Artwork by Sam Ellis

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Stipock woke with the sleep helmet still on his head, and as he moved his arms to the sides, he realized to his surprise that he was still in his coffin. It had never happened before. His body was soaked in sweat from the waking drugs, and his mind refused to clear. Bright spots appeared in front of his eyes. He blinked. The spots went away.

He reached up to the sides of the coffin, pulled himself to a sitting position, and looked around.

Not a Sleeproom at all, he knew instantly. The mass of controls placed within an arm's reach of a chair could only be a ship's control board. The space was cramped. Garol Stipock had never been in a warship before, but he had seen loops, and he recognized quickly that this had to be the control cabin of a ship of the fleet.

He also recognized the man standing at the head of the coffin, who said softly, "Is everything all right, Dr. Stipock?"

"Jazz Worthing," Stipock said, and his body flushed with heat as everything fit together -- waking in a starship, and Jazz Worthing, one of the prime enemies of the people of Capitol, standing by his side.

"I'm in a colony ship," he breathed, the words not sounding real.

"Very quick" said Jazz Worthing.

"Why? I never volunteered --"

"Not so quick, then?"

"No," Stipock said. "We must have launched our little coup attempt. We must have lost."

"In a nutshell," Jazz said, "that's so. There are more ramifications, of course. But I doubt they'd interest you."

"They interest me very much. Who else was caught?"

"Everyone."

Stipock turned away, suddenly conscious of his nakedness, suddenly aware of how vulnerable he was. "Can I have come clothing?"

"The ship has it ready for you." The clothing landed in a pile in the foot of the coffin. Stipock clambered out of the box.

"Is there a shower first?"

The starpilot pointed, and Stipock went in, showered, urinated, and came back out and dressed. His thoughts began to settle down in the process. Colonies. Death. No more somec. The raw emotions never reached panic; instead he began to think: Adjust. Fit in. Get along. Survive.

"What kind of planet is this?"

"Agricultural," Jazz answered

"Most are," Stipock retorted, "at first."

"This one always will be," Jazz said. "Fossil fuels are buried too deep to get to without metal tools. Copper and tin are extractable with wooden tools. Iron is only within three kilometers of the surface at one place, the middle of an uninhabitable desert. This planet will have a very hard time getting out of the bronze age."

Stipock was surprised at Worthing's attitude. "Don't you have any heavy equipment?"

"Yes," Jazz said.

"Then what's this about the bronze age?"

Jazz smiled. "Awake for three minutes, and already you know more than the captain."

Stipock flushed with anger, and grew angrier at himself because he knew that his pale skin always turned red when he was angry, making it impossible for him to hide his emotions.

"What am I supposed to do? Where are the others?"

"The others are all outside. You're the last."

Stipock didn't know how to take that. "Why last? Why in here, for that matter? I thought colony ships had a tape-and-tap."

"They do," Jazz said. "Ours isn't working."

"Why am I in here alone?"

"Your situation is unique, Dr. Stipock."

"Why? I wasn't even one of the leaders of the coup. I'm not about to cause any problems."

Jazz laughed. "Your existence at this moment is a problem. One which I created myself, I know, but I have to see what'll happen. Experimenting, you know?"

Stipock felt sick. He had seen the stolen loop, knew that Jazz Worthing was set to lead a rebellion of the Fleet to seize control of somec. But if Jazz's rebellion had succeeded --

"What are you doing here? I didn't think top level starpilots were exactly thrilled with colony assignments."

Jazz sighed. "That's the problem with using old tapes to wake you up with. You don't know a damn thing. Follow me." And Jazz turned on his heel and walked to the back of the control room, opened a door, and stepped through. Stipock followed, telling himself that he'd have to humor this man, but knowing that whatever his situation turned out to be, he'd hate it.

They went through a large storage compartment, with many large and small coffins, most of them empty and stacked out of the way. A few were still connected. "Ocelots just aren't needed in the ecology," Jazz explained casually, "and I decided skunks had no useful purpose either, just now. Avoid the nuisance, you know."

Stipock followed the starpilot to the end of the storage room, where he opened a door. Jazz Worthing watched him as he stepped through the door. Stipock looked around -- there were three sets of gauges and dials grouped around three doors. He resisted the impulse to ask questions, though he could think of no good reason not to. He just didn't want to converse with a man whom he had long hated (from a distance) and who now had a great deal of power over him (from close up).

Jazz parted the seal on the door marked A, opened it, and stepped back. Stipock moved to the door and looked through.

Dazzling sunlight poured in through a long oval slit in the roof. It took a moment for Stipock to adjust to the light. When he could see clearly, he gasped. The long tube, which had been lined with coffins, was a ruin. All the metal was melted down, and a clear swath had been cut through. There was no way a single passenger in that section could have survived. "What happened?" Stipock whispered.

"An enemy ship. Two of them, as a matter of fact. I had a choice between letting a projectile hit the stardrive and vaporize us all, or letting it hit here, in the hope that some would survive."

"What a choice," Stipock said. "Were either of the other two tubes hit?"

"All the life support in C tube was destroyed by the heat of the projectile's passage," Jazz said. Stipock noticed that the starpilot formed some of the words and sentences with difficulty, as if he were unaccustomed to saying them.

"I was in B tube?"

Jazz smiled patiently. "Isn't that obvious?"

Then Worthing stepped into the ruined tube, and Stipock followed. They walked carefully along the tube. Stipock looked up as he passed under the tear in the roof. The sun was blinding. He looked away, covering his eyes. A purple spot blocked some of his vision. "Don't look at the sun," Jazz said.

"Thanks for the warning," said Garol Stipock.

They made their way to the end of the tube and didn't have to open a door, because the hole left by the projectile was ample. They clambered through, and Stipock was horrified by what he saw -- the tape rack mostly fused and melted by heat. "The memory tapes," he said. "Look at this -- this is terrible."

Jazz reached out with his toe, and showed Stipock an empty slot in the lower right-hand corner of the B-tube tape rack. "That's where the only B tube tape that was usable was."

"Mine."

"Again, obvious."

Stipock leaned against the wall. "But what about the others? They won't have any memory at all, no training, no education. They'll be like infants. What are we going to do?"

"It's all been done."

Stipock was puzzled. "But how? If you didn't have the tapes -- you said I was the last one wakened! Why? How long did you leave me asleep after landing?"

"Fifty-eight years."

It was too much to understand all at once. Bad enough to wake up from somec and find that your last waking had been wiped and you were in the colonies, irrevocably off somec until you died -- that much he had bargained for, had known the risks when he joined the conspiracy. But the deaths of two-thirds of the colonists in a battle in space, and then the loss of every survivor's tape except his own --

And why had he been left asleep for fifty-eight years?

"It wasn't an easy decision," Jazz said, answering Stipock's unspoken question. "A dozen times that first year I headed for the Star Tower -- for the ship -- to waken you. I needed your help."

"Then why didn't you? Because I was a rebel against your conspiracy? In a case like this, you forget political differences. Captain Worthing, I would have helped you."

Jazz smiled slightly. "Would you?"

"Damn right!" Stipock said. "Damn right! Of course I would!"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it? Whether you'll help me, or whether you'll work against me."

"Now? Aren't they all functioning adults by now?"

Jazz nodded, then went to the door from the schoolroom to B tube, opened it, went in. Stipock followed. Most of the coffins were empty, standing open. But twenty of them were occupied. Jazz touched each one as he passed, said a name. Most of them Stipock recognized -- Fritz Kapock, the designer; Sara Hamilton, a wholesaler who had been one of the foremost leaders in the rebellion; Arran Handully, the best-known actress in the Empire and a primary financial backer of the rebellion. Others he didn't know, of course -- he hadn't been that high in the ranks of the rebellion, to know everyone.

"Why are they still here? I thought you said I was last?"

"They aren't still here," Jazz answered. "They're back here. These are the ones who have proved themselves -- the most creative, the most capable, those best able to lead. I bring them back here to sleep, so I can use them again."

"You still have people on somec," Stipock said. "But that's absolutely forbidden in the colonies."

"You worry about the law?" Jazz asked. "You're the man who invented the probe, Garol Stipock."

Stipock flushed again, was embarrassed again that his anger showed so obviously. "I also invented the geologer, which you no doubt used for your planetary survey."

"Of course. I'm just pointing out that in special circumstances, law-abiding people break laws. You must admit these circumstances are special."

"When the next Empire ship comes, let's see what they say about it."

"There won't be any Empire ship," Jazz said. "We left Capitol more than a thousand years ago."

Another piece of unassimilatable information. "A thousand years! Then we must be -"

"Very, very far from the pale of human settlement. And the Empire doesn't know we're here."

"Why!"

"Does it matter? Here we are. Now I'll explain this carefully, and you'll listen carefully, and we shall see what happens next. Dr. Stipock, these people all had empty minds, like infants. No conditioning from Capitol culture. No knowledge of somec."

