The Ships of Earth

EIGHT—PLENTY

The next morning they loaded the camels and moved southeast. No one said anything about it, but everyone understood that they were moving to put some distance between them and Dorova Bay. It was still no easy task finding a way through the Valley of Fires, and several times they had to backtrack, though now Elemak usually rode ahead, often with Vas, in order to scout a path that led somewhere useful. Volemak would tell him in the morning what the Index advised, and Elemak would then mark a trail that led to the easiest ascents and descents from plateau to plateau.

After a few days, they found another spring of drinkable water, which they named Strelay, because they would use their time there to make arrows. Nafai went out first and found examples of all the kinds of tree that the Oversoul knew would make good bows; soon they had gathered several dozen saplings. Some of them they made into bows at once, for practice and for their immediate hunting needs; the rest they would carry with them, allowing them to season into wood that would hold its spring. They also made hundreds of arrows, and practiced shooting at targets, men and women alike, because, as Elemak said, "There may come a time when our lives depend on the archery of our wives."

Those who had been good shots with a pulse were as good with the bow, after some practice, but the real challenge was developing the strength to pull far enough and steadily enough to hit more distant targets. There wasn't a one of them without aching arms and backs and shoulders for the first week; Kokor, Dol, and Rasa gave up early and never tried again. Sevet and Hushidh, however, developed into rather good archers, as long as they used smaller bows than the men.

It was Issib who thought of dyeing the arrow shafts a bright unnatural color so spent arrows would be easier to retrieve.

Then they moved on again, from fountain to fire, practicing archery as they went. They began to be proud of the strength in their arms. The competition in archery among the men became rather fierce; the women noticed but mentioned only among themselves that the men cared about no targets but the ones placed far enough away that Sevet's and Hushidh's smaller bows could not accurately reach them. "Let them have their game," said Hushidh. "It would be too humiliating for any of them to be beaten by a woman."

Without meaning to, they were soon running parallel to the caravan route, and rather close—they were back to raw meat for a while. Then one morning Volemak came out of his tent, holding the Index, and saying, "The Oversoul says we must now head west into the mountains until we come to the sea."

"Let me guess," said Obring. "We won't be able to see a city there."

No one answered him. Nor did anyone else mention their last venture near the Scour Sea.

"Why are we heading west now?" asked Elemak. "We've gone barely half the length of the Valley of Fires—the caravan trail doesn't come to the sea again until it reaches the Sea of Fire, due south of here. All we're doing is going far out of our way to the west."

"There are rivers to the west," said Volemak.

"No there aren't," said Elemak. "If there were, the caravanners through here would have found them and used them. There'd be cities there."

"Nevertheless," said Volemak, "we're going west. The Oversoul says that we'll need to make a long camp again—to plant crops, to harvest them."

"Why?" asked Mebbekew. "We're making good progress. The babies are all thriving well. Why another camp?"

"Because Shedemei is pregnant, of course," said Volemak, "and getting sicker with each passing day."

They all looked at Shedemei in surprise. She blushed—and looked no less surprised than the others. "I only began to suspect it myself this morning," she said. "How can the Oversoul know what I'm only guessing at?"

Volemak shrugged. "He knows what he knows."

"Pretty poor timing, Shedya," said Elemak. "All the other women are holding off on pregnancy because they're nursing, but now we have to wait for you."

For once Zdorab spoke up sharply. "Some things can't be timed precisely, Elya, so don't lay blame where there was no volition."

Elemak looked at him steadily. "I never do," he said. But then he dropped the matter and set out to the west, blazing a trail for the caravan.

Their route led up into real mountains—volcanic ones, with some relatively recent lava flows that had not yet been broken into soil. Issib used the Index to come up with information about the area—there were at least fifty active and dormant volcanos in this range of mountains fronting on the Scour Sea. "The last eruption was only last year," he said, "but much farther to the south."

"Which may be the reason the Oversoul is sending us to the sea this far north," said Volemak.

Hard as the climb was, coming down the other side of the mountain range was harder—it was steeper and more heavily overgrown. Indeed, it was almost a jungle high on the slopes of the mountain.

