he might show these people how to go not round but through.
Confront instead of evade.
The moment came, when their faces all turned to him, and the time had come for him to contribute.
"I overheard, sponndar Gheren, about this mossongunain thing... Is it really so impossible to know what it was all about?"
Strao Gheren explained, "When the five minutes are over, the memory is gone and you don't get it back. That's the discipline of it. That way, you don't 'know' - instead, you survive." Frowning, the cartographer added: "You must be from far away, sponndar Yadon."
"It's hard to know everything," Yadon smiled disarmingly, "but I want to make up for lost study-time."
Some chuckles greeted this. Therff put in, "Of course the temptation exists, to break the conditioning, to hold on past the five minutes, to keep permanently what mossongunain allows one to uncover. But who would really wish to flout what must have evolved for a good reason?"
Devlel slapped on a further layer of reproof: "You, sponndar Yadon from Ao, what were you getting at? Is it in your mind to throw off a discipline that protects us?"
"Easy, easy," replied Yadon - and thoughtlessly he said it in English. His syllables were uttered in a placatory tone, which kept the audience from becoming apprehensive or suspicious at the sound of a tongue which none of them knew. "I simply suggest," the mysterious stranger went on, now in the right language of the place, "that the glimpse gained by sponndar Strao Gheren might also be granted to another. That's to say, perhaps somebody else might climb the Ridge and win an additional five-minute dose of knowledge. In fact..." he added as he rose from his chair, "I need to learn plenty, myself."
"You?" "What will you do?" they cried as they saw him head for the door. The turn the meeting had taken was so swift and unexpected, not one of them could even think whether or not they wished to stop him.
He turned and spoke, "I can tell you what I will not do. I won't dodge."
The tumultuous effect the stranger was having upon the feelings of his hearers caused a froth-up of realization that the flow of fate had burst its usual banks. No one was sufficiently confident to stop Yadon from striding out the door of the Niffomb Ollog. Therefore that is what he did, ignoring the voices which were raised behind him in indecisive and bewildered tones.

A different sound, that of hurrying footsteps, made him turn his head to see the brawny but attractive Devlel gaining upon him.
She caught up and said, "You'll find the path quicker, Yadon, with me to help you."
"Thanks," he said; "by all means do show me the best way to the top; I'd appreciate it."
"I have never," she remarked, lifting her eyes to the sky-line as she fell into step beside him, "never felt bothered to climb the Krokkembar; but the beginning of the path is not hard for me to find."
"And now you are bothered to go up?" Yadon spoke with a sidelong glance at the woman.
"I'd be embarrassed on behalf of my homeland if I allowed you to lurch alone into trouble. Somebody needs to watch over you. A task which falls to me - since Gheren plainly does not wish for another climb." She sounded baffled but caustic. "A fact which tends to suggest that he wouldn't be any use up there anyway; so, since one of us ought to help a visitor, it is my turn to leave him behind."
"Ah," was all Yadon could think of to say.
"Interesting, isn't it?" She compressed her lips. "And interesting likewise is your style, sponndar 'no-dodge' Yadon."
He met that with a silence, which for a little while she did not break, till they came to the foot of the slope. "And there's the path," she beamed, pointing to a line of chalky pallor. "See, it winds all the way up the Krokkembar's flank."
Eyeing the zig-zag, Yadon observed that it became indistinct beyond the next two turns, and invisible thereafter; nevertheless its regularity promised its continuance.
"Ready?" said the woman. "Then up we go."
The way was wide enough for Devlel to trudge beside him, and now and then she scrutinized his rugged profile, which showed no great physical difference from that of any tough wanderer; Yadon's skin was no rougher, no greyer than that of the average Nenn - but she strongly sensed a contrail of mood eddying about him. A kind of swarthiness of will...
"Yadon," she broke silence again, "where are you really from?"
The side-gleam of a smile caught her eye. "Olhoav."
"Olhoav!? Isn't that - "
"Starside."
"Broken Skies!" she ejaculated.
"That's it," he agreed.
"You really have wandered here all the way from Starside?"
"Yes."
That silenced her for a while longer.
"And when," she presently said, "we get to see the Logician, what will you do? Will we then learn more about your 'not to dodge' policy? Will it bring out something from your heritage? Some special idea from Starside?"
"Ahhh," he murmured, "something from my heritage..."
His voice trailed away and he spoke no more until they reached the top.

Along its final stretch the path became smudged, until it petered out into the light soil. In this uppermost region Yadon began to deviate from his route. He no longer aimed directly at the summit observatory; rather, he chose to head towards a point about fifty yards to the right of that edifice.
Devlel made no comment on his change of direction. Perhaps, she thought, he intends to gauge the lie of the land before he faces the Logician.
