Mara and Dann

He said, "When Dromas was pregnant I was with her all the time, and I was part of it all. And now I spend a week with a woman who is going to have my child, but I am not supposed to want more. If I had not lived the way I have, with Dromas, then I would be the kind of man who could say to Kira, Thanks, that was very nice, goodbye. But how could I be? — after living with Dromas for twenty years."

Mara thought that "living with Dromas for twenty years" was like listening to a song, or a story, so far was it from her, or from anything she expected. She put her hand on his arm and said, "You know, Juba, there's a solution."

"What?" he said angrily. "There are things no one can change, nothing can make better — young people are like that, you think there must be a solution to everything, well there isn't. Dromas and I are — one person. And now I lie awake at night and I can't sleep because of that girl — and I don't even like her. I've never liked Kira. She's a sly, cold little piece. Dromas has taken her bed into another room because she can't bear it. I feel as if I've been cut in two."

For a while they stood silent, while in front of them the young men marched efficiently up and down, believing that Juba was watching them.

It was a hot day — but when was that not true? They were well into the dry season. Out on the plain the dust devils lazed by. Here, the stream that she and Dann had bathed in was lower and in places — Mara saw this with a feeling of foreboding — was not a stream, but had become a string of wa-terholes.

"So what is your solution, Mara?"

"You are fertile — you've proved it. If there were two, or three, or even more girls pregnant, then."

"Oh, so you see me as a sort of breeding stud?"

"You asked."

And now he gave her a glance so wary, so circumspect, that she cried out, "No, you're wrong. I know I'm ugly, I wasn't thinking." She felt that he had hit her, this kindly man. And she had been secretly thinking, I'm really not so thin and bony now, my hair is growing. Her eyes were full of tears. And he was remorseful and this was even worse for her. "Mara, give yourself time. You look so much better than you did. And don't imagine you aren't attractive. I wish you weren't — I don't want the Hadrons to notice you.Very well, what do you think I should do?"

"Some of the courtyard women are already saying they envy Kira. One or two have said they are going to ask you. Next time all the Kin are together, you should suggest it. And of course Ida is keen."

"Oh, Ida."

"She wants me to get pregnant for her, when my flow begins." And then at his enquiring look, "Oh no, no, no. I'm afraid. There's nothing more terrible, children dying, the babies."

And she thought, surprised at herself, It is true, back in the Rock Village, the children and the babies dying; but it was so terrible I wouldn't let myself feel it, and so when that child died on the journey here I felt nothing. I don't want to feel, I don't want that again — never. And she felt now the anguish of seeing the dying babies in the Rock Village, babies being born, then dying, or surviving for a while, so that everyone watched, hoping, and then another bad dry season — and they died. The mothers' stony faces, the fathers' angry faces as they dug little graves in the hard earth, or put the corpses out for the scavengers.

Juba put his arm around Mara, and she leaned against him and most bitterly sobbed, to make up for all the tears she had held back then. And he stood, full of sorrow, and thought that this girl could never understand his grief over Dromas.

Now Kira sent a message: she demanded a full meeting of the Kin, and when they were assembled she rushed into the room propelled by furious emotion, and was checked by Candace who said, "Sit down, there are still some others to come."

Kira was pouting and exclaiming, and did not sit.

"We have problems," said Candace, "serious ones."

"Oh, mine isn't serious, I see," said Kira.

Then Meryx came in, with Mara: they had been inspecting the food warehouses. Ida arrived, and sat and sighed, fanning herself, and at once everyone had to look. That fan of hers, made of the feathers of a bird Mara thought must be extinct, or had gone North long ago, was like her sighs, her exclamations, her sorrow: the quick flutter near her face, the dramatic turn of the elegant, plump wrist, the click of the fan opening and shutting, the blur of colours as she fanned — she had not said a word, but everyone knew she felt betrayed because Kira was saying that she was going to keep the baby.

"Sit down," said Juba to Kira, who was still marching about, ironically watching Ida.

She did sit now, because it was he who had said so — she made this plain by her manner.

"I demand," she said, "to be allowed to marry Juba." She saw the shocked and astonished faces around her and burst into tears. Candace said, "Don't be so absurd. Of course Juba isn't going to marry you."

Juba was sitting next to Dromas, who was looking strained, but she smiled.

Now Candace said to Kira, "You think only of yourself, Kira. Now listen." And she outlined a plan for Juba to try to impregnate the four girls from the courtyard who had agreed to it — not merely agreed, they were now desperate to try.

Kira began to wail and shout and fling herself about. Orphne supported her up out of her chair and said, "Don't worry, I'll calm you down." And Larissa joined the two, saying, "I think Kira should come and stay with me for a while. I'll look after you, Kira, you'll see."

Ida said, "Why does Kira hate me so much?" And Candace said, "Obviously, because you aren't Juba. Be quiet, Ida. We have serious problems." And almost as an afterthought added, "The women who want to try with Juba can arrange between themselves when and how."

Candace's tone was such that Ida was quiet, and even her fan lay still across her knees. And Mara thought that she had never suspected that behind Candace's gentleness and kindness lay this iron will.

Meanwhile Meryx was outlining the new difficulties. When he had finished he got up to leave and beckoned Mara to go with him. Normally Mara would have just left, but now looked to Candace for permission. Candace nodded, and Mara felt the shrewd — cold? — gaze on her back.

Meryx said, "I'm going to ask you something — don't be angry. But please will you wear my clothes — well, any of the men's clothes when you are out? And this?" It was a little cap like those worn by the slaves. Mara turned away so he could not see her face — her hair was just beginning to be nice to look at, and she loved the pretty frocks, pink and white and green, that she wore. Meryx caught her arm and turned her around. "Mara," he said, "I don't want... we don't want the Hadrons to notice you. Please. You are out and about all the time, everyone can see you..." She nodded, knowing he was right. He let his hand fall off her arm, took her hand and led her to his room. There he turned his back while she took off her pink dress and put on the brown top and loose trousers the men wore. Meryx turned, laughed and said, "Well, I would know you because — I know you." There was no doubt he liked what he saw. "And the next thing will be, you'll be sending a message to my father."

She wanted to say, Oh no, no, no, it would be you I'd ask but the consciousness of her ugliness, which would not leave her, kept her silent. He said, with the little humorous smile that was characteristic, "How would you feel if you were me? It is my father who will be father to the new babies. Not me. No one expects anything of me."

And now she did go to him, put her hands on his upper arms, daring herself to do it, and said, stumbling over it, "Meryx, I haven't begun my flow yet."

"Sweet Mara," said Meryx. "Well, we'll see. Let's see how my father does."

And with that they went out to deal with the new difficulties.

Every dry season dust blew across the plain and the dry, dead bushes bounced and whirled about the air with the dust devils; but this season was worse than anybody remembered. The milk beasts had always stayed out during the dry months, led daily to water, and food was brought to them. But hardy as they were, used to eating unnourishing grass and thorny scrub, used to heat and dust, this year they stood together in their family groups with their backs to the blowing dust and bleated their protests. It had been decided to bring them into the big empty sheds until it rained. "There is one thing we aren't short of," said Meryx, " — empty buildings." But these animals had never been confined before. They were herded into the sheds, and complained at finding a roof over them, but then saw that the great doors stood open and they could go in and out. Soon it was evident they were pleased about the shade they could escape into any time they wanted. It was lucky these beasts were used to drinking so little, with the water so low in the streams and reservoirs.

But the milk beasts' plight was a small problem compared to what had happened the week before when traders from the River Towns came as usual with their dried fish, dried meat, river fruits and vegetables, bales of cotton cloth, to exchange for ganja and poppy. While a casual glance around the great storehouses showed everything was normal, when the slaves came to pull out last year's crops, leaving this year's to mature, most of them were gone. Now these storehouses, housing the most precious commodity of Chelops, were heavily guarded, day and night, by Juba's most trusted militia. They were all Mahondis, because Juba had to keep control of what controlled the Hadrons.

Not to tell the Hadrons would be foolish, and besides by now their spies would have informed them. They had to trust Juba: everything depended on that. Yet to confess the extent of the loss must be to throw doubt on his competence. The ruling Hadrons were suspicious anyway, jumpy and ready to see plots everywhere. They knew of course about the discontent among the younger Hadrons and feared above everything they would lay their hands on the country's main source of wealth.

Juba had thought, and thought again, and consulted Dromas and Meryx, and then Mara. It was she who suggested that Juba should see the chief Hadron, and ask that the guards on the storehouses should be half Mahondi, half Hadron. This meant that any future thefts must be the responsibility of both. Juba agreed, for he had come to the same conclusion, though the plan meant the easily suborned Hadron slaves might steal the drugs.

Juba said that the chief Hadron, an old man called Lord Karam, was intelligent, even if half the time he was drug-sodden. Juba went to see Karam, taking Meryx. Mara had hoped to go too, but the men said, You keep out of sight, Mara.

Karam was alone in his great throne room. He sat not on the throne but on the floor, on a cushion. He was not befuddled as he sometimes was when Juba came for a talk. That he was alone meant that he, like Juba, did not want the crisis to be generally known — yet. The first thing he said was that if Juba knew who the culprit was then he or she should be executed, as an example, according to law. Juba said that his spies believed a Hadron was responsible.

"Are you suggesting a Mahondi wouldn't steal?" asked the old man, smiling, dry — dangerous.

"No," said Juba. "But my guards are spied on, every minute they are on duty, and the spies are spied on. But we found a tunnel into one warehouse, the biggest, very cleverly constructed and concealed. And in another there was a place in the roof, very hard to see." And now Juba had to challenge Karam directly. "My spies tell me that your nephew Meson is selling poppy and ganja."

And now a long silence. Then Karam said, "To whom?" "That we don't know." Juba did know, but knew that Karam must know too.

Karam thought for some time, his eyes hooded. Then he said, "It would be best if the extent of the losses were kept quiet."

"I agree."

"There will be no execution. My nephew will be given a warning."

Juba had to stop himself protesting: this was weakness, and he believed it was not the time for it. He dared to say, "Lord Karam, is a warning enough?" But what he was suggesting, not saying, was that Meson was the leader of the rebellious young Hadrons.

"It depends on the warning," said Karam.

Meryx told Mara that this was where the two men looked at each other, long and seriously. "I felt a lot was being said, but not in words. They respect each other — Karam and my father. Juba says that all of Hadron would have collapsed long ago if Karam had been stupid or weak."

The next thing that happened was that Karam's nephew Meson was arrested for brawling, with half a dozen of his friends, and they were given prison sentences, with hard labour. Short sentences, but it was as if they were not Hadrons at all, but common criminals.

Then the Hadrons announced that from now on all the milk, and the products of the milk, from all the milk beasts, would go to them and that included the beasts belonging to the Mahondis. Juba and Meryx went back to Lord Karam and said that there were pregnant women again, among the Mahondis, and it was in the interests of everybody, including Hadrons, that they should be well nourished. It was agreed that the pregnant women should have a ration of milk, but it wasn't very much.

There were four of the women pregnant — with Kira, five.

Mara was sent to the courtyard by Juba, who jested, though not with much conviction, that he was afraid of going himself, in case there would be other demands on him, and it had taken his recent experiences as a stud to make him feel old.

Kira was in her sixth month. She was not enjoying herself, was peevish, complaining and sat sighing and shifting her big body about. She and the four pregnant ones sat together, patronising the others, and demanding — and getting — special treats. Candace would come out to them, with a little dried fruit, or some broth, and Ida cooked them sweets, and this though there was talk of rationing because the crops had failed. The shade was less in the courtyard, and the women kept moving themselves out of the way of shafts of hot sun, for the leafy canopy was thinning. Candace arranged for a light cloth to be stretched across part of the courtyard.

Mara told them that Juba said they should offer to work with the milk beasts. As they began to complain and protest, she explained how little milk there was going to be. Then she waited for them to get the point. They did, but were wondering about this excessive caution. Usually there would be jokes: "Take a little swig when no one is looking" — that sort of thing. Mara said, "Do your best not to be noticed. And when the traders come from the River Towns we'll make sure we buy plenty of dried milk."

The young women looked at her with dislike, and not concealing it. Who was this Mara, who was always with Juba, with Meryx, with Orphne, who in such a short time had become so trusted a member of the Kin that she could give them orders? This cold, nervous, ugly woman, with her flat, bony body — well, yes, it did look better than it had, not that any of them had ever seen it, for she was always covered up... perhaps she had a scar or an infirmity she wanted to keep hidden? And her hair — it was growing out, she was less of a freak, but who did she think she was?

Mara knew how much she was disliked. And she thought with quiet bitterness, Why? I'm no threat to them. They're so soft and lovely and well fed and they have never felt that they have dust so deep in their skin it will never wash away.

Now the women competed to work with the milk beasts, and they milked them, and stole a little when they could, and often stood with their arms around the hairy, dusty necks whispering endearments, not minding that their bright, clean dresses had to be shaken free of dust. They took the beasts little treats of a wisp of hay or a bit of green stuff, or bread. Candace complained that they were all in a trance of dreams and imaginings, and she ordered them to attend some lessons she was arranging. And no, she said, the three new women who demanded Juba's attentions would have to wait until the five babies were born and everyone could see how these pregnancies turned out.

It was Larissa who gave the lessons, which were tales "from long ago, no one knows how long," and they were from a medical textbook found in ancient records.

The first tale was about a woman called Mam Bova, who hated her husband, tried to seduce a handsome youth, who rejected her, so she took poison and died.

The listening young women in their shaded courtyard, lolling about in their charming dresses, smiled sarcastically, for they knew why they had to listen: it was not only Kira who was sick with love, they were all falling subject to it as if a sweet poison were in the air.

The next tale was about a beautiful, powerful woman called Ankrena, who similarly hated her husband, left him for a handsome soldier, and committed suicide by throwing herself under a machine described in a note to the tale as "running on parallel rails, but this vehicle lacked freedom of movement and was soon superseded by ancient versions of the skimmer."

Then Larissa told a story about one Mam Bedfly, who was a young slave girl, in love with a sailor from across the sea (notes about sea, oceans, ships and so on were incomprehensible); but the point was, feeling abandoned, she killed herself.

Larissa then laughed at the sceptical, disapproving faces she saw all around her, stood up and said, "I'll give you another dose tomorrow."

Next morning the courtyard was crowded to hear Larissa's warnings.

The first was an old myth about a girl called Jull and a boy called Rom, from different clans, and they fell in love and killed themselves because the clans disapproved. This tale provoked much more discussion than yesterday's, for someone said, "Like Mahondis and Hadrons," and they shuddered at the idea of being in love with an ugly Hadron.

The second was about a young girl who wanted to marry a handsome young man instead of an old rich man her father had chosen; but instead of killing herself she was imprisoned for ever in a temple.

"What was a temple?"

"It was a place where they kept their God."

"What was God?"

"An invisible being who controlled their lives." This caused a good deal of merriment.

The last tale was of a famous singer called Toski who befriended a young man escaping from the police because he was intriguing against an unjust king. In exchange for the promise of freedom for the young hero, Toski slept with the Chief of Police; but he betrayed her, and the famous singer killed herself.

This tale they took more seriously than the others. All knew about the young Hadrons who were waiting to rule this country, some of whom were currently in prison as a punishment, and that all the talk among the younger Hadrons not in prison was of assassinations, coups and uprisings.

The salutary tales did not seem to have much effect, for the three young women — by now four — who wanted babies, said they were going to insist on their rights. This time it was Juba himself who said, "Wait until the rains, and the other babies are born."

When Mara's flow began, she went to inform Candace, as she had been told to do, and found her in the big communal room where they all met, looking at a great map filling all of one wall. Mara had not known it was there: it was usually covered by a curtain. Mara quickly said what she had to, and then ran to the map, feeling she was being given food long denied. Candace had her hand on the cord that pulled the curtain across, and as Mara stood staring, said to her, "Aren't you supposed to be in the fields with Meryx?"

Mara said, "Candace, when may I begin my lessons?"

"What is it you want to know?"

"Everything." Then Mara managed a laugh, in response to Candace's dry little smile, and said, "Well, I could begin with numbers. Counting."

"But Mara, you know as much as any of us. You come here to report to us that there are so many sacks of grain or ganja or poppy." "Is that really all any of you know?" "We know all we need to know."

"But when I say ten thousand sacks of grain, it is because there are ten thousand. That is my limit, or the limit of the sacks, not the limit of numbers. Or we say, 'in the old times,' or 'ten thousand years ago,' or — yesterday I heard Meryx say, 'twenty thousand years ago.' But that's what we know, or imagine, but not how far back things really went. What do we know of then — and how do we know it?"

Candace sat down and nodded at Mara to sit. What Mara was seeing was Candace's hands: long, clever hands, but they were restless. Mara thought, She is impatient, but controlling it. She is trying to be patient with me.

"Long ago there were civilisations so far in advance of us that we cannot begin to imagine what they were." "How do we know?"

"About five thousand years ago there was a terrible storm in a desert that everyone thought had always been a desert, just piles of sand, and the storm shifted the sand and exposed a city. It was very big. The city had been made to keep chronicles — records — books."

"We had books when we were children."

"Not of leather, not skins. Of paper. Quite like the stuff we make our shoes of... the indoor shoes. And on them printing." "Our books had writing."

"Printing. Techniques we don't have. The city was a kind of Memory. Histories. Stories of all kinds, from every part of the world. The scholars of then — that was a time of peace — trained hundreds of young people to be Memories: not just to remember, but to write things down. They decided to preserve the histories of all the world."

"The world," said Mara, desperate.

"The world. Some wrote it all down, but others were trained to remember. And that is where all our knowledge comes from — those old libraries. But it was just as well the Memories were trained, because when the books were exposed to the air they crumbled into dust and soon there weren't many left. But there are collections of them, or there used to be, in the stone graves where they used to bury people. The graves are cool and dry and the old books and records kept well."

"Why are we stupid compared with them?"

"We aren't," said Candace. "We are as clever as we need to be for our lives. For the level of living we have now."

"And we are the same as those old people that had all that knowledge?"

"Yes, we think so. One of the old records said that. Human beings are the same, but we become different according to how we have to live."

"I feel so stupid," said Mara.

"You aren't stupid. You came from a Rock Village and didn't know anything but how to keep alive, and now you know everything we know. Mara, if we said to you, 'Take charge of the food supplies,' or 'Run the militia,' or 'Manage the ganja and the poppy,' you could do it. You've learned what we know."

"Do we have Memories here with all that knowledge in their heads?"

Candace smiled. It was the smile that made Mara feel like a small child. "No. We are very unimportant people. What we know has filtered down from those old Memories who kept all the knowledge there was in their heads — but only a little has reached us. But because we know that it is important to preserve the past, we train people to be Memories, when we can."

"Are you training me to be a Memory?"

"Yes. But to understand what we have to tell you, you have to know first about practical things. It is no good telling you about different kinds of society or culture when you don't know what you are living in. And now you do. Besides, we need good people to help us run things — we are so short of them. You must see that."

"When are you going to start teaching me?"

"It seems to me you have made a start. You know the history of the Mahondis, right back to the beginning when we came down from the North, three thousand years ago."

"Are we the descendants of the old Memories?"

"Yes, we are."

"The world," said Mara. "Tell me about the world."

At this point Meryx came in and said, "Mara, I was looking for you."