"The winter winds come off the sea," said Issib, "and there are squalls almost every day in summer, too. The mountains catch the clouds, force them up into the colder atmosphere, and bring down whatever moisture is in them. So it's a rain forest here in the mountains. It won't be as wet down by the sea." They were becoming used to Issib being the one who explored the Index; during days of travel, he was the only one with no other duties, and he carried the Index with him, one hand constantly on it, exploring. Zdorab had shown him so many tricks and back doors that he was almost as deft now as the librarian himself. And no one disparaged the value of the information Issib provided, because it was all he could provide.

They were in the middle of a tricky passage down a tangled ravine when they felt an earthquake -rather a violent one, which threw two of the camels off their feet and set the others to stamping and turning in confusion.

"Out of the ravine!" cried Issib at once.

"Out? How?" answered Volemak.

"Any way we can!" shouted Issib. "The Index says that this earthquake jarred loose a lake high up in the mountains—anything in the ravine is going to be swept away!"

It was a particularly bad time for an emergency—Elemak and Vas were far ahead, blazing a trail, and Nafai and Obring were hunting higher up in the mountain. But Volemak had been journeying far longer than Elemak, and had resources of his own. He quickly sized up the walls of the ravine and chose a route up through a jumble of rocks into a side canyon that might lead to the top. "I'll lead the way," he said, "because I'm the one who knows best what camels can do. Luet, you bring the women and children along—Meb, you and Zdorab herd the pack animals after us. Supplies first, cold- and dryboxes last. Issib, you stay within earshot of them, and stay in touch with the Index. Tell them when there's no more time. When they have to abandon the rest of the camels and save themselves. They must save themselves, as must you, Issya—more important than anything else. Do you understand?"

He was asking everyone, and everyone nodded, wide-eyed, terrified.

"Elemak is in the ravine," said Eiadh. "Someone has to warn him."

"Elya is fit to hear the voice of the Oversoul himself," said Volemak. "The water is coming faster than anyone can ride to catch up with him. Save his baby and his wife, Edhya. Now come on." He turned his camel and began the ascent.

Camels were not made for climbing. Their sedentary pace was maddening. But steadily they climbed. The earth shook again, and again—but the aftershocks were not as violent as the first had been. Volemak and the women made it to the top. Volemak had a fleeting thought of going back down to help, but Luet reminded him that in several places the path was not wide enough for two camels to pass—far from helping, he'd slow down the evacuation.

All the camels were above the floor of the ravine when Issib cried out, "Now! For your lives!" As soon as he saw that Meb and Zdorab both had heard, he turned his own camel and pushed his way in among the pack beasts. However, he could not control his animal forcefully enough to make headway faster than the rest. As Meb overtook him, he reached out and took the reins from Issib's feeble grasp, then began to drag Issib's camel faster and faster. Soon, though, they reached a narrow place where the two camels couldn't pass side by side, especially because of the bulk of Issib's chair. Without hesitation—without even waiting for his camel to kneel to let him dismount—Meb slid off to the ground, let go of his own camel's reins, and dragged on the reins of Issib's mount, hurrying it through the gap. Moments later, Zdorab came through the same narrow place, then came up beside them. "The Index!" he shouted.

Issib, who couldn't lift it, pointed to the bag on his lap. "It's looped to the pommel!" he shouted.

Zdorab maneuvered his animal close; Meb held Issib's camel steady. Deftly Zdorab reached out, unlooped the bag, and then, brandishing it high like a trophy, rode on ahead.

"Leave me now!" Issib shouted at Meb.

Meb ignored him and continued to drag his camel upward, passing the slower pack animals.

Soon they came to a place where Zdorab, Luet, Hushidh, Shedemei, Sevet, and Eiadh waited on foot. Mebbekew realized that he must be near the top now—Zdorab must have left the Index with Volemak, and Rasa and the other women must be keeping the infants on high ground. "Take Issib!" shouted Meb, handing the reins to Zdorab. Then Meb rushed back down the canyon to the next pack beast. He thrust the reins of the animal in Luet's hands. "Drag him up!" he cried. To each woman in turn he gave the reins of a pack animal. They could hear the water now, a roaring sound; they could feel the rumbling in the earth. "Faster!" he cried.

