before our own Mother hooted us under her. Oh yes, and then would come Mother's earthshaking challenge and the strange Mother's answering roar, and we'd cling tight, feeling her surge of killfury, buffeted, deafened, battered while our Mother charged and struck. And once while our Mother fed I peeped out and saw a strange baby squealing in the remnants on the ground below.
But now it was my own dear Mother I saw lurching away through the mists, that great rusty-grey hulk so horned and bossed that only her hunting-eyes showed above her armor, swivelling mindlessly, questing for anything that moved. She crashed her way across the mountains and as she went she thrummed a new harsh song. Cold! Cold! Ice and Lone. Ice! And cold! And end. I never saw her again.
When the sun rose I saw that the gold fur was peeling from my shiny black. All by itself my hunting-limb flashed out and knocked a hopper right into my jaws.
You see, my berry, how much larger and stronger I was than you when Mother sent us away? That also is the Plan. For you were not yet born! I had to live on while the warm turned to cold and while the winter passed to warm again before you would be waiting. I had to grow and learn. To learn, my Lilliloo! That is' important. Only we black ones have a time to learn — the Old One said it.
Such small learnings at first! To drink the fiat water-stuff without choking, to catch the shiny flying things that bite and to watch the storm-clouds and the moving of the sun. And the nights, and the soft things that moved on the trees. And the bushes that kept shrinking, shrinking-only it was me, Moggadeet, growing larger! Oh yes! And the day when I could knock down a fatclimber from its vine!
But all these learnings were easy-the Plan in my body guided me. It guides me now, Lililoo, even now it would give me peace and joy if I yielded to it. But I will not! I will remember to the end, I will speak to the end!
I will speak the big learnings. How I saw-though I was so busy catching and eating more, more, always more-I saw all things were changing, changing. Changers! The bushes changed their buds to berries, the fatclimbers changed their colors, even the sun changed, and the hills. And I saw all things were together with others of their kind but only me, Moggadeet. I was alone. Oh, so alone!
I went marching through the valleys in my shiny new black, humming my new song Turra-tarra! Tarra Tan! Once I glimpsed my brother Frim and I called him, but he ran like the wind. Away, alone! And when I went to the next valley I found the trees all mashed down. And in the distance I saw a black one like me — only many times as big! Huge! Almost as big as a Mother, sleek and glossy-new. I would have called but he reared up and saw me and roared so terribly that I too fled like the wind to empty mountains. Alone.
And so I learned, my redling, how we are alone even though my heart was full of love. And I wandered, puzzling and eating ever more and more. I saw the Trails; they meant nothing to me then. But I began to learn the important thing.
The cold.
You know it, my little red. How in the warm days I am me, MyselfMoggadeet. Ever-grawing, everlearning. In the warm we think, we speak. We love! We make our own Plan, Oh, did we not, my lovemate?
But in the cold, in the night-for the nights were growing colder-in the cold night I was-what? Not Moggadeet. Not Moggadeet-thinking. Not Me Myself. Only Something-that-lives, acts without thought. Helpless-Moggadeet. In the cold is only the Plan. I almost thought it.
And then one day the night-chill lingered and lingered and the sun was hidden in the mists. And I found myself going up the Trails.
The Trails are a part of the Plan too, my redling.
The Trails are of winter. There we must go all of us, we blacks. When the cold grows stronger the Plan calls us upward; upward, we begin to drift up the Trails, up along the ridges to the cold, the night side of the mountains. Up beyond the forests where the trees grow scant and turn to stony deadwood.
So the Plan drew me and I followed, only half-' aware. Sometimes I came into warmer sunlight where I could stop and feed and try to think, but the cold fogs rose again and I went on, on and up. I began to catch sight of others like me far along the mountain flank, moving steadily up. They didn't rear or roar when they saw me. I didn't call to them. Each one alone we climbed on toward the Caves, unthinking, blind. And so I would have gone too.
But then the great thing happened.
— Oh no, my Lililoo! Not the greatest. The greatest of all is you, will always be you. My precious sunmite, my red lovebaby! Don't be angry, no, no, my sharing one. Hold me softly. I must say our big learning. Hear your Moggadeet, hear and remember!
In the sun's last warm I found him, the Old One.
A terrible sight! So maimed and damaged, parts rotting and gone. I stared,
thinking him dead. Suddenly his head rolled feebly and a croak came out.
'Young… one?' An eye opened in his festering head, a flyer pecked at it. 'Young one… wait!'
And I understood him! Oh, with love
No, no, my redling! Gently! Gently hear your Moggadeet. We spoke, the Old One and I! Old to young, we shared. I think it cannot happen.
'No old ones,' he creaked. 'Never to speak… we blacks. Never. It is not… the Plan. Only me… I wait…'
'Plan,' I ask, half-knowing. 'What is the Plan?'
'A beauty,' he whispers. 'In the warm, a beauty in the air… I followed… but another black one saw me and we fought… and I was damaged, but still the Plan made me follow until I was crushed and torn and dead… But I lived! And the Plan let me go and I crawled here… to wait… to share… but-11
His head sags. Ouickly I snatch a flyer from the air and push it to his torn jaws.
'Old One! What is the Plan?'
He swallows painfully, his one eye holding mine.
'In us,' he says thickly, stronger now. 'In us, moving us in all things necessary for the life. You have seen. When the baby is golden the mother cherishes it all winter long. But when it turns red or black she drives it away. Was it not so?'
'Yes, but-'
'That's the Plan! Always the Plan. Gold is the color of Mothercare but black is the color of rage. Attack the black! Black is to kill. Even a Mother, even her own baby, she cannot defy the Plan. Hear me, young one!'
'I hear. I have seen,' I answer. 'But what is red?'
'Red!' He groans. 'Red is the color of love.'
'No!' I say, stupid Moggadeet! 'I know love. Love is gold.'
The Old One's eye turns from me. 'Love,' he sighs. 'When the beauty comes in the air, you will see. .' He falls silent. I fear he's dying. What can I do? We stay silent there together in the last misty sunwarm. Dimly on the slopes I can see other black ones like myself drifting steadily upward on their own Trails among the stone-tree heaps, into the icy mists.
'Old One! Where do we go?'
'You go to the Caves of Winter. That is the Plan.'
'Winter, yes. The cold. Mother told us. And after the cold winter comes the warm. I remember. The winter will pass, won't it? Why did she say, the winters grow? Teach me, Old One. What is a Father?'
'Fa-ther? A word I don't know. But wait-' His mangled head turns to me. 'The winters grow? Your mother said this? Oh cold! Oh, lonely,' he groans. 'A big learning she gave you. This learning I fear to think.'
His eye rolls, glaring. I am frightened inside.
'Look around, young one. These stony deadwoods. Dead shells of trees that grow in the warm valleys. Why are they here? The cold has killed them. No living tree grows here now. Think, young one!'
I look, and true! It is a warm forest killed to stone.
'Once it — was warm here. Once it was like the valleys. But the cold has grown stronger. The winter grows. Do you see? And the warm grows less and less.'
'But the warm is life! The warm is Me-Myself!'
'Yes. In the warm we think, we learn. In the cold is only the Plan. In the cold we are blind… Waiting here, I thought, was there a time when it was warm here once? Did we come here, we blacks, in the warm to speak, to share? Oh young one, a fearful thinking. Does our time of learning grow shorter, shorter? Where will it end? Will the winters grow until we can learn nothing but only live blindly in the Plan, like the silly fatclimbers who sing but do not
