The Goatmen of Aguirra

705015:216 - We've landed in a grotto, near the center of Hochebene's Altiplano, but closer to the Towers of God than not. On one side of the grotto is the only run of clear water for some thirty kilometers, and I've noted with Sanders that this could be a problem as all native fauna encountered thus far follow the same biologies as we. Immediately upon landing, Sanders ordered Tellweiller, Nash, and Galen to construct a blind. We are now a boulder, one among several, that slid into the grotto when we lowered a rumbler to cover our landing.

Nash estimates two standard hours before sunrise.

Early estimates indicated Aguirra was three-and-a-half to four billion years old. Now, with readings coming in about the deep core and mantle, we place it closer to five. Gravity is one-point-one standard and the atmosphere is quite like Earth's, only sweeter due to a higher O ₃ content. There is also a free floating enzyme, essentially carbolic anhydrase, which explains some of the evolutioniary adaptations on the planet. Everything we've observed is based on the nitrocarbon cycle—everything we've recorded from space and robotics shows up as a variation on some earth fauna—and the carbolic anhydrase probably helps redaction and reduction in the O_3-rich atmosphere when a stressing agent is introduced.

Due to the atmosphere there is a perpetual slight pink tint in the sky, much like before an intense electrical storm back home. This area, Hochebene's Altiplano to the Towers of God, is a paragneiss formed we're not sure how long ago, by glaciation. It is difficult to estimate because the atmosphere mediates the planetary temperature such that weathering is neither gradual nor minimal—Hopkin's Bioclimatic Law doesn't seem to apply. There are seasons in the temperate zones, but without the fluctuations of four true seasons. Summer temperature extremes range from -19°C to 33°C. Winter temperatures also vary by about twenty degrees, from -25°C to 5°C. These temperatures are for our current location, 43°N, 8000m altitude, and, as I've mentioned earlier, shrouded to the west by the Towers of God.

To our immediate east is the rock wall we worked hard to resemble, the rise of the grotto, then the expanse of the high plain for several kilometers. Although comprised principally of paragneiss and granite with only slight eruptions of soil, a hardy tundral grass grows in clumps all around. Our guess is the grass serves to anchor what little soil there is in place. There are wind storms—one is due in another hour—when Astarte 217 rises over the altiplano and begins churning this high, thin air with the thicker, deep valley air far below.

These grasses are richly verdant, their tops a slight yellow as if gently burned. Galen collected some samples when the blind was completed, and says the yellowing is a pollen. Thus we learn immediately that these verdant clusters aren't true grasses and that there is some pollenizing agent, perhaps only the wind, which is at work. If the robotics sent into these highlands hadn't met such abrupt and catastrophic ends, we might know more about Aguirra's highland life, at least in this area.

There is still a carpet of snow, albeit thin and frayed in some areas, stretching a kilometer from the entrance to the altiplano to the Towers of God even though this continent is now in high summer. The snow, Nash says, is due to the altitude and rarified atmosphere. Even with the carpet of white, this is a desert, with cold, dry steppes leading to the Towers.

In contrast to earth flora, there appears to be no treeline. While there are no trees on the altiplano, there are five here in the grotto ranging from two to two-fifty meters in height. They appear something like succulent scotch pines, kind of chubby Christmas trees. They have no root systems and, according to Galen, all five trees are extensions of the same growth and are more like vines than trees, growing like Sequoias in the northern California forests. If they are vines, it explains their limbs being naked on one side and holding fast against the grotto's walls. They're being succulents so close to a clear water supply indicates that the water might be seasonal.

There are several similar although much smaller trees, these resembling elms and birch, although Galen's report might show different, growing to our west and in the runoff fissures of the Towers. From there these trees grow up to the crowns of the Towers, becoming deeper and denser with altitude, giving the appearance of twin green-haired giants out in the distance. Based on this and other evidence, Galen claims these are not true "trees". If Galen's contention about the succulents is accurate, there are but one or two of these "trees" sending their shoots, binding and girding like some giant's phylacteries, up the Towers.

The most noticeable feature of the landscape, the one we all knew would be most breath-taking, are the Towers themselves. We are eight kilometers above sea level, and the Towers rise another eight above us. They are the largest vertical features on all of Aguirra, even and symmetrical in every geologic detail, with their expansive, flat plained plateau heads, each five-point-five kilometers in diameter, separated by zero-point-five kilometers horizontal and a four kilometer drop. There are a few passes down the Towers, more like torrents than actual passes in their slope and grain, and various hanging, piedmont, and steppe glaciers coming down the Towers' sides. The best climb, if one were necessary, seems to be along a bergschrund on the immediate faces of each.

Tellweiller has no explanation for the Towers' formation, although it is obvious from their age they were formed in the prebiologic days of the planet.

Although I am not a religious man, standing at their feet and hearing the winds, it is not difficult to imagine the whispers the ancient Greeks heard about Mt. Olympus. I can understand why these features were named the Towers of God.

705015:323 - The winds are fierce now that Astarte 217's rays are directly on this moraine. Instruments indicate speeds in excess of one-hundred kilometers per hour, and the sudden inversion is creating torrential rains which are creating waterfalls down the faces of the Towers and flooding this gorge.

These rains remind me, in some ways, of New Orleans, where Robin and I lived briefly while she attended Loyola. In high summer it rains every hour, suddenly, violently, then stops after ten minutes. There are no clouds in the sky, then they gather up, release their hold and go away.

As the clouds gathered, Sanders ordered the caster to ground. At the time it was flying over the runoff fissures on the Alpha Tower. It continued transmitting and, thanks to the floor and angle, we witnessed incredible rains and winds clearing the skies and scrubbing the canopy. The only difference here is the color.

Despite the rain and wind, we can see Astarte 217 rising far to the east on that edge of the altiplano. It is peering over the precipice at us like some Indian scouting the fort. The clouds are higher over the plain than the precipice's edge, and this gives 217 a green crown. Nash says this is common here but uncommon on earth. Nash. Never-late-for-dinner Nash. Of all on this mission, he's the only one who grumbles when I sit next to him for meals. No one else seems to mind my being a lefty.

God, it is glorious here.

705015:500 - Wind and rain have stopped. They lasted about one-and-a-half standard hours, about point-seven-one dechours on this planet, and Nash says we can expect something similar at dusk and dawn every day.

Sanders sent up some more casters to scout along with the first when the storm broke. They are coursing through the far away valley and are sending back holos of the several species inhabiting Aguirra.

Closer to our blind but still some distance down the altiplano, Aguirran insects are busy. Their buzzing and clicking reminds me of apiaries and formicariums back home. Typical to robotic and remote sensing, the true aromas of this country weren't captured in their entirety, or were captured with the typical burnt-metal tinge which all such equipment imparts. Considering the waxing and waning humidity, there is no smell of decay, detritus, humus, or their like. Whatever moisture lands is quickly recaptured and, as noted previously, behaves more like some kind of planetary scrubbing action than rejuvenating rain. I've noticed, at the leading edge of each storm recorded, there is a smell similar to a good late spring rain in a forest. The smells of the flora are highlighted and accented, hitting one high in the nose not unlike a pleasantly bitter coffee.

The Aguirran insects disturb me. More correctly, it is their mammalian eyes which disturb me, eyes you're more accustomed to seeing on your dog or cat, eyes which you can believe have some hint of intelligence behind them. Galen further noted that the clearly arboreal species have blue eyes. "Same as you, Banks," he said.

"Why is that, do you think?"

"Adaptive biology, I guess. A blue iris in this atmosphere could cause less ocular distortion over distance. I wouldn't be surprised if everything living eight-k and up's eyes were blue."

Nothing else lives this far off the planetary floor.

Sanders brought me another message from Robin's attorneys today. There are advantages and disadvantages to being in a jumpship. This message, received as quickly as possible, is still months too late for me to respond. It appears I won't be allowed to see Jeremy.

Again, there is nothing here which hasn't been reported before.

715015:030 - The alarms woke us, although there seemed to be no reason. The casters were called back and found nothing, which our shipboard instruments confirmed.

The casters also indicate thermals on the steppes and higher on the Towers, although the vegetation is too dense for the casters to gather much information due to their altitude.

Sanders is staying up to perform a redundancy on the grid and has ordered the rest of us to sleep.

715015:430 - The alarms woke me again. It is time to be about my duties, anyway. Only Galen and I still slept. A moment after the alarms sounded, Sanders called me to observation.

There was another message for me, this one from Jeremy. How an eleven-year -old boy could manage to get a message off and properly through channels onto the Net and out to this sector of the Ring …

Still, he was always a clever child, far brighter than either Robin or I.

He cried throughout the transmission. He begged me to come home.

Sanders, god bless him, left me to scan the transmission alone. This, even though every message delivered shipside is reviewed by him, SOP. The only exception are those registered "Private" which the net delivers sealed to a ship's commander for dispatch. These the crew members may open first but only in the captain's presence. Normally it is enough to open it there. I've never had a commander ask to read their contents. Jeremy could not have known.

I had just finished Jeremy's transmission when Sanders came hurrying over to me, swiveled two externals and opened some viewers, pointing wildly to the screens and ports. "This is it. This is what the alarms are about."

Twelve bipeds stood twenty meters from our blind. In appearance, they can only be described as Satan in a snowsuit.

All are male, all stand from one-point-seven-five meters to two-point-one-five meters tall, their mass varies from one-hundred kilos to one-thirty kilos. Their bodies are built low with a powerful, blocky musculature and legs slightly more than one-third their height. Their torso starts with a broad, rounded abdomen—either these creatures eat well or are starving. I won't know until I can autopsy one—and progresses into a broad, massive thorax, with shoulders, chest, and back so well muscled they appear padded like football players. Their arms are equally powerful, ending in hands with two fingers and an opposing thumb.

All have elongated faces, long, prehensile ears emanating from slightly above the middle of each side of the skull, two large, vertebrate eyes—blue—which protrude slightly from the skull, and two horns rising from midway between the eyes and the ears. If these creatures are here by evolutionary chance, Galen is right.

Their coat is shaggy white hair, although some have elements of brown, gray, red, blonde, and cream. The only black on their bodies being their hands, their horns, their noses, and their feet.

Robotics showed some bipedal fauna, but merely evolutionary adaptations for food gathering.

Detailed analysis and holos will be transmitted later.

They are staring at us.

725015:600 - They stood outside the blind for a full day, leaving only when the inversion storms formed on the horizon and coming back when the storms dissipated, seating themselves in the extended root systems of the succulent, where their coloring makes them damn near invisible. We realize now they may have been there since before our landing, hence the blind is moot.

