Late in the afternoon, after the excitement had died down, Boukey sat down once more with the Elder and his son, the Terran. He said, apologetically:

"I am sorry this is so fragmentary. I am driven to tell it more and more as more and more of it comes back to me. Because I think there is something at work behind this that is coming toward you."

The Elder nodded. "Yes, the first attack was a feint, or a miscalculation. Everything you have said so far, and what we know ourselves suggest that there is a deep subtlety at work behind the overt activities of a crew of clumsy minions. It was far too obvious, far too brutal. "

Boukey looked at him. "What do you think then?"

The Elder weighed the situation, and then said, "I think that you discovered on at least Borhgillai or by the time you reached Margarnagarr that the whole Cosmic Disney Corp empire rested, not on the Root of Title, but on an Original Lie that they seeded into the minds and culture of the Earth remnant, and made it look as if they saved the Earth, when really they doomed it. And that if that were discovered, the whole enterprise would collapse. And the little shards and threads of evidence you gleaned from the remnants were enough to convince you, and lead you to us."

""Yes," said Boukey, "That is what I found."

The Elder said. "What puzzles me is why they have not struck again. What are they waiting for?"

"Well," Boukey replied. "One thing. Should anything happen to me, all I know will be made available to my Father, the Federation President, by a prearranged signal. That is what I did, the last thing before setting out for Tern on the Enterprise. And I sent a copy of that threat to Her Disney Herself, Cruella de Villeneuve. I believe that is why she has held off simply destroying this planet, given that they have the physical power to do so. "

The Elder frowned and said: "No, it cannot be as easy as that. I don't mean physically, you are right there: after all they simply have to arrange for the Neezian sun to go supernova. Any idiot can use brute force to wipe out beautiful subtlety. You can always toss acid on a Rembrandt. They have some other game in mind: I assume, for instance, that if they knew about our new discovery, they would create a Terminator process that would exhaust songseeds after a few plays, so the song would die forever unless you paid royalties to Cosmic Disney Corp. And so on. "

Boukey said, "It is clear that they were learning all the time. When I reached Borhgillai, the Library Planet, all the references to Earthsong material had been wiped out of the retrieval system. If it hadn't been for the fact that some librarian in 2300 had done a card catalogue by hand during a one year sunstorm that interfered with all the computer systems, I would not have found anything. As it was, all I found were tantalizing hints about the links of a remnant group to the founding of Holy Demershinnia. It was there that I intended to go next. I did what I could to hide my tracks and traces, and was I believe successful. It helped that Demershinnia was a shrine space -- extremely difficult to do any damage there. Well, I applied for entry, and like all applicants, I was shepherded onto the Anteluna, cleansed and recloaked in pilgrim's garb. After a week, I and many others moved into the pilgrim ships, full of Dermershinnian hymns and psalms, and hope, and descended to the desert planet."

The Elder said: "I have always wished to go there: but Tern is a holy place in its own way too. Like people, a place is known by the quality of its enemies."

Boukey looked around, and replied: "Yes, there are similarities: songs everywhere, but silence as a kind of song too."

They were all silent for a moment, listening to Tern.