  She still had not made up her mind whether she liked or disliked Yadon. Or perhaps, instead of either, she ought to view him as a force beyond her likes or dislikes...
Gaining the summit, they halted to gulp cool air into their lungs, while the panorama which suddenly embraced them inundated their thoughts and feelings with the distant hues and forms of the Moraar, a bath of contemplation which has solaced many a wayfarer. Little notions as well as big ones are apt, on such heights, to play about in one's head; fanciful comparisons and questions of scale, such as, for instance, the width of the line on which the walkers stood, which was about five yards, prompted Yadon to muse aloud:
"Not quite a "razor-ridge" when viewed so close; yet after all if I were a microbe on the edge of a literal razor-blade, I'd relate to it in comparable proportion, I suppose."
Delvel felt a sudden affection for her companion, though the thrill of the Yadon presence was too harsh and eerie for romance; anyhow, this enigmatic Starsider had furnished the excuse that had brought her here. Never before had she bothered to climb this ridge, for she had simply taken it for granted all her life, and the impetus to experience it at close quarters would never have come from Strao Gheren, she now realized: the cartographer had shrunk in her perspective... a predictable fellow compared with Yadon.
...Meanwhile the Starsider had stepped over to the ridge's further edge.
Desirous of learning what had caught his attention, she trotted over to join him.
He murmured, gazing down, "Do you see what I see?"
"Those few stick-shapes scattered on the plain?" She shrugged. "Abandoned skimmers." Obvious enough.
Then she straightened and turned round, uneasy about having taken her eyes off the observatory for too many moments. It was inadvisable, she felt, to allow the Logician an opportunity to approach unnoticed.
"Yes, but," insisted Yadon, still intent on the scene below, "what kind of accident leads to undamaged vehicles being abandoned with no bodies visible?"
"Does it matter? Something always fits the facts."
"I should like to know what fits those," he insisted.
  "Rather than brood about it, look there," and she touched Yadon's sleeve so as to bring him round to face the porch of the observatory.
The form which had emerged from between the pillars, was one from which she expected to recoil. It roused in her the memory of an old affront, a humiliation which had lain sore in her mind for a couple of thousand days. Now the wide-awakened memory rushed at her, snatching at her wits, and she groaned out loud at the embarrassment of that long-gone occasion. She had been a young, eagerly curious girl when the arrogant forg, Laro Hing, had for once descended from his lofty workshop to give talks and answer questions from the folk of Oblannerad. Some of them he had answered quite fairly. But not hers! Intolerable! She winced and twitched anew.
  Yet as the moments ticked by, the hot shame unexpectedly died. The old memory went out of focus; faltered, slackened, lost all its immediacy, so that Devlen cound not even clearly recall what her public question had been.
She only knew it had been perfectly sensible, and had not deserved the put-down he'd issued; and now - she suddenly realized - she couldn't really remember the put-down itself! Something about "I haven't time to teach" - but no further details. Her brain, having found it in storage, had thrown it out.
Now, she was big with a new mood of self-assertion.
"He's coming towards us, the scruffy savant himself," she said to Yadon. "Should we meet him half-way?"
Her companion replied, "We don't know if he wants that. Let's wait for him."
"Suits me," Devlel murmured, enjoying the realization that she did not care.

Ten yards off and closing, Laro Hing boomed, "Skimmjard, sponndarou!" Next he halted at half that distance, his wide stance suggesting a reflex urge to block them off, if they should try to reach his door. "This is remarkably soon after the previous visitor; perhaps Strao Gheren sent you to say he'd forgotten something?"
"Perhaps he has," said Yadon enigmatically. "Skimmjard to you, Logician L-H. This is Devlel..."
"The lady I recognize."
  The lady I recognize... reverberated in her astonished mind. The words, thank all the skies, were respectfully pronounced. No condescending quirk whatsoever could her frantic gaze detect in the lines around the Logician's lips. Well! She must now re-interpret her memories. A chunk of her life, apprently, required revision! Flabbergasting how one can have been so wrong for such a stretch of days...
  "...but who are you, sponndar?" the Logician continued.
"My name is Yadon," said the Olhoavan. "Just a wanderer."
"Why have you wandered here?"
"Curiosity."
"So you bring nothing for me to work on."
This sounded like a rebuke for wasting the savant's time; Devlel looked at Yadon and wondered momentarily if he were embarrassed. Yet then she realized that she did not care if he was. Her heart was hammering not on Yadon's behalf but out of sudden concern for the feelings of the Logician!
What in the world was going on inside her? Rapport with that two-named forg, Laro Hing? And distance, on the other hand, from her single-named companion, Yadon?
Her feelings confirmed that this was so. She still admired Yadon, but her concern, evidently, was all the other way, and, after all, why feel apprehension for what might happen to the Starsider, who seemed so eminently capable of looking out for himself...
