something it would normally have overlooked. If it had been free to espertouch the ships, planets, and missiles, it would have been too distracted to detect such a subtle nuance—thoughts of a single, disciplined mind.
Delighted, the Acceptor realized the sender was a Synthian! There was a Synthian here, and it was trying to communicate with the Earthlings!
It was an anomaly, and therefore beautiful. The Acceptor had never witnessed a daring Synthian before.
Neither were Synthians famed for their psychic skill, but this one was doing a creditable job of threading through the myriad psi detectors all sides had spread through nearby space.
The feat was marvelous for its unexpectedness … one more proof of the superiority of objective reality over the subjective, in spite of the ravings of the Episiarch! Surprise was the essence of life.
The Acceptor knew it would be punished if it spent much longer marveling at this event instead of reporting it.
That, too, was a source of wonder, this “punishment” by which the Tandu were able to make the Acceptor’s people choose one path over another. For 40,000 years it had amazed them. Someday they might do something about it. But there was no hurry. By that day they might be patrons themselves. Another mere sixty thousand years would be an easy wait.
The signal from the Synthian spy faded. Apparently the fury of the battle was driving her farther from Kthsemenee.
The Acceptor cast about, regretting the loss slightly. But now the glory of battle opened before it. Eager for the wealth of stimulus that awaited it, the Acceptor decided to report on the Synthian later … if it remembered.
33
Thomas Orley
Tom looked over his shoulder at the gathering clouds. It was too soon to tell if the storm would catch him. He had a long way to fly before finding out.
The solar plane hummed along at four thousand feet; the little aircraft wasn’t designed for breaking records. It was little more than a narrow skeleton, the propeller driven by sunlight falling on the wide, black wing.
Kithrup’s world-ocean was traced below by thin white-caps. Tom flew to the northeast, letting the tradewinds do most of the work. The same winds would make the return trip—if any—slow and hazardous.
Higher, faster winds pushed the dark clouds eastward, chasing him.
He was flying almost by dead reckoning, using only Kithrup’s orange sun for rough navigation. A compass would be useless, for metal-rich Kithrup was Covered with twisty magnetic anomalies.
Wind whistled past the plane’s small conical noseguard. Lying prone on the narrow platform, he hardly felt the breeze, but Tom wished he had just one more pillow. His elbows were getting chafed, and his neck was developing a crick. He had trimmed and retrimmed his list of supplies until he found himself choosing between one more psi-bomb to use at his destination and a water distiller to keep him alive when he got there. His compromise collection was taped beneath his cushion. The lumps made it almost impossible to find a comfortable position.
The journey was an unending monotony of sea and sky.
Twice he caught sight of swarms of flapping creatures in the distance. It was his first inkling that any animals flew on Kithrup. Could they have evolved from jumping fish? He was a bit surprised to find flight on a world so barren of heights.
Of course, the creatures might have been molded by some ancient Galactic tenant of Kithrup, he thought. Where nature’s variety fails, sophonts can meddle. I’ve seen weirder gene-crafted things than fliers on a water world.
Tom remembered a time when he and Gillian had accompanied old Jake Demwa to the Tymbrimi university-world of Cathrhennlin. Between meetings, he and Jill had toured a huge continental wilderness preserve, where they saw great herds of Clideu beasts grazing the grassy plains in precise and complex geometric patterns. The arrangements spontaneously changed, minute by minute, without any apparent communication among the individual animals—like the transient weavings of a moire pattern. The Tymbrimi explained that an ancient Galactic race that had dwelt on Cathrhennlin ages ago had programmed the patterns into the Clideu as a form of puzzle. No one in all time since had ever managed to decipher the riddle, if there actually was one.
Gillian suggested that the patterns might have been adapted by the Clideu for their own benefit. The puzzle-loving Tymbrimi preferred to think otherwise.
Tom smiled as he recalled that trip, their first mission as a pair. Since then he and Gillian had seen more wonders than they could ever catalog.
He missed her already.
The