There were just enough of them to take the reins of all the pack animals. Only Meb's own mount, now last in line, was untended. She was clearly frightened by the noise of the water, by the shaking of the earth, and didn't stay close behind. Meb called to her, "Glupost! Come on! Hurry, Glupost!" But he kept tugging on the reins of the last pack animal, knowing that the coldboxes it carried would be more important, in the long run, than his own mount.

"Let go, Meb!" cried Zdorab. "Here it comes!"

They could see the wall of water from where they were, that's how high it was—higher, in fact, than the top of the ravine, so that they instinctively ran even higher up the slope they were standing on. Those at the top were never in danger of being swept away, though, for the water stayed lower than they were.

However, the water that was snagged into the side canyon they had climbed through shot up into it with such force that it rose higher than the main body of water in the ravine. It slammed into the last two camels and then into Meb, lifting them all off their feet and heaving them the rest of the way up the side canyon. Meb could hear women screaming—was that Dol, howling out Meb's name?—and then he felt the water subsiding almost as fast as it had risen, sucking him downward. For a moment he thought of letting go of the reins and saving himself; then he realized that the pack camel had braced itself and was now more secure on the ground than Meb himself. So he clung to the reins and was not swept away. But as he hung there, pressed against the side of the camel that he had saved, and which was now saving him, he saw his mount Glupost get dragged off her feet and sucked down into the maelstrom in the ravine.

In moments, he felt many hands on him, prying the reins from his fingers, leading him, sopping wet and trembling, up to where the others waited. Volemak embraced him, weeping. "I thought I had lost you, my son, my son."

"What about Elya?" wailed Eiadh. "How could he save himself from that?"

"Not to mention Vas," said Rasa softly.

Several people looked at Sevet, whose face was hard and set.

"Not everyone shows fear the same way," murmured Luet, putting an end to any hard judgments anyone might be inclined to make about the difference between Eiadh's and Sevet's reaction. Luet knew well that Sevet had little reason to care much whether Vas lived or died—though she wondered how much Sevet herself actually knew.

What was most in Luet's heart was the fact that Nafai was also not with them. He and Obring were almost certainly on high ground, and safe. But they would no doubt be deeply worried.

Tell him that we're safe, she said silently to the Oversoul. And tell me— is Elemak alive? And Vas?

Alive, came the answer in her mind.

She said so.

The others looked at her, half in relief, half in doubt. "Alive," she said again. "That's all the Oversoul told me. Isn't it enough?"

The water subsided, the level dropping rapidly. Volemak and Zdorab walked down the side canyon together. They found it a tangle of half-uprooted trees and bushes—not even the boulders were where they had been.

But the side canyon was nothing compared to the ravine itself. There was nothing left. A quarter hour ago it had been lush with vegetation—so lush that it was hard to make way through it, and they had often had to lead the camels through the stream itself in order to pass some of the tangles of vegetation. Now the walls of the ravine, from top to bottom, had not a single plant clinging to them. The soil itself had been scoured away, so that bare rock was exposed. And on the floor of the ravine, there were only a few heavy boulders and the sediments left behind by the water as it dropped.

"Look how the floor of the ravine is bare rock near the edges," said Volemak. "But deep sediment in the middle, near the water."

It was true: already the stream that remained—larger than the original one—was cutting a channel a meter deep through the thick mud. The new banks of the stream would collapse here and there, a few meters of mud slipping down into the water. It would take some time before the floor of the ravine stabilized.

"It'll be green as ever within six weeks," said Zdorab. "And in five years you'd never know this happened."

"What do you think?" asked Volemak. "If we stay to the edges, is it safe to use this as a highway down to the sea?"

"The reason we were using the ravine in the first place was because Elemak said the top was not passable—it keeps getting cut by deep canyons or blocked by steep hills."

"So we keep to the edges," said Volemak. "And we hope."