"They know now, anyway," Stipock interrupted.

"I said listen. They know nothing about the universe except what I could teach them. They know nothing about law except what I have taught them. And in all of this, I was limited by what they could understand. On Capitol, children were surrounded by the artifacts of civilization. All the little gadgets that kept us alive and made life fun. How many people on Capitol actually know how those things work?"

Stipock snorted. "Almost no one."

"Only the specialists. Now if people who see these things and use them every day have no idea how they work, how could I explain, say, a laser to these colonists, who have never seen one?"

"I never thought of that. They don't have a fragment of the science of the last four thousand years, then," Stipock said. "What have you done?"

"I haven't tried to teach them."

"But they should know! They have to know --"

"Why? On a planet where the technology they and their children will have can't possibly extract iron or aluminum from the earth? On a planet where coal is inaccessible and oil even harder to get? Should I tell them about star travel and telephones and loops and food processors and tubes and toilets? Should I tell them that they're living in squalor and ignorance and make them hate their lives?"

Stipock shook his head. He sat on an empty coffin, looked at his hands. "But not to tell them anything. Captain Worthing, I couldn't do it."

"Yes you could," Jazz said. "I even tried to tell them. But they didn't understand. I told them I brought them down from the sky in the ship, and they decided that I must be superhuman. How could I explain the science of the stardrive? They have no need for higher mathematics -- it would just be a game to them, and a pretty damned hard one. None of them has time to learn things that can't be used -- it takes all their time from dawn to dark just to stay alive."

"It sounds like hell."

"They're completely happy."

"That's hard to believe."

"Only because you remember the Empire, Stipock. If you forgot the Empire, you'd live like them and be happy, too."

"What do they make of things like the starship, then?" Stipock asked. "If they don't know about technology, what do they think of the fact that you're still young after fifty years or so, that these people you've got in here don't get any older?"

"They think," Jason said, "that I'm God."

Stipock laughed uproariously. "Well, I hope you set them straight on that!"

"I never tried," Jason answered, shrugging.

"You're joking," Stipock said, and then saw that he was not. "What are you doing, setting yourself up here as the local deity? What right do you have to force them into superstition and ignorance?"

"The ignorance is unavoidable. And they made up the idea that I was God all by themselves."

"You could have told them it wasn't true."

"And accomplished what? You've been pampered all your life, Stipock, just like everybody else in the Empire. Well, they've got a hard life out there, and no precedents, no parents, no one to teach them. Except me. I'm their parents and their teachers and their ties with the past. They needed a foundation, and I'm that foundation. Why else do you think people believe in God? They can't live without faith."

Stipock was silent, said nothing, but told himself, This man is insane. This man is playing God with people's lives. I've got to stop him somehow.

"Garol Stipock," Jazz said, "you can try to stop me all you like. As long as all you do is talk, and as long as you obey the laws."

"The laws? You're the laws, aren't you?"

"I wrote them. But they stand alone now. The government is entirely in their hands. I visit now and then, to install a new Warden, to take people who've excelled into the ship to sleep. You won't find it oppressive."

Stipock got up and walked out of the tube. He didn't look back to see if Jazz was following or not -- the footsteps behind him soon told him that. He went back to the control room, and went to the door that led outside. He began unlocking it, but when it came to unfastening the seal, it wouldn't budge.

"Sorry, Stipock. Keyed to my thumbprint. And in case you get any ideas, it's keyed to my living thumbprint. Wrong temperature, no pulse, and no electric current, and the door won't open. In fact, if I'm dead and I touch the button, the control room blows up. The Fleet's little anticapture system."

"Are you keeping me a prisoner here?"

"It depends on what you plan to do when you go out there."

"I plan," Stipock said grimly, "to tell them all what a lying crazy bastard you are."

"Still a rebel," Jazz said. "Do you think they'd believe you?"

And Stipock calmed down, slumped as he realized how stupid his impulse had been. He would be a stranger to them all. Why should they believe him?

"Garol," Jazz said, "strange as it may seem, I know how you feel. A man once played God with my life, and I hated him for it for a while. But eventually I realized that what he was planning was good. I still had no choice but to obey him -- but I didn't want another choice. The vision was good.

"I have a vision of this world, Garol. I imagine it being a simple, peaceful place, where people are happy, by and large. I at least want to give it a good start. And if that means giving them a deity to worship until they no longer need one, then I'll give them a deity."

"Why did you even wake me?" Stipock said. "Why did you even use that tape?"

"Well, as for that, if you don't cooperate, I'll simply put you back to sleep and wake you as I woke the others, with no tape at all. So in the long run you'll be part of the colony one way or another."

Stipock laughed bitterly. "Then put me under, because the way I feel right now, I'm sure as hell not going to cooperate."

"You're a brilliant man, Stipock," Jazz said. "There have been only eleven significant advances in the Empire technology since the beginning of somec. Four of them were yours."

"Four?"

"I count the probe. Stipock, I don't think the way you do. I can help people solve their human problems, and I've taught them everything I could learn out of the ship's library. But I can't invent. And in a world with no metal, they need invention. We need it. Now if I put you under and woke you up mindless, maybe you'd still become an inventor and maybe not. Kapock was a designer and he still has great sensitivity -- but Linkeree was a businessman and now he carves in wood. You see?"

"So you do need me."

"We can survive just fine without you. But I want your help."

"I won't help you as long as you're playing God, Captain Worthing."

Jazz shrugged. "It's your choice. I'm walking out of here in three days. They expect me then. Either you'll come with me as you are now, or you'll come with me as an infant in a box. Up to you."

Stipock shouted, "You really believe you're God, don't you, juggling with people's lives as if they didn't have anything to say about it!"

Jason sat down at the control board, swiveled the chair around to face Stipock. "People never decide the major events in their lives, Dr. Stipock. The major decisions are made for them. The only things that people decide are the minor things. Whether they'll be happy or not, for instance; whom they'll love and whom they'll hate; how trusting they intend to be. You can decide to trust me, and I'll decide to trust you, and then maybe you can be happy, if you've got guts enough to be."

Stipock, bright red with rage, leaped for Jazz Worthing -- no clear plan in mind, of course. Just a vague but overpowering urge to cause pain. And pain was, indeed, caused. Stipock lay on the floor, holding his arm.

"That'll be a nasty bruise, Dr. Stipock. Remember -- you may have won a few duels on Capitol, but the Fleet trains its soldiers to win. And I always will."

A gross misappropriation of funds, Stipock thought humorlessly. He felt the anger and humiliation of a cripple -- unable to control his own fate, hopelessly trapped and yet capable, completely capable, if only he could set himself free of his handicap.

Jazz stayed busy the rest of the day, and Stipock began looking over his shoulder. He began wondering, from time to time, why Jazz was so calm and easy about having him loose in the control cabin, as if he posed no threat at all. But from time to time -- in fact, whenever it occurred to him to try to attack the starpilot -- Jazz would almost playfully, absentmindedly flash out a hand and bruise Stipock, a sharp, quick pain somewhere on his body. A reminder. And Stipock would put down any idea of resistance.

What Jazz was studying, and what Stipock read over his shoulder, were charts and readouts from the computer on probable population figures, depending on different variables. Now and then, curiosity aroused, Stipock would ask a question. "Which of these is accurate?"

"All of them. But the best predictor seems to be the max-max-mini figures -- maximum fertility, maximum available resources, minimum environmental hostility. The people out there seem to like having babies. At least, they don't want to quit having them bad enough to invent twin beds," Jason answered, and Stipock couldn't help laughing.

And reports, all written by Jason himself, on the progress of the colony under each Warden. The names were all familiar -- Kapock, Steve Wien, others that he had known or heard of. "Who's this Ciel?"

"Kapock's oldest son. Second generation. The first native-born that I appointed as Warden."

"Why do you call them Wardens?"

"I like the word."

"And why call it Heaven City, and the Star River, and all this other mumbo-jumbo."

"I like mumbo-jumbo."

Angry again, Stipock went away from the control and fumed quietly in a corner for a few minutes. He and Jazz spoke no more that day, until Jason yawned, looked at his watch, and said, "Time to sleep."

"Not for me," Stipock said.

"When I sleep," Jazz said, "you sleep."

And Jazz had a needle in his hand. Stipock leaped to his feet, bounded away to comparative safety by the door to the storage room. "Don't come near me with that."

"You're afraid," Jazz said, "that once I have you asleep normally, I'll put you under somec. Well, I won't. When I put you under somec, you'll know it."

"I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Got any choice?"

There was a struggle anyway, a brief scuffle that Jazz won handily, and Stipock soon slept.

Lights up. Stipock opened his eyes. Jazz Worthing was leaning over his bed, and Stipock sighed in relief. Awake another day, with memory still intact.

