suddenly gone, leaving unmasked only the dull weight of his failure to escape from Melizar.
The old one twisted his pyramid a second time, and another of the attendants performed complex motions on the tabletop, this time with sparkling crystals of pale violet. Again Jemdion felt the inner rush and the shudder of the boulder as it responded. Craning his neck backward, he saw their rotation slow and the uprushing ground now directly overhead.
The whispering chatter became more intense. The old one worked with his pyramid almost continuously, Jemidon felt a series of short rushes and re-anchorings. Like gambling in a complex game of chance, the manipulants alternately placed small colored stones on the table, maneuvered them briefly under the old one's hands, and then shoved them away.
Suddenly the one with the sextant waved his arms and all activity stopped. The old one slumped down beside the tablestone, apparently exhausted. Two of the others cautiously rose out of their pits and headed for the scaffolding, Jemidon looked upward to see the ground rushing closer, not quite as fast as it had before, More importantly, it also began moving to the side.
As he watched, the rate of closing became less and less. The lateral motion increased until the features on the ground streaked by in a rush. Finally they seemed to stop falling altogether and flew over the surface at a blistering pace, skimming along over the ground faster than any bird could fly.
For a long moment, nothing happened; then the sextant holder shouted, pointing to the left and far ahead. Jemidon saw the old one direct one more manipulation, and they resumed their descent to the surface. Smaller features resolved as they grew closer, the wrinkles of mountain slopes, the canopy of individual trees. Jemidon held his breath as they skimmed over a small ridge and then above a marshy plain. He recognized the grazing animals that had appeared in Drandor's initial animation and, stalking them behind the cover of tall grass, the strong-jawed dogs.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a net billow from the scaffolding to catch the wind. Working two-handled cranks, the manipulant at the scaffolding let out enough line so that each end of the net skimmed along the ground. With a hoot of panic, the grazing beasts saw it coming and began to stampede out of its path. The race of the boulder was too swift, however; in an instant, two or three were caught and scooped from their feet. Jemidon heard a soft, tinkling laughter and saw the manipulant next to him beat his thigh with his palm in apparent delight. The crank handles spun, slowly drawing the trapped beasts from the surface up onto the rock.
Jemidon noticed that the distance between the boulder and the surface began to widen. They had passed the point of closest approach. Gradually the lateral motion turned into one of recession. As quickly as they had come, they were now speeding away back into the reddish sky.
The tension seemed to dissolve from among the manipulants. They all gestured at one another with a curious contortion of the fingers of the right hand. While two hauled in the catch, three others helped the old one out of the pit and into the opening that led inside the rock. Another manipulated the mirror linkage, and coded bursts of light radiated out in all directions. Finally one returned to where Delia and Jemidon lay still, huddled in their pit. He brandished a short sword of copper and motioned them to follow the others inside. Jemidon looked into the manipufant's face and slowly released his grip. The sword he did not mind. What disturbed him most was the smacking of the thick, pulpy lips. Perhaps it would have been best if their encounter had not been a near miss after all.
Jemidon stared at the pile of coins in his lap. Slowly he put them back into the battered changer, one by one. Playing with Benedict's problem was probably what had kept him sane. Besides Delia, it was his only contact with the realm from which they had been cast.
Marooned in Melizar's universe they were; there was no doubt about it. And time was running out. There was no easy way to measure it here, but it was slipping away nonetheless. Over twoscore times they had slept while nothing else seemed to have changed.
Despite what he had suspected after the encounter with the larger sphere, he and Delia had not felt the sharpness of the copper blade. Instead, they were shown to small caverns carved from the rock. And once cautious tastes of meat from herd animals proved to produce no ill effects, their basic needs were provided for as well. The manipulants were even friendly in an offhanded sort of way. Teaching each other their languages had begun almost immediately. He had learned much after a few sessions of struggling with the basic concepts.
They were not prisoners; they could come and go as they chose. But as Jemidon had soon learned, their freedom meant very little indeed. Melizar had been right. Isolating him on a hunk of granite was a perfect prison. There were no exotic powders with which to summon the stronger demons, He and Delia were trapped, hopelessly trapped, far more removed from freedom than in any pit a few feet beneath the ground. How could they possibly escape before Melizar summoned them back to enjoy his meal?
Jemidon looked at the sky. And even if they could escape, escape to what? One speck of rock apparently was no better than any other. The djinn would find them, no matter which they were on. And even if they were able to make the transition back on their own, would even that be in time, before whatever they returned to was totally lost?
Jemidon pulled the leather vest tighter, but it did not help. He massaged one cold hand with the other. At least their worst fears had yet to be realized. The old one and the others seemed to have enough marrow from the grazing animals to keep them satisfied. There was no need for either hibernation or feasting. Other than a few appraising leers and teasing grasps, he and Delia had been left fairly well alone.
Not that anyone could ever be very far removed from the others. Jemidon was able to visualize almost every feature of the rock in his mind's eye. Honeycombed with caverns, a thousand feet across and almost perfectly round, it would have been an impressive monolith on an Arcadian plain. But here it was a mere speck, smaller than most of the others that floated in the sky.
Jemidon felt a slight twinge in his stomach and absently rubbed his side. He was aware of the drifting all the time now, although they all seemed mild and quite far away. Since the initial demonstration upon their arrival, the old one had made no more displays of his craft.
Jemidon looked down at his changer. He had mused over the facts so many times that even the critical nature of the situation could no longer stifle the undercurrent of boredom that mingled with the threat of ultimate doom. It was indeed fortunate that he still had the collection of coins to divert his attention when the level of frustration was particularly high. Not that Benedict's problem was proving any easier to unravel. With his latest sequence for loading the changer, the five coppers came out of a single column and the silver did, too. But the brandels were interleaved with the rest. The initial condition still was not set right. And any small change in the order with which he inserted the coins made the confusion worse. Perhaps there was no solution-a bad omen for the other, more important problem he somehow had to solve.
A shadow crossed the doorway. Jemidon looked up to see one of the rock's inhabitants enter and settle cross- legged on the other side of the floor. His face was old and, save for the operator of the pyramid, more leathery than any other in his small band. In large patches, the translucence of his skin had dimmed to milky opaqueness. Deep wrinkles surrounded his eyes, like waves gently lapping on a shore. His black hair was streaked with white on a head that peaked in a slight ridge running from the brow to the base of the skull. He held his token of leadership, a small shovel with a long and deep blade, in stiff fingers that did not completely curl about the shaft.
'The other, the one you name a female,' the visitor said softly, 'she is tired. Tired of teaching to me your speech.'
'Anything tires with repetition, Ponzar,' Jemidon said as he puzzled through the accent. Ponzar had shown an amazing aptitude for vocabulary and syntax, but his diction was distorted and hard to understand. 'Delia has spent many of our hours with you over twoscore of our days. She probably is no more bored than I.'
'Repetition?'
'To do something over and over, again and again,' Jemidon explained.
'Ah, then life is repetition,' Ponzar said. 'Forever we drift in the sky. Swoop to the larger lithons. Trade for water. Fly away from the air that is foul. Harvest the lodestones that have the power. The Skyskirr have done this since-since the great expansion. Until the right hand wills a change, we will do so forever after.'
'And yet you show an interest in our tongue,' Jemidon said. 'Perhaps the time between encounters does not pass so swiftly for you either.'
Ponzar twirled the shovel in what Jemidon had learned was the equivalent of a shrug. 'It is the talent of a
