rare qualities, he had a circle of devotees who stole for him.
“You may have this.” He passed her the cloth strip. She read it, as slowly and painfully as he’d written it.
“Become my artist now, and I shall write you many such verses,” Leep said. Mara tucked the strip carefully in her one pocket. It was worth preserving. Cloth was scarce. This was good cloth. She could use it for patching. She shook her head. “I wish to leave Fami. Which is the way?”
“There’s only one way: to follow your mother.”
She nodded in calm agreement.
“All ways lead to death,” he said, sententiously. “Even the way of acceptance, of remaining here. All shall die soon, for soon the glacier will flow over Fami.”
Again she nodded, and left him. As she walked back through the village of Fami, she looked around. This wide, fertile ledge, with its caves, shacks, and vegetable patches, this odd fault on the margin of the great glacier, was the only world she or its inhabitants had ever known.
Their ancestors fled here in the mountains for refuge from the pitiless, unending war sweeping the greater world.
But the war followed them.
Flying machines dropped fire and thunder on them, blowing great masses away from the mountain-side. The path had vanished in those rock-falls, leaving a sheer precipice on that side of the village.
On the other side, as always, was only the steep glacier, with its arm extended to overhang the village. It was so steep and glassy that if you went down it, you’d never be able to climb back—if you survived the descent. Above the glacier, snow-slopes reached up into the perpetual clouds. You might, possibly, climb them to the clouds. But only to meet death—for to breathe in the clouds was fatal.
There was good earth on the ledge. The survivors decided to remain there and make the best of things. They built shacks from the material residue of their caravan, hollowed out caves, tilled and sowed the earth, and called the place
“Fami,” which simply meant “Home.”
Most of the men were Army deserters. They brought the Army code with them. They’d lived so long by looting that they’d come to accept it as the primary method of acquiring food and property—indeed, the only honorable method. To do it properly, especially among fellow soldiers, required all one’s wits and ingenuity.
If you were too stupid, weak, or fearful to make a good thief, then you had to labor to grow the food and make the utensils for living. To have to fall back, thus, on merely producing was a confession of failure and carried a social stigma.
Mara was lucky, in one way. Her father’s father’s father had been in charge of Army provisions, knew all the tricks, and taught his family well. Her father had taught Mara well. She had, in fact, surpassed him, never fumbled it once.
But he did get caught once, at Filo’s granary. It was the law that if you caught a thief in the act of thieving, you had the right to kill him. It was justice: bungling must be punished. It was the only way to keep the standard of performance high, worthy of the name of art—for a professional chief claimed the title of “artist.”