It took a while at the top of the ravine to check the camels' loads and be sure nothing had come loose during the scramble to safety. "It's better than we could have hoped, that we lost only the one camel," said Volemak.

Zdorab led his own mount forward, and held out the reins to Meb.

"No," said Meb.

"Please," said Zdorab. "Every step I take on foot will be my way of giving honor to my brave friend."

"Take it," whispered Volemak.

Meb took the reins from Zdorab. "Thank you," he said. "But there were no cowards here today."

Zdorab embraced him quickly, then went back to help Shedemei get the women with babies onto their camels.

It turned out that neither Zdorab nor Meb nor Volemak did much riding the rest of that day. They spent their time on foot, patrolling the length of the caravan, making sure the camels never strayed toward the thick and treacherous mud in the middle of the ravine. They had visions of a camel sinking immediately over its head. The footing was wet, slimy, and treacherous, but by keeping the pace slow, they soon reached the mouth of the ravine, where it emptied into a wide river.

There had obviously been much damage here, too, for the opposite side of the river valley was a mess of mud and boulders, with many trees knocked down and much bare soil and rock exposed. And the rest of the way down the river they could see that both banks had been torn apart. Ironically, though, because the force of the flood had been less intense here than in the ravine, their passage through the debris it left behind would be far harder.

"This way!"

It was Elemak, with Vas behind him. The two of them were on foot, but they could see that their camels were not far behind. They were on higher ground. It would be a steep but not very difficult climb to reach them.

"We have a path here through the high ground!" called Elemak.

In a few minutes they were gathered at the beginning of Elemak's path through the forest. As husbands and wives embraced, Issib noticed that the forest here was considerably less dense than it had been higher up the mountain. "We must be near sea level now," he said.

"The river makes a sharp bend to the west over there," said Vas, one arm around Sevet, his baby held against his shoulder. "And from there you can see the Scour Sea. Between this river and the one to the south it's open grassland, mostly, a few trees here and there. Higher ground, thank the Oversold. We felt the earthquakes, but when they passed we didn't think anything of them, except to worry that it might have been worse up where you were. Then suddenly Elya insisted we needed to go to the higher ground and look over the area, and just as we got there we heard this roaring noise and the river went crazy. We had images of seeing all the camels floating by, with all of you still riding on top of them."

"Issib was warned through the Index," said Volemak.

"It's a good thing we weren't all together," said Issib. "Four more camels, and we would have lost them. As it was, Meb lost his mount—because he was saving pack animals, I might add."

"We can wait for the stories until we're at our camp for the night," said Elemak. "We can reach the place between rivers before nightfall. There's little moon, so we want to have the tents up before dark."

That night they stayed up late around the fire, partly because they were waiting for dinner to cook, partly because they were too keyed-up to sleep, and partly because they kept hoping that Nafai and Obring would find the camp that night. That was when the stories were told. And as Hushidh bade Luet goodnight in the tent where she would be sleeping alone with her baby, she said, "I wish you could see as I see, Luet. That flood did what nothing else could have managed—the bonds between us all are so much stronger. And Meb … the honor that flows to him now…"

"A nice change," said Luet.

"I just hope he doesn't strut too much about it," said Hushidh, "or he'll waste it all."

"Maybe he's growing up," said Luet.

"Or maybe he just needed the right circumstance to discover the best in himself. He didn't hesitate, Issya says. Just dismounted and risked his own life dragging Issib to safety."

"And Zdorab took the Index, and then led us back down…"

"I know, I'm not saying Meb was the only one. But you know how it is with Zdorab. That gesture he made, giving his mount to Meb. It was a generous thing to do, and it helped bind the group together—but it also had the effect of erasing the memory of Zdorab's own role in saving us. Our minds were all on Mebbekew."

"Well, maybe that's how Zodya wants it," said Luet.

"But we won't forget," said Hushidh.

"Hardly," said Luet. "Now go to bed. The babies won't care how little sleep we got tonight—they'll be starving on schedule in the morning."