Walking around the edge of a building that held the stores of poppy, Mara came face to face with Kulik. There was no doubt of it. She was wearing Meryx's clothes and the little cap into which she had bundled her hair. He stared at her: he was doubtful too. Last time he had seen her she had been a boy, half grown. She did not look much like she had in the Rock Village. But he did stare, and turned to stare again. He had got a job, pretending he was a Hadron, in their militia. They weren't going to ask too many questions, being as short of people as they were. And now Mara saw him every day, as she went about with Meryx or with Juba. She had been afraid of him as a child and she was afraid now. She told Meryx who he was, and said he was cruel and dangerous. Meryx said that fitted him perfectly to be a member of the Hadron militia. It was time for the rainy season to start.

"I seem to have spent my life watching the skies for rain," said Mara, and Meryx said, "I know what you mean." But he didn't. Around Mara's heart lay a heaviness, a foreboding, for she could not keep the thought out of her mind, It is not going to last. She fought this with, They say there have been droughts before: I might be wrong. I'll say yes to Meryx and we'll have a child and then...

It did not rain. It was time to scatter the poppy seed and the ganja, but the earth was hard, and the wind blew away the seed. The ganja self-seeded and did better.

Kira gave birth, and it was at once clear that what she had wanted was not a baby, but Juba, for she took the infant to Ida and said, "I don't want it." Ida was transformed. She took into her house a woman from the fields who had wanted a child and failed, and the two women spent all their days watching over the infant.

The water was low in the reservoirs, and so it was rationed. Instead of tubs being taken every day to the male slaves, now it was once a week. No longer could the courtyard women spend hours in the basins that were kept filled in the bathhouse. The people of the town, used to the morning and evening watercarts, were told that there would be one delivery a day, and the penalty for wasting water would be death.

The townspeople were showing all kinds of initiative. In the dusty gardens were appearing food crops and — illegally — poppy. They began trading direct with the River Towns merchants. The Hadrons turned a blind eye, because that meant less food had to be found from the half-empty warehouses. Some old wells were discovered, and the owners sold water, and some even established bathhouses. The monopoly of water, which the Hadrons had used for so long to control the town, was weakened — not ended, for there were not many wells. But the Hadrons were losing power fast, and when Juba said that it would not be long before the ruling junta was ousted, no one disagreed.

Meryx said to Mara, "Please live with me, and let me try to give you a child."

Mara moved in with Meryx and found herself overthrown by love. She had not imagined there could be such happiness. Nor that there could be such fear. For her to get pregnant — what a catastrophe, she knew it. Only in a dream or a fever could she possibly have seen herself with a child, here, where the drought was creeping up from the south. For the first month she lied about her fertile time, she was so afraid. But Meryx knew it and she could not bear what he was feeling. And so she abandoned herself as she might have thrown herself into a fast flowing river, thinking that she might or might not find landfall. And yet she loved him — and it was terrible.

Meanwhile the rainy season trundled on. There was a brief, violent storm, enough to half fill the reservoirs. The river ran again from under the cliff. There was not another storm. The poppies sparsely sprang up, and died. They were replanted and there was patchy rain. The ganja was thick and odorous, but only half its usual height.

The four babies were born, all of them strong and well formed. The other waiting women reminded Juba of his promise, but then two of the babies died. It was the drought sickness. Mara knew it, but the others did not, because they had never seen it. Mara told the two mothers and Ida's nurse to sit by the babies and give them clean water, but the water was not really clean. The Kin commandeered water from one of the deep wells in a citizen's garden, and it was thought that this was keeping Kira's (or Ida's?) baby and the other two surviving babies alive. The babies were sheltered inside the house because of the dust blowing about, and it was touching, and wonderful, and frightening, to see how all the Kin made excuses to go into the rooms where they were, to touch them, beg to hold them, watch them sleeping — men as well as the women.

One day Kira was not there. She left a message for the Kin that she was going to try her chances up North.

Mara was hurt by Kira's leaving, as the Kin were. She thought, Why did I let myself love Meryx? It was better when I was hard and cold. Now I'm open to every feeling, and it hurts, loving Meryx.

Their rooms were in Juba and Dromas's house, and looked into a court where some cactuses were flowering. Mara and Meryx's bed was a low, soft pallet, heaped with cushions. Mara lay in Meryx's arms and thought how strange it was that this delight — lying with your love in a clean, soft, pretty place, and sometimes the scent from the cactus flowers blowing in — was something that could be taken for granted, as Meryx did. Mara let her palm slide down the smooth warmth of his arm, felt his hand close on her shoulder, and for her these were pleasures she felt newly with every breath she took: pleasures as fragile and sudden as the cactus flowers bursting impossibly out of dry brown skin. Meryx had lain with others before her, and he had always been with them in sweet-smelling beds, in rooms that were cool and kept the dust out. For him there was nothing extraordinary that two bodies with healthy flesh should lie wrapped around each other, while strong hearts beat their messages. Mara often did not sleep, not wanting to lose a moment of this delight, or she half-slept, or dreamed, and more than once she dreamed that it was Dann in her arms and this startled her awake and into grief. She knew that sometimes when she held Meryx she felt that he was part-child, and wondered if this was because of Dann; for Meryx was not childish at all. Except in this one thing: that he did not know life was so like a cactus flower, and could disappear in a breath. And this was really what separated them. Strange that no one, even the cleverest, could know anything except by direct experience. All his life Meryx had been sheltered in the Kin, been safe, and that was why he could not hear when she whispered, "Meryx, it is not going to last. Let's go now, while we can."

His hand often slid to her waist, and fingered the little ridge of skin the rope of coins had left there. She had had to trust him with her secret. She begged him not to tell the Kin, and he said he would not. She pushed the cord with its heavy knots into the middle of a big cushion that lived at the head of their bed. All the anxiety she carried with her, unable to subdue it, was concentrated on what was in that cushion. She insisted on cleaning this room herself, would not let anyone else do it. She sometimes came secretly to the room to put her hand down into the cushion and reassure herself. When Meryx saw her doing this he was unhappy, and said, "I believe that you care more for that little nest-egg of yours than you do for me." And she said, "Without that money we would not have reached here. We would have been killed on the road." She knew he did not understand, because he had never in his life been at that point where it could be life or death to own a root filled with juice, or a bit of dry bread, or a coin that could buy the right to be carried in a machine out of danger. He would let his fingers travel along the tiny, rough line of skin and say, "Mara, I sometimes wonder if you could have said no to me, to keep those coins a secret."

As that rainy season ended, with months of dry before even the possibility of skies that held the blessed water, there were rumours that bands of travellers were leaving Chelops for the North, and they were not passing through, from the south, but were from the Towers. More people had been living there than had been suspected. They were leaving because of water rationing. People living near the Towers sold water to anyone in them, whether fugitives, criminals or squatters. But now there was little water to sell.

And then this happened. Mara was with Juba, in the warehouses that held the sacks of precious poppy and ganja. When she had first seen them, the warehouses were crammed to their roofs, but now were half empty: so much had been stolen, and then there had been the poor rainy season. What were they going to trade with, when the River Towns traders came next, if they reserved enough to keep the Hadrons happy?

Mara was a little way from Juba, who was standing on a tall pile of sacks using a probe to make sure they held what they were supposed to, and not chalk or chaff. Kulik came to her and said loudly, "My replacement has not arrived, he is sick." Then he said, very low, "Your brother is on level two, Central Tower." And then aloud again, "I've been on duty twenty-four hours now." He winked at her, a slow closing of a fat, yellow eye, and there was such malevolence there, such hatred, that she literally went cold, and trembled. She told him loudly to go off and rest. As he turned, there was his smile, poisonous, a threat. She thought, How strange: all my childhood I was dodging out of the way of this man and now here I must be careful not to find myself in his hands again.

She did not tell Juba about Dann, and this made her feel treacherous. But surely he must have known about Dann? His spies and the Had-rons' — they knew everything. When she went back into her room she ran quickly to feel if the rope of coins was still there. They had gone. So Juba did know what Kulik had told her, and was making sure she would not bribe her way into the Towers? She was standing with her hand still deep inside the big cushion when Meryx came in, and what she saw on his face made her exclaim, "So you told the Kin about my coins? They knew all the time — "

"I had to, Mara. Surely you must see that?"

She asked for a full assembly of the Kin, at once. They were all there. Meryx did not sit by her, as he had been doing, but was with Juba and Dromas. She was alone again.

"You never trusted us," said Candace, saying in her tone, her manner, her cool, hard eyes, You aren't really one of us.

"And you don't trust me," said Mara. "You've known Dann was there. You knew all the time and you didn't tell me."

Juba said, "You see, Mara, we don't think as highly of Dann as you seem to."

"You don't know him." "He's dealing in drugs," said Juba. "And taking them," said Candace. "He sent me a message," said Mara. "Why now?" "We think it is because all the people from the Towers are leaving to go North," said Candace.

"And he is ill, apparently," added Juba.

Mara was silent, looking at the faces that seemed to press in on her: concerned faces, but calm, and at such a distance in experience, in feeling. And Meryx too: He could have sat by me, she thought.

"What do you want us to do, Mara?" asked Candace.

"What I would like is for you to give me some soldiers to go with me to the Towers — all right, I know that you won't. But you asked."

"And you know that everything depends on our keeping quiet, keeping out of sight, never making trouble."

"And all this," said Mara, "to preserve something that isn't going to last anyway." She spoke low, falteringly, hardly able to look at them, because she knew how strong their defences were. And what their faces were saying was, Poor child, there she goes again.

"We know that you are going to try to get to the Towers," said Juba, and his eyes were wet — yes, he was fond of her, Mara knew; they all were — and yet here she sat, and though she was wearing a green, flouncy dress, as pretty as anything there, and as fresh, and as clean, she felt as if she were still caked-with-dust Mara from the Rock Village.

"We aren't going to stop you," said Candace.

"Are you going to give me back my money?" she asked.

Candace took the cord of coins out of a little bag, and threw it across to her. Mara caught it and could not stop herself quickly counting them — and saw critical looks being exchanged. "Did you think we were going to steal them?" asked Candace gently.

"Can we see them?" asked Ida. "I've never seen a gold coin in my life." At this they all laughed. "Who has?"..."None of us"..."Only Mara", were the comments.

Mara untied half a dozen of the coins and put them to lie on a dark blue cushion. Everyone craned forward, then Juba reached for one and soon they were being passed around.

"How lovely," sighed Ida. "You're richer than any of us, Mara." And she handed her coin back. Soon Mara had all knotted safe.

"If you take that to the Towers they'll kill you for it," said Juba.

"I can see you think I'm very stupid," said Mara. Then she said, deliberately, looking around, forcing them to look at her, "Dann came back for me to the Rock Village. He had got farther north than here. He didn't have to come back. I would have died if he hadn't. I owe him my life." This last stopped them, impressed them: if someone saved your life, it was a debt of honour, and must be repaid, in one way or another. "I'm going to try tomorrow. And if I don't see you again — thank you," said Mara, through tears.

"Wait," said Candace, and threw her another little bag that had in it the small, light, flimsy coins everyone used.

In the room she had shared with Meryx she tied the cord tightly under her breasts, while he watched her. She took off the green dress, and put on the slave's robe from the bottom of her sack. She folded the green robe and laid it on the bed. Meryx was so hurt by this that he grabbed it and made her put it in her sack. "Why?" he accused her. "We haven't suddenly become enemies, have we?"

"I was wondering," said Mara. As he exclaimed, "No," she put on the little cloth cap that she had been wearing as she went about her work with Juba and Meryx. Now she looked like a Mahondi slave: short, smooth hair, little cap, the rough woven robe that had once been white. She took off her house shoes, and Meryx snatched them up and put them in her sack. She pushed them right down, close to the wonderful clothes she had carried with her all the way from the Rock Village, and which all the Kin had marvelled over.

"I don't know what to say to you," she said to him. "I know I'll never lose my sadness that I didn't give you the chance to show you are as fertile as your father. But surely it's just as well — if I had been pregnant, or had a small baby, what would I be doing now?"

"Staying with me," said Meryx.

Mara set off for the centre of Chelops watched by many pairs of eyes, as she knew. The Kin were watching from the windows, and who else? She had not directed herself westwards since the Kin had taken her in. The fields, the pastures for the milk beasts, the warehouses, the suburbs where the Hadrons lived, the reservoirs and the streams — all these spread to the east of the Mahondi quarter, and that is where she had walked and worked every day. Now, her back to the east, she strode out, fast, towards the great Towers, at first through the pleasant houses of the Mahondis, in their gardens, which were mostly neglected, since so many houses were empty. For the year of her stay in Chelops she had been inside the protection of the Kin, and had become accustomed to the feeling of being enclosed, like a child looking out at the world from safe arms. Now she was on her own again. She was walking through smaller houses, in a mesh of little crooked lanes, where a big tree stood at a corner, its leaves drooping, the shade under it no longer inviting passers-by to linger. Dust filmed it. Dust hung in the air, though the rainy season had only just finished. In a small, fenced garden a milk beast stood glaring, its tongue lolling: it had been fed and watered and perhaps petted, but its owner had fled, leaving it. Mara opened the gate, and saw how the beast had scarcely the vitality left to step out into the lane. Perhaps someone will help it, she thought. Now she was cautious, her eyes on the alert, because she knew that any person she encountered would probably be a Mahondi or Hadron spy. How empty the place was; had everyone left Chelops? This had been a big, populous city. The Towers were still a long way off. It was early afternoon now, and it would take her to mid-afternoon to reach them, and then she had to find Dann. The black of the Towers was dull, did not flash or gleam, but the great sullen buildings seemed to pulse out the stored heat of the drought. As the little lane she was following reached a big street, a running chair stood waiting for custom. This was the first of the spies, probably Juba's. She asked the Mahondi slave between the shafts, how much. She could have sworn that he was on the point of shaking his head, Not for you.

But he reflected and said, "Ten." She paid over ten of the ugly little flakes of coins and was soon being jogged along street after street, the Towers always coming nearer. Dann had done this work: both on these chairs, with one porter, and on the others, like boxes, that had two. She imagined his hard, muscular, thin back, his sprinting legs, between these shafts. This youth was tough, but perhaps too thin. Rations had been cut to the slaves, but surely not to hunger point? He had not asked where she was going, so he must have been told. She stopped him where the decent order of the streets gave way to the jumble of the crowded lanes and houses that had so long ago marked the first citizens' revulsion from the Towers. And here, at last, were people. When she got out, she saw that he set down his shafts and leaned on the chair, watching her. She quickly moved out of his sight, and into an eating house that was only a room with a few tables and chairs, and a long trestle where stood plates of rough slices of bread and jugs of water. The place was quite full yet everyone turned to stare at her. Did slaves not come in here? She was thirsty, drank a glass of brownish water, and almost forgot to pay the woman proprietor, so used was she to not paying for anything. She sat in a corner, pretending indifference to her surroundings, and listened. They soon forgot her. They were poor people, wearing clothes that had come from Mahondi warehouses. These faces were sharp and dissatisfied. She was not shocked by what they were saying, nor even surprised, for already, having left behind the comparative riches and comfort of eastern Chelops, she was seeing it as they did. They did not distinguish between Hadron lords and Mahondi slaves, but saw them as one: ruthless, grabbing, cruel masters who stole everything good for themselves and doled out what was spare to them, the poor people. But above all, Mara was seeing those gentle, favoured suburbs as a narrow fringe on the edge of this hungry town, clinging on there at the edge of the real town — the town that had been real, because from the talk it was evident how fast people were leaving. The Mahondis and the Hadrons, for all their spies and their webs of information gatherers, had no idea of how they were hated, how happy any one of these people would be to cut their throats. And Mara could hear Candace's indifferent, "Oh, there'll always be some malcontents."

Mara sat on, turning her mug of brown water between her long, pretty, well-kept fingers, making herself eat the coarse bread, remembering how only a year ago it would have seemed a feast; and saw in her mind's eye clever Candace, sighing Ida, Juba, whom she thought of secretly as a father, Meryx, with his kind, humorous face, Dromas, who loved her husband in a way that seemed to Mara like an old song or a story, Orphne, who knew everything about plants and healing, Candace's elderly sons, Larissa, whom you could hear laughing from one end of the house to the other, the women of the courtyard — all these people, Mara's friends, her family — and could not fit this picture together with knowing how they were hated, seen as wicked people.

Yet she, Mara, sitting quietly here, was left alone, with only the occasional curious or hostile glance. The woman who was serving watched her: she knew who she was. How much had she been paid? More importantly, by whom? Mara went to her, asked if rooms were let, and asked how much. The woman nodded, not looking at her, keeping her face neutral, and said, "For how long?" "I don't know," said Mara. "For tonight, anyway?" At this a spasm of something — amusement? — crossed the woman's face and she said, "Is that so?" And added, almost laughing, "There's a room."

Mara went out, looking out for the next person who had been paid to keep an eye on her, but she could not see anyone. The Towers were now close. They were very high, oppressive, and she was all at once filled with anger against the people who had built them: she knew that this feeling, a rebellious hate, united her with the people she had left behind her in the eating house.

It was afternoon, and the sky a hot glare. The Towers flung back shadows across the little houses. Ahead was the ring road around the Towers, and now she could see the tall fence, of the same kind as barred the stream running from the cliff in the east of the city: a jangle of rusty metal, as intricate and tangled as the lace the courtyard women made to edge their dresses. But there were gaps in this fence. Mara set her face to the north, to walk right around this inner town, with its twenty-five Towers, and she thought that it would be dark before she found Dann. Then ahead, opportunely, was the same running chair, and the same lad who had brought her here. She gave him ten bits of the metal money, without asking him, and told him to take her around the edge of the Towers, saying she wanted to see the entrance to the tunnels. He did not seem surprised, but she could see he was setting himself to be wary: she knew that set of the face, the shoulders, from Dann. He looked for a gap in the rusty wall of the fence, went in, and they were on the ring road. The entrances to the six Towers of this, the south-eastern quadrant, were all blocked by heaps of the same rusty, interlaced metal; but almost at once there was the opening of an earth tunnel, and nailed to its entrance was the crude picture scrawled on a square of wood of one of the yellow beetles she had seen on the escarpment high above the city. The young man jogged faster past this entrance, peering fearfully in. A foul smell came from it.

Two other attempts at tunnels had been made and abandoned. One had gone in about twenty paces, but had met with a reef: the stones were embedded in the red sandy earth like white teeth. A little farther on a tunnel had caved in. Now they had to cross the big road that ran east, which was easy, because it was hard and wide and smooth. Looking to the east there was nothing and nobody to be seen on this road. If Mara directed this youth to turn right now, on the road, in less than an hour she would be back at the beginnings of the Mahondi quarter, and for a moment she was desperately tempted to do just that. But they went on around the ring road, which was equally empty. There was one large earth tunnel here and it was well used. There were even two women sitting in the entrance, their legs stretched out. At first they seemed the picture of ease, but then discontented faces told a different story. A group of men came out of this tunnel, not taking any notice of the women, nor of Mara in her chair: not seeing anything much — their empty, staring eyes said why. They walked back along the ring road, presumably to the eating house. Now Mara and the youth were at the big road going north, the north-eastern quadrant behind them. When travellers went North, was this the road they used? She leaned forward to shout the question at her porter, but he shook his head and shouted back, "Too dangerous." In the north-western quadrant were several earth tunnels, and at the entrances of all of them were the warning pictures of the beetles. Could creatures the size of a five-year-old child still be called a beetle? Mara's flesh seemed to shrink and tremble at the thought of them, but Mara said to herself, How soft you've got! You lived with scorpions and lizards and dragons and outwitted them.

