So Ryo told him, the whole story pouring out through his broken confidence. When he’d finished, Wuu pondered silently for several minutes. Then he led Ryo wordlessly from the eating area back into the sleeping chamber. A wide pane of acrylic looked out of the side of the hill. The sun was just below the horizon and rain clouds rose slightly above it, their pink underbellies glowing as brightly as faceted kunzite.

“Alien monsters, hmm?” Wuu turned from the view to face Ryo. “It sounds like a lot of garbage to me.” Ryo said nothing. “Garbage strong enough to drive you to leave your premate, your family, your clan, and your hive, to make your way to a city like Ciccikalk. To some, I suppose, garbage can become an obsession.”

“It’s not garbage,” Ryo declared angrily. “It’s part of a dream.”

“Ah yes.” Wuu sounded amused. “Very overrated, dreams. Nonetheless your persistence and natural intelligence mark you as something more than a mere fanatic. It strikes me you may have fallen into something worth pursuing. It should be fun, anyway. What say that you and I make our way to Hivehom and see if we can’t find out?”

Ryo could not have been more startled had Fal suddenly rushed into the room to throw herself wholeheartedly into the journey. Fal—he found himself thinking of her frequently, but always the dream surged into his brain, overpowering thoughts of anything else, goading him, guiding him, inexorable in its demands, unrelenting in its mental pressure.

“Are you sure … do you know what we may be getting into if my suspicions turn out to have grounds, sir? There could be danger.”

“I would hope so! Otherwise there would be no fun in this. If there were no fun and danger, there’d be no poetry to it. And if there was no poetry in it there would be no reason for me to go. Now, would there?”

Ryo did not know how to answer that.

“Look, out there.” The Eint turned and indicated the hillside window, from which the view extended across the valley of the Cicci.

On the far left towered silver tubes that belched the scrubbed emissions from immense manufacturing complexes. To the right were the intake stacks that supplied fresh air to the millions swarming below. In the distance, slightly to left of center, a tiny bright spot rose cloudward at a speed too extreme and angle too sharp for it to be an aircraft

“Yes, it’s a shuttle. The port is that way.” Wuu stood alongside Ryo, contemplating the rising dot of light “No telling where that one’s going, with its queen ship. To Hivehorn perhaps, or Amropolous or another world. We could be on such a ship very soon, if you’re agreeable.”

Ryo said nothing, simply stared at the distant reflection until it vanished into the cloud layer. When it was gone he turned to stare at his benefactor, hardly daring to believe.

“It’s not possible. You could follow the tale to its end, could return and tell me about it. I cannot go with you. I have no access to credit”