Right now he was asking, with a gesture in the direction of the plain beyond the Ridge, "Can you tell me, sponndar Laro Hing, about the mess down there? Lying like wrecks, but seemingly in good condition."
"Oh, those. Abandoned, free for the taking," the Logician replied dismissively. "And if you were to take one, the former owners could not claim that you had robbed them."
So, the owners had fled. The implication was one which no Wayfarer could ignore.  "I'd need more of the story, before I took one."
"Not much I can tell," shrugged the Logician. "Losing control, they were lucky to make forced landings and walk away. I repeat: nobody will object if you descend to scavenge in the Nefforlank."
"The 'Worst Place'? That what you call that patch of plain? Not a name to encourage scavengers," said Yadon dryly. "Yet come to think of it, not a great surprise in the Moraar, which I'd call Creepy-land. Why," he persisted, "is this district so peculiar?"
"You climbed all the way up here to ask me that?"
"Is the question not valid?"
Laro Hing gazed in true astonishment (and Devlel looked surprised too). "Sponndar Yadon, one is tempted to ask, what planet did you come from? Oh well, the attitudes which can spring up in out-of-the-way places..."
"I am from Olhoav, in Starside."
The supercilious incredulity vanished from the Logician's tone.  "Wonderful," he mused in a brittle voice. "Wonderful also, that I believe you."  It was a turning point in the interview.
Devlel meanwhile was paying decreasing attention, becoming occupied instead with a new understanding of herself, which revealed her real motivation for escorting Yadon up here. The idea on the surface of her mind had been to consult with Laro Hing about the mysteries of the Moraar in case the Logician's wisdom plus the Starsider's input might somehow make emigration from the area unnecessary, for her hope had been that she and her people would not have to abandon their homes. All that, she now understood, was just a transient excuse. Her real reason for this jaunt up the Ridge was -
That she loved a two-namer; and his name was not Strao Gheren!
Laro Hing was speaking to Yadon:
  "...Your style of questioning leads me to reflect that Starside is so far away, that to hail from there might resemble being from another world... But surely, some truths must remain the same all over the world. Surely, for Sunsiders and Starsides alike, prudence dictates that mysteries must be accepted, not plumbed. Wherever you are on this un-tameable world, you must know that we cannot master it. And even if we somehow found the means to do so, the World Spirit would intervene to disallow us from achieving that aim."
  Hearing this, Devlel wondered: Could be be arguing against himself? Wrestling against the painful new hope, that the stranger from Starside might actually be some unmatched resolver or rescuer?
Yadon, musing, wrapped his cloak closer about him as the wind on the ridge sought to billow it out. "I have learned to imagine," the Olhoavan said dreamily, "that it might be possible to proceed in a different fashion, that of a smaller, safer, more comfortable world."
Laro Hing objected, "Why play games with an imaginary world?"
"Because that way we could inspire ourselves to tackle mysteries in a different way. Directly, rather than by dodging. Dart not round but through."
"A strange dream," remarked the Logician.
Yadon added, "We have an annoying but useful saying, Think outside the box."
Laro Hing shook his head. "Ours is an overwhelming planet; that fact is the 'box' which we cannot escape."
"I have escaped from much," retorted Yadon.
"No doubt you have," the Logician conceded, sizing up the tall, swarthy Starsider; "but not from the world."
"You think not?"
"...Not from the plenitude of mysteries which cannot be tamed, sponndar Starside wanderer. Each peak in a mountain range must be accepted as it is, and evaded as it is, so that your skimmer weaves around them."
"Or you can land," Yadon pointed out.
"Oh, spoil my figure of speech if you like. Come and see something; come, both of you, and be welcome to my home," and the Logician spread his arms.
Devlel, who had been silent during the conversation, felt confused by a cometary tail of fear as the Logician strode in front of them, a fear that was drawing into a precarious hope, that the fear itself might at last be jettisoned! Naturally the new-born hope was itself fearful; it screamed like a baby, bawling at the prospect of disappointment. She felt this on Laro Hing's behalf. Pressure was on him, to grab an unexpected opprtunity somehow being offered by Yadon, who was going to be challenged to attempt the unthinkable. She saw all this because, in this particular flex of the narrative, hers was the viewpoint flame.

To enter the observatory was to exchange the open sky for a grey ceiling and four grey walls. It did have windows, but they were small. Even so, Devlel did not feel shut in.
The structure which enclosed her was sturdy enough in a material sense, and was not physically rattled by the breeze which sighed and whistled outside the walls and seeped under the door; all of the building was solid and strong - yet so many mysteries and secrets must crouch within its volume, as to suggest a porous border with infinity.