Now they crossed the big road running west, and here was the southwestern quadrant, and again there was a large, well used tunnel, and at its entrance a group of youths seemed to be waiting: they lounged there, with sticks in their hands, and she saw a glint of their knives in the belts that held their tunics. They watched Mara go past, curiously. And she knew from their faces and postures that they could as easily attack her as stand there, apparently indifferent. They were drugged too, probably ganja. Which of the two used tunnels was she to choose? It had taken her longer to make the circuit of the Towers than she had expected. It was past mid-afternoon. She would spend the night in the eating house, and start again in the morning. She would use the south-western quadrant's tunnel, which was nearer than the others. Now they traversed the highway running south. She had seen it from the skimmer: a dark and shining straight line cutting the brown landscape. Soon they were in sight of the eating house and she asked to be set down. The youth stopped, let the chair tilt forward — and as she stepped to the ground Kulik came fast towards her from a lane, with two Hadrons behind him. He hustled her back into the chair and got in beside her. The chair porter was not surprised, merely lifted the shafts, while the other two waited till the chair was in motion, and went off to the eating house.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, and he did not reply. He was sitting gripping the side rail with one hand, his eyes always on the move, and the other hand held a knife with which he was threatening any possible assailant as much as he was her. The two scars on his face were staring at her, promising cruelty. They had healed, but the flesh on either side of the scars did not fit, and there was a puckering, and that mouth, usually in a threatening grin, was permanently lifted in one corner to show yellow teeth.

"Did a dragon do that?" she asked. She thought he wasn't going to answer, but he said, "A water dragon. And there's poison in those claws. I thought I was dead." This last was said in the jocular, jeering way that she had been hearing from him since she was a small girl setting eyes on him for the first time. "And it's left poison in me, because I can sometimes feel it in my bones."

They were going back to the eastern suburbs. They passed the lane where earlier she had seen the milk beast. It was down on its knees, but sitting in the dust near it was a Mahondi field woman, and she was holding a dish of water to its mouth. They went through the Mahondi quarter. Now she was thinking, with horror, that he was taking her to the Hadrons: those foul, obese, drug-cruel old men, with their flesh lapping around them under their robes, their little, cold eyes. She thought, I won't, I'll kill myself — ima-gining being touched by those hands like pads of cold tallow. But the porter was jogging past the great house with its still-fresh gardens where the senior Hadrons lived. "Where are you taking me?" she asked again, but Kulik was here even more alert and on guard — well, yes, at any moment they might see Juba, or Meryx, or

Orphne, who would stop the chair or at least set up an alarm. The chair turned into a garden surrounding another big house that she knew was used by the young Hadrons.

The porter stopped, lowered the shafts, stood up, stretched, shook the sweat out of his eyes. Kulik took a grip on Mara's upper arm, which hurt — and his bared-teeth grin at her said he knew it did — and pushed her down in front of him out of the chair, then propelled her up some steps and on to a verandah where a Hadron guard lolled against the wall, asleep. Kulik knocked at the side of an open door and a young Hadron male came out, whom Mara recognised. And he knew her, and said, "Let her go." At which Kulik did as he was told, transformed from the bully into obedience.

This Hadron was Olec, and she knew him as a leader among the Hadron youth. He was one of those who had been given a suspended prison sentence. He was leading her by the hand into a large room full of young Hadrons, whose faces she knew. They sat about on cushions and pallets, indolent, and infinitely at their ease, just like their elders, she thought. These were not sick with drugs, they were not fat and disgusting, their flesh was not running to yellow grease, but they shared with their seniors a look of innate, taken-for-granted power. Every movement they made, the set of their heads, the way they lounged there, their confident faces — everything — said, We are rulers and shall continue to be. And Mara thought, sickened, But that is how we Mahondis were, back in our palace in Rustam, and the Mahondis here, slaves or not, seem like that to the townspeople.

"Sit down, Mara," said Olec, and let himself fall gracefully on to a cushion. "So, you were running away?" And this was not unkind, or an accusation, but that easy amusement at others which is a sign of confidence in power.

"A runaway slave," said another, laughing.

Mara sat on a low stool, from which she looked down on these, the golden youth, as they were called, and she thought, When they get into power they'll be just the same as their parents. They think they won't but they will.

"What do you want of me?" she asked, using the same almost easy camaraderie, which was because they were all young, and at least equals in that.

"I wonder if you are going to be surprised when we tell you?" said Olec.

"Try me."

"You are going to be my concubine," said Olec. "And you are going to produce children. For me. For us."

Now, the Hadrons had been a little more successful than the Mahondis with their breeding, but not much. "Hadron babies have been dying and we want to be sure of slaves."

Mara sat thinking, making herself smile, seeming cool and even amused. Then she said, "Are you planning a harem of Mahondis? Are you going to capture others? Juba won't like that."

"Juba will do as he is told," said Olec. "And you had run away. We didn't capture you from your family."

"Why didn't you take Kira? — she ran away."

"True," said Olec. "But we knew about Kira. More trouble than she was worth, we decided."

Here there was a loud, general and genial laugh. This was an all-male gathering. It was with this laugh that they discussed the qualities of the Mahondi women. What were the Hadron women thinking of this scheme?

"Well, Mara," said Olec, "do you have anything against me? If you don't fancy me, then take your pick." And she saw how these complacent young men's faces waited, smiling, for her to choose one — they were just like, she thought, a tray of Ida's sweets.

"There is just one thing," she said. "I am pregnant already."

At this there was an exchange of looks: first disbelief, then disappointment. And then, discontent. A couple of Hadrons actually got up and went out: this is a waste of time, said the set of their bodies.

Olec said, "But Mara, Meryx has never yet made anyone pregnant."

"No," said Mara. "But Juba has, several times."

And now she had to force herself to sit still, smiling, while Olec's eyes seemed to bore into her, travelled all over her, searching her body, her face, her eyes. Then he sat back and sighed, then nodded and even laughed.

"All right," he said. "Then why are you running away?"

"Who said I was running away? The Kin know all about it. I'm looking for my brother."

"What makes you think you'll like what you find?"

"How do you know what I'll find?"

"Your Kulik seems well informed."

"Why my Kulik?"

"He told us you were his sex friend when you were with the Rock People."

At this Mara was so angry that for the first time she was out of control. She could feel herself going white and cold with anger. She jumped up, stood staring, and it was hard to breathe.

At last she said, "It's not true." She was thinking, If he were here I'd kill him. Then she said, trying to make herself sound crisp and cool, though she was still breathless, "You should be careful who you use to do your dirty work for you."

"We know he's dealing in drugs," said Olec. "But provided we know when, why and to whom, that's quite useful."

"So you think he'll be loyal to you and you can trust him?"

"If we pay him enough, yes."

"If I were you I'd find out who else he is keeping informed," she said. She meant, the senior Hadrons. She was in command of herself again, and smiled, and said, "Are you going to let me go?"

"What can I say? Of course. Better luck with this baby than some of your others."

"We still have three alive and well," said Mara.

"Not enough."

"Don't trouble to come with me — I do know my way."

"But I shall come with you," said Olec, and he walked with her to where they could see the Mahondi quarters. This was to make sure she was going there. Then he said, "See you around," and she said, "I expect so."

In the courtyard the women sat about in their pretty dresses and sang, and played little games to amuse the babies. Mara thought, They are like cactus flowers, blossoming for a day, and her heart ached.

She changed into a clean robe, a pink one, thinking that she wanted to please Meryx, and then went to Ida to ask if she could visit the looking-wall — that is what it was called. A long time ago some craftsman had covered a whole wall in flakes of bright substance, which was mined in the eastern mountains, so cleverly that they fitted together in a single sheet, and the joins were like a fine net over a surface that reflected what was in front of it. The wall was like still water with a spider's web over it, and here all the women would come to look at themselves. Mara stood there, saw her smooth, shining hair, her smooth, healthy skin, her new breasts, and she thought, No one could say I am ugly now. She tried smiling at herself. The trouble was, her eyes, for she was cursed with seriousness.

Big, deep, serious eyes... She sighed, left the looking-wall and found Meryx in their bedroom. They fell into each other's arms.

Then she asked that all the Kin should assemble that night to hear her. And so, that evening, when the lamps were lit and set about the big room, Mara, with Meryx beside her and holding her hand (like Juba and Dromas; oh I wish it were the same), began to talk.

She could see from Juba's face that he knew what had happened in the young Hadrons' house, and so she began with that. She said she had been kidnapped "for breeding purposes" but that she had told a lie: she had said she was pregnant, by Juba. At this Meryx's hand fell away from hers; she knew what a dreadful blow she was dealing him. "It's not true, Meryx. I had to get away. I had to say something that would make them let me go."

"It's not true," said Juba to Dromas.

"It's not true," said Mara to Dromas, and then again to Meryx, "But it's not true."

Dromas looked closely at her Juba, who nodded at her, smiling, and took her hands and said, "Believe me, Dromas."

But Meryx sat beside Mara, silent and not looking at her, and his face — it hurt Mara to look at it.

Candace said, "Begin at the beginning."

And Mara said humorously, "But surely you already know everything?" "Not everything. Tell it so everybody knows."

There were more people than usual that night, twenty or so, all curious.

Mara began with leaving this house, the walk through empty streets, the dying milk beast — which was rescued, she assured them — the waiting chair and its porter, the eating house and the woman proprietor who was obviously expecting her.

"Not my doing," said Juba.

"No, it was the junior Hadrons," said Mara. "They organised it all." And went on to describe, and now in slow and careful detail, the journey around the perimeter of the Towers, the tunnels, the notices warning of the beetles, the mass of wire that had holes torn in it, the way the chair runner had been appointed to be available for her all day. She dared to take a look at Meryx, but he sat with his face turned away and Mara could see how concerned Dromas was for him, for she watched him, sighing.

Every detail, every moment; until she was kidnapped by Kulik, and taken to the young Hadrons. There, she told what had been said, but left out that Kulik had lied about her.

When she said that she had told Olec she was pregnant by Juba she could feel how Meryx took the blow as if he had not heard it before.

"Meryx," she said, direct to him, "it was a lie. I had to. Please believe me."

He simply sat on, listless, and shook his head as if to say, But it's all too much.

Now people were getting up, about to drift off, and she said, "Please don't go. I must say something, I must." And they sat down again.

And now she began an impassioned plea that they must leave, leave Chelops, while they still could. "You can take a lot of food and clothes; it won't be a hardship, as it was for us. Please leave — I don't know why I can't make you see it." They were looking at each other, doubtful, serious, but she was afraid they were already deciding not to listen.

"What is happening here is exactly the same as I remember from Rustam."

"You were a small child," said Candace. "How can you remember?"

"I do remember. And this is the same. People leaving. Criminals. The gardens dying. The water going. Less food." But she thought, But up here it is not so bad. And they don't know how bad things are down there, in the town. They live in this soft little place on the edge of the city.

Juba said, "We have had a bad rainy season."

"You told me yourself you have had several poor seasons recently," said Mara. "Majab's emptying now, so the travellers are saying. I heard it in the eating house. There's almost no one left. When we flew over it a year ago there were still people and things seemed not too bad. Then it was like what Chelops is like now. It happens so fast. In the Rock Village we heard that Rustam was empty and filling with sand. The Rock Village must be, by now. The sand is blowing into Majab, so they say."

A silence now, a worried silence, but restless, people fiddling with their clothes, their hair, not looking at each other then looking, and smiling, wanting to smile it all away.

"You should make preparations now," said Mara. "Pack everything up. Hire every kind of transport there is left."

Now Candace leaned forward, and insisted, "Mara, it is quite understandable, with your history, that you should be nervous. But it only needs one good season for everything to go back to normal."

"No," said Mara, and Juba backed her up. "It will take more than one."

"And," went on Candace, "you don't understand something. It doesn't matter to us if everyone in the town leaves. We won't have to feed them — it will be a good thing. We are quite self-sufficient here."

"The Hadrons wouldn't let us leave," said Juba.

"Then fight them," said Mara. "The militia will obey you, not the Had-rons."

But she could see from their faces that it was the enormity of the effort they would need that was dismaying them. She thought, All this gentle, lovely living has made them soft. They aren't fit for such an effort. But they have to be, they must be.

And she went on persuading, pleading, begging. Then she had an inspiration, and said to Candace, "Draw back the curtain off that map you have there."

And Candace got up and said, "No, Mara. I won't. It's enough for one evening." Then, to the others, "Let's say goodnight, and let's thank Mara for all the information she has given us."

The company dispersed, and the note of their talk was a subdued grumbling and complaint.

Mara went with Meryx to their room, and she had to persuade him, again and again, that no, she had never mated with Juba, nor ever thought of it, "You must believe me!" — and she supposed he did, in the end. But he wept, and she wept, they clung to each other, and they made love again and again. It was the middle of her fertile period. And Meryx said, "If you get pregnant tonight, I'll never know if it is mine or Juba's." And then he said, "You make love with me as if you love me, but you are leaving me."

And she was making love most hungrily: because of the long, frightening day; because of how exposed she had felt, away from the protection of the Kin; because of the dying milk beast, which haunted her, for she knew there must be others; because she was going away from Chelops, and she knew she would leave her heart behind in this place, with these people, with him.

In the morning Juba summoned them all to tell them that a messenger had arrived from Karam, saying two things. First, that the young women working with the milk beasts must stop stealing the milk. If they did it again, they would be beaten. This reminded them that they were slaves. The second part of the message was that four Mahondi girls must be sent to the young Hadrons. There would be no coercion as to choice. The girls could choose from among the young men. When they were proved pregnant, they could return to the Kin, if they wanted. There was much anger, outrage, protests of "But I won't go." But Karam had said which girls must go, by name, and these choices proved how well the Hadrons knew all their characteristics. The four were the youngest, good natured, and eager to please.

Meanwhile Mara was going to the Towers. Juba had said he would allow her to go only if he sent guards with her. She said, "But you didn't insist on guards yesterday." He said, "I didn't know the Hadrons planned to kidnap you." "The Hadrons said Dann was ill. I might have to stay in the Towers to look after him." Meaning: I know you don't want him here. Juba said, "Bring him here." Which meant Dann had been discussed, and the Kin had decided to indulge her.

Four running chairs arrived. In three were two militia, and there was one in the chair for Mara. He held a knife, and a big club lay beside him.

Now she knew exactly where to go, and they arrived at the tunnel in the south-western quadrant before midday. Six militiamen had been ordered to wait for her, with the chairs, the porters, and their weapons. She wanted to go into the Towers alone, but the man with her in the chair insisted on coming too: Juba's orders, he said.

The two stood hesitating at the entrance to the tunnel. They were afraid, and did not hide it. They did not know how long the tunnel was: a little, round eye of light meant its end. The air coming from it was bad. They were afraid of who they would meet inside it. Mara lit a big torch of brushwood soaked with tallow, and the militiaman took it from her and held it high. Now she was glad he was there. The earth of the tunnel was hard: it had been in use a long time. They passed the yellow carapace of a beetle, killed some time ago, for shards of black and yellow lay about. The torchlight illuminated rough earth walls and a low earth ceiling. There were felted spiders' webs on the ceiling, but these were not the monsters Mara had seen before, just ordinary working spiders, watching from their stations. About fifteen minutes of slow, cautious progress took them out into the air, from where they could look back and see the rusting tangles of the fence, which no longer could keep anyone out. They were right under the six black Towers of the south-western quadrant.

"Central Tower, second level," she told the man, and they walked through the six, noting how the dust was heaping around their bases, and that it looked untouched, like sand piling around an impeding stone or dead tree. They were right under the Central Tower, and ahead was an entrance, with black steps going up to it. The steps had sand filling the back of the treads. The doorway into the Tower had had a door, but it was slanting half off its hinges, and they walked straight into the long passage, as big as a hall, that bisected the building. Near the entrance were the machines that had once, on a system of weights and pulleys, carried people to the top of the building, but they were disused now. Stairs went up. Feet had recently used those stairs: dusty footprints were on every step. The first level showed a corridor running high and wide to where a light came in through a broken window. The guard was walking just behind Mara, his knife in one hand, his club in the other. He said, "If someone is in front, then get behind me. If someone attacks from behind, then run up the stairs but keep me in sight." The stairs to the second level were steep and there were many of them. They arrived safely, having seen no one. Again there was the long, empty corridor, doors opening off it, as many as thirty or forty doors.

"I shall go in first," said the man. "No, I have my orders."

And they began on a systematic inspection of the rooms. Some had had recent occupants. There were discarded containers, a roll of stained and torn bedding, old clothes like rags left on the floor. Everything was dusty. No people. Where had they gone? "North," said the guard. "They've all gone up North." There was the heavy, sickly smell of poppy, and there were whiffs of ganja, but not as strong.

Then, at the eleventh or twelfth attempt — they were losing count — the guard opened a door, stepped smartly back because of what he saw and stood to one side to let her in, with his knife held out in front of him. "Be careful now," he said.

Mara saw three bodies, lying with their heads to the opposite wall, very still. Asleep... or dead? The smell was horrible: a concentration of fumes and sickness. The guard briefly retched, but stopped himself, holding the back of the hand with the knife in it to his mouth. His eyes, staring at the bodies, were appalled, shocked, afraid. Mara would have liked to run away, but she made herself walk in. She bent over the body nearest to her, whose face was hidden by an arm, probably to keep off light falling painfully into his eyes, and saw that this man was so ill, he was nearly dead. His breathing was feeble, coming at long, irregular intervals, and his eyes were half open. He could die on any one of these light, gasping breaths. A Mahondi. The second body was indisputably a corpse. Again, a Mahondi, and there was a gash across his throat, and a pool of glazing blood.

Now Mara knew, because of the shape of the head, what she would see. She knelt beside Dann, who was prone. She turned him over. He was drugged senseless. His face was covered in sores. On his arms and legs were sores and scabs on dry, flaky skin. His eyes were glued with pus. His whole body was festering, and sick, thin flesh clinging to bones.

"Dann," she said, "it's Mara."

He did not open his eyes but he groaned. He tried to speak between gummed lips. "Mara," he said, and muttered and groaned, until at last she understood what he was saying: "I killed the bad one."

And now, at least partially enlightened, Mara looked again at the face of the dead man and the face of the nearly dead one and saw they were alike. Brothers, perhaps — or could have been. Dann was here because he had been a prisoner, certainly of these two men, but most of all because of his own ancient and terrible obsession.

"He was bad," said Dann, in a child's voice. "Mara, he was the bad man."

In a corner stood the can Dann had carried so far, when they travelled here, and in it slopped a little sound of water when she shook it. She poured water into that sick, foul-smelling mouth, and his lips reached up towards it as if they were creatures on their own account, desperate for water.

"Can you get up?" she asked.

Of course he could not get up, but Mara had said it because she could not connect this poor, sick thing with the lithe and light Dann she knew. The guard gave her the knife and the club and, his face screwed with disgust, easily lifted the starved body into his arms. Around the clear space where Dann had been was a litter of lumps of black, sticky, poppy stuff, pipes, matches, and bags of bright green, dried leaf. Mara quickly took the matches and hid them. The guard looked at her strangely: he had never known that you could lack matches.

She looked at the dying man and the guard said, "That one won't be alive tonight." And in fact it looked as if he had died already: he was very still.

