The bus's Frant driver looked back at Olmy, who nodded. They rolled smoothly across the lawn to a road paved with fine gravel, then to a whitetop highway that circled the resort and aimed toward the dawn, now deep red on the inland horizon. Patricia smelled something sweet, quite unlike the rich sharp smell of the Timbl ocean; a breeze was blowing over fields of low-lying thick yellow stalks growing outside the resort boundaries. In the fields, Frant farmers in red, many-pocketed aprons, accompanied by small automatic tractors, were already at work.

"They're harvesting biological personality elements," Olmy explained. "Tailored plantimals replicate complex biological structures, right down to preassigned memories. A cottage industry, you might call it—very advantageous."

"For humans or Frants?" Lanier asked.

"The plantimals can be adapted for most organics," Olmy said. "Installation of genetic codes is not difficult for carbon-based forms."

Lanier had meant whether the industry was more advantageous to humans or Frants, but decided not to restate his question. The bus took the white road through the fields and crossed the densely populated coastal plain. For dozens of kilometers in both directions along the coast, and for at least ten kilometers inland, the plain was covered with Frant villages.

As many as ten villages occupied tracts of land barely three kilometers square. Each village consisted of several nested circles of low-roofed rectangular houses. At the center was a stupa-like structure, often as much as fifty meters tall, draped with many-colored banners. As the sun brightened, the inland-facing banners on the stupas changed color, waving slowly in the gentle breezes like despondent rainbows.

"How advanced are the Frants, compared with your people?" Carrolson asked.

"More basic, but not primitive," Olmy said. "Their grasp of technology and science—I assume that's what you're referring to—is extensive. Do not be misled by styles of philosophies, or even by gentleness. Frants are resourceful. We rely on them a great deal."

Beyond the fields and villages, the road spiraled around a low mountain crested with sky-pointing prisms of translucent gray rock. At the top of the mountain, resting on a plateau formed by the prisms, a squat white-and-copper-banded dome rose some sixty meters higher, ballooning at its base into a broad pavilion. The bus drove under the outlying skirt of the pavilion and stopped.

Olmy led them toward the well-kept but obviously ancient bronze, black iron and white enamel works beneath the hollow dome. Standing beside a five-meter-wide horseshoe-shaped mount was a muscular, apparently middle-aged man, naked from the waist up, a tool kit hanging from his broad belt. His skin had a deep brown color, with a faint rainbow sheen. Three Frants stood at other points around the equipment, talking among themselves in low tones as they worked with polishing cloths. Above them all towered a huge cage of crisscrossing black iron bars, like a misplaced Victorian bridge.

"It's a telescope," Heineman said. "It's beautiful!"