A fitting home for a savant, thought Devlel, who an hour ago would have dismissed it as a mere shed, unfit to count as a home.
She accepted the invitation to sit on a swivel-chair beside Yadon's, while their host went into an alcove to pour drinks.
Yadon took to examining a bulky contraption on the adjacent table; Devlel swivelled to gaze around at the scuffy shelves that lined the walls - they held an untidy assortment of box-files, books and artefacts - and at the surfaces of the benches and tables, all of which appeared scratched. Nothing was polished; all was for use, nought for show. Devlel fondly glimpsed, through an open inner door that must lead to Laro Hing's bedroom, what looked like some furs heaped on an austere pallet, and the sight further endeared the occupant to her warming heart. Life could be enjoyable up here, amid the lonely dedication which, if her fate ran true, she would soon arrange to become less lonely...
She looked up, for the Logician was back, offering glasses of myyix to her and to Yadon. Smiling her thanks as she took hers, she said: "Sponndar L-H, we townsfolk have missed you."
"Really?" the Logician smiled back at her.
"Yes, really. We've taken you too much for granted, but this won't continue. We - all of us - need you."
Here she glanced at Yadon for support, and Yadon was listening with no sign of objection. Reassured by his attentive mien, she continued with her appeal to the Logician:
"You're a savant. Why should we not look to you for help? Today, sponndar L-H, some of us local folk have got as far as thinking seriously of emigration from this, our homeland."
  Laro Hing took a seat. "It's the 'silent noise', is it not?"
Those few words perfectly expressed the topic she aimed to introduce, namely the haunting, low-key, routine eeriness of the Moraar. She looked the Logician in the eye and said, "Precisely. You are with us in this matter? You sympathize?"
"Without a doubt. It wears us down." Then, to Yadon: "Sponndar, you as a stranger from afar perhaps do not hear the 'silent noise': the mystery of the Plain which its people have had to endure from time immemorial as part of their lives."
"Oh but I do hear it," the Starsider shook his head. "I judge it to be the tune of what I call 'Creepy-Land'."
"Not a bad term," agreed Laro Hing. "Sodden with an eerieness which has never been described, let alone explained, we usually cope because we contextualize, telling ourselves that such regional 'haunting' is bound to occur upon the surface of a giant ancient world worked over for so many aeons by powerful forces and therefore, so to speak, made threadbare-thin to influences that soak in from outside... That's the general excuse."
"And you leave it at that?" smiled Yadon.
"I'd prefer to," said the Logician with a short laugh. "But then, if I do, some people blame me personally."
Yadon said in a tone of disbelief, "Blame you for the 'silent noise'?"
"Well, for making it worse, at any rate. Yes, indeed, that's what they do." "But - "
"I'm a meddler," the Logician continued. "Devlel will tell you. People have said that I've done or caused something which has filtered down from my height to bother folks down below. My irresponsible prying, they allege, has disturbed the plain."
Devlel brightly remarked, "What nonsense people talk, sponndar. They shouldn't call you a Logician if they think you're as foolish as that."
"Thank you, Devlel! I'll count you as a colleague!"
"I could be that; I shouldn't find it too hard," she replied. "I mean that seriously, sponndar." She felt flooded with happiness as she went on, daring to demonstrate that she could get a bit technical: "I heard you once say, 'X' is not 'not-X', and from that truth, everything flows."
Laro Hing leaned forward, grinning. "The beauty of logic. Excellent stuff - but listen now; and you, Yadon-from-Starside, listen likewise. The beast is not slain."  His smile gone, he waited for the words to register in full.
Yadon guessed: "Emotion, you mean? That is the beast? Emotion versus logic?"
Laro Hing shifted in his chair and said, "Irrational fear."
"Well, you of all people," said Yadon, "ought to have an idea of what to do about that... I mean to say... refute it with logical statements..."
"But statements don't always have to be made with the mouth."
"I make them with a smile," remarked Devlel sweetly.
"That's good," said her host, "and I mean it, it's a real point. Only, in smiling, in your remark just now, you hoped to lighten the tone and yet you did not succeed."
"That's a pity," Devlel whispered.
Laro Hing continued remorselessly, "Emotions are statements insofar as they are admissions of belief. The truth thus comes smashing in: fear is a statement."
In that utterance the man's voice thrummed almost brokenly, as though in a struggle to disbelieve his own words.
"You mean," asked Yadon, "all fears are justified?"
"Yes," was the curt response.
Yadon looked dubious, while for Devlel understanding blurred.
"It happens all the time," ruminated Laro Hing. "Say you reach one conclusion according to your logic-code, while you reach another, different conclusion according to your emotion-code: then you are not merely being incoherent, you are actively contradicting yourself. As soon as I realized that I was doing this, I was aware that up till that moment I had not been a proper logician at all."