And so Mara and the guard, with Dann in his arms, went back down the corridor to the stairs, down the stairs to the first level, and down more stairs to the ground level. All the way Dann lay limp, but now his eyes were open. At the foot of the stairs the guard laid him down to take a rest, and Dann muttered, "Water, water," and Mara gave him all that was left in the can — which she had not been able to leave behind. Outside the Tower, Dann put up his arm to shield his face, and this encouraged Mara, that he had that much strength. And then they went back through the tunnel, Mara holding up the torch. Near the entrance a couple of girls came towards them.

"Where are all the people?" asked Mara.

They were rigid with terror — of her, or of the club and the knife she held, and pressed past, backs to the earth wall. "Isn't there anyone left?" Mara persisted.

"Why should we stay? What for? We're off this afternoon." And they began to run as fast as they could. Mara heard, "Mahondi spies." "They're spies."

Mara had Dann beside her in the chair, the guard who had carried him on the other side. Dann groaned and his eyes rolled. The movement of the chair was making him sick. The four chairs jogged their way back to the Mahondi quarter, slowly, because the runner in Mara's chair was finding it hard to pull three of them. Mara stopped them at Orphne's house. Dann would end up there anyway. She did not want the Kin to see him in this state. When the guard lifted out Dann the four runners came to stare at him, recognising him. Their faces, and those of the guards, staring down at Dann, had that look that puts the observer at a distance, like a judge pronouncing sentence. Dann was going to die, those faces said. And the young men thankfully turned away, the porters back to their chairs, the guards to their barracks, away from the ill luck of death.

Mara told the guard to lay Dann on a bed, and thanked him and saw him, too, hasten away. Mara found Orphne stirring cordials in her dispensary, and showed her Dann. Orphne lifted Dann's hand, saw how it fell, apparently lifeless. "So this is the famous Dann," she said; and as she stood there, in a white, floaty dress, a red flower in her hair, she seemed to have walked into that room out of another life, or truth.

"I thought you were as bad as I was likely to see," she said, and then, "Let's start." She went into her medicine room and came back with a strong-smelling drink. Between them, the two women got most of it into Dann, because he did swallow at last when choking became imminent, and went on swallowing, slowly, mechanically. "Good," said Orphne.

And now she took off her white dress and stood there in her long, flouncy, white knickers, her big breasts loose, and said, "If you don't want that outfit to be filthy, take it off." Mara removed her clothes — Meryx's. She could not stop herself looking enviously at Orphne's breasts, when hers were still mere plumpnesses on her chest. Orphne saw her looking and said, "You had nothing at all there when I first saw you. Now, lift."

They lifted the unconscious boy and took him next door, and laid him in a shallow bath. Over him Orphne poured sun-warmed water, full of herby substances. Dann was dirty, but nothing like as grimed as he had been a year ago, when the two of them came down the cliff into Chelops. The water was soon dark with dirt and blood and full of crusts from the scratches and ulcers. Then, as his body became visible, they saw around his waist a chain of scars that looked like knife cuts, as if he had decided to make a belt of scars for decoration or for ritual. They were red and sore-looking. The round, flat shapes under the skin told Mara what she was looking at, and she cried out to Orphne, who was manipulating the flesh there, "No, don't squeeze." Dann had cut himself and slid in coins for safe keeping, and let the flesh heal over them. Orphne's eyebrows were demanding explanation and Mara, close to tears, said, "I'll tell you... I'll explain."

That water was flung out into the hot sun where its filth could be burned harmless, and more medicinal water was poured around Dann, who lay quite still, eyes closed, and did not move when Orphne wiped his face and his eyes, and then held his head to wash his hair. They dried him and laid him back on the bed. Orphne cut Dann's nails, which were not far off claws, rubbed oil into dry skin, and examined his teeth, which were loose in inflamed gums, as Mara's had been so recently. But now they were white, and tight in her head, and she was proud of them: so would Dann's be, quite soon.

"So," said Orphne again, "this is the famous Dann. He looks like you, or will when he's better." The big, strong woman, with her big breasts, which shone with health, and which seemed to shine, too, with kindness, stood looking down at her patient; and then, evidently pleased, because he was already less inert, slipped on her pretty, white dress, replaced the cactus flower in her hair, and said, "Now Mara, you aren't going to like what's going to happen next, so I suggest you leave."

"No, I'll stay."

Orphne tied Dann to the bed with cords, interposing soft pads of cloth between them and his skin, laid a single piece of cloth over him, because of the heat, and sat down next to the bed. "Have you ever seen someone while the poppy is leaving them? No? Well, I'm warning you."

Mara replaced her tunic and trousers, and sat down. She thought, It doesn't seem as if he knows I am here, but perhaps he does.

For some time Dann slept, or was unconscious, or both, but then he began to moan and shiver, and to fight against his bonds; great spasms shook his body, while his teeth clenched and his eyes rolled, and yet all the time he seemed insensible, so that it was like watching someone fighting in his sleep with an assailant, or a drowning person struggling just under the water. It was sickening, and Mara wanted to untie him, and hold him as she had the small child, to lift that body of his, as light as bones picked up from beside a road, and run away with him, shelter him, hide him — but she knew that this Orphne with her skills was right, was curing him, and that she must sit quiet and watch.

Juba came, and Dromas, and then Candace and Meryx, and one after another all the Kin came and stood gazing down; and their faces were like the guards' and the runners', and — Mara thought — probably like hers when she looked at the dying milk beast. Which was not going to die, because a woman had given it water, and Dann was not going to die either.

Late that night Meryx came, found Orphne alert by Dann, and Mara sitting dozing in her chair. He tried to lift Mara up, to take her to bed, but her hand tightened around Dann's. Orphne shook her head at Meryx, who stood beside Mara for a while, stroking her hair, and Orphne watched, smiling drily. Then Meryx kissed Mara, and went off to bed; and Orphne said, meaning the way Mara envied her big body and her breasts, "But you have the lover, and I don't."

Through that night Orphne poured her soporific drinks and potions into Dann; but as she said, what goes in must come out, and she had a shallow pan by her, which she slid under Dann, watching for the moment. Then she had to clean him, and he screamed at the first touch. Orphne pulled apart his legs. The two women bent, shocked, to see how the area around the anus was bruised black and green and blue, and the anus itself was loose and bleeding. Mara had not seen anything like this, nor even thought about it; but Orphne knew and said, "They enjoy it when they are young but they don't think that when they are old they won't be able to hold their shit."

"Old," said Mara, for this was one of the moments when she felt as if she lived a different life from these gentle people. "Which of us do you imagine will live to be old?"

"I will," said Orphne, smearing ointment on Dann. "I shall be a wise old woman. I shall be a famous healer. Even the Hadrons will honour me and use my cures."

"They do now," said Mara.

"And my little hospital will be twice as big, and I shall train people to be famous healers."

And Orphne sat smiling at Mara, calm, confident, and with only a hint of the pugnacity that means doubt.

"You k^ow," said Mara, after a long pause of not knowing what to say, "I have learned something important here. Do you want to know what it is?"

"I suppose so," said Orphne, her smile meaning now: There she goes again.

"You can tell someone something true, but if they haven't experienced anything like it they won't understand. Orphne, if I say to you, 'You can't buy something if you haven't got the money,' you'll say, 'Well, of course.'"

"Of course," said Orphne, laughing.

"But you don't understand what it means to have a cache of gold coins, each one enough to buy a house, or three hours in a sky skimmer that means saving many days of walking — but if you don't have a little coin, you can't buy a piece of bread or some matches."

"Then change a gold one," said Orphne. "What's the problem?"

"That's the problem," said Mara.

All the next day Dann shook and screamed and begged for poppy, and Orphne kept him bound and cared for him; and that night he was so exhausted she gave him the same strong sleeping draught she had given Mara. It had in it ganja, and a little poppy; and when Mara said, "But surely that is only prolonging the agony," Orphne said, "There is only very little poppy, but it will be enough to calm him. To take someone off the stuff suddenly — you can, but it is dangerous when he is as weak as Dann."

And so Dann was put soundly to sleep, and Mara went to Meryx, and he held her as if he had recovered a treasure he had thought lost for ever.

And so the days passed, Mara and Orphne fighting to bring Dann back, and slowly succeeding. At night Meryx claimed Mara.

Then Dann was himself, though still weak, and Mara asked him what had held him so long in the Tower.

He seemed to be speaking of events long in the past. His eyes searched the ceiling as he spoke, as if what he remembered was pictured there, and he did not look at Mara or at Orphne, who held his hands, one on each side.

He said he had run away from the barracks for the male slaves when he heard the Towers were occupied. There he joined a gang of runaway slaves, mostly Mahondis, but there were some Hadrons and others. They were all men. There were women in the Towers but they kept to their own groups, afraid of rape. No woman by herself could survive. Dann's gang lived by stealing food from the fields, and then poppy from the warehouses, through intermediaries. He mentioned Kulik. At first Dann had sold the stuff to get food, but then he began taking it: now his words became halting, and he said, "There was a bad man." And now this was little Dann's voice: "A very bad man," piped little Dann. "He hurt Dann."

He had done it again: his memory had refused to accept a truth too painful to be borne. "Weren't there two men?" asked Mara.

"Two? Two?" muttered Dann, his eyes darting this way and that, frantic, evading some memory.

Mara said steadily, taking a risk, "When I came into the Tower and found you, there were two men with you. One was very ill, near dead. One was dead. His throat had been cut."

"No, no," screamed Dann, and struggled terribly inside his bonds. Orphne shook her head at Mara, and brought another soothing drink.

Mara sat on while Dann sank back into sleep, and she thought how he had always refused to remember that first time, when two men became one, "the bad one," and now again there's one man. Dann killed him but he's not going to remember.

This, the returning of his mind to his time in the Tower, made Dann relapse. He became childish and spoke in a child's voice; but soon that left him and he lay for hours, conscious, but sombre, apparently a long way from either woman; and when he did look at them, he was surprised by what he saw. And Mara thought, We sit here beside him, kind and smiling, in our clean, pretty dresses, and now even I have a flower in my hair. And we must seem to him like some kind of a dream.

Soon Orphne had another patient. Ida was brought in, raving that her baby had died of drought sickness, though in fact the infant was well and had become the pet — with the other two babies — of the whole Kin, so starved were they for the pleasantness of babies and small children.

Ida was in the room next to Dann's, and Orphne tended her while Mara sat through long days with Dann, watching as he was returning to normal. He was nearly himself again.

But perhaps that was painful, like swimming up out of dark dreams, for his eyes were always haunted and sad. And Mara caught him sitting up, leaning forward to look at his own backside over his balls and prick, where the bruises had faded, the flesh no longer ragged. But it was still ugly, and Dann's face twisted up in disgust, and he lay for a long time with his arm over his face, not wanting to see Mara.

It was soon more than a month since the four girls had gone to the young Hadrons, and three of them had conceived. Juba went to visit them and found they were well and happy. They no longer thought the Hadrons were disgusting, and two decided to stay with their lovers. Soon another four girls went to the Hadrons, and there were six Mahondis there. The courtyard seemed sad and empty, with half the women gone, though one was pregnant. Pregnant by a Hadron, though. There were not enough hands for all the work, and Mara went to join the slaves making food, since it was dangerous for her to be out in the fields, where the Hadrons might capture her again. She had not conceived. Meryx said, dry and sad, for this was how most of what he said sounded these days, "And so you didn't sleep with Juba." "But I told you I didn't," said Mara.

Dann got out of his bed and went to the courtyard where the girls were, for company; but there was something about this sad, restless-eyed, silent young man that subdued them, though they did not know the full story of his experiences. So Dann sat in the big general sitting room. Something new had happened. Candace no longer kept the curtain over the wall map. Mara had gone to her, and begged to be taught, and asked for the wall map to be exposed. She was there so much that soon the curtain was left pulled back. Dann sat there looking, thinking, sometimes for hours, and when she could Mara was with him.

Ida got better, and was full of accusations and discontent. She hated Kira; she complained the Hadrons had not asked for her to go and be made pregnant. She said that Dann was a thief — and that was on the day he found that the gold coins he had hidden in the bottom of his sack, those that were not around his waist, were gone. He complained to Juba. Juba said he was not to worry, the coins would be returned. And meanwhile Ida sat playing with the softly shining, enticing things. Eleven of them. She let her fingers move among them, while she smiled, and seemed to feel that from them she was receiving something delightful that was feeding happiness into her.

Mara asked Dann if those coins in the flesh around his waist were uncomfortable, and he said they were, when he thought about it.

"Perhaps I should ask Orphne to do the same for me," said Mara.

Orphne was present and said, "Then you'll ask in vain."

Dann said to Mara, "You were quite right when you decided we should never put things up our backsides or your cunt. That's where they always

look first."

Orphne was upset, really distressed, and looked pleadingly at them both. "My dear Dann," she said, "my dear Mara!"

When she was out of the room Mara said, "We have to soften things up for them. They don't understand."

Orphne brought Mara a necklace of seed cases: big, brown, flat ones into which the coins would fit. But the contraption would slide heavily around Mara's neck, making any observer curious. "Besides," said Mara, "when you are travelling you don't wear necklaces."

"Are you going to keep all yours in one place?" asked Dann, meaning Mara's cord of coins, again in its place under her breasts.

"Well, where can we put them? My hair is too short."

"How about in our shoes? These heavy Mahondi working shoes — we could slip a few into the soles?"

"It is easy to lose a shoe. Or someone might steal them."

"I think the best place is with my knife, at the bottom of the knife pocket."

"Yes. Eleven coins won't show."

"First I have to get them back from Ida."

"She's gone crazy," said Orphne, "just a little. Humour her."

Dann said, "I'm going to get you a knife — you must have a good knife, Mara."

Dann wanted to leave now; Mara, Orphne backing her up, said he wasn't strong enough yet.

Soon they were into the second dry season since the two had come to Chelops. The milk beasts were happy to stay in their sheds and let the dust blow past outside.

"There'll be riots in the town," said Larissa: "we've cut the rations again." For although they knew that the townspeople were going, and going, and mostly gone, none of the Mahondis seemed able to take the fact in.

Of the twelve young women who had been chosen by the Hadrons, ten had conceived, and six had chosen to stay with the men they had once thought of as enemies.

Mara wore a robe too big for her and kept it unbelted, for she had told the Hadrons she was pregnant and that was four months ago.

Again Dann said they should leave, before the dry season sucked all the life out of Chelops. Mara knew they should, but her heart hurt and ached at the thought of leaving Meryx. Yet she had to go. Yet she could not bear it.

Juba was summoned to Lord Karam and asked about the health of the new Mahondi babies. And by the way, how was Mara? Was she carrying well? Was she healthy?

"Very healthy," said Juba, putting on a look of self-congratulation.

And now that was it: they must leave.

On the evening before Mara and Dann left, all the Kin together with the new babies and their nurses were in the communal room. Mara and Meryx had put on the wonderful robes that Mara had carried with her at the bottom of her sack, and appeared, as the others said, as if they were going to their wedding. Again everyone exclaimed over the workmanship, the ma-terial — which no one there had ever seen, or dreamed of, and they fingered a sleeve, caressed a bit of embroidery, wondered over the dyes.

"Give it to me, I want it," said Ida, tugging at Mara's robe.

"You can't have it," said Dann. And then, "I want my gold coins. Give them to me."

Ida pouted and sighed and ogled Dann, and said, "Ida wants them. I want them. I won't give them to you."

Dann stood over Ida and said, "Give them back. Now." Then, as Ida writhed her shoulders about and lisped, "No, no, no," Dann whipped out his knife and was holding it at her throat. "Give them back or I'll."

She wailed, and took the little bag of gold coins from her bosom, and he snatched them from her.

Everyone was shocked — Mara too. Angry — but Mara knew the dreadful anxiety that had been gnawing Dann. She went to stand by him.

"It was only a game, Dann," said Dromas. "Ida was only playing."

"Then it's our lives she was playing with," said Dann.

The good humour, the charm, of the occasion had gone. In a moment everyone would have left. Mara said to Candace, "I want you to show everyone that wall of yours. I want to say something."

On this evening the curtain was hiding the map, and Candace was unwilling to show it. But as Mara stood confronting her, Candace at last got up, went to the wall, and pulled back the curtain. Most people had seen what was there, but had not really understood, as Mara had found out. It was just some old thing that had nothing to do with them, that old map, which for some reason Candace valued. Now all the Kin turned so they could see the wall. Candace moved lamps so that it was illuminated. Mara would remember that scene, hold it in her mind, and come back to it when she thought of Chelops. There were about twenty people in the room. The women sat in their soft tinted gowns, their black hair loose on their shoulders; the men were in their yellow house robes; and all the alert and apprehensive faces seemed to float above bubbles of soft colour, the whole scene glowing in the light from the lamps.

At first it seemed that the picture they were looking at had been blanked out with white: the top half was white from one edge of the frame to the other. Beneath this nullity of white hung, or projected, fringes or edges of colour, on a background of blue. Blue filled the bottom half of the picture, and in it were bigger coloured shapes, and two very large shapes, one of which had scrawled across it, IFRIK. This map was no delicate creation: it did not come from the same world of accomplishments as the robes Mara and Meryx had on. It was painted crudely on white leather: the joins of the hides that had gone to make this great map had to be identified and discounted in the general picture.

The other big shape, which resembled Ifrik, was South Imrik. Both were merely outlines on the white, crudely coloured, with dots for towns and their names, and black lines for their rivers.

Mara, who had sat in this room with Candace and with Dann, sometimes for hours, knew that what it said could not be grasped without explanation. And now Candace began, in a heavy, reluctant voice, and with many pauses.

"This white represents ice," she said. "None of us has ever seen ice. It is what water becomes when it is very cold. Water becomes solid white, like rock. All of this..." — she walked slowly along the wall, pointing — "is ice or snow." She pointed to the bottom half: "And this part of the world is free of ice. It is where we live. Ifrik." And she pointed to a black dot somewhere in the middle of Ifrik: "This is where we are. This is Chel-ops." At this there were sighs, almost groans, because of the littleness of their world. "When we say the world, we should not see it flat, like that map. It is round. Like this." And here she said, "Wait a minute." And she reached into a niche in the wall under the map and brought out a very big, round shape, and set it on a table. It was one of the gourds grown for the milk beasts to eat. The surface had been rubbed smooth and white chalk rubbed in, and the information on the wall map was done here in black for the outlines and blue dyes for background. But on this globe there was no white mass covering the top half.

Candace pointed to the very top of the globe. "Look," she said, and they saw a small cap of white. "Ice," said Candace. "Just a little, at the top of the world. And at the bottom, too, this small shape of ice. That is how the world was once — they say about twenty thousand years ago, but perhaps it was more — there was no ice or snow here." And she swept her hand over the white expanse on the map. "It was warm. All of this." — and she walked again, from one edge of the wall map to the other, pointing at the white — "it was all free of ice, and there were cities and very large numbers of people. They think that for fifteen thousand years all this area was free of ice, and during that time there were civilisations. They were much more advanced than anything we know. And then the climate changed, and the ice came down and covered all this space." And she walked, pointing. "The cities and civilisations disappeared under sheets of ice. The 'world' for us is this." And she swept her hand over the fringes and projections from the ice, and the two big shapes, Ifrik and South Imrik. "But once the world was this." And she pointed to the globe.