Breakfast out of the ship's paste. Tasted foul. "Well, the ship has been out for over a thousand years," Jazz said, smiling pleasantly as Stipock grimaced and forced it down. "Usually they're refitted within a century. Time does things to flavor."

After breakfast, more reports, and Stipock began to get a feel for the community outside the starship. By lunchtime he had even conceded to himself that Jason had really done remarkably well, turning mindless infants into a functional, working society in only five decades -- and without being there much of the time.

"I can see," he finally said, "that their worship of you served a real purpose for a time. Continuity. Their awe of you lent authority to the Warden, kept them together."

Jazz turned around in amazement. "Do I hear you, Garol Stipock, the perfect judge of right and wrong, actually commending me, the man who plays God, of doing something right?"

Stipock turned red and Jazz laughed. "I told you that before. But you wouldn't believe me. Just like a scientist. Perfectly willing to decide what's right and wrong without recourse to the evidence."

"When I saw the evidence," Stipock said grimly, "I changed my mind."

Suddenly more mild, Jazz said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to mock. And I'm glad you saw my point."

"Then I hope you'll see mine," Stipock said. "This God thing can't be forever. Let's make a bargain. Let me go out there, let me live there for at least a year. I'll be 'inventive' or whatever you expect of me -- I'll try to find ways to improve their lives with the limited resources. I'll help build up your colony. I'll obey all the laws."

"Bargain?" Jason asked. "And what will I do for you in this bargain?"

"You'll simply let me teach. I won't undermine the Warden's authority. I'll just try to wean them away from their belief in this God you've become to them."

"By teaching?"

"Persuading."

"You realize that if you try to teach them that I was a traitor to the Empire, which your little conspiracy believed, they'll either not understand, or they'll get very upset at you."

"I'm not a fool," Stipock said, "at least not usually. I know enough to avoid getting people angry. Peaceful means. Let me try to change their minds. Or do you like being God so much you won't even take a chance?"

Jazz cocked his head and looked intently at Stipock's eyes. "You mean you'd promise to obey all the laws, to build up the community in every possible way, in exchange for my allowing you to teach people that I'm not God?"

"I promise it now."

"It must be worth a lot to you to unthrone God," Jazz said.

"If there were a God," Stipock said, "I wouldn't fight it. But when a normal man acts the role, then I'll unmake him the best I can."

"Well, then," Jazz said, "I think that's a fair enough bargain. If you can persuade them, then fine. But I warn you -- I'll give the Warden power to imprison you if you incite or perform one act of violence. Even one. Agreed?"

Stipock hesitated, then nodded. "But I won't be responsible if some crazy person takes an idea into his own head --"

Jazz laughed. "This isn't the Empire, Stipock. The Wardens are all just. They try to be fair. And usually succeed."

"Who's the Warden now?"

"Hop Noyock," Jazz said.

"Your agent?"

"Was. But since I don't have any more income, his ten percent is gone, too."

Jazz held out his hand. Stipock took it, and they struck the bargain. Afterward, Stipock laughed. "I can't believe I'm making a bargain without lawyers and contracts."

"This isn't the Empire."

"Why are you trusting me?"

"Because," Jason said, "I have the foolish belief that I can see into people's hearts. I've looked into yours."

"A rather dismal place, wasn't it?" Stipock said, playing along with the joke.

"No more so than normal," Jazz said, smiling. "You still hate me. But I can trust you to keep your part of the bargain.

"And," Jason added, "you can trust me to keep mine."

Noyock laid down the pen on the table and rubbed his eyes. He shouldn't have left the writing until the last minute. But the History had to be kept. Not since the first day of the first Warden, Kapock the Eldest, had any Warden failed to keep the History, and Noyock prided himself on being more thorough than any of them.

A rooster crowed, and then another, as if in answer. Noyock reached over and opened the shutter slightly. Still dark -- someone must be walking the chickenyards, then. But perhaps it was nearly morning. Was the sky a little lighter? Had to sleep. Jason coming today, he muttered to himself. Yawned again. Jason today, and the History is ready.

Noyock stretched, and left the room he had set aside for his duties as Warden -- his planning, the History, meetings with individuals and couples, when the problems or questions weren't appropriate for open discussion. This, too, was new, since Jason had left. He will be pleased, Noyock told himself. I hope he's pleased.

Below him, he could hear the clank of tin pans, the dull sound of a wooden spoon stirring rapidly in a clay pot. Who this morning? Riavian, Noyock's own wife? Or his daughter-in-law, Esten, Wien's eldest daughter, who had married Aven in a joyful ceremony -- how many years ago? Thirty. Noyock chuckled. Poor Aven, he thought. My poor son, now more than fifty years old, while I look scarcely older than I did the day Jason brought me down from the Star Tower, they all tell me.

And Noyock paused to think about Jason for a moment, to think of the miracle of dwelling in the Star Tower, because no one who dwelt there with Jason ever aged. They could go in, as Noyock had done, leaving their children in their twenties, and come out to find that their children seemed to be older than they. Poor Aven. But no, aging was a part of life, the natural pattern of things. Like the cows and horses that grew old and died. It was not poor Aven. It was blessed, lucky, favored Noyock and Riavain and all the others who had been taken into the Star Tower; and thinking of Jason's goodness to everyone in Heaven City, Noyock's eyes filled with tears, and he wondered if he wasn't getting old after all, and just as he thought that, he heard a roar from downstairs.

"Lying to your father on top of disobedience! What kind of child have I brought forth!"

Aven, Noyock thought to himself, and doubtless poor Hoom was the object of Aven's wrath. Aven had always been obedient, deferent, careful. And now the poor man was cursed with a son who was willful, forgetful, prone to disobey. But, Noyock remembered with a chuckle, the boy was a hell of a lot more fun to have around than his father had been. And Noyock had often spent hours with Hoom as he was growing up, teaching him, answering the boy's questions, asking his own. Bright boy.

The slapping sound of a leather strap. Ah, thought Noyock. This is a bad one, then. Noyock debated whether to go, for though he tried not to intervene in the way Aven raised the boy, he had often found that by simply appearing on the scene, Aven's anger was tempered, and Hoom was spared the worst.

Noyock went down the stairs to the second floor (remembering, proudly, that his farm and cattlefields had been so successful that he was the first in the whole of Heaven City to have a house with three floors. And basement) and then turned, going up the hall to the small room that was Hoom's own, unshared with his sisters or his brothers.

"And that," said Aven's voice, now low and fierce with the exertion of the whipping, "is what happens to boys who disobey. And that," with the fall of the strap again, "is what happens to boys who lie!"

Noyock stood in the door. Hoom was kneeling at his bed, soundless as his father brought the strap down again on his naked back. Large welts were rising, but Noyock calculated that Aven could be hitting a good deal harder, and so didn't intervene, only walked in a little farther and cheerfully said, "That brings the count to eleven."

Aven brought the strap down again. "Let's make it an even dozen then, and be done."

He took the strap and hooked it through his belt, then faced his father. "Well, father," Aven said, "you see how my patience has finally been pushed too far."

"I do indeed," said Noyock. "And what did the boy do this time?"

"I come here in the morning to wake him, and find him in here half-dressed. I think, 'The boy's getting up early to help,' and come in to give him a hug and clap him a good-morning, and by damn his clothes are wet! Been down by the river again! Down playing water games with that little bastard Wix, no doubt. But I says to him, 'Did you sleep well?' And he says to me, 'Very well, father. Didn't stir all night long.' And I'll not put up with being disobeyed and lied to on top of it all!"

"So I see. Well, the boy's strapped well, now, isn't he?"

"And I hope it hurts him long enough that he learns to obey his father." And with that Aven stalked righteously out of the room.

Now, in the silence that followed, Noyock could hear the boy's labored breathing. Crying? Either that or trying very hard not to, which amounts to the same, Noyock decided. But no need to let the boy wallow in it. Good cheer: "Well, Hoom, my boy, today's Jason's homecoming."

Grunt from the face in the blankets.

"And today your grandfather's been Warden for one solid year. Four to go. Better this time than the first. What do you think, will Jason have me out, or keep me on?"

No answer at all.

"I suppose that's a trivial question to you right now, Hoom. But it plagues me a far sight more than anything else right now. What's troubling you? I know the pain's a trifle to you -- what's your sorrow?"

Mumbles.

"And only God heard that remark. Have you nothing to say to me?"

Hoom lifted his face from the blanket. His cheeks were tear-streaked, but his eyes were aflame with hatred. "I want to kill him," the boy hissed. "I want to kill him!"

The words were like knives to Noyock, who couldn't hear such words being said within his family. But he only smiled. "Ah, it isn't the pain at all, then, is it, because if it was the blows, you'd only want to thrash him. It's the shame, isn't it, of being beaten."

