Mara and Dann

"We can get food for these," he said. He bundled them, three and three.

She went back in, and fetched some of the delicate old garments from the chest full of them, and spread them out. He picked up one, frowning: his hands were unused to such fragile cloth.

"Better leave these," he said. "If people see them they'll think we're... we're."

"What? But we are. We wore these, at home. I don't want to leave them." "You can't take them all."

"I'll take these two." The soft folds, pale rose, and yellow, lay glowing on the dark rock.

"Perhaps someone'll pay for them. Or give us something."

Now they set two sacks side by side on the floor and began packing. First, into hers, went a roll of the torn-up material that she used for the blood flow. She was embarrassed and tried to hurry and hide what she was doing, but he saw and nodded. This comforted her, that he understood what a problem it was for her. She put in next the two delicate dresses, rolled up. Then the three brown ones. Then five yellow roots and her little bag of flour. Into his went, on top of an old cloth that had in it an axe, five roots, his bag of flour, three of the brown tunics. "Let's go," he said.

"Wait." Mara went to Daima, stroked the old cheek, which was chilling fast, and stopped herself crying, because tears wasted water. She thought, Daima will lie here and go as dry as a stick, like Rabat, or the scorpions will push the thatch aside and come in. It doesn't matter. But isn't that strange? I've spent every minute of my time worrying about Daima — what can I give her to eat, to drink, is she ill, is she comfort-able? — and now I say, Let the scorpions eat her. "Have we got candles?"

She indicated the big floor candles. Among them was one half-burned. Forgetting what it concealed, Daima had set it alight one evening, and it was only when an acrid smell of burning leather reminded them that they put out the flame. Now Mara took up the stump, turned it upside down, dug out the plug at the bottom and pulled out the little bag. She spilled on to the old rough rock a shower of bright, clean, softly gleaming gold coins. Dann picked one up, turned it about, bit it gently.

She could have cried, seeing those pretty, fresh, gold rounds, dropped in there from another world, like the coloured robes — nothing to do with this grim, dusty, rocky, cruel place.

"I don't think anyone would want these," said Dann. "I don't think anyone uses them now." Then he thought and said, "But perhaps that's because I've just been. I've been with the poor people, Mara. This is what I've been using."

He took from the inside pocket of his slave's garment a dirty little bag and spilled out on to the rock surface beside the scatter of gold some coins made of a light, dull greyish metal. Mara picked up a handful. They were of no weight at all, and greasy.

"This is the same metal as the old pots and the cans."

"Yes. They're old. Hundreds of years." He showed her a mark on one of them. "That means five." He counted on his fingers. "Five. Who knows what five meant then? Now they're worth just what we say."

"How many of them to one of the gold pieces?"

And now he laughed, finding it really funny. "So much." He spread his arms. "No, enough to fill this whole room. Leave them. They'll get us into trouble."

"No. Our parents... our family, the People, sent them to us. To Daima." She scooped them up, counting into the little bag, which was stiff with the candle wax, the pretty, bright little discs of gold, each the size of Dann's big thumbnail, twice as thick and surprisingly heavy. Fifty of them.

"Fifty," she said; and he said, "But keep them hidden."

And that was how they could have left behind the coins that would save their lives over and over again.

Because of this little fluster and flurry over the gold, which really did seem to steal their minds away, they forgot important things. Matches — that was the worst. Salt. They could easily have chopped a piece off the bottom of a floor candle, but they didn't think of that until too late. Mara did just remember to take up a digging stick, as they went out, which she had used for years and was as sharp as a big thorn.

What they were both thinking as they left, slinging the carrying pole between them: We have the most important thing, water.

The two stood at the door and looked into the glare and the heat and the dust. Black flecks were floating about. Red flames could be seen beyond the hills. The wind was coming this way. As they thought this, a spurt of flame appeared at the top of the nearest hill and at once ran up a dead white tree and clung there, sending up flares of sparks.

"If the wind doesn't change the fire'll be here in an hour," said Dann.

"It can't get inside the rock houses."

"The thatch will burn over Daima," said Dann.

Well, thought Mara, haven't I just decided it doesn't matter what happens to dead people? She felt sad, nevertheless, and angry with herself. She thought, If you're going to feel sad every time someone dies or goes away, then that is all you'll ever do. But she was wiping the tears away. Dann saw and said nicely, sorry for her, "We'd better go if we don't want to be roasted too." A thin line of flames, almost invisible in the sunlight, was creeping towards them in the low, dry, pale grass.

They walked, then ran, though Mara was pleased she had the stick to hold on to, through the rock houses, up the first ridge, down past the already half-empty waterholes, each one clustered with spiders and scorpions and beetles — some dead, some alive — up the next ridge and down to the stream, which was running so low that it was only a string of water-holes with wet places between each.

Dann set down his can, told Mara to do the same, and caught two frogs, killed them with his knife, which he took from under his tunic, and skinned them — all in a moment. She had never seen anything so quick and so skilful. He gave her some pink meat to eat. She had not eaten meat, or could not remember doing so. She watched him chewing up pink shreds and felt her stomach heave, and he said, "If you don't, you'll starve."

She forced the meat into her mouth and made herself chew. This hurt, because it was tough and her teeth were loose from starvation. But she did chew, and swallowed, and it stayed down. And now, for the first time in so long she could hardly remember, she needed to empty her bowels. She went off a little way into the grass, squatted, and the stuff poured out. Last time there had only been pellets, like Mishka and Mishkita's black, round pellets. She was losing water to the earth. This was how people began the drought sickness, wet shit pouring from their backsides.

"Perhaps I have the drought sickness," she shouted to Dann from her place behind tall grasses; but he shouted back, "No, you aren't used to enough water."

He made her kneel by one of the holes and drink, and drink again. Then he drank. They stayed there, side by side, feet in the water, their flesh soaking up wet. She was feeling her hair with both hands, wishing it away, knowing that if she put it into water the stiff, greasy clumps would not change. He watched. Suddenly he took his knife, said, "Bend your head." While she was thinking, Oh, he's going to kill me, she felt the knife blade sliding over the bones of her skull and saw the horrible lumps falling into the sand. She kept quite still for fear of being cut, but he was skilful and there wasn't a scratch. "Look at yourself," she heard, and bent close over the water and saw that her head was as smooth and as shiny as a bone or a nut; and she began to cry and said, "Oh thank you, thank you."

"Thank you, thank you," he mocked her gruffly, and she saw that thank-yous had not been part of his life.

She thought that her face, all bones, all hollows, made her smooth head look like a skull, and she again drank, wishing the water to fill out her face, her flesh.

"We'd better get a move on," he said.

The sky behind them, where the village was, was black with smoke, and greasy burnt bits were falling everywhere around them.

She was thinking, I can't move, I can't. Running here from the village, up and down the ridges, had worn her out. Her legs were trembling. She was thinking, Perhaps he'll just go off and leave me if I can't keep up. He had gone off with those two men, hadn't he? — without a thought for her, or for Daima?

"What happened to those two men you went away with?"

He frowned. "I don't know." Then his whole body seemed to shrink and shiver. She could see little Dann, whom she had held trembling against her. "They were... they beat me... they..." Dann could have sobbed, or cried out, she could see.

"How did you get away from them?"

"They tied me to one of them with a rope. I couldn't keep up with them. Sometimes I dragged behind them on the earth. One night I chewed through the rope. It took a long time." Then he added, "Perhaps it wasn't so long. It seemed long. I was just a child. And then I was starving. I came to a house and a woman took me in. She hid me when the men came to look for me. I stayed there — I don't know how long."

"And then?"

She could see he would not answer much more — not now, at least. "I travelled north with some people. We came to a town that was still — it had people in it, it had food and water. And then there was a war again. I would have been a soldier, so I ran away again." And he stopped. "I will tell you, Mara. I want to know about you, too. But come on, we must go, quick."

Again she was pleased that she had the stick between them, shoulder to shoulder, to steady her. They walked along the big watercourse, not close to the water, where the bones were heaped up, but halfway up the ridge. From there they could see the big flames leaping and climbing and dancing all over the hills where the big cities were. Well, those hills must have burned before, and often, and still the old walls stood.

"While you were travelling," she addressed Dann's back, "did you find out about..." But she hardly knew what she wanted to ask, since there was so much she needed to know. "Has there been this kind of drought before? Or is it only here?"

"I'll tell you," he said, "but let's keep quiet now. We don't know who might be around."

"There's no one. Everyone's left, or they're dead."

"There are people on the move everywhere, looking for water or for something better. Sometimes I think that all the people alive are on their feet walking somewhere."

It was mid-afternoon, the hottest time, the sun beating down and the earth burning their feet. Mara's naked head ached and throbbed as she walked with her free arm across it. The air was full of dust and of smoke. The sky was a yellowish swirl with dark smoke full of black bits pouring across it, and the sun was only a lighter place in the smoke. She wanted to lie down, sit down; she wanted to find a rock and creep under it.

"We must keep moving, Mara. Look back." She screwed up her eyes to look where they had come and saw that smoke was rising from where the village was, and farther on too — the flames were racing to the watercourse, and soon would cross that, in a jump, and reach the one they were walking along. Would those piles of bones burn, putting an end to memories of so many animals? Dann saw how she held her arms across her pate, and found a bit of cloth in his sack and gave it to her to drape across her head and make a bit of shade. She saw that sweat poured off him everywhere, felt it running down her too. She was afraid that the water she felt running down her legs was wet shit. She quickly looked, but no, it was sweat. She was afraid because of losing all that water, and went to a waterhole to drink, with him. They drank and drank, both thinking that they must while it was there. Then he said, "Come on: if the wind changes, the fire'll catch up with us."

She was so glad of her end of the pole: otherwise she would be staggering and falling. She was walking in a kind of half-sleep, or trance, and wondered that Dann could still move so lightly, that he was so alert, turning his head all the time, this way, that way, for danger. They went on, and on, their shadows at first small under them, but then black and long on the flat places between rocks, but jumping and changing when they went through rocks. She felt she must fall, but knew they had to go on. Every time she turned her head she could see how the smoke clouds were darkening and how they hung well beyond this second watercourse: the flames must be into the plain beyond the rivers. Where she had never been. Stumbling there in her half-sleep, burning up because the sweat had run itself dry, she thought, What a little life I've been leading. I wasn't curious enough even to cross over the rivers to the western plain. And there it was again, a word in her mind and she had no idea where it had come from: west, western. Like north, which everyone used. What was North, where was it?

Just when she thought she could no longer move one foot before the other, they were walking on burnt earth. The fire or another recent one had come here. The low, black grasses still kept their shape, as if they had grown out of the earth black and so fragile they crumbled into bits at a touch, and would blow away at the first strong wind. An old log burned, a red glow deep in grey ash.

"We'll be all right now," he said. They were still on the ridge with the watercourse down on their left, big pools from the flood. He lifted the pole off her shoulder, and went leaping down, and she followed, carefully holding herself upright. Just like farther down there were bones here, old bones and new ones, and the insects clustered and clotted on them and on the dead trees. Dann had flung off his garment and was in a pool like a big rock basin. She slowly took off her slippery skin and joined him. They drank and splashed water over their heads and shoulders and lay in the water, their heads resting on the edge. From there they stared straight up into a sky full of smoke and, turning their heads, saw columns and towers of smoke — probably the dead trees by the waterholes.

The fire would kill the scorpions and the singing insects and the new frogs. It would make the water in the holes steam and sink quickly down into the mud, which would soon be dry and cracked. It would burn the smaller bones. And the earth insects, which had to have grass to live? When the fire had passed over the plains, burning up everything, even the earth in some places, would the grass grow again? If not, the insect cities would die, their towers would stand dead and empty, and then... there would be just dry earth everywhere, and the dust clouds would blow about and slowly the Rock Village would be filled with dust and sand.

"Come on," Dann said, as he leaped out and pulled on his white garment. Oh no, she was thinking, I can't go on; but he had not meant that: he was looking for a safe place for them to spend the night. She climbed out of the water, put on her tunic that was like a snakeskin, and helped him search among the rocks. He was looking for a place that was hidden, but high enough for them to look down and around from. And there it was: a flattish rock on the top of a little hill, with still unburnt bushes and grass around it. There was something that looked like a barricade or a wall of small stones: yes, this was a wall, joining bigger boulders, and it had been made for defence. People before them had thought this place a good one. When she looked she could see the little rough walls here and there, some of them tumbling down. Quite a long time ago then, not recently, this hilltop had been fought over by — well, who?

The yellow glow in the sky that was the sun behind smoke and dust was lower now, but it was very hot, and the flat rock pumped out waves of heat. Mara took some of her white flour, mixed it with water and made cakes which she laid on the rock. Meanwhile Dann was moving away stones from where they could sit, their backs to a big boulder.

He sat with his legs stretched out, and she by him, thinking, Now perhaps he'll talk, he'll tell me. And then she was asleep, and woke to see that the whole sky seemed on fire, the clouds and billows of smoke full of light, and rays shooting right up towards the sinking sun. Dann was looking at her. She thought, I'm so ugly. He must think I'm like a monkey — but he has never seen a monkey I expect. But where did I see them? Oh yes, it was home, there were monkeys in a big cage. I know what I look like, and my head. She was so hungry. The flour cakes she had put on the rock? — he had eaten some. She would have gone to get herself some but she felt she could not move. His gaze did not leave her face. He was examining her, as Daima had looked at her before she died, as if her face — Mara's — held some truth or secret. Oh, she was so hungry. As she looked at the cakes, wanting them, Dann leaped up and fetched them, putting them carefully into her hand. And then he watched her eat them, slowly, a bit at a time, as she had learned to eat, food being so short, every crumb, every tiny bit held in the mouth to get all the goodness from it. Besides, her teeth hurt.

She did not feel uncomfortable that he was watching her. She was happy he was there, but she did not understand him. Nothing he did was what she expected, nor much of what he said.

She said to him, "If you hadn't come then I would be dead."

"Yes."

"I was dying and didn't know it."

"Yes."

"And when that fire started I think I would have decided to stay with Daima and let it burn me."

He said nothing, only gazed at her face, and her eyes.

"There would have been no reason for me to leave. Nowhere to go. And I was too weak anyway."

He said, carefully — and it was because he didn't want to offend her — "Didn't you ever go anywhere else? Only the Rock Village?"

"Only out to find the roots — and there were seeds, too."

He put his knuckles to the earth and leaped up, and stood staring away down the side of the hill. She knew it was because he did not want her to see his face. He was shocked because she had not made any effort to go anywhere else. But you didn't know how it was, how difficult, she wanted to say to him. But she was ashamed. She had lived all that time, knowing nothing — nothing. While he...

He was taking from his sack one of the yellow roots. He cut it and gave her half, sat by her, looked over to where the sun was going down, a red, burning place among the dark clouds.

"When you went off with the two men did you come this way?"

He shook his head. A long silence now. A real silence. Long ago, at this hour, the sun going, there had been all kinds of animal noises, bird sounds, and the singing insects were so loud they split the ears. Now, nothing.

"Where are we going?"

"North." "Why?"

"It's better there."

"How do you know?"

"People say."

"Have they been there?"

"The farther south, the worse. The farther north, the better. There's water up there. It still rains there. There is a big desert, they say, and it is drying everything around its edges, but you can go around it."

"There is going to be a desert here."

"Yes."

"We use words like south and north and east and west, but why do we? Where do they come from?"

He said with a laughing sneer, as if he had suddenly become another person, "The Rock People are just stupid. Stupid rock rabbits."

"All these words come from somewhere. I think from the Mahondis."

He jeered again, "The Mahondis! You don't understand. They aren't anything — we aren't. There were people once — they knew everything. They knew about the stars. They knew... they could talk to each other through the air, miles away." His mood was changing: he seemed to be wanting to laugh, but properly, then giggle."From here to the Rock Village. From here to — up north. To the end of North."

And now she found herself giggling too.

"You're laughing," he said, laughing. "But it's true. And they had machines that could carry a hundred people at a time." "But we had sky skimmers."

"But these could go on flying without coming down for days." And suddenly they were laughing aloud, for the ridiculousness. "And they had machines so big that — bigger than the Rock Village."

"Who told you all this?"

"People who know what's up North. There are places there where you can find out about the old people — the ones that lived long ago. And I've seen pictures."

"The pictures on the old walls?"

"No, in books."

"When we were little there were books."

"Not just paintings on leather and leaves. They used to have books made of... It's a very thin, fine stuff, white, and there can be a hundred pages in a book. I saw some pages from an old book... they were crumbling." His mood changed again. He said furiously, "Mara, if you only knew. We think the Rock People are just — rabbits. But those people, the ones that lived long ago — compared to them we are beetles."

Now the dark was coming up through the rocks. He said, "I'm going to sleep. But you must stay awake. Do you know how to? When you get sleepy, then wake me. Don't wake me suddenly or I'll hit you. I'll think you're an enemy — do you see? You slept a bit earlier." And there and then he lay down on the rock and was asleep.

And now it was really dark. There was no moonlight: the moon was almost full, but the sky was too full of smoke and dust to see it, or the stars. Mara sat with her back against a rock and her head whirled with everything she had been hearing. She wanted to cry, and would have cried, but stopped herself, thinking, Bad enough to lose all that water in sweat, but I can stop myself crying. She thought of her life all these years with Daima, who told her tales, full of all kinds of things the little girl had thought were made up — just stories — but now Mara was wondering if Daima's tales were true after all. But mostly they had played What Did You See? And what had Mara seen! The inside of a neighbour's rock house. The details of the scaly skin of a land lizard. A dead tree. "What did you see, Mara?" "The branches stick up like old bones. The bark has gone. The wood is splitting. In every crack insects are living." But they aren't now: the flames have killed them, every one. "The birds come and sit in the dead trees and go off, disappointed. There are birds' skeletons in the trees. When the skeletons fall to the ground you can see they are like us. They have legs and feet and their wings are like arms." "And what else did you see, Mara?" "The dead wood of the different trees is different, sometimes light and spongy and sometimes so heavy and hard I can't push my thumbnail into it." "And what else, Mara?" "There are the roots deep in the ground that I dig up." And that was what she had seen, all those years. The village. The Rock People. The animals, always fewer and then gone. The lizards and dragons — but they had gone too. Mishka, darling Mishka, who had licked her face clean, and then Mishkita. And the earth insects... insects, scorpions, insects, always more of them. Well, even the scorpions would have been burned up by now, probably.

And that was all. She had not gone farther than the dead cities in the hills. "What did you see, Mara?" "I saw pictures of people, but they were not like us, but a different brown, with differently shaped bodies, painted eyes, rings on their hands and in their ears. I saw." Perhaps those were the people that Dann said had been so clever that they knew everything?

Mara was staying awake easily because of her sad and ashamed thoughts. Then she wanted to pee and was afraid to move and wake Dann. She crawled away, trying not to make a sound, and squatted paces away. There was a lot of pee now, and her pee place was no longer sore. Her body was not burning and aching and itching and crying out for water. When she crawled back she saw Dann's eyes were open, watchful gleams in the dark.

"Did you hear something?" he asked.

