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  “Firstly, ci!!llp,” Twikanrozex began, “we are not ‘working’ this fair. We confront no one, pressure no one, seek out neither individuals nor families nor groups. We only respond to questions freely directed at us. The UC does not seek converts. There is nothing to convert people to. We have nothing like official membership. The Church and its services are freely available to anyone who is interested.”

  “What happens,” another woman demanded to know as she pushed her way forward, “if someone chooses to participate in your church? What happens to their former religion?”

  “Annamarie,” the man next to her began warningly. She ignored him.

  “Whatever you wish to happen.” Briann was warming to the discussion, now that it had turned into a discussion and away from unfounded accusations. “You may continue to practice as you did before encountering our organization. There are participants in the United Church who practice many religions, and participants who espouse none at all. We are very undemanding.”

  “How can someone belong to two churches and champion two different beliefs?” the woman persisted.

  “Beliefs?” Twikanrozex waved his truhands in her direction. “We don’t require that you believe in anything.”

  The spokesman’s brows drew together. “What kind of a church is it that doesn’t require belief?”

  Briann smiled invitingly. “A new kind. Try it and see. You’ll find it remarkably liberating. Most who come to us do.”

  The young man drew himself up. “I’m already liberated—by the knowledge that I am following the one true path.”

  “Of course you are!” Briann responded exuberantly. “All of you are, no matter what your particular individual belief. Realizing that allows you to participate freely in the UC.”

  One heavyset fellow on the edge of the group was nodding knowingly. “I understand now.” He smiled at his associates. “We have nothing to fear from these people, or from their establishment—because they’re crazy. They argue in circles.”

  “That is it!” Twikanrozex gestured vigorously. “We argue in circles, just like the universe. In the same fashion as a gravitational lens bends light so that you can see behind large stellar objects, the United Church bends reason so that you can see the truths that hide behind reality.”

  “We’re wasting our time here.” The spokesman, now satisfied that the two robed preachers, or whatever they were, represented no threat to the established theological order, turned away. “The girot mimes from Coolangatta are starting their show soon. We still have time to hop a transport and get there before the opening.”

  The white-clad gathering began to fall away—but not quite all of them. A pair lingered: the woman Annamarie and a male friend. Ignoring the admonishments of their companions, they remained behind. They were curious, which is the first step toward enlightenment. Briann and Twikanrozex were delighted to accommodate their many questions. The man went so far as to buy Briann a cup of mochoka and Twikanrozex a helix of cherel!l tea. The four of them sat sipping and chatting for several hours. When the conversation was finally brought to an end by the woman named Annamarie, the two priestly acolytes watched the young humans depart still deep in conversation.

  “There are good folk here.” Twikanrozex sucked the last liquid from the bottom of his nearly empty turbinate. “People willing to listen.”

  “Yes.” Briann scanned the milling crowds. “I would have wished for more thranx, though.”

  “The larger contingents will not be arriving for a day or two yet,” Twikanrozex pointed out. “All have to come from offworld, and only the boldest will consider attending a function on a human-settled colony. But they will come, rest assured. My people are irresistibly drawn to the neoteric.”

  “I hope I can meet some and convince them of the kindly nature of my species,” Briann murmured. “I’ve lost weight specifically for that purpose.”

  “It was a good thing for you to do,” Twikanrozex told him. “Too much jiggling of loose human flesh can nauseate even the most courteous and well-disposed thranx. It is a reaction as unfortunate as it is involuntary.”

  “Not to mention one that’s likely to put a damper on casual conversation,” Briann noted dryly.

  From time to time they would wander back to the automated display that had been set up and activated on the first day of the fair, both to ensure that it was functioning properly and to deal with individuals and sometimes small groups that had gathered there. Accustomed after the first couple of days to all manner of reactions, they encountered an entirely new one when, on the third morning, they confronted a well-dressed man in his early forties who was viewing one of the tridee hover messages while chuckling constantly.

  “Usually,” Briann offered by way of greeting, “our presentation meets with skepticism, or open hostility, or indifference, or interest. You’re the first person we’ve met whose primary reaction has been laughter.”

  “Oh, hello.” Turning, the man grinned at Briann, eyed Twikanrozex with more than casual interest, and reached up to dab at his face with an absorptive pad. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  “None taken,” Twikanrozex clicked. His response intrigued the man even more.

  “So you’re a thranx. I’ve seen a number wandering about the fair, but mostly they’re working displays and performances. It’s nice to finally meet one of you in person.”

  “The touch be mine.” Twikanrozex extended a truhand, which gesture humans found less alien than the caress of feathery antennae. The man took it, was surprised to find his own gently shaken, and withdrew his fingers thoughtfully.

  “The actual contact is warmer than I thought it would be. Not crustaceanlike at all. Do you see multiple images of me out of those compound eyes?”

  “While multiple images are perceived,” Twikanrozex replied, “they are linked in my mind to create a single image. Our eyes are more advanced than those of the terrestrial insects whom you are utilizing for reference.”

  “Not from Earth, myself.” The man shrugged. “New Paris, actually.” He indicated the lively display. “Your church sounds interesting. Complete waste of time, of course.”