It was only a few hours after dawn when Nafai and Obring returned. They had been far from the flood, of course, but they had also been on the wrong side of it, so that coming home they had to find a place to cross either the ravine itself or the river. They ended up dragging the camels across the river upstream of the ravine, making a long detour around the worst of the destruction, and then crossing the river in shallow marshes and sand bars near the sea—at low tide. "The camels are getting less and less happy about crossing water," said Nafai.

"But we brought back two deers," said Obring happily.

With everyone reunited, Volemak made a little speech establishing this place as their campsite. "The river to the north we will name Oykib, for the firstborn boy of this expedition, and the river to the south is Protchnu, for the firstborn boy of the next generation."

Rasa was outraged. "Why not name them Dza and Chveya, for the first two children born on our journey?"

Volemak looked at her steadily without answering.

"Then we had better leave this place before the boys are old enough to know how you have honored them solely because they have penises."

"If we had had only two girls, and two rivers, Father would have named the rivers for them," said Issib, trying to make peace.

They knew it wasn't true, of course. For several weeks after they got there, Rasa insisted on calling them the North River and the South River; Volemak was just as adamant in calling them the River Oykib and the River Protchnu. But since it was the men who did more traveling, and therefore crossed the rivers more often, and fished in them, and had to tell each other about places and events up and down the rivers' lengths, it was the names Oykib and Protchnu that stayed. Whether anyone else noticed or not, however, Luet saw that Rasa never used Volemak's names for the rivers, and grew silent and cold whenever others spoke their names.

Only once did Nafai and Luet discuss the matter. Nafai was singularly unsympathetic. "Rasa didn't mind when women decided everything in Basilica, and men weren't even allowed to look at the lakes."

"That was a holy place for women. The only place like it in the world."

"What does it matter?" said Nafai. "It's just a couple of names for a couple of rivers. When we leave here, no one else will ever remember what we named them."

"So why not North River and South River?"

"It's only a problem because Mother made it a problem," said Nafai. "Now let's not make it a problem between us."

"I just want to know why you go along with it!"

Nafai sighed. "Think, for just a moment, what it would mean if I had called them the North and South rivers. What it would have meant to Father. And to the other men. Then it really would have been divisive. I don't need anything more to separate me from the others."

Luet chewed on that idea for a while.

"All right," she said. "I can see that."

And then, after she had thought a little more, she said, "But you didn't see anything wrong with naming the rivers after the boys until Mother pointed it out, did you?"

He didn't answer.

"In fact, you really don't see anything wrong with it now, do you?"

"I love you," said Nafai.

"That's not an answer," she said.

"I think it is," he said.

"And what if I never give you a son?" she said.

"Then I will keep making love to you until we have a hundred daughters," said Nafai.

"In your dreams," she said nastily.

"In yours, you mean," he said.

She made the deliberate decision not to stay angry with him for this, and as they made love she was as willing and passionate as ever. But afterward, when he was asleep, it worried her. What would it mean to them for the men to make their company as male-dominated as Basilica had been female-dominated?

Why must we do this? she wondered. We had a chance to make our society different from the rest of the world. Balanced and fair, even-handed, right. And yet even Nafai and Issib seem content to unbalance it. Is the rivalry between men and women such that one must always be in ascendancy at the expense of the other? Is it built into our genes? Must the community always be ruled by one sex or the other?

Maybe so, she thought. Maybe we're like the baboons. When we're stable and civilized, the women decide things, establish the households, the connections between them, create the neighborhoods and the friendships. But when we're nomadic, living lives on the edge of survival, the men rule, and brook no interference from the women. Perhaps that's what civilization means—is the dominance of the female over the male. And wherever that lapses, we call the result uncivilized, barbarian…manly.

They spent a year between the rivers, waiting for Shedemei's baby to be born. It was a son; they named him Padarok— gift—and called him Rokya. They might have moved on then, after the first year, but by the time little Rokya was born, three of the other women had conceived—including Rasa and Luet, who were the most fragile during pregnancy. So they stayed for a second harvest, and a few months more, until all the women but Sevet had completed their pregnancy and borne a child. So there were thirty of them that began the next stage of the journey, and the first generation of children were walking and most of them beginning to talk before they were on their way.