Mara knew, because she had gone through the process herself, that all present were wrestling in their minds with immensities. Yet, at the same time, with smallness. They looked at Ifrik, and knew with their minds that it was vast because they could see the dot called Chelops; looked at a little triangular projection beneath the white that Candace said was Ind, a large country, full of people — so it was believed, or it had been in the past — and then at Chelops again, which was their world, and the centre of Hadron, which Candace outlined with her finger: just a little shape there in the middle of that immensity, Ifrik.

"These have never had ice," said Candace, pointing. "Ifrik has never known ice. South Imrik has never known ice. The climate has changed for us, many times, but never ice. Or so we believe. Nor Ind. Nor..." And she pointed to the east of Ind where thick fringes of colour hung below the white, and dots and splodges of colour spread out. "Islands," said Candace. "None of us has seen the sea, and probably won't ever see it. I know some of you have not heard of it. It is water. Salt water. Most of the surface of the world is water." And she turned the big gourd so that they could see how much blue there was.

"How do you know all this?" asked one of the girls, and could not conceal her resentment. Mara knew this resentment well: it was what people feel when being asked to take in too much that threatens their idea of themselves, or their world.

"It was all in the sand libraries," said Candace. "Our Memories knew it." And now she said to Mara, "You want to say something, I think."

Mara went to the wall and from there looked back at the faces which, every one, showed something like anger, or reluctance. They did not want to know all this. She said, "All this happened quickly — so Candace told me. This." — and she indicated the globe, with its tiny caps of ice top and bottom — "was how things were for fifteen thousand years. And then the ice came down, quite fast, in a hundred years."

"Fast?" jeered one of the girls. She was seventeen. To her the hundreds, and the thousands, and the tens of thousands, meant no more than the kind of talk children overhear: grown-ups conversing above their heads using words they do not know.

"It began," said Mara, "when these lands here." — and she pointed to the north of the globe — "which had people and towns and plenty to eat, had to empty because it got so cold, and they knew the ice was coming. And that took." — she looked at the girl who had spoken — "not much more than twice seventeen years."

The girl burst into tears.

"These things can happen quickly," Mara pleaded, imploring them, begging them. "Just imagine: all of this, all." — and she made the globe spin slowly — "all of it here, the top half, beautiful and good to live in, and then the ice came down over it."

The people were restless, their eyes evasive and gloomy, and they sighed, and wanted to leave.

Juba said, "Mara is concerned for us all. She wants us to leave Chelops."

"Where to?"."When?"."How, move?" — came from various people.

"North. Move North now before you have to. Up there they say there is water and plenty of food."

But it was too much for them, even those who knew what Mara thought, and had heard her pleas before, and they were leaving the room, not looking at her, exchanging little smiles.

Dann said to Mara, as if they were alone and all the others irrelevant, that she must be awake very early, and he would come to pack with her. He apparently did not notice that the Kin ignored him as they left. Only Orphne embraced him, told him to be careful and remember that poppy did not suit him.

Meryx and Mara did not sleep.

While Mara and Dann packed their sacks, Meryx watched. He was pale and seemed ill.

Into the very bottom of Mara's sack went the ancient robes she and Meryx had worn last night: "wedding robes" — she said she would remember them like that. Then the one brown garment they had left. A green house dress and a blue one: Meryx would not let her leave them behind. Light shoes. Trousers and tunic — Meryx's — that she had been wearing outside. A clean slave's robe. Matches. Soap. A comb. Salt. Flaps of flat bread. Dried fruit. A small skin of water, in case she and Dann were separated.

In Dann's sack was a spare slave's robe. Loin cloths. The same provisions. The top of his sack was filled with the old can, which held clean water from a good well. The robe he wore was the one he had arrived in, and he said it was a good thing it was stained and old. He had his eleven gold coins pushed well down into the bottom of his knife pocket. Mara too had on the robe she had come in. Orphne had sewn into it a new knife pocket: she had wept doing it. In that was a knife in a leather sheath. Mara had on her head a little woollen cap.

Meryx said angrily that if he had met her like this in the fields, he would have ordered her never to wear that disgraceful old rag again. His voice was thick with tears.

A message came from Candace that she wanted to see Mara before she left.

Mara found her staring at the map whose upper parts were all white — the Ice.

Candace said, "Mara, you are an obstinate woman. And you don't seem to realise you have put me in a position where I must either keep you here by force or let you go off into such terrible dangers."

Mara was silent. She saw, to her surprise, that Candace was not far off tears. She was thinking, Then I suppose she does care for me.

"And you are unfeeling. You don't mind that Meryx will be unhappy and that we shall miss you."

"I know that I shall be thinking of you all."

Candace's laugh was a sad little sound. "You may think of us, because you know us and how we live. But we will not be able to think about you — where will you be? And how will you be?"

And now she was weeping. Mara dared to approach her, and take her in her arms. A frail thing, she was, this formidable old woman, who ruled her tribe with such authority.

"It is a terrible thing," whispered Candace, "you can't imagine how terrible, watching your family get less, slowly disappear." She recovered herself, pushed Mara away and said, very bitter, very angry, "People risked their lives for you. Gorda — the others. The two precious children... And you don't care about that." And on her face was clear to see how her words, her thoughts, were betrayed by what she was seeing: Mara in her travelling clothes, and Dann, as she thought of him.

"Well," said Mara, "no one has yet explained why we are so precious. And who thinks so? — you do." She knew this was brutal: Candace's face showed it. "You are the Hadrons' slaves. And whatever Dann and I were once — then all that is under the sand in Rustam. And if we are so precious, then the important thing is that we survive. And we are not going to agree about that, Candace, are we?"

Candace sat silent. The distance between them was very great. Mara thought wildly that she should again put her arms around the old woman, to make up for what she had said; but what she saw on Candace's face was too bad to be softened by hugs, kisses — even tears.

Candace reached out for a leather bag that lay near on a table. She gave it to Mara. It had in it some light coins, easy to change. Candace said, "And now go. And if you know of someone coming our way, send news of yourself, tell us how you are."

Mara said, "Candace, no one travels south, no one. Don't you understand?"

On the verandah Meryx and Mara stood in each other's arms, feeling how the wet of their tears tried to glue their cheeks together, and not knowing if the trembling was their own or the other's. Dann leaned against a pillar and looked out into the early light: the sun was rising behind the house and throwing great shadows westwards.

Yesterday Dann had gone to find the depot where Felice, who had brought them to the cliff above Chelops, was to be found — or they hoped she was, for there were rumours she was leaving Chelops to go North. Mara let Dann go alone: she did not dare to be seen by the Hadrons, who must know by now that she had told them a lie, and would be looking out for her, to take her for their harem.

Dann had found Felice working on her machine. "It's you," she said. "So you don't like being a slave. And the other one, your sister?" Because of his surprise she said, "Not many secrets now in Chelops — not enough people left to absorb secrets. But I must confess it took me some time to connect that poor little lad with the new boss woman in the Mahondi quarter."

"We want to go North. How much?"

"How far?"

"The River Towns."

"If you stop there you'll have to move on again. They aren't doing too well either. You'll see for yourself, because I have to make a landing to refuel. If you give me two gold coins for each of you I'll take you to where you can get on to the big river. You can go a good long way on that. But you'll have to be here just after sunrise tomorrow."

Dann agreed.

"This is my last trip. There's nothing for me here, and Majab is finished."

When he returned to tell Mara, she said, "When Felice picked us up — when she landed on the road because she saw us down there — it was because her orders were to collect any stray travellers, by themselves, and tell them some lie, and then take them to the Hadrons. Why do you think she won't cheat us now?"

"Four gold coins," said Dann. "Besides, she didn't cheat us last time."

"She might take the four and sell us to somebody else."

"But she didn't bring us right into Chelops, did she? And she told us to avoid it. She warned us."

"We don't have any choice, I suppose."

In the running chair, Mara held her sack, Dann his, and each clutched two coins. Their knives lay beside them on the seat.

They reached the depot as the sun did. Felice was standing in a pose that surprised them, because she was rigid, staring at something on the ground, as if she had seen a snake and was afraid a movement might provoke it to strike. Mara was thinking, When I first saw Felice she seemed to me a wonder in her blue working suit, with her clean face and nice hair. But now compared with the Mahondi women she seems shabby and tired. Then she saw what Felice was staring at but could not at first understand.

Under the skimmer and around it were a dozen or so yellow balls, the size of sour fruits, or Mara's fist, and they glistened and were fresh and without dust, because they were inside a webbing or net of thick slime, like saliva. They were vital and alive, these balls: they seemed to pulse, and as the three watched, one cracked open and out crawled a pincer beetle, and it sat in the mess of its egg and slime resting from the effort of getting out. These were eggs, the eggs of a pincer beetle. And then they saw the beetle itself, half concealed by a wheel of the skimmer, its yellow body, the colour of its eggs, vibrating as out of its back end emerged slowly, one by one, more of its eggs. The great black pincers, the size of its body, stretched in front of it, and its black eyes stared at the three. The newly hatched beetle was crawling up a wheel; other eggs were cracking open, and a swarm of baby beetles were struggling free of the slime. Another reached a wheel.

"Quick," said Felice and, straddling the mess of eggs and new beetles, pulled herself up into the machine, and then hauled first Mara and then Dann in by the other door. Felice started the engine and the machine rolled away from the beetle and her progeny. The creature was still laying eggs and, unable to attack this machine, was clacking her pincers like knives, in warning.

Half a dozen soldiers came in sight, and when they saw the machine, began to run towards it.

"They don't want to let you go," said Felice, shouting over her shoulder at them. The machine rose out of reach of the soldiers, who went to the beetle, to attack it with clubs and knives. One slipped in the slime, and vomited, with disgust. Meanwhile the beetle, with incredible speed, had scuttled off and disappeared behind houses. And then the machine had risen too high for the three to see more than that there were soldiers standing gazing up after them. Felice slid back a shutter in the floor of the machine and peered down at the wheels: where were the beetles that had climbed up? Two were there, obstinately clinging to a wheel with their six clawlike legs. "They'll be blown off," said Felice, and slid back the shutter.

They were flying low along the big road north, which shone below them like water. It was empty, but beside it on a parallel dust track were groups of travellers, hundreds of them. From up here it was easy to see that Chelops was dying. Over in the east were little dots in the fields and streets that meant people were about, but the central areas seemed deserted. The reservoirs were low, and did not shine, because there was dust on the water. And now there was the Kin's central house, just visible, a tiny thing, and in the courtyard they were assembling for the early meal, and perhaps missing her. It seemed to Mara that her heart was all a bruise, a painfulness, that was making it hard for her to breathe. She sighed, she suffered, and yet her eyes were dry. She thought that quite soon the Kin, and Meryx, and all the loving and the kindness, all that would seem a dream and her heart would become cold again.

Soon Chelops' Towers were a little black hand of sticking up fingers, and then they, and the town, and the eastern fields — the Kin, Meryx — had gone; and not long after that they were leaving Hadron the country, because the big road was ending, and now they were flying over scrubby bushland.

Dann opened the floor shutter, and exclaimed that the beetles had fallen off: they could see a tiny speck falling into the scrub. Mara was wondering how the Kin, and the Hadrons, would deal with an invasion of these creatures, whose pincers could sever a limb or cut a child in half. But she felt she couldn't bear it, those monstrous beasts anywhere near the Kin: it was as if those giant pincers threatened her own heart, but it was all too bad to think about. She knew her feelings were becoming numbed, and she was glad.

An hour of flying over scrub and semi-desert, and scrub again, and the yellowish brown became infused with green, and below was a little, thin river, edged with bright green. There was a town ahead, and Felice said she must stop here for the sugar-oil fuel, and they must stay in the machine and remain calm. This town had people in it who all looked alike, and the first time you saw them it was a shock, and sometimes there were hysterics and even panic. "But it won't be the first time for us," shouted Mara, remembering how that band of people, all alike, had come to the Rock Village, and how Dann had scared them away because of his fascinated, horrified staring.

"Do you remember?" she urgently shouted at Dann. "Their faces — exactly the same."

Dann smiled, and took her hands, and said, "Mara, you worry about me too much. Thank you, but it's all right. I've seen these people when I was travelling, when I was away from you. I saw a whole town of them, in the East."

This was certainly not little Dann speaking, and Mara felt her heart ease and the worry lift.

The machine landed in a big square. At once a heavy, warm air enveloped them, and they felt the sweat start all over their bodies. Felice took cans from beside her, and said again, "Don't get out." She walked quickly off, ignoring the people who were crowding in to see the machine.

They were the same as Mara remembered: large, solid, heavy. But no, their eyes were different, not pale but brownish. Their skins were not greyish but dull brown. Their hair was not a mass of light frizz but a mass of brownish frizz. Their faces were all the same, with lumpy noses and low foreheads made lower because of the frizzy bush above. Their clothes were all of the same colour: it seemed that these creatures had been dipped into the same dye tub, fully dressed, so that everything was an ugly, lightless brown.

Dann took her hand. "They are stupid," he whispered. "Don't do anything to surprise them. I think they have only one mind between them. They are like animals."

It was like being surrounded by animals that were being drawn into a centre by curiosity: wary, ready to take fright and break away in a run. Those staring faces, those eyes! — and how did they tell each other apart? What could it be like, being one of a people exactly alike, every tiny detail the same, so that you turned your gaze from one face to the next, but it was as if you were still staring at the first? They were coming in slowly from everywhere, all the surrounding streets and lanes, a big crowd of them, and the skimmer seemed a frail thing in the middle of that crush and press. What big, solid people they were, and their hands so big, and their bare feet splayed out into the dust on great pads of flesh, and their toes continually curling and moving like an insect's antennae sensing the air. One lifted an enormous hand and felt Mara's hair. "Careful," she heard from Dann. "Don't move." Another poked her cheek. Was this one a man? Were they male, all of them? They seemed so. On the other side of the machine one was peering into the empty seat beside the pilot's, and was trying the handle, but the door was locked. The machine began to rock. Feeling it rock, they all put their hands to it and pushed; both sides pushed. They were not co-ordinating, and so for a moment the machine shook and seemed to jump about, but was not in danger of falling over. And then Dann let out a shout of alarm, which caused the creatures to jump back and glare, mouthing and muttering. One of the pincer beetles had survived the flight, and was trying to scuttle away from the machine between the big feet towards the houses. Dann shouted, "Kill it, kill it," but they were slow in turning, and then in seeing it; and then they turned to stare at him, not understanding; and then, at last understanding, went after it, all jostling together like a herd of beasts. Then, having lost it, because it scuttled away somewhere, they were slow in turning and resuming their slow pressure in on the machine. Felice appeared, running, with a can in each hand, shouting to scare them away so she could pass, and when a gap appeared as they turned to stare, she jumped in and at once started the machine, and it began to rise. As it did, the enormous hands were reaching up to bring it down, and could have done, had they been a moment sooner. The skimmer flew off, and the three looked down at those upturned dull faces, a multitudinous unity, a nightmare.

Beyond the town, the skimmer dropped among the dry grasses of the savannah. Felice got out and fed the machine with the sugar-oil in her cans. Then she said, "Get out, you two."

The brother and sister stood side by side while the young woman walked all around them, stood examining them. Meanwhile she talked. The town just behind them had only males in it. There was a town near by that had females. They all met at stated times, to mate: at the equinoxes and solstices. You could hardly tell the males and females apart.

Now, having thoroughly inspected the two, she pronounced judgement.

"You are altogether too appetising, both of you. You've got to disguise yourselves a bit."

Mara knew she was in danger: she felt her aptitude for fertility strong in her body, and had seen that her black shining hair and her new soft breasts had invited stares. And Dann was a handsome youth and, with all his scars and weals well hidden, looked like a sleek and well fed member of the Kin.

"Runaway slaves," said Felice. "That's what you are and that's what you look like. You're an invitation to any slave trader. And don't imagine that all slavers are sweet and kind like me."

"Tell me," said Mara, "if you had sold me and Dann to the Hadrons, what would you have got for us?"

"Not much. You were in such a terrible state. In good condition, the equivalent of one of your gold coins. Yes, you are right — it was easy to let you go because I wouldn't have got anything for you anyway."

Mara smiled: this exchange was without ill-feeling.

"So I can see I'm not going to make you believe in my kind heart."

"Have you got a lot saved?" asked Dann.

"I'm glad to say, yes. A profitable business, buying and selling people."

Now she went to her machine, and took from it one of her working uniforms, faded blue, top and trousers and belt, and said, "I'll charge you as little as I can." Dann counted small coins into her hand till she said it was enough. "You wear it," she said to him. "You are in even worse danger than your sister is."

"I know I am," said Dann, and this acknowledgement eased Mara's anxiety, for she had seen how he had been looked at recently, in Chelops. He stripped off his robe, put it into his sack and for a moment stood almost naked. He had on a small loin cloth. Felice laughed and said that she could fancy him herself, but unfortunately fate would soon separate them. Dann responded to Felice's flirting, and that cheered Mara too. For she secretly feared Dann's returning to drugs, and being used by men again.

He put on the tunic and trousers, slipped his knife into a pocket, and again the two stood side by side.

"Better," said Felice. "You could pass for a workman and his slave." She fetched water and bread from the skimmer, and the three sat on the earth and ate and drank. Around them stretched the yellow, beaten-down grasses of the dry season, and under them was the soft detritus of last year's wet season, for there had been rain here, if not enough. The sky was tall, and so blue, and there was only a little dust in the air.

"We have a long flight," said Felice. "And when we get to the next town you must go straight to the river and make sure of your places in tomorrow's boat. Then go for the night to an address I will give you. Pretend you are a couple, it will be safer. Don't go into the town, they don't like travellers. If I can refuel I'll leave straight away for the East. I'm going to sell the skimmer. It's too hard to get sugar-oil and spare parts." "And then?" asked Dann.

"Then I'll take what turns up." They could see that the idea of throwing herself on the chances of luck invigorated her. "I might buy a boat with the skimmer money and run a river service instead."

"And I suppose I won't see you again," said Mara.

"Well, that's how we live now: we meet people, we become friends, and then that's it. Perhaps we'll run across each other somewhere or other."

Dann was drawing a shape in the dust. It was Ifrik. He put a bit of straw down for Rustam, a little stone for the Rock Village, a leaf for Chelops, and then handed Felice a pebble and said, "Where will we be tonight?"

Felice put down the stone half a hand's span from Chelops. Now it took the span of Dann's hand, his long fingers at full stretch, to reach between Rustam and where they were going. He said to Mara, "See how far we've gone already?"

Felice watched this, not smiling: Mara could see she did not believe they would get much farther.

Mara said, "We did well in Chelops, and you didn't think we would."

"True," said Felice. "And, anyway, good luck. I don't know why I like you two, but I do."

"Luck?" said Dann. "It's knowing that matters." He pointed to the place where Felice had said they were going, and said, "On the globe this area was all green, and it was full of rivers."

"What globe?" said Felice.

"Of how the world was long ago."

Felice shrugged. "I don't know anything about that."

"On the map that has the Ice all over the north of the world, the north part of Ifrik is not brown, the way it is on the globe, because before the Ice it was all desert — all the north of Ifrik was a desert. But it isn't now. And on the globe the only part that is green is where we are going: rivers and a lot of green."

"Rivers, yes," said Felice. "But not much green, you'll find." Then, "But I don't know what you are talking about, not really." She was offended. "And let me give you a word of advice. Not all the tall tales you hear in the Mahondi quarter are true. They go in for a lot of mystification, you know, to impress people."