  “In what way?” Briann was silently disconcerted by the casual dismissal from so obviously intelligent and interested an observer.

  “Too many religions already. Humankind’s got a house full of ‘em. Always has. Every year, every month, it seems like a new fad pops up, attracts a horde of eager adherents, and then just as quickly fades away. At best, that’s what you’re looking at.” He smiled approvingly at Twikanrozex. “Although with the thranx involved you certainly have real novelty value going for you.”

  Briann could tell from the man’s tone and attitude that he was in no way trying to be offensive. He was simply stating his mind.

  “We who believe think that you’re wrong.” Twikanrozex added a whistle of conviction.

  “Well, without a doubt you would.” The man’s good nature continued to shine through his disparaging words. “But I’ve spent some years in the business of fads, done pretty well out of it, and I know whereof I speak. Just a friendly warning: Make sure you have some kind of professional position to fall back on when it all goes flat. How are you doing here, by the way?” Briann mentioned a number. The man was suitably impressed.

  “You’ve been quiet about it, anyway.”

  “We don’t believe in trumpeting our accomplishments.”

  Their visitor chuckled anew. “Believers in word-of-mouth, eh? Can’t say as I blame you. It’s the best advertising no matter what you’re selling.”

  “We are not ‘selling’ anything,” Twikanrozex corrected him. The thranx was growing irritated with this self-assured human.

  “Sure, sure.” The visitor spoke as if humoring a child. “That’s the baseline every religion has used since the beginning of time. Well, how do I join?”

  Briann frowned. They had finally encountered someone for whom their training had not prepared them. “You mean, after all that
cynicism you’re still interested in joining the Church?”

  “Why not? I’m always in need of fresh amusement. In my work I have access to the latest stimsims, tridee plays, prose, you name it. So I’m highly cultured but easily bored. Your church will be a diversion, a lark, a fashionable fancy. My friends are very big on one-upmanship, but I don’t know a single one who can claim to have worshiped alongside a bug. Your pardon, sir or whatever—a thranx. When I’m bored again, I’ll move on to something else.” He spread his arms wide. “Meanwhile, your organization will have gained another new, albeit transient, neophyte.”

  Recovering nicely, Briann extended a hand. Shaking it, the other man seemed to lose just a hint of his astonishing self-assurance. “You’re going to accept me in spite of my avowed lack of expectation?”

  “The United Church turns no one down. There is room within for all,” Briann affirmed. “Even the incredulous.”

  “Well, that’s mighty obliging of you! I look forward to reading your source materials, and to having a good laugh at their expense.”

  Twikanrozex saw to it that the visitor’s communicator accepted the information transfer before congratulating him in turn. “If you gain a few days’ amusement from all that we have given you, that will be reward enough. An amused species is a contented species.”

  “Glad to know that you bu—thranx have a sense of humor.”

  “You will learn more about us from the Church materials,” Twikanrozex informed him. “The UC was formed by a human and a thranx working in concert. It is an entirely new idea in interspecies relations.”

  “And one that neatly sidesteps the current controversies raging between our respective governments.” Exaggerating the gesture, the man put a finger to his lips. “You’re very clever, you people are, but it won’t make any difference in the end.”

  “We think it will,” Briann replied. “Enjoy your literature.”

  “So I will; so I will. It’ll give me something to wade through in space-plus, on the way back to New Paris.” With that he departed, tucking his communicator back into his shirt pocket.

  “What do you make of our chances with that one?” Twikanrozex tracked the human’s progress across the strip of fairgrounds pavement, which looked and felt exactly like grass except that it was impervious to both footwear and the elements and needed neither light nor water to maintain its springiness and color.

  “He’s intelligent.” Briann turned back to their display, wondering if he ought to switch the order of presentation to present a new field of images to first-time viewers who happened to be passing by. “But I have yet to meet the individual who was so smart they could keep from fooling themselves. If he reads, and doesn’t just delete the load you gave him, I think he very well might choose to partake. I’d much rather try to convince an intelligent cynic than a willing ignoramus.”

  “Maxim forty-seven.” Twikanrozex shuffled around to the back of the display tower. “Let’s put the site selection first for a while. Looking at your equatorial lands helps to take the chill out of this air for me. Mentally, at least.”

  “Sorry you’re cold. As soon as we’re done here, we’ll go spend some time in the Willow-Wane pavilion.”

  “Srr!rrt—ah, for the feel of real air in my lungs! You’ll be all right there, Brother Briann?”

  The human nodded. “I don’t mind sweating in the service of the Church—or for my friends.”

  9

  The more Pilwondepat thought about it in the days that followed, the more the affair nagged at him. Probably he was obsessing on nothing, haunted by matters of no real consequence, simply because he was personally irritated at what was happening on Comagrave. It detracted from his work, and he knew it. But he could not stop himself. He had always been afflicted with something of a suspicious nature, and as an exoarcheologist he was trained to draw substantiative conclusions from dozens, often hundreds, of miniscule, seemingly unrelated sources.