"No."

His eyes closed and he was instantly asleep. A little later he rolled towards Mara, and was hugging her. "Mara, Mara," he said, in a thick voice, but it was childish, a little boy's voice. He was asleep. He snuggled up to her and she held him, her heart beating, for she was holding her little brother; but at the same time he was dangerous, and she could feel his tube thick and hot on her thigh. Then his arms fell away. He was sucking his thumb, suck, suck. Then silence. He rolled away. She could never tell him that he had sucked his thumb. He would probably kill her, she thought. Then was surprised at the thought, which had come so easily.

Before Dann fell asleep, while he watched his sister, he had been thinking, Why am I here? Why did I come for her? She's such a poor, sick, feeble thing. But all he knew was that ever since he had heard from travellers that there were people alive in the old village, he had had to come. He did not know why, but he was restless, he was unhappy, he could not sleep. He had to look for her. She was mistaken, thinking he had not seen monkeys. He had, in cages — and people too, in cages. He thought she looked like a little monkey, with big, sad eyes and a naked head. But she was already fattening a little. She was no longer just a skeleton with a bit of skin over the bones and enormous dry, hungry eyes. And that was in only two days. At the waterhole he had seen something he first thought was an animal, with its long claws and filthy mats of hair on its head; but now he knew her again, for certain looks of hers, and movements, and memories, were coming back. They were all of warm arms and a soft voice, of shelter and comfort and safety. He was trying to match what he saw: the little, spindly creature, all bones, with the memories his limbs and body held, of soft, big, kind arms, everything big and soft and warm.

When the light began, Mara saw that all over her were bits of the black, greasy stuff from the fire. So the wind had shifted. She said, "Dann," and he was at once on his feet and looking at the black bits on him. The fire had burned to the edge of the older fire, and gone out. There was smoke everywhere, but it was thinner ahead, where they were going. He took up the water cans, and put the pole on his shoulder, and went bounding off down towards the nearest waterhole; and then he shouted to her and she went to the edge of the little hill, the rock already hot under her feet, and saw him point down. The black from the fires seemed to have over it greyish-yellowish streams, like liquid: earth insects, like a flood, going down to the watercourse. But that was not their destination: the streams were already on their way up the farther ridge. "Quick," he said, and bounded down, though keeping a distance between him and them; and she followed, shivering now not with weakness but with fear, and plunged after Dann into the biggest waterhole. There they washed the black smears off them, and filled the cans right up, and drank and drank, always watching the earth insects; but saw that the mass was spreading out sideways, towards their waterhole. She wanted to scramble out but he held her, and then, as the insects fell over into the water, he grabbed them with his quick fingers, pulling off their heads and cramming the still squirming bodies into his mouth. He ate several, then saw her face and stopped to think what to do. She was not far off fainting with horror. Along the edge of the water now was a fringe of drowning insects. He stepped through the water to the bank, reached for his big sack, took from it a smaller one, filled it with drowned insects, and then nodded at her to get out of the water. She was afraid, for the insects seemed to be everywhere. But he stepped up and out, carefully, putting his feet between the trickles of insects which, if they had a mind to, could eat him and her to bones in a moment. But no, the insects were going as fast as they could through the waterholes to make new cities for themselves in a part that had not been burned. Yet there was nothing to be seen but the black of the fire, so they would have a long way to go, carrying everything they had: bits of food from their underground farms — which, Mara could see, seemed dry and shrivelled instead of plump and fresh — their babies, and their big mothers, each the size of Mara's hand, white and fat, and who even as they were being carried along were laying eggs that fell from them like maggots and were gathered up by the insects and carried in their mouths. This was a people moving from one home to another, as the Rock People moved into an empty house if they liked it better than their own. Mara watched Dann step carefully among the insects, who were now more like a flood, a flash flood, when it seemed as if the earth itself was on the move; and she went after him afraid she would set her feet down on them because of her faintness. But soon they were through the insects and going along the ridge again, above the watercourse where the holes were already only half what they were yesterday. Looking back they could see more and more of the insects coming; soon there would be none left in the tall earth towers that were like cities. Up the two went to the place between the rocks, and Dann put the drowned insects on the hot rock, and in a few moments they had lost their juicy, glistening look and were like little sacks of skin. And now Dann gave Mara one of them, looking hard at her, and she put it in her mouth. It tasted on her tongue acid, and pulpy; she pretended it was a bit of fruit. Dann handed her another and another, and she ate them, until she was full. Then off he jumped down back to the swarm, and she saw him scooping the insects out of the rivers of them, putting them into the bag, and in a moment was back, and as he took each one out of the bag he nipped off its head. The insects were hissing and fighting inside the little bag. His hands had been bitten, they were red and swollen. But he went on, beheading them and laying them out on the rock, which was by now almost too hot to touch. He ate them as they cooked, and handed her one after another, and she knew that he was measuring that bony little body of hers with his eyes and thinking, She's fatter, she's better. "Eat, Mara. Eat, you must," he commanded.

By then it was mid-morning. Again they were going to travel through the hottest part of the day. They went parallel to the watercourse. There was no shelter, only rocks and dead trees, their branches reaching up like bones. The fires were behind: ahead the sky was full of dust but not of smoke. Mara longed to give up for the day, go down into the water and lie there, because it was sinking so fast that some of the waterholes were already only mud.

She was walking with her eyes kept lowered because of the glare, holding tight to the pole where the water cans hung. Then Dann said, "Look ahead, Mara," and she did try to unscrew her eyes to see that ahead the ridge went sharply up and into a high country, and down it fell a trickle of water, which was all that was left of the flood of four days ago. But the fall of water was between sharp rocks, and she knew she could never climb there to drink. "We'll stop soon," he said. She thought that he sounded as she must have done, talking to him when he was a child. He was coaxing her on. "It's better up there, over the escarpment. You'll see. Tonight we'll stay halfway up and tomorrow we'll be up."

In the late afternoon they made their way down to the water, which here was not waterholes, had been a really big river, and still flowed slowly from the fall, before it ran farther and became sand and rocks and the sparse, drying holes. Bones everywhere. Big, branching, white bones and, among them, horns and tusks. As they walked to the water's edge they had to step in the spaces between bones: ribs, and skulls and teeth and little bones that the sun was crumbling into chalky white earth.

She was afraid there might be stingers or even a water dragon still alive and so, evidently, was he. He stood by the side of the shallow stream and poked everywhere into it with the carrying pole, but there was no creature in it, nothing broke the surface. This water was flowing only because of the flood, and the stream had been dry so long nothing had lived, not even a frog or toad. Again they bathed and splashed and drank and filled the cans, and went up among rocks high above the ridge, some distance from the fall, which was whispering its way down — though once that waterfall had been half a mile wide, for where they stopped for the night the stains of water were on the rocks around them, and were so smooth from old water they had to be careful not to slip on them. The light had not yet gone. They sat looking down over where they had come, and saw how the fires were raging away, but going south, away from them. She could not see the village, though it could not be very far — they had been walking slowly because of her weakness. It was all blackened country, and smoke was rising in places from a slow-burning log, or from a pile of bones. She tried to see the hills near the village where the old cities were but they were only a faint blue line away in the smoke. The wind had changed again: no black smuts were falling on them.

She mixed flour with water and again cooked cakes on the rocks. Then they ate another root. Very little flour left now, and eight yellow roots.

"Up on the top there's more food," he said. And he took out his little bag of greyish coins and laid them out and counted them. "We won't be able to buy much with that," he said. And then he stayed, squatting, brooding over the coins, resting lightly on his knuckles, his other hand stirring the coins around. "I've been thinking, Mara. It's that gold. The trouble is, how are we going to change those coins? Let's have a look at them." She brought out her bag of gold coins and spread them out on the rock.

"You know, I've never heard about these except as a sort of joke. 'As good as gold.' 'More precious than gold.' 'It's a gold mine.' But the more I think about it, I remember that it is used. But only by the rich people and that's why I didn't think at first." He sat stirring his fingers now in the gold coins. "They'd kill us if they knew we had these," he said.

"If we can't change them, then how are we going to eat?"

"I didn't say we couldn't." He sat, frowning, thinking.

The little coins lay shining there, and when she touched one it was already hot from the rock.

"With one of these you could buy a big house," he said.

"Oh Dann, let's buy a house and live in it — somewhere where's water all the time."

"You don't understand, Mara."

Well, she knew she didn't, and she felt she must have heard this many times already: You don't understand. "Then begin telling me," she said.

They were crouching face to face, coins, the gold ones and ugly, thin, grey ones, on a big stone between them, and even up here on a dried up hillside that seemed quite deserted, he lowered his voice.

He took up a big stick and began drawing in the dust between stones. He drew a big shape, longer than wide, and on one side it bulged right out, so that it was like a fat-stemmed throwing stick.

"That's the world," he said. "It is all earth, with sea around it."

"The world" floated up easily into Mara's mind from long-ago lessons with her parents. "The world is bigger than that," she said. "The world has a lot of pieces of land with water between them."

He leaned forward, peering into her face. He seemed frightened. "How do you know? Who told you? We are not supposed to know anything."

"We were taught all that. I was, but you were too little. Our parents told us."

"But how did they know? Who told them? They don't tell us anything. They want us to think that what we have is all there is. Like rock rabbits thinking their little hill is everything." The sneer was back in his voice.

"It's this shape you've drawn. I remember it. It is called Ifrik. And it is the piece of earth we live on. Where are we on it? — that's what I'd like to know."

He pointed in the middle, well below the bulging out bit. "And how far away is Rustam from here?"

He pointed a little distance down, and then put two fingers, almost together, one where he said they were and one where Rustam was.

She felt that she had really become as small and as unimportant as a beetle. In her mind the journey from Rustam was a long one, a change from one kind of life to a completely different one; and now all that had be-come — because of those two fingers of his, held with a tiny space between them — nothing very much, and she was nothing much too.

But she held herself steady and said, "I remember they said that Ifrik was very big. And where are we going tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow and the next day and the next..." He held his fingers the same tiny distance apart, but now on the opposite side of where he had said they were.

"And that is north?"

"It is north. But the real North is." And, excited, he pointed to the very top of the space or shape he had drawn.

"If it has taken us so long to come such a little way then how long to get North?"

"Why long? It's been two days."

"But." she was thinking of that journey by night away from Rustam and knew that he wasn't. And probably couldn't. "From here, going north, it will get better."

"And if we were going south, instead, it would be worse?"

"Worse, until we got to the very bottom, here." and he pointed to the bottom of Ifrik. "There are high mountains, and then there is water and green."

"So why aren't we going south?"

"We'd die trying to get there. Besides, when everything started to dry up and the deserts began, then a lot of the people travelled south, crowds of people, like those earth insects today; everyone went down and down and then through the mountains. But the people there didn't want them, there wasn't enough water and food for everyone. There was a war. And all the people from the high, dry lands were killed — because they were weakened by the travelling."

"All killed?" "So they say."

"And when was this?"

"Before we were born. When the rains began to stop, and there was no food, and the wars began."

"Daima ran away from a war. That was a long time before we were born."

There was a silence then, with the sun going down in its dusty red, the shadows dark and warm between the rocks, the little tinkling of the waterfall.

"I don't see how we are going to stay alive," she said.

"I've stayed alive, haven't I? I know how to. You'll see. But we have to be careful all the time." He looked again at the gold coins, thinking. Then he said, "Give me two of those strips of cloth you have."

She fished them out of the bottom of her bag, wondering, sadly, And when am I going to need these again? He was watching her, and she thought, He knows what I am thinking: he's kind.

He divided the coins into two heaps of twenty-five and tied them, one by one, into the strips of cloth, with a little knot between each. So they wouldn't clink — she understood; and began to help him. There were soon two knotted cords of twisted cloth lying on the rocks.

"See if you can tie one around you — high up, above your waist."

She lifted her tunic and tied one of the cords where he had pointed. The trouble was she had no breasts at all, she was flat. When she showed him, she was ashamed, because across her chest under the flimsy brown the knots of the cord were visible, taller than her little nipples.

The tears splashed off her face on to the stones.

He smiled, and put his hand out, taking a little pinch of flesh where her neck was bare above the tunic. "Poor Mara," he said, gently. "But you'll be a girl again soon, I promise you." And he rocked her a little with his hand, while she smiled and made herself stop crying. "All right, take it off." She slipped the cord down under her tunic and gave it to him.

"We'll get you something to wear that's thicker and then no one will see what you've got under it."

"I wish I could have something different, soon." And she took up handfuls of the stuff of the tunic, letting them spring back into shape, trying to crush it, destroy it. "I do hate it, Dann. I wish I could wear the same as you've got on."

He said nothing and his face changed: he was angry.

"I know it is a slave's dress," she said. "Our slaves used to wear them."

"I don't remember." But he was remembering something bad.

"Anything would be better than this," she insisted, and then he smiled at last.

Now it was dusk, the material of her tunic was not brown but a soft, glistening black.

"It's such funny stuff," he said, fingering it and hating it. "It changes colour. Sometimes in the strong sun I think it's white, and then it's brown again."

"Where can I get one like yours?"

"We'll have to buy one. And we don't have enough of the little coins. So we'll have to wait until we can change a gold one." He dropped one of the strings of twenty-five coins into his sack, and one into hers. "And now you sleep and I'll stay awake."

Mara lay down between the stones, her head on her hand, and was at once asleep, and woke to know Dann was not there beside her. Then she felt his hand over her mouth and heard his whisper, "Quiet, there are people." Feet moved among stones just below them, closer to the waterfall than they were. Clumsy feet: stones slipped and bounded down off the rocks. The light was in the sky again. The two peered over the edge of a rock and saw a man and a woman clambering down, who stopped, consulted, lay down where they were and slept. "Very tired," Mara breathed. Then she watched Dann creep down towards the travellers. He was among boulders, and in the dim light could be thought of as a boulder, for he stopped to wait, crept on, stopped... She saw him stoop down near the two sleeping bodies and was back with her at once, with a bag in his hand. They emptied it on the ground. Not much in it, only a little dried fruit and some pieces of flat bread. Dann at once divided the fruit and began eating his share. She thought that the two travellers had come from beyond the Rock Village somewhere, and down there was no food at all. "They'll be hungry," she whispered, and saw Dann lean forward to stare into her face. When he did that, he was trying to work out what she was feeling, and what she was expecting him to feel. Then he whispered into her ear, "Eat, Mara. If you want us to stay alive, then we have to use our wits." She ate. The pieces of bread went into her sack.

Dann slung the cans back on the pole, careful they didn't clink, and pushed the stolen bag deep into his sack. She slid her end of the pole on to her shoulder, and together they moved on up the sharp ridge, full of rocks. By the time they reached the top the sun was up and they looked back from this higher place at the black from the fires, the smoking logs here and there, and far away the fires themselves, burning slowly down into the south. Between where they were and the fires, nothing green was left, only grey rocks and stones here and there in the black. They went on up and over the escarpment and along the river that was falling behind them in the trickle she had seen from the plain. Mara was walking well, was keeping up easily with Dann. She was sure that her limbs were plumping out, with all the water she had been lying in, and drinking. But when she pinched her thigh through the tunic, and then her forearms, there was still only skin there, not flesh. But she was feeling better.

Now, ahead of them, was an enormous basin of land, with mountains all around it. The river came from a small lake. And the story was the same: once there had been water, big water, probably filling the basin right up to the mountains; but now cracked old mud, which was in places dust, spread out from the edges of the little lake. They were walking over hard, dry mud and bones.

In the lake, which was more of a large pool, she could see movement and said, "Are there still water dragons?"

"No. They have died. But there are water stingers."

"Then we daren't go in the water."

"No. When I was coming to you I walked along here. I thought the water was safe. I put a foot in to test it — and I only just got away. It was a big stinger."

Here, on this side of the mountains, the air was cleaner. The sky was yellowish with dust, and low down, and the sun was making thick, regular rays through it, but it was not smoke. Soon they came to a village. The houses were not made of rocks but of big bricks, with roofs of thatch. A fire had been through here, but not recently, for the black had mostly blown away. The thatch had burned: the houses stood roofless. The inhabitants had left. The two went carefully through every house, room by room, and in every room Dann leaped up to see the tops of the walls, for he said people hid things up there and might have forgotten them. A likely story — both were thinking — with everything so scarce. There were jars in every house for water and food, but no rock cisterns. The jars were very big and it was not possible to carry them away. There was no food, not until the very last house, where Dann had to frighten away scorpions clustered around the door, and there they found in a jar some tightly packed down dry leaves. Dann filled one of his smaller bags with them: he said they were nourishing. While they were doing this they heard voices and hid, and peered out to see going past the couple they had robbed up in the hills. These two were a kind of person Mara had never seen, with great bushes of black hair and almost black skin. But they were so thin, and so weak, it was not possible to say whether really they were solid and strong, or wiry.

Dann pulled himself by a door to see all around the top of the wall. Only part of the thatch had burned here. He let out a shout, and reached out, and threw down a thin roll of cloth, which had inside it a garment like Dann's. The cloth was a little scorched but not the robe. Mara took off her old skin-like tunic, which she had worn day and night for years, and was in this robe or dress that was made of a vegetable fibre, a soft, coarse cloth. She was actually crying because of her joy. She was about to throw the old brown garment — though it was as good as new, with not a mark on it, not a tear — away into a corner, goodbye, goodbye, you horrible thing, when Dann caught it up and said, "No, we can sell it." And stuffed it into her sack. Now they had seven of them.

With this new robe, which had been white once but was now a light brown, from dust, she felt she had thrown off her old life and was wearing a new life, though there was another person's smell on it, and she knew that it was stained with that person's sweat. But she could wash this dress and make it hers. And now Dann pulled out of her sack her cord of knotted coins, and she tied it just above her waist, and it could not be seen under the thick material. The cloth the dress had been rolled in would come in useful, for something.

The two went back to the edge of the lake, or pool, and stood looking at it. Mara wished she dared wash her dress there, and let it dry on her. Dann was silent. Mara saw on his face something she had not seen before: it was anger, or pain, or fear — but she could not decipher it. He only stared at the dirty little lake, and at the dried mud, and then over the lake to the mountains. She was afraid to ask, What's wrong? — but he turned his head towards her, and she understood that if he could cry, could sob, could allow weakness, then that is what he would be doing now. It was pain she was looking at. "Why?" he whispered. "Why? I don't understand. It was all water. When I ran away that time, it was water from here all around to the mountains. Why should everything go dry, why does the rain just stop, why? — there must be a reason." And he came stepping across the hard mud ridges and took her by the shoulders and peered deep into her face, as if she must know the reason.

She said, "But those cities, the ones near the Rock Village, they had people in them for thousands of years, Daima said, and now they are just nothing." And as she spoke, she thought that she used the word thousands because Daima did, yet she still did not know more than the ten fingers on her hands, the ten toes on her feet. Long ago she had been taught more than that, in the school at home, but in her mind it was the same as if she said hundreds or thousands, and yes — there was another word — millions. He let his hands fall and said, "We walk over all these bones, all the time." She knew that tears wanted to come into those sharp, clever eyes of his, which were beautiful when he sat thinking, or had just woken; but his mouth was tight. "When I came this way to get you I saw skulls, people's skulls, piles — I couldn't count them." And now his face was so close to hers she could feel the heat from it on her cheeks. And his eyes seemed to press into hers. "Why is it happening, Mara? Why don't we understand anything? No one knows why anything happens."