As I stated earlier, Aguirra is a testament to adaptive evolution. These creatures—we call them 'Goatmen' now that we've been able to observe more about their physiologies—are the best blend of North American mountain goats and South American camels.

In this land of high, thin air, little food, cold, and treacherous terrain, these Goatmen have developed enlarged hearts and lungs—my guess is that they couldn't survive at sea level.

Their coats are fine and dense, with two layers; the outer layer is comprised of long, oily, water repellent guard hairs, the inner layer is comprised of dense hollow hairs to provide both thermal insulation and protection from parasites. At least the insects don't seem to bother them. The coat won't collect moisture, and sheds condensation, the principal elements of the best insulations known, and is thickest across the shoulders where the guard hairs may be ten to fifteen centimeters long. The coat thins as it moves out to the muzzle and legs.

Toe walkers. Their feet are like their hands, although the toes are broader, flatter, and rubbery in their ability to grasp the surface they walk on. Their legs obviously evolved from something quadripedal in recent evolutionary time.

Chromotographic analysis of their respirations—only two to three per decminute while observing us, apparently a resting state—shows a ninety percent CO₂-O₂ exchange. Without dissection I can't be sure, but I would guess they can force oxygen into their tissues in much the way deep diving cetaceans do.

I would almost believe they live on the Towers, although there is no evidence of this other than the telemetry of the casters.

It is obvious they know we are here. This blind serves us nothing. I've asked Sanders to allow attempts at communications. Although they haven't made obvious communication amongst themselves, their behavior leads me to believe them intelligent.

745015:390 - Two days of observation by the Goatmen. They do nothing but stare at us.

Things happen more quickly than can be imagined back home. Robin has excised herself from my life like a tumor. She, of course, would believe the growth benign. Such a fool. I still feel the hole in me where she and Jeremy lived. To her, benign; to me a cancer, the traces of which haven't all been removed. It is good I'm here, on this faraway world, far away Aguirra, so far even jumpships take weeks to reach us.

Galen and Tellweiller talk to me to comfort me. Neither of them are Earthborn, although both are only four generations removed from home, long enough to notice the hints of alien gravities and atmospheres and oceans if you know how to look, not long enough to make them foreign to the species which bred them. Galen is simply too powerful for an endomorph without obtrusive musculature, and too pale. Tellweiller a little too tall, with all his features and extremities slightly longer than they should be to maintain healthy proportion. Nor have they been to Earth, except in holos and on projections, while I have been to both their worlds; Galen's Stratton and Tellweiller's Devereux.

Jumpships may take weeks, but messages still come in days; relayed along the net by semismart repeater stations.

Sanders asked if I wished to reply. I think he really wanted to know why, if my marriage was destroying itself from within, I signed on for another exploration.

He doesn't understand. His life comes to him via a meter, I think. He puts in a credit and garnishes an hour in return. His pinched face beneath cropped, mouse-colored hair atop that tall, thin body, the way he moves as if always stretched in below-standard G, makes me think he's constantly inspecting that meter, perhaps believing he got fifty-nine-mark-fifty-nine minutes instead of the hour he thought his due. I remember watching him as he stood in uniform—the first time since we left—outside my door in the ship's outer ring. Emotions are difficult for him, I think. He doesn't understand them, nor those who use them. For him, for as long as I've known him, emotions are something kept in a bottle on a dusty shelf, taken down once a year when socially or politically appropriate, looked at, stirred and shaken, but never opened or expressed, then placed back on the shelf until next year's inspection. Perhaps he feels he was given only a few at birth. That may explain why he's so niggardly with them.

Perhaps he should have married Robin.

But then they would not have given me Jeremy.

In any case, having spoken his due about space exploration and family obligation and how his wife understood such things and encouraged them—he breathed hard once, as if to show that talking about her stirred things deep inside him. The bottle of emotion came out and was displayed. "See? I have them, too," then quickly put away—he retreated to the clustered confines of C3I, back to piloting the ship, slinging his way through asteroids with a mathematical precision which, like a grossly integrated curve, showed its discontinuity even if you didn't look.

After hearing my arguments for communication with the Goatmen, Sanders has decided to dispatch a rumbler. I've told him this is a mistake.

745015:400 - The rumbler rolled from behind the blind and out towards the Goatmen. Set on low, its pseudopod extended and thumped the Aguirran plain lightly and rhythmically.

A strange thing happened which I haven't shared with the others but am willing to recount here:

All of us—Sanders, Galen, Tellweiller, Nash, and myself—sat at the great table in Common and watched the monitor. On the screen we saw all the goatmen save one turn and stare at the rumbler. They watched it with the same blank, seemingly mindless expression with which they watched the blind previously. They showed no aggression, no offense, no territoriality; nothing. No display of anything with which I'm familiar.

All except one. He turned to the rumbler, puckered as if in thought, as if he were trying to come to some decision about it, then turned back to the Blind. It didn't end there. If it did there would be nothing more to tell.

When he turned back to the Blind, his eyes—those damn near human eyes everything seems to have on this planet—came to a focus they had not achieved before and he stared—if that word can be used—not only directly into the blind, but at me, as if I could be seen by him as separate and distinct from the blind, our ship, even my fellows in the crew. I was about to mention this to the others when I noticed none of them was aware of this singular fellow. All of their attention was on the rumbler, waiting for it to cause an aboriginal scatter. None of them seemed even aware of the lone Goatman.

I looked back at the Goatman whose eyes were fixed upon me, and he opened his mouth as if to say "oh". It seemed he breathed rapidly and I … I felt my surroundings fade. As I sat there meeting this creature's unintentional stare, I peripherally watched my compatriots moving off as if into some great distance, becoming wisps and shadows until they, the table, Common, and even The Merrimack itself were gone from me.

I am squatting by a fire, just outside of a cave and close to a mesa edge, warming my hands and haunches even as the cold of the high, rarified air and clear, moonless night sky bristle the hairs of my back, neck, and flanks. I note that my hands aren't mine. They are a Goatman's, as is the rest of my body which I can see, and note with surprise that none of this disturbs me. It seems natural and good that I see myself as such, and the shock quickly fades as I let this versipellic vision continue.

I take a step closer to the fire, until my penis is almost hanging in it. I reach behind myself for more chigarro—how do I know that word? What does it mean?—to throw over the flames. There isn't much left, and I season the fire with half of what I have. The dry root burns slowly, sending black, sooty smoke into and over me, making my eyes water until a nictitating membrane covers them—now, at last, I understand how the Goatmen see, what those hideous eyes show them—and my nostrils flare—how wonderful their sense of smell is, compared to ours. Aguirra, if this is Aguirra I see myself on, is alive with scents our robotics could never have known, as the chigarro's smoke burns into me. I look around, although I know I'll find none of the scrubby chigarro trees; the winds of the mesa don't bite my nose, high up and between my eyes, bringing the tell-tale scent of the chigarro ready to harvest, a scent which always made both me and my father sneeze—what nonsense is that?

Earlier today, I remember, I'd been lucky. I found a bubbling mudpool while hunting—what?—and, dropping my weapons, rolled in it, covering myself with the mud and letting it cake heavily on me as I climbed back home. Now, under the clear night sky, I let it dry until I feel the fire's heat mold it to me.

My eyes are half open, my eyelids cover the upper half and the lower half are covered by the nictitating membranes. I sing quietly and rock, gently, towards the fire and away, my voice a low roll which works its way across the plain facing me and my cave.

Another low rolling sound comes down from the sky and settles around me, my kin and the kin of my brothers answering my song in prayer, hearing my song in answer. I welcome the sound, adding it to my voice and adding this sound to my own. Slowly, as the chigarro rises into me and the earth is baked into hardened clay upon me, the sound grows louder. I let the sound move through me, patiently harmonizing and deharmonizing with it as I learn its flavors, its colors, its movements, waiting as all the voices merge and separate to reveal themselves to me, each voice revealing the one who made it.

I stand, my eyelids rising on top and my lower lids coming up from below, covering the nictitating membrane and blocking the light of the fire from my eyes. As I stand, the fire-hardened mud cracks and chips away from me. My fur comes away with it, leaving only my heat-reddened, all-black skin underneath. The chigarro root flares as some of the sulfurous mud catches in the flames and its smoke and odors etch my naked skin. Slowly, my eyes grow accustomed to the night sky.

There, up where Old One parted the skies while the People dreamed, a Walker new among the Bright Eyes comes down. This one, he walks over the edge of the mesa onto the plains on the other side of home. I do not know this Walker, so he has come far. A Journeyer, he.

Old Ones, Bright Eyes, Walkers, Journeyers and their kin are good allies.

Naked, my fur baked off me, my black skin starts to twitch with chills in the late winter air as the fire quiets to embers glowing in the wind. I take a moment to admire my naked flesh, the new cuts and grooves in it where the fire has spoken to me.

The sound stops. I look back to where I last saw the Journeyer fall. There are no indications of it anywhere.

My ears, still focused on the sound, now turn and scoop after the Journeyer, listening. I hear nothing.

I walk back to my fire and throw some more chigarro on it, stirring it slightly and letting it grow once again. I squat with my back to my cave, the mesa edge on my right. All around me are hardened furry mud packs. One by one, I throw them into the fire, letting the smoke and stench of my burning fur bathe me, some ritual I know, but the ceremony of which I can't remember.

Quietly, I continue my song, now singing the sounds of Journeyer with me.

Sanders recalled the rumbler. His motion on the control board before me seems to have brought me back as everything in The Merrimack comes into focus around me.

The Goatmen are staring at us again.

Galen brought to our attention the insects. Or to the lack of them. We studied the recordings of the past few days and discovered that the insects have neither parasitized nor symbiotized the Goatmen from the latter's advent to the present. Perhaps time has taught the insects that the Goatmen's thick coat is too much to get through.

Strange. Co-evolution should not have allowed that.

755015:500 - Sanders consented to an attempt at open communications. Aside from the robotics and the collar, I'll be going alone. I suggested a holo for first contact, in case these creatures are hostile. Policy and the others went against my suggestion, and I was selected as odd-man-out. No robotics indicated anything like these Goatmen, so no xenopologists were assigned to this crew.

This isn't what I was trained to do, and I don't like it.

755015:940 - When they saw me walk around the Blind, all immediately lowered themselves to their knees with their arms at their sides and hands on thighs, fingers pointing inward, their backs straight and their faces always towards me. I felt like I was entering an Aikido class. The way their arms arc out from their bodies I can only think of "I'm a little teapot short and stout …". Jeremy so loved that song. I would sing it to him and dance, positioning his little body to the lyrics of the song. Ah, well.

