Flek smiled, a surprisingly wicked smile. “I would tell Naumi anything. You either are or are not Naumi. If you betray us, you’re not Naumi, and you’re stupid, besides.”
Glory choked back a giggle, but Mar-agern laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. “We’re being tested, Margaret! What about the others who obviously aren’t Naumi. Glory? Bamber Joy? Falija?”
Caspor said, “We’ve been told the Gentherans are completely honorable. If this young…Gibbekot is related to them, we may trust her honor. If these are your grandchildren, reared by you, then they, too, should be completely honorable.”
I thought of explaining that neither of them was actually my grandchild, but let it go. It didn’t matter. I trusted the boy at least as much as I trusted Gloriana. “You imply you have something to kill ghyrm.”
Flek nodded. “We developed a metal that kills them, and we’ve been providing the Siblinghood with knives made from it. Recently, we’ve developed a machine that kills ghyrm in confined areas. The Siblinghood sent you one, Ferni, not long ago. Did it work well?”
“So I understand,” he replied.
“That’s good, because the first few models killed humans and a lot of other creatures as well. The problem was that the genetic code of the damned things is very similar to the genome that ninety-odd percent of all Earth mammals share, including humans.”
“As though humans were the intended target?” Naumi asked.
“We’ve considered that possibility. The rest of the genome is a weird amalgam that no one has been able to identify! We’ve improved greatly on that model, however. What we have now is a small prototype of a weapon that, when we enlarge it, can wipe ghyrm off whole worlds without killing people or umoxen or whatever. The prototype only covers fifty square jorub.”
“Jorub?” I asked.
“Thairy measurement,” said Caspor. “A jorub is ten taga, which is roughly three miles, old Earthian. Say four hundred fifty square miles. But how high?” he demanded of Flek.
Flek said, “The dimensions of the field, length, width, height are variable. Since ghyrm don’t fly, the fifty-jorub figure has a low ceiling, to cover more ground. It would have to be set higher for mountainous terrain, of course. At this point we’re sure it doesn’t kill Earth animals or any creatures native to any of our colony worlds, but there’s always the possibility it will kill some essential something that we aren’t aware of. Eventually, if we can locate the place where the ghyrm are coming from, we plan to drop some really big machines on that location and wipe them out at the source. Anyhow, it seems relevant to our discussion.”
Ferni said earnestly, “For my situation, it would be helpful if we could give the tribes a lot of those knives you mentioned. M’urgi and I both used them when we went ghyrm-hunting. We have to give the tribe something to make them let M’urgi go.”
Caspor had been staring at the ceiling, his lips moving silently, and suddenly he demanded, “Where’s the star map we used to have in here?”
Naumi looked up, puzzled. “Behind the screen, over there. It’s a new one. The old one’s display circuits were so worn, no one could read it. Why do you want a star map?”
“This way-gate business interests me. I’m wondering what the underlying logic of all this business may be. Margaret—if you’ll excuse the familiarity, ma’am—came from Tercis to Fajnard. Then the group came from Fajnard to Thairy. They tell us the gates are one way, that each place has one gate coming in and one gate going out. It would be interesting to know where all the gates are…” He went to the screen, moved it aside, and stood before the map pedestal, mumbling to himself and switching it back and forth among view planes.
All of us newcomers were staring at Caspor wonderingly. Ferni said, “He’ll do that for quite a while. Caspor has to figure everything out. If it doesn’t have a logical, mathematical solution, he drives himself crazy.”
“If he wants to know where the way-gate is that leads away from here,” said Gloriana, “it’s up in that same cave, just around another corner.”
“There are two of them?” Naumi was astonished. “When I discovered it, I thought there was only one.”
“You saw the outgoing one. The incoming ones are black,” said Falija. “Don’t try entering them from that direction.”
“But I stepped inside the light…”
Falija said, “Yes. And then what?”
“I stepped back out.”
“Then you never went all the way through. You were just inside the gate. If you’d gone on through, you couldn’t have come back. Not the way you went.”
Naumi furrowed his brow, staring at the ceiling as he tried to remember. “There was a dark recess to the left when I went in. The way in must have been in there…”
“We were discussing weapons,” reminded Falija.
Flek nodded. “We have the next model of the machine in the final stages of assembly.”
“Is it something you could do in a hurry?” asked Ferni. “I’m not worried about M’urgi, not really, but—”
“Well, I’m worried about her,” I interrupted. “If she’s one of us. It seems that seven of us may be necessary in order to do something important, and if M’urgi is one of the seven, she’s probably irreplaceable.” I thought about this for a moment, saying with surprise, “Any of us are!”
“Why seven?” demanded Caspor, from his position before the star map.
“It’s a story,” Falija responded. “About a fish and an angry man.”
“Can you tell it briefly?” Caspor asked, turning toward her.
Falija said, “There’s also a saying, and it’s shorter. ‘Who knows? The Keeper knows. Well then, ask the Keeper. Where do I find it. All alone, walk seven roads at once to find the Keeper.’ The story repeats the phrase ‘Seven roads are one road.’”
“What’s a keeper?” asked Jaker.
“In the story, it was the little statue with a book in which everything in the whole universe was written,” Falija said.
“The Holder,” cried Ferni. “The…rememberer that fills the universe and senses everything that happens. M’urgi
