The human's old story about the race between the tortoise and the hare was never very popular with the other sept of Jijo. It wasn't comprehensible. It didn't grok.

Some 'wolfling' concepts did not translate well into the Civilization of the Five Galaxies. This was a true to form statement for both that galactic civilization, and for life here on Jijo. Each Sooner race, in settling on Jijo, had long ago abandoned all of the physical befefits of that civilization. But the ways of Uplift were so pervasive that each race had still retained many if not most of the ingrained social mores of that civilization.

Case in point: The Tortoise and the Hare.

A hare that took the time to sleep during a contest had too much personal hubris to be able to be a representative of one's species. Such an er would have been disqualified by its own kin. A replacement would have been found; someone with a better sense of duty to er's clan.

'Sleep' would be unthinkable. A hare 'losing' would be unthinkable. That which is, is.

"On Jijo, the hare is a g'Kek and the tortoise is a traeki or a qheuen. So stated the g'Kek Vebbin to the qheuen Face Maker anytime the story of The Tortoise and the Hare was mentioned.

A g'Kek will always beat a qheuen in a race." So Vebbin quoted to Face Maker even when the story wasn't mentioned.

Repeatedly.

Vebbin would always quip,"Hoon are stronger, Traeki are stinkier, and g'Kek are faster then the Qheuen." Then whenever she remembered to be polite, she added "But no one can sculpt like a qheuen."

It had only been forty seven years since the creation of the Great Peace. Not so long ago that there weren't more than just a few active veterans on any one side, save for the short lived Ur. Old feelings could once again resurface for even the slightest of reasons. As the human's books of pre-contact history always pointed out, it almost always takes more than the life span of one generation to fully cement a peace.

And everyone knew that.

Everyone was trying to be polite to everyone else. The other races in the village were being polite to to the recently transplanted g'Kek families; they thought of the economic advantage they had now aquired. The g'Kek were to be a local source of first rate stitched sails, and finely knotted mesh nets. No more waiting for a shipment to be exported from somewhere far to the North. And to the South was Wuphon, where they could now export both finished sails and nets. Tight close-in work was a g"Kek speciality.

As for the rest of the village's races, basically the Hoon specialized in their sailing and open sea fishing, the Qheuen specialized in ship construction and fish farming, the single human family specialized in not being specialized, and the lone traeki tried to keep everyone else healthy with er's special concoctions.

Now in praising Qheuen carving, Face Maker was also always being praised in particular.

Face Marker had a well noted talent for carving and sculpting wood--even among the Qheuen. No other qheuen had ever gotten such a unique name. Then again, no other qheuen had ever started to pictorially carve at such an early age. He had looked up while still in the molting pen to see a human face in the observation port. He then proceeded to accurately carve that face into the wooden floor.

"No qheuen could ever beat a g'Kek in a race."

It was only ment to be taken as a matter of fact, a truth of diversity as it is, or the luck of the roll of Ifni's dice.

But this matter of fact statement of Vebbin was probably stated just a bit too often, and just a bit too proudly.

Face Maker became fixated on the idea of proving that statement false. It became his major form of mental escapism whenever it was his turn to take watch on the fish pens, or to cut and haul leaves and lattices for the overhead cover.

To be fasle just once would be enough. He'd seen Phwed, the adult male human-for-hire of the village, do logic charts in the sand. Even a flyspeck's worth of intersection with a circle means that a statement true to almost all of the circle can no longer be made for the entire circle. One exception breaks the rule.

As a friend, Face Maker wanted to help out his friend, to make her become a better friend in the end. He didn't want to break Vebbin--just to break her of a few mildly annoying habits. What he wanted was to find a flyspeck to put into her circle.

So, how to do it?

Not underwater. And not in mud, bog, or wet sand. That wouldn't be fair. It'd have to be on neutral ground. Or even on terrain that would normally favor a g'Kek. Making the problem of how to do it that much bigger.

He needed some help, but didn't know exactly what type of help he needed. And when you want something done, but don't know exactly what it is you want done, or even if what it is you want done can be done, you want a human. Doing the impossible seems to have become a long standing tradition for the humans of Jijo.