And then he let her go, turned away, picked up the end of his pole and waited for her to lift hers. "There was a boat," he said. "That was only a week ago." His voice sounded ordinary again. They went on, carefully, well beyond the edge of wet, for in both their minds was the thought that if a water dragon or a lizard had survived it could be up and out of that water to get one of them. The water stingers rattled as they moved, so you could hear them. She was thinking, I say words like day or week, or year, and never think what I am saying, but behind these words are what they are. I know what a day is because the sun shines in it, and then there is dark, and I say night. But why a week, and why a year? She was tormented, haunted, by memories that refused to come properly into her mind: she had been taught these things, she was pretty sure. And now she did not know what a year measured, or why the rain fell or did not fall, or that the stars were... Of course she had known about the stars: she remembered her father holding her up to look at them, and saying, "That one there is." But she had forgotten all the names.

They were at a place where once there had been a wooden jetty; but now the wood had rotted and all wood was so scarce that it was of stone that the causeway was made, leading to the water's edge. A boat was coming. Mara had never seen one. It was a fisherman's boat, Dann said, a big one, and a crowd of people were approaching over the dried mud, about twenty of them. Two men had long oars, and stood at the front and at the back of the boat. She and Dann went on with the others. There was a rail around the boat and she held on tight. They were all standing close together, and the smell of the crowd was thick and sour. The boat was low in muddy water. At the last moment a man and a woman came stumbling to the boat. They were the couple who had been robbed last night. It seemed they hadn't found food anywhere else, because they were hardly strong enough to stand. Dann glanced at them indifferently, as he did at the others. Water stingers were watching them, their eyes and pincers sticking up out of the water. Everyone kept and eye on them: a stinger could knock someone in with its tail. Now the boat was in the middle of the little lake, and from down here the mountains seemed high. Yet the ones behind them were where Dann and she had come in a morning.

Mara had not known there could be so many different kinds of people. There was a woman with a thick body like the Rock People, but her hair was a frizzle of bright red. She was with a man who was yellowish brown, a thin, sick man, and his hair was in shags of white, though he wasn't old. There were three that could be Mahondis, tall and thin, but their hair was like the Rock People's, a pale mass. She and Dann were the only Mahondis, but no one seemed to notice them or mind, and this was because, they decided, they both wore the long, loose, once white robes that everyone knew were slaves' or servants' dress. What would Mara and Dann's parents think if they could see their children now? Would they even recognise us? — and Mara tried to remember her mother's face, and her father's, but could not. Their voices — yes, and they laughed a lot, she was sure. And they smelled: her father had a warm, spicy smell she had thought was the smell of kindness, and her mother a teasing, sweet smell. Meanwhile Mara was standing in a press of people who smelled of dirty sweat and feet. The water was muddy. The boat was hardly moving. The boatmen were shouting at Dann to use his carrying pole to push the boat along. Then they passed an oar through the crowd to her. They thought she was a boy, being so thin and bony inside that robe, and with her still bare pate. Only the men were being given oars and paddles. The sun was scorching down. It was midday. Over the mud shores the heat waves oiled and shimmered. As the oars and poles plunged into thick water, bones were disturbed and appeared for a moment, and sank, and, worse, corpses of beasts came up, emitting the most fearful stench, and went down, leaving the air poisonous. But the boat was making progress. Soon they were out of the lake and into the stream that fed it — a narrow, shallow flow that had once been a big river — and the boat had to be pushed along with poles. It was farther to the mountains than it had seemed from where they embarked, and by the time they reached them it was mid-afternoon. There was a jetty of rotting wood, and the boatmen ordered everyone off. Grumbling, the people got on to the shore. The boatmen held out their hands, and into them were put a fruit, a little bag of flour, a flap of bread. Mara and Dann offered two yellow roots, which the boatmen turned over and over, not having seen them before, apparently. To save argument the two jumped quickly on to the jetty. Mara was beside the woman they had robbed. She saw the mass of black hair just in front of her eyes and thought, But that's like the fur of a sick animal. It should be standing out and strong, but it was limp and dull. The woman was swaying, she could hardly keep herself up. Mara pulled out from her sack one of the yellow roots and held it out to her. She was thinking, But she'll need a knife — when Dann was there, with his knife, and was cutting the root in two. The movement was so quick, and Dann's eyes narrow and sharp — she looked and saw the crowd was pressing in around them, all eyes on her sack, and on Dann's, and on his knife — which was why he had been so quick to cut the root in half: he wanted everyone to see the knife. The woman began sucking at the juice, moaning and crying, and her companion snatched at the other half and chewed at it. Dann pulled Mara away, and they ran up into the mountain, not stopping until they were among rocks. Mara was thinking that Dann believed they were going to be killed, because of the sacks, and the water. And she waited for him to scold her, or say something, but he didn't. And she was thinking, Those two, when Dann was stealing their little bag, if they had woken up and seen him, would he have killed them — all for a little dried fruit and a bit of bread?

Dann said, "You must have a knife. And make sure that everyone sees you have got it."

They climbed to where they could look down on the lake, and the river running in from this end and out the other side, and the great basin of dried mud and dust. The mountains on the other side where they were yesterday stood up high and blue and fresh. "That cloudburst must have been there," she said, "somewhere in those mountains. And the flash flood went down the other way, it didn't come this side. Otherwise that lake would be bigger. And it would be fresh."

"It hasn't rained here for a long time," he said. And the sullen, restless note was in his voice again. And she was thinking, If that cloudburst had happened just a little way this side of those mountains, the flood would have come this way, not down past the Rock Village, and I would be dead now. And Dann said, angrily, "Everything is just chance. It's just luck — who stays alive and who dies." And then, again, "You must have a knife."

They searched until they found a place where they could lie among rocks and look out. Several times they heard people from the boat go past, farther down. "They think the stream goes on and they can follow it," said Dann.

"And it doesn't go on?"

"No."

She wanted to ask, What will they do? And what will we do? — but Dann had dropped off to sleep, just like that. She kept watch until he woke, and then she slept while he kept watch. When the light came they drank water, but he said they should be careful, water was going to be short; and they ate the bread they had stolen, and a yellow root each. Now they had practically no food left. The dried leaves were so bitter Mara could not eat them, but Dann said they had to be cooked. There were no matches.

"We'll get some food today," he promised. And he smiled, a stretching of his lips, cracked and a bit swollen from the sun, and he quickly put his hand on her shoulder, but let it drop again, because he had heard a sound from down the hill. The hard, suspicious stare was back on his face, and he sent quick glances all around at the rocks and the dead or dying trees, and when a stone fell clattering down among rocks he was on his feet, his knife in his hand.

Then, silence. He pushed his knife back into the slit in his robe, where there was a long, narrow pocket to hold it, and crouched down over their sacks. He pulled out the bundle of brown tunics, and laid two out on the rocks. One had come off Mara's body yesterday. They stared, for again it had sprung into its own shape and lay fresh, glistening, unmarked, though it had been on her day and night for months. It was repulsive, that unchanging, slippery brown skin, lying there on the rock, with them leaning over it, both so dry and dirty, their skins scaling and flaking dust. "How could they do it, how did they?" he asked, in that voice that meant he could not bear his thoughts. "They made these things and those cans that never break or mark or change. How did they? How, how, how?" And began twisting the thing in his hands, trying to make it tear; and he pulled at it to make it split, but it resisted him, lying there whole and perfect on the rock, shining in the sunlight.

He sighed, and she knew what it meant, for she was feeling what he felt through her whole self: here they were, these two hunted and hunting creatures, and in their hands, their property to use as they liked, these amazing and wonderful things that had been made by people like them-selves — but they did not know how long ago.

And now he pulled out the knotted cord of coins from the bottom of his sack, and in a moment had untied a coin and pushed the cord back, all the time glancing over his shoulders in case someone was watching. The slim, bright gold circle lay on the old grey rock. They sighed, both of them, at the same time. How long ago had that coin been made? And here it lay: the brightest, freshest, prettiest thing for miles around.

"If we can change even this one coin, then." He put it down the long tube of cloth inside his robe that held the knife. "I'll say you're my brother," he said.

"So what's my name?" she whispered, and her mind was full of that scene where Gorda had told her to forget her name. And she had: she had no idea what it was. She was going farther away from her real name now, when she said, "Maro. Dann and Maro."

They set off downhill, united by the carrying pole where the water cans swung. The trees here were not all dead. Some must have roots down into deep-running water, for they stood strong and green among the tree corpses. There was a bad smell, sweet and disgusting, as they came to where the hill flattened into another plain. That smell. She knew it, but not as strong. Dann said, "They made a big grave over there." He pointed. "Hundreds of people."

"Was it the water sickness?"

"No, there was a war."

"What about?"

"Water. Who was to control the water from the spring that makes the stream that feeds the lake we were on."

"Who won?"

"Who cares? It is all drying up anyway."

As they walked away from the hill, the smell lessened and then it had gone.

Dann walked lightly, warily, his eyes always turning this way and that, his head sometimes jerking around so fast because of a sudden noise, or even a gust of wind, that she thought his neck must ache. She tried to walk as he did, his feet seeming to see by themselves where there was thick, soft dust or some rocky ground where they would make no sound. She knew they were nearing a place where people were, and when she saw his eyes she felt she ought to be afraid of him, they were so hard and cold. Ahead was a town, and these houses were bigger than any she had seen, though she seemed to remember her own home had been built high, windows above windows, and these were like that, of brick, but nothing like as graceful and delightful. They were walking along a street between ugly houses. There had been gardens, but in them now were only scorpions and big yellow spiders that coated every dead bush or tree with webs as thick as the material her robe was made of. Some spiders were the size of a child — of Dann, when she first had charge of him. She was afraid, seeing their glittering eyes watching them go past. There seemed to be no people.

"Did they all die in the war?" she asked, in a whisper, afraid the spiders would catch the sound, and a web near them began vibrating and jerking as the spider climbed to see what had made the noise. He nodded, watching the spider. No people, nobody. Then she saw sitting in the open door of a house an old woman, all bones and eyes, staring out at them, and in the path between her and them were clustering scorpions, and she was flicking them away from her with a stick. But as they landed on the earth, they scuttled back to where they had been, their pincers all held out towards her. Quite soon she would not care: she would let that tired old wrist of hers rest, with the stick lying in front of her, and would wait for the scorpions.

"I don't like this place," Mara whispered. "Please, let's go." "Wait. There's a market here. If it is still here."

They came into an open place of dull, yellowish dust, with some trestle-tables in the middle, and one man guarding them all. Around the edges of this space, along the walls of the houses, were scorpions. On the two dead trees were the spiders' webs, and there was a big dragon, lying out in the sun as once dogs had done.

Her brother was standing in front of the man, staring hard at him, and the handle of his knife was showing: his right hand was held ready near it. On the wooden slats of the trestle were a few of the big roots Mara had not seen for a long time now, bags of dried leaf, a few pieces of flat bread, a bowl of flour, and strips of dried meat. What meat? It did not smell: it was too dry.

Dann took out the brown garment they had examined on the hill that morning, and she saw the man's eyes narrow as he peered at it.

"Haven't seen one of those for a bit," he said. "Have you come from the Rock Village? I didn't know anyone was still alive."

"There isn't now," said Dann. "So this is the last of these you'll be seeing."

"You aren't Rock People," the man said. What he was really saying was, You are Mahondis.

Dann ignored that and asked, "What will you give me for this?" He held tight to one end of the tunic.

The man looked steadily into Dann's face, his teeth bared, and put on the board, one after another in front of Dann, six of the food fruits. He added a bag of dried leaf, but Dann shook his head and the bag was put back beside the other bags. A pile of the flat bread — Dann nodded. And waited. The two men stood glaring at each other. Mara thought they were like two animals about to attack each other. Past the man's shoulder lay the dragon, apparently asleep. It was only a few paces away.

"Water," said Dann.

The man lifted on to the board a jar of yellowish water. Dann slid their two cans off the pole, and was topping them up with water from the jar when the man said, "I'll take those cans." Dann did not respond, went on pouring. "I'll give you these dried fruits for them."

Under the trestle was a sack full of dried fruits. Dann shook his head, put the cans back on the pole, where they swung between him and his sister.

"We need more for this tunic," he said. "Matches?"

The man sneered, then laughed. "I'll give you a bundle of matches for the two cans."

"Forget it," said Dann. "Have you got candles?"

The man produced some stumps of candle. At Dann's nod, he laid them beside the big fruits and the bread.

The two glared at each other again. Mara thought that if it came to a fight Dann would win, because this man was as thin as a sick lizard and his hair had the flattened, lifeless look — pale, fuzzy hair. Starving children's hair sometimes looked like that.

"More bread," said Dann.

The man counted out from his pile one, two, three, four, five, six pieces of bread and pushed them forward.

And to Mara's surprise, Dann let go the end of the garment and the man snatched it up, held it up, gloated. Mara thought, Something I've worn for years and years — it is worth some food fruits, a little water, and some bread. And stumps of candle.

"Have you got another?" asked the man, carefully pushing the garment into a sack and tying it tight.

Dann shook his head. Then — and Mara could feel Dann's trembling, in the stick that lay from shoulder to shoulder — he said, "I want to change a gold fifty."

At this the man's face came to life in an ugly laugh. "Oh you do? And what do you want to buy with that? You can have one of the houses here for a few matches."

"Are you going to change it?"

"Let me see it."

Again the precious, shining gold piece seemed like a message from another time, or place. Dann held tight to one edge while the other stared at it. He sighed. Dann sighed. So did Mara.

The man's eyes were glittering and he was very angry. "You could try your friends up there in that house. Wait till dark. You don't want to be seen."

Dann quickly put the bread, fruit, candles into Mara's sack, and the two went away, as quickly as they could, and as far from the fat dragon as they could.

Dann began peering into the doorways of houses, but from each room came hissing, the sound of scales on dust or stone, the clattering of scorpions. Then there was a room that seemed to have nothing in it. The two went in, and Dann's eyes were moving everywhere: up in the rafters, in the corners, behind the door. Was that a sound above them, in the room over this? There was something up there. Mara was frightened, but Dann took a big stone and jammed the door that led from this room into the rest of the house. He said, "Nothing can get in here." In the middle of the room, their eyes always on the door out into the market place, they squatted and drank water from a can, and ate two pieces of bread each. It was after midday, and the afternoon heat was yellowing the sky. Mara wanted to sleep, but Dann's eyes were restless and suspicious: he was afraid. Several times people went past, stopped to glance in, and then went on. Then Mara did sleep, for she woke to see Dann at the door, watching some scorpions. It was getting dark.

Dann took one of the stumps of candle and fitted it into a hole in the wall. Mara was thinking, But we have no matches, when he pulled from the pocket that held the knife a single long match, and slid it back. "Last one," he said. "We mustn't waste it." She had not known he still had a match. He hides things from me, she thought. Why does he? Doesn't he trust me? Dann saw the look on her face and said, "Suppose someone said to you, 'What does Dann have in his sack?' Well, if you didn't know, you couldn't tell them, could you?" He laughed. And now what he saw on her face seemed to disturb him, for he said, "Oh come on, Mara. You don't understand." There it was again, and she had no answer to it. He waited, watching her until she smiled, and then he gestured her to the door, and they went out, carefully, and stepped quickly past the scorpions.

They walked in the dusk up a path towards the lights of the house they had been shown. It was a house like the one she remembered from long ago: a tall, light, pretty house, and there had been a garden and trees.

They went up stone steps, and were outside a room that was lit by tall floor candles. Mara remembered furniture like these chairs and tables. A man came forward, smiling. Mara thought, He knew we were coming. And then, Of course, in a place where there are only a few people, everyone knows everything.

He was a Mahondi. The three of them were alike: tall, slim people with black, smooth, long hair. But he could not know that Mara's black, fuzzy stubble was really hair like his.

"I have a fifty gold," said Dann.

The man nodded, and Dann took out the coin. He gripped an edge tight, and held it out.

"You'll have to let me see it properly."

That voice: waves of remembering went through Mara. She had become used to the heavy, rough voices of the Rock People. Dann let go of the coin. The Mahondi took it to a candle, turned it over and over, and bent to bite it. He straightened and nodded. Dann was trembling again. The man handed him back the coin and said, "What do you want for it?"

Dann had expected to change it, but now it was evident there would be no change. "We want to go North," he said. The Mahondi smiled: You don't say! "How far could we go for that?"

"Your brother and yourself? A long way."

Mara could feel the carrying pole trembling again: Dann was full of fear, frustration and anger. It was because he did not know how much to ask, was afraid of being cheated. He asked, "Do you have transport? Can you arrange it?"

On the wall was an enormous coloured picture. Mara remembered it. It was a map. It was like the one she remembered from the classroom long ago. And it was the same shape as the one Dann had drawn in the dust for her. The Mahondi stepped to the map and pointed to a place in the middle. He meant: we are here. Then he pointed farther up the picture, to a black spot that said MAJAB, in large letters. It was a span of about three fingers' breadth.

"When can we go?" asked Dann.

"Tomorrow morning."

"We'll come back here," said Dann.

"You'd do better to stay here. We'll give you a room."

Who was we?

"How are we going to get to Majab?" asked Mara. Dann and this Mahondi both looked impatiently at her for asking the question. "Well, of course," said Dann, "sky skimmer." Mara had not known they still existed.

The man said again, "You'll be safe here." All of Mara longed to say, Yes, yes, yes, thank you; but Dann shook his head and then jerked it towards Mara — Come.

"Then be here just after sunrise." And then they heard, "You shouldn't go back into the town with that on you." Dann was walking away, not replying. "They know you've got gold. It's dangerous."

The last light was in the dark of the sky, a red flush. The two could hardly see the path. The man was watching them go. "He thinks we won't be coming back," said Mara. "He thinks they'll kill us down there." Dann said nothing. At least he didn't say, You don't understand — when Mara understood very well. It's a funny thing, she thought, knowing something about someone, like why Dann is afraid of that Mahondi, but he doesn't know. I don't think I can explain it to him, either.

She could hardly bear to walk down into that town. In the market place the stallholder and some other people stood around the trestles eating. There was some bread and fruit there. All of them turned to watch Dann and Mara go past. Their faces were hard and cold. They had not expected to see the two again.

A woman said loudly, "Their own kind won't have them."

Those faces: Mara was looking at a hatred worse than anything she had known, even in the Rock Village. She whispered to Dann, "It's not too late, we could go back up there." He shook his head. "These people want to kill us." But she could see he knew that.

They were returning to the house where they had been. The door was open on to the square: it had been closed when they left. Inside the main room some light came in from the twilight, not much. "The moon will be up later," he said.

