Print   |   Back

Artwork by Sam Ellis

What's this icon for?

Billin's voice sounded muffled in the heavy, smoky room, though he was shouting. Dilna sighed as she heard the same words again. "That damned History is our enemy! Every time something comes for a vote, Noyock pulls out the History and says 'That isn't the way Jason did it! That isn't the way Kapock did it!' Well, I say, who the hell cares how they did it?"

Dilna carved savagely at the block of wood in her lap, as if it were Billin's head. It was stupid, this meeting every night in the tavern. Everyone in Stipock's Bay already agreed -- they had to separate themselves from Heaven City. The laws had no relation to reality anymore -- things were different here. But Billin didn't help anything with his fury, that so infected the others.

Even Stipock, she noticed, was watching Billin intently. But she more than half-suspected that Stipock was analyzing more than he was listening. Surely Stipock wasn't moved or impressed by Billin's talk! But Dilna wondered just the same. Could Billin possibly be doing just what Stipock wanted?

"The History is just paper! Only paper, and that's all! It can burn! And if that's the barrier that keeps us from making our own laws here, then I say, Burn it!"

Oh, clever, Dilna thought. The whole point is to win our independence, as Stipock had so often said, without losing our interdependence. If those on the other side of the river come to hate us, she silently asked, where would we get our copper, our tin, our brass? Paper? Ink? Flour? None of the tiny streams on this side of the river had enough force to turn a mill. But if Billin had his way, we'd rush over right now, burn the History, and then somehow persuade them to amicably let us be independent, while trade continued.

The chair next to hers scraped along the floor, and she looked up to see Stipock sitting down next to her.

"The aging philosopher comes to chat?" she asked.

"Aging," Stipock said. "It's worry, not years."

Billin's voice reached a climax. "Does it matter how the vote goes? As long as we own the boats, we decide what laws get enforced on this side of the river!" Some beery cheers arose from the audience.

"The man's an ass," Dilna said. "Even if you were the one who first pointed out that whoever owns the boats makes the laws on this side of the river."

"Billin gets a little too angry," Stipock said.

"As the great Stipock has always said," Billin shouted, "a man who rejects a government is no longer truly governed by it!"

"Is that what the great Stipock has always said?" Dilna asked, smiling.

"I wish to hell no one would ever quote me." He looked at the wood she was working on. "What are you carving."

"A canehead for a rich old codger from Wienway. One of Wien's sons, in fact, who thinks a bit of bronze will buy anything."

"Won't it?" Stipock asked. She laughed. "Almost anything."

Stipock sat in silence, surveying the room. "Hoom isn't back yet?"

"You know how it is -- once you start visiting with relatives --"

"Hoom and his father, under the same roof tonight. Will the house burn down, do you think?"

"Good chance," Dilna said, but she didn't laugh.

"And Wix is with him?"

"I assume so," she said. Suddenly she felt her knife hand gripped by Stipock's powerful fingers.

"Dilna. Hoom knows."

She gasped, before she could control herself. Damn, she thought, trying to cover the reaction. Damn, now whatever he suspects is confirmed. "Hoom knows what?" she said, doing a bad job of acting innocent.

"I said Hoom knows. And no one else matters. I'm just warning you, Dilna. Hoom loves you too much to do anything about it. Unless you leave him, you'll have to kill him."

"What are you talking about? I have no intention of leaving Hoom. What an idea."

"Good thing," Stipock said, releasing her wrist.

"Damn you," Dilna said.

"You're an idiot," Stipock said. "No one on this side of the river is half of Hoom's quality as a man."

"And what do you know," she said bitterly, "about quality in a man?"

"Enough," he said, and he got up and left, as Dilna tried to force her trembling hands to carve true. She couldn't, and she, too, walked out of the public house.

She went down the dusty road toward the house that she and Hoom had shared since their marriage. It was much more elaborate now -- prosperity had helped it grow -- but the original cabin was still there, a back room now.

She went inside, suddenly bone weary, wishing she could go to sleep and wake on another planet, as Stipock kept saying people did. A crazy man. For all these years, we've followed a crazy man. No wonder we do crazy things.

The house was clean inside, and the cupboards were full. Hoom, for all his mildness and lack of initiative, was a good provider. She sold her carvings because it made people prize her work, not because they needed the money. And it was like Hoom -- to dig up young trees, plant them, and sell the fruit. He only needed to plant once, and he reaped forever, only pruning now and then. His orchards spread from the Heaven River far inland. Tame trees. Hoom thought he could tame anything or anybody. Except me, she thought bitterly. Only I cannot be tamed, no matter how I long to be.

Why Wix? she wondered. And why now? Why a week ago? Why not ten years from now, or never, or always, so that Hoom would never have loved me, would never have been hurt. And how the hell did Hoom know? Too many questions. Does everyone know?

And if Stipock had only been guessing, she had certainly confirmed his guess. What a food I am, Dilna reminded herself.

When Hoom got home Dilna was asleep, but she roused herself with a groan when she heard the door open, wrapped a blanket around her, and went into the common room, where Hoom and Wix were saying good night. Wix waved a greeting at her, and then disappeared silently as Hoom swung the door shut.

"Well?" Dilna asked. "How did the meeting go?"

"I'm tired," Hoom said, collapsing on a chair in an exaggeration of weariness.

"Tell me," Dilna insisted.

"And what will you give me if I do?" Hoom asked with a lazy smile. Dilna sighed and walked over to him. She sat on his lap, wrapping the blanket around them both. He rubbed his hand across her bare stomach and laughed. "Ah, the wages I get in this house!"

"Tell me," Dilna said, "or I'll put roaches in your bed."

"You would," he said. "So I'll tell you: Noyock's willing."

"Good," she said. "That'll defuse that Bastard Billin."

"Don't call names. What's much more important, my dear, is that father's willing, too."

"You spoke to your father?"

Hoom smiled, but he didn't look amused. "It would have interfered with the negotiations if I hadn't. After all, he is the leader of the Uniters."

"That's one nice thing about the opposition -- they're very orderly, always appointing leaders."

"We don't have to appoint one: we have one already."

"But Stipock refuses to say what he wants," Dilna said, getting up and walking to the cooking fire, which still had enough heat to stir it back to flame. "Want some broth?"

"As a second choice," Hoom said.

She put the kettle over the flames, its brass long since blackened by smoke. "What did Aven say?"

"That if we were willing to accept the general leadership of the Warden, they'd consent to a separate vote and a separate tax."

"No, silly," she said. "What did he say afterward?"

"He tried to get all emotional and pretend that there was a reconciliation. But I left as soon as I could."

Dilna felt strangely irritated. "It was awfully petty of you, not to let things smooth over."

Hoom didn't answer, and she knew he was angry. Oh well, what the hell. He'd forget as soon as she climbed into his bed. Instant forgiveness, she called it. Privately, of course -- it would never do to let Hoom know how transparent he was.

Change the subject: "Any doubt about the vote?"

"No. Even if half the Uniters don't go along with the compromise -- which is likely enough, too many old people believe the History says that Jason has commanded us always to be united no matter how widely we spread out -- we'll have enough votes to turn the difference."

The broth had already been warm, and now it was steaming hot. She ladled some into a bowl and carried it to Hoom. "Thank you," her husband said as she went back for a bowl for herself. They drank the broth in silence. When it was gone, Hoom went outside to relieve himself and Dilna went to the bedroom and turned down the blankets on his bed. Even though Hoom never treated her like a possession (as a lot of the older men treated their wives, and too many younger ones, too), she still liked to do small services that made his life more comfortable.

As she turned down the blankets she wondered: Does he know?

She thought of how Wix had looked afterward, half-covered with damp leaves and his face twisted in -- what, grief? Regret? Disappointment? He should have married, the bastard, and then he never would have been tempted by her, nor she by him. There was no way Hoom could know.

He came into the room, stripping off his shirt as he walked. "Getting chilly now. Jason's due back in a month. From today. Noyock wanted us to wait until he came."

Dilna turned in surprise. "Actually, why not? That isn't a bad idea. After all, the whole idea of voting was put in after Jason's last visit -- why not let Jason see it in action?"

"Because," Hoom said wryly, "he might take offense at it and abolish the practice, and every old bastard in Heaven City would give it up just like that. We haven't mentioned it much, but that's one of the reason's Stipock's been pushing us to get the decision now, before the old god returns from the Star Tower."

"So Stipock does have opinions."

"One or two," Hoom said. "So do I. I'm of the opinion that I married the most desirable woman in Heaven City."

As he caressed her she laughed and said, "What about the most beautiful?"

"Goes without saying," he answered. But she wondered anyway whether he knew: why had he chosen to call her desirable? Did he know who had desired her? And been satisfied?

She didn't go back to her own bed until nearly morning, wondering as she did why she had insisted on that arrangement a year after they married. A sign of independence, she supposed. Everybody had to have their little signs of independence.

Because Hoom's orchard needed little tending at this time of year, he spent most of the day in the house, and there was a constant stream of visitors. Dilna usually would have been in the common room joining into the conversations, but today she didn't feel like it, and instead she climbed up onto the shingled roof (Wix's innovation, and it had made him rich before he turned eighteen) and lay there, occasionally carving, but usually looking up at the clouds that promised rain (but not a drop fell, of course, for the winds were from the west and not until they shifted to the north would the fall rains begin).

Once she climbed to the crest of the roof and looked out across the river, where now four boats made regular trips back and forth. Eternally back and forth -- boring. Wix and Hoom talked of following the current, going down the river to see where it led. As soon as the vote was taken and things were settled. Well, that's tomorrow, Dilna thought, and I'll be packed five minutes after they vote.

She wondered vaguely why she was so anxious to get away, but when her mind made a connection to that day a week ago in the woods to the west, she slid halfway down the roof (damn the splinters, I'll slide if I want) and carved furiously for a while.

She had fallen asleep on the roof when Hoom found the ladder and climbed up. She was surprised to see that it was nearly evening.

"Trying to kill yourself?" Hoom asked, concerned.

"Yes," she answered, and then realized that Hoom really had been concerned. "No, Hoom, I couldn't possibly fall off."

"Yes you could," Hoom said, and then he helped her carry her things back down the ladder.

"The visitors all gone?"

Hoom nodded and led the way into the house. "But they aren't all happy about the compromise."

"Why not?"

"Billin says he can't tolerate having the Warden over him. Though why he should hate Noyock so badly I don't know."

"He's a fool sometimes," Dilna said. "Noyock's bound to be replaced next month when Jason comes. Who knows? Maybe Stipock will be Warden -- now there's a thought that makes me want to throw the vote away!"

Hoom laughed. "Stipock Warden? The way he feels about Jason? I should tell you -- there's even talk of separating from Jason himself. That's what Billin wants, anyway."

Dilna was silent for a while. Separate from Jason? Well, of course, no one thought Jason was God anymore, at least not in Stipock's village on this side of the river. But separate?

That made her uneasy. She was eager to cut ties -- but all the ties? That felt like Hoom's feud with his father: wrong somehow, a wound that should be healed, not widened. And would Jason stand for it? He had tools -- like the little box he had held in his hand when he killed the ox that went wild. Would he turn that against a man? The thought made her shudder. Of course not. But they'd never separate from Jason -- that was just Billin's talk.

Hoom and Dilna spent the evening weaving and sewing together, and then went to bed.

In the morning she felt a familiar nausea, and vomited before breakfast.

"Well?" Hoom asked her as she came back from the privy.

"Damn," she said. "Why now?"

"It's hard to pick the time," he said, laughing. "This one we'll have," he said. He held her tightly around the waist. She smiled at him, but there was nothing behind the smile. She knew when her last fertile time had been -- damn Stipock for even telling them about the cycle within the cycle -- and it was possible, just possible, that Wix was the father. And he and Hoom looked so different.

Don't borrow trouble, she told herself. I've got months yet, and heaven knows the chances are better that it'll look like Hoom.

As always, Hoom misunderstood what she was worried about. "Two miscarriages aren't that bad," he said, consoling her. "Plenty of women have had two and then on the third pregnancy, the baby was born. Which do you want, a boy or a girl?"

"Yes," she answered, reviving the old joke from their last pregnancy, and then she told him she felt good enough to go to Firstfield.

"Are you sure?"

"Once I throw up I'm always fine," she said. "And I'm sure as hell not missing the vote."

So they walked to the shore and got in Hoom's small boat. This time Dilna was at the tiller, the less strenuous job, while Hoom tended sail. The wind from the west and the current from the east made crossing tricky -- every gust of wind meant quick adjustments so the boat wouldn't veer in the current. But they sailed into Linkeree's Bay, where dozens of other boats were already landed, and still more were just coming across the river.

The group from Stipock's Bay walked to Firstfield together, as their friends and sympathizers -- mostly young -- from Heaven City joined them along the way. The talk was cheerful and neutral -- about anything but the upcoming vote -- and they arrived in Firstfield in good humor.

Once there, however, they quickly got down to business. "What's the count?" Hoom asked, and Wix smiled as he said, "I don't think anybody stayed home today. On either side."

"How will the vote turn out?" Dilna asked.

"Well, Aven's sure that at least half his people will vote for the compromise. And with ours, there's no chance of it failing." Wix looked around. "Even Billin's smiling and looking happy. And he swore he'd do anything before he'd let the Warden keep power over us."

Hoom put his arm around Dilna. "When it comes down to it, Billin's a pretty sensible man. Just loves to hear himself talk."

But Dilna was watching Billin as he chattered happily not far away, surrounded by his supporters. Billin had been talking for weeks of how nothing short of complete freedom from the Warden -- and from Jason -- would be acceptable to him. He seems too happy right now, she thought.

I'm just depressed because of the pregnancy, she thought.

But she was not the only one depressed when the no vote was considerably louder than the yes vote. Concerned, Wix leaped to his feet at the same time as Aven, and both of them shouted for a count. "Closer than we thought it would be," Wix said as he sat down. "Trust the diehards to yell louder."

But the count made it even more obvious. In favor of the partial independence were a clear majority of the Uniters. But among the people of Stipock's Bay, fully two-thirds were opposed.

