That is my content. I addressed the Flock in our subspeech, in ancestral song-sounds, melodious and sincere. I used our Second Tongue that we have artfully concealed beneath our symphonic string-speech. This was to elude detection and their understanding. The grounders assume the strings are our main language, and so miss the song-chirps and feathershrugs that add so much. Thus we so speak only when in full gather: the Flock can best speak as we fly.

So to you all of Flock: Our concealment wings well. My small band is with me, enduring their heavy world. We shall proceed with bloodpride challenges to the grounders. They much like to see us. The snouts of their vision machines follow us everywhere. They even pry into our intimate moments!—which with fury we have stopped.

These flutters and feats shall distract them from our main flight wingers, on their moon. They labor with the Prefects and Noughts and Librarians—these seem to be separate breeds, or nearly so—in their Message chambers. There they can explore the many Messages that were lost to us in antiquity, during the Exodus. With deft wingship they shall find the increments of knowledge of the wormhole network. We need these now, to find our vagrant Mouth and then to use it.

In their Plunge, I judged their courage and truest nature. For groundlings to attempt such spoke well of them.

Yet the Mouth goals we must keep secret. We need learn more, here, before trusting these primates. Thus our feats of bloodpride distraction proceed. After descent, comes ascent.

PART 9 ASCENDING EVEREST

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell.

—W. H. AUDEN, “THE MORE LOVING ONE”

1.

Days later, her soreness was gone but not her smoldering emotions. The Plunge had changed her, Rachel knew, but not exactly how.

“What?” the Prefect Siloh demanded. “Fraq will only teach us rituals?”

Rachel shrugged. “That is all he’s delegated to do, apparently.”

“What good is that?”

“Fraq points out that without the protocols needed to access a wormhole mouth, the artificial systems that keep those gates open will not let us pass.” Rachel shifted, aching, still feeling the pressure of full grav.

“What does that mean—not let us pass?”

Rachel grimaced. “I don’t think we want to find out.”

“What are these rituals like?”

“Maneuvers in space, signals to send. Some tangled mathematical stuff I couldn’t follow. Think of it as an elaborate key.”

The Prefect returned his face to the familiar stony blank. “Fraq won’t give any hint of where the nearest wormhole mouth is?”

She eyed the Prefect, wondering if the man had any personal life. Or was it all about the Library? Better be the diplomat, then.

“That may come, in time. He says he wants to ‘ken’ Earth. That’s an old word meaning to know in a profound way.”

The Prefect’s mouth twisted. “Some high-ranked people will be very irked.”