As I approached, in unison they held out their left hands and bent slightly towards me. One of the Goatmen communicated. The communication was audio-verbal, but was in the infrasound range, as I felt it more than heard it, like feeling the vibrations of a big bass drum as a parade marches by. The vibrations stopped and, again in unison, they extended their right hands, still bent slightly in my direction. I was told by a friend from Namibia that most white men smell like goats. The wind has changed and, if this is how we smell, we should bathe more often.

If they used audio-verbal communication, I would try the same, hoping my voice was neither beyond their hearing nor painful to their ears.

"My name is Gordon Banks."

They communicated amongst themselves, this time in the audible range. What I immediately noticed was the physical cues to communication. When one spoke, he leaned towards his listener and extended his left hand, then showed he awaited a reply by extending his right hand. The listener kept his back straight until he spoke. During conversation—as opposed to communication—both leaned into each other and their hands darted forward and back quickly but rhythmically. During oration (if that term can be applied) the listeners sit with their backs straight. The patterns for conversation and communication followed when more than two Goatmen were engaged.

I remember that my reaction to their physical cuing was the amount of respect it showed for speaker and listener. I wondered if this physical cuing was ceremonial or cultural.

Their voices remind me most of excited horses and sheep, a combination of high bleating, neighing, and low bellowing. It is obviously a complex language. As they went through their posturings the wind brought several subtle smells to me. Could there also be a vomeronasal component to their communication? How I wished for a Goatman's nose! Is the grotesque physical animation necessary due to the torpidity of the face? Does their vomeronasal sense supplement that? And if so, how subtle and sophisticated is it?

Why did none of the robotics reveal this culture here? Why are there no other such creatures or cultures anywhere else on this planet?

They extended their left hands again (a sign of placation or offering?) and bent towards me. When the one Goatman—I've decided to call him Gomer, it is as close as I can get to his name—spoke, I tied in the translators. He is, I think, a middle-aged male of some importance. "You are from the …" He made a sound at the end of his question that the program couldn't translate.

Again their right hands came forward. All stared at me, waiting. I spoke into the collar, "Can the computers give me anything on that last phoneme?"

Sanders answered me, although I could hear the others in the background and imagined them all huddled around the holo watching and taking notes. "Something tied to their mythology is the best we can do. Some kind of primary cultural icon, we think."

I wanted to echo "We think?" but know Sanders was incapable of an original thought unless the flight manual expressly indicated it. Instead I said, "Thanks. I'm talking with fifteenth-century Christians and am about to say, 'Jesus Christ? Holy Spirit? Sorry, I have no idea what those are.' I hope their culture is more aboriginal."

I tied in the translators and spoke. "Can you understand me?"

Their left hands came forward, all grunted which the translator expressed as "Yes," and their right hands came back.

"Sanders, can you get me covered if what I'm about to do doesn't work?"

"You're covered, Banks."

I knelt down and leaned towards them, extended my left hand and prayed the translators had integrated enough of their language into its core. "Our languages are different, friends, and your words are strange to me. Perhaps my language has different words for …" and here I had the translator echo back the phoneme it could not parse.

The Goatmen became agitated.

I spoke to the collar, "What's going on, Sanders?"

"Why don't you start backing up. They don't look happy."

They stood up and so did I. Then, one by one, their eyes ever on me, they walked away.

795015:500 - We have not seen the Goatmen for four days, although the casters clearly showed them going into the brush on the steppes rising to the Towers. I've run several linguistic routines through the computers, but there wasn't enough conversation to develop much lexicon, grammar, syntactical rules, etc.

Sanders just called me up. A Goatman is outside and the computers have identified him as Gomer. It is just as well. This morning Sanders handed me another communique from Robin, this one Private. I left it unopened on my desk.

795015:620 - He started in the standing talking posture. "Come to see our homes, Journeyer."

So I was 'Journeyer'. A name I could live with and one which made me laugh. Robin, I think, would agree with that name.

So be it! I would be 'Journeyer' and I would go with them. For once, I told myself, Robin could be right.

I mimicked their talking postures and said yes, I would come but had some things to do first. He'd have to wait until I returned.

His left hand came forward. "Just you. Not the others …" and again the program returned that impenetrable word.

"What others?" My first mistake. Just because they're simplistic doesn't mean they're simple.

Gomer stood up straight and stationary. The only indication of life the occasional flecking of nictitating membranes over his eyes and slight steam jetties rising from his nostrils. If he pawed the earth I would have run.

Slowly he leaned towards me and his left hand came forward. "The others like you who are in the home who wants to be a rock." Then, as if weighted with finality, "Are there those like you other than those in the home who wants to be a rock?"

And here is where it happened, I realize now; I lied. This, I think, was a gift of Robin's; to lie with such easeful facility. I shook my head no and heard Tellweiller over the collar, "Say it, Banks. Shaking your head might mean you want to date his daughter."

"No. There are no others like me except in the home who wants to be a rock. There are things I need to travel."

He stared at me, those damn cerulean eyes of his never leaving me and, at the same time, giving me the feeling he might not have been looking at me at all or perhaps seeing more than me standing there.

I left him sitting as I returned to the Blind. When I returned to The Merrimack I saw him on the monitors, staring at the home who wants to be a rock.

Sanders came to me as I prepared my quarters for departure. "Have you read that last transmission?"

I gazed around me. "What transmission?"

"The one from your wife. It seemed pretty important. I—"

I know my gaze interrupted him. He could not know the contents of a Private message unless he believed the mission in jeopardy and expressed his concerns to CenComm. I felt color leave my face. "How have I jeopardized this ship or its crew?"

If he answered, I don't know, for it suddenly became clear to me that this log was under his inspection as well.

795015:790 - This is the last record I'll make on the ship. From now on, my only connection to the ship will be via the grid strapped to my back. The ship will receive holos of everything around me, the collar I'll wear is linked directly to a translator in the grid, and I'll be able to extend a two-hundred amp field ten meters around me thanks to Galen's and Nash's tinkering. Other than that, the ship will be a passive witness to my fate. I won't be taking food as Galen says the vegetation is high in both digestible carbohydrates and protein, vitamins and minerals, and it might be good not to eat ship food for a few days.

Jeremy and I once played a game called "Circles". One person named something and the next had to somehow link that thing to another thing. So on the game went until you had come full circle and the first thing was named again. Perhaps that is what's happening here on Aguirra. Soldier to husband to father to xenopologist. Ha! What am I to become when the game ends?

805015:700 - I am exhausted. Gomer could no doubt have made the trip from the blind to the top of Alpha Tower in an hour, maybe two. Rarely have I seen an animal so uniquely adapted to its environment. Because of me the trip took a little over a day, and I'm considered in good shape.

Gomer led me up and away from the blind in what I think was a slow pace for him. As the incline increased, he dropped to all fours and moved like a North American billy high in the Canadian Rockies. His toes act exactly as flattening rubber pads, thick-soled and slightly prehensile, that spread and grab the rocks for support and balance. Walking bipedally, it wasn't unusual to see him leap against a rock wall, one foot flatten against it like a hiking boot and filling minute crevices to obtain purchase, and push off and forward with his other foot literally grabbing an outcropping which normally would block the way. All this and maintaining forward locomotion! At another point he had gone around a rivel ahead of me. When I came around he was suspended upside down from an upper ridge with no apparent support. His attention seemed fixed on the steppes leading to the other Tower.

I gasped and his attention was broken. I heard two pops and he fell—a drop of several meters—twisting in the air like a cat and righting himself. The place where he "stood" under the ridge was moist but evaporating quickly, and there was moisture under his footprints now as he walked. It was then I noticed the extremely pronounced musculature and venous markings between his knee and ankle and ankle and pads, markings and musculature which previously hadn't been apparent. I'm guessing these creatures have evolved the ability to control the contour of the soles of their feet and excrete a mucous, thus creating a suction cup.

He looked towards Beta Tower. "Tomorrow," by which he meant today, "they begin their Passage."

The climb only grew more arduous and I told Gomer to stop often. He didn't seem bothered by this. Perhaps he considers me a juvenile?

A curious thing did happen, once. I started to slip and Gomer stared at me. I flailed at the edge. Suddenly he was between me and the precipice, gently butting me back into the direction I should travel, his butting as gentle as a mother covering her young in a blanket, yet as forceful as a cat chastising her kits. From that point on he always walked between me and the fall line of the Tower. When the path wouldn't support two abreast he fell to all fours and moved over the edge until more trailspace became available and he could again join me on the path. One could believe they evolved from quadripedal spiders until you see their eyes.

Later, at a particularly difficult pass for a biped, I told him I could go no further. He sat and, of course, stared. Eventually I could draw a breath without rasping. My legs, I knew, would ache for several days due to the lactic acid build-up in them. In addition, the rarified air was forcing me to hyperventilate in order to force enough oxygen into my system and I was starting to feel the cold through my suit.

I looked up at him, silhouetted by the setting sun, the sky clear above but a gentle mist settling over the Tower. On three sides of us were gray crags and small, translational rock slides. Underfoot and in occasional mounds were bluish green scrub plants. To the other side was the high plains of Aguirra and, far away and below, the lowlands were the colony would one day be. A wind blew, smelling of O₃ and summer storms, and my attention went back to him. As the wind blew, his fur ruffled and filled, swirling around him and protecting him, bleeding away the cold the way a hirsute man's pelt bleeds away water as he rises from the sea. All the while his impassive, immutable face stared down at me, the only change in it being the nictitating membranes that covered his eyes when the winds blew directly into them.

I saw myself clearly in his eyes, then as if surrounded by clouds and mists when the membranes came over them, then clear again, and wondered how he saw me.

The winds started to grow more violent and I realized that, indeed, another storm would soon be pummeling the altiplano and all that grew out of it. What oxygen I had been able to glean before seemed to be robbed from me as the pressure dropped and the winds increased. The pain in my lungs was tremendous as they struggled to ventilate me, my blood to irrigate me. My heart began pounding in response to my body's demand for more oxygen.

Why hadn't I thought to bring O₂ shells with me? I could feel my vessels dilating within me to carry rich red life where it was needed and my brain felt as if overcome with fever as oxygen starvation took hold.

On my knees, the Goatman standing on a rock a meter or so over me, I leaned towards him and reached, genetics moving my left hand forward more than any understanding of his culture, and fell unable to speak, unable to look up at him due to the setting Astarte's rays piercing into my skull.

His three-fingered hand swamped about my wrist. I was suddenly aware of his strength the way one is suddenly aware of a powerful undertow, being caught and going under, panicking, either to drown or to ride the wake and rise later, eventually making for shore.

I remember feeling the nails of his fingers against my skin. They were hard and cold, like the hooves of a cow in a winter field, but his fingers and palm were warm, near hot in this fairyland through which he guided me. His grip was strong but not violent as his fingers wrapped about my wrist and up my forearm.