Noyock finished the count, and shook his head. "People of Heaven City, I don't understand you!" he shouted.

Aven leaped to his feet. "I understand! Those crossriver bastards make all kinds of promises, but nothing comes of it!"

Many of the older people grumbled their agreement, and Billin shouldered his way through the crowd to the front. "May I speak?" he asked. Noyock shook his head. "Anybody who wants to listen to you, Billin, is free to. But I'm closing the council. Heaven City stands as a unit. The vote was against separation, and that's all I can do."

Noyock walked away from the front, and many of the older people gathered around him followed him away from Firstfield. Billin, undisturbed, began to shout.

"Why did we vote against the so-called compromise?" he asked.

"Who the hell cares!" Wix shouted back, and those who had voted for it laughed.

"We voted against that so-called compromise because it was a trap set by these Jason-loving old men, to keep us under the thumb of their precious Warden! Well, we don't need you here in Heaven City, and we don't have to settle for your outmoded, rigid, stupid laws and decisions! We'll cross that river, and take all the boats with us, and you can keep your Heaven City and we'll be a new city! Stipock City! A place where people are free!"

A thin cheer arose from those who had voted with Billin -- and a few others.

"Let's get out of here," Dilna said.

"I agree," Hoom said.

"What I want to know," Wix shouted, even as he was walking through the crowd to leave with them, "is what you plan to do for metal if we don't cross the river!"

"That's Wix for you!" Billin shouted. "If he didn't think of a plan himself, he doesn't like it!" Laughter. "Well, Wix, three days ago, Coren, Rewen, and Hanlatta came back from a little exploring party to the north of the river. And sure enough, they found what they were looking for! Copper! Tin! A supply as good as anything here on this side of the river! We're independent in every way now! So let the old men and the old women sit over here for the rest of their lives. We'll build a city that's a decent place to live in! We'll have no Warden! We'll have no God who tells us what we can and cannot do! We'll have no…"

Dilna, Hoom, and Wix were far enough up Noyock's Road that they didn't have to listen anymore. Several of their friends were with them, and the silence was depressing as they walked up the hill.

Soon, however, they began joking, clowning, mocking each other and the events of the day. And by the time they reached the crest of the hill, they were laughing.

Stipock was standing, alone, on the hill.

"Didn't you go to the council?" Hoom asked him.

Stipock shook his head. "I knew how it would end."

"I didn't," Hoom said. "I wish you'd told me. Before we set ourselves up as idiots." Hoom laughed, but the mood was suddenly somber again.

"I might have been wrong," Stipock said. Wix laughed, spoke loudly so all could hear: "Do you hear that? Write it down -- it's the first time we've heard him say it. Stipock might have been wrong!"

Stipock smiled thinly. "The feelings run too deep. Too many people love to hate. People aren't willing to work together."

"As the man who taught us that division was a wonderful thing, it's odd you should suddenly love peace and cooperation so much."

Stipock looked very tired. "You don't know. I was born and raised in the Empire. Too many laws, so much oppression, everything far too rigid. And overnight I was put here, and I had to fight those laws, relieve that oppression, loosen things up."

"Damn right," Wix said.

"Well," Stipock said, "it can get a little out of hand." And then he looked down from the hill toward Linkeree's Bay. And all the eyes followed his, and saw the flames and the smoke rising. The boats were burning.

They shouted, and most of them ran down the hill, screaming threats that they couldn't possibly carry out, shouting for them to stop, not to burn the boats.

Only Dilna stayed with Stipock, and they walked slowly down the road toward the bay. "Your plans didn't work, did they, Stipock?"

"Or worked too well. The one thing I didn't count on, you see, was the fanaticism of the people I converted too well, and this kind of reaction from the people I antagonized too much."

"There it is, you know," Dilna said. "You're just like Jason in your own way, Stipock. Twisting people around to do what you want them to do. Playing God with their lives. And what do you think will be left when the smoke dies down?"

And Dilna sped up, leaving Stipock walking slowly behind her.

At the burning ships, Wix and Hoom were having a shouting match with Aven and Noyock. Dilna ignored them. Just watched the flames and the red coals of burnt wood.

"…Have no right!..." she heard her husband shout, and she only sighed, marveling at how people who hated laws pleaded for rights when their opponents, too, turned lawless.

"…Won't have this city split apart by children…" came Noyock's voice, angry and yet still, in his own way, trying to reason.

"Our homes are on the other side!" Wix cried out. And Noyock answered, "We'll let anyone who swears to loyally support and obey the laws Jason gave us build a new boat and cross the Heaven River."

"You don't have the right to stop us!" Hoom shouted again, and this time Aven answered his son.

"I heard what you people were saying -- separation whether we voted for it or not. 'We own the boats,' you say! Well, you and your damned Stipock made us start changing the laws by majority vote. And so you damn well better be ready to abide by majority vote! And we're going to see to it you do, whether you like it or not!"

And Dilna couldn't see the flames anymore, for the tears running down her cheeks. I'm pregnant, she told herself. That's why things like this could make me cry. But she knew that it wasn't pregnancy. It was grief and fear. Grief for what was happening to people; fear of what would happen next.

What could the people from Stipock's Bay do, anyway? They had all come -- there was no one left on the other side to bring a boat and take them across in the night. No one could swim the river -- the current was too swift, and it was three kilometers wide at the narrowest point. They had none of their carpentry tools, and the older people were brandishing their axes and torches as if they'd gladly break a head or two, if one were offered.

She left the fire and walked slowly to where Hoom and Wix were still arguing furiously with Aven and Noyock.

"We don't want any trouble," said Noyock, "but I won't let you break up the City!"

"Break it up! You call this holding it together?" Hoom shouted back.

Behind each group of leaders was a gathering crowd of supporters. Both crowds looked equally angry; but the crucial difference was the sharp tools the older men held in their hands. Dilna walked into the space between the two groups.

She said nothing, and after a few moments they realized that she wasn't joining into the argument on either side. "What is it?" Noyock asked.

"All this talk," Dilna said, "won't build the ships for us. And all the shouting doesn't find us a place to stay warm tonight. I want my husband to build me a shelter. We'll need tools to do it."

And Dilna turned around to find herself looking directly into Wix's eyes. She averted her gaze, found Hoom's concerned face. Behind her, she could hear Aven saying, "We can't give them tools -- they'd build boats in a week. Not to mention busting our heads in."

Dilna whirled on him. "You should have thought of that before you stole our homes from us. I'm pregnant, Aven. Do you want me to spend the night in the open air?"

Noyock turned to Aven and said, mildly, "They're right. Maybe a few tools -- enough to rig some kind of shelter before nightfall."

"Why?" Aven asked. "Not one of them but has parents that'd be only too glad to invite 'em back into their homes."

Wix's father, the usually gentle Ross, raised his hand and said, "That's right, there's no hard feelings. We'd be glad to give them food and shelter!"

Wix's face was twisted with fury. "Give us food and shelter! There's not one of us but has plenty of food and shelter across the river! You stole it from us! You don't give us one damn thing! It's ours by right!"

"Rights, rights!" shouted Aven. "You little lying bastards don't have any rights!"

Dilna turned back to Wix and Hoom. "Enough, enough," she said quietly. "In a brawl we'd lose. Whatever we do, we can't do it here."

"She's right," Hoom said. "Let's go."

"Where?" Wix asked.

Hoom looked up the hill toward Noyock's Town. "The forest just north of the Pasture. We can take fence rails and rig a shelter."

Dilna turned back to Noyock. "Do you hear that, Noyock? We're going to take fence rails from you and build shelter. That way we won't have to touch your tools."

Noyock, eager to end the quarrel without violence, agreed, and Hoom, Wix, and the rest of the crowd straggled away from the beach, heading back up the hill. It was already afternoon, and there was much to do before night.

Noyock caught Dilna's arm before she could leave the beach. "Dilna -- please listen. I want you to know, this wasn't my idea. When I got here, the boats were already burning."

"There's a law," Dilna said, "about destroying another man's property. You're the man who loves the law -- imprison these men until Jason comes."

"I can't," Noyock said miserably. "There are too many of them."

"There are more than a few of us, too," Dilna retorted. "This is Linkeree and the ax all over again. Only you're not Kapock."

As she walked away, Noyock called after her: "It wasn't me that worked so bloody hard to strip all the power away from the Warden, it was you! If I still had that power, I could protect you!" But she didn't turn to answer. When she got to the brow of the hill, she stopped and looked back at the beach. Noyock was still there alone, watching the last flames die. On impulse she ran back down the hill, all the way to where he stood. "Warden," she said, "we'll need a fire tonight. Will Jason approve, do you think, of our taking some of the wood from our ships to start it?"

He set his face like stone and turned away. She picked up a piece of wood that was still burning on one end, and whose other end had been in the water until then. And once again she climbed the hill.

The people of Stipock's Bay were gathered in a small clearing in the forest, trying to turn fence rails, branches, and dead leaves into lean-tos for the night. Few of them looked sturdy, and Dilna looked at the sky, grateful that the clouds had gone, and the sky was clear. When Wix saw the torch, he smiled. "Wise woman," he said, and called to several men to rig a fire. Again, they had to use fence rails, so the fire was built in a large square, hollow in the middle. "I only wish we could burn down the whole damn fence," Wix said, as he lit the fire.

"Burning's a good idea," said a voice from the edge of the clearing. Many of the people working turned to see who it was. Billin.

"Ah, Billin," said Wix. "I thought you were still down in Firstfield, giving a speech."

"The time for speeches is over."

"How clever," Wix said. "Now he realizes that."

"I just saw the ashes of our boats," said Billin, raising his voice to be heard by all. "I just saw the ruins of our last hope for peace! And I say to you --"

What he was going to say to them no one knew, because at that moment Wix strode forward and struck him so hard in the stomach that Billin's feet left the ground, and he collapsed, gasping, in the dirt.

"The ruins of our last hope for peace aren't on the beach, Billin!" Wix shouted. "The ruins are back at Firstfield, when you and the pebble-brained oxen who followed you wrecked the only compromise we could have had! It was you that caused the burning of our boats, Billin! So you can shut up for a few days, or I'll put you deep enough in the river that you'll be singing to the fishes for eternity!"

The silence rang out after Wix finished his impassioned speech. Then Billin groaned, and slowly dragged himself to his feet. Everyone got back to work. But when conversations resumed, they were more bitter than ever before.

When night fell, they gathered around the fire, staring at the flames. Some women from Noyock's Town, and Linkeree's Bay brought food before dark. It wasn't enough, but it was something, and they swallowed their pride and ate it. Now they sat and watched the fence rails shrink in the fire.

"I've been thinking all day about what Billin said," Hoom said in one of the dismal lulls in the conversation. "And I think he's right. Burning's a good idea."

"And what do we burn, the whole city?" asked Wix, scornfully.

"No, no," Hoom said. "But the old people, they've hated the boats from the beginning, the boats have meant freedom from them. They burned them." Hoom stood up and walked around the fire. He was no orator, but the very quietness of his speech made them listen all the more. "Well, there's a few things they've been using as weapons against us. The Warden, for instance." Someone laughed and said, "Does that mean we burn Noyock?"

Hoom smiled and shook his head. "Noyock's done us no harm. Just his office. There's something else, though. The History."

Several people snorted. The History, constantly held over their heads as "proof" that things must be done the old way.

"They burned our boats," Hoom said. "So let's burn their History. It's far less harm than they've done to us. You know what our fields will be like if we let them sit for a month, unharvested. My fruit trees will be bare, with the fruit rotting on the ground. They've destroyed our homes and our livelihoods -- nobody could say we've been excessive if we destroy their stupid History."

A few chuckled, and the idea began to look more appealing.

Wix spoke up. "Easily said. But they're armed against us, and they'll fight to protect it. It's -- it's a God-thing to them, they keep it for Jason. They'll fight."

"So," Hoom said, "we won't announce what we're after. Not a large number of us, either. We'll just wait until everybody's asleep at Noyock's house, and we'll break in, rush up the stairs, and burn the damn thing before they even know what we're about."

"Break in? Is it that easy?"

"It will be for me. I can get in," Hoom said. And so the plan was made. The crescent moon was high in the sky as they emerged from the forest, far to the west of their camp. Only one of them held a torch; the rest carried unlit torches and kindling wood. They walked in silence, and approached the tall house from the west, where it was less likely that anyone would be watching.

There were no lights in the house, and so they set immediately to work. Wix pointed to a spot beside the house, and the kindling was laid down. Then Hoom, who carried the lit torch, ignited the kindling. As it flamed, they all put their torches in. After a few minutes, they were all ablaze. Then Hoom raised his torch, and they all followed him to the kitchen door.

Hoom knocked on the door, and they waited, all of them standing close to the wall, so that someone glancing out a window wouldn't see them so readily. But the household wasn't expecting danger that night -- a soft voice asked, "Who is it?"

"Grandmother?" Hoom asked.

"Hoom," said the voice behind the door, in relief and delight. "You've come home," she said as she opened the door. But the door was barely ajar when Wix and Billin muscled through, forcing their way past Riavain. It only took her a moment to see what was happening, and she cried out, "Fire! Help, fire! Quickly! They've come!"

No one stopped to silence her. Instead, Hoom led the way up the stairs to the second floor. As they reached it, several of his uncles and cousins emerged from their rooms, looking worried. "Where's the fire?" one of them asked, and Hoom said, "Downstairs, in the kitchen." For a moment the obvious ruse seemed to be working -- the men headed for the stairs even as the torchbearers charged upward toward the third floor. But then they realized who was carrying the torches, and ran back up the stairs, trying to overtake them.

On the third floor, no one was fooled. Aven and Noyock stood in front of the door of the library. "You're not coming in here," Noyock said. "This won't help you a bit."

"But burning boats will?" Hoom snarled, and Wix shouted, "Get out of the way." Dilna realized, though, that at this moment their attack would either succeed or fail -- the men from the downstairs were right behind them, waiting, it seemed, for them to surrender. And talking would never get the door open.