Hoom started to argue, then thought better of it, and Noyock took note of the boy's increasing maturity, that he'd change his mind so readily when he knew the other side had the truth. "Yes," Hoom said. "It's the shame."

"Well, Jason's coming today, and all shames are forgotten."

"Not all," Hoom said. "He forbids me to spend time with Wix."

"He's your father."

"Father or not, Wix is my friend! I didn't choose my own damn father! And I did choose my friend!"

"Well, you're thirteen," said Noyock. "In only eleven months you'll be fourteen, and come of age, and no father or mother can tell you what to do or not to do."

"But by then Wix'll have it done! And I won't have had a part in it!"

"In what?"

"Logs on the river!"

"Ah," Noyock said. "That again. But Wix is so impractical! Why go out playing on the river, with the current as dangerous and swift as it is, when we have no need to travel on it?"

"But the city'll grow, grandfather! Wix says there'll come a time when a floor of logs on the river will carry cargo from one end of Heaven City to another!"

"You can't even guide your silly logs," Noyock said. "The river isn't an ox, to be tamed by men."

Hoom turned away in ill-hidden disgust. "No, you're as bad as father."

"Probably worse," Noyock said. "I love you like he does, but I haven't the courage to try to stop you from drowning yourself. If it was up to me, I'd say, 'Let the boys experiment. Let them learn the only way they ever will'."

"I wish you were my father!" Hoom said.

"Too late to arrange that," Noyock answered, laughing. "But go on down to breakfast. Jason's coming today."

Suddenly concerned, Hoom said, "Are my eyes red? Does it show that I was crying?"

"Not a bit. But I'd advise you to put on some clothes, boy. Your mother's likely to belt you a good one if you come naked to breakfast." Hoom laughed, and so did Noyock; and the Warden left the room, wishing that all the unhappy people in Heaven City could be so easily comforted.

Breakfast was placid, except when Aven started telling how Niggo the tailor had nearly beaten Wix within in inch of his life, because the boy had been teaching Niggo's nine-year-old daughter to swim. "That'll teach young hooligans to keep their hands off young children."

The point of the remark was too sharp to miss, and Hoom piped up in his changing voice, "She asked him to teach her. He didn't want to, but she pestered him until he did."

"Nevertheless," Aven pontificated, "if Jason had meant for human beings to swim, he'd have given us scales and fins."

Hoom's eyes flashed with anger, and he said sarcastically, "And if God had meant for men to plow, he'd have given you blades for feet."

Aven grew furious immediately, and crisis was averted by the arrival of the bacon and Noyock's loud laughter. "My son and my grandson, both prizes for their wit!" the desire for a quarrel passed quickly, and overzealous mouths were soon filled with dripping fat. "I say that even if hogs are disgusting creatures," Aven commented with his mouth full, "they're certainly good once they're dead!"

And Noyock answered, his mouth even fuller, "And let us say the same for fat men, too!" and everyone laughed, for they had nothing but contempt for the tailors and weavers and wood-carvers who sat all day at their tasks, while Noyock and Aven and all their family, keepers of cattle and tillers of fields, considered loose skin at their waist to be a sign that they'd been slacking.

The breakfast over, they gathered cloaks against the wind and headed out of the house, down the dirt road, and joined the crowd trickling along the new road that was generally called Noyock's Road. Noyock was justly proud of it -- for though Cooter the wagonmaster had suggested the idea to two other Wardens, only Noyock had caught the vision of it, and found a way to do it.

The trouble had been that no one wanted to donate time just to spread small rocks over the surface of the road. So Noyock had assessed, not time, but goods from the older, wealthier people, and had paid those goods to younger men whose farms were not yet producing, or who were still learning the trade. That way the older men didn't have to waste their time on a public job, while the younger men could work for the general good -- and not starve in the process.

The result was good. A summer of frequent rain had proved it: while every other road in Heaven City was a morass of mud, Noyock's Road, which led from the Main Town, past Noyock's Town, over the crest of the hill, and down to Linkeree's Bay -- the water ran right off or soaked right through, and not a wagon was stuck all summer. And now, with the evidence before their eyes, there'd been no trouble persuading the people to spread the small stones on all the streets of Main Town, and much of Wienway Road -- clear to the forge. Jason would be pleased.

Firstfield was already full. The census last winter had brought a total of 1,394 people in Heaven City. Twenty had been taken into the Star Tower. Eight had died in all the history of Heaven City, of accidents or, in the case of a few of the Ice People, of the strange, inexplicable maladies of old age. Noyock had no hope of counting how many babies had been born since winter -- these days it seemed that every woman was pregnant, and Linkeree's son Torrel had told Noyock, "Every third person wants a cradle these days."

Noyock came and stood on the Warden's place, and watched to see when the rising sun would be completely hidden behind the slender shaft that stuck out from the front of the Star Tower -- the place where Jason lived. It was only a few minutes' wait, and then the citizens of Heaven City sighed the pleasure and fulfilled expectation when the dark place appeared at the front of the Star Tower, and the slender line descended slowly to the ground.

But Noyock's pleasure turned quickly to dismay. Jason was not alone. And the only time he ever brought an adult from the Star Tower was to put one of the sleepers into office as Warden. Have I done so badly this year, Noyock wondered, that Jason is already replacing me? But that would be unfair -- he hasn't even inspected my work! And I did very well the first time I was Warden -- not fair!

But as the line descended more and came closer, Noyock realized that the man with Jason was a stranger. Blond and pale, he had obviously never been in the sun; but he looked strong enough, and intelligent -- but who was he? Noyock knew all the Ice People, and recognized by sight everybody over ten years of age in the whole city. This one was new.

Jason and the stranger touched the ground, and Jason strode from the chair he rode in, holding out his arms, greeting all his people. They leaped to their feet. They cheered. They cried out. They wept and laughed and some sang. And, representing all of them, Noyock, came forward to embrace Jason. But Noyock couldn't conceal his uneasiness, and Jason, as always, saw into his heart. As they embraced, Jason whispered, "Noyock, my friend, this man isn't here to replace you. You're doing well, and you are still Warden with all my confidence."

And so Noyock was free to be curious rather than concerned about the stranger. Until it occurred to him that this man must be --

"The hundred eleventh Ice Person!" Noyock called out in realization.

"What?" Jason asked. But Noyock had already turned around to face the crowd. "Jason has brought with him the hundred eleventh Ice Person. The last of the Ice People! As Kapock prophesied in the History! The last of the Ice People has come!"

The people were awestruck, and Noyock barely noticed the helpless expression on Jason's face as he beckoned the stranger to come forward. "You see?" Noyock heard Jason say, but he didn't understand why. Jason stepped forward, bringing the stranger with him, and he raised his hand for silence.

"Your Warden is right," Jason said. "This is the last of the Ice People. And he is uniquely gifted! Of all the Ice People, only Stipock has come from the Star Tower with the power of speech. He is a wise man in many things -- but he is like an infant in other things, and you must be patient with him!"

(Did I see the stranger glare at Jason? Noyock wondered. Why should he be angry?)

"His name is Stipock. Will you build him a house?"

Of course the people shouted, "Yes," and the meeting broke up immediately -- it had lasted longer than any other Greeting in the History, and because of the stranger it seemed that the tumult afterward lasted longer, too. Everyone had to touch Jason, talk to him, see if he remembered them, show him the new children, ask him a question, tell him how well things were going. And then the more curious -- and the majority were very curious -- had to come meet the new Ice Person.

"Stipock," they all said, trying out the name. "Welcome to Heaven City."

Noyock watched as Wix (the problem! The thorn in everyone's side!) came to Stipock and fixed him with that cold, painful stare, and asked, "Why are you able to talk, when all the others who came from the Star Tower were like babies?"

Stipock glanced at Jason (Why do I keep thinking they're adversaries? Noyock asked himself), saw that he wasn't looking, and said, "Because my memory tape was the only one that survived the wreck of the ship in space."

Dead silence fell over the group. Someone muttered, "He makes words, too, just like Jason." But Wix only sneered and said to everyone and to no one, "Anyone can make up words." And then to prove his point, the fifteen-year-old man said, "Because my memory glibbit was the only one that survived the wreck of the mumblebunk in tiddiewart." Though Wix was irritating to practically everyone, they couldn't keep from laughing.

And Noyock wondered why the stranger was turning red. Embarrassment? Anger? Ah well. He'd need a place to stay until the new house could be built -- so Noyock went to him and said, "I'm Noyock, the Warden. Would you be willing to live with me until we can build you a house?"

"I don't want to put you out," said Stipock.

"We won't leave," Noyock said hurriedly. "We'd stay there, too. It's a big house."

Stipock seemed as if he wanted to explain something, then thought better of it, and followed as Noyock led him out of the crowd.

Several people followed them up Noyock's Road toward Noyock's Town, the cluster of houses mostly belonging to Noyock's children and grandchildren that fringed the road near the crest of the hill. They wanted to hear Stipock speak -- he had a different way of saying things that was very amusing, and no one was sure what to make of Jason's latest miracle.