He brought me forward, his muzzle a few scant centimeters from my face, and stared intently at me for a moment, as if inspecting me, unsure of what I was or what he was with me, then pulled me closer still until his lips engulfed mine, and he breathed. He pushed his own air into me, filling my lungs with oxygen his body didn't use. His free hand he placed on my belly, feeling my respirations through my suit, monitoring just how much to exhale before letting me breathe again. His eyes never wavered from me as he did this, as he resuscitated me, all with one long, shallow breath like a diver rising without tanks from far beneath the sea.

My body and brain, craving the life he gave me, took too much too fast, I think. I remember him ripping the flesh of his arm with one of his horny nails, making a gouge just wide enough to cover my lips, then making a fist until he bled. He gripped me by the neck then and held my mouth over his wound, holding me there and squeezing his fist. I fought at first but there was no point. Even at my best he was many times stronger than I. He held me there until I drank one, maybe two mouthfuls of his blood.

The skies turned red and I felt myself falling completely into his arms after that. I don't remember if he picked me up, led me, or carried me. I remember nothing until waking up some moments ago. I checked the equipment and all is functioning within specs, so I'm assuming Sanders and the others got everything on holos.

When I awoke, there were several females surrounding me and I was covered with their hairs. I can only guess that, realizing I was going into thermal shock, they lay around me to keep me warm. I was in a depression in the rock surface, not exactly a cave, but leeward, deep enough and with enough of a leading overhang to keep one relatively free of wind and rain. The rock surface itself was covered by plaited hairs, I think serving as a rug. Branches and leaves of some strange tree were woven into walls and roof around me.

I am in someone's hut, I suppose. Someone important, no doubt.

My first impression is that the females are built like diminutive males. All about me have narrower muzzles and foreheads, thinner necks, slightly shorter legs, and less massive shoulders than the males I've seen previously. They have four teats clearly visible due to hairless areas in their undercoats. This is not evidenced in the males. The females around are obviously of different ages although I have no way of knowing what their exact ages are as yet. Also, there is neither reddening nor swelling of the female's teats. This leads me to believe there are no nursing kids in this camp, unless none of these females are mothers. I can say that, as a whole, they stink. They exude an odor similar to an overripe, rotting melon which seems to lodge like a wedge in my sinuses slightly behind and immediately between my eyes. This odor is stirred or freshened when they move, and they move a lot. It's damn near killing me.

Shortly after awakening, they brought me a heavy, bluish green porridge. I buried my head in it as doing so alleviated the scent of these women. It filled my nostrils like a fine but foreign liqueur, was sticky to my lips and tasted like sweetened cauliflower; all in all quite invigorating. I drank three good size bowls before it occurred to me I might be depleting their stores. They continued to offer, however, so I continued to drink five more bowls full. As I finished the last bowl I realized my breaths were coming easier. It wasn't until I had finished the last bowl that I realized how much better I felt. The porridge, I think, is sedative, elixir, and re-oxidant. Small wonder!

Gomer came while I ate. He assumed the kneeling position I've described previously, my little aikidoka, and waited. His nictitating membranes rose from the corners of his eyes slowly, near eclipsing his irises, and his lids lowered. I did not know if he could even see me. His nostrils flared and he breathed slowly, evenly, the calm power in his body a mockery of the lack of it in mine. A moment later he got an erection which he stroked slowly and shamelessly. The females left, taking their musky scent with them. Do the females control the matings here? Again perhaps through some vomeronasal sense? Are their matings ritual, ceremony, or purely atavistic? That they have a culture is obvious, how much that culture has stripped them of their genetic coding is not. Do they divorce? Do the females take the young and leave the males lonely and far away? Perhaps that was the hallucination I had. For that matter, what is going on with Robin and Jeremy? Sanders, I'm sure, will know. By-the-Book Sanders who, probably even as I enter this, is asking for a psych addendum to my files.

Ha!

Gomer has spoken. The translator was not hooked in so I had to ask him to repeat. "You talk when there are none who will hear you."

"What do you mean?"

"Your sounds are not our sounds. There are none here to understand."

"The sounds are for myself."

"You sing your own history."

What an interesting phrase; to sing one's own history. Yet it seemed so true, so accurate. "Yes, I do."

"Share them with me. Teach me to sing your songs."

Ah, so social contagion finally rears it's ugly head. That I could not allow. "There's nothing to share. I make it up as I go along."

Gomer, who was kneeling while we talked, sat back at that. He stared at me with those damning eyes and unreadable face, then picked up the last bowl I'd been given. There was still some porridge sticking to the sides of the bowl and, lifting the bowl to his face, his tongue flipped out and rasped the bowl dry. He seemed to bow then, placing first his left hand on the ground before him then his right so that a triangle was formed between the first fingers and thumbs of each hand, then bowing at the waist, next sitting up and placing first right then left hand on his hips and finally rising. He took the bowl with him and left.

What have I said?

Could it be that his culture has no concept of stories or songs for entertainment? Are all their traditions oral? If they have writing, I have not recognized it as such. Are all their oral traditions morality lessons, history and folklore? Are none of them purely for entertainment? Robin would be proud. I've happened upon a planet of Presbyters.

Or at least a plateau of them.

Before Gomer came I was commenting about the porridge and the effect it's had on my breathing. I've also noticed there is no pounding in my ears and my heart isn't racing. At these altitudes, I am not surprised to discover they feast on plants which are both water and oxygen retainers.

805015:0800 - A brief walk around the village reveals little. There are no family dwellings as such, although there are some common constructions. The one I was in is evidently for the sick and infirmed. One seems to house foodstuffs. I have not ascertained what the others are for in detail, although it seems one is a common sleeping hut. All are marvelously constructed to withstand the elements, as are the goatmen themselves. Perhaps their physiology precludes the need for dwellings. Even so, I would think that over time they'd come to prefer them.

Which brings up an interesting detail. I asked Gomer what they call themselves. His nostrils flared and released, flared and released, as if beating with his heart. With each flaring he gave a name. He was signaling them by scent, I believe, and perhaps expecting me to be able to do the same, much as we would point to one person after another.

"No, no," I said. "What are you named all together?"

His level of confusion demonstrated there was none. Again, if I were a xenopologist I would have expected that. This also demonstrates there are no other sentients on the planet, I think. If there were others, wouldn't the Goatmen have developed the language to separate themselves from these hypothetical others? Or is this my prejudice placed upon them, By-the-Book Sanders versus Not-By-the-Book me.

Or perhaps there are no other intelligences who have revealed themselves to the Goatmen.

I then told him what we called ourselves—"human"—and his left hand shot forward. "How many of you are there?"

I told him I didn't know.

"There are enough so you don't know each one?"

"Oh, most definitely."

"And all of you are in the home who wants to be a rock?"

He waited for my answer.

Damn my lies. Damn them. Damn Robin. Damn Sanders, Tellweiller, Galen, and Nash. Damn the Goatmen.

"Oh, I misunderstood before. No, many of us are in the …" and I used that word.

He brayed, something which the translators evaluated as laughter, and gave me a gentle butt. I am sure it was gentle for him. It damn near cracked my skull. "Go on."

They know when I lie. Perhaps my scent gives me away. Yet the gentle reproof. Am I teaching them that some stories can be fun?

I told him we call them "Goatmen". What he heard was "Goat Men" and he laughed again.

"Can half a people hope to survive?" he asked, still laughing.

The last thing I remember was him giving me another gentle butt. Soon after I slept.

The village is multi-generational from what I've seen so far, and the divisions are fascinating in themselves. I wonder if these creatures come into a mating season, still tied to some ecologic bio-rhythm, so clearly are the generations demarcated.

Lactating females seem to have longer hair, or perhaps they simply haven't shed their winter hairs as easily as do the males and non-lactating females, of which there are few. Around the nipples of some lactating females there is a bloody stain. Perhaps some of the kids don't give up the tit soon enough.

Closest to me is one female still suckling a young. There is a tenderness common to all sentient creatures between parent and young—and yes, I'm aware of my many assumptions.

I surmise I'm witnessing a parent and child simply by the interaction between them. It reminds me of Robin nursing and nuzzling Jeremy. There was a tenderness between them which did not extend to me, often intentionally excluding me.

I remember, there was one time, I watched her holding him crooked in her right arm, unbuttoning her blouse and folding it down, then pinching her nipple as he rooted back and forth, his little mouth open and reaching, until he found her. His eyes slowly closed as she sang to him, almost too quiet for me to hear. Once she was secure he had found her milk, her eyes, like his, slowly closed.

She rocked then, rocked in rhythm to her song, and his mouth went lax without ever loosing her teat, every now and again his cheeks would tense and he would suck, perhaps six or seven times. She would smile and then he would sleep again.

That these creatures are sentient there can be no doubt. They have long since passed Keiger's Porpoise Test—another anthropomorphic egocentrism, if you ask me. Twentieth century sociologists learned to be participant observers to best understand a culture. Agreed! Goodbye Robin, farewell Jeremy, my son. Sanders, you were my commander, never my superior, even as an officer. To Tellweiller, Nash, and Galen, serve him as best you can if not at all.

Ha!

Robin had plenty of milk for Jeremy, it seemed. Not once can I remember did she ever nourish me.

805015:1280 - There are no other animals up here. I just noticed that. More accurately, I just noticed I hadn't noticed. Hopefully the robotics I'm carrying are noticing things I'm not.

There is vegetation and it seems highly ordered, although I don't know if it's cultivated.

Gomer approaches. There is another billy with him. This one's horns are broken off and he appears to have cataracts. Strange.

"I have spoken of the strange things you do and Tenku has offered to …" another word the translator could not understand.

According to one of my old college professors people learn when they either develop or acquire new language for what they're doing. What is it the translator needs to learn?

Or is it I who has not the language?

I then noticed that Tenku—that's as well as I can do the new billy's name—was holding a black root.

Participant observation, yes.

They came and sat. Gomer never moved from the neutral position except to say "Tenku", at which point the new billy leaned forward, left hand out, and started talking. "We use this when we wish to—" again the translator barked, this time a string of garbled sounds as if it were cursing in a foreign language. I can't believe it hasn't developed sufficient vocabulary yet!

Tenku placed the root between us.

How is it used? Because I'm not an anthropologist, I'm assuming it's some kind of narcotic and, because I'm not an anthropologist, I'm probably right. But how is it used? Chewed? Swallowed? Smoked? Injected? Inhaled? Mixed with something else? Rubbed into the skin? As an enema?

Gomer and Tenku strip a piece of the root then rise and motion me to follow. Each holds a piece of the root, its black juice streaming down their hands and dripping onto the ground. "Where are we going?"