"Talk is nothing!" Dilna shouted, and she swung her torch at the man behind her on the stairs. He recoiled instinctively -- if he hadn't, the torch would have hit him in the head. But in recoiling, he lost his balance, and fell backward into the men behind him. Billin seized the opportunity, and while Dilna and a few others used their torches to keep the men on the stairs at bay, Billin rushed forward, swinging his torch at Aven and Noyock.

But they held their ground, and Billin faltered in his advance. This time it was Wix who recovered the momentum. "You've had fair warning," he snarled, and shoved his torch into Noyock's belly.

The pain of the blow drove the breath out of Noyock -- and when Wix pulled the torch away, Noyock's shirt was on fire. He tried vainly to brush it off, but it spread quickly, and he screamed and fell to the floor, trying to smother the fire. Aven still blocked the door, and he was using his feet to try to keep Billin and Wix at bay.

"An ax!" someone shouted, and sure enough one of the uncles was brandishing a bronze-headed ax. He was swinging it in a circle over his head, causing as much danger for his own side as for Dilna and the others defending on the stair, and Dilna ducked under the blade and jammed the tip of her torch upward against the man's chin. He dropped the ax -- it clattered on the floor next to Hoom. Hoom picked it up and swung it savagely at the door, right at Aven's head.

This time Aven ducked, just in time, and the axhead was buried in the door, splintering it. Aven tried to strike at Hoom while he pulled it free, but Billin was too quick, forcing him back.

With a roar the men on the stairs tried to rush past, just as the door gave way on the ax's second blow. Dilna and the others couldn't stop them -- but the work was nearly done. Wix and Billin threw their torches into the room -- Wix's sputtered on the floor, but Billin's landed on a shelf, instantly igniting the papers there. Then the stair landing was a melee, as Wix, Billin, and Hoom struggled to keep the older men from entering the room and putting out the fire.

Aven bellowed and charged his son, throwing him aside as he entered the smoky library. As he passed, Hoom brought down the axhandle on his father's head, sending him sprawling. At that moment, Wix shouted, "Let's get the hell out of here!" and began slugging his way to the stair.

The others tried to follow. One of them was unconscious on the floor. Dilna, who had been swept to a far corner by the rush on the stairs, tried to rouse him, but he didn't budge, and she got up to run for the stairs. As she did, the library erupted in a sudden roar, and for a horrible moment flames lashed out the door and threatened to start the whole landing on fire. Then they subsided a little, but flames danced now on the banisters, and as Dilna forced her way toward the stairs, she saw an inert body in the library, covered with flames, the feet already charring. She screamed, caught hold of Hoom, who was fighting his way down the stairs, and shouted in his ear, "Your father! Your father!"

The look on her face told him the story, and he, too, screamed, rushing back up the stairs. "Father!" he shouted, a throat-ripping cry. "Father!" But the flames forced him back. Several of the men on the stairs saw what was happening -- there were three men unconscious on the landing. They struggled back up against the heat, screaming, "Father! Father!" When they finally dragged him down his face was black with smoke, and the front of his clothing was charred. Dilna, who was being held at the bottom of the stairs, saw his smoking clothing and blackened face, and fainted.

They gathered in Firstfield on Jason's Day, but this time there as no chatter or pleased expectation. Those who had borne torches that night were each surrounded by men, and their hands were bound, except Hoom, who was still so badly injured that a makeshift bed was provided for him. The other refugees from Stipock's Bay kept to themselves. They were unguarded, but they had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Jason was coming; and suddenly even those who had scoffed at him were afraid of his coming.

The sun was hidden from them by the shaft of the starship; the space opened in the side and the line descended. Dilna remembered four years ago, when she was only barely thirteen, coming with her mother to see Jason come. He had brought the hundred eleventh Ice Person with him. Stipock. And bitterly Dilna wished he had never come.

Jason's feet touched the ground, and he stood and walked to Noyock, who waited for him. Jason held out his arms to embrace the Warden, but Noyock only covered his face with his hands and wept.

Jason stopped directly in front of Noyock, his blue eyes staring at him. They stood like that, it seemed, for hours, though when Jason broke the pose and enfolded Noyock in his arms, the sun was still not out from behind the tower. The people watched, and the realization spread as a murmur among them. "Jason is crying, too," they whispered.

"He knows," came the answer. "He already knows, without even a word spoken."

Jason whispered something in Noyock's ear, and then stepped away. Noyock turned to look after him, no longer sobbing, though his cheeks were smeared with tears. Jason strode toward the waiting crowd. "Where is Aven?" he called out.

There was no answer, only a rustle of whispers in the crowd.

"Who has hidden Aven from me?"

And then some answers came. "Hoom killed him!" someone said. "He died in a fire," said another. But the answer that caught on, that many called out, was the one that fixed the blame on Hoom.

Jason walked to where Hoom lay, swathed in bandages on the makeshift bed.

"Did you kill Aven, Hoom?" Jason asked, loudly.

Hoom closed his eyes and answered, clearly, "Yes."

Jason knelt beside him, and many, unable to see, stood or crowded toward the front, to see what Jason would do. But Jason only touched the bandages on Hoom's forehead, and looked deeply into him, as if he could see into his mind. Dilna got up from her guards, and came to Jason. "It isn't true," she said. "Hoom didn't mean to kill his father. He was only trying to burn the History."

Jason stood, and looked around at the crowd. "Burn the History. And why did Hoom want to burn the History?"

Again silence. But now Wix leaped to his feet, and cried out in fury, "They burned our ships, that's why! They're all quick enough to tell you Hoom killed his father, but they're not so fast to tell you they burned our boats! Kept us from our City on the other side of the river! All our fields are rotten, our harvest is waste, all because they burned our boats!"

Jason nodded, and Wix fell silent, sat down. "Burned the boats," Jason said. "And why did they burn the boats?"

The answers came quickly. "They wanted to split the City! They wouldn't obey the Warden! They said they'd make their own laws! They didn't obey the majority!"

Jason raised his hands, and silence fell again. He raised his voice and said, "The wouldn't follow the majority. They wouldn't obey the Warden. And for this you kept them from tending their fields and their flocks. For this you kept Hoom from getting a crop from his trees."

A gasp came from many in the crowd, for no one could have told Jason about Hoom's trees. He knew. He already knew everything.

"And why wouldn't they let the Warden rule them?"

The answers were shouted back at him, but again and again the shouts included one name: Stipock.

"Stipock!" Jason shouted. "Stipock!"

And Stipock walked out of the crowd, made his way to the front, and stood to face Jason squarely. "Stipock," Jason said. "It all seems to come back to you."

"I never meant," Stipock said. "I never set out to have it end as it did."

"What did you mean, then?"

"I just wanted to give them democracy."

Jason smiled grimly. "Well, you didn't. You gave them anarchy."

Stipock's face was sculptured deeply with regret. "Do you think I don't know?"

Jason stepped away from him, faced the crowd, and cried out, "Who should be punished for this!"

There was no answer.

"That's what I think, too." Jason looked at them angrily. "We couldn't fairly punish anyone, without punishing everyone, could we. Because you're all guilty of Aven's murder! Every one of you!"

"I'm not," a woman shouted, leaping to her feet. "I didn't have a part in any of the fighting!"

"You didn't?" Jason asked sharply. "Did you try to stop them?"

And the woman sat down again, her face dark.

"Go to your homes, all of you. Be about your business. And give tools to the people whose homes are across the river. Let them build boats and go home! I'll speak to you all in due time. Go home!"

And the crowd dispersed miserably, in dismal groups that silently walked home, cloaked in shame. Jason knew. Jason had seen. And Jason was not pleased.

Jason had even wept.

The snow was light on the fields and on the trees when word spread through Heaven City: "Jason is finished." And in fact he had talked to everyone, visited in every home. And now he went to the edge of the river, and splashed out to the large boat that waited for him. Wix reached out his hand, and helped him into the boat, where ten of the people from Stipock's Bay sat, holding oars.

"I wish," Wix said as the oarsmen pulled them away from shore, "I wish you could have seen the boats with sail on them. But the wind is from the north now."

"I've seen them with sail," Jason said. Wix wondered when, and how. And Jason answered his unsaid words: "I've seen them in your eyes, Wix."

They touched the other shore, and Jason walked unerringly to the public house. Gradually the people came in, filling the large room to overflowing Jason stood at the long bar, sipping hot beer. When it seemed that all had come who were coming, Jason set down the cup and lifted himself onto the bar, where he sat as he spoke to them.

"I've talked to every one of you," Jason said, "and there are many of you -- most of you -- who have learned enough from the bitter experiences of this autumn. You're content now to live under the law and under the Warden. But you still want to stay on this side of the river, where you're still independent, where you're still a little lonelier, and therefore a little happier." And then he said the names, all the men and women who felt that way, and told them they could go home. "If I'm wrong, then stay," he warned -- but he wasn't wrong. Only about forty people remained in the public house, and Jason waited until the others were all gone before he spoke.

"You are the ones who hate too much. You're the ones who don't want to follow the laws, no matter how it hurts other people; you're the ones who don't want any part of Heaven City. If there's anyone here who doesn't feel that way, you can leave."

They all stayed.

"Well then," Jason said. "You're no more responsible for the disaster this city suffered than are those who aren't content unless they force everyone to fit their image of what is right and good. You won't be punished. I think your memories are punishment enough."

No one looked at anyone else, except Stipock, who sat at the back of the room and looked at everyone in turn.

"Stipock," Jason said. "You wanted to lead your own city, didn't you? You wanted to wean some of the people away from believing and trusting in me."

"Damn right," Stipock said.

"Well, then, look around you. These are the people you've won over. You've had four years. I'm sure our bargain is satisfied in four years, isn't it?"

And Dilna looked at Hoom, who sat beside her, holding her hand. Bargain? she asked with her eyes, and he shrugged.

"It may well be," Stipock said.

"You haven't fulfilled your part, you know," Jason said. "I expected a bit more than a tallow lamp and boats on the river."

"I was busy," Stipock said.

"You'll be busier. Because you're all getting what you want -- freedom. Separation from Heaven City. And I'll even let Stipock choose where you're going. What's the most valuable piece of land on this little planet, Stipock?"

Stipock only half-smiled, and shook his head. But Jason acted as if he had answered. "Do you love steel that much?" Jason asked. "Then that's where I'll send you -- to the place where iron ore is close to the surface."

The words were meaningless to them -- iron and steel they had never heard of. Jason looked around at them, and smiled. "Oh, the iron is desirable enough," he said. "Have you seen the metal of the Star Tower?" They had, of course. "That's steel," Jason told them. "And you make it from iron -- if you can."

"When do we leave?" Stipock asked.

"Tomorrow. I'd advise you all to forget your warm clothing. And bring hats. They place you're going is pretty sunny." Then Jason stepped away from the bar, and left the public house.

The next morning those who were leaving gathered in a large cleared field where the wheat had rotted on the stem. They didn't wait long -- a roaring sound came from the Star Tower, and soon a huge metal object hovered over them. Stipock told the people to stand clear, and when they had shifted back, the metal craft settled to the ground. Many of them were filled right then with doubts -- Jason really did fly, and the ship he flew in was bigger than a house.

But the door was open, and Jason was herding them inside, and they had little time to worry about whether Jason was, after all, everything he had been thought to be. Two rows of seats filled the middle section of the craft, and they nearly filled them all. Stipock was the last to enter, and the door closed behind him, though no one touched it. And as soon as Stipock sat down, the craft lifted gently from the ground, and as the earth receded below them, many were filled with a terrible vertigo, and some vomited.

"Where are we going?" someone asked Stipock, and Stipock turned around and spoke to the group generally. "We're going," he said, "to a very hard place. There aren't many places where fields will grow well. But there are things more precious than fertile soil."

Dilna leaned over closer to Hoom, and said softly, "You'd almost think Stipock wanted us to go to this place from the beginning." Hoom's only answer was a faint smile. He didn't talk much, even though he was virtually healed from his burning in the fire at Noyock's house.

They crossed an endless forest, and then the forest ended, and below them was nothing but blue, striped with white. "The sea," Stipock explained. "Water for kilometers in every direction, so it seems you can never find the end."

But they found the end, and under them was rock and sand, carved into canyons and hostile mountains, plateaus and occasional patches of green. From the air it was impossible to see the details, but it was plain enough to everyone, though they had never seen a desert, that the land below them was dead.

It was frightening to Dilna, to see so much space with nothing growing in it. It looked endlessly dry. She swallowed convulsively. Hoom's hand closed over hers, and drew her close, and his arm reached around her, and held her.

"Hoom," she whispered. "I've never loved anyone but you."

"And I trust you with my life," he answered; and it occurred to Dilna to wonder whether Hoom had told as great a lie as she had told.

Jason left them near trees, and a shallow stream ran nearby, but the earth underfoot was sand, and the air was hot and dry. They milled around aimlessly, until Jason said a few words wishing them luck, urging them to obey Stipock; then the star-pilot climbed back into the flying ship and the door closed behind him.

"Well, everybody," Stipock said. "Let's get moving -- up into the trees. We'll follow the stream. Feels warm enough that we probably won't need to build houses tonight -- give us all a chance to be lazy!" Stipock laughed, but no one joined him. The sandy soil didn't look like it would be easy to farm. The water trickled over rocks, but a thin film of dust covered its surface even as it moved.

They shouldered their burdens and followed Stipock into the tall, gaunt-looking trees. Dilna and Hoom were among the last, and Dilna turned around to see dust rise under the flying ship.

She stopped and watched as it rose into the air and moved away north over the sandy plain. Wait, she wanted to cry out to him. Wait for me!

Instead, she shifted her pack and smiled at Hoom, who was waiting for her. "Well," she said. "This is more fun than a broken leg." He laughed, and they hurried to catch up with the others.

In his haste to get back with the good news, Billin slipped on a shale slope and cut his hand severely. Of course he swore; of course he shouted; and then he ripped up his good sleeve (the left) and bound the bleeding cut and walked on.