"It's going to be quite dark until then," she pleaded, expecting him to ignore her; but he looked at her — that long, intent look — and took out the precious match, rubbed it on the wall, lit the candle stub. A thin light wavered over the dark room. Now he went to the inner door and pulled aside the stone that held it. They heard hissing. It was a lizard's hiss. She was frantically trying to pull Dann towards the door into the square, but he said, "Wait. We must look." He pushed open the inner door and beckoned. There was another room, and along a wall a half-grown lizard was dying, and hissing at them, but only feebly. Stairs went up. Dann leaped up the stairs and nodded at her to come too. There was a big empty room up there. Beyond it another room. Dann opened that door and quickly stood back. She went to be with him, thinking this was the same as when he was small, when he would jump off a rock or into a pool hardly looking to see if there was danger. There was a great hole in the roof here, and the sky showed a couple of still pale stars. This room was full of spiders: not the yellow and black ones but enormous, brown spiders that were everywhere on the walls and the floor. What did they eat? — she was wondering, and at once knew the answer: they were eating each other, for as she looked a great brown spider, the size of a big dog, leaped on a smaller one and began crunching it up, while the victim squeaked and squirmed, and others came scrambling to join in the feast.

Mara said, "I'm not staying in this house."

She had never said no to him, had let him take the lead. And he stood still, those intent eyes of his on her face: What am I seeing now, what does it mean? How strange it was, the way he searched faces, wanting to know what people were feeling. As if he didn't feel himself — but that wasn't true. And why was he not afraid now? The spiders knew they were there and would surely attack them? And suddenly Mara understood. Dann was afraid of people, only of people... But she was already off down the stairs, while he came leaping after her. She had picked up her sack and was out into the dark, and stopped, because of the scorpions. But they were not there, had gone off into their holes and hiding places because they did not like the cold. And the people had gone off too. Dann stood looking this way and that way and then he ran across to the trestles, and jumped up on the biggest of them. She followed. He was right: better to be well off the ground. But where was that big dragon? The light had gone, and the stars were coming out, dusty, but friendly to Mara. The two sat back to back, their sacks and water cans near them, she with the long carrying pole close to her hand, he with his knife pulled half out of its pocket. They ate one of the food fruits that were like bread, but this one was not soft and rich, as it ought to be, but was dryish and tasteless from lack of water. They drank a little of their water, not much. "Who knows when we are going to get some more?" Dann whispered. And Mara thought, Those people up in that house, they would give us water.

And now the moon came up, as heavy and solid as a food fruit, but it was not a complete round. Its bright yellow had an edge that looked as if it had been gnawed. They could see everything. Both looked for the great dragon: where was it? And the yellow and black spiders in their thick webs: did they know the two were there, so close? Soon, it was sharply cold. She felt the heat from Dann's back in her back, and wished that she had, like him, long black hair that she could pull close around her shivering neck. Instead she wrapped her naked head in the cloth that had held the slave's dress that Dann had found at the top of the wall. Neither slept. They were in a half-sleep, or dream, watching how the black shadows of the houses moved towards them across the dust. And they saw something else: a movement in the shadow near the door of the house they had left. Then someone, crouching, ran back towards houses that had flickering lights in them. Here they burned candles all night, for protection: how did they dare to sleep at all, the people of this horrible town? The very moment the sky greyed, Dann was stretching, peering about, on guard. Again they hastily ate a little, one of the yellow roots, and drank a mouthful or two. They were waiting for the sun to show itself, and soon there it was, a hot red burn over the hill they had been on yesterday. The scorpions came running around the edges of the houses and took up their positions. The stallholder from yesterday came into the market, but stopped when he saw them. He seemed surprised. He went to the door of the house they had been in, opened it, and out waddled the dragon. The man had led the beast into the house when it was dark and had expected it to attack them. He had not seen them there on the trestles. The dragon came fast across to the trestles, its mouth open, hissing. The man took out a piece of meat from a jar and threw it to the dragon. His angry, hating smile at the two said clearly: I thought the dragon would not need feeding this morning. The dragon lay down where it was yesterday, in the sun. It was a guard for the stallholder, perhaps even a pet.

The two went quickly away out of the market and again up the path to the house on the rise. On the way Mara went aside to pee. It ran clear and light yellow into the soil, which hissed gently, from dryness. She was not sick any longer. She thought, I'm well; soon I'll be as strong as I ever was. And she looked at her thin, stick-like legs, lifting her robe to see them, and thought they were already more like legs. She put her hands on her buttocks to feel them: but they were still just bones, no flesh there yet.

Just inside the door of the front room, they stood side by side, each holding an end of the carrying pole and a sack in their hands. The man from yesterday came in, and Mara saw his smooth, shining skin and his clean, shining hair, and thought how she and Dann must seem to him, with their dirty robes, and their dust. They had brought dust in with them: dusty footprints on the polished floor, and dust fell from them as they stood.

The man held out his hand. Dann took the yellow coin from the pocket that held the knife, and put it into the hand.

The man stood looking closely at them, Dann, Mara, Dann again, and asked, "Did you come from Rustam?"

Dann said, "I don't know."

The man looked enquiringly at Mara. She almost said, Yes, but was afraid. He said, "You look very much like." and stopped. Then, "Do you know how to ride in a skimmer?" Surprising her, Dann said, "Yes." To Mara the man said, "You must keep very still. If the skimmer has to come down, get out, wait until it begins to lift, and jump in. They have very little power now."

"I had a job working skimmers, on a hill shuttle," said Dann. Was that actually a smile? Was he trusting this Mahondi after all?

"Good. Then if you are both ready, we'll go..." And at that moment another man came in, a Mahondi, and Dann's mouth was open; he stared, and was trembling. The two men were alike. But, thought Mara, frantic, already knowing what was going to happen, Mahondis are alike. These two men just look like Mahondis — that's all.

Dann was letting out gasping, feeble sounds, and the two men, frowning, astonished, turned towards him, presenting their faces to him, close, leaning forward. Dann gave a shout, said to Mara, "Come on," and ran, the two cans on the carrying pole over his shoulder, his sack in his hand. Her first thought was, And now I shall have no water.

The two men were looking at her now: Why? She could not speak, for her throat was thick with the need to cry. She knew why, but how could she explain it to them? "What's the matter with him?" asked the man who had just come in.

Mara felt herself sway, and was able to reach a chair where she sat, eyes closed. When she opened them, the two were staring at her.

"Your big brother is rather strange, isn't he?" said the first man.

And now she had to smile: little Dann, her big brother. But they were still staring: were they seeing something they hadn't before? She thought, In a moment they'll whisk up my robe to have a look. And what they will see first is the rope of coins knotted around my waist. She stood up. They were looking at her chest. She thrust it out so they could see its flatness.

"How old are you?" asked the second man.

"Eighteen."

The two looked at each other. She did not know what that look said. A long pause. Then the first man said, "We'll take you, if you like."

First she thought, Oh yes, yes, anywhere away from here. Then she thought, But Dann, I can't leave him; and she said aloud, "I can't leave my brother." She had nearly said, My little brother.

"You'll be by yourself. It's dangerous," said the man she now felt was her friend, and whom she did not want to leave.

She did not reply. She could not. Her throat was thick again, and she was thinking, If I cry the way I'd like to, they'll know I am a girl. And meanwhile there was a new thought in her mind. She wanted to ask, Please may I have a bath? — but this was ridiculous, so dangerous. But she was remembering, because of the faces of these two, which were so familiar to her, so near — like her parents, like all the people she had known as a child — how one could stand in a big basin and water was splashed all over you, cool water; and then there was a soft, sweet-smelling soap, not like the fatty sand she had used to clean herself at the waterholes. She longed so much for this water that she was afraid of saying anything at all, because it was dangerous. Of course it was, for she would have to take her clothes off and then.

The two men stood side by side and looked hard at Mara, trying to understand.

"What's your name?" asked one suddenly.

A name came pushing into her mind from long ago; yes, she thought, that's my name, it is my real name, my name — and then she saw Lord Gorda's face, tired, thin, kind, so close to hers. Remember, you are Mara, your name is Mara.

She nearly said, Mara, but said, "Maro."

"What is your family name?"

And now she could not remember. Everyone then had had the same name, and she never thought about it.

"I don't know," she said, and she was even thinking, Perhaps they'll know and they'll tell me. And she was still thinking, I'll ask they're kind and I can wash this robe and make it white instead of dusty brown and wash out the smell of that other person.

"Then if you're not coming, I'll give you back the fifty," said the first man, holding it out.

And now she was pleading, "Oh no, no, please, let me have it in small coins, please."

And now another long look between the men. Then the man she thought of as her friend said, "But Maro, the change for this would fill your sack. You couldn't carry it. And besides, no one has that amount of money these days." And the other man asked, "Where have you come from, Maro?" — meaning, How is it you don't know this already?

She said, "The Rock Village."

Again they looked at each other, really surprised.

To avoid more questions she said, "I'll go." And held out her hand for the gold. The coin was put into her hand. Then her friend went to a chest, pulled out a bag of the light, flimsy coins, poured some into a smaller bag about the size of her hand, and gave it to her.

She said, "Thank you." And again, "Thank you, thank you." She longed to say, I've changed my mind, please take me in the skimmer away from here, but she could not.

"Keep that money out of sight," her friend said.

And the other, "Don't go back into the town."

She walked away from the house, and never in her life had she felt as she did then, as if her heart would break: she was going away from what she really was — that was how she felt.

At the foot of the rise she turned: they were still in their doorway, watching her. She lifted her hand: Goodbye. And thought that in her other hand she still held the gold coin and the little bag of coins. She dropped both into her sack.

She would rather have died than go back into the town. She felt sick with fear even thinking of it. There was a dusty track leading away from the town, going north, and she began walking along it, alone. She thought, I won't last long without Dann. They'd kill me for this sack, or for this robe I have on.

She kept glancing back along the track to make sure she was not followed. On either side was the landscape that by now she knew so well: dead and dying trees, like sticking-up bones, whitish drifts of dust, the sky yellow with dust and, dotted about among the drought-killed trees, the occasional strong, fresh, green trees, their roots going far down. She walked on, the sun burning her pate through the thin cloth she had draped there, and she was thinking of how, deep in the earth, streams of clean water ran, making pools and marshes and falls and freshets and floods, and into them reached the roots of these few surviving trees. And why should these few have fought to reach the deep water, and the others given up? It was midday. Ahead she saw a thin crowd of people. She was at once afraid. More afraid than she had been of the spiders or the dragon? Yes; and she understood Dann. She was walking faster than they were: soon she would catch up with them. What ought she to do? When she was closer she saw they were the mix of peoples that was usual now: every kind of shape and skin colour and hair colour and kind of hair; but everything was dusty: dust on them and on the clothes they wore, which mostly were trousers and tunics that she knew were worn farther south than the Rock Village. When she came up with the end of the straggle of walkers, she saw the two people Dann and she had robbed — and was it really only two nights ago? Both were on their last legs, almost staggering, their eyes glazed. These two took no notice of Mara, but others turned to look, but were not interested in her. She went on behind them, more slowly, because a lot of people walk slower than one or two, and because it was very hot. The front of the crowd could hardly be seen through blowing dust: the wind was getting up, and dust clouds were swirling about and through them. She tried to make out the faces nearest to her: some she thought were from the boat. It was important to recognise faces, friends or enemies. She was stumbling along, thinking that she longed for a mouthful of water, and she had none; that if Dann were not as he was, then they both would now be travelling north in the skimmer, would be far away from this dying land. Someone was walking up behind her... was level with her... had moved ahead; and it was Dann, who did not smile or greet her, but only adjusted the carrying pole so that it again rested on her shoulder and the two cans swung between them. She said, "I have got to have some water." He said, "Wait, or when they see you're drinking they'll grab it all."

They walked all through the hot day, while the pale dust clouds swirled about them, and when the red sun became a big reddish blur low down, the whole company began moving up into a low hill beside the road: they were all staying together, for safety. And while they were doing this, their attention distracted, Dann quickly rested the pole and handed Mara a can of water, standing close to her, shielding her from curious looks, and she drank and would have gone on drinking, but he said, "Stop, stop, that's got to last us."

The smell of the water seemed to have reached some stragglers, who turned to look, but Dann had the cans back on the pole, and his knife was in his hand. On the top of the low hill, they found a big rock to protect their backs, and crouched there, close, the cans between them, while she whispered that the two men he had been afraid of had given her the little bag of coins. He was at once suspicious. "Show me," he said, and she did, and he let the thin, light stuff run between his fingers on to a rock. "It looks all right," he said.

She asked, knowing it was useless, "Dann, why did you run away? They were friendly. They wanted to help us." And she saw, astonished, how his eyes moved fast from side to side, heard his fast, frightened breathing, watched him hunch up, protecting his head — little Dann, in that long ago room on that long, hot night.

"Bad," he said. "Bad men."

He put the bag of coins back in her sack and looked for something that would burn. He found bits of old bark in a crack in the rock, and pulled down a bough from a dead tree. He went to his sack, was about to take out his axe, saw that if he did it would be the only one here, and he wouldn't keep it long. He broke up wood with his bare hands, built them a fire, lit it with a brand taken from the nearest fire. He didn't ask, just took it. A dozen small fires burned on the big flat rock that topped this rise, and around each huddled a few people, guarding their food and their water containers. One group had a pan and were cooking the dried leaves: the smell of the leaves, a memory of fresh green, blew about and around the hill, together with the dusty smoke.

Mara and Dann ate flaps of bread and shared a yellow root. Not far away the two whose last food they had taken sat with their backs to a rock. Mara asked Dann with her eyes if he would let her take them a root, but he shook his head.

And then everyone was lying down, and the fires were burning low. Dann was listening. He stood up and listened, went to the edge of the rock and listened again. Then he said loudly, "Someone should stay awake, someone should be on guard. And we should keep the fires going. There are lizards and dragons just down there." People sat up to stare at him: it was because he had called them we, had suggested they might help each other. Some lay down again and even turned their backs: Leave us alone. Others stayed sitting up, poked their fires, and one went to the edge of the hill, as Dann had done. Mara thought he looked like Kulik, and then that he didn't. There were movements down the hill, something big and dangerous.

Dann said to Mara, loudly, meaning it to be heard, "Move in, the dragons will get the ones lying at the edge." Again, some took notice and moved in, so the fires burned between them and the edge, and others stayed where they were. The moon was up, large and yellow, and the shadows were thick and black from the rocks around the edge. Dann said to Mara, "Something could jump down on us from the top of this rock." And they went farther in, having kicked the fire close to the rock, so the heat and flames went up its face to the top.

"I'll sleep first," he said. Both were longing to sleep. Last night — was it really only last night? — they had sat half asleep on the market trestles, and since then they had been walking for hours. As always he was asleep almost before he had finished speaking, lying so the water can was against his body. All of these people had their most precious thing, water containers, against their bodies, between their legs, or in their arms.

Mara sat listening. Into her mind came the words, I am listening with every cell in my body — and was at once jerked full awake. Cell. All these words that she knew, but did not know why. Probably Daima said it: she often used words that went by Mara. Again Mara was seized with the hunger to know more, to understand: she wanted to know... And even while she was thinking that this hunger was like the need for water or for food and as strong, and always stronger, she was staring hard into the shadows that edged this place where everyone was asleep. All but one: a man sitting up beyond the last of the fires. There was something familiar about him, but she could not see him clearly. In the middle, lying between two adults, was a child. Mara thought that she hadn't seen a child for... it was certainly months. She knew this child would not live — how could it? There were heavy movements in the rocks beyond the edging shadows. She looked quickly up because of a movement and saw the sharp head of a big lizard poking over the rock under which they had set the fire. The head disappeared, because of the smoke. She broke up more wood and fed the fire. That rock was not as dark as it was because of this fire but from earlier fires. She and Dann were not the first to have thought, This rock will make a safe place for our backs... then, later, that, An enemy could jump down on us from its top.

How many others? How far back? She did not know for how long people had been leaving their homes to move North. The man beyond the far fire was on his feet, leaning forward, listening. She thought he looked like Kulik, except that he was so thin. There was a moving and shoving in several places below them now. The moon was directly overhead. The dead white trees glistened. Rocks sparkled a little in the moon rays. She saw that a long shape, half in and half out of the shadows, was a lizard, and she leaped up and yelled as the man who might be Kulik whirled around, flailing his stick; but the lizard had taken up a sleeping woman in its mouth and was waddling off out of sight. She did not even scream. They could hear the crunching sounds of her being eaten, and the hisses and grunts that meant other predators were wanting their share. Even now not everyone was awake. Dann was. He stood up and said, "We should all get into the middle and make a big fire." The people awake looked at him but no one moved. They were all thinking, If we are crowded together it will be easier to steal from each other.

Dann said to her, "Back to back." Again they sat, like last night, back to back, he with the knife, she with her stick. She felt from the relaxing of his hard, bony back that he had gone to sleep again. She was not tired, but alert. It was foolish for her to sit staring out in only one direction, and she gently slid away from Dann, let him fall sideways; and now that he was asleep, her little brother, she could kneel by him, and feel how her love for him wrapped him around, just like long ago, when he was a baby, and then a small child. She also watched the man who might be Kulik walking up and down and around. He had a big stick. She saw him use it to lift up a water can from between the legs of a sleeper, but she coughed, and he let the can fall back. The sleeper did not move. She thought, That man is my enemy now. He went on walking, around and back and forth, sometimes glancing at her to see if she was watching.

She was fingering her upper chest. There was a little pinch of flesh there. She thought, But when my breasts come back, then I'll be in danger. Then she thought, But if the trickle of blood comes back what shall I do? I shall have to be afraid of every man who comes near. Then: I am sitting here worrying about the monthly blood but a woman has just been eaten alive by a lizard. And I don't care. Some of us are going to die or be killed, and there is nothing we can do.

She remembered the grave that held hundreds of people, near the hill of two nights ago. Hundreds, Dann had said. She began counting in her head: ten fingers. Then: ten toes. She knew that five twenties made a hundred but after that everything became difficult: only words, words that she used without understanding. It was silent now down the sides of this little hill. She was sleepy. Dann jerked up and said, "Sleep." She curled up and wished she could fall asleep the way he did, a closing of his eyes and — out. She heard sounds, knew that a wind had risen, and what she had begun to think was hunting lizards was the wind worrying and whining among rocks. She saw Dann standing over her, his knife in his hand, looking out at the dark. In the strong moonlight he seemed smaller, and easy to attack. The other man was staring at him past the fires. Was he thinking that Dann was only a boy and could easily be overthrown? Or was he Kulik and recognised Dann? But how could he? Mara had only just recognised him. And as for her, she still had breasts when he saw her last, and was a girl whom he tried to surprise behind walls and in corners. The wind was lifting the dust about and when it was blown into the low fires it burned, sending up sparks. The dust was what was left of plants, trees — or perhaps the bodies of animals. And people. Mara slept and woke with the light warm on her face. The fires were all out and the travellers on their feet, picking up their belongings. Dann put a piece of bread into her hand. She gulped a mouthful of water. Kulik — but was it he? — was watching them both. When everyone began filing down towards the track, he went first to make it clear he was the leader, and looking at Dann to challenge him; but like yesterday Mara and Dann came last. Near the track was a mat of dusty brown hair from the woman the lizard had eaten, with blood on it. The two robbed by Mara and Dann were not far from the end, walking stiffly, one foot after another, and seemed to be asleep with their eyes open. Mara thought, They had so little food left that what we took wouldn't make all that difference, but she knew the two would not be walking like that, on their last legs, if they had eaten the food that was now making strength in Dann and her.