The farther they walked up the hill toward Noyock's house, the stronger the smell of cattle pens became. To Noyock it was the smell of home; the smell of prosperity. But Stipock wrinkled up his nose and said, "Can't you do something with the smell?"

Noyock was startled, then laughed. "And what can you do with a smell, when no one knows what it looks like, or how to take hold of it?"

Stipock didn't answer, and Noyock wondered if the man had a sense of humor. A person who can't laugh is only half a human, Noyock firmly believed. Why had Jason created this half-man, and brought him here?

Stipock stepped in a pile of fresh cow manure that was sitting in the middle of the road. He lifted his foot and asked, "What's that?" He sounded irritated.

"Cow manure," Noyock said, puzzled that the man wouldn't know.

Stipock walked from the road to the thick grass and hurriedly rubbed it off his shoes.

"If you didn't want it on your feet," Noyock asked, genuinely confused at the man's actions, "why did you step in it?" Stipock only shook his head, and wiped his feet some more.

Late that night, Noyock retreated to the room where he worked on the History. But tonight he couldn't bring himself to write anything. He just stared at the paper, and at last passed the time by drawing maps of his farm as it was, and as it should be within a year, five years, ten. Meaningless. He was tired -- he had only managed a two-hour nap in the afternoon. But he couldn't sleep.

All day Jason had been going through Heaven City, visiting with people, talking to them, asking what they thought about this, what they felt about that. As always the Warden was forbidden to come along. So instead, Noyock had had the increasingly odious task of dealing with this creature Stipock. He wasn't sure how he was going to broach the subject with Jason, but he certainly wished Jason would take the man back into the Star Tower with him.

Questions. "Why do you do this? Why do you do that?" When Stipock asked Aven, "Why do you let your wife do all this cooking while you just come in and sit at the table, expecting to be fed?" Noyock didn't even try to stem the outburst. Aven was at his furious best. "Because, by damn, I spend the day from an hour before dawn until an hour after dark tending cattle, hoeing fields, reaping, plowing, sowing and every other damn thing that keeps this family alive, including producing every damn thing you've put in your damn mouth today, Stipock! And if I expect my wife to cook the damn food and clean up the dishes after it seems only fair considering that there'd be no food and be no dishes and be no house and be no table if I didn't work to get them!"

Stipock had turned very, very red, and Noyock couldn't help it -- he laughed outright. Now, drawing maps on the paper, he wondered what Jason intended to do with Stipock. Please, Noyock wished fervently, please explain at least what the fellow is for.

A knock on the door, and Noyock got up, startled. Everyone knew that after dark Noyock was not to be disturbed in this room. He opened the door -- and it was the hundred-eleventh Ice Person. "What do you want?" Noyock asked.

"I just want to ask some questions," Stipock answered. And because Jason had, after all, said that he should be treated as carefully as an infant, Noyock invited him to come in and sit down. He did not, however, say to Stipock, "Be welcome." There were limits.

"Questions?" Noyock asked.

"I've been talking to Hoom," Stipock said. "Your grandson, right?"

Noyock nodded.

"He tells me that as Warden you tell everybody what to do."

Noyock shrugged. "When it needs telling, I tell it. Mostly people do what they want."

"But there are laws?"

Noyock nodded, wondering what Stipock was getting at. "Of course. Jason gave us those laws."

"And according to those laws a man has a right to beat his son?"

Ah. Another criticism. Noyock suddenly felt very tired and wanted to go to bed. "Within reason," Noyock said, "a man has power over his children."

Stipock laughed and shook his head. "I just can't believe how crude it all is."

Noyock stood up and stepped to the door. "Good night, Stipock. Let's talk in the morning, if you wish."

"No, I'm sorry," Stipock hurriedly said. "I didn't mean -- I just meant that everything is so primitive." The word meant nothing to Noyock. Stipock went on: "I just wondered if you ever voted on anything. If you voted about the laws."

"We vote," Noyock said, "when there is no law. When Jason has given us a law, why should we vote?"

"Why shouldn't you?"

"Because if Jason says it, only a fool would disagree."

"It might as well be the Empire all over again," Stipock said, more to himself than to Noyock. "It hasn't occurred to anyone that the laws ought to come from the people, not from a man who comes out of the starship once every few years?"

"People are often very stupid," Noyock said.

"Including Jason, just like everyone else," Stipock said.

Noyock fixed a cold glare on him. "Good night, Stipock," Noyock said. "Sleep well."

Stipock shrugged, said, "Thanks for answering my questions," and left. Noyock closed the door after him, but his shaking fingers could hardly control the string to loop it on the bolt. He walked back to the table, sat down, and put his hands to his face.

It is very clear now what Jason wants, Noyock told himself. Stipock is here to test us, to try us. Jason has created an enemy, so that our love for him and our obedience to law will have its trial.

But we will overcome, Noyock vowed. We can and will be strong.

And then he remembered that Stipock had spoken with Hoom. With young, restless, easily influenced Hoom. And the spectre of the stranger stealing away the hearts of the children came up before Noyock's eyes for the first time, and he was afraid.

Hoom sat at the table, the tallow lamp casting a circle of light that included the paper and the pen. Except for the scratching of the point on the paper, the room was silent, until Hoom laid down the pen, sat up straight, and stretched, sighing softly.

He got up and walked to the window, which was barred. His fingers played along the bar, but he didn't lift it. He was confined to his room for a week, except for labor with his father on the farm. And Aven had gone so far, this time, as to insist that the window remain closed. Of course Aven would never know, this late at night, whether he was obeyed or not -- but Hoom suspected that his father was so angry, this time, that he at least considered watching one night outside Hoom room, just to see if he was obeyed.

Not worth a chance, Hoom decided. His back was still stiff from the last beating -- the tenth in as many months. I will be fourteen next month, he reminded himself. Then I can move out of here and never see my father again.

Today his oldest brother, Grannit, at the age of thirty-two already a grandfather, had talked to him. "Why build a fire between father and yourself, so that neither of you can ever cross?" he had said, and Hoom had no answer. Except the silent one: "I'm not building the fire." He couldn't say that, though, because all the old people in Heaven City seemed to be on his father's side. They all distrusted Stipock, even though not a house in Heaven City lacked at least one of the tallow lamps Stipock had taught them to make. They all resented Wix, even though Jason himself had commended Wix for finding ways to travel on the water -- even though Noyock (thank Jason for grandfather, Hoom thought) had ridden in the newest boat, which Stipock had helped Wix design. And they all had nothing but contempt for Hoom, who was "a disobedient child," as the phrase had so often been said. Hoom sat down and tried to write again. But the words were hard to come by. And would Jason even care to read what a thirteen-year-old boy had written? No, it was pointless. Noyock wouldn't change the law to set him free; Stipock hadn't the power; and Aven was determined that until the last moment that his authority lasted, Hoom would obey.

"I'll do all in my power to make him a decent man," Aven had said, loudly, when the cattlekeepers' council met tonight, "so that when he turns to rubbish next year, no man can say it was Aven fault."

And while I rot this year, Hoom thought bitterly, no man says any fault to Aven, either.

A loud knock. Hoom got up, guiltily, as if his thoughts could be heard and he was going to be held to account. He turned the paper over, so the writing couldn't be read, and went to the door. No one was there. He wondered -- who could be walking the halls tonight? And then the knock came again, louder, and Hoom realized that someone was knocking at the window. At a second-story window? No matter -- someone was there, as a third knock testified. Hoom rushed to the window, opened it, and Wix tumbled into the room.

Surprise turned to dismay. Hoom quickly closed the window again, then rushed and closed the door. Returning to Wix, who was now lying on his back on the floor, flexing his arms, Hoom whispered, "What are you doing, coming back here when I'm confined? Are you trying to get me killed?"

"You killed!" Wix whispered back, laughing silently. "And there I was hanging by my elbows, trying to butt my head against the window loud enough that you'd hear me! Were you asleep?"

Hoom shook his head. "I was writing. As Stipock said to do."

"Writing'll never do any damn good," Wix said.

"I think Stipock right," Hoom said. "Why should the Wardens be the only ones to write the History? Then it'll all written down the way they think it happened."

"Well, it's your grandfather," Wix said.

"Why did you come here? I've been beaten too much already!"

"I came because you'd've killed me if I hadn't. We finished the new boat today, and Stipock says we're to try it out tonight."

"Tonight? In the dark?

"There's a moon. And Stipock says that the night wind is from the southwest and will help us fight the current. We're going to cross the river."

Hoom immediately began pulling trousers over his naked legs. "Cross the river, and doing it tonight!"

"Coming then? Wix asked, laughing silently again.

"Think I'd miss it?"

"What about your father?" Wix's eyes taunted him.