And they were off, the sun standing above them, and beneath them the scrubby plain; and then the sun was on their left, shining hot and clear, not dulled by dust; and then it was low; and below them was a river and a small town that as they came down seemed full of people. They landed. The people were what Mara was now used to: a mix of every kind of person, with every shade of skin, and hair sometimes straight and sometimes frizzed, and of every colour. There were no Mahondis, no Hadrons, and none of the kind who looked all the same.

Already there was a small crowd around the machine. Felice told Mara and Dann an address, pointed where they should go, said, "See you some time, somewhere," and flew off, this time to the East.

Mara and Dann were surrounded by staring, curious eyes. Not hostile, or at least not yet. They walked quickly to where they had been directed, followed by stares. It was hot, the wet heat, and they could feel the sweat trickling, and the air going into their lungs was like steam.

The houses were of wood, a few of mud bricks. The roofs were of grass. It looked a prosperous enough place, certainly not threatened with emptying, as Felice had said these River Towns were.

They found a little house in a lane. They walked into a room where a big, homely woman was cutting up roots. She looked them up and down, heard that Felice had recommended them, nodded, and said, "Sit down." They sat at a big, wooden table, laid with bowls and spoons for supper. She put questions to them, which they answered guardedly, saying that they had come from Chelops. She nodded and said, "Yes, refugees from Chelops have become rather more than we can manage."

Dann asked where the landing stage was, and she said that she would send her son to book them places. Her advice was to stay indoors until they had to go to the boat. "A lot of refugees have been robbed," she said. "You don't look as if you've got much to steal, but one never knows. And there have been a couple of slavers around, too." Here she examined Mara's slave dress, but said nothing.

She fed them the kind of supper that Mara had not eaten for a long time, of stewed roots, and bread: this was hardly the fare that the Mahondis were used to.

She did not ask what their relationship was, but showed them a room at the back, with barred windows. The room had several beds in it. Mara lay where she could watch the window, and Dann squatted on a bed, and counted out the small money Candace had given them, then dividing it and putting it into little leather bags. He gave her half. He counted the nine gold coins he had left, and tried various places to put them, an inner pocket, his shoes, but ended by choosing one of the little leather bags, where they could seem only another purse of cheap coins. They checked their store of bread, and decided they should try to buy more from their landlady.

All this went on for a good hour or more, the contriving and planning.

Mara thought, And this is the difference between having enough, as in Chelops, when all this business of keeping alive takes care of itself, just one of the things you do, and being on the edge, when you think of nothing else.

They slept, and in the night woke to see the dark outlines of two people trying to get in at the window, but the bars held. They slept again, and Mara dreamed of Meryx and woke thinking she was in his arms. But it was not the dream that had woken her. Dann was thrashing about and fighting in his sleep, and was muttering threats, "I'll kill you," with names Mara could not catch, but she thought she heard him say Kulik.

In the morning she told him he had been dreaming. He said he knew that: he had terrible nightmares most nights. She asked about Kulik, but Dann said that he was only one of the suppliers. Clearly he did not want to talk about it, and they went down, and were given hot tea made from some plant the woman said grew on the river bank, and some bread. They paid what she asked for, enquired if they could buy some bread, were given a few pieces, for a couple of little coins, and went as fast as they could to the river.

A big boat, about thirty paces in length, and half as much wide, was tied up to a stump, and people were already going aboard. Mara and Dann took their places on a bench under a little roof of reeds, and felt the wet river heat soak them and their clothes. There were tiny biting insects, in clouds. The passengers were making fans from anything they had, bits of clothing, their hands, even a flap of bread. Then a boy came running and jumped on to the boat just as it moved. He was selling fans made of river grass. Mara and Dann bought two and sat fanning away the insects, while the boy made a prodigious leap from the boat to the bank, earning applause, and the town they had scarcely seen moved away from them into the past.

And so Mara and Dann, who had known in their lives only drought and dust, thirst and anxiety over water, were floating on a river that seemed to them enormous; but it had been wider, they could see, for the water had, though not recently, filled the banks to the brim. Now the level was a good ten feet lower, and grass was growing over the part of the banks that had once known only lapping water and river weeds. And there were water dragons, who were lying on the banks, half in and half out of the water, some of them half as long as the boat. Two men propelled the boat, standing at the prow and at the stern, using long poles. That meant the water could not be very deep: when the river was full, poles would not have found the bottom to propel the boat from. The boatmen wore loose, baggy trousers tucked into their shoes, and tops that tied at the neck, and cloth tied tight over heads and necks to keep the midges off, but their faces were red and lumpy from bites. Their hands were inside bags of material tied at the wrists.

There were twenty passengers: men and women, and two children. Mara's eyes kept going to the children, to reassure her that they were healthy and well fed.

Mara believed that she might be pregnant. Or was it that she hoped she was? It seemed that her body yearned, craved, a child — or was it Meryx she was longing for? And if she was pregnant, what would Dann say, when everything was so difficult already?

North: he wanted to go north, north to water, leaving the drought behind. But were they going to stop at the first place not threatened with dryness? How far was North? What was North? From the map on Candace's wall North was only a whiteness, was ice and snow, covering half the world. She thought, Perhaps that is where all the water is, held in ice and snow, that can't move and flow? Is that what people from the South mean when they say that the water is up North?

It was very hot and the water dazzled. Mara drowsed and was woken by the plop and splash of the water dragons sliding into the water off the banks. These dragons had been in the rivers for thousands of years: the pictures on the walls of the Rock Village said so. And they were just the same, great clumsy monsters with long jaws full of irregular, ugly teeth and bulging with meat and confidence. Perhaps they planned to overturn this boat? If they all got together they were strong enough to do it. She asked Dann to ask the boatman in front, who said that sometimes when the boat was overloaded and low in the water the dragons might try to leap up and take a passenger. And did they succeed? "Oh sometimes," said the boatman, bad-tempered because of the midges. "Sit down and keep still, or they'll have a bite off you."

The day went on, so hot, so damp, a torment of midges, and the boatmen let down containers into the stream and brought up water which all the passengers drank and poured over themselves, and then they asked for more. Was there disease in the water? If so they were all too hot to care. They wanted only to drink. And then had to pee it out, over the edge of the boat, no one attempting much modesty or concealment, because of the languors of the heat. That day they stopped at sunset at a small town that was used to the boat travellers and took no notice of them. They all went together, for protection, to an inn that fed them root stew and bread and sour fruit, stewed. They all slept in a very big room, on reed mats, stretching out arms and legs, as naked as they could manage, trying to believe that it was cooler because it was night. But Mara kept herself covered. Her pallet was next to Dann's, so she could wake him if he had bad dreams.

In the morning they were off again. The river did not change, rolling along, glossy green and clear, because it was the dry season, with some green trees along it where there were birds, actually birds, most of which Mara and Dann had never seen. On either side the country was dry and yellowish, and tall dry grasses fringed the banks. This was the country that had once been the green part of Ifrik, long, long ago, with great forests, and innumerable feeder streams — so Candace had said — and those streams had baby streams running into them. Now no forests, only savannah, and water running slow and low between dry banks. For seven days they travelled up the river, stopping every night in little towns where the inns that served the river trade seemed all the same; and at the end of that time they had gone up Ifrik the breadth of Dann's forefinger laid in the dust of the map he drew to show Mara. And now there was a choice: to get off this boat and rest a little in the town that filled the fork between this tributary and the larger river, or to transfer to another boat, and go on, for this boat was returning to where it had started, which was where they had got on. Mara would have liked to stop, but Dann did not want to. He was driven by his need to go north, always north. Most of the passengers transferred to the new boat, a bigger one. None seemed to know where they were going, only that it must be better than where they had come from. Not all were from Chelops: some were from Majab. Mara and Dann had come farther than any of them, but were discreet about their origins. Bad enough that the passengers from Chelops knew that they were Mahondis, and hated them for it. Mara would see how Dann looked from face to face of these people, the close, intent look she knew so well: was he recognising faces, friends or enemies, from his time in the Tower? If so, he gave no sign. At night Mara always lay within touching distance, because she was afraid of what he might say in his sleep, or shout out if she did not wake him fast enough from his nightmares.

This river they were on now was a very different affair. It was wider, and though the top part of its banks showed that it had shrunk in its bed, it was still much deeper than the river they had been on, which now seemed a mere stream in comparison. To use poles here was not possible; there were two oarsmen on each side, and a man to steer. This boat was lower in the water, and kept to the middle of the river, well away from the dragons that crowded its banks. On the tributary, towns and villages had appeared infrequently, but here they seemed almost continuous. All were of baked mud bricks, with reed thatched roofs — clearly there were no forests near this river: on either side spread the thorny scrub of semi-desert, and even, in patches, the hot yellow glare of real desert. Thick reeds grew along the banks, and clumps of bamboo. The trees were all varieties of palm. This landscape was new to all the passengers, and the boatmen had to keep explaining what they were travelling through.

On the first stop at a town much larger and finer that any on the other river, they all walked close together, looking out for possible assailants, though the boatmen said these were peaceful people who welcomed travellers for the money they brought in. In this inn they could choose to sleep in a big communal room or in smaller rooms, and Mara and Dann managed to get one of these for themselves. They had not been alone for days, and now they were able to count what coins they had left and talk freely. In fact their supply of small coins was running low, and to change a gold one in inns such as these was out of the question: very likely these people would never have heard of such a thing outside of some tale, or legend. Now there was a bit of luck. One of the boatmen fell ill and had to be left behind. Dann offered to replace him, and so could travel free. He was in the middle of the boat, at the side, and Mara sat just behind him and watched him row. The blue outfit Felice had given him was much too hot, and he only wore a loincloth, like all the male passengers. Mara was watching the muscles work in that strong muscled back: a fine back, yes, but much too thin. All the travellers were losing flesh fast, they sweated so much, and it was too hot to eat. Mara held out her arm free of her sleeve and knew that if Orphne could see her and Dann she would be ordering them special food and rest. Meanwhile Dann was pulling his oar from sunrise to sunset. He was so strong, and so quick in learning everything, always ready to haul water out of the river for everyone to drink, helping people on and off the boat, making himself the best of the oarsmen, so that he could keep his job. At least, in the very middle of the river, the midges were absent. Mara watched the banks with their reeds and tufty palms glide past, and averted her eyes, and then shut them. She was feeling sick, longed to get off the boat and lie down. The dazzle on the water, even the regular splash of water dripping off the oars, made her queasy, and she more than once vomited over the side. On the bench beside her was a woman, who had not said much till then, but now she spoke very low, "You had better not let anyone know what you are carrying, if you know what's good for you." Then it was that Mara realised she was pregnant and thought that she after all had not had much confidence in Meryx's fertility, if she had to be told she was pregnant by this stranger. "There's plenty of people who'll make a grab for you if they know what you've got," this woman went on, and she took from her bag a fistful of dried leaves and said, "Chew these, they settle the stomach." Mara chewed, and they were bitter and dry, but her sickness stopped. This new friend, one of the last people to leave Majab, was Sasha, and she stayed in the seat near Mara, just behind Dann, and kept an eye on her, making her chew dry bread, and drink water, always more water.

When they landed that night she gave Mara a supply of the dried leaf and repeated that she should tell no one she was pregnant. There was no opportunity to tell Dann, because they were in a room with others. Next day Mara asked Sasha if she had a medicine for someone who slept badly, and offered a coin. Sasha took the coin, and gave Mara bark to put in water. She said, "Plenty of people sleep badly these days." As she watched Mara give Dann the water the bark had been soaked in to drink, her eyes were sad. Mara thought, If I asked her she might tell me a story worse than mine. Perhaps that's why we are frightened to talk to each other: we are afraid of what we might hear.

Next morning, as they were walking down to the boat, apart from the others, Mara told Dann she was pregnant, and asked if they might get off this boat so she could rest for a few days. He said, so low she could hardly hear it, that there was someone after him. "He was in the town where we changed boats. I saw him." Mara held him back, because he was already hastening to join the others, and said, "Dann, sometimes you imagine things. Are you sure?" He seemed to shrink and become little in her grip and he said in little Dann's voice, "He was the bad one, Mara." But she held fast, gripping his two arms and said, "Dann, don't do that." And, amazingly, he heard, straightened, shed little Dann, and looked straight at her, and said, "Mara, there were a lot of things that happened in the Towers you don't know about." And now he tried to smile, trusting her. "I'll tell you — some time. I hate thinking about that time." "You do think about it, when you are asleep."

"I know," he said, and pulled himself away and went ahead of her to the boat. If he heard her saying she was pregnant, he hadn't taken it in.

Mara suffered through the long, hot, damp days, the dazzle in her eyes being the worst torment; but Sasha supported her with herbs to chew, and bits of dry bread, and encouragement. "This is the worst part of being pregnant," she said. "Soon you'll feel well — you'll see." Mara could not be more than six weeks pregnant: a period had been scant, had started and stopped and started; another had been late, but she did not expect them to be regular — how could they be, when she had scarcely been a female at all, until a year ago? She wished she could let Meryx know, and kept seeing his bitter, miserable face on the night he had believed she had slept with Juba. If he knew — well, she could imagine how he would look: he would stand differently, taller; and a shrinking and diffidence, almost an apology, that was always in his face, his smile — all that would go. She imagined standing beside him, pregnant, her hand in his, telling the Kin this news, and how he would smile as they all rushed to congratulate him. How far away he seemed — and was; how out of reach — and he was; and yet her thoughts flew to him a hundred times a day and to all of them, in their illusory safe place.

Day after day she sat at touching distance behind Dann, watched his lean muscled arms pulling the oar, saw how his cheeks lost the fullness they had got from the Kin's good food. All day, with the sickness beating up in waves, with Sasha beside her, whispering, "Don't be sick. Don't let them see." How she hated this endless, gliding journey up the middle of the river that reflected blue sky, and sometimes slow, white clouds, and along its edges the reeds and bamboos and palm trees, while among the reflections often appeared the dark shape of a dragon, or the white grin as it propped its jaws open so that the little birds could clean its mouth. How she longed to stop, simply to stop moving; and then on the twentieth morning of this journey Dann woke feverish, and had to agree to stay behind when the boat went on. Now the faces of the people they had been with day and night for what seemed now to be a long time were those of friends, and Mara thought that without Sasha she could not go on. Without Sasha — well, she would have been reported to the authorities by now, and kept to wait for the arrival of the next slaver. She and Dann took a room in a little town, and both of them slept, and slept, he sleeping away his fever, she the nausea of movement. But she had to get up often to sponge off Dann's sweats, and hold water to his lips, making him drink, though it was bitter with Sasha's herbs.

In his sleep he muttered, "We must go on, Mara. He'll catch up with me." "Who, Dann, who?" Once he replied, "Kulik," but there were other names she did not know.

Mara became well quicker than Dann did, and trusting that it was true that the people in this town were friendly, as the innkeeper said, she went out into streets — rather, lanes — of mud-brick houses, and wandered through the town ignoring the people she met, and being ignored. She had seen from the room windows large buildings some distance from this town, and now she walked there, watching the low grass for snakes, and gratefully smelling the aromatic bushes that brushed against her. The clean, medicinal smell so appealed to her that she chewed some of the little leaves, not able to believe they were poisonous, and their effect was to make her hungry. The buildings were tall, six or seven levels, and of stone. There was no surface stone anywhere near, so there must be a quarry somewhere. When she reached the buildings she saw they were old, and it had been a long time since they had had roofs. No sign of a roof, or rafters, no fallen beams, just walls. There were signs of old fires, old scorch marks that had eaten into the stone so one might think the stones were black, and new fires, the ghosts of aromatic bushes that had burned where they stood inside the walls, each a little cloud of pale twigs and stems.

This had been a big town, laid out in a regular way, streets intersecting each other in squares. They had been paved with big blocks of stone, and there were grooves in the stone made by wheels. The buildings were full of birds that had their nests anywhere there was a ledge or a hole. Creepers had reached high up the walls, thin green fingers clutching the stone. When had people lived here? She asked at the inn and they said that no one knew: before the trees went, they said. Once there had been great forests here, but that was so long ago you could hardly find an old tree trunk or a bit of dry wood, not for several days' walking distance. A rain forest it had been — so it was said. Well there was not enough rain these days even to keep the palms happy. Along this river in the dry season the trees were watered by teams of townspeople who made themselves responsible for them. The trees provided all kinds of food, and fibre for weaving, and a kind of milk, which was welcome now that it was getting difficult to keep the domesticated animals alive. Mara went to see these animals. There was a small version of the milk beasts down south, no higher than Mara's waist, and she thought of Mishka and Mishkita and wondered what they would have thought of these small copies of their kind. There were animals with horns and great udders, that stood to Mara's shoulders. They were fed on palm leaves. There were very tall animals, with great feet like floats and long necks called Khamels, which had been imported from the north at a time when North had been all sand and stone, because they needed so little to live on. And when was that? Oh, hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, no one knew now. Mara asked if skimmers were known here and the reply was that there used to be plenty, at least once a week, but now hardly ever. It was the river that everyone relied on, and that was not likely to disappear. This river led into a larger one, believed to be the main one, and there had always been rivers here, though it was known they had sometimes changed course.

Rain forest, thought Mara, going to stand in the deserted town, gazing at ancient wheelmarks in streets that had been empty for hundreds — or thousands? — of years. A rain forest... what could that mean? She shut her eyes to imagine it, and heard the sounds of water running and splashing off oars. What could it have been like, to wander in a forest that held rain in its branches, was always wet, and little streams ran everywhere?

She went to the river, saw the rolling glitter, and felt her stomach turn over, for it remembered the movement of the boat. Soon she would have to get on a boat again and face days — how long? — of that heat, the movement, the glitter in her eyes. She heard Sasha's whisper, Don't let anyone know you are pregnant, and she closed her eyes to conquer the nausea. When she opened them in front of her stood a vision, a beautiful young woman in a pink dress, with her hair braided and shining, and she was smiling at her. It was Kira, who said, "I'm not surprised to see you: anyone sensible would leave."

And she took Mara by the hand and led her to a mud house larger than the others, of two storeys, and into a large, cool room full of coloured things — cushions, hangings, embroideries, bright pots and jars. Mara sank into a reed chair, thankful to be able to keep still, and Kira clapped her hands and a servant came in, who was told to bring drinks. She was a black girl, and her hair was as intricately done as Kira's.

"And now tell me everything," Kira said, fanning herself, clicking and turning and displaying the fan, of scarlet birds' feathers, just as Ida did. Her pink dress billowed about her to the floor.

When Mara had finished her tale, she asked Kira, "If you had known what the journey was going to be like, would you have left?"

Now, this directness was not at all Kira's style, for she evaded it, pouting, and laughing, and flirting her fan — as she had always done; but at last, faced by Mara's seriousness, she sighed and said, "No. I would not. That boat nearly killed me."

"And are you sorry you left your baby?"

"Ida's baby."

"I want to know."

Another sigh, not petulant or staged. "Mara, if I had brought that baby with me it would have died on the boat. What baby could survive that? — so hot, the insects, not enough to eat."

Here the servant brought milk from the palm trees and fruit.

"Is there enough food here?"

"Plenty. And my husband is a trader."

"Your husband! I didn't think husbands were your style."