Tenku starts chewing the root. One question is answered. Gomer says, "We speak with the Theisen."

"The Theisen? Who are they?"

"The ones who answer."

It is sweet.

I am naked. Totally naked. No survival pack, no environment suit, no food, nothing.

How did they know to strip me?

Who stripped me?

I am on the ground. How long have I been lying here?

It is not cold nor is it difficult to breathe, yet I still feel myself to be on the Alpha Tower.

I must remember all this for later. To record it. I hear Tenku's voice, what equates to their laughter, the braying, but he's not around. His voice is close but he is not.

The black root must be some kind of hallucinogenic. Gomer is before me. He is standing at the foot of a path, narrowed and marked by azure and deep maroon stones. There are trees further up the path. Real trees. Pines, mostly. Christmas trees with some birches. One or two elms. There are pine needles on the ground. The path leads up a slight rise then disappears between the trees, moving further up a hill and into the woods.

I thought we'd climbed to the top of this tower, but clearly it goes higher.

Gomer is at the foot of the path, staring at me and holding out his left hand. It is covered with milk. His horns are black against the sky and his eyes, always impenetrable, now show me naked before him, goat's eyes with rectangular pupils like huge picture windows looking out onto my soul. He stares at me with his left hand out, slightly bent at the waist with one knee forward, reaching out to me, helping me from the ground and patient for me to follow him, an alien Mephistopheles offering me an unknown Cleopatra at the price of some xenopologic Hell.

I am scared.

Gomer is still waiting, his hand outstretched and still dripping milk. He leans closer and slaps my face. God, it stings. The pads of his hand rip my naked face. His hand is still outstretched but now it drips blood. This is familiar. How long have I been here? How long has he been waiting?

I wish I had something to drink. I wish I sucked the milk when it was offered.

Gomer leans forward, coming closer and I fear he will strike me again. Instead he wipes my face. It is covered with sweat. Tears and blood and sweat. He stares at the mixture as it pools in his palm as if he were reading a history of my life.

Again I hear Tenku laugh.

Gomer opens my mouth and lets my history fall in. It tastes like milk and quenches my thirst.

I can't move. My arms and legs are free and yet I cannot move.

Again there is Tenku's laughter. Where is he?

Blood runs down my arm and into my hand and now I can move it. I can taste it. I can breathe. I take Gomer's hand. It is rough and tender. Both facile and feral as it swarms about mine. It takes a while, a few tries, but I get up.

We start up the path. I hear a voice. It is Jeremy's. It comes from Gomer's lips, speaking in the Goatmen's tongue. I look into Gomer's face and see he has Robin's eyes. Now they look at me without judgment, without regret.

I am still naked and it is cold.

Tenku, Gomer, and I are back, standing in the circle with the black root between us. Their jaws, chests, and hands are covered in streaks of black juice. Their teeth are blackened, as are their tongues. They look like two kids—pardon the pun—who'd been eating and drooling licorice.

Their breath smells like … well, like blood. I doubt this is the case, as they are herbivores and even the billies don't have pronounced canines. A possibility is that they self-mutilate by biting their own tongues, perhaps as part of the black root ritual. I have no idea if sublingual ingestion works for caprins as it does for humans. The pain involved in biting one's own tongue, however …

I am fully clothed again and wonder if I was ever naked. There are black stains down the front of my suit and on my hands.

815015:0800 - The recorder signaled The Merrimack's request for my immediate return sometime during my study of the black root. Has my intention for participant observation caused Sanders concern? Has Robin conscripted my pay for this rigging and Sanders needs my consent before he'll approve? Damn him, By-the-Book Sanders. For the first time in years I feel useful, like I'm accomplishing something, and I'll be damned if any petty squabbles will keep it from me now.

I had not noticed before, but some of the billies are not in the village. Have they gone back to inspect "the home who wants to be a rock"? Is this Sanders' concern?

835015:1700 - No entries yesterday. It seems I slept. Gomer tells me this is common for those first exposed to the Wa'asis, the proper name of the black root. He also tells me we didn't get to the Theisen. I could not make the journey, he said, something which is also common. When I asked why he said nothing.

More of the Goatmen have left this village, some even as I enter this, and I note that the majority of those leaving are the young ones. Regarding that, several of the females are pregnant and, Gomer tells me, will start kidding soon. I asked him if there are any natural abortions or stillborns and he answered no, but not directly. There are no words in his language for either stillborn or abortion. This is the strongest evidence such things don't exist.

I've also asked about natural predators. The lowlands have several, he tells me. Original planetary findings confirm this. "Is that why your people came here to live?"

"No, we have always been here."

I haven't as yet heard any of their oral tradition or myths—if indeed they have any. I'm sure they would be fascinating.

This opens our discussion again to Tenku and I question him about the Wa'asis. Whatever it is, only Tenku and a few others have it and administer it. What happens when these others are no more? Then one like them will chew it. "Will you chew it?" He has no answer.

This brings up another point. Are these the only goatmen on all of Aguirra? Where are the other "tribes"?

I ask about the Goatman—here again Gomer laughs at "Goat Man". He butts me but this time knows I'm delicate and it is a tap, barely felt yet frightening never-the-less the individual who stared at me when we sent out the rumbler.

Gomer tells me no such person—Goatman—exists. I describe the individual in detail and he asks me to go on, to tell him more. It is here I realize something else about these Goatmen and perhaps all aboriginals I've ever known.

The Goatmen's observational skills are based on a delicate yet pervasive matrix of focused attention directed to minute detail, the constant exercise of a rich cultural memory, and the predication of all experience into oral history. This latter is prevalent in all pre-ecririen societies. This could be true of all aboriginal peoples but I have no way of knowing.

845015:0430 - Gomer has returned with Tenku. Tenku asks me to tell him who I saw with the other People when they came to the Blind.

It is not that he's dissatisfied with my description, it's simply that he feels there is more. He doesn't question what I've told him, only asks "Where are you?"

"I am here."

Quickly, he lifts me. I think he is old and still he demonstrates formidable strength. Holding me against him, I smell his scent quite strongly. It is the same and subtly different from the others and the community smell I'd gotten used to. He smells, I realize, of the Wa'asis. His breath is sweet with the stuff, and being this close it is intoxicating.

"Where are you?" he asks me.

"I am here, I told you."

He put me down. Something strange happened then, something I'd noticed but had not referenced in this work before.

There is, I think, a far less obvious kind of communication these creatures employ, something beyond the perceptual ranges of both myself and my immediate instruments. Perhaps even beyond the vomeronasal. Tenku and Gomer moved off in the same direction although there was no clue or communication between them which I discerned. That would be enough, except that several of the other remaining males moved simultaneously to a common point, one of the common shelters, and all entered.

845015:1000 - Extremely cold last night. These creatures know about fire, yet don't make much use of it. Nor do they make use of the common dwellings. It is a matter of perception. By tucking themselves with their backs to the wind they can sleep in the open at forty degrees below zero. Cold to me. I don't know what it is to them.

I have discovered more via some telemetric readings. In extreme cold they reduce epidermal bloodflow to conserve heat, with hands, feet, and exposed facial features maintained just above the tissue freezing point. Warmth to these possible contact points is regulated independent of the rest of the body, an efficiency of design emphasized greatly on Aguirra. On warm days they flair themselves out to keep cool, exposing as much of the body surface as possible to the air, or they roll in the dirt. The younger ones do this quite a bit and I believe it to be some kind of game or play.

Coat ranges in color from almost pure white through white, through various shades of blond cream and ocher to grays, blonds and blacks. Most striking are the slope blue coats of the older goatmen, whom I collectively call 'Silverbacks'.

The recorder is transmitting a caster response signal. Sanders must be serious about my return. He's sending a caster to find me and bring me home. What could he want now?

845015:2200 - Tenku has returned. There is another billy with him, a young one just starting his horns, and not Gomer. They assume the talking positions, not including me. Tenku asks this other Goatman, "Where are you?"

"The Theisen … " and a bark. Perhaps I would learn more if I didn't rely on the damned translator. "Tenku has asked me to be with him and Journeyer. Gomer agrees this will help us know Journeyer and where he is, as Journeyer, we believe, is lost.

"We sit with the sisters and children of Hepob …"

This new billy's recitation continued for fully forty minutes, at which time Gomer came over.

Before continuing, note his reference to "The Theisen." This seems odd to me as he did not smell of Wa'asis and I thought such was necessary for communication with "The Theisen" to begin.

Most disturbing to me was what he said as he came to the end of his speech; " … and there are some fallen stones. The Old Ones, placed without asking by the others from—" the untranslatable word again "—those who dwell in the home who wants to be a rock."

The young billy got up and Gomer took his place. Tenku asked, "Where are you?"

Gomer started, "As Shika said and …"

His recitation of where he is took days longer, even starting as it did from where the other Goatman left off and continuing far down the Towers, across the Altiplano and ranging over the continent.

The missing third leg of the triangle. I believe I have it. The oral history is truly rich and greatly diversified, everyone in the village has their own. They define where they are by their experience, starting at their immediate present, continuing throughout their personal histories and including racial histories when it is relevant to their personal recounting. Gomer, for example, recited a story about a Goatman called 'Denihé'. From what he said, I suspect Denihé might be the Goatman I and I alone perceived when the others stood outside the Blind and Sanders dispatched the Rumbler. If not that, then Denihé is the creature who I became in that dream.

It is fascinating, this concept. To define your existence by your experience. Perhaps I was mistaken in thinking these creatures have names so much as they have icononyms, a single sound which acts as an arrow to a racial or cultural memory of their entire existence. It may explain why they laugh at 'Goat Man'. The name denies them half their experience. To them, "history" is by its very nature an individual's song.

I wonder what they made of "My name is Gordon Banks."? Has that simple statement, denied of cultural references and identity, defined our interactions since?

Tenku sits facing me. There is black root in his hand.

We are moving up a steep incline. There are several males with me. I am walking without paying attention to how I move, much as these creatures themselves do. Several of us turn towards something at once. I know I am to look, to see, to feel, taste, touch, smell, whatever this thing is.

My nostrils open wide and carry the scent to me. I feel my legs twitching, vibrating, as if there's something older here than I should rightly know, a racial memory which others will have to tell me about.

There are a few tracks with a scent mark, although I was unaware of the scent mark. Four of the older billies suddenly surround me, their blue pelages sheening in the sun. I am filled with knowledge, knowledge I know I didn't have, knowledge accumulated and indexed and presented in small, digestible chunks, knowledge of the area, knowledge of animals in the area, knowledge of this season, knowledge of this time of day, details upon details upon details.