He still carried his pack, though the food was gone since yesterday -- good cloth was far too scarce these days. In the hot gray days of autumn when they first arrived, they had thrown away all the clothing that modesty allowed. Now they knew better. The summer sun burnt, and clothing was the only defense.

The trees were already getting more open, and shorter. The rich loam of the mountains had given way to more sandy soil, loose and sliding and hard to walk on. He was almost there, following the trickling stream that kept Stipock's City alive.

It was late afternoon when Billin finally reached the irrigation ditch and the diversion dam. Wix's idea, of course, and brilliant, of course, but only a stopgap in their constant losing battle with the sun and the sand. Although they might have had a chance if Stipock weren't so dead set on getting the iron -- no. We'd be losing anyway. But now, Billin thought exultantly as he lurched along down the path of the ditch, now we can live better than we did at Heaven City. Just reach out a hand and pick food from the trees. Water everywhere. We have to leave immediately.

A house (new since he had left, but hardly a surprise, and he noticed that they had built it higher, out of reach of the sand) and Billin went to the door and knocked.

No one. Getting on toward dark -- wait here or go on down?

Billin was too hungry to wait, and too eager to tell his news, though his legs were weak enough that he had to think of every step before they would move.

And then he saw Wix and Dilna coming in from the trees. He stopped and waited until they came up to him.

"Billin," they said as soon as they were close enough to see who it was, and they rushed up and embraced him and welcomed him home. Yet Billin was not too tired to wonder what Wix and the bitch had been doing in the woods (as if he and everybody didn't know -- a miracle Hoom hadn't murdered them both by now, except that the sweet simple-minded ox didn't notice), and he smiled at them as he said, "How's Hoom doing?"

"Well," Wix said. Was Dilna blushing? Billin doubted it -- she wasn't the blushing type. At least Cirith, ugly and foul-tempered as she was, stayed faithful to Billin and loved him desperately.

"You must be tired," Dilna said, and Billin didn't even have to agree. He just stumbled and Wix caught him before he fell, and then the two of them helped him to the nearest house that might be large enough for him to rest awhile before going on to his own home.

It was a struggle between hunger (stay awake until the fish is fried) and sleep. Sleep won.

He woke in his own bed with Cirith leaning over him, smiling.

"Good morning," Billin said.

"Stay in bed," Cirith ordered, losing the smile the moment she knew he was looking. "You're too tired and weak to get up."

"Then bring me something to eat, dammit," Billin said, lying back down.

"It was so good while you were gone," Cirith grumbled as she brought a bowl from the fire. "No one to complain to me."

"How did you make it through the weeks?" Billin said. And then as Cirith set the bowl on his bed and made as if to walk away in a huff, he lunged over (spilling stew) and pinched her.

She whirled on him. "If you're that wide awake, Billin my boy, you'll have no more sympathy from me!" And then she was off to the children's bedroom. Billin lay back on his bed and sighed. It was so good to be home.

He vomited the stew, but was able to eat broth later on in the morning.

And after noon, Stipock, Wix, and Hoom came to see him.

"Three out of four," Billin said as they gathered around his bed. "I feel honored."

"Dilna's pregnant again," Hoom said proudly.

"How many does that make -- three?" Billin asked.

"No, four, of course -- unless it's twins."

Four of hers, Billin kept himself from saying, but only three of yours. Not my place to tell the fool what everybody else knows.

"You were gone three and a half months," Stipock said.

"The days just flew by," Billin said, smiling.

They waited, and Billin loved watching them as they tried not to seem eager. But he was even more eager than they, and he ended the game and told them.

"A swift-flowing river, plenty of water even during the heat of the summer. A bay, and there are trees every inch, except where there are thick berry bushes. While I was there I wasn't hungry for a minute -- I would have brought you back some of the fruit, but it started spoiling in the heat this side of the mountains, and so I ate it."

But as Billin described the paradise he had found a hundred miles to the south (or more -- who can tell when the distance is covered on foot, scaling cliffs and wasting days hunting for a path through an impassable barrier), he became more and more uneasy. Hoom and Wix kept glancing at Stipock -- and Stipock just watched Billin, his face impassive.

"I tell you," Billin said, determined to fire them with the enthusiasm he felt for the place, "that we could leave the plow behind and live forever there by just gathering. It goes on like that for miles. And the ground is as rich as anything in Heaven City, I swear it, except there's plenty of rain -- the mountains must catch all the clouds, keep them from coming to us -- and it's warmer than Heaven City, and besides -- from the mountains I could see another land across the water, not far -- we could build a boat and cross to it, and that other land looks even richer than the one I was in."

At last Stipock answered, "Very interesting."

Billin sat up in bed -- too abruptly, and his headache immediately punished him for his impetuosity. "The hell it's interesting, Stipock. It's bloody damn perfect, it makes this place look like a desert, which it is, if you had guts enough to admit it. You chose this place -- well, fine, you made a mistake, but by damn I've found a place we could get to in two weeks! Two weeks, and our children wouldn't spend half the year crying for food and the other half blistering in the sun and crying out for water!"

"Relax, Billin," Hoom said. "Stipock didn't mean anything bad. It's just hard to believe a place could be that good --"

"If you aren't going to believe me," Billin said, "why the hell did you send me?"

"We believe you," Hoom said. Hoom the peacemaker. Hoom the cuckold. Billin turned away in disgust. What kind of people did he have to deal with? Stipock, who only cared about that damn iron ore which wasn't worth a quart of ox-urine, and who always pretended that he was thinking carefully about things when the truth was his mind had been made up about everything a million years ago and he'd never change it come flood or fire. Hoom, so kind that you could almost forget how stupid he was. Wix, always full of bright ideas -- the kind of man that could only be trusted by a fellow with an ugly wife (like me, Billin reminded himself). And Dilna? Why the hell was Dilna always involved in decisions? At least she wasn't here now.

"If you believed me," Billin finally said, "you wouldn't be here, you'd be home packing food and getting ready to go."

"Sleep awhile," Wix said. "You're still tired. We'll talk tomorrow."

"What did I do wrong!" Billin shouted, his voice cracking from the weariness still in him. "I'm not a hornet, don't brush me away!"

"You haven't done anything wrong," Stipock said as he went to the door. But it was Hoom who turned around and said, "I'm glad you're back, Billin. I've missed you."

After they left Billin was too angry even to quarrel with Cirith, and she went to bed in a huff, worried about Billin's strange behavior. And Billin kept waking in the night -- angry, though it took him a few moments after waking to remember what he was angry about. Why were they so reluctant? Did they actually like the desert?

"No," Cirith said. Billin realized he had been talking aloud. There was a faint light in the room -- early morning.

"Sorry I woke you," he said.

"That's fine. They don't like the desert, Billin," she said. "But about a week after you left, I guess they realized you might find something like what you found, and ever since then Stipock has been telling people how good it is to suffer, how it makes us strong."

"Don't tell me people believe that crap!" Billin's mouth tasted foul. He got out of bed and staggered on aching legs to get a drink.

"I don't know what people believe," Cirith said.

Billin looked at her from the table, where he was dipping water from the jar. "What do you believe?"

"Don't tell me you suddenly, after two years of marriage, want my opinion?"

"I don't want to have your opinion, I only want to hear it."

Cirith shrugged. "Stipock's right. It makes us strong."

"Crap."

She held up her arm, flexed a large muscle. "Behold," she said. "Strong."

"So I married an ox," Billin said. "It's still a desert and I found a place where our kids can smile without getting a mouthful of sand."

He came back to Cirith and sat on the floor beside her stool. She put her arms around him. "Billin, I believe you and I want to go to that place. But I don't think Stipock will ever give up on his iron. He wants to make carts that move without pulling or pushing them. He wants to make a mill that doesn't need a stream. He thinks he can do it with iron."

"And I think he's crazy," Billin said.

"And I thought you loved Stipock."

"Like a brother," Billin said. "Like a stupid, bull-headed, lovable, cold-as-a-fish brother. It's morning and I'm already sick of today."

"Let me make it better," she said, and he let her; and even though he was still a wreck from his exertions of the last month, it was wonderful.

"I take it all back," he said afterward. "That place wasn't perfect. It needed you."

"You hurt my thumb," she said, and then it was time to fix breakfast for little Dern, while Blessin pumped away on Cirith's breast. Billin tried getting out of bed, but he couldn't manage it. "Maybe this afternoon," he said.

But that afternoon he slept again, and as the sun set he woke to find Hoom beside his bed.

"Hello, Hoom. How long have you been waiting there?"

"Not long."

"Good."

Long pause. Billin decided that whatever Hoom had come to say must not be very pleasant, or he would have said it by now.

"Say it," Billin urged.

"We've talked about it --"

"We meaning the four Wardens of Stipock City --"

Hoom sat up rigidly. "How can you call us that?"

"You came to tell me," Billin said. "So tell me. You four have talked about it and decided -- or rather, Stipock decided and the three of you chirped back what he wanted to hear -- and now you want to warn me not to tell people about what I found in the south."

"You don't have to see it that ugly unless you really want to."

"I should cover my eyes? I see what is."

Hoom smiled. "Does anybody see what is?"

"Least of all you, even when it's in front of your face."

"Sometimes," Hoom answered mildly (he doesn't understand, Billin thought contemptuously), "only the blind pretend to see. If you insist on telling people about what you say you found -- what you believe you found -- you'll only hurt yourself. No, that's not true -- you'll hurt them, too, because they'll want so badly to believe in a place like that."

"Of course they'll want to believe it."

"For your own sake, then," Hoom said. And he left.

Billin felt better than he had since coming back -- but even so, he would have stayed in bed if anger hadn't pulled him up and into his clothes and out the door of the house.

"Where are you going?" Cirith snapped as she saw him leaving.

"Visiting."

"At this time of night nobody wants to see you," she said.

"Mind your kitchen, woman," Billin answered. She kept grumbling after he left.

He went first to Serret's and Rebo's house. They were busy with putting children to bed (they had been twinned twice since coming to Stipock City), but they greeted Billin kindly.

"Glad to see you up and about already," Serret said, and Rebo smiled and took off her apron (in tatters, Billin noticed, like all the cloth), bringing him a stool to sit on.

He immediately began telling them what he had found on his journey. They listened politely, smiled, nodded, answered his questions, asked a few (though not many). After a half hour of this Billin realized to his fury that they weren't excited about it. And why not? Their children were worse off than most, with bloated bellies that even Stipock said were a sign of lack of food.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Billin abruptly asked, even while Rebo cooed softly about how wonderful his description of the rainfall sounded.

"Well, of course we believe you," Serret answered. Billin wasn't fooled. He took his leave quickly, went to another house.

It was late, and the lights were blown out in most of the houses when Billin finally gave up and came home. Cirith was waiting for him. She looked worried when he finally came to the door.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Billin nodded, then shook his head. "Not one of them," he said, and she understood, and for once there was no banter, no complaint, she just came to him and held him and in his weariness and frustration he cried. The tears turned to anger quickly enough.

"How did they do it?" Billin demanded, pulling away from her and tossing a chair across the room. One of the children woke at the noise, cried out.

"Shhh," Cirith said, heading for the children's room.

"Not on your life!" Billin retorted. "I want to know how they did it! How did those damn self-appointed gods get everybody to answer the same way -- 'Yes, Billin, so glad you had a good time there, Billin, we're so pleased that your journey was successful, Billin, now get the hell out and let us get some sleep, Billin'--"

Cirith came to him and took his arms and dug her fingers into them. "You must promise me," she said, "that you won't do anything to them."

"What do you mean? What could I do to them?"

"Promise you won't. Promise you won't quarrel with them, please, Billin."

"What do you think I could do? Hoom's the murderer around here, Wix is the adulterer, all I do is talk and now nobody's listening."

"Promise me, and then I'll tell you."

"Tell me what?" Billin asked, suspiciously.

"What they did."

Billin looked at her carefully. "I promise. What did they do?"

"I didn't want to tell you before you went out because you wouldn't have believed me and if you'd known you would have gotten so angry --"

"Get to it, Cirith, dammit, tell me what you know!" Billin paced to the window.

"They told everybody for the last two days, while you mostly slept, they told them that you had been badly hurt in a fall and it damaged your mind --"

"I cut my hand, the bastards, where do they think my mind is?"

"I know that, but they told the others that you invented a dream place, a place where everything is perfect, but that it doesn't exist --"

Billin roared with rage. The child in the bedroom cried louder, and another cry joined in. "Do they say I'm a liar! They dare to call me a liar!"

"No, no, no," Cirith said. "They only say that you were hurt. They say that you really believe what you say, that your mind isn't working right -- Stipock had a name for it, he called it 'hallucinations,' I think --"

"Stipock has a name for everything --"

"Billin, you can't fight it, the more you say you know what you saw, the crazier they'll think you are --"

"Cirith!" Billin said, striding to her, looking her in the eye, "do you believe them? Or do you believe me?"

She looked at him for a long time, but then she looked away. "I don't know," she finally said.

This time Billin did not roar, because this time his anger dissipated in despair. "If you don't believe me, Cirith --"

"I do believe you, I do, Billin, I want to believe you so much, but that's it -- what you tell about is so perfect, how can I trust it? It makes everything here so terrible, and Stipock says that this is the best place --"

"He says that because of the iron --"

"I know, I know, please go to bed now, Billin, you're tired --"

"I can't sleep."

But he did, and woke in the morning still filled with despair. Because sometime in the night he had wakened after dreaming of the place he had been to. The dream had seemed so real. He had tasted the fruits again, and swum again in the bay, and drunk from the cold river and lain in the grass growing thickly on the riverbanks. He had felt the rain cover him again, beating warm and fresh on his skin, making him clean.

And he wondered if it had been a dream before.

And, once he wondered, he knew that it had. How could it be real? He closed his eyes and tried to picture the place, tried to imagine the taste of the berries. But all he could taste was the dust that always hung in the air; all he could see when he closed his eyes was red.

So he didn't speak of it anymore, not for weeks.

It was time for the rains to come.