He'd ask Phwed.

One of Phwed's unspecialized specialities was in being neutral to all, and tattletale to none.

"Deep shade, Phwed"

"Cloudy skies, Face Maker."

And Face Maker confided with Phwed and told him of his dream of taking Vebbin down a peg or two.

Phwed tried to cool down Face Maker's exuberance. "You know I always take the more cautious route," he said with a wink. "I took my name from one of those old human books of cartoon art, but changed it a bit by altering one letter."

"Why so?" Face Maker asked. The wink tipping him off to what was to come. He was fully aware that in asking for an answer, he was being pigeonholed into playing the role of a straight man to a comic.

(Or of a thennanin to a tymbrimi, a hydro to a tytlal, or a non-jijoan hoon to any one of several hundreds of races, as the human's books would translate the term.)

"If the Great Day ever comes, the Galactic Institutes will punish all of the races of Jijo for our illegal occupation. But a more personal punishment might come directly from Earthclan. Two hundred and fifty years is a long time in terms of Anglic legalese. One never knows how the copyright laws might have changed."

Face Maker did his best to vent a traeki fart as laughter. "That is _definitely_ being cautious."

They continued talking of many things. Of how the village could easily build one sea going ship a year. How the bay didn't have the room to keep it under cover if it went unsold. What books would come back from Biblos at the end of summer, and whether Phwed should have his son educated here, or in Wuphon, or in some northern town where there would be other human children. But always, inevitably, Face Maker's conversation came back to his dream of beating Vebbin in a race.

His human friend took it all in. When it was time to part, Phwed became silent in thought.

"As to your problem, solve it quickly, or give up on the idea," he said in a way that made it a concluding statement. "If you don't, you'll soon have your brain running in circles."

* * * *

The Qheuen are not the sept best known for having abstract thoughts. But hands down, (strongest stink, deepest umble, tightest wheelie, hammer and tongs, top cupolla) they are the race best known for visual thought. Qheuen are the best when it comes to both creating and holding in memory detailed and complex visualizations. A qheuen's mind's eye surpasses all others. The eye is on the top side of the body and the mouth is on the underside. One can't see what the other is doing. There's really no other way for the brain to develop coordination and cooperation between the two. The mind has to be able to remember an item three dimensionally by both visual and tactile sensations. It can then transfer that image back and forth from one medium to the other. Once an item is chewed, it's pattern is remembered. It can always be chewed again--almost without thought.

Face Maker started to use his race's power of visualization by mentally picturing a qheuen and a g'Kek at the same time.

Then he made a revolutionary breakthrough by merging and overlapping the images. When you overlap the forms of a qheuen and a g'Kek.....

Although his human friend didn't know it, Phwed had provided the solution. Face Maker was thinking of having his brain running in circles.

* * * *

When his idea had congealed into something that crossed the line from whimsical fantasy to possible practicality, he wanted to test it out. Possible practicality could also be translated as being a probable disaster. It should work, but it was also most likely to be damn jeekee dangerous. Face Maker needed to test his idea out in complete secrecy, even from Phwed.

That little problem by solved by hiring Phwed to run security. He was to keep everyone from viewing the testing, including himself.

Face Maker needed unobserved use of the glade behind the village.

The glade was a fairly gentle hillside hidden from the village's direct view by the same low coastal foothill that came right down to the sea and made an end to the village's short beach.

Everyone knew the sloped glade. It was an open incline of grass, a long and relatively gentle slope, rocky only in intermittent places. It was a clear cut run between two stands of lesser boo and mixed trees, made to look like a path cleared by a past forrest fire. It was the path used in winter to sled the felled great garu trunks down to the docks.

At the top of the hill was Two Hoon Rock.