There is so much. As it comes into me I can't breathe. I hear the voices of my brothers, my sisters, my family, my children —my children?— long distant, summoned to talk to me now from throughout time. Things heard from others. Histories sung.

My four acolytes leave me, as suddenly as they came, moving back into their ranks in our procession, and ahead of me one other male slows. As I'm about to pass him he butts me. It is the male who watched me at The Merrimack, although now his horns are broken like Tenku's and their edges cut me. "Make a guess," he says. "What do these particular marks, these specific trail clues, mean? Tell me what and who has been here. Where were they before? Where are they headed? When? Will they come again?"

I answer his questions, surprised at my knowledge, astounded by my experience. My guess is correct, for all that I tell him, then realize I'm not answering out of my own experience. I'm answering out of the experiences of others.

He laughs at me. It is Sanders' laugh. He has an Old One's face.

At night, the air around the Towers grows still and quiet. There are no raptors or other predators at the altitudes governed by The People. How ever long they have lived thus, they have grown calm and accepting of their environment. No guards or watches are posted. Of course, with their ability to communicate vomeronasally, I doubt any threat would long stay such to these creatures.

The sky, at night, is darker than the darkest desert night on Earth or many other worlds I've seen. The constellations, Tellweiller told me, are those the dinosaurs on Earth once saw.

I heard something coming up from the altiplano. When I got up, half the people of the village were up, at the edge of this Tower and looking down to where I long ago left the blind.

A meteor rose from the ground and rode through the skies. Half way into the darkness it exploded.

885015:0010 - A caster lies wrecked about two hundred meters from me. When that happened I don't know. The transmitter's indicators show only that it records.

Only that it records.

Damn.

There is no indication that it sends. The Merrimack is gone. Without me.

Damn.

Damn Sanders and Galen and Nash and Tellweiller and Robin and the Corps and …

How do I know what an Old One looks like? For that matter, what is an Old One?

I'm overcome by a feeling of melancholy. My notes are no longer transmitted to the ship. Who hears them? Who reads them? I mourn the loss of my objectivity. I mourn my participation in their primitive rites. All has become nothing more than my history song.

I want to tell them more will come, that the Pilgrimage Council will find a way to deny them their aboriginal rites. With no natural predators, how can they prepare? How could they understand?

905015:0830 - How many days of recording does the transmitter have without The Merrimack close by to bleed power from?

Gomer is back with Tenku. Both are playing with the kid whom I witnessed nursing earlier in this narrative.

Yes. They have become distinct to me. I can recognize and individuate them.

I've noticed The People seem to pick up cues from each other even when there is no obvious contact. They can have their backs to each other, even at extremely distant parts of the village from each other. Something will catch the attention of one of them, usually something outside of that individual's experience, and as that individual's attention quickly becomes hypnotic a common anxiety moves through them all. Others respond by moving without hesitation to look at the area where the first individual is staring. They respond simultaneously, as though some group consciousness comes "on-line".

I ask if we'll try to reach the Theisen again and Tenku shows me the black root, the Wa'asis. The ceremony is much like the previous one. It is ritual to me, ceremony to them. There is a meaning to them, a history and a reasoning. To me there is only the placing of the root, the stripping with the teeth, the chewing. With all other cultural iconography gone I suppose I must make it more than mere ritual soon, I must not repeat the mistakes of the Europeans colonizing the world. They wanted to prove their god was the match of any pagan idol and took tobacco, alcohol and more powerful hallucinogens, all aboriginal vectors to the gods, and bastardized them until they became addicted, proving the old gods greatest of all. They forgot the ceremonies behind the rituals.

I must not. I can not.

"Who are the Theisen? What happens when we chew the root? Where do we go?"

There are no answers. Tenku offers me the root. "Wait. I have questions," I say. It is too late. They have already started to chew.

I'm losing my objectivity. I decide to sit and see what happens to them. I watch their breathing, their eyes, watch their bodies relax and sag.

The nanny comes over. The kid, who sat watching us, sniffs the air, turns to his mother, and butts her belly and thighs. She squats—the Little Teapot—and he raises on toe to nurse.

She's staring at me. Her eyes aren't like the others. They are deep, and black. Like Robin's. And also, I think, beautiful.

Without meaning to, or perhaps meaning to without knowing I mean to, afraid to be left alone as it were, I lift a root to my mouth and chew.

No knowledge of time or date. I am naked. In the same place I was before, only closer to the path. Gomer is here and Tenku is not, although I feel Tenku is near.

Gomer stands over me, at the foot of the path. All of my training, all of my knowledge, all of my experience avails me not, and I am terrified by the newness of it.

This is the magic I believed in as a child and denied as an adult.

Gomer offers me his hand. It is easier to reach this time and I stand quickly.

Tenku laughs.

"Where are we going?" I ask, wondering how Gomer can understand without the translator to mediate.

He points up the path.

"Are the Theisen up there?"

He says nothing and begins to walk. I follow.

Whatever experiences I have, I'm unaware of them. The only thing I am aware of is my terror at being a child.

I wake and find myself holding Gomer's genitals. How this came about I don't know. Gomer waits for me to sit up then tells me we traveled far.

"Did we reach the Theisen?"

Tenku, sitting with his back to us, answers, "No. Not yet."

"Do you journey with us? I think you're there but you're not."

"No."

They leave me. I check my recorder. Nothing of the hallucination has been recorded. Then I am chilled.

Tenku spoke with his back to us. The normal postures were ignored.

What has happened? What have I done?

The nanny, Hepob, has taken on the task of feeding me.

Tenku has awoken me. We go to the edge of our Tower closest to the other. The ground is uneven and churned here. If there were more moisture it would be muddy. The sun has risen enough to heat the two plains of the Towers of God. Gomer joins us. There is a great mist rising from the altiplano table and atmospheric venting is creating a turbulence between the Towers. It reminds me of a high speed oil and water separation. I can make out the other Tower through the turbulence but not enough to determine details. The wind gusts up the edge of this Tower and the other like the updrafts beside some coastal shelf.

There is a rumbling in my gut. All the males join us, all of them Gomer's age or older. The only other males in the village are prepubescent kids and those not yet off the teat.

How old do they think I am?

I still don't know how old Gomer is. As more and more older billies join us, the rumbling grows. It feels like a sonogram with too much power. The billies are panting. No, I see now they are taking rotary breaths.

Are they purring? Is that the sound I feel? They line the churned earth, leaving a great center space between them.

My god, it's deafening.

They all face the other Tower. All the males seem joined in this chorus. The earth, this Tower, quakes beneath us. The mist clears in a column, as if some great tube were being laid between this one and the other, a passageway with invisible walls. The mist rises around it but does not pierce it.

This passage, this sonocasting, grows warm, although no sunlight penetrates the thickening cloud.

There is another rumbling, another purring, an answering chant, from the other Tower and, as I watch, the young billies start to come across.

Some walk although it is clear they are afraid. Some run. Others leap. Some leap but not through the passage and you hear their separate cries ascend the Towers as they descend to their deaths.

A few walk and show no fear. Some hold onto others, some help others.

They are braver than I.

"What is going on?" I ask Tenku.

He doesn't answer, his concentration on his breathing, on the direction of his voice, his eyes holding onto the passageway their song has made between the Towers.

The translator is failing so I use it sparingly. The recorder I use because I can. I will take a guess and record the date as 916015.

Funny how much lighter these units have become without The Merrimack to power them. The mists cleared. The earth is churned more than before due to the leaping and running of the young billies. Most of the elder billies have gone, as have all of the young. There is no more rumbling. I peer over the edge of the Tower and make out the bodies of those who didn't make it.

Tenku is staring at me.

"What happened here? What was this?"

He grabs my genitals. I don't know if that is the answer, but it is the only response I get.

He doesn't seem surprised by them. I am surprised at the gentleness of his touch. They must seem a child's, weak and ineffective in his hands. How did an ancient Hebrew oath right find its way here, I wonder.

Back in the village, Hepob offers me the same porridge as when I arrived. It tastes slightly different and I see scrapings of the black root in it.

After I eat, I rest.

I slept long and deeply, yet my sleep was fogged by dreams as thick as the altiplano's Aguirran gnats. I no longer know how reliable or intelligible this redaction has become.

I remember several dreams, although only a few clearly. In one, I was back at the ship. Sanders, Galen, Tellweiller, and Nash walk through me and past me as if I don't exist, nor can they hear me even though I scream at them. The Old Ones have advanced. The Merrimack was called home.

In one dream, I watched Galen and Tellweiller on one of Dave's C3I monitors, then realized I was Dave watching the monitor. This wasn't a common dream, where you know who you are and have a sense of yourself no matter what you are in the dream. Here, I was more a passenger along for the ride; not David Sanders, but able to experience his environment, thoughts, and emotions along with him. Not a pleasant journey. He seems a lonely, fearful man.

On the monitor, I watched Tom ask Bob if he'd like to join him in a little exploring. "Care to come along?" I sat with Dave in C3I as they finished lunch in the Common. Dave tapped in the commands for a two-way screen split and zoomed a separate window onto each man's face. His eyes, always quick, looked down and over his nose at the images on the screen. They went out of focus momentarily and he "hmmed", bridging his fingers against his mouth and nose. His eyes still out of focus, he tilted his head back further, just enough so he could see the tip of his nose in the foreground of their faces. This is an unconscious habit he has when talking to people.

As the two men cleaned up their table and left the Common, Dave adjusted the Eyes to follow them out of the ship. They hadn't traveled far when they stopped. Without even looking for any remotes or robotics, they fell into each other's arms, laughing and giggling, pulling off their suits and, making themselves comfortable against each other, finally … finally I looked away, not so much embarrassed as wanting to afford them their privacy. My only thought was "How could they have kept this secret so long?"

Dave continued to watch and I felt him dissociate, fighting to have no emotions, finally losing so that the only emotion he had was disgust and even this one he denied himself. In the end, Dave made a note in his log about each of them and included a special adjunct to talk privately with Bob. Dave, I now realize, lives by the book because he is terrified to do otherwise. Within those paper-thin walls he is safe. Outside of them he is open to the attacks with which he attacks others. Seeing others outside the book is a threat to him, a constant reminder of what he has not.

Nash, brown hair and beard, brown eyed, tall and heavy, leaves The Merrimack , calling Bob and Tom back to the ship before the storms come. I watch him through Sanders' eyes then suddenly am him and suddenly realize he tends to direct his words towards some space over people's heads.

Tom and Bob return and I am them, my mind hearing both their words and their thoughts, feeling their emotions, moving their bodies, and I note as I-Bob answers Nash that I-Bob tends to look over our head as if to read our words as if they appear in the old style cartoonist's speech balloons. Although I was never conscious of it before, I now understand I thought this gazing was due to self-consciousness over a speech impediment which tended to leave certain words swimming in saliva back around his molars.