The rains didn't come.

"Don't worry," Stipock said. "These things vary by as much as two or three weeks."

After six weeks the rains still hadn't come; but the winds came on schedule. Last year the winds had been cooling, drying out the soaking earth (for that short time of rain and then wind, the colony had been bearable); this year the winds were hot and dry, the breath of dying, and after four days of dust and sand whipping into ears and eyes and noses and mouths, burning the skin of those caught outside, drying out or silting up every barrel of water, every cistern, filling every ditch, tearing leaves off the trees, after four days of that one of Serret's and Rebo's younger twins died.

They buried him in the sand during one of the brief lulls in the wind.

The next morning the dessicated body was in the open, the skin flayed away. The wind, by one of those cruel freaks of nature, had blown the baby so that it jammed its parents' front door closed. Serret swore as he shoved the door open that morning -- screamed and wept when he found what had closed it so tightly.

They burned the baby at noon. The wind kept putting the fire out.

And the next day two more babies died, and Wevin, Weerit's wife, died when her baby tried to come four months early.

They couldn't bury the bodies, and they couldn't burn them, so they carried them out into the sand and left them, knowing the desert would surely dry them out.

That evening Billin huddled into his last cloak and crept against the wind to Serret's and Rebo's house. While there he told them what the water had tasted like in the land he had found. But he knew they hated him for saying it, since they believed he was insane, and it made it hurt even worse.

And from time to time during the terrible three weeks that the wind lasted, Billin dropped a word here and there. "Fruit," he would say, "growing off the trees. Wet and sweet." The person he was talking to would frown and move away.

"Sweet water in a wide, cool river." And the person would lick his lips and say, "Dammit, keep your madness to yourself."

"Rain," he would say, and a child nearby would say, "What's rain, Mama?" and the mother would weep and curse Billin for his cruelty.

And Billin cursed himself, for he, too, wondered if he were mad. For now that he himself doubted what he had seen, he didn't know why he kept talking about it, why every morning and every night and the hours in between he would keep seeing that fruit before his eyes again, bushes more red than green, and water.

"Am I crazy?" he asked Cirith.

"Hopelessly," she answered, and kissed him. But he didn't know if she was teasing; finally was sure that she was not.

And then the wind stopped. One morning everyone awoke to the sudden silence, to the sudden heat (even before sunrise) when the wind didn't penetrate the cracks in the woodwork.

They put on their ragged clothing and went outside to see. The sky was clear. The dust had settled (mostly) to the ground. And now, for the first time, they could see the damage. They saw their suffering by moonlight, and realized before daybreak that they were through.

The sand had built up against the trees, in some places ten or eleven meters above the old level. Houses that had been on level ground now seemed to have been built leaning against sand dunes that were higher than they.

The irrigation ditches were all gone, with no trace left of where they had even been.

Two hundred meters to the west lay the new course of the stream, a wide shallow trickling stream, full of mud and barely drinkable.

The few sheep were all dead, except a couple of lambs that had been kept indoors.

There was no scrap of food anywhere that was not impregnated with sand. That was no surprise, since sand was the main seasoning and the main flavor that they had known for months. But the people, as they talked, realized that all the children were complaining of the pain of defecating, for their stools were filled with sand. And now all the bellies were distended, because food was short.

And water less yet.

And then, as the sun broke over the horizon, promising the terrible, unending heat they had known before, Billin scrambled up a sand dune that leaned against a house and cried out at the top of his voice, "It's enough! We're finished here!"

They turned and looked at him.

"There's no hope here anymore! We have no water, we have no food, we have no clothing, our children are dying!"

In alarm, Wix and Hoom came running to him.

"Don't talk like that," Wix said.

"I take no orders from you," Billin said. Then he shouted to everyone, "It's listening to Stipock and Wix and Hoom and the Bitch that's got us where we are! I say I'm through taking their orders! Who made them Wardens! Who put them in charge?"

Hoom climbed up the dune and took Billin by the warm. "What did you call my wife, you bastard?" Hoom shouted at him.

"How did you know I meant your wife?" Billin said triumphantly. At that Hoom swung back his arm to hit him, but Billin dodged and cried out, "See! The murderer wants to kill again! Murderer!"

And at the word Hoom backed away, confused. By now all the people had gathered, even Stipock, who watched dispassionately from a few meters behind the rest.

Billin pointed his finger at Stipock and shouted (and his mouth was dry and it was hard to make the words come, but still he shouted), "There he is! The man who taught us that Jason wasn't God! Well, that's true enough. But neither are you, Stipock! You and your damned iron. Machines that fly through the sky! Where are they? What about a machine that keeps our children alive, what about that? Where's that, Stipock?"

People began to murmur to each other. Cirith came to the foot of the dune and spoke to her husband. "Billin, don't make people lose their hope," she said.

"Damn right," he answered. To the crowd he said, "I'm making you lose your hope, my wife says. Damn right, I say. Look around you! They say I'm crazy, but only a crazy man would look at this and still hope!"

"He's crazy!" Dilna shouted. "Don't listen to him!"

Billin ignored her. "Think for a minute! Think of this! You all saw how much food I took with me. Enough for three weeks! How long was I gone? How long?"

Three months, they realized.

"Why didn't I starve to death? I came back so weary I was sick, came back hungry because I had run out of food two days before. But not ten weeks before! That's because I found food! Whether you believe all that I said or not, you have to believe this: I found food out there! And that's more than you'll find here!"

Billin looked at Stipock and still the man didn't show any emotion at all. Billin looked at the impassive face and realized he had no hope of persuading anyone. When Billin had stirred crowds before, he had done it with the words Stipock had taught him. And now Stipock was silent and stood there uncaring, because he knew that Billin couldn't persuade the crowd on his own.

So Billin slumped his shoulders, then looked up at the crowd again and said, "Never mind. I don't care what you do. Stay here and keep digging for the damned iron and wait for the sand to come again. But I'm going. Because even if I'm crazy and there's nothing out there, it's better to die looking for something than to die here in the sand, with the wind to dry us out because we've lost our power even to bury or burn the dead."

And then Billin let himself fall backward and slide down the dune to where Cirith caught him and cradled his head. The crowd stayed for a while, then went back to their homes to begin sweeping out the dust.

That night the wind came up again, as hard as ever, and the dust came back in and hung in the houses.

And the next morning at dawn Billin, Cirith and their two children loaded pitifully scrawny packs on their backs and left their house. They walked west to the stream and then set their faces south, uphill into the shadeless trees that had been stripped by the storms.

They had not gone more than a hundred meters when they heard a hoarse cry behind them. Billin turned and saw Serret and Rebo and their two surviving children (one from each set of twins) also loaded with meager packs.

"Wait for us!" Serret called again.

They waited.

"Billin, may we go with you?" Serret asked.

"I thought you didn't believe me," Billin said.

Rebo shrugged. "Does it matter whether we believe you?"

Billin smiled, a dry, ghastly grin, he knew, but the first time he had smiled in weeks. "Come along then."

They went up the stream all day. Gradually, as the miles went by, the sand grew less, and the stream was deeper, better to drink. They filled their waterbags and went on (after drinking deeply and pouring the clean water on their heads). And finally they came to a place where the stream bent to the west and their path went to the east a little.

Billin went to a tree that bore a small cut, and with his knife made the cut deeper and more plain. He turned the mark into an arrow, pointing the way they went. Then he looked ahead until he saw a tree with another small mark, and led them to it, where again he made the mark plainer. "In case others follow."

They were nearly out of food when they came to the mountains, but already the land was far greener, the trees and undergrowth lusher, water more plentiful. Billin killed a tree squirrel and they ate the meat. And while they camped there, with a fire and water enough to wash all over, two more families joined them.

"We saw your fire," they said, "and realized you weren't so far ahead as we had thought."

So they waited a few more days, killing more squirrels and catching some small freshwater fish in a mountain lake one of them found while exploring the area. And when they finally left, heading downhill this time, there were thirty of them, counting women and children --half the colony. Billin knew now that he hadn't dreamed -- everything was as he had remembered it, and he couldn't stop talking about what they would find at the bottom of the mountains.

And after another week they reached the end of the craggy paths and found themselves in a placid bay, with a coldwater river rushing down, and fruit trees and berries so thick around that there was hardly need to plant. Of course they did plant, because one never knew what other seasons would be like in a place like this -- but who needed to bother with watering and tending the fields, when they knew the seeds would grow and the harvest would come without worry?

And Billin's children stopped wearing clothing as they played in the sun, day after day.

Over the weeks more and more people came down the mountains and into the village, where the only houses were roofs -- no walls were needed, and the roofs were just to keep a few things dry when the rains fell, and to keep the sun off during the heat of the day.

At last Billin counted who was there and realized that between those who had died and those who were there, only seven people remained unaccounted for: Stipock, Wix, and Hoom and Dilna with their three children.

He told Cirith.

"Will they come, too, do you think?" she asked.

"I don't think so," Billin said. "What would they do here? The only way they know how to live is by telling other people what to do."

"You tell people what to do."

Billin laughed. "Only when they want to work. We built a boat -- so what! Those who wanted to work on it did. The rest just did as they pleased. Next week maybe we'll go over to that other place across the water. Who knows? Who cares?"

"I see, now. You're just lazy." She laughed.

"Of course," Billin said. "And you're just fat."

Cirith looked ruefully at her bulging stomach. "I was hoping I was going to have a baby, but my time of month began yesterday, so it isn't that."

"It's berries. Always when I kiss you you taste like berries," Billin said.

Then they made love, without particularly caring that their house had no walls and that it was daytime. No one particularly looked. And then they were through, Cirith went naked to the stream to get water.

"Cirith, you forgot your clothes," Billin said reproachfully when she came back.

"I know," she said. "But who needs them in this heat? We all know what human bodies look like, don't we?"

And they laughed, joking about what life was like for all the poor people back in Heaven City who had to wear clothes to stay warm and who had to work in order to eat, who always tried to keep learning things.

"Who cares if you can read and write?" Billin asked. "I never knew anyone who said anything worth writing down."

And Cirith only belched and then left him, trotting down to swim naked in the bay. Billin joined her and swam for hours, mostly lying on his back in the water looking at the white sky, wondering what Jason would think if he could see them now. Probably tell them that people were only human when they were working to achieve something. Like Stipock -- have a goal, have a purpose. Well, to hell with them, Billin thought, and then he laughed so loud that he swallowed seawater and had to paddle in to shore, coughing and sputtering all the way. To hell with them, he thought again as he lay in the warm sand of the shore. And tomorrow I'll explore that other land. Or the next day, maybe.

Stipock woke early one morning, and because there was no wind he dressed and left his house and walked among the dying houses of the village. He went from door to door, and almost every one was hanging on its hinges, or blown off, and no one was there to make repairs. At last he came to Hoom's and Dilna's house, and knocked, and they let him come in and sit on one of the beds as they served the small breakfast they had to Cammar and Bessa and Dallat. The children looked gaunt and old, and no one seemed to have the energy to speak or make a sound.

Wix came a little later, and sat beside Stipock on the bed, and said. "We're the last."

Breakfast done, there was little to do worth doing. No one had worked the mine for a month or more, and it was doubtless completely blocked by sand. The pitiful amount of iron they had taken from the hill this year was not enough to encourage them to dig for more. And Hoom voiced all their thoughts when he said, "If only we could eat iron."

Wix patted his trouser leg and dust rose into the air. Outside there was only a small breeze. The sand lay undisturbed, but the dust rose into the air, seeped through the many cracks in the house. Cammar kept sneezing.

Finally Stipock leaned back on the bed and addressed the ceiling. "We might have done it, you know."

Yes, yes, of course, if only.

"But you can't organize rebels to do a damn thing," Stipock said. And again they agreed.

"Doesn't matter now," said Wix. "They're all gone to where fruits hang on the trees and fish leap up into your hands and the squirrels come over and lie down in the pan for you." And they managed to laugh.

Without a word they all began to move, taking all the food and putting it in bags. Hoom and Wix took empty waterbags and went to the brook to fill them. Stipock went back to his house and gathered up the record he had kept of the village and the small supply of food he had left.

At noon they were ready to go.

"Where?" asked Dilna as they hid from the sun in her house.

"Home," said Hoom, and Stipock wondered at the fact that for some reason -- or many -- none of them suggested going south, to Billin's group. Pride, because they had refused to take the easy escape route that would lead to savagery, and wouldn't give in now? Or a longing for Heaven City? It didn't matter. Stipock was too tired to analyze. Jason had won every round of their duel, and had done it without breaking the bargain. Stipock couldn't deny it, and now he wanted to go back to Heaven City and surrender.

Satisfied? he could hear Jason saying.

Satisfied, he answered. Whatever the hell you're doing with this world, you do it better than I can. You know the people better than I do. And so, because it's the only game, I'll pay whatever price I have to in order to play. Your rules. But you can bet I'll play pretty damn well, whatever the rules might be.

"Stipock?" asked Dilna, and Stipock shook his head. "Sorry. Yes. Home. Heaven City."

They slept in the afternoon, and began their journey just before dark. The sky was cloudless, as always, and the moon was high and full, and the trees looked cool and welcoming as they left the dying village and walked out into the sparse forest. Stipock, Hoom, and Wix carried heavy packs and water bags. Dilna carried Bessa in a sack on her back, and held Dallat in her arms. Cammar walked, his small legs forced to work hard to keep up with the slow pace the adults took.

They drank copiously from the stream before they left, and began rationing immediately. And as the night grew cool, and then cold, they hurried their pace in order to keep warm.

Stipock brought up the rear, following several paces behind Hoom, who now was carrying a weary Cammar, at least for a kilometer or so. The bodies of the three adults ahead of him were not adult bodies, Stipock remembered. Only Wix was twenty, the others still in their teens. In the Empire they'd be children still, none of them at their majority. Here the weight of the world was on them. And they seemed strong enough to bear it.