"This one's worth another beating," Hoom said. "And maybe he won't know." Hoom opened the window and Wix climbed out, falling lightly on his feet in the soft earth below. Hoom paused a moment in the window, dreading another huge quarrel with his father, wondering if taking this jump was worth it. But the thought of taking the big boat out into the river -- across the river -- ended his inward debate, and he jumped, landing on all fours and rolling.

Wix scrambled back up the wall enough to close the window, so that discovery wouldn't be easy, while Hoom smoothed the dirt where they had landed. A few meters out from the house the dirt was covered by a thick mat of grass -- no tracks there. And the dew was cold on their feet as they ran. A cow lowed as they sped through the pasture, almost three kilometers before they reached the forest edge. There they rested, panting, out of breath, until their eyes got used to the denser darkness under the thick leaves. They followed a path known only to children's feet, a narrow winding that seemed deliberately to take the most dangerous descents, the steepest slopes, and it took almost a half hour for them to reach the edge of the river, in a little bay protected by a finger of rock that protruded into the river, blocking the current. There the boat lay rocking on the water; there a half-dozen shadowy people were busy at a half-dozen nameless, invisible tasks in the darkness.

"Who's that? Hissed a voice, and Wix answered, aloud, "Me, of course."

"Hurry, then, we're nearly done. Did you get Hoom?"

"I'm here," Hoom said, clambering down the slope after Wix. Closer, he could distinguish the features of the people there, and he immediately sought out Dilna, who smiled at him and let him help her with her task, which was folding and loading on the extra sail.

A few minutes later, Wix and Stipock pushed the boat out of the tiny cove and then were helped aboard as Hoom held the tiller. He had been tillerman on the last two boats, too, and as the boat hit the first currents (still not as strong as the main current a kilometer farther out -- they had never tried to cross that before) he laughed with pleasure at how lightly and easily the boat responded to his touch.

Wix, in the meantime, with Dilna and Cirith, was putting up the sail, and the wind from the southeast caught it, pulling the boat forward, making it dance across the water.

There were four oars on the boat, just in case the sail didn't work, but Hoom laughed and said, "Won't be needing to row, now, will we?" and Wix laughed and said, "We could sleep our way across in this boat," and Stipock said, "Shut up and mind the tiller and the sail. The real current still ahead."

When they reached the main stream, the bow of the boat yawed widely to the left, and for a moment there was a flurry of activity until the sail was turned to take the boat virtually into the current. Hoom plied the tiller vigorously, and kept the boat on course, and when they finally passed out of the main current and into the gentle eddies of the opposite side of the river, they gave a quiet cheer. Quiet, because Stipock had warned them that sound flew across water better than through forest.

Ahead loomed the highest hill of the opposite shore, and just to the west of it there was a beach. They unshipped the oars now, and pulled down the sail, rowing gently in to the shore. This time everyone but Hoom jumped out of the boat into the water, pulling it ashore. Hoom got out then, patting the firm structure of the boat as he swung from the bow.

"Well," said Dilna, "it doesn't feel much different from the sand on the other side."

"What did you expect?" Stipock asked. "Gold?"

"What gold?" Hoom asked, and Stipock shook his head and laughed. "Never mind. Let's climb that hill, and see how the world looks from this side of the water"

So they climbed up the hill, Wix pointedly taking the shorter, steeper way, and Hoom following him. At the top, they waited for the others to come. Stipock was smiling when he reached them, and as they stood together in the wind, he laughed and said, "It's not too many years off, my friends, when you'll be as glad as I am to find a way that's not so steep!"

"The hill's high enough," Hoom said, looking at how small their boat seemed down on the shore. The moon was full and high, and without trees around them, it seemed they could see forever.

"Well," said Stipock, after they had all had ample time to look around, "what do you see over there?" And he pointed toward the shore they had come from.

"I can see my house," Hoom said immediately, because his house crowned the bald hill of the Pasture. There were others near it, of course, but his grandfather's house, where he lived, was highest.

"There's a light in my father's house," Wix said, pointing to the many houses that skirted Linkeree Bay, where Wix's father, Ross, still lived in the house that his father, Linkeree, had built.

"My family lives in the Main Town," Dilna said. "I can't see it from here." Stipock chuckled softly behind them. "And is that all you see?"

Cirith said, "What I mostly see is trees. The houses look pretty damn small when you compare them to the forest." Stipock patted her arm.

Hoom wondered what in the world he was supposed to see as he looked across the river. Sure enough, everything did look smaller from farther away, but everyone knew that. What did Stipock want them to see?

Wix finally kicked a rock off the hill and turned back to Stipock. "Quit the guessing game. You want to show us something, show us."

"Right," Hoom said. "All that we can see from here is forest and Heaven City."

"And there's the answer," Stipock said, clapping Hoom on the back. "That's Heaven City. Over there, isn't it?"

"Where else would it be?" Cirith asked.

"Look down on this side. Is Heaven City here?"

No, of course not, they said.

"Well then. What if a man crossed the river with his wife, and they built a house here. Would that house be in Heaven City or not?"

And now they began to catch a glimmer of the idea. "It wouldn't have to be, would it?" Dilna said.

And Hoom added, "And if the people who lived here had the boats, they could pretty much decide who came and who didn't."

"They could even keep the damned Warden and his stupid laws on the other side," Wix said. "We could vote on everything, like you've been saying!"

But the excitement was dampened when Stipock said, "And could you keep Jason on the other side?"

They shrugged. They shuffled. They didn't know. After all, you never knew what Jason could do.

"Let me tell you, then," Stipock said. "You can't keep Jason away. Because Jason has machines that let him fly."

Fly! Hoom stared in wonderment at Stipock. The man was strange -- for hours he would talk to them about how Jason was just a man, like any other; and then he would say things like this, or talk about Jason piloting a great ship between the stars. Who could know? Even Stipock himself couldn't seem to make up his mind as to whether Jason was God, as the old people said, or whether he was just a man.

"And not just Jason. Which of you owns a cow?"

None of them did.

"Or an ax? Or anything at all?"

"I have my tools," Wix said, but he was the oldest of those who followed Stipock, and few of the others had turned fourteen and reach adulthood.

"Are your tools enough to build a town?"

Wix shook his head.

"Then we're back where we started, aren't we? Because you can't be free from Heaven City until you don't need Heaven City anymore. But it's still worth thinking about, isn't it? Still worth, perhaps, planning for. Perhaps?"

"Perhaps," Hoom said, so solemnly that he earned several punches and jests from the others all the way down the hill. But as he sat at the tiller on the way back, he couldn't keep from looking back often at the shore they had left. Land as good as any at Heaven City. But perhaps there the young, who, like Hoom and Wix, cared little for the old people's single-minded attention to every word that dropped from Jason's mouth, might be able to set up another city, one that depended on the will of those governed, as Stipock had so often said, rather than the will of those governing.

Now as they crossed the river, the current was trickier. They had to steer into it again, though it took them far from the direction they wanted to go, because the wind was directly against them returning. Once they had crossed the main stream, though, they let the eddies carry them lazily back across Linkeree Bay, around the point, and into the shallow cove where they had built the boat.

They splashed to shore (except Hoom at the tiller) and tied the boat to three trees, and then they all laughed with each other and made funny remarks about having to go back to the old people again, and then they parted.

Because Dilna lived in the Main Town, she and Hoom had to go back in the same direction, which was perfectly all right with Hoom. He wanted to talk to her anyway, had wanted to ever since he had met her in the group that met to listen to Stipock months ago, while he was still talking about the stars and planets and billions of people on other worlds (as if anyone much cared what really existed in heaven). As they wound their way through the forest toward the Pasture, Hoom held her hand, and she only held the tighter when he tried to do the courteous thing, and let go as they reached level, open ground.

That was encouragement enough for Hoom. "Dilna," he whispered as they walked through the Pasture. "Dilna, in a month I'll be fourteen."

"And I'll be fourteen in two weeks," she said.

"I'm moving out of my father's house that day," Hoom said.

"I'd move, too," she answered, "if only I had a place to go."

Hoom swallowed. "I'll build you a house, if you'll come to live in it with me."

She tossed back her head and laughed softly. "Yes, I'll marry you, Hoom! What did you think I was hinting at so much all these months?"

And then they kissed each other, clumsily, but with enough fervor to make the experience all they had hoped it would be. "How long will I have to wait?" Dilna asked.

"I'll have it built before Jason's Day."

"Will he come back, do you think?"

"This year?" Hoom shook his head. "This year he won't come. Not with grandfather as Warden."

"I was hoping he would be able to marry us himself," Dilna said, and then they kissed again and she took off running, heading for Noyock's Road, which would take her down into the Main Town. Neither of them noticed the incongruity of wanting Jason himself to perform their marriage, even as they planned and worked to remove themselves from the city he governed. After all, Jason may not be God, as Stipock always told them. But that didn't mean he wasn't Jason. And everyone knew that Jason could read what was in people's hearts, and that made him more than anybody else. God or no God, Jason still wasn't, in any way, ordinary.