Back in the ship, my equipment looks foreign to me and there is a young billy dead in my chamber, lying on my couch.

In the next dream I am back on Earth, back in New York City. I meet an old lover there and, in the magic traveling of dreams, we are suddenly on the Towers. She is on the far one from me. She starts to walk towards me and I scream at her to wait, there are no billies with histories to create a bridge. I open my mouth and tears fall from my rasping Goatman tongue. The tears fall down the side of my Tower and swell into a rising mist. She leaps and falls. I do not hear her scream. I only hear her hit.

Then I am back home, in my apartment on Earth, and dream that I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I went into the bath and turned on the light. On my way to the toilet, I passed the mirror and looked into it. An Old One with my face stared back. I remember being terrified of it. The Toelitchte didn't recognize me and was angry, near enraged at me.

The Toelitchte?

The last dream was the most vivid of all. I was somewhere on Aguirra, although I didn't know where exactly I was. There were massive trees before me, far grander in size and age than even the oldest Sequoias or any tree in any rain forests on any world. Yet they did not smell of forest floor. Instead the air reeked of human sweat, tears, and blood.

They talked to me. More correctly, they talked around me. I could not speak their words although I know they could understand mine.

"Who are you?"

They didn't answer. Or if they did I was unaware.

"What are you?"

No reply of which I knew.

"Talk to me," I shrieked.

Their branches ruffled. They made sounds in the wind. I looked up and could not see their tops, so high were they in the sky.

A great catlike creature, one of the ones Gomer mentioned to me, came out from behind one of the trees. It was more like a cross between a tiger and a bear, with the great lumbering body of some monstrous ursus, yet the swiftness and retractile claws of a feline. Its eyes, also, were those of a cat. Its belly was white and the rest all brown, with small tufts of white at the tips of both ears.

It came at me. There was nowhere to run or hide and, in one breath, it was upon me. Its first swipe of those six-toed claws opened me. The second broke through ribs. The next three cored me deeper and deeper until there was nothing left.

Then it left me there, bleeding on the ground, as it walked away. I felt other things, smaller things, tickling me and entering me. They were the roots and shoots of the trees, spreading through me as if I was the earth in which it grew. Suddenly I was one of those massive trees, looking down at myself on the forest floor.

Only it wasn't me I saw. Tenku was there, his body eviscerated as was mine, only mine was not to be found. The air changed its smell. I was engulfed by the black root.

That's what I remember of my dreams.

I will be more careful what I accept in my porridge.

I don't know how long I've been here at this point. I've been making records as often as I think to, always when I wake up, but have no idea of how long it has been.

Hepob and all the other females of kid-bearing age are due soon, if not today. I wonder who Hepob's mate is, or if she even has one. For that matter, why are there only two sexes here? Why not one, or ten? There is a life form on Chalderon that was at first thought to use seven hosts before it could reproduce. We discovered too late there were seven sexes and each played a significant part in the fertilization and development of the embryo.

Unfortunately, only the last sex was sentient, and when your life cycle is several thousand years and your planet is colonized right before the end of your mating period?

It is too horrible to think about.

Tenku is here. It's black root time.

I have met the Theisen. I had met them before but had not known it.

Trees. Light-year spanning, world-bearing trees. Trees with leaves big enough to shelter a sun. Trees so vast their being spans the multiverse. Trees that root in universes we do not know and gather light in universes we can not name. The youngest is the age of my race and the oldest form the Towers of God. They talk to me in words I won't live long enough to pronounce and tell me of their people, the Aguirrans, and my own.

The Theisen travel the stars multigenerationally. They have no concept of time or space. To them everything is here and now. Yet they have memories, race memories, of seeding a hundred billion worlds. Each Theisen is a history of their kind, yet everything they know is happening to them as they speak of it. Is this where the Goatmen learn their songs?

They know they have traveled and there is no place other than "here" to them.

"How can you know everything on all worlds, even ones I've never seen? You're parts of my dream, aren't you?"

"We dream each other. You are part of the millennia-long dream of trees."

I say nothing because I desperately need to believe I sing to myself.

"Do you know where you are?"

I turn to walk away and see the Alpha Tower across a great divide and in the distance. Many elder Goatmen are there. There is much turbulence in the air between us. They start to sing and a pathway forms.

"No!"

"Do you know where you are?" The Theisen's leaves shake at me although I feel no breeze.

"How?"

"Do you know where you are?"

I understand the words and they are not really a question. It comes as the sound the translator couldn't parse. This is the cultural icon, the mythic symbol of which the Goatmen speak.

I take a step onto nothing but sound, nothing but song, and I'm back aboard The Merrimack looking at Galen and Tellweiller. God. I never told them they kept me sane. They were the epitome of the Pro-Choice movement's slogan at the turn of the 21st century; Life begins when you mind your own business. Galen—Tom—was athletically thin, something I attributed to his being the youngest of us and always able to find good looking, intelligent women he genuinely wanted to spend time with. Pale skinned, clean-shaven, with freckles, aquiline green eyes and copper hair, he had the uncanny ability to answer questions which were asked rather than the questions implied. I envied him that.

No guile. What a gift.

—Why am I thinking of him in the past tense?—

Nash, definitely the oldest of us, was also the most talkative and often engaged you in conversation unless you asked him not to, then it's "Oh, I'm sorry," and the next thing was, "Do you think Tom's around?" If not Tom, then Sanders or Tellweiller. He was an old Texan with a square face and a slight hump which he'd never allowed Fleet-Med to reconstruct. Part of this I blame on his arcane religious beliefs, part on his sense of independence, and perhaps a little on his "fear of the knife" as they use to say.

I liked his drawl.

—God Damn It! Stop!—

He's traveled so much you can't really notice it anymore, except when he laughs and talks immediately after. His laugh is loud and abrupt, high in his head and right in your face. He is the kind who genuinely laughs and whose whole body shakes when he does, which is interesting to watch as he is a field geologist and grisly hard and permanently tanned from exploring half a dozen worlds.

I left them in Common. "Damn, it's quiet out there," Nash said, his eyes so wide on the screens. I had to laugh. If he'd been looking out a window, he'd be at home in a horror-vid.

"Probably just your ears getting use to the lack of wind and rain," Sanders said.

"No. Christ, I wish Gordo were here," Nash said, wanting an ally, I think. "He's the xenopologist. You watched his reports. He understood more than any of us what all these biologic anomalies were about."

—I dream—dream?—Now they talk of me in the past. What is going on?—

"Listen," he continued. "It's quiet."

"Huh? Maybe. Whatever." Sanders shrugged. "I'm going to C3I. We'll find out in a couple of days what the fauna's circadians are. We can analyze the last of Banks' transmissions then if we want."

A moment later I'm in C3I with Sanders as Tom walks in. "Sanders, I have something for immediate uplink."

Sanders didn't respond. He sat there, his face flushed and his eyes red, until his breathing, which had been harsh at Tom's entrance, was more normal. Finally he stood up.

"What's wrong, Sanders?"

"What's wrong?" Sanders eyes opened wide, as if Galen were an apostate and his sins should be obvious. "What's all this … crap—Crap!—in your personal logs?"

Tom's stared back at Sanders. "You went through my personal logs?"

"Damn right I did, and a good thing, too. All this talk about how beautiful Aguirra is, all these poetic descriptions about the land, the sky, the birds—the fucking birds? Number One, a lot of this is from Banks' observations. And he's dead as far as we know."

"—I noted where my observations are substantiated or reinforced by what Banks transmitted."

"And Number Two, I decide what goes out, not you."

Tom stood for a moment, his face showing the effort of trying to understand. "Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me you haven't uplinked any of Gordo's transmissions? None of his holos? You had no right—"

"As commander of this mission I made it my right. With all the stress he's been under I had to make sure he could still carry out his duties, didn't I?"

Tom was speechless. He kept his eyes fixed on Sanders. "You had no right. No regulations allow for this."

Sanders grabbed the holo-cube away from the younger man. "What's this that you need uplinked so quickly?" He popped it into a viewer and adjusted the controls. Holos of the Goatmen appeared, life size, between the two men.

The audio came on and I heard my own voice, rich and full, with more life and strength than I'd heard in it before. "It is worth studying the transmitted holos against holos of terrestrial goats. For males of the same age and weight, the goatmen's head is wider, longer, and generally larger, their necks are about the same. With the goat being bigger in the chest by several centimeters. The goatmen are five centimeters taller, eight centimeters longer in the leg and twenty centimeters longer in the body. The goatmen have no tail, and the feet are twice the size of terrestrial goats."

"Captain, I'm demanding a Level Ten Field Transmission. Give me the cube, please."

Sanders hesitated. I think if there'd been a weapon near by he would have used it. Instead he backed away from his console. Tom's fingers raced over the pads then dropped the cube into the reader. He pressed another tab and said, "Append: The decision may be called questionable when taken with respect to any previous transmissions regarding Xenopologist and Acting Mission Redact Gordon Banks. It is my belief, based on many years experience as mission personnel and a long relationship with Banks, the increased responsibility assigned by acting Captain David Sanders has jeopardized both the life of Xenopogist Banks and this mission. At the time of the assignment, Banks was not fully capable nor a totally productive member of the crew. It is my belief that the lack of confrontation with his problem and non-acceptance of his familial status impeded his re-adjustment to The Merrimack's five-man society."

In another step I am on my mission previous. Another step takes me on the mission previous to that. There is a rustling above me and I am standing on sound canopied by Theisen. Part of me fears their singing will stop and another knows it won't.

If you live knowing only a process, you can never have all your options. If you live knowing there are options, one of them can be to partake in the process, they tell me.

I agree.

Would I like to see my world? they ask. I accept. It comes at me like a newsview montage, everything at once, because that is how they feel it. There are little wars claiming the peace, tiny exultations where one doesn't think the other is right. Companies, vast multi-systems, their employment records reading like census briefs from minor and not so minor worlds, deciding political strategies for planet-nations fighting planet-nations. Peace only exists where it generates acceptable profit.

The Theisen tell me no memories come from there now, and the montage stops. How so? I ask. Our children there now are not, translates their one word reply.

What? The Earth gone? Were there no warriors for her in all the people I knew there?

They do not.

I am leaving Jeremy one last time. I am playing with him on the gold hills of Teindien.

My leaves are folding through space, mapping it like the back of a hand I don't really have.

I am with Robin at his birth.

My shoots and roots engulf the stars, and suns burst from dust, blaze, then grow cold instantly.

I am with Robin.

Mother, father, sister, come quickly, then are gone.

Grandparents.