"They aren't. But there are different kinds of marriage here. He wants a full marriage, he thinks I am a marvel." And she laughed, all her lovely teeth on show. Then she leaned forward and whispered, "If he knew I had been a slave in Chelops. I wouldn't let him touch me until I had a legal security here." Aloud she said, "I love him and he's good to me." On this a big black man came in. He had heard what she said and was pleased. He shone with pleasure in his handsome blackness. His hair was a great black bush. He stood with his hand on Kira's shoulder and looked at Mara, and he did not think she was a marvel, as Mara could see.

"Who's your friend?"

"She's my cousin. From Chelops. She was married to the son of the chief man."

This man nodded, smiled politely, squeezed Kira's shoulder and went out.

"He's jealous," said Mara.

"Of men and of women. But I don't get up to any of that here, he'd kill me. Of course I never went in for it much — girls. That was just to pass the time." On she chattered, and did not ask Mara another question, because she had created her vision of the life in Chelops and had no intention of letting it be challenged.

One thing was clear. She was lonely and desperate to talk. Not to exchange talk, but to talk. Mara tried to stop the flow, several times, and then the servant came in to say that the innkeeper wanted her.

She thought, Oh no, it's Dann, he must have said something — what has he said? — and she apologised to Kira, who said, "I'll come and visit you and Dann," and she ran through the heavy yellow sunlight to the inn where the innkeeper was waiting, with a man he introduced as Chombi. She found him frightening. He was very tall, thin and his skin was of an ugly white colour she had never seen before. His hair was like Mahondi hair, but there was this unhealthy white skin — repulsive.

"Your brother is making a noise," he said.

"He's my husband, not my brother," said Mara.

The trouble was, Dann might or might not remember to lie. She ran into their room and found Dann crouched by the head of the bed, panting. He had dreamed, that was clear. She made him lie down, gave him more medicine, and said, "Dann, I've told them we're married. Will you remember that?" She repeated it until he said yes, he would, and dropped off back to sleep.

Mara sat at the low window and watched the river glide past a hundred yards away, and saw the moon paths swaying on the water. Even that little movement made her feel sick.

Chombi came to enquire after Dann. She said he had the river sickness, the one insects give you, but he was getting better. Chombi was full of suspicion and hostility. He enquired after her health too. He had heard she was sick, when she arrived. Mara said she had the river sickness, but not badly, and was better now.

While Kira had talked, and talked, Mara had been able to make a picture of this place.

The region of the River Towns was governed by the Goidel people, who had their headquarters in the next town up the river, called Goidel. Each river town had its local representative, and this town's government man — Kira called him The Spy — was the tall, white, thin man, Chombi.

Kira had seen Mara's nausea — but only when she actually asked to be shown a place where she could be sick — and said that Mara must not be ill. If Dann was ill, and she was too, that would be seen as the possible beginnings of an epidemic and both would be taken to Goidel into an isolation hospital. More than anything, this region feared epidemics, for there had been several recently, and many had died, mostly children. Mara had been afraid to tell Kira she was pregnant, but when she had to be sick again Kira said, "And you'd better not tell them you are pregnant either, because they'll take you for breeding. But if you can make them believe that Dann is your husband, it will be all right. They don't take women away from husbands."

Mara, then, could be neither ill nor pregnant, and what was she to do? It seemed to her she had no choice, except to go on with the journey and hope for the best. Choice: were there people who had choices? Kira, for instance. If she stayed in Chelops, probably the Kin themselves would have been delighted to lose her to the Hadrons, because she was such a nuisance. If she had kept the baby then Ida would have made her life a misery. If she had brought the baby with her it would almost certainly have died on the river.

Mara could decide to make the slow, difficult — and sickening — journey back to Chelops, and tell Meryx, Look, I'm pregnant, you are like your father, a maker of children. But the Hadrons would take her the moment the baby was born. And she would still be in that situation which both she and Kira knew: Chelops could not last for long.

Why was Kira so clear-headed about this, unlike the rest of the Kin? She was an orphan, had been taken into the Kin as a child, from an inferior branch of the Mahondis. She had never felt part of the Kin, had always seen herself as an outsider; and was able to see the Kin from an outsider's view, had never been lulled into complacency.

There was a hard end to this run of thoughts: Kira would probably survive, having run away and left her child, when the Kin, and the Had-rons — and Kira's baby — might easily not survive.

And what was Mara to do now?

She listened to Dann muttering or shouting in his sleep, hushed him, told him, Dann, be quiet — and he woke apparently himself, demanding to leave at once.

"Have you remembered I am pregnant?" she whispered. "And that I am your wife?"

"Up North it will be better," he said, and slipped back into fever, shaking and sweating again. Kira came to sit with him while Mara slept. Mara knew that Dann was good-looking, but she had not thought of him as someone immediately attractive — in spite of Felice — but it seemed Kira liked Dann very much, and she helped Mara change the slave's robe for a clean one, and she exclaimed over his scars, and the weals around his middle, and sighed and said that perhaps she would come with them when they left. This was such a boring little place. After all, this was only a minor river. It would join the main river about ten days' from here, and on that one you could travel right up to the edge of the country that the Khamels came from. But up there they spoke a different language and Kira didn't think she could be bothered with that.

"I thought the same language was spoken everywhere," said Mara, and Kira laughed at her and said that Mara's trouble was — and it had been Kira's — that she had believed Hadron to be most of Ifrik, instead of just a little place, and that since all of southern Ifrik spoke one language, they had thought it must be the same everywhere.

It seemed that Kira's presence was calming the suspicions of the tall, white spy, for he kept away until she left, and then said he had noticed Mara was not in health, and he had a duty to tell his superiors so. "I am perfectly well," said Mara. This man, whom she thought was like a worm or the white belly of a lizard, and who she hated touching her, then took her wrist and felt her pulse, put a thin, bony thumb on her neck pulse, bent to look into her mouth and check her teeth, and lifted an eyelid. Mara knew that he was checking on more than her present health. He would report on her physical condition to the superiors in Goidel.

"If you are pregnant," he said, "you have nothing to fear, if that man is your husband."

"He is."

"You look very much alike."

"Mahondis do look alike. We are inbred," she said, not knowing that in fact she thought this.

"Then that is a fault easily cured," he said.

Dann was awake and listening, and on his face was a look that told Mara he was fighting inner demons.

"And do you claim this child?" Chombi asked him.

"Yes, I do," said Dann, forgetting that Mara had told him not to say she was pregnant.

Mara asked Kira how long it took to get a message to Goidel. Two days there. Then a couple of days of deliberations and a decision, and two days on the return boat. Altogether, allow a week.

Mara told Dann that she might be taken as a concubine for the Goidels. He said, "Oh no, they won't." As always now there was a pause after her speaking, before he heard, and responded. She believed that this bout of fever had done him real harm — not physically, for he was recovering, but by bringing his nightmares nearer. She wondered if Dann was perhaps a little mad. Sometimes, yes. On certain subjects.

That week she spent feeding Dann and herself, and making him strong by walking with him around the mud lanes, and to the old deserted city in the savannah. She knew they were being observed. They sat with Kira, and Mara watched to see if Dann was attracted to Kira, for she longed to be reassured: there was a death sentence in the River Towns for men finding men attractive. And Dann did respond to Kira, but she made such a joke of everything it was hard to say what she felt.

At the end of ten days two uniformed men came off the river boat from Goidel to the inn and demanded to see Mara and Dann. They were in the communal room, eating. At the sight of the two men Dann gave a shout and darted out of the door and disappeared into the maze of lanes and little houses. Yes, the two men were quite alike, Mara thought. Like most people around here they were very black, well-built, with lean faces, but their hair was long and black, like the Mahondis'.

"I see your husband has run away," said one man, genially. "Well, that makes things easier. Get your things. You are coming with us to Goidel." Mara said nothing. She knew Dann had run away because of the two similar men, who later would become, in his mind, one man. Perhaps he would ask Kira for help. And he had not committed a crime, was not sick — or pregnant.

"Better for you that you are pregnant than ill," said the other gaoler. "It would be isolation for you and that's no joke."

They watched her pay the bill. She had none of the small coins left after that. She watched them conferring with Chombi, while he reported the events of the little town, and was given orders.

The upriver boat came. Mara got on with her sack, and sat where she had before, but this time she had two men behind her, watching. What did they think she might do? Jump into this big, dangerous river, full of water dragons? Swim through them to a bank that edged empty savannah and ancient, deserted towns?

That night in the inn they made her sleep between them. The next day on the boat was the same. She did not dislike these men, who were only doing a job. They were kind, in their way, making sure she ate and drank. That evening they arrived in Goidel and she was taken to a gaol and put in the charge of two women who fed her, washed her, were jocular and tried to make her laugh.

Next morning she went in front of an elderly magistrate who reminded her, by his manner at least, of Juba.

"So you claim you are married?"

"Yes."

"What degree of marriage?"

Kira had told her to say, second degree. That meant, here, either man or woman could have other partners, but the man must assume responsibility for any child, since there was no way of establishing paternity. This was one of the laws introduced when it was becoming clear that fertility was dropping.

"Second degree," said Mara.

"Whatever the degree, when the husband is not present, it is irrelev-ant — wouldn't you agree?" "Yes," said Mara.

"Well, you must go back to prison. If your husband does not claim you within a week, then you will go to the breeding programme."

Mara had walked between the two gaolers to the court, and now back again. Going she had been too anxious to notice much; returning, her mind easier, since she believed Dann would come, she was able to see the streets she was walking through. Goidel was very different from the little mud towns down the river, several times larger, and while the buildings were of mud or mud-brick, the facades of most were covered with the same fine plaster she had seen in the old ruined cities above the Rock Village. So, instead of looking like an extension of the river bank mud, the buildings were white, or a pale earth colour, or yellow, or even pink. None of these facades was new or clean; some were chipped, or areas of plaster had fallen and not been replaced. The roofs, of reed, needed replacing. In some, birds had nested. Many buildings were empty. But there were hundreds of people in the streets and they wore garments striped with bright colours, or plain, of the same very fine material as the robes she carried rolled at the bottom of her sack. Delicate, almost transparent material, with embroidery around necks and sleeves when the garment was plain. These were well fed people. Above all, there was an air of general confidence and calm. People stood about in groups talking, and laughing. In a little garden families were sitting on the grass eating and drinking. Her gaolers were not marching like soldiers, but strolling along and stopping to explain things when she asked.

The two women gaolers took her in, making jokes with the two soldiers. These were, Mara knew, clever, surviving women, and she wanted to trust them. She decided she would: after all, she had no alternative.

She asked them if they knew any medicine for aborting a baby. She was whispering, so even the walls could not have heard. They were not surprised. Whispering, one said that if they were found out it would be the death sentence for both of them, and the other that they must be well paid.

Mara put her hands up under her robe, to untie a gold coin, then saw she was ridiculous: with one movement they could fling up her robe and see the cord of coins. She untied the cord and brought it forth. Twenty-two. She offered them one. First one, then the other tested it. Then they asked for another. She gave them another. All three knowing that they could have taken everything, there was a moment when Mara despaired and she believed that they were being tempted. But they said, "All right, put it back." And she tied the cord again, where it had been.

It was lucky, they said, that she was the only woman in the gaol, because otherwise it would have been too much of a risk. Then they joked that it was more usual for them to be asked for drugs to increase fertility, and this was their reputation, which made it easier for them to help Mara.

They gave her bitter drinks, which she had to get down her as hot as she could bear. This was for three days. Then, on the fourth, very late at night, they put her on a pallet on the floor, and got to work on manipulating her stomach. She felt those long knowledgeable fingers probe deep, through her flesh, seeking out her womb, looking for the child — finding it. The pain was intense and she fainted, and came to, and the fingers still probed and pushed. Both women kept their gaze on her face, and when they saw that she really could not bear any more, gave her another potion.

Towards morning she felt the warm rush between her legs.

"Do you want to see it?" one asked, and Mara caught a glimpse of a tiny creature in its bloody mess. She felt the most terrible pang in her heart — a knife would have been kinder — and shook her head for them to take it away. She was sorry she had said she would look.

"Three months," said one, and the other, "Could be even a few days more?"

So Meryx's child was alive when Mara saw it. When it was dead one of the women crept out into the savannah — for the prison was on the edge of the town — and when she returned she said briskly, "That's done."

Mara was thinking, I've chosen between Meryx's baby and Dann. And then, No, that's foolish. No baby could survive a boat journey in this heat. That was no choice.

The two women made her sleep, and woke her to say that Dann had arrived at the magistrate's court in good time to claim her. But there was a problem. He seemed ill. Mara knew he was not ill; it was his terror that made him ill. She knew what it had cost him to go and confront the soldiers that stood guarding the court. She could feel little Dann's fear in her own nerves, see his face, for that moment little Dann's face.

"He has been told that you have miscarried," said the soldier who brought the message.

Before Mara was released she again drew the two women into the very centre of a large room, and whispered that she needed to change a gold coin, or if they could, two. And they said, "Two. One each. But we shall not be giving you the full value. It's dangerous for us." She gave them two coins, leaving nineteen in the cord, and she got back a mass of the light, trashy-looking coins in exchange. About half the value, she judged, but did not blame them. This change she put into her sack, and thanked them both, and said she would always remember them, which was true. And they embraced her and wished her well.

Dann was in a guest house, waiting for her. He was not ill, but he was frightened still, and haunted, and when Mara thanked him for coming to rescue her he burst into a terrible sobbing, and clung to her — almost little Dann, but not quite, for there was a hardness and obstinacy there, adult, responsible, and his voice, "Mara, if I'd lost you..." was far from little Dann's.

"Or if I'd lost you," she said.

These two were not in the habit of physical affection, but now they sat close together on the bed, arms around each other, resting and quiet.

At peace, that's what they were; and Mara felt the tension go out of his body, and her own.

A brave thing that was, what he had done. She knew that soldiers, guards, the police, turned him to water. To have made himself walk into that courtroom — what was it she could do that was anything like as brave? But then she did not fear standing in a court, to be judged: that is what tormented him. She knew it, but did he? And then, the two men, two men.

She dared, "The two men who came to arrest us back in that other town." And waited for him to say, "No, not two, one man." But he only searched and searched her face with his eyes.

"Mara, I know you don't believe me, but there is somebody after me. I've seen him."

"Who, Dann, who is it?"

He only let his head fall on her shoulder, with a groan.

She said, "If you hadn't come to claim me they would have taken me for their breeding programme."

"I know, they told me." And then he said quietly, almost humbly, and smiling, "Mara, I think it would be better if you didn't let yourself get pregnant again."

They had two days to rest in. She was still a little weak, but was herself: she had not felt anything like herself yet on this journey. He ate a lot, and they walked together around and about this most pleasant river town. They were watched by agents from the magistrate's court, and when they caught the upriver boat the agents went with them. This was to make sure, even now, that they were neither of them ill. Mara had been told by the women gaolers, and Dann had been told, for everyone talked of it, how much epidemics were feared. Terrible diseases arrived in the River Towns, for no reason, made people ill or killed them and then disappeared, for no reason. The river sickness everyone understood, and they did not fear it. Its symptoms were always the same: the sufferers shook and shivered and ran high fevers, and then a lull, and then another attack: lulls and fevers, and sometimes people died, and sometimes not. In every house were medicines for the river sickness, but there was none for these new diseases, if they were new. There was talk among the old people that this was not the first time illnesses had swept along the river, and disappeared.

When two days later the boat went in to the shore for the night, where this river joined the main one, which was called Cong, it was already dusk and so they did not see until morning that if the river they were leaving had made the first one they embarked on seem like a creek, so now that river, which had been so large and powerful, seemed a mere preparation for what they gazed at. They walked down from the inn, still watched by Goidel agents, since this was where Goidel sovereignty ended, to yet another boat, a much larger one, waiting at a pier where boats of all sizes were tied. The river was so wide that the birds in the trees on the other bank were white dots and the trees were a little, low fringe. From this bank it could be seen that on this river were still many kinds of palm, but there were big, green trees, and some like green hands pointing up, covered with thorns. Along the sides of the boat were oars, but they were at rest, lodged in their supports, because this boat was propelled by a device that used sunlight, concentrated and focused on to a slanting square of material that had a dull shine. The secret of this use of the sun had been lost long ago, and so precious was the device — very few were left now — that guards protected it, day and night. Dann, to find a way of travelling free, offered himself as a guard. The owner of this boat, and the navigator, was Han, an elderly woman as lean and dry and brown as a tree trunk, and as wrinkled. She looked long at him, and finally nodded. Dann inspired confidence. He did not have that ease and openness that people have who have never experienced treachery, so it must be, thought Mara, that his many skills and aptitudes were evident in his expectation that he would be accepted. He also offered to cook the midday meal, or to serve it. And he would travel free. The voyage would take a month. They were going on this stage farther than all their travelling from the Rock Village. Mara paid out three of her gold coins, from the nineteen she had left. Now she had sixteen. There were about a hundred people on this boat, some of them from as far as Chelops, some from the first River Towns they had passed. She felt she must know these faces, that they were familiar, and saw how Dann's eyes went from one face to another, slow, concentrated, memorising each one.

This wide river did not have the force of its tributaries. It was much shallower. It was running low in its bed, but here there were no grassy verges because of a fallen water level, only the eroded gullies and collapsed banks of rivers that flood, with the detritus of flood high above the water and even leaving wisps of straw and dead weeds in the trees. The water dragons were not on these banks, but deep in the water, or floating like logs: the blunt wedge heads could be seen just under the water, the nostrils exposed, or long, dark shapes steered beside or behind the boat, for the beasts were hoping that something or someone might fall in; and the deck was too high to attempt a leap. The sky was hot and blue and empty — not a cloud. Through the palms and thorn trees on the bank could be glimpsed the little dance and whirl of the dust devils sucking up dirt from between the grass clumps. It was sultry, the air clinging to the skin. But Mara was not sick now. She looked back on the days of nausea on the other boats and wondered how she had borne them. Well, she had because she had to. Now she sat at ease and wondered about the city of Shari, where they were going. They would be on this river, Cong, going upstream, for half their journey, and then, after a brief, tight squeeze through a canal, would join another river that flowed into a lake called Charad. On that river they would travel downstream, and the precious machine that gathered sunlight would be switched off, to save it. That is when the oars would come into use. All this she was told by Dann, during the intervals he was stood down from his post as guard, with three others, and came to sit with her. He said to her, "Mara, all the time it gets better, doesn't it?" And he glanced anxiously into her face to see if she did feel what he felt: a relief, a reassurance, a kind of awe perhaps, that things were going well for them, after being so very bad.

Mara sat neither asleep nor awake, but in a reverie where everywhere her eyes rested seemed sharp and clear, but far from her; and she was in a dream, a dream, and the silent boat that clove its way up the river, the gliding banks, the cloudless sky where occasionally appeared a visiting cloud — all this floated through her mind as if she were transparent, or two people, for always she remembered the Mara whose skin had forgotten water, and who had often woken from sleep, her mouth dry and cracked and longing for water. When the pails of water dipped from the river went about among the passengers, and it was her turn, she felt that every gulp of the coolness going down her was like a whisper: Mara, you are safe now; and when she dipped her hands in and splashed her face her skin remembered old hungers.