This rock was aptly named because it took one adult male hoon to stand on another adult male hoon's shoulders in order to be able to touch the top. Invoking its name stood for both skill and trust. The top hoon had to be skilled in bringing both sets of knees to the locked position for maximum height, and had to trust that the bottom hoon wouldn't drop him while in such a vulnerable stance. The bottom hoon had to be skilled to do the same with his knees, and had to trust that the one on top wasn't going to extend his toe hooks. A falling hoon will reflexively extend his or her claws, and in this stance, those claws were situated dangerously close to the bottom hoon's throat sac. The southwestern face of the rock was a sheer rise. You were disqualified if you touched the rock anywhere but the top.

(Such were the games of passage from youth to adult.)

From Two Hoon Rock, a well used path wound its way downhill. It skirted the rocky places at times and enter the stands of boo at least once on each side.

For several weeks, Phwed and a group of qheuen friends had formed a security squad. They set up their security perimeter every time Face Maker went to the glade.

Most of Face Maker's time was spent in traipsing both up and down the hill. The actual physical performance of his revolutionary idea always took very little time. Face Maker was only trying out this idea for very short distances. He wasn't going to go full jeekee until absolutely necessary.

* * * *

After all of his experimentation was over, Face Maker concluded that his idea would work, that it was most certainly a damn jeekee dangerous idea, and that it was also an idea well worth the risk.

All this risk weighted next to nothing when balanced against the outcome: The ability to prove that a g'Kek's universal, undeniable, and inalterable statement can, ah....in some circumstances, be proved to be wrong.

Knowing Vebbin as well as he did, and the supposed past history of g'Kek and bets, Face Maker wasn't making a social risk. Whatever happened would not change their friendship. The challenge itself will probably be enough to change her behavior.

This was not to become something that could stir up any racial hatred. It'd be best if no one at all was allowed to make any bets. The bettors might want their money back when they figured out the real rules.

Perhaps the best way to categorize what Face Maker planned to accomplish would be in sticking to the original human's story, but with a new meaning. A profound statement that there is more than one way for a being to 'fall asleep.'

Now that he knew that his plan could work, he had to figure out how to make his challenge work. The fact that the path touched both the trees and the rocks was very important. He'd have to work out the challenging statement very carefully.

And it had to be in Anglic, as galactic languages, with very few exceptions, never went in for double meanings....

* * * * *

So when Face Maker was mentally ready, all he had to do was to wait for the next utterance of that now well known, and tired old refrain. And the next time Vebbin mentioned g'Kek racing prowess, Face Maker said "Prove it."

That got all four eyestalks turned.

"Wanna race me?"

Now the same four eyestalks widened as far as they would go.

"I'll even give you the advantage. Downhill. From Two Hoon Rock to the flat before the stream; a g'Kek's sleepwalk."

Vebbin was definitely showing signs of interest.

"I want a race where we both travel as fast as we can go. I'm going to going faster than you'd expect--how fast are you going to go?" Face Maker asked. "Think you'll use the boo to help break your speed as you round the corners? Gonna bounce off of any rocks?"

"Possibly," Vebbin admitted as she rolled back and forth in contemplation. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wanted it stated that one can use the trees and the rocks as one see fit. And that each being can roll or run as he or she chooses."

Vebbin rotated two eyestalks upwards as if they were searching the sky. "To quote a human expression, 'Well, duh.'"

Switching from human-like gestures to the more traditional g'Kek, Vebbin pushed off on her kicker legs to balance only on her two wheels and brought all four eyestalks forward and low.

"Challenge accepted."

And the race was a go.

To be auspicious, they both agreed upon holding the race on the next fully overcast day. No need to temp Ifni by bringing a crowd out into the sun and open skies.

The first fully clouded day was supposed to be in about a week, as the traeki was predicting. A traeki can design a ring to be much more effective and far less intrusive than any human's case of gout--which, of course, the traeki can cure in the first place.

* * * * *

Sage Ur-rhue arrived from Wuphon in less than that week. She had just happened to be in Wuphon town when a trade ship arrived carring the news. The idea of this race intrigued her and was worth delaying her return to Mount Guenn.

The land route from Wuphon was not very flat or even very well marked. The sea route was so much easier and totally unobjectionable to five out of the six races of the Commons.