Hoom reached the house and quickly scrambled up the horizontal logs to his window. He pulled it easily ajar, and slipped through, barring the window behind him.

His tallow lamp was sputtering, but hadn't gone out. He doused it, and undressed in the darkness. The room was cold, and his blankets were colder still. He shivered and he slid his naked body under the wool -- but he was tired enough, and he was quickly asleep.

He woke when his door crashed open violently and his father shouted, "Hoom!" The boy sat up in bed, holding his blankets around him as if they would offer some protection. "Father -- I --"

"Father!" Aven said in a high voice, mocking him cruelly. "Father." And then he roared. "Don't you call me father, boy! Never again!"

"What is it? What have I done?"

"Oh, are we innocent this morning? Didn't I tell you not even to unbar the window? And certainly not to leave this room for a week! Do you remember why I told you that?"

"Because," Hoom said, "because I disobeyed you and went on the river --" "And have you obeyed me when I told you to stay here as punishment? Hoom knew then that the beating was coming. He had long since learned that when he was caught, it was better not to lie. The beating was easier then, and the shouting was over sooner.

"I have not obeyed you," Hoom said.

"Come to the window, boy," Aven said, his voice lower and so all the more frightening. Hoom climbed uncertainly out of bed. The early autumn air was chilly, and when his father unbarred the window and flung it open, it became freezing cold on Hoom's naked and sleep-slowed body. "Look out the window!" Aven commanded, and Hoom became really afraid -- he had never seen his father so furious.

Down at the foot of the wall of the house, the dirt showed clearly Hoom's footprints leading from the grass to the wall. In two hours, they would not have showed -- but the slantwise morning sun made the prints black on the dark brown soil.

"Where did you go?" Aven asked, softly, menacingly.

"I went -- I went --" and Hoom saw some of his brothers and uncles and cousins, passing by with tools for mending fences. They had stopped. They were staring at the window. Had they heard Aven's shouting?

"You went to the river?" Aven prompted. Hoom nodded, and Aven roared again. "This is how I'm obeyed! You're not my son! You're an untrainable animal I've been cursed with! I won't have you in my house anymore! You won't live here anymore!"

Hoom could see some of his cousins, and he thought he could see them pointing, laughing, mocking. He whirled on his father and shouted back, as loudly as he could, though his young voice cracked twice, "That's no punishment at all, you old hog! I've been wishing for the day that I could get out of here, and you've set me free all the sooner!" With that, Hoom started for the chair where his clothes were piled. But his father caught his arm in a tight, savage grip, and pulled him back.

"Want you clothes, is it? Well, none of that. My sweat earned those clothes for you, and your mother's."

"I've worked too," Hoom said, defiant but terribly afraid as his father fingers dug viciously into his arm.

"You've worked too!" Aven shouted. "You've worked! Well, you've been paid for it. You've eaten my food and slept in my house! But I swear when you leave me you'll leave as naked as you came! Now get out, and never come back!" "Then let go of me, so I can," said Hoom, sick with embarrassment at the thought of having to go out naked in front of everyone, wondering where he would go.

"I'll let go of you," Aven said, "but you won't use the door, boy. You'll go out the way you snuck out last night, hoping to deceive your father! You'll dance out that window, boy." And Aven flung him toward the open window again.

Hoom stood at the window, looking at the ground below him. It suddenly looked farther than it had last night, and his cousins had come closer, were no more than twenty meters off now, could hear every word, would watch him jump, naked, with nothing to cover his shame.

"I said jump!" Aven said. "Now climb up on the sill and jump!"

Hoom climbed on the sill, trying to cover himself with his hand, his mind an agony of humiliation and indecision and hatred.

"Jump, dammit!" Aven bellowed.

"I can't," Hoom whispered. "Please!"

"You could damn well jump last night!" his father shouted; and just at that moment Hoom heard his grandfather's voice, from back by the door, saying, "Aven, be careful with the boy," and Hoom turned to call out to his grandfather, to cry for help, for relief from the intolerable. But at the moment he turned, Aven finished the gesture he had begun, and struck Hoom hard. If Hoom hadn't been turning, it would have struck him on the back and stung bitterly; instead it struck him in the ribs, crushingly, and because he was off-balance Hoom teetered for a moment on the sill and then fell from the window.

He wasn't prepared for the fall. He landed with his right leg only, and the knee popped somehow, and with an agonizing grinding the leg buckled under him. He lay there, terribly, acutely, sharply conscious, though the only reality was the vast pain that pressed on him and shortened his breath and threatened to suffocate him utterly. He heard a distant scream. It was his mother. She ran to him, screamed again, crying, "Hoom, my boy, my son," and then in the distance (far up in the sky) he heard his father's voice call out, "Stay away from him, woman!" "My name is Esten, man!" shouted his mother in fury. "Don't you see the boy's leg is broken?"

Broken? Hoom looked down and nearly vomited. His right leg was bent backward at a ninety-degree angle at the knee. Only a little below the knee, a new joint, from which a strange white-and-bloody bone protruded, bent his leg back again the other way.

"Jason!" he heard his father cry out, as if the call would bring God from his tower. "What have I done to the boy?" And then the pain subsided for a second, Hoom gasped his breath, and the pain washed back, twice as powerfully as before. The wave of agony swept him away; everything went bright purple; the world disappeared.

Hoom woke to hear a knocking at a door. He was immediately conscious of being hot; sweat dripped from him, and the wool of the blankets over him prickled in the heat. He tried to push the blankets off, but the movement was pain, and he moaned.

Someone had come in, and he heard, in the distance (a couple of meters away), an argument.

"You'll stay away from my boy, damn you," said Aven's voice.

"I can heal his leg, Aven," said another voice, "and you have no right to stop me."

"Jason knows you've done enough!" Aven said, his voice rising.

"And you've done more than enough!" came back the savage retort. "At least let someone who really loves the boy care for him now!"

Hoom recognized the other voice. It was Stipock. But now Grandfather Noyock's voice came, soothing, gentling. "Aven, the law is the law. And if a man injures his child, the child is no longer in his care."

A moan, a cry. "I didn't mean to hurt him!" Aven said, his voice twisted and bent with weeping. Father, weeping! The thought was incomprehensible to Hoom. "You know I didn't mean to hurt him, father!"

But Noyock said nothing to him, only told Stipock to go ahead.

Hoom felt the blanket come off him. The cold air was biting. Gentle hands touched his leg -- fire ran up his spine.

"This is terrible, terrible," Stipock said softly.

"Can you heal him?" Noyock asked. "We've never had an injury this bad, at least not one that left the poor fellow alive."

I'll need help."

Aven spoke up from the corner. "I'll help you."

"No!" Hoom hissed from his pain-clenched teeth. "Don't let him touch me." Hoom couldn't see Aven turn away, or Esten put her arm around her husband to comfort his remorse. All he could see behind his closed eyes was the hatred on his father's face.

"You help me then, Noyock. Is that all right, Hoom?"

Hoom nodded, or tried to. Apparently Stipock understood his assent, for he began giving instructions. "You'll have to hold the boy by the armpits, from above. And don't try to spare him any pain. Gentleness won't help him now." What's happening to me? What are you doing?

"Trust me now," Stipock said. "This is going to hurt like hell, Hoom, but it's the only way we can fix it so you'll ever walk again."

And then a hand gripped him at the ankle, which made Hoom moan, and another hand gripped him just below the break, high on his shin, which made him cry out in pain.

"Don't hurt him --" began his mother, and then silence, as Stipock said, "Now pull with all your strength, Noyock," and Hoom felt as if he were being pulled apart. The pain rose and rose and rose, until, suddenly, Hoom could feel no more pain, except that he knew he was virtually dead with it. Above the pain he floated, and felt the dispassionate movement of his body as Stipock pushed the fragment of shin back into place, where it fit again with a terrible snap (I don't feel it; it isn't me); as Stipock slid the kneecap back into position, forced the joint to fit again; as the leg, already used to the torture of the bones out of place, now began to feel worse torture of the bones back together.

"Is that it?" he heard Noyock ask, from a great distance.

"We need wood and cloth strips," Stipock said. "Straight firm wood, no twigs or branches or green wood."

"I'll get it," Aven said, and "I'll get the cloth," said Esten, Hoom's mother. And then, at last, Hoom fell back down into the sea of pain and drowned in it, drifted down to the bottom, and slept.

He woke again, and it was dark. A tallow lamp sputtered by the bed. His head ached, and his broken leg throbbed dully; but the pain was much better, much eased, much gone, and he could leave his eyes open.

The room focused, and he saw Stipock sitting by his bed. "Hi," he said, and Stipock smiled. "How do you feel?" Stipock asked softly.