Oceans like worlds and worlds frighteningly like first oceans.

Seeds and vines burst from me and grow free of me. They float through space, gripping worlds and running through them.

My foot lands on churned, moss covered ground.

The singing stops.

Listen. I ask the Theisen. Listen to your children. Don't they call you?

We know not.

Tenku takes my hand. He leads me away. I'm not sure where we're going. My eyes are cataracted with blood and tears.

Tenku wakes me early in the morning. He is as excited as I've ever seen him.

"Where are we going?"

"Yes." He gently butts me.

I know what he means. The nannies are kidding. The field behind the village is littered with nannies on their sides, their legs folded slightly up towards their bellies and their eyes glazed. They do not scream or weep. There seems to be no pain at all. Tenku leads me to Hepob. Gomer is with her.

I ask questions, the xenopologist in me still strong even though I'm sure my transmissions are no longer reaching any ship.

Kids are born one hundred twenty-eight Aguirran days after conception. Kids are always born in the village. They're only single births, with twins being very rare, and it is unusual for any individual pair to have more than two children. If there is a methodology for deciding which partners will have more kids it eludes me.

It is dawn and the kidding begins. Like popcorn in an old style popper, the plateau pops with the bleats of first one kid then another, the sky filling with bleats and nays and hinnies as the kids pop from their mothers, the air turning first rich then acrid then pungent as puddles of blood and bowel and afterbirth meet the rising sun. The kids' coats are damp, matted flat and mucousy. They steam as they dry. This is perhaps why they are born so early in the day; to ensure their coats being dry and fluffed before the night's cold and rain. Close my eyes and I can hear the nannies' tongues licking, scraping, and cleaning their kids, followed closely by the hollow sucking as the nannies consume the afterbirth.

It is the first time I've seen kids this early in their life. They more closely resemble goats back home—

Home.

Where am I?

There is a cracking sound inside my head and I feel myself drawn into the ground, my spine and legs fused into a trunk and roots reaching deep.

Where am I?

—although their craniums are noticeably larger and the eyes more obviously placed for binocular vision. But male and female kids walk on all fours and follow their mothers around just a few moments after birth, butting their mothers legs, near knocking the nannies over to get at their milk.

Hepob is on her knees before me, a newborn billy nipping her coat to get at her teats. Gomer comes over to me and places his left hand forward. "She is yours now. I have given you a son."

"What?"

He leans forward and grabs my testicles in his hand. His left hand. He takes his hand away then grabs me with his right. He says something, an untranslatable word but now its meaning is clear to me. Home. The untranslatable word is "I-Am-Home." The meaning is not transitive but transcendental. It is an equivalence.

Does this thing work anymore? The lights come on. I know it records. I just don't know if there's anybody listening. Or anyone to listen.

Tenku is dead. Gomer, soon, I think. Age, when it comes, comes quickly to them. Gracefully, though. He has left me his Wa'asis. Hepob is teaching her daughters how to grow and cultivate it. What was once so unique I now know as ordinary. Unlike us, Goatmen mate for life. A mate's passing is announced with a song. I suppose it would be translated as "He/She waits for us" that starts with the mate and finishes when the youngest has chorused that line.

The Theisen are always with me now. They've told me about their technology, one we had long, long ago and forgot because something inside us didn't let the blue-eyed Neanderthals live.

I have blue eyes.

Our technology, they tell me, was developed because we feared the unique, the different, thus we created a science which ultimately made everyone equal without and did nothing to make us equal within. We developed the means to give everyone equality then mocked and mistrusted those who used the means.

How is it here the Neanderthals lived? How come evolution provided no challenges?

A young nanny has asked me to take her to the Theisen. I was afraid of this. As soon as she asked, by a communication I do not yet understand, Gomer was there. "Come," he said. After some walking we are near a cave I recognize but don't know where from. "You go in. I'll stay here and watch."

There is no need for Wa'asis this time, but I take some anyway. Dutch Courage for what's inside.

I'm climbing the Theisen. There is no indication of how long I've been doing it, although I feel many days and nights have passed. As always with them, I am naked.

Long before I see their tops, I see Aguirra fall away below me. Shortly after, stars dwindle in the distance. Galaxies come and go. Nebulae bathe me then recede. The gravity storms of blackholes and radiation tides of pulsars wash over me without affect as I pass them, one by one.

Still the tops of the Theisen aren't in sight. There is something, though. A barrier of some kind. It is semi-solid, firm yet yielding, and like Ezekiel breaking through to see the mechanisms of the Universe, I go through.

I know where I am. Robin is gone. So is Jeremy. So is The Merrimack and her crew. Earth is no more. There is no taste or scent of her.

Definitions are by what, not by who, and at the top of the Theisen the what and the who are one.

I see myself reflected in the whirlpools of this space, a goatman with broken horns staring at me. He waves and smiles.

And I remember. When I was a child. Shopping for Christmas Trees. It was a large lot. A field. Acres and acres of trees. Getting lost. Not hearing my parents voices or the voices of any elders or other children at all.

Just hearing the voices of the trees.

Screaming at what they said. Not wanting to accept or believe but knowing it was true.

I let go of the Theisen and start to fall, unafraid of the descent, knowing where I am and knowing now which direction is down.

I emerge from the cave and know many days have passed. Gomer, my first-friend and—brother, has died outside the cave. Hepob seeks comfort from me and weeps. Between sobs she whispers "He waits for us" and, not understanding, dimly aware, I quietly join in.

My kid is ten years old now. He is strong and fine and makes me proud. Gomer, too, I think is proud. In my dreams he offers to go into Hepob again if I wish another child.

Not yet, I tell him. There is something first I must do.

This tower is cold. Colder than the other. Around me are many billies, one of whom, my kid. Across from us, on the Tower of our People, the other, older, billies have gathered.

The singing starts. The histories come. The young billies around me are scared. They snort and stamp the earth. This Tower is higher and lower than the one across from us. I am in the lead with my son. A column forms, like the root of a great Theisen, reaching out to us. My kid is afraid as we walk across.

I sit atop the Theisen and at the mouth of Denihé's cave, my cave, and watch the skies, waiting and listening for the gentle quaking of a Rumbler leaving a ship, hoping it will wake me if I sleep at night. They always land at night. I remember, when The Merrimack came here, waking at the sounds of the Rumbler being dispatched and going to my console, adjusting my Eye until the Rumbler's coal-black combustion flare arced past and made its way through the cold lights of space towards Aguirra.

That was long ago.

Now I aim the transmitter's beacon towards Canis. It is cold. I motion Tika's daughter, Keke, to throw some more of Hepob's blue-green berries into the fire along with some of the Wa'asis I'd left here to season. Keke forces a few berries into my mouth and I swallow without chewing. The berries in the fire ignite like Chinese Tallow, albeit more evenly, and burn white hot as their oxygen catches the flames. I wonder what the berries do to my gut.

"Look. I'm setting it on passive attract. It'll transmit everything in its core once a year. You'll be able to hear it when it transmits, so don't worry.

"But you have to remember to let it remain here, on top of the Tower, until another Journeyer comes."

Should the Pilgrimage council ever again corridor this world, I want someone to know what they'll find here. Which dream of trees they may destroy. Checking the transmitter's power supply, I pull my survival suit's flaps tighter around me. Most of my own clothes are long tattered and mostly fallen from me. There's not even enough left to provide some dignity if I were to meet another human. Still I wear them, partly out of habit and partly in case anyone else ever comes.

My eyes wander from the power supply readout to the fire. It had burned down again. I remember being in college, back on Earth, and going on an expedition up K2. I'd gone with the goal of climbing to the summit, being able to say I'd been there. At seven-point-five kilometers, with slightly more than another kilometer to the summit, the sherpas gently took me aside, sat me down, said no, told me I could go no further.

"I'm fine."

They pointed to my holometer and shook their heads.

"What? What'd'you mean? I've been taking pictures all the way up. I was just changing picture-paks."

Yes, they nodded. And it had taken me thirty-five minutes to change a picture-pak which, at base camp, I'd done in not even as many seconds.

The fire flickered again, almost out, and Keke grabs a fistful of Hepob's berries, brings them to my mouth and forces them in. I hope their oxygen finds its way into my blood before I pass out for good.

Blue-eyed Keke, Tika's daughter, is beside me without my noticing. Did I black out again? She selects specific pieces of chigarro and places them on the fire, along with some of her great-grandmother's berries, blows gently, and quickly the fire grows. Next she pulls skins of bear-cats I've killed tighter around me and lifts me closer to the flames, propping me by the fire so I squat the way all the males do.

Her hands on me cause me to snap my head up and I leave the Theisen, perhaps for good this time, only to join them another. She knows I'm fully with her and I let her move me, her hands, with their two fingers and opposing thumbs, feel good on me. Their natural suppleness and strength massages my blood through me. She takes some berries and raises them over my head.

I'm back with the Theisen, resting comfortably on their tops, outside Ezekiel's machinery, watching Keke and a male of The People, broken horns and with cataracts, far below.

She's trying to feed him something. When he doesn't follow, she forces his chin up and opens his mouth. She massages his throat and he swallows quickly.

He doesn't fight her. He seems barely aware of her.

I feel time slow for him. I feel his life leave him.

He catches her out of the corner of his eye as the fire's flames first silhouette her, then flicker to show her features, and he wonders, when he can see her, who is this Satan in a snowsuit?

His hand comes up to her hand at his throat and he feels the fur there, so much like the coat Robin wore when he first met her in New York. Her fingers, even now, feel so warm and tender. He remembers his wife, Robin, and wonders, looking at Keke, why is Robin dressed so strange?

Keke, holding the berries over his open mouth, crushes them in one hand even as she holds his head up with the other. He starts to fight her, to struggle, and she increases the pressure, helping him swallow. The black juice from the berries oozes like pitch over her hands and into his mouth. Her fingers and palm sticky with the juice, she shoves her fingers under his tongue, wiping them under, over, and around his tongue and all along the inside of his mouth.

His struggles cease. His eyes clear and color leaves his cheeks. Her eyes tear. She releases her grip on his throat. She sings his song.

Another billy appears beside her as I fall from the trees. It's Jeremy, the dying Goatman's son. There are black streaks down his face, chest, hands, and sides.

THE END

Bio: Joseph Carrabis has been everything from a long-haul trucker to a Chief Research Scientist and held patents covering mathematics, anthropology, neuroscience, and linguistics. He's the author of The Augmented Man, Empty Sky, The Inheritors, Tales Told 'Round Celestial Campfires, The Shaman, Search, and the non-fiction neuroscience-based That Th!nk You Do, all available through Ingram and Amazon.

E-mail: Joseph Carrabis