"What are the odds?" was the first question she had asked when she'd finally recovered from her trek.

"No odds," it was reported to her. "Face Maker does not want anyone making bets. This is to be a race of personal satisfaction between two friends. No one is supposed to make any profit from it. No one is to take this to any sort of racial level."

"Fear of that was one of the reasons I decided to come here and observe this race."

She then met with Face Maker to have a short talk.

"I know of the human story of the tortoise and the hare, and though I don't personally know either you or Vebbin, I do know the respective rates of speed for both a g'Kek and a qheuen when traveling downhill. I don't know what you or the both of you have planned. Will Vebbin 'conveniently' fall asleep so that you can both cross the finish line together? That would not be the normal action for a g'Kek to take."

"Vebbin will roll with maximum effort. I insisted upon that fact."

"Is this some sort of 'vrudge' match?" Sage Ur-rhue next asked, lisping a bit over the word 'grudge' as there was no single galactic word that could exactly replace the Anglic meaning.

"Not a grudge against Vebbin, and not a grudge against the truthfulness of her statement."

"__under normal circumstances," he mentally added, but carefully refrained from venting.

"Call it a mild grudge against the frequency of the statement's use."

"Well, you've shown both honor and courage in proposing to race. Vebbin has shown honor in accepting. Perhaps the entire purpose of this race is to see what the g'Kek does while waiting for you to finish, and..."

"Excuse me, Sage Ur-rhue, but you are making a false assumption. I am racing to win, and win honestly. I have not explained to anyone at all how I can possibly have any expectations of winning, and I do not wish to do so at this time. Let me just state that Vebbin has agreed to a set of rules, even if she did not realize, at that time, the rather unique set of circumstances to those rules."

Ur-rhue folded her hands in front of her in human style, and reared back her head to stare at the qheuen with all three eyes. "Very well, you do have something planned. But is this idea of yours also something that should not cause malace towards anyone if it works?"

"In human terms, it should be nothing more that a pie in the face. Not even up to the level of a Drake's Dare burning or dunking."

"Oh, and speaking of human terms, the challenge was first made in Anglic, and will be repeated, in Anglic, on the day of the race."

"I've perked from originally being mildly interested. You now have my total undivided attention. I'll be watching you two when the race occurs. Which may be tomorrow or the next day after. Clouds were always behind me as I traveled north to get here."

* * * * * *

The race, indeed, was the next day. The sky was fully overcast, which under jijoan philosophy was the perfect weather for crowds to gather when out of doors. Although the upper air currents were bringing in the cloud bank from the South, a sea breeze would follow the crowd as they made their way inland.

For such a small village, a goodly number of beings that morning walked, trotted, or rolled up the path to the glade. The path made a quarter circle turn about the small hill, and then used the deep shade of the trees as it hugged the left side of the small stream that emptied into the bay. As if only used by Jijo's natural animal life, the path disolved into a wide flat when it finally met the base of the glade.

It was the only place where everyone could gather about to hear the reading of the rules.

As Phwed had agreed to be the judge, they were read in Anglic.

Which included the following:

"Each er can use the trees and the rocks as he or she sees fit; each er can roll or run as he or she chooses."

By silent agreement, Ur-rhue was one of the smaller group of beings that chose to follow Vebbin and Face Maker up the hill. Partially because Phwed was to be at the finish line, but mostly because she wanted to get as far away from the smell of the sea as possible.

Either by prior agreement or natural happenstance, neither Vebbin nor Face Maker talked about the race as they made their way up the path. Small talk on various subjects actually degererated into a mock serious discussion in Anglic of one of Phwed's bad puns. They talked of shoes and ships and ceiling wax.

Face Maker again played the straight man role. "Don't you mean 'sealing wax' with an 'S,' Vebbin?"

"Not if properly thrown."

Which was accompanied almost immediately by a hoon's rimshot umble. One of the less intellectual byproducts of having a human about was the picking up of bad habits that did more good than bad for inter-spiecies relations.

"The 'C' goes with the ships."