"The pain's not as bad."

"Good. We've done all we can do. Now it's up to your leg to heal."

Hoom smiled wanly.

Stipock turned toward somewhere else -- a door, Hoom assumed -- and said, "He's awake now. You can call the others." Then he turned back to Hoom and said, "I know you don't feel well, but some decisions have to be made, that only you can make."

Footsteps coming into the room, and one by one they came into Hoom's range of vision. First Noyock, looking grave. Then Esten, her eyes red from crying. And then Aven.

Seeing his father, Hoom turned his head upward, to the ceiling.

"Hoom," said Noyock.

"Yes," Hoom answered, his voice soft and husky.

"Stipock wants to take care of you," Noyock said. "He wants to take you out of your father's home, if you want to, and take care of you until you can walk again."

Hoom tried to control them, but the tears dripped out of the corners of his eyes anyway.

"But, Hoom, your father also wants to take care of you."

"No," Hoom said.

"Your father wants to say something to you."

"No."

"Please," said Aven. "Please listen to me, son."

"I'm not your son," Hoom said softly. "You told me so."

"I'm sorry for that. You know how it was. I went crazy for a minute."

"I want to go with Stipock," Hoom said.

Silence for a few moments, and then Aven bitterly spat out his feelings about Stipock, who came to steal children away from their parents. "I won't let you take the boy!" Aven said, and might have said more except that Noyock's voice, harsh with anger, cut through.

"Yes, you will, Aven!"

"Father!" Aven cried out, anguished.

"The law says that after a father has injured his child, the child must be taken by another family, for its own protection."

"Stipock isn't a family," Aven said.

"I will be," Stipock said, "when your son is living with me."

"It only makes sense, Aven," Noyock said. "Stipock can help the boy now -- you can't."

"I can help him," Aven insisted.

"By pushing him out of windows?" Stipock quietly asked.

"Shut up, Stipock," Noyock answered mildly. "I'll ask Hoom one more time, and then that's it, and there'll be no complaint, no more discussion, and no resistance, or I swear I'll have you bound up and kept in a locked room until Jason comes again. Now, Hoom, will you stay with Stipock, or with your father?"

Hoom half-smiled. He felt a glow of satisfaction: the broken leg would be worth it, for the chance to make this choice. "Stipock is my father," Hoom said. And Aven's low moan of pain was some measure of repayment, Hoom felt, for the pain he had gone through. With that thought he closed his eyes and dozed.

But he became vaguely alert again a few minutes later. It seemed that Noyock and Stipock were alone in the room, and they were arguing.

"You see the harm it caused," Stipock said. "The law didn't give you any power to take this boy out of his father's home until his father nearly killed him." "The law is the law," Noyock said, "and only Jason can change it"

"That's the point!" Stipock insisted. "The law needs to be changed. If Jason were here, he'd change it, wouldn't he?"

"Maybe, Noyock said.

"Then why can;t we? Not just you and me, but all the people. Vote. Let the majority change the law."

Noyock sighed. "It's what you've wanted all along, Stipock. To let the majority of people in Heaven City change any one of Jason's laws they want." "Just this law," Stipock said. "Just the law that lets fathers beat their children."

"Just this law? I'm not a fool, Stipock, though you seem to feel that everyone in Heaven City is stupider than a newborn pig. Once we've changed one law that way, there'll be other laws to change, and people will begin to think all the laws are changeable."

"Aren't they?? Stipock asked. "Why don't you just ask them? On Jason's Day, when they gather at Firstfield, call a council, ask them to vote on whether voting should be allowed. See what they decide."

"I said, Stipock, that I'm not a fool. If I let them vote on anything, that becomes a lawful way for decisions to be made."

"So you aren't going to change the law?"

"Just let me think, Stipock."

'Let you? I'm begging you to. Do you really think the majority of people in this colony will decide stupidly? Don't you trust them?"

"I trust them, Stipock. It's you I don't trust." And Noyock left the room, his footfalls ringing in Hoom 's ears.

"Stipock," Hoom whispered.

"Hmmm? Are you awake? Did we wake you?"

"That's all right." Hoom found it hard to use his voice. It was hoarse. Had he cried out that much from the pain? He didn't remember shouting at all -- but his voice was as hoarse as if he had been yelling all day in the fields. "Stipock, what's a colony?"

"What? Oh, yes, I did use the word -- it's still hard, even after all these months --"

"What is a colony?" he asked again.

"It's a place where -- it's when some people leave their homes behind, and go to a new place, and start to live there, far away from the others. Heaven City's a colony, because the -- uh, the Ice People -- they left the Empire and came across the space between the stars and lived here." Hoom nodded. He had heard that story before -- Stipock's miracle stories, they all called them behind his back. Wix didn't believe them, but Hoom wasn't sure.

"When we live across the river, we'll be a colony, then, won't we?"

"Yes, I guess so."

"Stipock."

"Yes."

"Move me across the river."

Stipock chuckled. "When you can walk again."

"No. Move me now."

"Your leg is bound up. You can't walk for months, Hoom."

"Then get my friends to carry me. Take me out of Heaven City. I want to get out of Heaven City. Even if I have to live in the open, in a tent. Get me out. Get me out." And Hoom's voice drifted away as he slept again.

Stipock sat studying the boy's quiet, gentle, but pain-scarred face. The lips were turned permanently downward; the forehead, even in sleep, was furrowed; the eyes were bagged with exhaustion, not crinkled with laughter as they should have been.

"All right," Stipock whispered. "Yes, now. That's a good idea, Hoom. Very good idea."*

Two days later, two horses drew the cart that carried Hoom joltingly down Noyock's Road to Linkeree's Bay. Then, with a crowd of several hundred people gathered around, they carried Hoom on a plank out to the boat, which was waiting a few meters from shore. And the boat, this time in broad daylight, spread its white wings and danced skimmingly out of the bay into the current. Hoom laughed with pleasure -- at his freedom, at the movement of the boat on the water, at his friends proof of their true friendship. Dilna was at the tiller, and she smiled at him. Wix poked him now and then with his toe as he passed, working the sails, just to let him know he was noticed. And then they reached the other shore, and they set him down by a tree to watch as they cleared a patch of ground and laid the walls of a rough cabin. The floor was of planks, which had been cut the day before, and the door and windows were gaping holes. The roof couldn't be put on before dark, but they all promised they'd be back in the morning, and then carried Hoom inside. He looked around at the walls of his house.

"Well," asked Wix, "How is it?"

"Ugly as hell," Hoom said. "I love every inch of it." And then, before he could thank them and cry, they whooped and hollered their way out of the house and back to the boat.

It was getting dark, but there were plenty of blankets over him, and the stars were shining. Breakfast was in a bag on the floor beside him, and Hoom listened to the distant sounds of the boat being launched again.

As the sound grew softer, he listened to the breeze in the branches above him. Leaves were drifting lazily down; soon all the leaves would have turned colors and dropped, and the snow would come. Hoom felt a stab of loneliness -- but he quickly forgot it in the satisfaction of being out of Heaven City. A leaf landed on his face, and he waited a moment before he brushed it away. Was this what it was like for Linkeree, in the old story, when he left Heaven City and built his own home in the forest? This feeling of not being out of a city, but of being an intruder among the trees?

He heard footsteps in the grass and leaves outside his door. He froze, afraid of who it might be. The ship was gone -- had someone stayed behind? And why?

Dilna stood in the doorway.

"Dilna," Hoom said, sighing in relief.

"Hi," she said.

"I thought you went back with the others."

"I decided not to," she said. "Comfortable?"

Hoom nodded. "It's a good house."

"You promised me I could move in when the house was done," Dilna said.

Hoom laughed. "As soon as you want to," he said.

"Noyock promised me that he'd cross the river and marry us tomorrow. If you want to."

"I want to."

"Can I come in?

"Of course, come in. I didn't know you were waiting for an invitation." Dilna came in, her face lit only by starlight, and knelt beside him. "Do you always sleep with your clothes on?" she asked.

"No," he said, laughing at the idea. "But with a lumberyard tied around my leg, I've found it a little hard to get around."

"I'll help you," she said, and Hoom was surprised that he felt no embarrassment as she gently, carefully undressed him, moving his leg without hurting him, touching him so casually he felt no shame. Then she turned her back and undressed, also. "I didn't bring any more blankets. Any room to spare under yours?" she asked.

"I can -- I can do anything," he said. "My leg -- I can --"

"Nobody expects you to," she said, touching his forehead softly. "There's plenty of time for that." She lay down beside him and pulled the blankets up to cover them both. Then she snuggled close to him. Her body was cold with the chilliness outside the blankets. She put her arm across his chest, stroked his cheek. "Do you mind? she asked.

"No," he said.

"Better get used to it," she said. "Because I plan to sleep here for a good long time."

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