Sometimes sandbanks appeared ahead, and on them the water dragons lay, and slid into the water when the boat appeared. The banks were too far on either side to see the details of nests and birds' lives; nor did they see animals standing to drink, because they ran away when they saw the boat. And so, day after day, they went along. Every night they tied up, sometimes in a town or village, sometimes at an inn that stood by itself on the bank, waiting for the river travellers. All these inns and guest houses were simple, and clean, and pleasant. They supplied evening and morning meals of bread, and sometimes cheese, and vegetable stew, and a drink made from palm tree juice. The travellers were given big communal rooms to sleep in, or were four, five, six in a room. Dann and Mara were never out of each other's sight. The towns were like Goidel, each one with its own individuality, expressing itself in the eyes and faces and ways of moving and talking of the inhabitants, which Mara found invigorating, a challenge, because she had not till recently known living, busy towns full of confidence, each one needing to be understood, like a person. When the boat was tied up in the evenings, sometimes she and Dann wandered about the streets, looking — always — into faces, perhaps risking the purchase of a fruit, or sweets, or a small cake, for its taste of this place, so different from other places. Sometimes Dann would stare so long and hard at someone that he, or she, would be annoyed, and disturbed, and stare back: What do you want?

"Who is this person you are waiting to see, Dann? Please, tell me."

But he did not answer. Sometimes she thought he did not hear, so deep was he in this inner pursuit. Sometimes, trying to keep contact with him, staying close, she might talk, commenting on what they saw, for minutes, half an hour, with no reply from him at all. Yet later he might say something that meant he had heard her, had stored up what she said. These evening strolls through the towns they visited were delightful to her but, she thought, not to him. How could they be, when he was so fearful and on guard? Yet he said unexpectedly, "I like these walks with you, Mara. I look forward to them all day, on the boat."

Day after day. Sometimes Dann came back to crouch by her and measure on the wood of the boat's deck a little distance with his fingers: how far they had come on this boat. And then, how far since Chelops. Then, the Rock Village. When he drew a capacious shape of Ifrik, on the planks, other people saw, and joined in, showing with their hands the distances they had come — but none as far as Dann and Mara. Some of them knew the shape of Ifrik. Others stared, and puzzled, and could not take in what Mara and Dann explained.

Most of the time Dann was up in the front of the boat watching the sun device. There were six guards, always changing. At night Han left two guards when she went ashore to eat or sleep, but usually stayed on the boat, with the guards. More than once one was Dann, but Mara hated that, afraid she would not see him again, and could not sleep. Han used Dann more and more. This dried-up woman, like a tall, clever old monkey, so quick and alert, watched the men guards all the time, seeing if they drifted into a day dream or turned their faces away too long from the sun trap. Dann seemed able to stay alert all the time. He stood in the prow, balancing on his set-apart feet, sideways on to the sun trap, so that he could see all the boat (and, Mara knew, anyone who might be creeping up on him), and his eyes moved slowly and steadily around the faces of the travellers, to the trap, and then around again. He saw at once if someone went too close to the trap, or was careless in settling their bags and sacks. People begged Han to let them see the sun trap, and sometimes she agreed, but stood near it, and them, watching every movement. And they would stand staring at the square of metal, which was unknown now, something invented in the distant past and forgotten, this square which seemed like a blank, dully shining surface. But then, if you stared into it, there were changes and shifts of light in its depths, and colours too, strengthening and fading, like the colours of water or sky at sunset and sunrise, so it was as if you stared into water, deep water; and it was always with surprise and unease that the travellers saw — returning to themselves out of the illusory depths of the metal — that it was after all only a piece of something not far off the tin they had used all their lives made into cups and plates and containers, and which came from manufactories that some of them had seen. Just a square of metal, flat and thin, nothing to it, which you might kick aside or throw on to a rubbish heap; and yet it was something to make you feel awe or even terror, because this bit of nothing much, that looked as if it had come off a scrap heap, could make this boat move upstream day after day, pushing aside the waters of this great river.

Soon there were many shoals and sandbanks and Han navigated herself, not leaving the task to one of the guards who, when the river was deep enough, had only to stand at the tiller and keep the boat moving straight. Now Han swung the boat from this side of the river to the other, or between sandbanks, and two guards stood on one side and two on the other to ward off a shoal or push the boat off a shallow bank. There were no rocks on this river, only sand, that shifted as the currents flowed. Day after day. Mara felt she had been on this boat all her life, and would never leave it, each night sleeping in an inn so like all the others she sometimes felt she had not left the last one, each morning embarking and settling on the same bench; and feeling, as the boat swung out into the stream, that the walk around this particular town, and the restless sleep in the inn, had not happened, for the reality was the river, the shoals, the sandbanks, the shores that slid backwards with their trees and birds; and sometimes, deep in the water, fish or the stubbornly following water dragons. It seemed that the dragons had divided up the river, for as the boat entered a stretch of water they saw nosing towards them four or five from the sandbanks; and these would follow for a while, and then propel themselves away to where there was a flat beach or a bank. And then another population of the creatures would take over. Day after day and then there was a change, and it was in the air. Instead of the smell of river water, and sometimes a blast of hot sand smell, there was a bad taint coming to them from ahead of the boat, and then it went, to be forgotten, but came again, stronger; and soon there were foul blasts of air in their faces, and before long the smell was continuous. People were being sick over the side of the boat, or sat holding cloth to their faces. That night Han went ashore to the proprietor of the guest house and conferred with him for a long time, while she eyed the travellers eating their frugal meal. Or deciding they could not eat, for it was not possible to avoid the smell here, no matter where they sat or how they shut the doors and windows.

Han called them together and said that there had been a war, probably still going on, in the territory they were going to pass through, and there were great numbers of people fleeing from the war, living how they could on either side of the river. They had no food. They often had only the clothes they wore. They were dying. All they had was water. If the passengers wanted to go on, they would have to pass between banks crowded with these desperate people. The alternative was to return, going back downriver. She took it that no one wanted to do that. Then, tomorrow would be a difficult day. Everyone must be ready to fend off possible attempts by boarders, and above all, to defend the sun trap. She was going to position ten of the strongest men by the sun trap. She wanted contributions from everyone to buy a big sack of bread to throw to the refugees: she waited while people gave a few small coins each. She told everyone to find a stick, and sharpen it. Before they left for the boat in the morning, there would be a tub of water by the door of the inn, full of strong smelling herbs, and they should soak cloths or even bits of clothing in it, and tie these around their faces, because then the smell would be less.

Next morning this crowd of people, who by now knew each other very well, went down to the boat in a wary company, and each held a long stick or a knife. On the boat Han positioned ten guards all together around the sun trap, Dann in charge of them, and made the rest of the men line the sides of the boat, with the women around the back, all with their weapons. She stood at the prow steering, watching everything and everybody. The smell was by now almost unendurable. For a couple of hours the boat went steadily up the middle of the river, in and out of the sandbanks, while corpses floated past and the water dragons fought over them. Then they turned into a new reach of the river, and there they were, the desperate people, massed on the banks, staring at the boat. Then a shout went up and from both shores they crowded into the water which was shallow almost to the middle. Nowhere was the river deep. In a moment they were splashing, wading, swimming to the boat. The dragons snatched and snapped at this fresh meat. Several of the attackers were dragged down out of sight, or struggled in the shallows with the beasts, but on they all came, hundreds, cursing, wailing, screaming, pleading. In a moment the guards at the front were beating off people trying to climb up the front of the boat. Someone reached up to cling on to the sun trap but Dann knocked him off into the water. All along both sides of the boat the passengers were using sticks, poles, oars — anything — to push the refugees back. A woman drowned: she could not swim. Some children reached a sandbank and began leaping up at the boat as it passed, and were beaten down. Mara, who was at the back with the women, saw how the people who had been shoved off the sides tried to swim after the boat. Han took the big bag of bread and threw bread into the water; soon all the attackers were fighting over the bread, snatching it from each other, eating it as they swam or waded. Then that stretch of river with its crowds was past, but the danger was not over, because there was another bend, and more swarms of refugees.

Again the guards were beating off people trying to reach up for a hold on the projecting sun trap. Again the water dragons dragged people under. Again the screams and cries and pleas filled the travellers with a frenzy of fear themselves, and they were crueller than with the earlier attackers. This was a bigger crowd, and they seemed to be well established on both banks, in a hundred different varieties of shack, shelter, hut, and lean-to. The smell here was worse, too, because of these refugee camps. Because they had been longer on the banks, they had attacked boats before, as could be seen by the way they were planning the assault. For ten minutes or so there was a real battle, and both Mara and Dann were in the thick of it, Dann at the front of the boat, Mara at the back. And then, another bend, and the din was gone. One minute it seemed the whole world was shrieks, yells, the sound of wood hitting flesh — and they were again on a peaceful river where trees and reeds stood along the banks. There were no water dragons: they had all gone downstream to the feast. The wind blowing into their faces meant that the smell had gone. And the travellers sank down into their places, took the cloths off their faces, and sat exhausted, while the fear and anger left them.

What would happen to those refugees? What had happened to the inhabitants of Rustam and the Rock Village, of Chelops and many other towns which had emptied because of the long drought? What did happen to people who lost their little place and had to flee? And if those refugees they had left behind did go back to their homes, what would they find, who would they find?

The boat was again moving slowly ahead. It had been two weeks since they had left Goidel. Now Han made them all listen, and said that because of the lowness of the water and the necessity of dodging the banks and shoals, and the nastiness of the attacks, she wanted more money from them. They realised that she did this on all these trips — this ugly, yellow, monkey woman with her little greedy eyes; they hated her, but they all paid out what she asked, because they were dependent on her knowledge of the river. More than once there had been mutters and grumbles, that they should throw her overboard and take the boat on themselves. But without her they would be aground on a sandbank within a few minutes, and they knew it. Mara gave her a bag of small coins. So much had been paid out for food and lodging at the inns for her and Dann that she now had only a few little coins left. And there was so much of this journey still to come before they got — where? North. Everyone talked all the time about "up there" and "up north" where things were so much better. How did they know? Who did know? When Han was asked if she knew she said, with her short, ugly little laugh, which despised the world, "It depends where you end up, doesn't it?"

Now the travellers had to brace themselves for another trial. In a couple of days, Han said, they would reach the canal where there would be a whole day of propelling the boat between banks so close that from them even a child could jump on to the deck. She had been up this way six months before, with no danger at this one place where it could be almost expected — the canal; but the war that had made refugees of so many people had spread this way from the East, and bands of soldiers were roaming the country. Han was keeping a closer watch than usual. Her eyes were always on the move, first one bank, and beyond it to the savannah, then the other bank, then ahead, as the river turned a bend, and behind, from where they had come.

Next day, they heard shouts, gruff commands, the thudding of feet on hard earth, and the boat was running level with a band of soldiers. When they turned their heads — all at the same moment — to stare at the boat, their faces were all alike: these were another version of the people who seemed, every one, to be cut from the same mould. They were heavy, ugly people. Their hair was a pale frizz. They were as alike as insects. They were Hennes soldiers, said Han: the Hennes were rulers in these parts. It was easy to imagine those robustly planted legs, stamp, stamp, stamp, as the legs of a single organism, perhaps one of those long, shiny, brown insects like worms, the length of a forearm, and their legs moving all together, like a rippling fringe. And the brown uniforms made a blur, like a long, brown crawler which, if crushed, shows it is filled with a whitish ooze. Easy to believe, too, that the Hennes were filled with it, and not with the healthy red blood of real people.

For a short time the boat and the soldiers were going along at the same pace. Another order was barked out, and the travellers understood that they were hearing a new language. For the first time in their lives, all of them, their ears did not understand words. Mara felt dismayed, lost, a support gone. They were leaving behind that Ifrik where everyone spoke Mahondi, and soon she would understand nothing. This seemed to her worse than anything that had happened until now. There was another barked order, and the soldiers turned sharply right and ran off to the east. During this time Han had stood still, watching, apprehensive. They were approaching the canal.

Mara sat waiting, watching Han, thinking that she looked like one of those long, lean, furry animals that stand on their hind legs peering everywhere with sharp eyes, when they sense danger, their little paws tucked up in front of them, like Han's, clutching her money bags. Mara was trying to take it all in, everything, every sound, the anxious faces around her, Han's every change of expression. What did you see, Mara? What did you see? That early lesson had been so thoroughly fixed in her that it was as if she still expected someone to say to her at the end of the day, "Mara, what did you see?" And today she would have said, before anything else, "I saw Han staring at something a long way off beyond the west bank. And when I looked I saw it too. Two people, but they were so far off you couldn't tell what they were."

But Han knew, for she said sharply to her passengers, "Spies. Men. Soldiers. Keep a good lookout."

But time passed, it lulled past like the sounds of water, and in Mara's mind was not only this river scene but in her inner eye the map on Can-dace's wall, and the big gourd globe. That globe, from "thousands of years ago" — or at least the information on it — showed where they were now a dense green, the rain forests, and big rivers everywhere; and they all flowed westwards towards the sea, which in Mara's mind was a flat blueness. Beyond the net on the globe that meant rivers, were the beginnings of other rivers, running north, and then west, a whole different net, separated on the globe by a distance the size of Mara's little fingernail. North — were they now approaching North? How would they know when North began? Ahead was nearly half the length of Ifrik, and she and Dann had travelled more than a third. On that old gourd globe that showed the big stain of green, the thick, wet rain forests, was now the savannah she could see, where rivers ran between dry banks. Beyond, on the globe, a yellow colour stretched almost from West to East, right across Ifrik: a desert of sand, covering most of North. But that was not desert now, for on the wall map that came from fewer of those "thousands of years ago" — how they enticed, and sang, those thousands, thousands of years ago — that North was a forest, not rain forest, but the kind of forest that had surrounded Rustam once. And through those forests that grew where once had been sand had run big rivers where on the globe no rivers had been. But the map, after all, was thousands of years ago too, and so who knew what was there now? Sand again? Sands shifted about, forests came and went, and this river she and Dann were on now might in a dry season simply disappear into its sandy bed. But it was the dry season. In the inns along its banks the inn keepers complained of hard times and shortages. This season of drought was not as bad as could be, for sometimes on the banks or sticking up out of the water could be seen skeletons of all kinds of animals from a previous drought. They had died from lack of water where water now was running between banks that had trees and rushes.

Han did not have to announce, "Soon we will have to enter the canal," because they could see the entrance; but before that was something that shocked and frightened them all. Squatting on a sandbank was a boat like this one, with a couple of dragons sunning themselves beside it, and on the boat, nobody. Han steered her boat near to it, and told the guards to use the oars to slow it. Han took an oar and banged it on the hull of the deserted boat. Nothing happened. No smell came from it. No one appeared from a hiding place. The little square of the sun trap had gone — no, it had been wrenched off its swivelling stalk and lay on the sand near one of the dragons. Han began hitting the dragons with an oar, and they slowly waddled into the water, which was shallow here, so they did not disappear but lay half-submerged, watching. Dann leaped from the side of their boat into the water, with a big splash, and had snatched up the sun trap, had splashed back, and had reached the trap up to Han, and grabbed at the hands reaching down to him, as one of the dragons whipped up out of the water — but he was already on the deck.

Han said, "They were taken to be soldiers. Or slaves." She threw the sun trap down, and went back to the prow. The canal banks were not much wider than the boat, and the water was low. It would be necessary to push the boat in, with oars, from the river that here spread into a shallow lake. Slowly the boat was pushed on to the water of the canal that stretched ahead out of sight, so low that the deck of the boat was well below the banks. Usually a day would be needed to get through the canal but conditions were so bad that this time it would take two days. And again Han demanded another fee from them all. She moved about among them, holding out a little bag, and their hatred of her seemed to feed her, because her face was screwed into a triumphant grin, and her eyes were full of malice. Mara thought, Isn't she afraid we will kill her? — and was surprised how easily the idea lodged in her brain, how pleasant was the picture of Han lying dead. Her heart had gone to sleep again, and she tested it by thinking of Meryx, which she tried hard not to do, and while her body was suddenly wrenched with need, her heart remained calm. A long time ago that seemed, and yet it was only a few weeks, and back in Chelops the Kin were still living through the difficulties of the dry season, which would not end there for a month. And now she did think of the new babes, and from there had to think of what was lying hidden in the dry dust outside Goidel, and it seemed her heart was not dead after all, for it began to ache. Would she ever hold her own child? In normal times — but Mara was beginning to wonder if there had ever been normal times — by now the older women would be admonishing her, Be quick, you are losing your best time for breeding. She was twenty. In normal times she would have had three or four children by now. The slaves in Chelops — that is, the slaves that served the Kin, slaves of slaves — had their first babies when they were fifteen or sixteen. Even the Hadron women began at about that age. As the slave of slaves, in Chelops, she would have had her own little house, with three or four children, and a man who might or might not live with her, but who would give her another child at the right time. In normal times... instead she was standing at the side of a boat, pushing with an oar at the side of a canal. Above her was a hot, blue sky. There was a smell from the slow canal water of steamy heat. As the oars and poles dug into the canal sides, the earth crumbled and fell in showers of dust and little stones on to the deck. Han was standing on her tiptoes to see as far over the edges of the canal as she could — and then again came the sound of thudding feet, this time not marching, but running, and shouts in that foreign language that dismayed and frightened all the travellers. On the western shore of the canal, opposite to the side where yesterday had appeared soldiers, there were about twenty soldiers, different ones. These were, Mara first thought, Mahondis, but then was doubtful: yes, they are — no, they can't be... yes, but they don't look.

There was nothing to be done. The soldiers stood immediately above the boat and barked orders at Han, in their language, which Han translated. "They are going to take the young women and the young men." Meanwhile, the six guards, strong men, three of them young, not much more than boys, like Dann, stood just behind Han, and for a moment did not know what to do. Then Dann hurled himself forward as the soldiers jumped down to grab the nearest young woman. The other guards joined him, while Han shouted, "No, don't, stupid idiots." But there was already a noisy fight on that side of the boat, and other passengers were joining in. Han was knocked down, and disappeared among scuffling, kicking, stamping feet. Her money bags scattered. Mara did not know she was going to do it, but she dived forward, snatched one up, and had returned to her place, so fast, so skilfully, it was as if she had been in a different time, for just a moment — only a second, two, and yet she had time to plan her move, which bag to choose, and how to slide back unnoticed while the bag went into her sack. She was amazed at herself. Now knives were flashing and she heard again the sickening sound of wood hitting bones, hitting flesh. There appeared on the bank a man, a soldier, who was clearly in command, for he shouted orders in that alien language, and then in Mahondi, "Stop it, at once." The soldiers at once stood back, and then so did the guards. Han, bruised, hurt, crawled on hands and knees to the front of the boat and crouched there, her head in her arms. This new man was a Mahondi. At the first sight of him Mara knew that he was, and the others were not. He was very like the men she remembered from her childhood, and like the Mahondis of Chel-ops. He was tall. He was strong and broad, because he was a soldier. His face — but at the moment he was angry, and frightening. An order. The soldiers went to the young women, tied their wrists, and lifted them up over the edge of the boat on to the bank. Four young women. When they came to Mara she said, in Mahondi, looking at the commander, "There is no need to tie me." And she went to the edge and jumped up herself. The three youngest of the guards, including Dann, and four other young men were tied and put up on the bank. Han was still crouching against the side, her arms over her head. The other passengers began poling the boat along, not looking at the soldiers on the bank. Then Mara said to the commander, "Quick, take that," — pointing to the broken sun trap from the other boat that Dann had rescued. An order. A soldier jumped down and back, with the sun trap. A dull square of tin, on a broken stem, no more than something to be kicked on to the nearest rubbish heap. The commander looked enquiringly at Mara, and she said, "It could be valuable."