They all walked on, slowly, while the sun rose up, hot. Then Mara saw beside the road the little straggle of half-dead leaves on a brown stalk that told her that under it was a clutch of yellow roots. She showed Dann; but he did not remember how they grew. If these two fell out and were alone on that track it would be dangerous, yet all around now she could see the brown stalks and leaves. She called loudly, "There's food here." Some people turned, turned back, indifferent. Others stopped. Mara took her digging stick from her sack, and dug with it in the hard earth, while Dann stood guard, and the others were stopping and coming back. She hoped that the roots would not be deep — sometimes they were as deep in the earth as she was tall. She reached the first roots at the depth of her arm, and pulled out the dusty brown balls, used Dann's knife to cut one, and showed how the yellow liquid dropped from it. At once all these people were scrambling around among the dead grasses, digging with anything they could find. Into Mara and Dann's sacks went ten of the roots, five each, after they had eaten as much as they could.

Mara saw the two robbed ones, who were dying, simply sitting by the road: they did not have the strength to dig. Dann knew what she wanted to do, and this time did not stop her: everyone was so preoccupied with their digging they wouldn't notice. Mara gave the two a root each, cut open, and saw that they had hardly the strength to suck them. Although it was Mara who had seen the tell-tale vines and alerted everyone, now she was being pushed out of the way and kept at a distance from them.

The man from last night was organising the effort, allotting the vines and the sharing out of the roots. He hardly looked at Mara and Dann standing by, watching, but when it was over, and the travellers were on the move again, he stood staring at them, glaring. He hated them. Whether he knew who they were, or didn't; whether he was Kulik, or wasn't... he loathed the two youngsters and intended them to know it.

There was a coughing, grumbling roar and from behind them came a skimmer, low over the track, turning up dust and chaff, and the raw earth from the root diggings that looked as if miners had been prospecting there. Everyone scattered off the track, and there were mutterings of hate, then shouts of rage, as the machine came level. In it were five Mahondis, all looking very serious, worried — but Mara could not see if her friend was there. The machine was low: if the travellers had wanted they could have pulled it down on to the ground. She knew the skimmer should be much higher, about treetop level; she knew that inside it must be comfortable seats... How did she know these things? She only just remembered travelling in them. It took a long time for the clouds of dust to settle: on either side of the track were drifts of pale, thick dust. As a child she had looked out from the windows of the skimmers at the Rock People and never thought how they felt about the dust, or how much they must hate the skimmers and everyone that travelled in them.

They all walked on, hardly visible to one another in the dust, and then up a rise, and saw that down the other side the skimmer was on the track, the dust already settling around it. All the crowd ran up to it: inside the Mahondis sat, frightened to death, afraid to get out and lighten the machine. If they did, they would be killed, they knew. And then the pilot struggled with his levers and gauges and got the skimmer up quite high, well above their reaching arms. It trundled on, making grinding and creaking noises, and then it fell — it crashed. At once all the travellers rushed up, peered in, reached in. Some of the Mahondis were dead, but not all; there were groans and cries and blood, but what the travellers were after were the provisions they carried. What food there was soon found itself distributed among the travellers — kept by whoever had grabbed it. Containers of water came out too, but there were only two small ones. And then the machine exploded, and the people near it were killed, together with anyone left alive inside. The skimmer lay in pieces all over the road and on either side of it, and black smoke went up. Ten of the travellers had been killed. The rest, thirty or so, stood shaking their fists and cursing the machine and the Mahondis. Mara knew she could have been among them: it might have been her head, or her arm, lying there in the dust. If she had accepted the invitation of the two men to travel with them, then she would be dead now.

She was waiting for Dann to say, Mara aren't you glad I ran away? Aren't you glad I said no? — But while he stood there, as always alert on his two feet planted slightly apart, gripping the pole on his shoulder with one hand and his knife with the other, he did not seem to be thinking anything of the kind. He did not respond to things as ordinary people did. Surely he ought to be thinking now of their escape? She said to him, pleadingly, "Dann — Dann?" But he turned to give her his close, acute look, and then his narrow smile — and he was already moving away from the crash. Was it that he had been near death so often that he did not care about it?

Dann waited until all the travellers were back in their places: Kulik or, at any rate, the leader, at the head, the rest in their families behind, and then he and Mara at the very end. Behind them they could see that, across the space between here and the hill they had spent the night on, lizards and dragons were waddling. Big, fat, bulging-with-flesh beasts, the size of a big man. They had smelled the blood.

Now they were walking through flat country and the big, green trees were few, so the underground rivers must be dry or perhaps had never run here. Everywhere stood the pale, dead trees. At sunset, the time to stop, there was no hill or high place. They would have to stay the night in the open, with miles of emptiness around them, the moon showing where they were. It was still a bright moon, though only half of what it had been.

Kulik — but Dann said he thought it wasn't Kulik — told everyone to get into a big circle, with their faces outwards and their sticks and weapons ready. He was taking command because he thought that last night Dann had been trying to be a leader, and he kept giving Dann hard stares that said, Don't you try to challenge me.

There was nothing to burn, only a little grass. They would have to forget fires for that night. They did not listen to Kulik, because they could not trust anyone, and were again in their little groups. Near Dann and Mara were the couple that had the child, who looked about four but was really ten years old. It was very still in its mother's arms. Her face was hard and angry. She carried the dead child well away from the crowd, which was already settling to sleep, and laid it on the earth. At once everyone was shouting at her, "Do you want the dragons and lizards to come for us?" So she fetched it back, and sat over it while it lay on the earth with its eyes staring up from a dirty little face.

The yellow half-moon rose high up and the dark forms of the people lying on the earth seemed small, and like a scattering of boulders or low bushes.

When the sun rose the mother again carried the child far away from the travellers, almost out of sight. She came back running, stumbling, weeping. Mara wanted to say to her, Don't waste water on tears, and was shocked that she could be so cold. If there are no children left, she thought, then what will happen? Perhaps I will have a child one day? But that seemed ridiculous, when she thought of her bony boy's body. The staring eyes of the little child that had died of hunger haunted her, and she knew that she did not want to be like that mother, with a dead child in her arms.

That day was like the last, but there were no roots, and they did not see a river, not even a dry one, nor a muddy waterhole, nor any sign of water. That night they lay in the open again. The moon was now much smaller. Mara did not like to think of the dark of the moon, just ahead. In the morning the two people Dann and she had robbed were dead. The travellers simply walked away from the corpses, leaving them on the road. Three more days passed and three more people died. There was little food left. The yellow roots had been eaten, and the water was almost finished.

It was ten days since Mara and Dann had left the Rock Village: ten days' walking and nine dangerous nights.

When they all stopped for the tenth night, before they slept, Dann told her to make sure the bag of coins that had been given to her was at the top of her sack, easily reached, and said, "This is our last night on the road. There are skimmers ahead — no, they don't fly, but you'll see." In the last light from the sunset he knelt and drew a rough map of Ifrik in the dust, a shape that seemed to move and flicker in the firelight, and made a mark for the Rock Village, and measured a width of three fingers north of it. Mara knew he was exaggerating their progress to comfort her, and when she smiled at him to say she knew this, he did smile back, and they laughed. "But you'll see," he said again, and they lay down to sleep, back to back. In the night she woke to see Kulik — and it was he — bending over her. Now she understood why he had been so hard to recognise. On the right half of his face were two scars, not yet healed: one from his nose, just catching the corner of his mouth, and lifting it, down to his collarbone; the other from under his eye to under his ear. He was not merely thin, his big bones showing, but yellow and sick looking, even in this bad light. He had been just about to flick up her robe with his stick. She did not know if this meant he had suspicions about her, as a boy, or if he thought she might be Mara, or if he had somehow caught a glimpse of the knotted cord around her waist when a gust of dusty wind had blown her robe up. He saw she was awake, and grunted and moved off. He did this in the way they all used: he was unapologetic, not guilty, not even concerned that she had seen him. They could thieve from each other, threaten, even kill, and the next minute could be walking along the road a pace apart, or lie down to sleep within touching distance, if the danger was enough.

Dann was awake and whispered, "Don't worry, we'll get away from him today." "It's Kulik," she whispered. Dann said it wasn't. She said he hadn't seen Kulik for five years. He said he could never forget that face: he even had nightmares about it. She said, "Then you'll have worse nightmares now."

Next morning they each had a mouthful of water. The others had taken to staring at the two water cans hanging there on the pole, and Dann put all the water they had left into one can, which they hung on the pole, and the other can went into Mara's sack. As they walked, the water slopped around in the can, and the people ahead kept glancing around to look at the enticing can. Both knew they would soon be attacked for the water, but at midday there appeared a skimmer on the crest of a rise, and around it were a group of ten youths, armed with knives and sharpened staves. The travellers moved off the road to keep well clear, but Dann signalled to her to hang back until the others had gone out of sight over the rise. Then he went up to the group, and the youth who seemed to be the leader let out a shout, and in a moment Dann and he were hugging each other, talking and hugging again. Of course: Dann had said he had worked with skimmers. Now the two men went off a little way and conferred. Dann came back to take the bag of coins from her. He counted out coins into this new — or old — friend's hand. Dann motioned to her: Get in. This little machine was smaller than the one they had seen crash and burn. It had four seats. It was like a grasshopper or a cricket. Dann got into the pilot's seat. Ahead the road dipped down in a long but steep slope to a string of pits that had once been waterholes, and rose up again to the next crest. At the bottom the group of walkers, who probably had not even noticed that Dann and Mara had not kept up, were plodding heavily on. The youths pushed the machine, which did not attempt to fly but only rolled down the slope, getting up a considerable speed. The youths pushed until they could not keep up, then went back to their station on the crest of the rise. Dann's friend waved at the two, and then the others did too. Because the machine was making no noise, with its engines silent, it was only at the last moment the travellers knew it was there, and they jumped off the road, cursing and shaking their fists; and when they saw Mara and Dann in it, they ran forward to grab it, but the skimmer was going too fast by then. The impetus from the long run down got them to the top of the next rise, where another group of youths stopped it. Mara and Dann got out; Dann conferred with these youths, saying that he had paid for eight skimmers. It was clear they were not altogether happy with this, but they allowed the two to transfer to the next waiting machine. The one they had come this far on, would return with one of these youths as pilot.

Again, this group pushed them off, down another and this time steeper decline, and again the skimmer reached the top of the next rise, and was brought to a stop by another gang of youths. This was a relay service, using skimmers whose engines no longer worked, for travellers who still had the means to pay. How did they live, then, these bands of young men, each with their skimmer? — but Mara knew the answer. They lived by robbing travellers — how else? They took food, and water, and anything else they fancied — and Mara wondered for how many stages of this shuttle the authority of that first youth, Dann's friend, would command respect. Soon, she knew. When this skimmer reached the third rise, the youths there demanded more payment. Dann still had a little clutch of the coins as a reserve, and he wasn't going to part with them. And the gold coins were each many times too much. For the ride from the third stop to the fourth Dann paid one of the brown garments, which had the young men exclaiming and marvelling so much they took little notice when Dann and Mara got into the skimmer, and had to be summoned by a shout from Dann. Down they went, and up they went. All this part of the landscape was a system of valleys between crests, each ride from ridge to ridge about two miles. At the fifth stop they parted with another brown tunic. There were now four left. Dann said that the youths were getting far more than they deserved, for these garments earned in the markets to the east a small fortune each. What markets, what do you mean, the East? — Mara wanted to ask, but they were in the noisy machine. At the sixth stop the youths wanted the two to turn out everything they had in their sacks. They were not impressed with the name of Dann's friend, nor that he had once been one of them. In the end they did not insist on their opening the sacks, but accepted the water can, which, again, they found such a wonder that it was only after some time Mara and Dann were pushed off from the ridge. This was a long, deep descent, and the machine rocked because of the speed, and Mara held on while the landscape rushed past on either side: the same old brownish grass, the same dead or dying trees. At the seventh stop the atmosphere was more friendly, for no reason they could see, and the youths were satisfied with a couple of the food fruits — the last. And now the last long dip down and then up, and at the top the youths were truculent and surrounded the couple with a circle of staves and knives and angry, threatening faces. There had been no travellers through that day, nor the day before, they said. The stations farther back grabbed all the good things — and now what were they going to be given? To say that the two had paid for this last stage would be asking for more trouble. These youths wanted food. There was no food. Then they said they would take the can and its water. They actually had taken it off the pole when Mara piped up, "There isn't enough there to give you even a sip each, but it's life and death to us." At this they forgot Dann and turned on her, jeering and laughing. "Listen to the kid." "What a pipsqueak." "He's got a loud voice for such a little squit." And so on. They began jostling and shoving her — and pushed Dann aside when he tried to protect her. Then one said, "Oh leave him," and they all stood back. And then, just at the right moment, when the youths were wondering what to try next, Dann said, "I've got an axe." Now, axes were rare and precious. "Show us," cried the youths, and when Dann produced the axe were silent because of it. It was very old: the man Dann had got it off had said it was the usual "thousands of years old," made of a dark, gleaming stone, and with an edge that left blood on the thumb of the youth who tried it. It was, like the gold pieces when they were allowed to see the light of day, made with a craft and a care and a knowledge that no one knew how to match. It was worth — well, it was worth Mara and Dann's lives.

The young men no longer cared about the two, and hardly noticed when they set off down the long descent. They were handling the axe, silent with awe of it.

The laborious walking down, with ahead of them a long ascent, told the two just how much the skimmers had saved them every day. The distance covered in the skimmers amounted to two or three days of the slow walking that was all the travellers could manage now, being so exhausted. Mara and Dann were in better shape than most of the others because they had had more water and a little food, but they were learning today that they were reaching the end of their strength. Then Dann said, "Wait, wait, we're going to see something soon — I think. It was still running when I came down to get you." And as he spoke there appeared in the sky ahead a machine that Mara remembered: it was a sky skimmer, an old machine, and as it settled on the road it was rattling and shaking and roaring as if it might collapse there and then. Out stepped the pilot, a person in bright blue clothes, not a tunic or a robe but close fitting trousers and top, a vision of cleanness and neatness. It was a woman, Mara decided after her eyes had cleared from the surprise and shock of seeing this being from another kind of world. Her yellow hair was smooth and glossy, her skin shone, and she smiled at them.

Dann walked straight up to her holding out the gold coin, as he did before, keeping an edge tight between his fingers. "How far?" he asked.

Before examining it she said, "I am Felice. Who are you?"

Dann did not reply, intent on the transaction; but Mara said, "Dann and Maro, from the Rock Village."

"You must be the last, then."

And then she bent, bit the coin, while Dann still held tight, straightened and said, "It's genuine, all right. I don't see one of these very often." She waited, but Dann said nothing, and she said, "Well, ask no questions and you'll hear no lies."

"I found it," said Dann.

"Of course you did." And she showed she was waiting for some tale by leaning there against her machine, all her very white teeth on show, and her eyes hard, but amused.

"I didn't kill anyone for it," said Dann, angry.

"I know he didn't," Mara came in, and this bright, shining creature transferred her attention to Mara. "He's my brother," she said. "So I can see."

"That money was given to me by the woman who took us in when we were little and looked after us." And Mara, not knowing she was going to, began to cry. She was thinking of all that kindness, which she had taken for granted. She was thinking, Oh I wish I could be little again, and Daima could hold me. She could not stop crying. She turned away and tried to wipe the tears from her face with the sleeve of her dusty robe. This dirtied her face even more.

But Felice was kind, Mara knew, and without knowing she was going to, held out her hands imploringly to her.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Chelops," said Dann.

Her face changed. She was incredulous. "Why Chelops?" "We're going North."

"You are Mahondis," she stated. "And what makes you think you'll get any farther north than Chelops?"

"But we do keep going north," said Dann.

"Have you been to Chelops?"

"Yes," said Dann, again surprising Mara.

"Are you sure? You mean to tell me you just walked through Chelops?" "I... didn't just walk," said Dann. "I saw a lot of police, and so I hid... and hid... and then made a run for it at night." "You didn't notice the slaves?"

"I didn't see very much," said Dann. "But I liked what I saw."

Felice seemed too surprised to speak. She seemed to be thinking, or even in doubt. Then she said, "Why don't you let me take you to Majab? It's a nice town."

"Majab," said Dann, contemptuously. "Compared to Chelops it's just nothing." As she still did not reply, and hesitated, and then began to speak, but stopped, he said, "I know you go as far as Chelops."

"It's my base," she said. Then said, "I am employed by the Hadrons."

This meant nothing to either Dann or Mara.

Felice sighed. "I've warned you as much as I can," she said. "Very well. But that coin: it would be enough to take the two of you to Majab. What else can you pay me?"

At this Dann scrabbled around in the bottom of his sack, without actually taking anything out so she could see it, and untied another gold coin, and brought it forth.

"Well," she said. "If I were you I'd not let anyone know you'd got those."

Dann gave the sort of laugh that means, You think I'm a fool? She was thinking they were foolish, but her face was soft and she smiled as she helped Mara in.

This was a six-seater, but the seats were broken and they had to sit on the floor. The machine took off with a feeble, coughing roar. All the same, it got quite high, enough for them to have a good, wide view down. It was a brown landscape, with clumps of grey rocks and, very occasionally, a green blotch that was one of the trees that had deep roots. There were dead trees everywhere. The machine was following the road. Below were several columns of walkers, like the one the two had been part of till this morning. As the machine passed overhead all the people looked up to see this rare thing, a sky skimmer, and while it was not possible to see their faces, all of them were hating the machine and cursing it.

They crossed a wide river running west to east, but there was not much water in it. At the least the mud flats on either side were not white with bones. Now they were approaching some mountains, and the machine did not increase its height — could not, that was clear. At the last moment, when it seemed it would crash into a tall peak that had glittering streaks down it from past rains, it turned to slide through a pass to the other side, where the plain went on, and on, everything brown and dry. After about half an hour, in the middle of the plain, there appeared below them a town, rather like the one behind them that was full of spiders and scorpions, but here there seemed to be people in the streets and there was a market.

"Majab," whispered Dann. "That's where the old woman was — I told you, who hid me when I ran away."

"You were here a long time?"

"Two years. Then I went off with some people — East." He pointed.

"What's there — East?"

His face was so angry she was afraid of him. East was a town where he had seen monkeys, and people, in cages. He had seen the cages slung between work beasts, like the water cans on a carrying pole, people clinging to the bars and crying and begging, women and children as well as men, particularly children: they were to be sold in the towns along the coast.