"I thought the ships go in the sea"

"Well if the sea goes into ships, the ships go straight down."

And so on...

Conversation continued in Anglic on the speculation of just what sort of items would be useful to have attached to a ceiling using sealing wax. That is until Ur-rhue let out a huff at a step that wasn't really large enough to merit such a sign of undue exertion.

Everyone got to rest at the top for a while before Vebbin and Face Maker took their places next to Two Hoon Rock. Being the tallest there, a hoon waved a flag to signal that they were ready. From the bottom of the hill, Phwed used a flag to wave back that they, too, were ready for the race to begin.

An exploser's firecracker signaled the start of the race, and the g,Kek started down the path at once.

Face Maker, however, did not. He surprised everyone there at the top of the hill by quickly going to the near stand of young trees. Face Maker then used his mouth to bring down a thin tree, a type known for its flexibility and strength. The end of the trunk was no thicker than one of his claws.

"I don't know what you are doing," Ur-rhue commented, "but Vebbin has had an eyestalk trained on you ever since she started to roll."

"Plenty of time, plenty of time," Face Maker vented from one of his legs.

Face Maker then laid the trunk on the ground. He started to chew from one end, deftly using his qheuen mouth full of independently moving diamond tipped teeth. Voicing from one of his leg vents as he chewed, he calmly stated, "After doing this over twenty times, I know exactly how long this will take."

He quickly chewed one side of the trunk flat, cut off the excess, and then flipped it over.

"Vebbin's about a forth of the way down," someone commented. "I think she's now got two eyestalks looking back at us."

"No problem."

Face Maker chewed seven equally spaced indentations, five interior and one at each end of the trunk. The entire length of the trunk also now had what must have been over a hundred small transverse scores.

He then carried his work back to the vertical face of Two Hoon Rock and leaned it up against it.

"First the balance weight," Face Maker said as he picked up with his central mouth a now all too familiar stone. It was the one he had laboriously carried all the way from the bottom of the hill, as the final thing that he did the last time that he had had the glade all to himself.

The stone looked like any other rock except that now that it was in Face Maker's mouth, everyone could see that it came with a central projection that ever so conveniently seemed to be exactly the right size for a qheuen's mouth.

Facemaker then proceeded to grab two of the carved trunk's indentations, using the ten o'clock and two o'clock legs--if you counted the free middle leg as being in the noon position. The position calls used the useful human terms, even if the Jijo day wasn't the same lenght as a day on Earth. Galactic languages tended to stick to degrees. On Jijo. this was yet another example of one of the Earchclan ideas that had universally caught on.

Each indentation was perfectly fitted for a claw. Bracing against the rock face with the middle leg, Face Maker then used the two lower position legs to walk up the side of Two Hoon Rock. When he became almost vertical, the rock being held in his mouth came into contact with the the wall. The noon leg was no longer needed for steadying and returned to the wood.

Face Maker then had three claws for flexing the wood. First bending it into one fifth of a circle. Then two fifths.

"Over halfway," again someone commented.

Then as the 'rim' started to take a round shape, even the slowest of minds started to catch on.

Face Maker rotated his body as he flexed. Finally the last two carved indentations overlapped into the original ten and twelve leg claws.

"The overlap's the key. Easier to hold; less stress."

No one at the bottom of the hill could see to the top of the hill well enough to figure out why the two hoons who had accompanied Face Maker were now bellowing out umbles of laughter.

"Two thirds."

"Not a problem," Face Maker vented. "She's not taking the direct route."

He then used the stone in his mouth to push off from the rock.

Someone started to rush up as Face Maker begain to teeter on edge.

"No-o-o! Don't help. That'd be cheating.

Face Maker's head and mouth were both moving in and out, until he finally achieved a sort of balance.

He flexed his forward legs a bit to bring in the front of the circle. And ever so slowly at first, he started rolling down the hill.

Now a g'Kek travels at a constant speed. Even downhill. Any faster and there'd be a danger of brake burnout, or of overturning when taking corners.

But a rolling qheuen gathers momentum.

Especially when traveling in a straight line. Downhill.