Yadon murmured, "Perhaps nobody is..."
With a chopping gesture Laro Hing pressed on. "If, in my profession, fear is not aligned with calm reason, but nevertheless continues, then that is tantamount to saying that 'X' and 'Not-X' do, after all, co-designate."
"And so?"
"And so, since that cannot be, the duty of the logician is crystal clear: if he cannot suppress, he must believe the fear."
"I see where you're headed," said Yadon. "You believe that any 'haunting atmosphere' must be a warning of real danger."
"I regard that as proved."
"All right, I accept," and Yadon clanged the words so that Devlel swung round to look at him, swung back and looked at the Logician... who appeared not to have taken offence at the Olhoavan's peremptory tone.
This was the point at which Devlel pictured Yadon as a ticking timer. The metronome went Yadon, Yadon, Yadon, to whom the proceedings must thump in tempo...
Yadon was pointing to the scanscope.  Laro Hing was inviting his guest to sit and learn to operate the controls... How had things got to here, wondered Devlel.

During the following few minutes the Olhoavan familiarised himself with the controls: namely the dials on the screen's boxlike stand.
He rubbed his fingers together, saying, "The surface of this thing feels... soapy."
"That's because the whole apparatus is coated," said Laro Hing, "with a microscopic layer of frozen force."
"Won't get dusty through the aeons, then." Yadon found he was quite expertly exploring the Marescent Wood by remote control. Then, the short training having sufficed, he twiddled the dials to shift the televisual focus away from the Wood, veering the aim onto the bare plain.
"No use," murmured the Logician. "It's been tried. You won't find any answers there."
Yadon did not stop as he asked, "Why not?"
"The terrain doesn't just look empty, it really is. Therefore there's nothing to find."
"Reason in the abstract," Yadon murmured. He continued to adjust the controls as he spoke. "Reason, you know, must point beyond its own use... and so must the scanscope. Ah... here we are."
On the screen, the mostly barren ground had become less blurred. This was because the scanning speed had dropped; tufts and pebbles were panning past more slowly than before.
The decelerating focus was shifting towards a particular patch of plain: the area that was strewn with abandoned skimmers.
Belatedly the Logician, with an edge to his voice, said, "You're onto the Nefforlank."
"Might as well give it a try."
"But... all right, it's where those skimmers crashed, but apart from that, it's just an ordinary patch of the Moraar. So why waste time on it?"
"You actually really do mean to tell me that you haven't got round to it yet? Skies above! Seems to me, any place that's dubbed the 'Worst' must be worth a careful look."
Silence greeted his words. Once again the Starsider had unnerved his audience. His yen to probe rather than dodge had made even the Logician uncomfortable.
Laro Hing felt shamed into admitting: "Well, perhaps I, too, have felt that the scanscope is the key to it all... but, I've never managed to point it rightly." It sounded thin. He ought, he felt, to have stood up for "dodging", for those evasive attitudes which were essential on Ooranye. Surely, one simply had to dodge; no other way existed to survive. How else might one pilot oneself through one's span of days on a giant world? Mad it would be, deliberately to hurtle into the flank of any prowling enigma on Ooranye.
Fortunately for the evasive principle, it looked as though Yadon's meddling would lead nowhere... Minutes went by without his investigation revealing anything profound. Fingers on dials can only twiddle so much.
Yes, it was turning out to be a demonstration in futility: the result being merely to magnify a blank area of plain. Grains of gralm looked bigger, while naught else appeared.
"What did I tell you? Nothing there," remarked Laro Hing.
"And what about underground?"
"Ah, yes, the supposed Yimdian invaders lurking underground. The tall tales we're supposed to frighten our children with." Laro Hing allowed his tone to sound tired. "You're out of date. Nowadays we Moraarans mock all that stuff as much as foreigners do. No trace of Ymdians here. Nothing underground except ice. Otherwise - you can be assured - we'd know about it by this time."
Yadon growled, "Hmm, all right." It did stand to reason. "So let's forget underground. What about surface space-stretching?" Noting that the Logician had gone quiet once more, Yadon pursued the idea: "History knows of that trick, and you must know of it too: an area can be expanded while keeping the same circumference. Think of the Quest for Solor in the Gold Era - "
Laro nodded, "Records exist, yes, of that feat being performed... It seems that you Olhoavans must be well-read."
"The library in the Zveggh-Yerrand is quite good," remarked Yadon briefly, continuing his investigation.
All this while, Devlel had settled into a comfortable certainty, on the crest of a situational wave, in which the moment must come when she would hear "mossongunain". It would be followed by the five allotted minutes of revelation. That would bring a technical solution, which would lance the boil of disquiet, after which everyone would feel so much better that the problem of the Moraar would exist no more -
Then nobody would need to emigrate. She and Laro would bask together in this triumphant phase of their life-stories; what an idyll that would be!