"Dann," said Mara, touching his arm to bring him back out of his anger. After a few moments he did sigh, then nodded at her: All right. And then in the dust on the floor of the machine he drew Ifrik again, put a finger where she knew he meant the Rock Village, and then walked his fingers to a spot that he whispered was Majab, and then to the next, which was Chelops.

They had been flying for about two hours when the skimmer began to descend. It landed on a high ridge; beyond it they could see only sky. The sun was red and gold and violet, sending rays across the sky.

Felice got out of the pilot's seat and opened the door for them.

"But this isn't Chelops," said Dann. "You've cheated us."

"Chelops is over the ridge," she said. "Now listen to me. I am not supposed to say this. If they found out I'd said it. But don't go into Chelops. Make a detour."

"For one thing we haven't got any food and not much water left," said Mara.

"Well I don't know," she said. "I really don't know what to say. I like you two kids. Well, if it's possible, see if you can buy some food in the market up in the north-east. Don't go through the centre." And with that she was back in her machine, and they watched the machine labour into the sky and go over the ridge, just skimming it.

"It doesn't matter," said Dann. "I wanted to show you something up here anyway."

And he began walking on, to the top of the ridge, where they could look down on Chelops. It was enormous. She had not imagined there could be anything like it. The light was going, it was dusk down there, but she could see tall black towers clustered together, though all dark, and a town spreading away from them, a big spread of houses, a wide scattering of lights.

Dann seemed familiar with this place. He said he had come over this ridge when he was walking down Ifrik to get to her, that somewhere close there was an old city, ruins he had heard people talk about.

They found a higher place, like the other nights, with flat rocks on it. There was no moon, but the stars glittered and seemed to rustle and talk. They ate the last piece of their bread, drank almost the last of their water, and lay down on a rock and looked up. The heat stored in the rock would warm them through the night, and above was the cold shine of the stars. He slept while she watched. She did hear scuffling and clicking from quite near, but these were not the sounds the dragons or lizards made. Then she slept. He woke her to show her an enormous beetle, yellow, with black feelers, running off to some rocks.

Before the sun rose they moved off their rock with its store of warmth and walked along the ridge that marked the descent into Chelops. "And here it is," said Dann, "it is where they said." He sounded perplexed. Ahead of them were buildings of all shapes, round or square or like bowls, but they had no roofs and were all of a piece, with round holes for windows. They were of a dull greenish or brown metal, sometimes two-storeyed with outside stairs, but were mostly one-storey. When the two stood a foot or so away from a wall they saw their reflections, brownish distorted pictures of themselves, deep in the dull metal. What was this metal that still reflected after so long? It was not rusted, or dulled, or dented or scratched. The smooth, dull walls enclosed spaces that were hot and airless, or, rather, the air seemed flat, like stale water: both of them were pleased to step outside into the heat. They went from one to another and found not a crack, not a hole, not a chip. Mara pulled out of her sack the tunic that could be worn for years and never show a mark, or a tear, never lose its dull sheen, and she said to Dann, "Look." She held the slippery glisten of the tunic near the wall of a house: they were the same; and she put the can for their water near a wall: the same. The same people made the houses, the tunics, the cans. The two walked about among the houses, the sun beating down on them, and the metal of the buildings did not absorb or throw out heat but kept a mild, indifferent tepidity, no matter where they laid their palms. This city extended along the edge of the ridge and back from it for a mile or so: lumps of buildings, dead, ugly things that could never change or decay.

Mara asked, "Did they tell you how old this place is?"

"They think it is three thousand years old."

"Do they know what kind of people they were?"

"They found bones. They used to throw their dead people down over the edge for the animals to eat. The bones were all broken up because they were so old, but those people were much taller than we are. They had bigger heads. They had long arms and their feet were big too."

The two were dispirited, dismayed, even angry. "How did they make this thing," said Mara, suddenly emotional, and she hit the wall of a house, first with her fist, then with a stone; but there was not a sound — nothing.

"No one knows," said Dann.

"No one?"

"Those old people were clever. They knew all kinds of things."

"Then I'm glad they're dead. I'm glad, I'm glad," said Mara, and began shouting, "I'm glad, I'm glad — " and she was shouting away into the hot air all her years of feeling the slippery deadness of the material sliding around her, on her body, her legs, her arms.

Dann was leaning with one hand on a wall, watching her. What he said was, "Mara, you're better, do you know that? When I saw you back there at the waterhole you couldn't have shouted, or made this kind of — fuss." And he was smiling at her, affectionate, and with those narrow, sharp eyes of his for once ordinary — kind. And then Mara began to laugh. It was with relief. She felt she had escaped for ever the nastiness of that dead, brown stuff, and the unpleasantness that had made these houses. He smiled, while she laughed. She knew this was a moment new for them, of trust and relaxation, after such effort and danger. Did he know how rare it was for him not to be on guard?

"The people who lived here," she said at last, summing up, ending their little moment, "they must have been monsters. How could they have borne it? To live all your life in houses that can't change, with things that never break, with clothes you can't tear, that never wear out?" And she kicked a house, hard, so that her long toenails scratched the metal — or would have, if this metal could be affected by anything. For three thousand years these things had been here. And she remembered the ruins of the cities near the Rock Village with affectionate respect for them, their generosity in giving up what made them to people who came after, so that the houses of the Rock People were made of the stones and pillars of those people who had lived there so much earlier.

She squatted in the dust, took up a little stick, and said, "Tell me about numbers, Dann. Tell me about three thousand." And she laid her two hands flat on the earth: ten; and stretched out her two feet: ten again. He knelt in the dust opposite her, and with a stick wrote 10, then 20, looking at her to see if she understood. Then he went on: 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, saying the words as he wrote. And again he looked at her.

"Yes," she said. "One hundred." She had reached that point herself, though not to write it with these strange new marks. And now she could go on, with this little brother who knew so much more than she did.

He made ten marks side by side in the dust, at a little distance from each other; and under each, ten strokes; and under each of those, ten. "A thousand," he said, and sat back on his heels so she could have time to take it all in. How sweet it was, this being close here, alone, learning from him, while he taught her. Neither wanted it to end. They had not been alone with each other a moment all these past days. And now, in this deserted place, they were comfortable together, and not in danger, they were pretty sure — and then they saw the sweat running down each other's face and remembered they had only a mouthful of water each and that they were very thirsty.

They stood up.

"Where did you learn?" she asked. "I was at school in Majab."

"At school?" she asked. "How?"

"I worked in the day and had lessons at night. But then I left and that was the end of school." "What else do you know?" "Not much, Mara."

They were standing not far from the rocky edge, and they went to it and looked down over the city, over Chelops. And now in the full daylight she could see clearly what had been impossible to see in the dusk. The whole city lay there, spread out, and they could understand its plan. The first thing you had to see was that roads ran in from north, south, east and west to the centre, which was an enormous, very tall, black building, dwarfing everything for miles around. The roads were like nothing Mara had even imagined. They were straight, wide, and were made of a smooth, dark stone — or so it looked from here. Nothing moved on those roads. Where they met at the central tower were four quarters, each filled with smaller but still important buildings, all exactly the same: six to a quarter, and each glum, threatening, solid, dark, with regular windows that the sun flashed off, like knives. There was no movement inside this central core of the city, which was defined by an encircling road, narrower, but the same as the quartering roads. A vastness of irregular, lively buildings of all sizes and shapes and colours began at the circling road, making courts and compounds and avenues where there were trees. The trees seemed to droop, but they were not dead. In the streets of this city a lot of people were moving, and vehicles too. There was a big market place that was not central, and there seemed to be others here and there.

"This city was built to be the first city of the country."

"Of Ifrik?"

"No, just of the country. It is a big country. It is from Majab in the south far up beyond Chelops in the north. We would need weeks to walk across it. It is the biggest country in this part of Ifrik."

She was for the first time in her life hearing of a country, rather than of towns, or villages. "What are the people like?"

"I don't know. I came through it so fast because of all the policemen, and it was at night."

Now they began walking down a steep slope of chalky sand, where long ago the people of the houses that looked like cooking pots had thrown their dead. There did not seem to be bones now — not on the surface, at least. The chalky white of the earth was old bones: she knew how bones became white dust. The white was rising all around them, and they were beginning to look like floury ghosts; and they laughed at each other, and slid down the slope, which became steeper and then so steep they had to step off to one side to a gentler slope, which was still made of white chalk; and then at the bottom there was green, and some living trees, and a little stream. It had once been a big river, but water was still bubbling up from somewhere, for it was not standing in holes but actually gently running. Clear water. Sweet water. And with a shout both flung off their dirty robes and were about to throw themselves in when they remembered their commonsense, and stood waiting at the edge, looking, for they did not know if there were water dragons or stingers or snakes. Dann took up his pole and began probing a pool. Here the bottom could not be reached. They moved to the next where the water spread and a sandy bottom showed. Dann pushed the pole into every bit of the pool, again and again. And then he flung down the pole and both of them jumped in. The cool water enclosed them, and they sank to the bottom, and lay on white sand, and then at the edge, their heads out; and their bodies felt as if they were drinking in the water, and Mara let the water run all over her dusty scalp with its little scruff of new hair. And then Dann produced from the bottom of his sack a little piece of hard soap, showing it in triumph, and they washed and soaped and scrubbed and then all over, again and again, till the soap vanished into the white bubbles that piled the pool.

They got out and stood looking at each other. Under all the dust and dirt had been Mara, had been Dann, and now they were there again. Their flesh was not firm and plump like the woman pilot's, but at least the skin lay healthily on their bones, even on Mara's, for she was no longer only bones and skin. And now at the same time they were shy and turned away. Dressed in dust they had not thought of covering themselves, but now they did. Mara averted her eyes from his thick tube and the two smooth balls in their little sac, and he glanced at her slit, with its fluff of hair, and looked away.

She could not bear to put on that filthy garment, so stiff with dust it was lying on the earth with her shape in it. Naked, she stepped back into the pool with her garment, and he too with his. And they rubbed and rubbed in the soap foam, the soap itself having dissolved away; and soon the water was brown and the white foam masses were pale brown too. Dann washed his robe with his back to her. It was a strong muscled back, and her body was as hard and strong. On her chest, above the knotted cord of coins, were hard round plates, like Dann's, but back at the waterhole in the Rock Village there had been no flesh there, only bones. When they had washed their robes, they laid them on a rock to dry. Their pool was no longer an invitation, being so dirty. Dann tested another, and they lolled in it and floated in it, while the sun sucked the water out of their two robes. And then it was midday, and they were hungry. Mara mixed the very last of their flour with water, and cooked it on the hot rock, and they ate, and drank a great deal of water, out of hunger, though Dann said that soon they would eat, he was sure of it.

Then they put on their almost dry robes. Mara's would never be white again, for it had been dyed by dust, and his was the same. But they were clean. They filled the water can from another pool and then, the carrying pole between them, the can hanging there, they set off to walk into Chelops, along the stream. In front of them soon was a barrier that they could not understand. It was several times their height, made of closely laced metal ribbons, covered with barbs like thorns, and rusty. There were holes in this fence where the metal had simply rotted away. There was a great gate, which they tried to push open, and then two men, big yellowish men with rolling, abundant flesh and cold yellow eyes, came running.

Dann shouted at Mara to run — but there was nowhere they could run, the fences went on and on. When a man grabbed Mara she fought, but her wrists were tied together with thin rope, which hurt. Dann too, though he kicked and twisted and several times got away and was caught, had his wrists tied.

Within half a day of entering Chelops, Mara and Dann were prisoners, charged with defiling the city's water source, and for being inside a forbidden area, and for resisting arrest. On that same afternoon they were put to stand in front of a magistrate. Mara had been expecting someone like the guards, whom she now knew were Hadrons. But the man sitting on a little platform, looking at them, Mara thought, with curiosity, was not a Hadron. He was more like a Mahondi, but could not be because he was large and even fat. This was Juba, who soon would become Mara's very good friend. Meanwhile he was seeing something that he expected to see several times a week: starved fugitives from the famine down south, whose first action was always to steal some food. These two had not, though they had no food at all. Juba never punished the thieves, merely sent them off to join the slave force. But in this case he had to find out what they were doing in the water pools. If they had come from the south then why not by the road everyone used? Why had they sneaked like criminals down over the escarpment?

Mara was doing the talking. Dann, from the moment the cord went around his wrists, had become listless and silent, and seemed to have given up hope. His stood beside his sister drooping, sometimes shivering a little, and would not look up.

"My brother is ill," said Mara. "He hasn't eaten enough."

"I can see that," said Juba. "You have committed a very serious crime. You don't seem to realise how bad. It is a death sentence for defiling the water supply. And then you resisted arrest too."

Mara said, "I didn't know about an arrest, or resisting."

"Where do you come from?"

"The Rock Village."

"But you aren't of the Rock People. You are a Mahondi." "Yes," said Mara. "Where were you born?"

"In Rustam."

"What is your name?" Here it was again, a small tugging at her memory.

"Maro."

"No, your family name."

"I don't know."

"You are going to have to tell me how you got down into our water supplies."

Mara had not wanted to mention Felice, but now she said, "Felice brought us to the top there."

This seemed to disturb him.

"Felice did? And how did you pay her?"

"She was — sorry for us," said Mara. And knew she had said something that Felice would be questioned about.

They were put in a little room near the court while someone went off to find Felice. They were given food, at Juba's order, and it was good, hot food, which made them feel better. Though Dann seemed not himself, and sat staring, and would not speak.

How was it possible? Mara thought. Could one night, one terrible night in a child's life, mark him for ever? So that he would never get free of it? Even though he couldn't — or wouldn't — remember it?

When the messenger came back, he said that Felice was asleep when he got there, but said that she had given a lift to the two boys, since she was coming back to Chelops anyway. They had asked to be set down on the ridge and would make their own way down into Chelops. She had not taken payment from them. This was a relief, because when the guards had gone through their sacks, not very thoroughly, because they had to do it so often, they had actually found Dann's cord of coins, but thought it was probably some sort of amulet or fetish, and had thrown it back into the bottom.

Juba sat there for quite a time, his head in his hand, thinking. He could understand why Felice — who had piloted him often enough on official business — had felt sorry for these two innocents. He knew quite well that he was not being told all the truth, but did not believe that truth for truth's sake had always to be insisted on.

In the end, he simply said to the guards, "Take the cords off." And, while Mara and Dann rubbed their wrists, "Take them to the slave quarters." These were buildings in a compound where Chelops' slaves were housed. Dann and Mara were slaves because they were Mahondis, who had "always" been the Hadrons' slaves. They were not at once put to work but fed double rations for a few days. They were sent out with the other slaves before either of them felt strong enough, but were given light tasks to begin with. Then they kept streets and public buildings clean, acted as bearers for the chairs on poles the Hadrons were carried about in, or pushed the old skimmers that were now ground vehicles, or did any other tasks that needed doing. The slaves were well fed, worked twelve hours a day, and one day a week wrestled and threw each other in a big hall used for that purpose. Male and female slaves slept in different buildings.

Dann and Mara had little opportunity to talk, for they were supervised by Hadron guards whose task it was to discourage any possible attempts at conspiracy.

Where they had come from was spoken of with contempt, which masked a dread that what had happened — was happening — "down south" or "down there" in "the deadlands" or "the bad place" or "the dust country" or "the country without water," could happen here too. No one went south but officials, to Majab, when they had to.

The Mahondis were an inferior race and had always been servants and slaves.

The Hadrons had built this city, and many other cities in the country, called Hadron, which they had settled and had always administered.

Certain things were only whispered. No one lived in the administrative centre, those twenty-five grim buildings in the middle of the city, except criminals or runaway slaves or people passing through who did not want to attract the attention of the police. At some time in the past, when it was hard to find accommodation in the town, people lived there illegally; but Chelops had about a tenth of its earlier population, and many empty houses. Citizens were quietly leaving to go up North, fearing the spread of the drought. Water was not rationed, but the authorities punished those wasting it; there was food, but not as much as there had been. Both food and water supplies were in the hands of the Hadrons.

Moving about the streets on her cleaning duties, Mara recognised a good deal of what she saw. The trees, first. They were limp, some had dying branches, white stick-like limbs among the green, and there were many dead trees. The city had fountains, but there was no water in them, only rubbish, which Mara, with fellow slaves, was kept cleaning out.

The slaves were not all Mahondis, but all were fugitives from the famine and the drought. Some had already been here for years. Mara had believed that the Mahondis of Rustam had been all there were, but other Mahondi people had come from all over southern Ifrik, and some spoke of past comforts and pleasures — even high positions and riches.

Mara was tense, anxious, fearful, which climaxed every day when the tubs of water were brought in from where water was kept under guard and, when enough had been set aside for drinking, the slaves were expected to stand in groups around the tubs and wash themselves. Most stood naked, shedding the ubiquitous slaves' robes to wash, but not all stripped, and Mara washed her legs and body up to her hips, bunching up the robe, and then sliding it down a little, but never showing her chest. Her worry was the cord of coins, but her breasts were already a bit bigger. The Hadrons who guarded them were looking at her and wondering. Something told them she was not male, though she thought she still looked like a boy. Then what she dreaded happened. While she was washing, manipulating the folds of robe to keep herself covered, a guard lifted them with his stick and kept his stick there, so she was exposed to everyone — fellow slaves who first were surprised, but laughed, and the other guards, who laughed, and came to have a good look.

Within an hour she had been told to fetch her sack, and without being able to warn Dann, who was out portering a chair for some bigwig, she was led across the town to a large house, where she was taken in at once to see its mistress. She had expected to see a Hadron, but the guards had told her no, she was a Mahondi in charge of the female slaves. At first Mara thought, How can she be a Mahondi? We are tall, slim people, while this woman is fat, and sits in her chair with her little, plump feet on a stool. It occurred to Mara for the first time that she had believed her people to be thin by nature, because she had never known a time when food was not short, even when she was little. So Mahondis could be as fleshy and as large as Hadrons. Mara was not sure she liked this.

She was standing quietly before this woman, who was examining her, her head propped on a little hand with many rings on it. She wore a big, white, clean robe of fresh cotton, with black stripes around the sleeves, and ropes of coloured beads around her neck. Her long, black hair had a red flower in it. She smelled of a heavy, sleepy scent.

Her name was Ida, and on her depended Mara's fate.

Mara did not know what to think of her, but that pretty freshness, the clean white, the glossy hair, the sweet scent, was making her want to cry. She wanted so much to be like that, to be that, instead of... She did not know she was going to say what she did: "Are you cruel?" she whispered, and saw Ida's eyes widen, then narrow, while her plump lips mocked her in a slow smile. All this was artificial, Mara knew, meant for her to see it and feel foolish. "That depends on." said Ida, laughing; but at once her face became serious, and she sighed, for Mara only stared.

Meanwhile what Ida was seeing was a tall, lanky youth with a brush of hair, a bony face and enormous, hungry eyes, a body all bone and hard muscle.

"Tell me about yourself," said Ida, flicking some dust or something off her skirt. There was a little dust in the room, but nothing like what Mara was used to.