It had been a good two years. Instead of desert farming, they had lush, rain-watered fields on good soil. Their crops were more varied; the hunting was better; and even the camels thrived, giving birth to fifteen new beasts of burden. Making saddles was harder—none of them had ever learned the skill—but they found a way to put two toddlers on each of the four most docile animals, which always traveled in train with the women's camels. When the children first tried out the saddles, some of them were terrified—camels ride so high above the ground—but soon enough they were used to it, and even enjoyed it.

The journey was easy through the savanna along the seacoast; they ate up the kilometers as they never had before, even on the smooth desert west and south of Basilica. In three days they reached a well-watered bay that the men were already familiar with, having hunted and fished there during the past two years. But in the morning, Volemak dismayed them all by telling them that their course now lay, not south as they had all expected, but west.

West! Into the sea!

Volemak pointed at the rocky island that rose out of the sea not two kilometers away. "Beyond it is another island, a huge island. We have as long a journey on that island as we have had since we left the Valley of Mebbekew."

At low tide, Nafai and Elemak tried fording the strait between the mainland and the island. They could do it, with only a short swim in the middle. But the camels balked, and so they ended up building rafts. "I've done it before," said Elemak. "Never for a saltwater crossing, of course, but the water here is placid enough."

So they felled trees and floated the logs in the bay, binding them together with ropes made of the fibers of marsh reeds. It took a week to make the rafts, and two days to take the camels across—one at a time—and then the cargo, and then, last of all, the women and children. They camped on the shore where they had landed, as the men poled the rafts around the island to the southwestern tip, where again they would need the rafts to ferry everyone and everything to the large island. In another week the company had traversed the small island and crossed to the large one; they pushed the rafts into the water and watched them float away.

The northern tip of the large island was mountainous and heavily forested. But gradually the mountains gave way to hills, and then to broad savannas. They could stand at the crest of the low rolling plain and see the Scour Sea to the west and the Sea of Fire to the east, the island was so narrow here. And the farther south they went, the more they understood how the Sea of Fire earned its name. Volcanos rose out of the sea, and in the distance they could see the smoke of a minor eruption from time to time. "This island was part of the mainland until five million years ago," Issib explained to them. "Until then, the Valley of Fires came right down onto this island, south of us—and the fires still continue in the sea that has filled the space between the two parts of the valley."

Growing up in Basilica, most of them had never understood the forces of nature—Basilica was such an unchanging place, with so much pride in its ancienthood. Here, even though the timespans were measured in the millions of years, they could clearly see the enormous power of the planet, and the virtual irrelevancy of the human lives on its surface.

"And yet we're not irrelevant," said Issib. "Because we are the ones who see the changes, and know them, and understand that they are changes, that once things were different. Everything else in the universe, every living and non-living thing, lives in the infinite now, which never changes, which always is exactly as it is. Only we know the passage of time, that one thing causes another and that we are changed by the past and will change the future."

The island widened, and the ground became more rugged. They all recognized it as being the same kind of terrain as the Valley of Fires—the continuation of that valley that Issib had predicted. But it was quieter—they never found a place where gases from inside the earth burned on the surface—and the water was more likely to be pure. It was also drier and drier the farther south they went, though they were rising up into mountain country.

"These mountains have a name," Issib told them, from the Index. "Dalatoi. People lived here before the island split away from the mainland. In fact, the greatest and most ancient of the Cities of Fire was here."

"Skudnooy?" asked Luet, remembering the story of the city of misers who withdrew from the world and supposedly held most of the gold of Harmony in hidden vaults beneath their hidden city.

"No, Raspyatny," said Issib. And they all remembered the stories of the city of stone and moss, where streams flowed through every room in a city the size of a mountain, so high that the upper rooms would freeze, and those who lived there had to burn fires to melt the rivers so that the lower rooms would have water all year.

"Will we see it?" they asked.

"What's left of it," said Issib. "It was abandoned ten million years ago, but it was made out of stone. The ancient road we're following led there."

