All right, so I wasn’t too swift on the grok. I’m plenty smart in my own way-steady and thorough is the hoonish style-but no one ever accused me of being quick.

I frowned, mimicking a human “thoughtful” expression I once saw in a book, even though it makes my forehead hurt. My throat sac throbbed as I concentrated.

“Hrrrrrm… Now wait just a minute. You don’t mean those wall markings sometimes found—”

“On the walls of old Buyur buildings, yes! The few not smashed or eaten by mulc-spiders when the Buyur left, a million years ago. Those same markings.”

“But weren’t they mostly just street signs and such?”

“True,” she agreed with one dipping eyestalk. “But there were really strange ones in the ruins where I first lived. Uncle Lorben was translating some into GalTwo, before the avalanche hit.”

I’ll never get used to how matter-of-factly she can speak about the disaster that wiped out her family. If anything like it happened to me, I wouldn’t talk again for years. Maybe ever.

“Uncle swapped letters with a Biblos scholar about the engravings he found. I was too little to understand much. But clearly there are savants who want to know about Buyur wall writings.”

And others who wouldn’t like it, I recall thinking. Despite the Great Peace, there are still folk in all six races ready to cry heresy and warn of an awful penance, about to fall from the sky.

“Well, it’s too bad all the carvings were destroyed when… you know.”

“When the mountain killed my folks? Yeah. Too bad. Say, Alvin, will you pass a couple more strips over to me? I can’t quite reach—”

Huck teetered on one wheel, the other spinning madly. I gulped and passed over the lengths of slivered boo. “Thanks,” Huck said, landing back on the beam with a shuddering bounce, damped by her shocks. “Now where was I? Oh yeah. Buyur wall writings. I was going to suggest how we can find some engravings no one’s ever seen. At least none of us exile Sixers.”