Mara was dismayed. She wanted to sit down, because of the length of what she had to tell, but Ida only waited. Mara began from that moment when she and Dann were taken to be cross-examined by the man she still could not help thinking of as "the bad one." Almost at once Ida was alert and listening, her indolence gone. Mara told it all, leaving out nothing, went on to the flight, the stone room and Lord Gorda, went on to the rushing through the night, the two rescuers, the flood, and then to Daima, where Ida stopped her.

"What is your name? Maro?"

"No, Mara."

Ida looked hard at her, meaning her to see it. "You are going to have to tell us everything. We want to know everything that happened. We are related to the family at Rustam. You are probably some kind of cous-in — we'll work it out. Meanwhile, I want you to do as I say. We have something called the sleep cure. I'm going to give you something to drink, and you are going to sleep. Every time you wake you'll have something to eat. Until we get some flesh on to you we aren't going to get anywhere."

Mara had thought she was doing well, with getting her bones covered, but she looked down and saw her long, spiky fingers and her long feet where all the bones showed. The thought of sleeping — oh it was wonderful. She had slept so little, in the barracks with the young male slaves. Apart from her fear of discovery — but being found out had turned out to be a good thing — it was Dann: she was worried sick about Dann. She knew he was going to do something foolish: run away again, start a fight, or a riot. She was sure he hadn't smiled or laughed since they had come down the hillside into Chelops. He was so angry she was even afraid of him herself.

"My brother," said Mara. "My brother, Dann..." but Ida broke in, "Don't worry about anything. I'll make enquiries about your brother. And when you wake up, believe me, we are all going to want to hear your story."

She clapped her hands; a young woman appeared, and stood waiting. "Kira, take Mara to the Health House, and tell Orphne to give her the sleep treatment, and feed her, and go on until it's enough. I'd say probably five days."

Kira led Mara through a courtyard where young women were sitting about, talking, laughing, with piles of flowers and plants in front of them, which they were picking over. There was a strong herbal smell. They all looked curiously at Mara, and Kira said, "Later. She's going to sleep now."

Kira walked with Mara fast through hot dusty lanes, where plants and trees stood drooping, to a big house, like Ida's, where she called to another young woman, Orphne, gave her the instructions, and went off.

Orphne was another large woman, full of health, pretty, with flowers in her hair, and she said to Mara, "Have you really come from down there? Is it as bad as they say? — well, I can see by looking at you that it is." She walked around Mara, examining her, touched her brush of hair, felt her arms and legs, and said, "Before anything else I'm going to clean you up a bit."

Mara had thought she was clean, but now she sat down, while Orphne cut her long claw nails and the hooks of nails on her toes, rubbed pads of callused skin from her soles with a rough stone, dug clogs of wax from her ears, lifted her lids to examine her eyes, and put in drops, shook her head over the loose teeth, and rubbed oil all over her arms and legs. Then she made Mara drink a long, warm, herb-smelling draught, and put her to bed in a room that had another bed in it, and said, "When you wake up you'll be all right again, you'll see."

Mara slept, sometimes deeply, sometimes shallowly, and whenever she woke there were heavily sugared cakes beside her, and fruit, and more of the herb drink. Once Kira was sitting by her head, watching. She said, "I'm going to give you a massage and then you can sleep again."

"I don't want a massage," said Mara, thinking of the coins under her chest.

"All right then. But I'm here to keep an eye on you. You're a restless one, aren't you?"

"I don't remember anything."

"You were crying out, 'Help me, help me' — and then calling for Dann.

Who's he?"

"He's my little brother," said Mara, and began to cry, as if she had been waiting all her life to cry as she was now.

Kira waited a little, then called Orphne. Mara saw the two young women, with their young, fresh faces, their concerned smiles, their plump young bodies, and thought, And I'm so ugly, so ugly — and I've always been ugly. She went on crying, until Orphne lifted her and Kira held the herb drink to her lips, and she sank back into sleep again.

Another time when she woke it was night, a low flame burned in a dish of oil, and Orphne was asleep in the other bed.

And then she woke to find both Kira and Orphne there, and Orphne said, "Now that's enough of sleep. We don't want to make you ill. And soon Mother Ida will decide what to do with you."

Mara said, "If we are slaves, all the Mahondis, then why is everything so nice, how can you be so kind?"

At this Orphne embraced Mara as if she were a small girl and said, "Everything was much nicer, believe me. These are hard times." And Kira said, in the way she had, laughing, but with a little edge of petulance, "We are nice. We're lovely — aren't we, Orphne?" And Orphne patted and stroked Mara and said that now she must have a bath. "We're going to give you a bath," she said. At first Mara did not hear the "we," but then did, and was full of panic again. Orphne and Kira must not know about those coins hidden there. Then Mara thought, I'll confide in them, I'll ask them to keep it a secret — but knew this was nonsense. No, no, already Dann and I have been saved by the gold coins and they'll save us again — get us out of Chelops to the North, buy us our escape.

"What's the matter?" asked Orphne.

"I want to bath by myself."

"Goodness, what a shy little thing you are. Very well then."

In a room that had a stone floor stood a tub of water, not hot but warm, because the water had been in a tank in the sunlight. Orphne put clothes on a stool and went out. The door did not lock. Mara took off her slave's dress, so dirty and smelly, untied the lumpy rope from her chest, put it under her new clothes, and got into the water, which was up to her chin. In came Orphne again, with soap. "I'm just in and out," she said, humouring Mara; but what she wanted was really to take a good look at Mara's shoulders, which was all she could see of her.

"You're fattening up nicely," she said, and went out.

When the water was cold Mara put back the cord of coins and over it a loose, light, white dress, like Kira's and Orphne's. She went back into the other room and Orphne hugged and kissed her, saying she was pleased, and now Mara must go back to Mother Ida who was waiting for her.

Again Kira led Mara through dusty little lanes, and into Ida's house; and there was Ida, as before, sitting with her feet on a stool, and she was fanning herself slowly, using many turns of the wrist, with a fan made of feathers. This made Mara remember birds, and their variety and their songs and their beauty, and wonder if perhaps there were still some left in Chelops. She had not seen any birds.

Ida was looking closely at her with those clever eyes of hers, while she fanned and fanned, and then she said, "Good. I wouldn't have recognised you. You've got a face now." Then she lifted down her pretty feet and said, "I'm going to take you now and show you to the Hadrons. No, don't worry. You aren't pretty enough yet for it to be dangerous. But that's the point you see. They have to see you — it's the rule. And then they'll forget about you.

At least I hope they will." She draped a white scarf over Mara's brush of hair, and took her hand. She asked, "Are you feeling yourself again? Can you manage a little walk? It really is better if we do it now."

At this Mara had to remember for how long she had not felt herself, how she had forgotten what feeling yourself meant; and she stood smiling at Ida in gratitude, wanting to tell her everything, and she had begun, "You see, in the Rock Village, for all those years I don't think I was anywhere near what I really am — " when Ida laughed, gave her a little push to the door and said, "Save it for when we can all hear."

At the door stood one of the carrying chairs that so recently Mara had been portering, the shafts on her shoulders, and Ida got in, and pulled in Mara, who stood hesitating, knowing how her weight and Ida's would drag at the thin shoulders of the two slaves at the back and the front. One recognised her, and gave her a sullen look.

They were jogging through small lanes, then on a road, which had on either side of it red flowering shrubs; but the flowers seemed to Mara to be emitting a high, almost audible scream for help, because she was remembering, and identifying so strongly with a longing for rain. Then they turned into a big garden where there were shrubs and flowers that were watered and fresh. Beyond the big house they were approaching was a field full of very tall odoriferous plants, and their smell was unpleasant, rank and head-haunting.

"We used some of that for your sleep," said Ida, "but don't take it on your own, I'm warning you: we don't want you to become one of those — " and she pointed to a couple of slaves who lifted their faces as the carrying chair passed to show blank, drugged eyes.

Around this house were big, deep verandahs, and on them lounged half a dozen men with long stick-like weapons, which they pointed at the two women.

"Don't worry," said Ida, "they are as useful as the sky skimmers — they don't work. Or when they do, they give the poor fools such a fright they throw them down and run."

They stepped out of the chair. The two porters took it to the side of the garden, sat down by it and at once went to sleep.

They went past the guards, and into a big room that was half dark because the windows were shaded, with the glare showing through the blinds like a hot stare. In the room, on cushions all around the walls, sat very large men, very fat, with billows and pillows of yellow flesh, wearing robes of all colours that were loose to hide all that fat. Never had

Mara even imagined such ugliness, such disgustingness, such beasts of men. The bulging flesh reminded her of the big lizards and dragons.

These were Hadrons. But Mara was thinking, I've seen them before — surely I have? And then she understood: the Rock People were very similar in build and shape, and their hair was the same, a mass of pale, frizzy stuff. Each of these beast-men leaned his elbows on a cushion, and they all stared and dreamed, and the air was sickly sweet. There were all kinds of pipes and tubes set out, and some Hadrons used these, but others were chewing black lumps, slowly, the way Mishka and Mishkita had chewed their food — when there was any.

Ida walked to the middle of the floor, leading Mara by the hand. No one seemed to notice them. Ida made a very deep curtsy, clapped her hands gently at chest level, and then curtsied again. Some of the befogged faces turned to look.

"Your lordships," said Ida, "I've brought the new girl."

At this all the eyes turned towards Mara. It was the words "the new girl." But, clearly, what they saw did not attract them, and besides, it was at that moment, when questions might have been asked, that four slaves carried in two great trays of food, piled high, and the smells of spices and fat were added to the cloying smells of the drugs.

All faces turned to the food, and Ida and Mara were forgotten, Ida curtsied again, but the Hadrons were reaching out with fat hands, covered with jewels, to the food, and the two women went out, unnoticed.

"We have to do that," said Ida. "It's the rule. They must have a good look at every new arrival in the Women's Houses. And now we'll not have to do it again, when your hair is grown and you look nice."

Back they went in the carrying chair to Ida's house. There she told Mara to rest for a while, since she shouldn't overdo things after her sleep treatment, and showed her a room that had only one bed in it, and left her.

When Mara got up, she found Ida in her usual place, fanning herself, apparently contemplating her pretty feet. She looked so unhappy, Mara thought, in that moment before Ida saw her and smiled.

"Sit down," said Ida, and Mara sat.

"And now," said Ida, "what did you see?"

Mara smiled at Ida through tears: to hear these words again, after such a long time, it was like hearing Daima's voice, or her parents' voices. "The Mahondis here are slaves of the Hadrons, but they decide everything and the Hadrons do not know it because they are lazy and stupid and take too much poppy."

"Very good," said Ida. "Well done. But don't you ever say it where they can hear you. But we don't decide everything. We can't stop them taking Mahondi girls as concubines. Or the boys, either." Then, because of Mara's surprised face, "You've never heard of what I'm saying?"

Mara shook her head. "Not men and men?" In her mind a warning was flaring: Dann, Dann, Dann. She thought, That's a danger for Dann, I am sure of it.

"Go on, Mara, what have you seen?"

"Chelops is emptying," she said. "And that is why you need so many slaves — there's no free labour to hire." And then, after a silence, while an old sadness dragged at her heart, "Chelops is coming to an end."

"The Hadrons say that Hadron will last for a thousand years," said Ida.

"That's silly."

"We have food growing out there. Our storehouses are full. We still have milk beasts. And we are still trading with the North: we sell them poppy and the ganja, they sell us food. It'll last our time."

Mara did not allow herself to say anything, and Ida went on, "So what have you seen?"

"There are hardly any children. I haven't seen any babies."

"The slaves in the Women's Houses are supposed to get pregnant, but for some reason it is hard for us to get pregnant."

"And the Hadrons?"

"There are very few Hadron children."

"Perhaps their stuff isn't any good?"

"And our stuff doesn't seem much good either."

Mara said, because it floated up into her mind from long ago, "Every woman has in her all the eggs she will ever have: she is born with them. And every man has in his stuff enough eggs to fertilise all of Chelops."

Ida's eyes widened, she sat up, she leaned forward. "Where did you hear that? Who told you?"

"Daima told me. She was from Rustam." "Was she a Memory?"

"What's that?"

"A person who has to keep in her mind everything the family knows."

"I think she was."

"There is a lot we have forgotten — a lot we've lost. What else did she say?"

"That there is a time in the month when it is safe to — to — to."

"For goodness' sake, Mara, speak out."

"I wish I could go to school," said Mara passionately.

"It seems to me that you know more about some things than we do. Meanwhile, something seems to have happened to our eggs; but whether it is the women's eggs or the men's eggs, there is no way of knowing."

"Surely it's a good thing, not to have babies when times are bad?"

"But they aren't bad here, they aren't," said Ida, distressed. Then she sighed, and she frowned, and shifted about, taking her feet down off the stool and putting them back up. "Mara, when you are yourself again, when you are strong, will you have a child for me?" Then she seemed to shrink away because of Mara's reaction. "Why not? I'll look after you, and the baby — always, I promise you."

Mara said, "I've been watching babies and small children and even big children die. You haven't seen babies die of hunger."

"I've told you, we've enough food and water to last." And Ida was stretching out her hands to Mara. "I long for a child. I cannot have children. I've been pregnant over and over but I always lose them." And she began to weep, bright little tears squeezing out from between thick painted lashes, and bouncing down off painted cheeks and landing on her white dress, making little smears. "You don't know what it is like," she whispered, "wanting a child, wanting, then conceiving — and then — they're gone."

"Meanwhile," said Mara, "I'm so ugly no one would look at me." She tried to make this sound like a joke but she was suffering, because of all these attractive smooth-fleshed women, and their bright, fresh clothes and their breasts, which they took for granted. Whereas Mara's breasts seemed to have disappeared for ever.

"Oh, Mara, just be patient. You don't know how you've changed in the last few days. And I'm not going to give up. I'm going to ask you again. Meanwhile Kira's trying for me, but so far she hasn't got pregnant."

Mara thought she had never seen anyone as unhappy. Desperate faces, anxious faces, fearful ones — that is what she had been seeing, but never anything like this fretful unhappiness. And she was fiercely thinking, She has plenty to eat, she has clean water, she can wash when she likes, and she is so pretty and fine.

"And now I'm going to take you to the other girls," said Ida. "Just so they can set eyes on you. They are all going mad with curiosity, because you come from down there. You don't have to tell them everything now, because you are going to have to tell us all everything tomorrow."

Mara was soon sitting among other young women, each one, she thought, as fresh as a flower, making her heart ache because she was so ugly, and she was given some curds to prepare. They asked her questions but did not understand what she told them. They had grown up in Chelops, and had never known hardship. When she said, "Sometimes we had only one cup of water to last for days," they did not believe her, thought she was making it up. When she said, "For years we ate roots and flour made into paste with water and cooked on the stones," they exchanged pretty glances and little grimaces of disbelief. She said, "We didn't wash at all, we couldn't, there wasn't any water," and they raised their eyebrows and shook their heads, and smiled at each other. They were being kind to her, as if she were a foolish child or a pet animal.

That night she asked Ida if she could use the room she had rested in, instead of sleeping in one of the big rooms that had in them several girls. All those kisses and cuddles, and pattings and strokings — she couldn't do all that, she wasn't used to it. Besides they would soon discover what she was wearing: the coins that would buy her freedom and Dann's. Ida said, "I can't understand anyone wanting to sleep by themselves," but said she could use that room. There was plenty of space. As for Ida, she always asked one of the girls to sleep on another bed in her room, preferably Kira.

Next day Mara was taken by Ida into a large room that had several people waiting for her. She knew Ida, Kira and Orphne, and then saw Juba, who had been the magistrate that day in court. He greeted her with a friendly, ironical little smile. A tall, lean, older woman, with a face that Mara seemed to remember was like her mother's, opened with the ritual, "And now, what have you seen, Mara?"

Mara knew they did not mean what had she seen here, in Chelops, and started, again, with the scene in Rustam where she and Dann were being interrogated. She began to feel embarrassed, because it was taking so long, and began to shorten the tale; but the woman like her mother, who was Candace, said, "No, we want to know it all — everything. We will go on tomorrow, and so there's no hurry at all."

And Mara talked, remembering more and more, details she had not known she had noticed: like the way water-starved skin shrinks into a rough, ridgy dryness, or how when they were hungry the milk beasts licked earth that had bits of old grass in it, or how very hot and thirsty people will sit panting with their mouths open, like birds when they are hot. And when she told about the old ruined cities on the hills above the Rock Village she saw in her mind's eye one of the painted people from a later layer of the cities: she had thought that she — or he, it was hard to tell — wore a headdress; but no, it was braided and woven hair — she knew because she was looking at a woman's head whose hair was the same, a marvel of inventive arrangement. This girl was Larissa. As she talked Mara was listening for names and trying to work out relationships. Next to Juba was a comfortable, greying lady, called Dromas; the two held hands. A young man with a fine, gentle, humorous face was Meryx, and he was their son. Two middle-aged men, Jan and John, were Candace's sons. The only young woman from that courtyard of merry and carefree females was Larissa — why she, and not the others? There were half a dozen people who sat silent and listened.

Mara was still talking about the ruined cities. She said, "I was lucky — wasn't I? — living with that story, those stories, so close to me. If I had been brought up near that horrible city up there on the ridge, I would have learned nothing about who lived there." A wave of the old longing gripped her and she said, "Please, please, can I go to school?"

Candace said, "Yes, you will — but first, your story. We need to know. It isn't often we have someone here who has seen all the changes down there in the south. You see, we make up a history of what has happened — as far as we can hear about it. And we have people who learn it all and they preserve it, and make sure it is handed on down to someone younger, and we teach it to the young people. We call these people Memories. So please, Mara, go on."

And Mara went on talking. It was quite late when Candace said, "That's enough for tonight."

Mara was in the room she had chosen, by herself. She had never in her life been alone to sleep, and she felt such a freedom, such an exultation in being alone. It was not a large room, and in it was only a low bed, and a jar for water and a cup, and a little glow of light from a wick floating in oil — but she was as happy as she had ever been.

Next day they asked her to go to the young women's courtyard, but she begged to be with Orphne, to learn what she could of herbs and healing; and besides, she felt, when with Orphne, as if she were being fed with cheerfulness, for that young woman's pleasure in everything she did, in her own competence, was truly infectious. Oh, if only I could be like her, Mara was thinking.

Next evening, again, the same people assembled. Mara went on with her tale until it ended with her and Dann's sliding down the chalky hillside, and bathing in the pools and washing their garments. Juba did raise his eyebrows, and allow himself a frown, but he then waved his hand as if to say, Enough, it's forgotten. The incident had certainly not been generally forgotten: the story of how two refugees had polluted the Chelops main water source and got away with it was being told to the extent that Juba had sent out warnings that the penalty for going anywhere near the water was still a death sentence.

"And now," said Candace, "what do you want to ask us?"

Mara said, "When you found out I am female, and brought me here, it was because all the female slaves are checked, for breeding purposes. Then you discovered I am Kin. But Dann is Kin, too, and you left him with the other slaves." She sounded reproachful, more than she had meant.

"He has run away," said Candace. "We can't find him."

"Oh no, no, no," said Mara, remembering how, with earlier disappearances of Dann, it had been as if half of her were torn away.

