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Show XI "The time it takes to rectify a situatipn is inversely proportional to the time it took to do the damage." from Dr'Anya Gundarholt-Needlesmith's History of BauerWorlde Deep in the catacombs below Janni and her lady mother, the Governor's memory banks sucked and swallowed, swelled, spun, shifted, sung. The song was silent, but content, and it was everywhere under the city, in a space bigger than the city above, an enormous, serpentine and distended mind buried in soil and rock. But it was an indiscriminate mind, an unthinking mind. It took in everything, without understanding, barely categorizing, holding within itself story upon story about BauerWorlde, that could be told fully,- from all sides, if only one knew where to look, if only one knew what particular commands, what particular questions to key into the all-knowing Governor who never spoke unless spoken to, and then only if spoken to in specifics, nay in absolutes. For instance, the story of Lodyan-the-Zett-for that matter,- the story of all the Zetts. One might get glimpses of that talisman, that DreamingStone, hanging from Lodyan's silken furred neck on a thin strong chain while she led her people away from the drought-afflicted Southern Steppes to the high Zettian Valleys in spring, many a TwelveMonth before. The Zettian Valleys themselves were a kind of reservation granted the small folk, although at what time and by whom were facts lost somewhere in the 88 |