  It wasn’t just the circumstance of the unfortunate human who had been bitten by a native arthropod only to be saved by the extraordinarily fortuitous proximity of an AAnn mineralogical sampling team. That was what had sparked his imagination, true, but reports of other incidents had been festering in his mind for many weeks now. Festering, until the occasion of the arthropod bite had caused all of it to burst forth in the full flower of anxiety.

  Too many bad things were happening. Surely, Comagrave was a dangerous place, newly discovered and barely explored. Trouble was to be expected, even the occasional disaster, but there were no hostile native sentients to fear, no overwhelming profligacy of inimical life-forms. Either the humans who had come to study and explore were an exceedingly inept bunch, or else too many of them had been born in the hive of the unlucky. From personal experience, Pilwondepat knew the former to be untrue, and he did not believe in the latter.

  Therefore, something else was going on.

  He was circumspect in his investigation. It was not his province to ask personal questions of individuals from various camps and outposts, though he had the means to do so. Drawing together individual recollections of seemingly unrelated incidents might have enabled him to come to a conclusion more swiftly. But it would also have drawn attention to him. He did not fear such attention from the humans themselves. It was the presence of so many AAnn “observers” on the planet that induced him to keep a low profile.

  While he could only exchange communications with the occasional human, there was nothing to prevent him from examining the contents of every unrestricted report that was being filed or sent offworld. These were available to all at the touch of the right button. Electronic translation supplemented his growing knowledge of Terranglo, enabling him to inspect the relevant correspondence as rapidly as any other potential reader. And the more he read, the more convinced he became of the correctness of his suppositions.

  They were very clever. Not every catastrophe was on the order of the complete destruction of the thermal supply depot and research station. The multitude of incidents varied in degree between that and the bite that had nearly killed a single researcher. Some of the details were almost amusing in their resourcefulness. A case of food poisoning at one paleontological camp, for example, resulted in not a single fatality. But once again, it was the AAnn who were conveniently positioned to provide the fresh fruit that cured the humans’ digestive upsets. Studying the information, Pilwondepat stridulated involuntarily. Though they shared the omnivorous appetites of most intelligent species, AAnn appetites fell decidedly on the carnivorous side of the food spectrum. How convenient of them to have fresh fruit at their disposal! How implausible. And just the right sort of fruit to cure a digestive disorder within the human system, too.

  An aircar carrying a quartet of avian researchers went down in a deep canyon. With human help already on the way, an AAnn craft in the vicinity arrived first to render assistance and effect the needed repairs. A lone prospector—half geologist, half entrepreneur—was found dead in the wildly eroded territory human cartographers had named the Bacunin Badlands. Cause of death: a bad fall. No AAnn available to recover the body, Pilwondepat read. He made a mental note to suggest that a larger, better equipped expedition explore the region. If the AAnn were responsible, as he was beginning to suspect they were in the majority of such unexplained incidences, it was because they wanted to prevent the humans, or in this case one solitary adventurer, from finding something. Pilwondepat was willing to bet a case of goldel surr!onyy from Trix that the Bacunin Badlands hid mineral deposits of some value.

  Considered individually, the incidents he waded through would not have drawn more than passing commiserations from those who scrutinized them. Assessed together, they comprised a litany of AAnn involvement in human misery and misfortune on Comagrave that could hardly count as coincidence. But who could he lay his case before? The few other thranx on the planet were wholly immersed in their own activities. Sending his conclusions offworld might eventually bring a response, but without any hi
ve authority on the human colony world, he would be left to implement any decision all by himself. And he was a scientist, not a soldier.

  He was left to ponder who best among the human population to present with his findings. He knew none of the planetary authority personnel individually. Handing the information to a skeptical official might have any number of consequences, many of which could be bad. They might laugh at him or dismiss his allegations out of hand. Swamped by the difficulties of supervising the exploration and development of a complex new world, the authorities were likely to have little time to spare for the complaints of their own kind, much less for the wild inferences of a visiting alien. Worse yet, the AAnn might be monitoring, officially or otherwise, all such planetary transmissions. If he did not proceed with care and caution, he might well find himself the victim of still another of the inexplicable accidents that up to now had plagued only the resident humans.

  Who could he talk to? Who could he converse with who would not treat him as a bug afflicted with paranoia? If it could not be an outsider, then it would have to be a colleague, and one with enough authority to make recommendations that would be listened to. His choices were very limited.

  The following morning was bright and clear. The desiccating wind that perpetually scoured the crest of the escarpment was blissfully subdued, and there were even a few dark clouds marring the cerulean blue of the sky. His lungs sucked at the distant suggestions of humidity like a drowning man gasping for any hint of oxygen. Busy, energetic humans crawled over the excavation site, resembling more than they knew the terrestrial insects they professed to loathe.

  He was pleased to find Cullen in his portable, prefab living chamber. Confronting him outside, where someone else might overhear, was best avoided. Not that Pilwondepat worried about the energetic bipeds who were laboring on the site, but there was always the possibility that anything said out in the open might get back to Riimadu. That was the one consequence Pilwondepat knew had to be avoided.