"We are looking for him," said Meryx. "But the other slaves say he was talking of going North."

Mara kept her counsel. She did not believe Dann had left without her. He was hiding somewhere. Probably somewhere in those Towers. And how was he doing? She had all this food and water and comfort and cleanness, she was being petted and favoured — but he?

She said, "The Mahondis control all the food-growing and supplies?"

"Yes." And Meryx made a little bow to her. "Here is the Controller of Food — in person."

"You control the guards, the police, the watchmen, and the army?"

"Yes," said Juba.

"But the Hadrons control the water?"

"Yes," said Candace.

"Or they believe they do?" asked Mara.

A pause. Some glances were exchanged. Then Juba leaned forward and said, "Exactly. And it is important they go on thinking they do."

"All right," said Mara.

Now Juba said, "Mara, we are going to ask you to do something important for all of us. We want you to work for a while with the poppy and the ganja." She felt so disappointed, she felt they were rejecting her; and, seeing her face, they leaned forward, with smiles and nods, to reassure her. "You must have seen how important it is, when you visited the Hadrons." Mara still sat silent, but she was thinking.

"The difference between the Hadrons and us," said Meryx, "is that they use poppy and ganja and we don't." Mara nodded.

The next moment was not for her, because Meryx looked hard at Ida and said, "Mahondis don't use these things."

Ida's smile became nervous and guilty; she shifted about, and her fan began fluttering and trembling. Everyone was looking at her.

"And you set a bad example," said Meryx; and now they were looking at Kira, who faced them with more self-command than Ida.

Kira said, "I only have a little puff sometimes." And she laughed her petulant, defiant laugh.

"Then don't," said Candace.

Ida was in tears. She went out, her fan loose in her hand, like a broken wing. Kira sat on, refusing to be guilty.

Next day Mara was in the courtyard with the young women, and she asked questions about the growing of poppy, and the supply of ganja, but realised they did not really think about it. Only Larissa understood, and Mara saw the answer to something that had been puzzling her: why were so few people there on the evenings when matters of importance were discussed? Larissa was there because she had come to certain conclusions by herself, and was promoted to the inner circle of the Kin. And that meant that those of the inner circle were always on the lookout for people who did ask questions, who understood, and could answer intelligently when asked, "And what did you see?"

Mara knew that she was about to be tested, and so it turned out. Juba, then Meryx, and Meryx again, took her to the fields where the poppies were growing, and then to the ganja, took her to the barns where the workers, male and female, were getting milky juice from the poppies, drying it, making big sticky balls, ready to smoke, or drying the ganja and crushing it and putting it into sacks. She was given poppy to smoke. She knew this was to make sure she could refuse it, having tried it. And indeed, while her head floated with imaginings, she thought she could not live without it; but when she was herself again, she was frightened by its seductive power, and swore never to touch it again. And she was offered it again, by the workers, and then by Ida, and finally by Meryx himself, who was openly apologetic. Then she smoked the ganja, but did not find that so enticing. She was invited again, by Juba, by Candace, with whom she actually did share a little smile that said she knew she was being tested.

Then she was told, "There's no need for you to work with the ganja and poppy again."

During this time most evenings she spent with Orphne, or with Larissa, avoiding Ida who was always begging her to sit with her. But there were other evenings when she was invited into the room for important occasions, and questioned. One evening was spent on what Mara had learned about fertility from Daima. Everyone was present. The atmosphere was tense. They were anxious. This was the heart of the Mahondi concern for the future: that they were not reproducing. How had Daima told Mara about the cycle? — "No, Mara, her exact words, please."

Mara said, using Daima's words, "Now listen, Mara. Once there was a girl, rather like you, and she loved a young man — and one day you will too. He begged her to lie with him, and she found it hard to refuse; and then one night she gave in, but it was the wrong time in her cycle, and she was at her most fertile. She was pregnant. He blamed her. He said it was the woman's duty to know her blood cycle, and the safe days; and when the case came to court, the judge agreed, and said it was the young woman's first duty to herself and to her society to know her cycle."

Juba said, "That court must have been in Rustam. Do you know anything about how it worked? What the laws were?"

Dromas said, "Juba, she was seven years old when she left."

"But Daima might have told you, Mara — did she?"

But Mara sat silent. She was most bitterly regretting the opportunities she had not taken. How had she seen Daima all those years? She had taken her for granted: a kind old woman — but she was not really so old — who had taken in two orphans, literally out of the dark, and loved them and looked after them. She had lived like them on roots and bits of dried weed and flour cakes; she had never complained about being thirsty and dirty and very hungry. And yet she had been an important person in the court of Mara's parents' predecessors, where she had lived cleanly and sweetly and gently. And she had known so much that Mara had never asked her. How much Mara would have given now to have Daima back for a week, a day, even an hour, to ask her questions. Now Daima was dead, all that knowledge, all that information, was gone, for ever.

Mara said, "Once when I asked her how she knew about the old cities up on the hills, she said the Mahondis had all kinds of bits of information from the past. She did not know where it all came from." "Not these Mahondis," said Candace, grim. "Why don't you have it too?"

"You forget, we have been slaves for a long time. But your family were never slaves."

And now Mara, who was forcing herself to ask this, said, "Do you know what happened to my parents?"

"They were killed the night you escaped." "How do you know?" "Gorda was here. He told us." "What happened to him? Is he alive?"

"He made a rising against the Hadrons. A foolish uprising. He was killed with his followers."

"That means he did it without asking you; you didn't know about it — no, that's not possible, you must have known about it, but you didn't approve."

Meryx said, "You might have noticed that we do things more — quietly."

Mara was thinking of that night, the first time she had been in a rock house, and how he had been kind. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "We would have been killed without him."

"Yes," said Candace.

And now, when Mara was least expecting it, Candace asked her, "And what is your name?"

It seemed to her that her real name was about to appear on her tongue and she would say it here, among these friends, the Kin — her Kin — but at the last moment she remembered Lord Gorda's, "Your name is Mara. Remember that always. Mara."

"My name is Mara," she said. They all nodded and smiled, at each other and at her. "But what is my real name? Do you know it?"

"It would be better for you not to know it," said Candace. "Who knows what the Hadrons know? — what they got out of Gorda, before he died."

"Perhaps one day I'll know my real name again," she said.

"I hope you will," said Candace. "I for one think that we Mahondis have a good chance of ruling here one day. I know that not everyone agrees with me."

At this, the next reply Mara had planned to give when asked, "And what did you see?" — became impossible. She was thinking, I have seen the future, and they haven't. And they wouldn't believe me.

Instead she said, "I saw a beetle up there on the ridge. Do they ever come down into Chelops?"

"Yes, and we kill them," said Meryx. "But some people believe they are breeding in the tunnels — Gorda saw them: he was using the tunnels as a base for his uprising."

"How did he get water?" asked Mara.

"To the point, as always," said Meryx. "The water was cut off to the Towers long ago. But the people sympathetic to Gorda living near the Towers helped him with water."

Mara said, not knowing she was going to say it, surprising herself, "Is anyone living there now? — the Towers? Could Dann be there?"

"We don't think so," said Candace.

That meant Dann had been discussed when she was not there, and they knew things she did not.

"If he is there," said Juba, "then he can't last long." "Do you ever send slaves to find out?"

"Listen, Mara," said Juba, leaning forward urgently, holding her eyes with his, making her listen, "we don't draw attention to ourselves. You seem to forget that we are slaves. There are penalties — death penalties — for being in the Towers. We Mahondis succeed because we are quiet, we make life easy for the Hadrons, and they don't need to think about us."

And Candace said, "Don't make trouble for us, Mara. You are thinking of going to the Towers, aren't you? Please don't."

That ended the session.

Now Mara spent her days in the fields with Meryx and went about with Juba, even to court sessions; she was with Candace when she organised provisions for the slaves, and was often with Orphne. One day Juba took her with him when he went to see the guards on the water supply — where she and Dann had come into the town, and been arrested. As she had thought, the officer in charge was a friend of the Mahondis; though nothing was said, or even hinted, she knew that when the two men talked, everything that was said carried other meanings.

She asked Juba, "The Hadrons that are our friends — what do they get

out of it?"

"A good question. You see, they are ashamed — that is, the young ones are. They are bitter because the Hadrons in power are degenerate. They hope that when they take power themselves, they can restore Hadron to what it once was. Because once it was well governed, though it is hard to believe that now. We spend most of the time trying quietly to put right what the Hadrons have got wrong."

Meanwhile, a great excitement: Kira had become pregnant. The father was Jan, Candace's younger son. Mara could see, going about with Meryx and with Juba, how much the news affected them: a despondency had gone, a look of discouragement.

Kira summoned a session of the Kin to announce it formally, and they were all embracing and laughing. Jan was congratulated, but seemed uncomfortable with it.

And then Kira sent a message that she had miscarried. She stayed in her room and would not see anybody, not even Ida, who wept continuously, so that Orphne had to stay with her, day and night.

Kira summoned Mara, who found her sitting in her cool room, fanning herself with a pretty, pert little fan, not like Ida's great trailing fan, and not seeming particularly unhappy. The trouble was, Kira's style — her manner, her way of walking and laughing, everything about her — was pert and even impertinent; she was full of little stratagems and tricks. Kira did not like her life. She did not believe in a future for Chelops, and had agreed to have a baby for Ida because in return Ida had said that if there was ever a possibility, she would help Kira travel North, provided the baby was left with her. She wanted to find out from Mara how to prepare herself for travelling, but she had no idea at all of the hardships and dangers of travelling.

Ida sent for Mara, and begged her to have a baby, and Mara said, "If I did have a baby, what makes you think I'd want to give it up?"

"But I'd be so good to it, I have so much — oh Mara, do think about it. Look at yourself: you're better now, you could do it."

Mara certainly had breasts again, but her blood flow had not resumed. Candace had asked her to say when this happened.

"Are you going to make me have a child?" Mara asked Candace.

"You might have noticed that we don't make anyone do anything."

"But you want me to have a child?"

"You talk as if it would be easy. But yes, we'd like you to try."

Kira summoned a session. Everyone was there.

Jan spoke first. "Before you start, Kira — no, I'm not going to try again. Yours is not the first miscarriage. You forget Ida miscarried with my seed."

And his brother said, "And that goes for me. I'm not going through that again: all the expectations, and the hoping, and then — nothing. Three of the courtyard girls have lost my attempts at a child."

Kira said, "I wasn't thinking of either of you. I don't want another mis-carriage — once is enough. I am invoking the old law. It has never been repealed, has it?"

This law was that a man could have two wives, a woman two husbands, if everyone agreed. This law had been made when it first became evident that fertility was lower, there were fewer children, and many miscarriages. So morality changed to suit a necessity. For a while it had worked: there had been more babies born, but then it was evident this was only a temporary improvement. The new law had caused a lot of unhappiness, and slowly fell out of use.

The fact was, Kira had fallen in love with Juba, and by now everyone knew it.

Juba sat quietly beside his wife, Dromas, and said, "I'm not going to pretend I'm not flattered, Kira..." — here he took Dromas's hand — "but why me? I'm old enough to be your grandfather."

Kira said, "You have a son, Juba. Your son doesn't have a son. Meryx is the only young man among the Kin."

Meryx had tried to father a child with one of the courtyard girls, but had failed.

Dromas had to agree with this mating, and she was composed, dignified, but did not hide her hurt. She said, "We have been married twenty years. But Kira, you know I am not going to say no. I couldn't, could I, if there's a chance of a child? I couldn't live with myself if I said no." — and here she smiled, attempting humour in this very tense atmosphere — "I couldn't live with Juba either."

"Oh yes you could, always," said Juba, and kissed her hand.

At this Kira's eyes filled with tears, and she said, "So what are you going to lose? None of us young women will know what it is to say, 'I have been with my man for twenty years.'"

"I know," said Dromas. "And that is why I am saying yes. But I want to say something else. None of you will know what it is to be with a man all of your youth, and to have a child with him — you have no idea of what it is you are asking me to do and what it will cost me."

This was Kira's cue to withdraw, and perhaps say she would try with one of the field slaves. But she sat on, her face wet with tears, her eyes bright and defiant.

"Then you may start your month tomorrow," said Dromas, taking her hand away from Juba's.

The custom was that when a couple were trying for a child — that is when everyone had given their permission — they were given a room, well away from everyone else, and they were excused their ordinary duties for a month.

"Why a full month?" said Mara — and as she spoke, knew she was destroying Kira's dream of a month of love. "We know — don't we? — that the eggs can only reach each other for a week in the middle of the cycle."

"I'm prepared to let it be a week, Kira," said Juba, "and if it doesn't work the first time we can try another week later." To soften this, because Kira looked mortified, and angry, and miserable, all at once, "I'm so busy, Kira. For me to stop working for a month — it is a real difficulty."

"Bitch," said Kira to Mara, as they all went out, "bitch, bitch, bitch."

"But it's true," said Mara. "Someone would have said it, if I didn't."

"But it was you who said it," said Kira.

The week of love — as the women of the courtyard were calling it — began shortly after this discussion. They were all gossiping about this passion: falling in love belonged to the past, to stories and fables and history. They had liaisons with each other, sometimes with permanent partners — lovers was not a word much in use — or more often temporary ones. They did not break their hearts when someone wanted a change, and said, "I want a fling with." — whoever. In the courtyard they chattered and giggled and discussed each other's likes and dislikes, their bodies, their needs — for they varied very much. One might say, "When I've finished with you I'm going to try." — whoever it might be; and the cool answer might be, "Oh suit yourself." It was as if deep feelings, or any feelings, had left these women, as if some silent agreement had been come to: We are not going to want, or yearn, or fret, or need, or suffer over that ridiculous thing, love. They all frankly said that choosing only women meant there would be no heartbreaks over miscarriages and infant deaths or not conceiving when they tried. "I don't want to know if I'm infertile," they said. "Who cares, anyway?"

Yet when one of the field slaves managed to have a baby, and brought it in to show the Kin, all the women in the courtyard wept over it, competed to hold it, and were pettish and cross and tended to burst into tears for a week afterwards.

During the week Juba was with Kira, Candace told Dromas to be with Mara. Dromas was a Memory, and she had learned every word of Mara's history, and now she was to tell Mara as much as she knew of the history of Ifrik, but beginning with Hadron. Dromas of course knew she was given this task so that she wouldn't be sitting by herself, thinking of her husband with a very pretty young woman; but as she talked, her voice kept fading into silence, and she would sit, looking down, her hand irritably and anxiously smoothing back her grey hair, over and over again, as if she were trying to soothe away painful thoughts.

And then Mara would say gently, "And what happened next?"

Plenty had happened. The history of Hadron was a long one: "Hundreds of years," said Dromas; and when Mara jested, "At least it's not thousands," Dromas did not see Mara's point. How strange, Mara thought, that an ignorant thing like me should think so easily of "thousands," of long stretches of time, while a real Memory doesn't seem to hear "thousands" when I say it.

The history of Hadron had begun with the conquest of this country, when the Mahondis who ruled it were defeated. In the middle of an empty plain, the cluster of twenty-five Towers had been built, with the four great, black, shining roads running in from the horizon; and this was where the rulers, the lawmakers, and the administrators were all supposed to live and govern. Soon they were making excuses, and would fly in by skimmer for a week or a day of meetings, and then go home to the regions. Then a law was passed that everyone, including the president, must live in the Towers. Meanwhile the twenty-five black, bleak, sullen buildings were being surrounded by little outcrops of shanty towns: every kind of shed, hut, lean-to, shack, made of every imaginable material, even cloth and mud and old bits of metal. The big roads remained mostly unused, except for visiting dignitaries. Alongside the roads ran dusty tracks, easier on the feet, and everywhere around the base of the Towers, and spreading farther out, were networks of paths, then simple dirt roads, from one little annexe town to another. Soon there were no spaces between the towns, and the mess of buildings stretched outwards from the Towers, but mostly to the east, where the good water was. The shanty towns were rebuilt in brick and wood, and beyond them new houses arose, some of them fine, in large gardens. The administrators, instead of living in the Towers, built themselves houses. Within fifty years of the building of the Towers, which had been meant to stand up straight and tall and alone on the plain, a self-contained city designed to strike awe into the whole country, they were deserted, except for criminals or fugitives or as temporary housing for families taking shelter on the lowest floors until they could find accommodation in the genial and human suburbs. The Towers had become a lesson in misguided town planning, and there had been a time when people came from other countries to take lessons in how not to do it.

And now Mara stood on the wide verandahs of this Mahondi house, which had once been the home of a rich Hadron, and looked across to that enormous, threatening central Tower, with the twenty-four smaller ones — small only in comparison: they were huge. Had she promised not to go there? Yes, she had, at least by implication. And how could she do anything to damage these people, her Kin, who had been so kind and who valued her? But suppose Dann was in those Towers, hiding? It must be as terrible for him as anything they had experienced together. No, more likely that he had gone North: if so, he would be back for her, she was sure of it.

Again Mara accompanied Juba to the water site. All the young men hated this duty, which was lonely and boring, and that was partly why Juba visited them. Six guards, who patrolled the rusty tangle of fencing, and their officer, who was the Mahondis' ally. These young Hadrons were not disgusting, like their elders. They were like the Rock People, and Juba said that the Hadrons had come from the south, and presumably some had decided to settle along the way. Poorly fed Rock People were still solid and big boned, but these, who fed well, were large, and smooth, and their yellowish skins shone. The glistening mass of pale hair, on soldiers, was shortened and looked like a silvery cap. They were proud of their military training and their weapons, which were mostly piles of sharpened sticks, and bows and arrows. Juba inspected them, solemnly. The officer had the weapon like a long stick, of metal, Mara had seen when she was taken to the Hadron house. Juba was careful to look at it, check it, hand it back with a stern nod, saying, "Very good." This was a gun: it came from somewhere in the North, it was very old, and the traders who brought them said they would terrorise any possible enemy. The trouble was, they had killed quite a few people, not enemies, by blowing up in the soldiers' faces.

Juba said to Mara, "Did you know that there were weapons once that could fire right around the world?"

"No." Mara was wrestling with the word, world. Her longing reached Juba, who patted her shoulder and said, "Don't worry, we will teach you everything we know. But as I am sure you are beginning to see, that isn't very much. And you must be prepared: it isn't easy, when you begin to learn just how little we know compared with those people — the ones who lived long ago. If they could see us they would think us savages."

They were standing looking past the great rusty fence up to the cliff where Mara and Dann had come. The scrub right at the top made Mara think of her short brush of hair — though if she used water she could plaster it down now. She was unhappy, and it was because of Kira, her week of being with this man, and of her being pregnant. All the women were restless, and sad, like Mara. Kira sat among them, with a softness about her, a sweetness, that none of them had. Because of Mara's own unhappiness she could feel Juba's. This strong man, of whom Mara had often thought, I am sure he is like my father was — a man with a grown-up son of whom Mara had caught herself thinking, If I did agree to have a baby then it would be with Meryx — this man who seemed so calm, so self-sufficient, was staring up at the cliff top but not seeing it, because his eyes were full of tears.