Only then did they realize that they were indeed following an ancient road. There was no trace of pavement, and the road was sometimes cut by ravines or eroded away. But they kept returning to the path of least resistance, and now and then they could see that hills had been cut into to make a place for the road to go, and the occasional valley had been partly filled in with stone which had not yet worn down to nothing. "If there had been more rain here," said Issib, "there'd be nothing left. But the island has moved south so that this land is now in the latitudes of the Great Southern Desert, and so the air is drier and there's less erosion. Some of the works of humankind leave traces, even after all this time."

"Someone must have used this road in the past ten million years," said Elemak.

"No," said Issib. "No human being has set foot on this island since it fully split off from the mainland."

"How can you know that!" Mebbekew scoffed.

"Because the Oversoul has kept humans from coming here. No one even remembers that this island exists. That's how the Oversoul wanted it. To keep things safe and ready… for us, I guess."

They saw Raspyatny for a whole day before they reached it. At first it simply looked like an oddly textured mountain, but the closer they got, the more they realized that what they were seeing were windows carved into the stone. It was a high mountain, too, so that the city carved into the face of it must be vast.

They camped northeast of the city, where a small stream flowed. They followed the stream and found that it flowed right out of the city itself. Inside, it made cascades and the walls near it were thick with moss; it was much colder than the desert air outside.

They took turns exploring, in large groups, leaving some in charge of the children and animals while the others clambered through the remnants of the city. Away from the stream, the city had not been so badly eroded inside, though nowhere was the interior as well preserved as the outer wall. They realized why, when they found a few traces of an aqueduct system that had, just as the legend said, carried water into every room of the city. What surprised them, though, was the lack of internal corridors. Rooms simply led into each other. "How did they have any privacy?" asked Hushidh. "How did they ever have any time to themselves, if every room was an avenue for people to walk right through?"

No one had an answer.

"More than two hundred thousand people lived here, in the old days," said Issib. "Back when this whole area was farther north, and much better watered—all the land outside was farmed, for kilometers to the north, and yet their enemies could never attack them successfully because they kept ten years' worth of food inside these walls, and they never lacked for water. Their enemies could burn their fields and besiege them, but then they'd starve long before anyone in Raspyatny ever felt the slightest want. Only nature itself could depopulate this place."

"Why wasn't all of this destroyed in the earthquakes of the Valley of Fires?" asked Nafai.

"We haven't seen the eastern slope. The Index says that half the city was wiped out in two great earthquakes when the rift first opened and the sea poured through."

"It would have been glorious to see a flood like that," said Zdorab. "From a safe place, of course."

"The whole eastern side of the city collapsed," said Issib. "Now it's just a mountainside. But this side stayed. Ten million years. You never know. Of course, the streams are eroding it away from the inside, making the outside more and more of a hollow shell. Eventually it'll cave in. Maybe all at once. One part will break, and that'll put too much stress on what is left, and the whole thing will come down like a sandcastle on the beach."

"We have seen one of the cities of the heroes," said Luet.

"And the stories were true," said Obring. "Which leads me to wonder whether the city of Skudnooy might be around here somewhere, too."

"The Index says not," said Issib. "I asked."

"Too bad," said Obring. "All that gold!"

"Oh, right," said Elemak. "And where would you sell it? Or did you think you'd eat it? Or wear it?"

"Oh, I'm not allowed even to dream of tremendous wealth, is that it?" said Obring defiantly. "Only practical dreams allowed?"

Elemak shrugged and let the matter drop.

After leaving the vicinity of Raspyatny—and it took them another whole day to pass around the western side of the city, which really seemed to have covered the whole face of the mountain—they made their way through a high pass, which once again seemed to have been made almost uniform in width in order to accommodate a heavily trafficked road. "Once this was the highway between the Cities of Fire and the Cities of the Stars," said Issib. "Now it leads only to desert."

They came out of the pass and a vast, dry savanna spread out below them; they could see that the island narrowed here, with the Sea of Stars to the east and, far to the west, the blue shimmer of the southern reaches of the Scour Sea. As they descended, they lost sight of the western sea; instead, at the urging of the Oversoul, they hugged the eastern shore, because more rain fell there, and they could fish in the sea.