Hoom, burdened with Cammar's weight, slowed down enough that Stipock overtook him. "Let me carry the boy," Stipock said. And Hoom willingly handed the child to Stipock, who held him to his shoulder. Cammar barely noticed -- he was sleepy, and he rested his head. Hoom looked at the boy as they walked, and then said, "A beautiful boy."

"Yes," said Stipock. "Like his parents."

Hoom's face grew a little sadder, and he said, "I wonder if Wix will ever marry, and have more children." Not children of his own, Stipock noticed. More children.

"You're a kinder man than I am," Stipock said, softly.

Hoom shook his head. "Love and faithfulness can only be given, not demanded. All the same, I would have liked to have them."

Stipock was surprised at the pain behind the whispered words. After all these years of silence, of pretending not to know, why was Hoom saying it now?"

"Dilna loves you," Stipock said. "And so does Wix."

"And I forgive them because of that. Or in spite of that. Stipock?"

"Yes?"

"If I die before we return to Heaven City, would you tell them? That I know? And that I forgive them?"

"You won't die. You're the strongest of us all, don't let the darkness and the sand get to you already, or you'll never stay sane through the desert."

Hoom only laughed. "Just taking precautions, old man."

And then they walked in silence for another hour, before Wix called out that they should stop and drink. They drank, a swallow each from one waterbag, and sat and rested for a few minutes. And then they were on their way again, until dawn.

They followed the pattern for days, walking among the trees at night, sleeping in the best shade they could find by day. They refilled the canteens at every stream, and in this area there were many.

But after a week, the trees began to thin, and the ground began to rise, and Stipock told them it was time to move due north. They reached a large river, and followed its course northward, but the water was brackish, and they only filled their bags at the sluggish streams that joined the river. Later, the streams became more rare, and they began to drink the river's water in order to keep their waterbags full.

They reached the crest of the mountains and left the river behind, descending to a dry plain of rock and sand. A few plants grew, and an occasional small animal moved at the edge of their vision. But no water at all.

And no rest from the heat. There was no shade, except behind rocks, and at noon even the rocks were no shelter, for the sun was directly overhead, and rocks had no shadows at noon. On the eighth day they ran out of water. On the ninth day they piled rocks over Bessa's corpse and went on, no one shedding tears because they were too tired, and their eyes were too dry.

They found an oasis of sorts on the tenth day in the desert, and drank the foul-tasting water, and filled their waterbags. An hour later all were vomiting, and Dallat died of it. They buried him by the poisoned pool, and weakly walked on, emptying their waterbags before they left to forestall the possibility of their forgetting and drinking again.

They were lucky. The next day they found a clear spring in the side of a hill, and the water was good, and they drank and didn't get sick. They stayed at the spring for several days, building back their strength. But now their food was getting low, and with full waterbags they set out again.

Two days later they reached the top of a rocky rise, and stopped at the edge of a cliff that plunged nearly a kilometer, almost straight down. To the west they saw the sea, and to the east another sea, the water winking blue in the sunlight of early morning. And at the bottom of the cliff, the land funneled into a narrow isthmus between the seas. The isthmus was green with grass, and Stipock wasn't the only one, he knew, who breathed a great sigh of relief.

"Do you see the green down there, Cammar?" asked Dilna. The boy nodded gravely. "That's grass, and it means that we'll find water."

"Can I have a drink?" Cammar asked.

They found a way down the cliff before noon, and as they descended they realized that it wasn't nearly as sheer as it seemed. The slope was broken, but there were many possible paths. And that night, exhausted, they spread their blankets in the tall grass. When they woke in the morning, the grass was damp with dew, and their blankets were cold and wet.

At first they laughed, and plucked up grass and threw it at each other, getting soaked in the process. And then Dilna began weeping, and the others also grieved for the two children who had been granted no tears at their burial.

From then on the journey seemed easy enough, and they were hardened and ready to walk many kilometers every day. Even Cammar seemed to thrive on it, and often would run ahead of the others, calling back, "Too slow! Hurry up!"

The farther north they went, the thicker the grass and the larger the bushes became. Soon they were passing many groves of trees, and tiny streams became brooks that they had to take their shoes off for. Eventually the shoes were put in the packs, and they hiked on bare feet, which were already toughened and hard as leather.

Six weeks after they had left the village to the sand and drought, they saw the snow-capped mountains rise ahead of them. "The headwaters of half the rivers in the world rise in these mountains," Stipock said, and they marched on. A week later they could no longer see the peaks because of the high, steep foothills they were traveling through. They followed the banks of a large river northward, and as it narrowed into a canyon they often had to walk in the river itself. They climbed cliffs to pass waterfalls, and often had to backtrack when seemingly easy paths ended in precipices and narrow defiles. And always the rivers flowed south and east, back in the direction they had come, and always the path ahead was uphill. They passed the last trees, and food became scarce, and they rationed again; but hunger was better than thirst, and it was summer, so that although they were cold, they were in little danger of freezing to death.

And then they noticed that the rivers seemed to flow in the other direction, northwest, and some of their routes were downhill. And one morning as they reached the top of a windswept, grassy hill, they saw what they had hoped to see: between two lower peaks in the distance, a green blanket of dense forest that went on and on, stretching forever into the distance.

"It's the largest forest in the world," said Stipock, "according to Jason's map. But nothing ahead should be as hard as what's gone on before." They sat down to rest and look at the hopeful view, and Cammar caught the mood of relief and happiness, and he ran back and forth around the crown of the hill.

"Jason never told us he had a map of the world," Wix said. "And yet you follow your memory of it as if you trusted it completely."

"I should," Stipock said. "I invented the machine that took the geological survey. It's pretty accurate. The only inaccuracies are in detail -- and in my memory."

Hoom was pulling up grass and letting the breezes catch it. "You know, Stipock, you kept telling us, again and again, that Jason wasn't God. And yet every time it comes to one of the miracles that Jason performs, you say, 'Of course he can do that.' And I think I understand it now. To you, what Jason does is commonplace. To you, God would have to be far more extraordinary. But to us, Jason's abilities are far out of reach. And that's enough to make him not at all ordinary, not a common man at all. To us, God. And why not?"

Stipock only leaned back. "I suppose that if a man sets out to manipulate the world in certain ways, and has the wit and the power to do it, then why not play God? I would have stopped Jason if I could. I couldn't. But does that --"

A piercing scream interrupted the conversation, and they all jumped to their feet. "Cammar!" Dilna shouted, and they quickly saw that he wasn't on the crown of the hill. They ran in different directions, and Stipock called, "Here! Come here!" He was at the northwest slope, the area they hadn't yet seen, and when they arrived in a group at the edge, they saw that the gentle hill they had climbed gave way to a jagged precipice on the other side. A torn patch in the grass at the edge showed where Cammar had fallen.

Dilna was frantic. "Cammar!" she cried out again and again. And then his answer came from surprisingly close. "Mama, I'm hurt!"

"Don't move, Cammar!" Hoom called, and Stipock shouted, "Where are you?"

"Here!" Cammar answered.

Hoom ran along the edge of the cliff a little way. "I can see him from here!" he called. "He's just over the crest of that little cliff, on a ledge!" Then Hoom waved and smiled, and the others knew then that Cammar must be all right -- just out of sight over the edge. Hoom ran back to the others.

"Can we reach him?" Stipock asked.

"He's not very far," Hoom answered. "You'll lower me over the edge -- I'm the lightest one who isn't pregnant," and he smiled at Dilna. She smiled back, reassured about Cammar's safety by Hoom's obvious confidence. "Just hold onto my legs."

In a few moments Stipock was gripping Hoom's left leg, and Wix his right, as the young man inched his way out over the edge, his arms reaching downward, out of the others' sight. "Lower!" Hoom called, and Stipock and Wix slid carefully down a little farther. "Lower!" Hoom called again, and Stipock answered, "We can't --"

But he was cut off by Hoom's urgent cry. "Don't jump for me, Cammar! Just stay there -- don't jump!" and then a high-pitched child's scream, and Hoom lunged downward, desperately, tearing his foot out of Stipock's grasp. Hoom slid out of control, and only stopped with Wix gripping his right foot, with Wix himself in clear danger of being pulled over the edge. Hoom's left foot was over the edge and out of sight. Stipock didn't try for it, just clung to Wix to keep the two younger men from flying off into the chasm. Wix was panting, his fingers slipping on Hoom's leg. "I can't hold him," Wix said. "I can't hold him alone!"

"Let me help!" Dilna shouted, nearly hysterical with the terror of knowing that her son had fallen, that her husband was about to fall. She threw herself to the ground and slid forward, face down, toward the edge, out of control. "Dilna!" Stipock cried, and she was only stopped by grabbing at Wix, which jolted him enough that he lost his grip on Hoom's foot. Wix cried out in the agony of trying to force his fingers to grasp, but Hoom slid away, struck the ledge Cammar had been standing on, bounced limply out into midair, and for a moment it seemed that he'd fly into the abyss -- and then he was out of sight.

Dilna was hysterical, screaming Hoom's name and beating at Wix. Both of them were in a precarious position, and Stipock was afraid that anything he did might break the equilibrium. But he decided, and acted quickly, pulling Dilna by force backward toward safer, more level ground. When she was well clear of the edge, still weeping uncontrollably, Stipock went carefully back and pulled Wix clear. It only took a meter's pulling to get the young man in a position where he could get himself back up to safe ground.

"I tried to hold him," Wix kept saying. "I really tried." And Stipock said yes, I know, yes, of course you did.

Then they heard Hoom's voice from below -- not loud, but loud enough to be heard. Immediately they fell silent, and listened.

"Don't come down!" Hoom shouted. His voice echoed from the walls of the canyon.

"Where are you!" Stipock shouted.

"There's no way down here! Don't try!"

"Are you all right?"

"I think my back is broken! I can't move my legs at all!"

"How far down are you?"

"Don't come!" Hoom shouted, sounding more frantic. "It's too sheer! And the rocks are giving way under me -- I won't be here long!" To Stipock's horror the boy began to laugh. "There's nothing under me from here! Five hundred meters, right down to the river!"

Dilna called out to him. "Hoom! Hang on! Please!"

"I already thought of that!" Hoom called back, and then they heard a distant scraping noise, and a cry from far below. Dilna gasped, but Hoom immediately called again, "I'm all right! I have hold of a rock! It seems stable!"

Stipock wracked his brain for an idea, a way of getting down to Hoom. But there was no rope any nearer than Heaven City, and to try to scale the cliff and bring up a man with a broken back without rope was inviting more deaths.

"I'm going down," Wix said softly.

"No you're not," Stipock answered.

"I'm going down, Stipock," Wix said. "I've got to help him!"

"Stay there, dammit!" Hoom shouted. "I don't want you to die with me!"

Wix was frantic. "I can't let him die!"

"Don't kill yourself for guilt," Stipock said coldly, and Wix turned to Dilna for support. "I tried to hold onto him," Wix insisted.

"I know it," she answered. "We all did."

And then they fell silent. They stood several meters from the edge. Waiting. For what? Stipock realized that the situation was impossible. They were waiting for Hoom to fall asleep, or lose his grip, or die of his injuries. At best they were waiting for him to die of thirst. If they had to stay there waiting, they'd all go crazy.

Hoom realized all that, too, and said so. "I'm going to let go!" he called out.

"No!" Dilna wailed, and the canyon shouted it back at her. "No! No!"

"I can't hold on forever! What should I wait for? Jason's flying ship?"

"Is Cammar anywhere near you?" Wix called, trying to keep Hoom from talking himself into dying.

"He's dead!" came the answer.

"Can you see him?" Wix called. There was a long wait before Hoom answered. "There's a lot of blood on this rock," Hoom said. "It isn't mine. There's nothing between here and the river." Hoom's voice quavered as he spoke.

Dilna began to vomit, retching loudly. The sound was terrible, and Stipock wanted to scream in his helplessness. Wix was crying, more in frustration than grief.

"Stipock!" Hoom called.

"Yes!"

"Tell them for me!"

"I will!" Stipock called back.

"Tell us what?" Wix asked, looking up in dread. "What?"

"That he knew. And that he forgives you both."

Wix and Dilna were silent now. Hoom called from below, "But you, Stipock! I'll never forgive you!"

Stipock felt a terrible pain, a wrenching in his bowels, and he breathed heavily. The boy couldn't mean it.

"I'll never forgive you for not teaching me more before I died!"

And, relieved, Stipock slowly sat down. But the feeling of guilt was still there. Because it was Stipock who had brought Hoom to this.

Hoom didn't say anything. There was a sliding of rock. No scream, no cry. No sound of the body landing below. And in the deep silence after the sound of Hoom letting go, the gurgle of the river far below seemed remarkably loud.

Wix and Dilna just sat there, saying nothing, not touching. After a while Stipock went farther up the hill and looked for bushes he could use to make a fire. When he got it going, he came back to the two young people and led them up the hill to the fire. They came passively enough, but they didn't look him in the eye. Stipock could guess what they were thinking. Years of betrayal, and the fact that they hadn't stopped, had never stopped. Knowing that he knew that they had betrayed him. No wonder, Stipock thought, that they sit on opposite sides of the fire. Guilt couldn't keep them apart when Hoom was alive; but now that he's dead, it will, for a time at least, separate them more thoroughly than marriage had ever done.

Dilna and Wix both cried out in the night, at different times. Stipock also slept badly. The next day they backtracked, and found another way down the northwest slope of the mountains. They never found the river that had taken Dilna's husband and son, and were just as glad of that.

The forest swallowed them, and the going was slow, and at last Dilna was too pregnant to travel. They built a house, then, and hunted in the forest, trapping small animals and birds and laying in food for the winter, Wix and Stipock both leaving the house for days at a time, to make sure the winter would not catch them unprepared.

The snows in the forest here fell deep, deeper than they ever had in Heaven City. The trees were taller, too, and denser, and the darkness at noon in the middle of winter, even though the leaves had fallen from the trees, was dismal and depressing. But that winter Dilna's child was born. A son.

"You'll name it Hoom?" Stipock asked.

