The child said, 'Now if you'll read it, you'll know who you are and who we are.'
Her voice pleased me, and I patted her head. 'But there is so much to read here, little one. I've unrolled it enough to see that it's a long, long scroll, and the writing is very small. Besides, it was written with this and not with ink, and so the writing is gray, not black, which makes it hard to read. You can tell me these things, if you know them, much faster than I could read about them.'
'You have to go to the house of the Great Mother,' the child announced solemnly. Then she recited a poem. When it was over she said, 'Pindaros was taking you there.'
'I'm Pindaros,' the man told me. 'The citizens of our shining city designated me as your guide. I know you don't remember, but I swear it's the truth.'
A black man who had been sleeping with the sailors rose and climbed from his bench to the deck where we sat. It seemed to me that we had met before, and he looked so friendly and cheerful that I smiled to see him now.
He exclaimed, 'Hah!' when he saw me smile. Some of the sleeping men stirred at the sound, and those who were not asleep stared at us. The bowman, who had been watching and listening, put his hand to the knife in his belt.
'You must be less noisy, my friend,' Pindaros said.
The black man grinned in reply and pointed from his heart to mine, and then, triumphantly, from mine to his.
'You mean he knows you,' Pindaros said. 'Yes, perhaps he does, a bit.'
I said, 'Is he a sailor? He doesn't look like the others.'
'He's your comrade. He was taking care of you before Hilaeira and Io and I met you. Perhaps you saved his life in the battle, but he was using you to beg when I first saw you.' To the black man he said, 'You got a great deal by your begging, too. I don't suppose you still have it?'
The black man shook his head and pretended to gash his arm with his knife. Filling his hand with the unseen blood, he counted it out as money, making a little click with his tongue for the sound made by each imaginary coin as he put it on the deck. When he was finished he indicated me.
The child said, 'He gave it to the slaves that night when we camped, while you were writing poetry and talking to Latro. It was for the slaves Latro killed, because the slaves were going to kill him when we got to the Silent Country.'
'I doubt if the Rope Makers would have let them. Not that it matters; I had ten owls, but they got them in Tower Hill. I'd rather we were prisoners in Rope than in Tower Hill, but even Tower Hill would be preferable to Thought.' Pindaros sighed. 'We're their ancient enemies, and they are ours.'
Hypereides had been telling me how the ships of Thought had fought the barbarians, implying that I was a barbarian myself; now I asked Pindaros if his city and Thought were worse enemies.
His laugh was bitter. 'Worse by far. You forget, Latro, and so perhaps you've forgotten that brothers can be enemies more terrible than strangers. Our fields are rich, and theirs are poor; thus they envied us long ago and tried to take what was ours by force. Then they turned to trading, growing the olive and the vine, and exchanging oil, fruit, and wine for bread. They became great makers of jars too and sold them everywhere. Then the Lady of Thought, who loves sharp dealing, showed them a vein of silver.'
The black man's eyes opened wide, and he leaned forward to catch every word, though I do not think he understood them all.
'They had been rich. Now they grew richer, and we proved no wiser than they and tried to take what was theirs. There is hardly a family in our shining city that is not related to them in some way, and hardly a man in theirs-except the foreigners-who's not a cousin of ours. And so we hate one another, and cease to hate every four years when our champions give their strength to the Descender; then we hate again, worse than ever, when the games are done.' He pursed his mouth to spit but thought better of it.
I looked at the woman. She had eyes like thunderheads and seemed far more lovely to me than the woman painted on our sail. I did not wish to think this, but I thought that if Pindaros was a slave, I might somehow buy her and her child. 'And are we friends,' I asked her, 'since we've traveled together?'
'We met at the rites of the God of Two Doors,' the woman said. She smiled then, remembering something I could not recall; and I felt she would not object, that she would be content to live with me and leave her husband wherever his fate might take him. 'Then the slaves of the Rope Makers came,' she said, 'and while Pindaros and the black man faced their first antagonists, you killed three. But the others were going to kill Io and me, and Pindaros stepped in front of you and made you stop. For a moment I thought you were going to cut him down, and so did he, I think. Instead you dropped your sword, and they bound your hands and beat you, and made you kiss the dust before their feet. Yes, we're friends.'
I said, 'I'm glad I've forgotten that surrender.'
Pindaros nodded. 'I wish I could forget it too; in many ways, your state is a most enviable one. Nevertheless, now that the Shining God has directed you to the Great Mother, you'd better go to her and be cured if you can.'
'Who is this Great Mother?' I asked him. 'And what does the child's poem mean?'
Then he told me of the gods and their ways. I listened intently as he spoke, just as I had to Hypereides's account of the Battle of Peace; but though I do not know what it was I hoped to hear from each, I knew when each was finished that I had not heard it.
Now the sun is hidden behind our sail, though I sit in the bow again; the ship rocks me as a mother rocks her child. There are voices in the waves, voices that laugh and sing and call out one to another.
I listen to them too, hoping to hear some mention of my home and the family and friends I must surely have there.
CHAPTER IX-Night Comes
Across the sea, black shadows race like chariots. Though it will soon be too dark for me to write here, I will write as much as I can, and if I cannot write everything where I am, I will go to one of the fires and write there, then sleep.
I had hardly put away this stylus when the kybernetes spoke to the sailors, who stopped gambling and talking to furl the sail, strike the mast, and run out their oars.
It is wonderful to travel in such a slim, swift ship under sail; but it is far more so when the rowers strain at the oars and the ship leaps from the water at every stroke and falls back shouting. Then the wind is not behind the ship, but the ship makes her own, which you feel full in your face though silver spray blows across the bow.
Then too the flute boy plays, and the sailors all sing to his piping to keep the stroke; their song calls up the sea gods, who come to the surface to hear it, their ears like shells, their hair like sea wrack. For a long time I stood in the bow watching them and seeing the land brought ever nearer, and I felt that I myself was a god of the waters.
At last, when the land was so close I could see the leaves on the trees and the stones on the beach, the kybernetes came and stood beside me; and seeing that he meant to give no order for a few moments more, I ventured to tell him how beautiful I thought his ship and the others, which we had outdistanced and now saw behind us.
'There's none better,' he said. 'Hardly one as good. Say what you please about Hypereides, but he spared no expense on Europa. You may say it was to be expected, because he meant to take the command himself; but there's many another who did the same and got his timber cheap anyhow. Not Hypereides. He's got the wit to see that his honor's gone aboard her as well as his life.'
'He must be brave too,' I said, 'to take charge of this ship himself when he could have stayed safely at home.'
'Oh, he couldn't have done that,' the kybernetes told me, glancing at the beach. 'They're foolish enough in the Assembly at times, but never such fools as to let the men who supply the army and navy stay clear of the fighting. Not that Hypereides would have been safe in the city anyway; the barbarians burned it. Still, he could have served on land if he wanted. A good many did. But look at Clytia there. She's a fine ship too. My brother's