It was a hard passage—dry, so that three times they had to dig wells, and hot, with the tropical sun beating down on them. But this was exactly the sort of terrain that Elemak and Volemak had both learned to deal with from their youth, and they made good time. Ten days after they came down from the pass through the Dalatoi Mountains, the Oversoul had them strike south when the coastline turned southeast, and as they climbed through gently rolling hills, the grass grew thicker, and here and there more trees dotted the landscape. They passed through low and well-weathered mountains, down through a river valley, up over more hills, and then down through the most beautiful land they had ever seen.

Stands of forest were evenly balanced with broad meadows; bees hummed over fields of wildflowers, promising honey easily found. There were streams with clear water, all leading to a wide, meandering river. Shedemei dismounted from her camel and probed into the soil. "It isn't like desert grassland," she said. "Not just roots. There's true topsoil here. We can farm these meadows without destroying them."

For the first time in their journey, Elemak didn't bother riding ahead to confer with Volemak about a campsite. There was no place that they passed through where they could not have stopped and spent the night.

"This land could hold the population of Seggidugu and they could all live in wealth," said Elemak. "Don't you think so, Father?"

"And we're the only humans here," he answered. "The Over-soul prepared this place for us. Ten million years, it waited here for us."

"Then we stay here? This is where we were coming?"

"We stay here for now," said Volemak. "For several years at least. The Oversoul isn't ready yet to take us out into the stars, back to Earth. So for now this is our home."

"How many years?" asked Elemak.

"Long enough that we should build houses of wood, and let our poor old tents become awnings and curtains," said Volemak. "There'll be no more journeying by land or sea from this place. Only when we rise up into the stars will we leave here. So let us call this place Dostatok, because it has plenty for our needs. The river we will name Rasa, because it is strong and full of life and it will never cease to supply us with all we need."

Rasa nodded her head gently to acknowledge the honor of the naming; as she did, she had the tiniest smile, which Luet, at least, recognized as a sign that Rasa knew her husband was trying to be conciliatory in his naming.

They made their settlement on a low promontory overlooking the mouth of the River Rasa, where it poured into the Southern Ocean—for that was how far south they had come, leaving the Scour Sea and the Sea of Stars behind them. Within a month they all had houses of wood, with thatched roofs, and in this latitude they had a growing season almost all the year, so it hardly mattered when they planted; there were some rains almost every day, and heavy storms swept over quickly, doing no damage.

The animals were so tame they had no fear of man; they soon domesticated the wild goats, which clearly were descended from the same animals that were herded in the hills near Basilica—camel's milk at last became a liquid that only baby camels had to drink, and the term "camel's cheese" became a euphemism for what well-fed babies left in their diapers. In the next six years, more babies were born, until there were thirty-five young ones, ranging in age from nearly eight years to several newborns. They farmed their fields together, and shared equally from the produce; from time to time the men would leave and hunt together, bringing home meat for drying and salting and skins for tanning. Rasa, Issib, and Shedemei undertook the education of the children by starting a school.

Not that their lives were one unrelenting tale of joy and peace. There were quarrels—for an entire year Kokor would not speak to Sevet over some trivial slight; there was another quarrel between Meb and Obring that led to Obring building a house farther from the rest of the group. There were resentments—some felt that others weren't working hard enough; some felt that their kind of work was of greater value than the labor of others. And there was a constant undercurrent of tension between the women, who looked to Rasa for leadership, and the men, who seemed to assume that no decision was final unless Volemak or Elemak had approved it. But they weathered all these crises, all these tensions, finding some balance of leadership between Volemak's loyalty to the purposes of the Oversoul, Rasa's clearsighted compassion, and Elemak's hardheaded assessments of what they needed to survive. Any unhappiness that hey might harbor in their hearts was kept in check, buried under the hard work that marked the rhythms of their lives, and then dissolved in the moments when joy was bountiful and love unstinted.

Life was good enough over the years that there was not a one of them who did not wish, when they thought of it at all, that the Oversoul would forget that they were there, and leave them in peace and happiness in Dostatok.