He could have picked up a good deal from mine. I got up from the place I was hiding and went to the door. I wanted to hear what they were saying about the omphalos.
They stood around the table, looking down at the map. Lutha’s fingers traced wandering lines of canyons and the tips of mesas, all ramified like the branches and twigs of trees, pointing off in all directions. Canyons run down all the sides of the mesas; mesas limit all the edges of the canyons. Except at the sea. And at the omphalos.
“Look at this,” said Leelson softly as he pointed to the southward leading canyon. “What does that mean?
‘Simi’dhm’a.’”
She raised her head. Later I was to learn what that posture meant, that alertness. Her mind was searching, searching.
“Separated,” she said. “Separated something. What would the root word be? Dhuma?”
“Could be.”
“The word for songfathers is hahm-dhuma. So this would be what? Separated father?”
He thought about it. “Ghost?” he suggested. “A parent who’s died?”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t have the right feel to it. I need a lexicon. Either that or I need a lot longer with the old chips. Tomorrow we’ll ask Chahdzi. Maybe he’ll tell us.”
“I will tell you,” I said from behind them.
They turned as one, surprised, perhaps a little hostile.
“There is a dark canyon, where the sun scarcely touches. It is Simi’dhm’a, which now means lost and lonely, though once it meant abandoned ones. Importances left behind.”
“Left behind where?” whispered Lutha. “Where, Saluez?”
“On the other world. Before we came here. On the world of Breadh. It was there we left Mother Darkness and Father Endless.”
They looked at me. I could feel the two men probing at me, trying to feel as I felt, feeling as I felt but not knowing why. Lost, they were. Not understanding.
“Why?” Lutha breathed. “Why did you leave them behind, Saluez?”
“Because of them,” I whispered, gesturing at the shuttered windows.
Leelson moved to the window. I hurried to turn off the lamp, an outlander lamp, one that runs on stored sunlight.
They watched as Leelson shifted the lever that controlled the shutters, opening them only a crack.
“Careful,” I whispered. “Oh, be careful.”
Fragile fingers slid between the slats. Luminous eyes peered in at us. Teeth as delicate and sharp as needles bit at the edges of the slats. My flesh knew those teeth. I cried out.
Lutha turned to me, reached for me, catching my veil with the bracelet she wore. My veil dropped. They saw my face. Lutha hesitated for only a moment, then drew me close to her and held me.
Leelson closed the lever.
From the darkness outside came the cries of petulant children, denied a treat. It was the sound I had heard after Masanees had sounded the gong. I had not heard the sound of wings, one or two approaching quietly, as was customary, but these same cries, the noisy approach of many, talking among themselves. And when they came in, they had not gorged themselves on the banquet prepared for them before settling on my back to do what they had come for. No. Instead they had grabbed my hair, pulled at me, raised my head, insisted upon getting at my face.
“They!” said Leelson with certainty. “They did that to you!”
They had, yes, but I did not reply. Instead I stood with my head on Lutha’s shoulder and let myself cry. I had not seen the beautiful people since the House Without a Name. Perhaps I had hoped never to see them again.
On Perdur Alas, Kane the Brain came in from the day’s labor in the fields, where they’d been planting various food and fiber crops for the ag-test. He was carrying a bundle on his shoulder, something wrapped in his own jacket, and he put it on the table in the lab, saying to no one in particular, “We found this thing in a cave out there.”
Snark was filing germination records, but she put the pile down and came over to see what it was. A jar, not unlike the jar in her cave.
“That’s Father Endless,” she said, tracing the pattern. “And Mother Darkness. And these are the horizons of sleep.”
“How do you know that?” Kane demanded, not too urgently. “You’ve never seen it before!”
“I’ve seen them before,” said Snark, remembering all at once that this was true. “My mother told me about them. On Breadh our people believed in them, but then our people listened to the words of the tempter and put their gods aside. My family was of the T’loch sdi, the old order.” The words came of themselves. Labels. An identity, for herself, for her mother, for certain other children, certain other mothers and fathers. The old order.
“What does that mean?”
She quoted what she had been told:
“We were faithful to our beliefs. Faithful to Father Endless, to Mother Darkness. When we died, we died into their keeping, for that was part of the everlasting pattern. We did not allow the tempter to sway us. Even after many generations on the new world, we remained faithful. And at last we ran away from the new world, fled from the new commandment. We came here. That is, my parents came here.”
“You weren’t born here.” Willit sneered. There was no real venom in his voice. The challenge was only habit.
“No. I think I was only a baby, though. I grew up here. Keeping away from the scourges of the tempter, until the ship came and took us survivors away.”
“Survivors!”
She rubbed her head fretfully. “Me. And the other children. Five of us. All the adults were gone by then.” Gone to Father Endless and Mother Darkness. Gone into the womb between the worlds. To the place where everything dwells in timelessness.
Willit started to say something sneery, but Kane stopped him. “Snark. Why did they call you survivors?”
“Because they didn’t believe we had lived here. They thought we’d survived a shipwreck, taken off in a survival pod, got twisted into a wormhole, and