One detail remained uncertain. Whose voice would utter the word, would spark the climax? Laro's, or Yadon's? It might well be Laro: he'd uttered mossongunain before; he could do it again. However, on the whole Devlel was inclined to suspect that Yadon the wanderer was the appropriate clincher. He seemed the type to wrap up the episode before moving on. Anyway, the word would come, of that she was sure. And since she herself had no intention of pronouncing it, and since there was no fourth person present, it would have to be one of the two men.
Only - minutes went by, and more minutes went by, and neither of them said it.
Yadon, turning the dials without results, became more and more restless and impatient until at last he let his hands fall. He sat back, eyeing not just the screen but the scanscope apparatus as a whole.
"What," he asked, "are those hand-moulded bumps on the sides of this thing?"
"The palm-holds? Try placing your hands on them, one hand on each." Laro Hing smiled thinly as he watched the Olhoavan try.
"Invisible repulsion," muttered Yadon while his attempted grip was bounced aside to right and left. "More than soapy - it's cushiony."
"Try harder if you like."
Yadon duly increased his efforts to touch the mid-patches on the right and left flanks of the gadget's control-box, but the greater the effort he put in, the greater the invisible resistance his palms encountered.
Patiently he asked, "You tell me, then, the point of these appurtenances which one cannot reach to touch."
"You ask me that? What's the point of asking for the point?" smiled the Logician. "Starsider though you are, you surely know the way of the world, every bit as well as I do."
"The way of the world," echoed Yadon testily. "And a Logician is no different, it seems."
Devlel caught a flicker on his face which told her that stark rejection was imminent.
Sure enough Yadon suddenly, violently clapped his palms against the scanscope box-stand's "ears", with a force and an audacity savagely different from his previously respectful handling. He achieved a result. An imagined "pop" like that of a burst bag caused Devlel to blink.
When her eyes re-focused she saw that Yadon's hands now successfully grasped the holds, the "appurtenances" which had seemed unattainable a moment ago. He had them in a kind of helmsman's grip. That was the thought that pecked at Devlel: that it was the grip of a fate-driven pioneer, a traverser of voids.
Such a man might well be able to smash any old psychological barrier erected by the "way of the world".
Devlel gazed with awe at the Starsider for some while. Presently, though, the scanscope screen itself drew her full attention.
Its circular view had become divided, by three equally spaced radii, into three separate views, each of which showed alien scenes, utterly different from the featureless plain which had covered the entire display an instant before.
The immediate effect was emotionally electrifying. Its newness promised further amazement that must come as the gaze was drawn in -
First of all Devlel's eyes were entrapped by the lower-left third. She would have preferred to tear her eyes away from that image but she dared not, even for a moment - dared not refuse to be shown what was erupting from the plain.
To see that up-funnelling spout, was to give way to the notion it gave of a peering, eye-on-stalk probe, thrashing in closer and closer sweeps at the observatory. Its crown shone brighter with each sweep. And what that blunt and glowing tip was revealed to be, more and more clearly, was a matching screen-within-a-screen, a pictured twin to that of the scanscope.
As for the shape depicted on it: there mouthed a blue head, with other faces crowding to either side of it, jostling and thronging all over the background of the picture.
Laro Hing was the first to tear his gaze free from the scanscope; he dashed to the window of the observatory and cried, "All illusion! Nothing out there!"
Was he right? Devled could hope so, for a moment. Her heart beat with gladness because, from where she sat, she could turn her head sufficiently to see for herself that no visible monstrosity was actually lurching up from the plain. And nothing else would seem amiss, were it not for what was being shown on the scanscope screen.
Again the Logician insisted, "Nothing's really happening!"
The quiet man at the controls showed no interest in those words.
Desperate for vocal agreement, Laro shouted, "Did you hear me, Yadon? I said it's not happening!"
"You think I've triggered a recording, perhaps?" asked the Starsider with innocent calm.
"Possibly," gasped the Logician, striving to master himself. "Anyhow it's only one of the three..."
Indeed the other two thirds of the scanscope's field of view promised some quite different fare. Better fare, much better. It would be desirable to lock eyes with that stuff. Only, in order to manage that, it would be necessary to tear one's attention from -
A blue head, which was enlarging into an approaching face, on a brandished image, on the screen-within-a-screen.

If only one could, it would be a relief to ignore it. The globular head was human after a fashion, though with skin coloured royal blue instead of Uranian grey, and it bulged with authority; its lips lips pursed and unpursed with repeated and urgent commands while, to each side of it, the background heads excitedly mouthed. Of course from this soundless image no known words could be lip-read, and yet with dread clarity the oral contortions conveyed the sense, "Let us out - let us out - let us out - "
Approaching closer, the picture on the screen-within-a-screen tilted and strove to fit the whole field of view...
