The worldtree roots, trunks, and rudimentary mind were all connected. The feathery fronds reached hundreds of feet high, drooping to form an umbrellalike awning, each tree touching the next, to make the sky a tapestry of foliage. The fronds waved like eyelashes stroking each other. In addition to the humming insect sounds and calls of wild animals, a constant blanket of white noise settled over the forest, a rustling sound as soothing as a lullaby.

Worldtrees had spread across all the Theron land masses, and now ambitious green priests carried treelings to other planets so that the interlinked forest sentience could grow and learn. They prayed to it, a throbbing “earth spirit” in a literal sense, and helped the forest sentience grow stronger.

Long ago—183 years—an Ildiran Solar Navy patrol had encountered Earth’s first slow-moving generation ship, the Caillié, and brought it to this untouched planet. All eleven of the old generation ships had been named for famous explorers. The Caillié had taken its designation from René Caillié, a French explorer of darkest Africa, who had disguised himself as a native in order to enter the mysterious continent. He had become the first white man to look upon the fabled city of Timbuktu.

Burton, Peary, Marco Polo, Balboa, Kanaka… those generation-ship names had an exotic resonance for Estarra, but even tales of Earth’s uncivilized days could not match the wonders the widespread colonists had found as they settled other worlds across the Spiral Arm. Clark, Vichy, Amundsen, Abel-Wexler, Stroganov. All of them had found homes with the help of the Ildirans, except for the Burton, which remained lost among the stars.

The inhabitants of the rescued Caillié had rejoiced upon seeing Theroc’s verdant landscape, the sheer potential of this untamed world. This new home was more welcoming than any they had imagined during their generations of blind flight in search of any habitable star system. They had lived for centuries confined aboard a large, sterile starship, and during all that aimless time the colonists and their descendants had little to do but look at images of forests and mountains. And Theroc was everything they had prayed for. The colonists had immediately suspected something unusual about these trees.

The Caillié had carried everything necessary to settle even the most hostile world, but Theroc proved to be fully cooperative. After the Ildirans deposited them here, the colonists set up prefabricated structures as an immediate and temporary settlement while biologists, botanists, chemists, and mineral engineers set out to assess what this remarkable world had to offer.

Luckily, the biochemistry of the Theron ecosystem was mostly compatible with human genetics, and the settlers were able to eat a great variety of native food. They were not required to engage in massive labors of clearing and fertilizing land. The Caillié settlers found ways to work with the forest, discovering natural homes rather than erecting metal and polymer structures.

Decades later, by the time the Ildirans had established diplomatic relations with Earth, the Theron settlers had developed their own culture and established a firm foothold. Although Hansa representatives finally came to reunite them with the greater network of humanity, the Therons were perfectly happy to remain unaligned. When their ancestors had set out on the generation ship, they had never expected to go back, never dreamed of restored contact with Earth. They were a seed cast on the wind, hoping to take root somewhere. They did not intend to be uprooted…