She shook her head. "Hoom told me he wanted a son named Aven." And there was little talk that day, though the snow confined them all indoors; they were thinking of death as the infant sucked pap from Dilna's breasts.

As night came, and they laid the logs for the night's fire, Dilna spoke from the bed where she lay, recovering from the birth. "I've been pregnant," she said, "six times. Six times, and Aven is all that I have now." As if in answer, the baby stirred and cried weakly. No one could think of anything to say to her.

And in the spring they set out again, following streams and rivers northward, trying to find a pass through the northern mountains that Stipock warned them of. And they found it soon -- there was still snow on the ground as they hiked through the vast gap in the mountains, the peaks rising to the right and the left as they walked northward on the gentle hills.

It was nearing summer when they came to the Heaven River, the kilometers-wide torrent rushing westward to Heaven City. They stopped to build a small, crude boat, and two days after they launched it, they saw the shining metal of the Star Tower rise above the trees. Soon they saw boats ahead, plying back and forth across the river.

"Left bank? Or right?" asked Stipock, who was at the tiller.

"Left," Wix answered quickly.

"Left," Dilna agreed. They wouldn't try to hide among the people of Stipock's Bay, who would probably accept them more readily. They'd go to the Main Town. They'd find the Warden and take whatever answer he gave them.

They were greeted with amazement and open pleasure by the people in Linkeree's Bay, and a crowd followed them up Noyock's Road, over the hill where the ashes of Noyock's house had been cleared and a four-story house erected on the site, and down the other side to Main Town.

The new Warden was Jobbin, a great-grandson of Hux, a man younger than Wix. He embraced them, and showed them a paper left by Jason when he had come to take Noyock into the Star Tower.

"Stipock," said the letter, "are you ready now?"

Yes, thought Stipock.

"You and all who returned with you -- welcome home. Be happy here in Heaven City. And at least make an effort to avoid causing trouble." And Jason had signed his name at the bottom.

Having read the letter, Wix and Dilna and Stipock smiled at each other, and then settled down to tell their story. Stipock gave the records of his colony to Jobbin, who read them carefully. Several people also took turns writing the account of their journey as they told it. The travelers, in turn, read the History of the last few years. It was an unbroken story of peace, plenty, growth, happiness. When it was done, Dilna looked at Wix and then at Stipock, and said, "It's good to be home again, isn't it?"

And then the three of them went to live in different parts of Heaven City, and had as little to do with each other as possible. Someone once asked Stipock why -- after all they had been through together, shouldn't they be close friends?

"We all died in a chasm in the mountains," Stipock answered. "And these new people you see are strangers, with unpleasant memories of someone who looked very much like us. When those memories are gone, perhaps we'll be friends." That was the most he ever said on the subject. Wix and Dilna never said a thing.

But it was Wix who led the expedition that mapped the Heaven River clear to its delta. And it was Stipock who first minted money, and who taught them to make charcoal, and who built the first windmill, and who taught them to make glass.

And Dilna's son Aven became Warden -- many said the best Warden of all -- and when Jason brought Arran from the Star Tower and married her, it was Aven who performed the ceremony.

Jason eventually took both Wix and Stipock and their wives into the Star Tower. But when he asked Dilna to come and sleep so she could live forever, she refused. "I don't see anything wrong with dying," she said, "and I'd rather do it among friends than strangers, years from now, who never knew me." At her instructions, after she died her body was burned, and the ashes were scattered across Heaven River.

People kept having babies, and the babies kept growing up, and three hundred years after the starship first landed beside the Star River, half a million people were spread along the Heaven River, and it was time for the next step in Jason's plan.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the discovery of the so-called Aven Map is that it has caused archaeologists to rethink many of their most basic assumptions. For years it was a canon of the professional archaeologist that all the legends of the Dispersal were merely after-the-fact rationalizations of the dominance of the Heaven King over the counts of the low and high plains, and eventually over the more distant dukes as well. It was too tempting for researchers to assume that the legendary Wardens, like Linkeree, Hux, Ciel, Noyock, Kapock, and so on, were invented to "prove" that all the great cities and nations of the world had their start in Heaven City.

Even now, the legends that ascribe to the Star Tower the power to keep its residents from aging while within its walls must be rejected by serious scientists. But the fact that a map, carved in stone, that could date from no later than 1800 B.A. [Before the Accession], clearly shows that residents of Heaven City at that incredibly early date already had a full knowledge not only of the exact outlines of the major land masses of the world, but also of the names of the principal cities long before they ever reached any appreciable size, gives definite support to the idea of some kind of Dispersal. And if the Wardens actually do have some basis in historical fact, one begins to speculate that even Jason Himself may have had a historical analog.

Enough of idle speculation, however. The Aven Map has forced archaeologists to look to Heaven City for the source of world culture -- and now that archaeologists have done so, many of the puzzles of history are simplified:

1. The wide dispersal of the basic Jason legends through every nation of the world.

2. The recurrence of the so-called "Songs of Dilna" in various forms in both Stipock and Wien.

3. The universal worldwide dating system, that has for too long been taken for granted. After all, why should the Stipock Calendar, when meshed with the Heaven King's Calendar, show exactly the same date for the Dispersal and the Creation, though Stipock was isolated from the Heaven Plain for more than a thousand years?

Before examining the actual inscriptions on the Aven Map, let us first review the legendary -- but now proved to be at least somewhat reliable -- accounts of the Dispersal.

The Council of Lords. Not to be confused with the present-day Council of Nobles, the Council of Lords was a great meeting at which, according to most versions, Jason brought all the Wardens and their husbands and wives out of the Star Tower and divided the people of Heaven City among them. According to many versions, there were no other people in the world at that time.

The First Leaving. After a year's preparation, the Lords of the South departed overland -- Kapock, Alss (Usset), Del, Poritil, Hux, Fane, and Torne. The next year, the Lords of the North departed -- Wien, Merrion, Stoon, and practically every County of the High Heaven Plain. And the next year, the great fleets of the Lords of the Sea set sail, Noyock and Aven to the west, and Stipock, Jobbin, Linkeree, and Capitol to the south. This order of departure is reinforced by the fact that in many cases, there is no tradition in the nations that left first about the departure of the nations that left later: Kapock, for instance, has no legend to account for the founding of Wien, though Wien accounts very well for the founding of Kapock.

Jason's Ascent to Heaven. This is easily the most confusing account. It seems that Jason (whom we must now suspect of having really lived) not only took his wife Arran into the sky, but also took the Star Tower with him! This is the explanation for the fact that this immense object, supposedly kilometers in height and length, cannot be found anywhere on this planet. Yet this so-called ascent may indeed be based on some kind of fact -- Jason may indeed have taken his departure, but not into the Heavens; rather, he probably wandered into the Heaven Mountains, either living out the rest of his life in Hively or beyond, in the Forest of Waters. Perhaps this is why the freeholders in the Forest of Waters have the seemingly arrogant habit of calling their native land "Jason's Country" and even "The Land That Jason Chose."

Jason's Son. And here we have the wish-fulfillment of every people that remember a Golden Age. Just as the people of Wien look for the return of Hardon Hapwee, the great minstrel who led their armies to victory on the plains of Eastway, so the legend persists, primarily among the common folk, in many different parts of the world, that Jason's Son will someday come, blue of eye as Jason was, and bearing Jason's "hidden name" (this primarily from Stipock), and possessing many magical gifts chiefest among them being the power to see into people's hearts and read their most secret thoughts. Quite an expectation, that! But here again, archaeologists can no longer dismiss the legend. It must have some meaning hidden back in the events of the time, and it is even possible that the real Jason, if there was such a man, made that very promise to the people of his day.

The Dispersal, however, probably did not involve nearly half a million people, as the no-doubt-inflated legends claim. Rather these great national heroes probably left with rather small groups, taking their high-level civilization to more benighted peoples in different areas of the world. This would indeed, at least in one sense of the word, be bringing man -- civilized man -- to places where he had never lived before. And careful study of the Aven Map will undoubtedly bring us a great understanding of the religion, the government, and the culture of people much farther into our past than archaeologists had ever dared to dream of going. . . .

The Aven Map:

The First Translation, 1204,

University of Darkwater,

pp. 22-25

Little Reuben followed the bird into the forest. He did not look where he was going. He did not notice when he stepped through the cleared area that stretched all the way around the farm. But if he had, chances are he wouldn't have stopped. Because he was only four years old, and his education was not complete.

The bird, of course, being small, flew easily through the invisible barrier and on into the dense undergrowth of the Forest of Waters. But Reuben could still see the splash of red, now hopping back and forth on a branch. He did not know that it was hopping because even though the barrier was passable, it still caused such a disturbance in the tiny brain that it was all the bird could do just to stay on the branch.

Reuben ran though the invisible barrier, too -- but it cost him far more than it cost the bird. Between the moment when his head first entered the field and the moment he hit the ground Reuben felt more pain than he had ever felt in his short life. It seemed like every nerve in his whole body was on fire, like huge thunders were erupting in his head, like lightning was dancing in his eyes. So great was the pain that he didn't notice that his shoulder struck a rock and bled profusely.

He didn't even notice the hideous scream he uttered.

And because his leg remained in the middle of the barrier after he fell, the pain went on and on and on.

He fainted, but not soon enough. When he woke in the dark house, with father and grandma bending over him, massaging his arms, he could still hear the terrible thunder in his ears, and white spots danced at the edges of the world, retreating just out of sight when he tried to look at them. And his leg was completely numb.

He heard nothing but the thunder, though grandma's lips moved, and she seemed to be angry. He wondered why his leg felt like it wasn't there. Grandma and father were arguing, it seemed, and he wondered why they were talking so soft that he couldn't hear them.

Grandma clapped her hands hard beside his ear. He thought she was trying to hit him, and he dodged. Father looked triumphant, but grandma shook her head. She reached down and rolled Reuben over on his stomach, so he was looking at the wall. Reuben didn't see anything, then, though he did feel a wind rushing past his ear -- at least, his hair was stirred by something.

Then, as if from far away, he heard through the thunder a soft voice, calling his name. He rolled over quickly, to see who might be calling. But it was grandma, and she was only a few inches away. She seemed to be shouting. He answered, "I can't hear you, grandma, you sound so far away."

But she seemed pleased with that response, and father also looked relieved. Reuben didn't understand.

But he soon understood his useless legs.

Over the months his hearing gradually came back, but the feeling in his leg did not. He could swing the leg from the hip, but he had no control over what happened to the knee or foot. And so he was always falling down, always dropping things, and father and mother were impatient with him. But after a while he learned to walk by throwing his leg forward and bringing the heel down hard on the ground, which made his knee lock. Then he treated his leg just as if it were a crutch, as straight and hard as wood. He swung over it, then threw the leg forward again.

He could not see himself, but his older brothers and his older sister teased him unmercifully because of the way he walked. "You walk like a mantis," they said. "You walk like a crippled rabbit."

But one day grandpa came back. Reuben was old enough by now to notice that grandpa looked younger than father, and much, much younger than grandma. It was a mystery, but the kind of mystery that he knew not to ask questions about. Another mystery was why no one would answer him when he asked if there were other people outside the farm, and where they came from, and who was grandpa's father.

When grandpa came back he took Reuben into the shed behind the house and touched him with little cold boxes and spheres that frightened him and made him cry. But when grandpa left, grandma began massaging Reuben's leg for an hour every day.

Father complained about that, because it took so much time away from important work. But grandma answered, "That's what Jason said, my boy, and so that's what we'll bloody well do. The boy's leg is more important than the weeds."

Father looked angry, but went out of the room. Grandma kept on massaging.

It did no good.

When Reuben turned five, grandma began to take him out to the barrier now and then. He would go with her easily enough until he realized that they were near that partially cleared strip of ground. Then he began to cling to her skirt and try to hold back, try to pull her away.

"No, grandma, please!" But she took him right to the barrier, and then, every time, she said the same words.

"This is the wall of Worthing Farm. On this side of the wall is life and food and clear water and everything good. On that side of the wall is death and pain and terrible loneliness. What happens if you cross that barrier?" She said all this in such a dark and terrible voice that Reuben only cried and answered, "I don't know!"

So she told him. And when she finished, he was sobbing so hard he could barely breathe, and then grandma would take him away from the barrier. At night for weeks after one of those visits to the wall, he would have nightmares, and wake screaming. "Jason!" he could call. "Help me!" But grandpa didn't come -- only grandma, or mother, or father.

When Reuben turned six, he stepped on a sharp rock and cut his bad foot. But he rejoiced -- for he had felt the pain, like a little spark from miles away, but he had felt it.

When he told grandma, she didn't believe him, told him that he must get used to not having the use of his leg. But then father came and looked at Reuben with his vivid blue eyes (just like grandpa's) and said, "He's telling the truth, mother." And then grandma cried for joy and hugged him in her long, strong arms.

And because he was getting better, father began to give him more work to do. Reuben learned ropemaking and bucketmaking and was taught all the seeds and which to plant at what day of the year and month. He learned the calendar and the names of all the weeds, but grandma never taught him how she did her trick of scratching a quill on thin strips of paper, and then say the same words from it every time. She taught no one how to do it, not even father.

When Reuben turned eight, father said he was old enough to come on the Walk.

Reuben didn't want to go, but when father decided, the children did it.

The Walk came every seventh day. Winter or summer, blizzard or wind or the hottest day of the year, they would leave at noon and walk to the northeast corner of Worthing Farm. There at the corner father would repeat the very words grandma had used. Except that when he said them, he not only made the children afraid, but he also seemed to be afraid himself. When the words were said, they walked in single file all the way around the barrier. Reuben could hardly stand to be so close to the edge. In the dark forest beyond he could imagine them, waiting. He knew them well: he had seen them in a hundred terrible dreams. Now, walking along the barrier, he felt the same sweating, freezing sensation that woke him up screaming in the night. He kept turning around to look, but they retreated out of sight before he could get a clear glimpse. He stayed as close to father as possible. Why doesn't he hurry? Reuben wondered. Doesn't he know they're watching us?