Seconds away now from a precise match...
"Should we," wheezed the Logician, "let this happen?"
Yadon continued to brood at the palm-controls and made no reply. Laro Hing took an uncertain step towards him and, in an urgent, jerky whisper, spoke again: "Yadon, sponndar, listen: you've activated all this without finding out what it's for or how to use it; should we let it happen?"
"Let what happen?"
Then, click! - it was too late.
The images of the lower-left third had become one; the blue faces entirely filled that part of the screen. They could go on mouthing their commands in what was now a steady picture.
Devlel, however, suspected something bogus about it all. She reflected upon what had happened: the eruption of a spout bearing a picture had approached and fused with a sector of the screen, yet nothing in the real world off the screen had actually changed; the sinister on-screen juncture must have involved a mere emblem or logotype; it was just a show... She widened her attention, to examine the other two sectors of the scanscope's circular view, the portions which had remained comparatively calm. The picture they showed - Her understanding suddenly gulped at it, her imagination gorged with a bloat of wonder.
What she saw, drenched her in powerful conviction, that she was being shown a world mightier than her own. The general sense of grandeur in the vast purple mountain-scape was so strong, it rather tended to overwhelm any actual detail, but one fact she did immediately note was that the sky was crossed by a mighty banded arc. This sky-band glowed down upon the alien world, to reveal more of its detail as the eye-drinking moments ticked by. A route had been gouged through a tract of mountain. It was a road that ran over a pass to link one whitish misty lowland with another. Through the pass, in slow motion, crawled a dusting of lights. They must signify a host of vehicles or illuminated creatures voyaging from hollow to hollow...
Meanwhile the last sector, the lower-right third of the scanscope, was quite different, much flatter, and lacked that super-charged quality which made the upper image so much more impressive than the sum of its colours and shapes. But the lesser landscape was able to make its own silent visual speech. Its utterance was, at first sight, sadder. A horizon between pale ground and pale sky circumscribed the wanderings of some bead-like figures strung along another, lesser road. Dim, that narrow little road, and faint the intermittent filigree of travellers along it. Then, the eye adjusted. Suddenly it was clear that the scene was - enormous; the road was not "lesser" after all and the figures were not people, they were buildings in motion, or even blocks of buildings in motion. Their stately journey occurred within a vast perspective of mountains now recognizable as artificial... climaxing in the distance with an immense complex of upsweeping ramps at the centre of which reared a pyramidal statue - and the statue's face had lips that moved, that could be lip-read, continuously uttering, "Yirisoa..."
Devlel's head jerked back as she realized with horror that the gadget itself, the scanscope, was now haloed by a fuzzy incandescence resembling superheated steel wool, while the Logician was shouting:
"Don't do it, Yadon!"
Eh - what was the moody Starsider doing now? He had stood up and put his arms around the scanscope as if to heave it.
The stretched moment oozed into syrupy nightmare. Laro Hing was gabbling, "Don't, for skies' sake, Yadon, don't! You'll betray our world! Old machines - can't be trusted - aliens are getting at you, Yadon! Backtrack or I'll shoot!"
No, thought Devlel, you won't beat this Starsider to a laser-draw. Not even if his hands are full of scanscope and yours are free. He'll be more than a match for you in that line, so please don't try it, Laro.
Yet she herself might have acted if she had been sure of the right thing to do. She was not quite convinced that Laro had read the situation correctly. Transfixed with fear and indecision, doubting both men but hugely respecting Yadon's power, she could only stare into the scanscope's "halo" which was now growing into a real gateway in the air.
"Don't throw it!" pleaded Laro Hing, unwilling to follow through on his threat to shoot.
Well could Devlel guess the destination that anything thrown through the gate might reach. It had become frighteningly understandable and high time to admit, that the Nefforlank's space-stretched pocket was a beachhead held by ancient invaders. They'd been stuck here for ages, yearning to break free, and now, they hoped, was their hour to try for liberation via the scanscope. What to do?
Uranians are schooled to recognize the slinky creep of Fate in whatever costume of circumstance it may choose to wear. You must play the game of life and death by rising to the moment. Get squared to it in time, before it harries and destroys you. For example, here, you guess:
The Yimdians invaded in pre-human times, and met with resistance. Whatever beings may have inhabited Ooranye in those days were able to contain the invasion inside its beachhead. Devlel could figure that, somehow, the scanscope was the key to confining or releasing the Yimdians. Whether it is one of our world's artifacts or one of theirs, either way, it's the "draw-string of the bag". It keeps them confined within the space-stretched bounds of the Nefforlank.
