She was taking her time. Boukay opened his fieldbook again.

2584:05.7 - I don't know what to do. I sit in my room with my machine, listening to the other songs sung at the funeral, just to get Polgarrian cowboy accents down, I guess, and to work up some courage to hunt down what is going on. I do not want anyone else to die because of me, because of my curiosity about old earth songs. I hear the whipping of the wind over the grass, the solemn phrases of the preacher. Then the voices are raised in a sweet version of "Mike Eisner's Seen the Glory" -- you can hear the rhythm of the Earthling roots, even in these gypsy cowboys. Then I wind all the way back to the first recording of the cowboy singing. I am so depressed by it all: and frightened. I push the button, and he sings, so alive. I come to the end of the song, and am about to turn it off, when there is a high, modulating wail that intercepts the noise of my getting up and preparing to pack my equipment. I do not remember hearing it at the time. It is a funny sound. For a moment I think it is accidental, and then I have an inspiration: perhaps it is a Cybanian calloide -- the famous secret woman's slave tongue, pitched too high for the ears of the vicious Cybanian master race. I fiddle with the demod/translucer, rewind, and start the machine again. The wail becomes the voice of the woman with the roses crying urgently: "Green man, green man. The Songdealers [?] are in the shadows, dealing death. Escape, escape, escape, esc" --- and the tape ends. Song Dealers? Stealers? The tape is blurred here. Who are these killers? I stand up and set out to find where she ---"

There is a knock on the door. Boukay closes his fieldbook.