“I’ve seen fragments of them before,” Rynason said. “This is a big one—no telling how much area the total complex takes up. One thing’s certain, though: it’s no ordinary computer of theirs. Not for plain math-work, nor even for specialized computations, like the one on Rigel II—that was apparently used for astrogation, but it wasn’t half the size of this. And navigation between stars, even with the kind of drive they must have had, is no simple problem.”

“The Hirlaji think it’s a god,” she said.

“That raised another problem,” Rynason mused. “The Outsiders built it, and must have left it here when they pulled back to wherever they were going … if they ever left the planet. But the Hirlaji use it, and they communicate with it verbally. The Hirlaji are apparently responsible for keeping it protected since then. But why should the Hirlaji be able to use it?”

“Unless they’re the Outsiders after all?” said Mara.

Rynason frowned. “No, I’m still not convinced of that. The clue seems to be that they communicate verbally with it—they must have been using it since before they developed telepathy.”

“Couldn’t there have been direct contact between the Hirlaji and the Outsiders back when the Hirlaji were just evolving out of the beast stage?”

“There must have been,” said Rynason. “The Temple rituals are conducted in an even older form of their language than most remembered—a proto-language that was kept alive only by the priest caste, because the machine had been set to respond to that language.”

“But aren’t primitive languages usually composed of simple, basic words and concepts? How well could they communicate in such a language?”

“Not very well,” Rynason said. “Which would explain why the machine seemed to make mistakes—clumsiness of language. So the Outsiders, maybe, left the machine when they pulled out, but they set it to respond to the Hirlaji language because our horsefaced friends were beginning to build a civilization of their own and the Outsiders thought they’d leave them some guidance….” He stopped for a moment, remembering that first linkage with Horng, and Tebron’s memories. “The Hirlaji called them the Old Ones,” he said.

“And that order to Tebron … about the other race that they would meet someday. That was based on Outsiders observations.”

“I wonder when the Outsiders were 

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