Now what?
Yadon, to judge from his lack of hesitation, knew what he was about. He hefted the scanscope, lifting it high, uncovering in full the "halo" behind it, the door in the air; he gritted at Laro Hing: "Don't get in my way, Logician." Laro Hing snarled, finally going for his laser.
Yadon with a twist of his body hurled the scanscope through the door as Laro found his weapon and aimed to fire -
MOSSONGUNAIN, resounded a voice so penetrating and immense, that all thought and action in the room was frozen.
Devlel could neither ask herself what Voice that was, nor believe that she did not know. She knew - they all knew - that it was Uranian but that it came from no human throat.
Of all recognitions compelled at a cellular level, that of Thremdu is the most unmistakable: the possessor of the rarest voice, that of the World Spirit, Ooranye's planetary intelligence. Its every word is historic, and in order to avoid being stunned by the idea, Devlel could only sit still and imagine it as a dream.
Likewise dreamily accepting, Laro and Yadon slumped on chairs; they exchanged words in short, exhausted sentences.
"You threw it," panted Laro.
The scanscope was gone, and so was the haloed fuzz. That gate between the worlds had shut behind it.
He repeated, "You threw it. They have it now."
Yadon opened his eyes and managed a wan smile. He seemed less stunned than Laro. "Well, if someone at the bottom of a well asks you to throw down a rope, and you don't want him to get out, but can't disobey, what do you do?"
"Tell me."
"You throw him the whole rope, of course. Both ends. So he has it all but can't use it. He's trapped, forever."
Laro Hing nodded finally. "You did right, I see."
"And now," remarked Yadon, "we have the luxury of pitying them... for all that's left for them to do is to look at their pictures of Yimdi, of Yirisoa, to their hearts' content."
"Yes, maybe," replied the Logician. "Pity them, even through they tried to invade our world. But what I don't like is, they still have their stretched space. They can stretch it more. Even if they can never open their 'bag' and get out, they can make it much bigger..."
"Makes no difference to us, given that they can't get out. Unless, of course, the scanscope, for them, really does act one day as a gate between the worlds."
"I doubt that's possible."
The talk died down again. They sat in long silence, energies drained, not so much by the crisis as by that Voice that had spoken at the end, the Voice that had only been known to speak a few times in the entire history of Ooranye, the Voice whose nature and purpose raised the most staggering questions -
But perhaps, thought Devlel, those questions aren't going to get asked, since that's the point of "mossongunain". She was just able to remember that it had prevented Laro Hing from firing his laser; now, with cosmic humour, the Voice had ensured its oblivion after its work had been done.
She realized, I feel the dream fading... It's lasted maybe a bit more than five minutes but now it's... it's... it's...
  Yadon shifted in his chair. "It's time for farewells, Logician," he said. "I'll be getting one of those skimmers which you say are free for the taking. Thanks for inviting me here. And to you, Devlel, thanks for your company."   Thank you, she thought, for triggering my happiness. Aloud, she said, "I'm sure we'll again be hearing from you, Starsider, or hearing about you, before too long."
She and Laro followed Yadon to the door, waved their farewell, and then turned to face each other.
The face of the Logician was filled with wonder. He said to the woman, "Your tone, your look, when you said 'we'..."
  She nodded. "I'm staying," she said.
A while later, watching from the ridge, Devlel and Laro Hing, arm in arm, contemplated the diminishing form of the Starsider descending the further slope of the Krokkembar.
Devlel said, "I trust he's going to be all right down there."
Laro chuckled, "He will. 'Nefforlank' will be just a name, from now on. Not the 'Worst Place' any more. One wave is ended, another has begun."
Devlel however, so as mildly to tease her new lover, expressed more concern for the wanderer from Starside. "It's a bit soon, nevertheless, to tread that patch of ground..."
"He'll cope," said Laro matter-of-factly. "Better times are ahead, in fact, all over the Moraar."
"Thanks to you."
"Thanks to me!! What did I do?"
"You didn't shoot him," she said with a laugh.
"True," he laughed in return. "But so close to being not true... By the Skies, am I glad I thought better of it."
"Best thing you ever did," smiled Devlel.
"Could be! For now the Yimdians will have to abandon their yearning for a breakout and, instead, make the most of the beach-head dimension they have created for themselves..."
They continued to watch the receding Starsider. Devlel listened with half an ear as Laro spoke in somewhat rambling recapitulation, musing on the truth behind old legends.
Just before Yadon receded from sight, the woman smiled and waved. Laro glanced at her in surprise. "He's not looking back. He can't see you."
"No, but now that he's just a disappearing dot, I can properly breathe, with a sigh of gratitude for what he's done, and one of of relief that he's gone."