After a moment Rynason turned back to the girl; she was still watching Malhomme thread his way through the men on his way to the door.

“So now you’ve met my spiritual father,” he said.

Her deep brown eyes flickered back to his.  “I wish I could use a telepather on him.  I’d like to know how he really thinks.”

“He thinks exactly as he speaks,” Rynason said.  “At least, at the moment he says something, he believes in it.”

She smiled.  “I suppose that’s the only possible explanation for him.”  She was silent for a moment, her face thoughtful.  Then she said, “He didn’t finish his drink.”

* * * * *

“You’re all hooked up,” the girl said.  “Nod or something when you’re ready.”  She was bent over the telepather, double checking the connectives and the blinking meters.  Rynason and Horng sat opposite each other, the huge dark mound of the alien looming silently over the Earthman.

He never seemed upset, Rynason thought, looking up at him.  Except for that one time when they’d run into the stone wall of the block on Tebron, Horng had displayed a completely even temperament—­unruffled, calm, almost disinterested.  But of course if the aliens had been completely uninterested in the Earthmen’s probings at their history they would never have cooperated so readily; the Hirlaji were not animals to be ordered about by the Earthmen.  Probably the codification of their history would prove useful to the aliens too; they had never arranged the race memory into a very coherent order themselves.

Not that that was surprising, Rynason decided.  The Hirlaji had no written language—­their telepathic abilities had made that unnecessary—­and organization of material into neatly outlined form was a characteristic as much of the Earth languages as of Terran mentality.  Such organization was not a Hirlaji trait apparently, at least not now in the twilight of their civilization.  The huge aliens lived dimly through these centuries, dreaming in their own way of the past ... and their way was not the Earthmen’s.

So if they cooperated with the survey team on codifying and recording their history, who was the servant?

Well, with the direct linkage of minds the work should go faster.  Rynason looked up at Mara and nodded, and she flicked the connection on the telepather.

Suddenly, like being overwhelmed by a breaking wave of seawater, Rynason felt Horng’s mind envelope him.  A torrent of thoughts, memories, pictures and concepts poured over him in a jumble; the sensory sensations of the alien came to him sharply, and memories that were strange, ideas that were incomprehensible, all in a sudden rush upon his mind.  He fought down the fear that had leapt in him, gritted his teeth and waited for the wave to subside.