"Twins," Kiri told her. "My name is Kiri Quintero."
"I'm Moon Bunderan," the girl said, extending her hand. "This is my friend, Thrayl. He can shake hands with you, too, if you like."
"Of course," said Kiri, though his tone was more uncertain than his words. But when the Taur reached down and took
Kiri's hand in his own hard, three-fingered fist, the skin was warm, the pressure friendly. "Nice to meet you," Kiri said, looking up at the huge-eyed, massive, horned head. The horns really did glow with a light of their own.
Then the Taur spoke. It was a hissing, buzzing sound that Kiri could not understand at all. "I don't speak Taur," he said apologetically—apologizing to an animal!
"He only said that he thinks your smallsongs are good and that he hopes your horns grow strong," the girl translated. "It's kind of what Taurs say, like—well, like 'Nice to meet you,' I guess." She sat suddenly on the hood of the car. "I'm sorry," she went on. "I'm really tired. We've been driving for days—all the way from New Mexico. And it was kind of—"
She hesitated, looking into Kiri's eyes as though wondering whether to trust him with a secret. Evidendy she decided she could, for she finished, "Kind of scary. Because we were hiding, really. You know, a lot of people are afraid of grownup male Taurs, and some of them mightVe wanted to hurt Thrayl."
The bull Taur suddenly blared a sort of muted roar and danced around, lowering the huge head, the horns pointed back toward the place Kiri had come from. "Oh, Lord," Moon Bunderan breathed in excitement. "Look at that, Mr. Quintero! Isn't that a Turtle?"
Kiri looked around. Litlun had drawn closer, his frill quivering as both yellow eyes were fastened on them. "Why, yes. His name's—well, we call him Litlun. Because he's smaller than the rest of them, you know."
"He's smaller? Then the others must be as big as Taurs! And he looks excited about something."
It was true that Litlun was waving his boneless upper limbs and cawing to himself as he came. The Turtle turned one eye on Kiri Quintero. "Well?" he demanded through the trans-poser. "Is it not true? Isn't it indeed an adult male Taur?"
The young woman shrank back. "Oh, don't let him hurt
Thrayl! He's only just becoming mature. He's not dangerous at all!"
But Litlun wasn't listening. He ignored Kiri Quintero, barely glanced at the young woman with one eye in passing. All the Turtle's attention was focused on the Taur. Litlun stopped dead in front of him, both eyes now firmly fixed on Thrayl's horns. One of the Turtle's boneless arms reached out to touch a horn.
Thrayl pulled back. There was a warning rumble from the Taur, and the horns seemed to brighten with a reddish light.
"Please, Mr. Quintero," the girl said worriedly. "That Turtle is bothering Thrayl—he's not used to having anyone touch his horns. Except me, of course."
The Turtle spun around and glared at her. He barked something, but he was speaking so rapidly that even the trans-poser did not make him comprehensible to her. "What's he saying?" the girl said, backing uneasily away.
Kiri frowned in surprise. "He—he wants to buy your Taur. He asks how much you want for him."
"Oh, no!" the girl cried. "I won't sell Thrayl! That's why he and I are running— That's out of the question," she said firmly. "Tell him. Say thank you, but Thrayl isn't for sale."
Kiri didn't have to translate, because Litlun got the message. The yellow eyes blazed angrily as the Turtle boomed away again, this time more slowly. "One will pay anything you ask," he squawked. "One wishes to have this adult male Taur."
"No! Please make him understand. I don't want Thrayl dehorned, turned into meat—or breeding stock, either."
A rumble from the Turtle. "One will not physically harm the animal in any way."
"I don't believe you!" Moon Bunderan said fiercely.
Kiri cut in. "Well," he said reasonably, "I've never known a Turtle to lie, or break his word. They're honest traders, Miss. If he makes a deal he'll keep to it."
"No. Thrayl and I are going with Captain Krake in his ship, and that's the way it's going to be!"
The Turtle hissed furiously, the eyes wandering in all directions. Litlun opened his parrot-beak mouth to speak, then changed his mind. He closed it with a snap and stormed away.
Moon Bunderan gazed fearfully after him. "What's he going to do?"
Kiri shook his head. "I never saw him so excited. I don't know, Miss Bunderan. They are acting pretty strange these days—why, just last night he was trying to buy some old recorded Earth lectures from Sue-ling Quong." He felt an unhappy sense of confusion—unusual for Kiri; but there were suddenly all these strange bits of data that must fit together somehow—but how?
The girl put her hand on his shoulder, looking up at him. "Will he try to take him away from me?"
"Oh, no," Kiri said in surprise. "No, he won't do that. The Turtles never take anything. It's all fair and square commerce with them. But," he added seriously, "I'm afraid it looks as though Litlun really wants your Taur. And the Turtles generally find a way to get what they want."
To the third song of the Earth poet the aiodoi listened with compassion and perhaps even pride, for error was giving way to understanding, and the song began to ring beautifully as it went on.
"For the last time I remind you that our division of universal history into three eras, like the divisions of human history, is really only an analogy. But it's a good one, I think, and now we will come to the important part.
"It's time for us to say what we know about the universe's prehistory.
"As with the prehistory of the human race, from the first African Eve—or whoever it was—to the beginnings of history, or at least of legend, the prehistoric part is far the most important. For human affairs, that prehistory lasted for hundreds of
thousands of years. The prehistory of the universe is a lot shorter. All the same, it is the most important part.
"Still, it won't take much time to tell it, for what we know about the Planck Era—that is, the first ten to the minus-47th seconds after the Big Bang, which we will call the prehistory of the universe—is, basically, nothing.
"That doesn't stop us from needing to know. It only makes it impossible for that need ever to be satisfied. We can't see back past the Planck barrier. Maybe nobody ever will. We don't know the detail of events.
"What we do know is that somewhere in Planck time—or maybe some of it happened in the GUT time which was the beginning of the Ancient History, we can't really be sure—all the rules for our universe were set.
"That is to say, all the Svave functions' (as you might call them) were 'collapsed' into exact, hard numbers. Values which could have been almost any value at all suddenly became fixed values. That was when, for instance, it was 'decided' that pi would then and forevermore equal three-point-etcetera instead of, maybe, seven or some other number; when Planck's constant and the fine-structure constant and all the others became rigid facts instead of some possible other values.
"From that point on, everything else was pretty much decided.
"You might say the program for our universe was written then; everything since then has just been the running of the computer. If we could somehow catch a glimpse of that primordial computer program we would understand a lot of things that are now shrouded in doubt ..."
"But we can't, and perhaps we never will."
And the aiodoi sang on tenderly and with compassion, and the song they sang was of hope.
7
Sork Quintero didn't follow Sue-ling into her office to try to check on the well-being of Captain Krake's crew. He had something more important to do.