Soon Face Maker couldn't see where he was going. All of his practice runs were started at a height that was much less than half of the entire length of the hill. Now he was going faster than any test run, and he could no longer rotate his eye fast enough to compensate for the speed of his spin.

Vebbin actually had the best view. Totally as a matter of good luck, or bad luck as the case may be. For when she reached the last big rock outcropping of the hill, so did Face Maker. He hit the upslope rock and flew into the air not more than half a meter over Vebbin's four now involuntarily retracting heads.

Such an action for a g'Kek also brings on an involuntary braking. She was still in the process of slowing down when she got an eyestalk raised back up just enough to see Face Maker's short flight end with his landing directly on one of his claws.

Face Maker continued to roll on, though she could see that the 'wheel' was no longer taut. Vebbin was still trying to gain back momentum when she saw him reach the bottom of the hill, winning, for all to see, the race 'under the rules that she had agreed upon.'

"Each er can use the trees and the rocks as he or she sees fit; each er can roll or run as he or she chooses."

She should have asked for a standard Galactic translation. _Any_ Galactic translation.

"Well I'll be... Hoisted by my own petard and other Anglic euphemisms."

Spectators had to scramble out of the way as Face Maker continued his roll through the shallow stream and onto the upslope of the facing hill. But they could see the slackness in the wheel, and the fact that Face Maker was now retracting his head.

Slack, slowing, and out of balance, he released the stone and finally toppled over. Head down. Only then was the rim released from four of his claws. The fifth claw was smashed and reflexively stayed locked onto the wood.

Vebbin stopped within one meter of the marked finish line. All eyestalks were now trained onto her friend.

"Aren't you going to finish the race?" Face Maker managed to ask, though his obvious pain.

"I'd thought I might spend the night here and finish it tomorrow. In imitation of the human fable, it might be a bit less embarrassing if I had a good sleep before I brought the story to a close."

"That wasn't in the rules. You were supposed to go all out."

"Well how could I be expected to do that with all sorts of things flying overheads. You won, but at what cost. I don't see how this recreated human story can really have a happy ending."

"Oh, end it on a joke by all means. The same way we went up the hill. Yes, cutting off a claw will hurt, but it grows back. And yes, Qheuen are naturally slower movers than some other sept. In, 'ahem' _normal circumstances_, this will remain so."

"But what does it matter that in order for me to become, for once, the faster of two ers, I had to claw my way to the top."

"Or bottom, as the case may be." Vebbin replied.

* * * *

The qheuen not attending to Face Maker's wounds were looking over both the rock and the carved rim.

"Well of course the rock is needed," one commented. "Even with all five legs fully raised, our center of mass is still going to be above the plane of the base of our legs."

"But what if we balanced-ed-ed one qheuen against another-other?" Stuttering being a sure sign of excitement. "Two of us holding a log in our mouths would make the log an axle."

"Why with enough of us we could make a great cart. We could haul down garu trunks in the middle of summer.."

A forecefull "NO!" brought everyone to silence.

The 'no' was heard to come from two directions at the same time. And the human and the Ur wound up looking directly at each other. Ur-rhue had made it down the hill in time to hear the qheuens' thoughts.

After a moment of silence, Phwed said, "You first."

Switching to Anglic, the sage Ur-rhue lisped, "Hauling logs down the hillside is the ownly meaningful employment a hoon has in the dead of winter, vecause the seas are no longer safe."

"The same thought I had," Phwed commented.

So then and there between the slope and the stream, a sage wound up holding a council with the villagers.

The Great Peace was too important to jeopardize in any way.

There was a challenge; there was a race. And that was it. What happened was a purely for fun. A reenactment of a story taken from a copy of an old pre-contact human's book of fables. There was no winner or loser, and there certainly wasn't a rolling qheuen that had also had a short unexpected experience with flight.

What really happened will be dutifully recorded by the Sage Ur-rhue. One never knows when that which should not be allowed to exist may on day actually be needed.

But for now, and for the good of the Commons, ye sage who is now reading this tome, you never really read this at all.