Then, after they had walked the whole border of the farm, three kilometers on a side, they came, wearily, to the Worthingstone. It was a smooth silver-colored tube, harder than any other rock, and it always gleamed in the sunlight. Etched into the stone by a power greater than any of them, because they knew they could never cut its surface, were strange marks. The same kind of marks grandma made on the paper.

And at the Worthingstone father would say, his voice trembling with emotion, "This stone was marked by your grandpa. He set it here to protect us. As long as this stone is here, the enemies from outside Worthing Farm cannot harm us. But if any harm comes to the stone, or if any of the people of Worthing Farm leave, then our protection will end, and terrible death will come upon us all."

Then the Walk was over, and they gratefully left the barrier, walking slowly at first, then running, then bounding across the farm until they were at the dark house.

The light house, of course, they could not enter -- it was grandma's, and it had the trick of flying off. Everyone had to hide in the dark house, and then there would be a terrible roaring, and then grandma and the light house were gone. Matthew told Reuben once, in whispers, behind the shed, "Father said once that she goes to grandpa."

Whenever grandma came back, she was quiet for days; but she seemed serene and happy all that time, going about her work with a smile. Father would ask her, "What's so grand that you're grinning all the time?"

But grandma only answered, "Why don't you look behind my eyes, and see?"

Whenever she said that, father turned away looking angry and ashamed. Matthew told Reuben it was because grandpa had once done terrible things to father for looking into grandma's thoughts. No one was allowed to look into grandma's thoughts.

"Will I be able to know what people think?" Reuben asked Matthew one day.

Matthew laughed. "You're too little!"

But it was about the time that Reuben turned twelve that three things happened to him. His leg was almost completely better. His chest and groin began growing hair. And he began to have flashes of what people thought.

It was then that the stranger came to Worthing Farm.

He was short, and dressed in clothing that seemed like another skin, only dark brown. Reuben, Matthew, father and Jacob were hoeing the potatoes when he stepped from the forest. How he had got through the barrier no one knew. But he was strange, he was from outside, and he must be terribly powerful.

Reuben could not control his gift yet -- but he did manage to catch glimpses. They were frightening. He saw images of great halls and huge towers, the world like a little ball in the distance, men and women in strange clothing doing strange things. He heard words and sentences that had no meaning, but that sounded vaguely wondrous, and also menacing. And he understood something else: this stranger was a man of power, a man of might, a man who was used to ruling other men.

He was everything that Reuben had learned to hate and fear from outside. And almost at the same time that Reuben realized that, father and Matthew and Jacob silently picked up their bronze-headed hoes and raised them high and advanced on the stranger.

Later, Reuben could not remember if the man had spoken or not. He only knew that the man looked coldly at them, and turned and walked back toward the barrier. Don't let him get away! Reuben silently shouted, and the others thought the same thing, because they ran to catch the man, kill him before he could get away and come back with more men with such frightening minds and such calm, confident power. But the man reached the edge, fiddled with something in his hands, and stepped easily through the barrier.

At the cleared space the men stopped, wordlessly watching as the stranger calmly walked back into the forest. When he was out of sight, they came away from the barrier, shaking with fear as they always did when the barrier was too close, too long.

They said little about the incident. Reuben assumed they didn't want to tell the women and worry them. But grandma looked at them all carefully at dinner, and asked, "What is it you're not telling me?"

And father smiled and answered, "Why don't you look behind my eyes and see?"

Grandma reached over and slapped his face, lightly. "I said tell me."

And so they told her about the stranger. When they were done, she leaped to her feet. "And you waited to mention this until now! I've raised fools for sons, but I had no idea how foolish!" And she ran out of the house. Soon came the roaring of the light house, and she was gone.

They assumed she'd be back soon, but she never came.

Reuben grew up and married his Uncle Henry's youngest daughter, Mary, and all their sons had bright blue eyes, and all of them, at puberty, could look behind each other's eyes and see each other's heart. Nothing else of importance happened to Reuben; he lived out his life within the confines of the farm, and grew old, and saw his great-grandchildren born.

One day, however, when he was very, very old, he went to the barrier alone, and stood there for a very long time. He wasn't sure why he had come. But finally, in order to ease the longing, he reached out his hand into the space where the barrier had always been.

And felt nothing.

He took a step forward, and still felt nothing. And another step, and another, and he was completely through the barrier to the other side, and had felt no pain, nothing at all.

He touched a tree on the other side. It felt like any other tree. The sky looked normal enough. And the leaves crunched underfoot just the same.

And then he walked back through the barrier, and fled back to his tiny room at the back of the old house, and stayed there, trembling, for an hour. He told no one of what he had found. But from that day on, he made his son Simon lead the Walk, and Reuben stayed away from the barrier for the rest of his life.

He was buried with his head pointing toward the Worthingstone.

Jason Worthing awoke from somec for the hundredth time within the pilot's cabin of the starship. But now he no longer exercised -- it was all he could do to get out and walk around, force the blood to flow. He had long since ceased wondering how old he really was -- he looked not older than forty, and felt ninety-nine. For three centuries the responsibility for a world had been on his shoulders; for forty years since then, he had been wakened every year or so to talk to Arran when she flew the scoutship from the farm to the starship. He assumed, when he got up, that it was she whose coming had roused him.

But the voice that spoke to him as he stood, flexing his arms beside the coffin, was a man's voice, and Jason looked up in shock.

The man was fairly old, but dressed in Empire fashions, though the color combinations were strange to Jason. And the old man laughed as he saw Jason's puzzlement. Jason looked into the stranger's mind, and then laughed.

"Abner Doon!" he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "I'd long since given up any hope! Abner Doon!"

And the old man embraced him. "Sweaty, aren't you," Doon commented.

"And still making a virtue out of discourtesy, I see," Jason said.

And they sat and looked at each other for a while. Finally Jason laughed again. "You know, I kept expecting any time, after the first hundred years here, that you'd turn up someday. I think I was still hanging on to some hope of that. What kept you?"

"Oh, things, you know. The revolution took a bit longer than I had expected to foment, that kind of thing. People are so damned unpredictable."

"I know," Jason said. They sat in silence for a moment.

"Oh, by the way, "Doon said. "I took some liberties. I read all the Histories you've got stashed in here -- fascinating reading. And the wreckage in the back of the ship here is self-explanatory. So instead of waking you and wasting your time on a guided tour, I made a few visits around your little planet."

"And is everything up to snuff?"

"Going nicely. You'll be interested to know that Wien's group -- Wien's dead, by the way -- made it to the lake without muck trouble, and there's a magnificent little bronze-age town growing up along the shores, with farms spreading all over. And Noyock's quite ambitious -- he's already sent colonists to five of the major islands. You've accomplished a great deal. A planet with no metals, and you've created a stable, religious society, progressive, well-governed, peaceful, knowledgeable -- my congratulations."

Jason nodded, smiling.

Doon moved in for the kill: "So what the hell are you doing with that miserable little farm in the middle of the Forest of Waters?"

"Oh," Jason said. "You went there."

"Yes, I went there, and they damn near killed me before I got away. That's when I decided to come back here and wake you up. That farm is the opposite of everything else you've done -- everywhere else, poets, music, a chance for a totally nontechnological culture or real beauty and refinement. And on that farm, everyone suspicious, murderous, ignorant, and hemmed in by the strongest damn mindshield I've ever had the misfortune to bypass."

"Well," Jason said, "that's my showcase."

Doon snorted. "Papa's pride and joy."

"Exactly."

Doon looked up, startled. "You don't mean it!"

"Didn't you see their eyes?"

"I didn't come close enough. You mean that's your family?"

"That's where my genes are being stored. Inbred. There's a very small chance that a few idiots will start turning up after a while. But in the meantime, they're going to be getting my genes from every parent for a few generations."

Doon looked disturbed. Angry. He got up and walked to the control board. "Dammit, Jason! That's terrible. I mean, it's fine to want to improve the strain -- but inbreeding like that can cause real harm. You just don't have the right to play with people's lives like that!"

Doon might have said more, but Jason started laughing uproariously, and it didn't take Doon long to join in.

"Oh, well," Doon finally said. "From one man who's spent his life playing God to another, I must say you've done a thorough job."

And Jason reached over and shook his hand.

The door from the storage area opened, and Arran came in. She rushed to the coffin, saw it was empty, and whirled to see Doon and Jason shaking hands, looking at her in surprise. "Arran," Jason said.

"That must be the stranger," Arran said.

"Arran?" asked Doon. "Not Arran Handully --"

"Correct," Jason said. "Not Arran Handully. Just Arran. My wife."

Arran stepped forward, eyeing Doon suspiciously. "He came to the farm, Jason, just as you said. Thomas and the boys drove him off, though -- I came as soon as they told me."

"It's all right, Arran," Jason said. "He's a friend of mine."

Doon got up and offered her his hand. She took it carefully, and Doon smiled. "Still beautiful," he said, "as beautiful as ever, though the years have deepened you, it seems."

"Have we met each other?" Arran asked, surprised.

"A long time ago," Doon said.

"Never mind, Arran." Jason took her arm, and she clung to him -- clung as she had when they both looked young, and she was a bride, living for three glorious years in Heaven City as the wife of God, before the Dispersal, before she went to the farm in the Forest of Waters and raised a family in the strange fashion Jason had commanded.

"Is he --" she asked, then stopped.

Jason looked at her carefully, then smiled. "Yes, Arran. He's my father."

They spent three days together in the ship, telling Doon anecdotes that hadn't found their way into the History, he speaking of events in strange, far-off places that left Arran dazzled and filled her dreams. Doon and Jason pored over charts, talked about the past, the future. And then Doon said, "Well, Jason. I see you've thought of everything, and you don't need the advice of an old man anymore. Too bad I won't be around to see what happens when some superhuman descendent of yours comes out of the wood and demands his rights as Jason's Son!"

"Where are you going next?" Jason asked. Doon only smiled. "I think," he said, "that I'll go back home now."

"Aren't you going to visit any other colonies?"

"Oh, no. No, Jason. Actually, I probably shouldn't have visited here, either. But you see, I had to kill a couple of thousand years before I dared go home to Garden and find some subtle way of living out my last few years in peace and quiet. After all, even Hitler was forgotten after two thousand years, and I wasn't quite as bad as he." They both laughed, and then Jason put his arms around the old man and embraced him, and Doon hugged him back. "You're the prize in my collection, Jason. The best I ever found. That's the best part of being God, you know -- when you create someone who surpasses you."

Doon went out to his own suborbital cruiser and, without looking back, closed the door and lifted off to rejoin his starship in orbit. Jason watched until the craft was out of sight.

Arran asked him when he turned around, "Well, Jason, do I go back to the farm now?"

He looked behind her eyes.

"You don't want to go back, do you?"

She shook her head, and her aging eyes filled with tears. "Let me stay here with you, now, Jason! They're all trained. They'll stay inside the farm for a thousand years!"

"More likely two hundred, with luck," Jason said. "That's all I could hope for. The barrier itself won't last more than another fifty or sixty years. Your work's done there, Arran. Far better than I could do it."

"Why," she asked, "didn't you want to stay with me there?"

"Oh, no, Arran, I did want to stay with you. But I can't always do what I want, you know. You see, there are things in my mind that the boys might have understood, if they'd had enough time. Things that would have destroyed everything."

"You mean they can see into you, too?"

"You can stay with me now, Arran, I want you to."

And she threw her arms around him and wept. "I'm old and ugly!" she cried. "And you're still young. You'll always be young! I've lost my life with you!" And he let her weep, saying softly, "We all lose parts of our life, Arran. It can't be helped." But for a fleeting moment he felt a bitter regret for all the life that he, too, had lost; he grieved for friends who had grown old and died while he slept in the coffin; friends whose minds had been stripped by somec, whose life and love had been lost; for the children that he hadn't really been able to enjoy, for the life he had never been able to taste. "Being God," he said, "is the worst damn job in the universe."

Then he led Arran to a coffin in the now-empty B tube, and put her to sleep. He sealed the tube carefully, inspecting everything to make sure that the components had lasted the time well. Then he went through the rest of the ship, preparing it as if for deep space. The gap in the side he could do nothing about, but the interior locks in the ship were as able to withstand pressure as the exterior surface.

When he was satisfied with the condition of the starship, he sat in the control room and gently lifted the monstrous structure into the sky. He hovered it, so that the rotation of the planet moved the surface under him. Soon the land retreated to the east, and he was over the sea. He flew south, then, to a place far from any land, and gently settled the starship toward the surface of the ocean. The ship barely noticed contact with the water; it sank easily beneath the waves. And the structure was hardly enough to bear the pressure at the bottom; Jason knew that the ship had been built for far worse conditions than these; that perhaps thousands of years from now the metal would still be uncorroded, the ship's computers still capable of being revived, the ship's engines still able to bring her to the surface.

He wrote a message and laid it on the control board, spoke the same message into the ship's log, gave it to the computer so that any contact with the computer would print it out on the screen. Then he went to the coffin, lay down, put the sleep helmet on his head, and waited for his brain to be recorded. The job was done.

And then for no reason he could think of, Jason began to weep, softly, in his coffin. He was still weeping as the needle stabbed him and the somec scoured through his veins, and the agony of another thousand years of sleep began.

The ship lay waiting on the bottom. Sea creatures crawled along its surface, or made their homes in A tube, which lay open to the water. Every fifty years or so the ship would come to life, lights going on and off from one end of the ship to the other. The engines would fire, killing millions of infinitesimal plants and animals. Then the ship would go back to sleep again.

Each time it happened, a message flashed on the computer screen for a full minute:

"I am Jason Worthing. Think carefully before you waken me. If my work has failed, I don't want to know it. And if it has succeeded, but wasn't good for the people after all, I would rather sleep on. My dream of the future is too good for me to be eager to wreck it with reality."

The bottomfish, with their self-made light to protect them from the darkness of the deep, scuttled in and out of the torn place in the starship's hull. To them it was just another rock that could shelter them, for a short time, from the death always waiting just around the corner in the night.

Previous

http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=issue&vol=i1&article=_hotsleep-005