Answering voices come from the sky and beyond: a chorus of my brethren on a million worlds. Most of them are Hlutr, for we alone of all the races have mastered the mystery of the Inner Voice. In this way, as in our physical stature, we stand above all other creatures; in this way, we do our duty to the Universal Song. For how could there be a Song, without the Hlutr to sing..."

I sing, and this should be pleasure. I seek the communion of my race, the oneness that comes through the Inner Voice and lifts us all far beyond the various worlds we inhabit. The animal races, however mobile, are bound by their very nature, bound in space to one particular location; only the plants, seemingly sessile, have truly transcended all boundaries. This night, I sing, and in my song I seek to become one with the Universal Song.

This should be a pleasure. Yet too soon, before I am even begun, a discord intrudes. It begins faintly, a mere hint of the song gone wrong, and I turn my soul away from it in my attempt to fly the night. Yet the discord is still there, on the worlds of the Hlutr and in the empty spaces where only our dormant spores drift; in the oceans and the clouds, spoiling their wet happy melodies, in the soil and the turf, poisoning their deep restful peace.

It is the Humans.

I know, my brothers, that many of you do not agree with me. Many of you, I know, do not see them as I do, these sons and daughters of Terra with their machines and their Thrones and their ever-continuing raucous jabber. Most of you do not concern yourselves with the Humans. Many of you feel that they are not truly sapient, that they do not have enough sense of the Inner Voice to cause any discord in its melodies. You are wrong. I live in their midst, not a dozen Hlutr-lengths from one of their cities, not eight hundred parsecs from one of their most populated worlds, and I know: this dissonance I feel comes from them.

Still more of you, my siblings, feel that the Humans are sapient and feel a special compassion for them, silly and weak as they are. You may remember our dealings with them, and our strange brother who left Amny and went to the world where the Humans live. I think of him always as "The Traveller," for he went places where Hlutr seldom go.

The last remnants of his carcass stand yet, in the clearing only a Hlut-length or so from me. He had been specially-bred for his mission, and he burned out his stunted life in a very short time. But his memory lives on, in all of us. It comes through our roots from the wet ground, it descends on us in the summer winds, and it echoes yet in the waves of the Inner Voice. We will never forget the Traveller ... and I least of all. I was his Teacher; I bear some of the responsibility for his mission, for making him what he was. Sometimes, when I look to the lonely blackness of interstellar space, or when I contemplate the grand sweep of time, I feel that he is near, and I can almost hear his whisper. It is a sad whisper, a lost sound as he entreats us on behalf of those strange folk he came to love--as if a Hlut could truly love any of the Little Ones.