'Kill you? The Nameless One? Why?'
'I don't know.' It was as though she were the inquiring adult, he the child.
'But he's nice. Underneath. He wouldn't do that. Not just because it didn't work.'
Var shrugged. He had seen the Master run amuck. He believed.
'What are you going to do, Var?'
'Leave. He's giving me a day and a night.'
'But what will I do? I can't go back to the mountain now. Bob would kill me and he'd kill Sol and Sosa too. For losing. He told me he'd kill them both if I didn't fight, and if he finds out'
Var stood there having no answer.
'We weren't very smart, I guess,' Soil said, beginning to cry.
He put his arm around her, feeling the same.
'I don't know enough about the nomads,' she said. 'I don't like being alone.'
'Neither do I,' Var said, realizing that it was exile he faced. Once he had been a loner and satisfied, but he had changed.
'Let's go together,' Soli said.
Var though about that, and it seemed good.
'Come on!' she cried, suddenly jubilant. 'We can raid some other hostel for traveling gear, and and run right out of the country! Just you and me! And we can fight in the circle!'
'I don't want to fight you any more,' he said. 'Silly! Not each other! Other people! And we can make a big tribe with all the ones we capture, and then come back and'
'No! I won't fight the Master!'
'But if he's chasing you'
'I'll keep running.'
'But, Var!'
'No!' He shook her off.
Soli began to cry, as she always did when thwarted, and he was immediately sorry. But as usual he didn't know what to say.
'I guess it's like fighting your father,' she said after a bit. That seemed to be the end of it.
'But we can still do everything else?' she asked wistfully, after a bit more.
He smiled. 'Everything!'
Reconciled, they began their flight.
By dusk they were ensconced in an unoccupied hostel twenty miles distant. 'This is almost like home,' Soli said. 'Except that it's round. And everything's here I guess the nomads haven't raided it this week.'
Var shrugged. He was not at home in a hostel, but this had seemed better than foraging outside for supper. Alone, he would have stayed in deep forest; but with Soli 'I can fix us a real underworld meal,' she said. 'Uh, you do known how to use knives and forks? I saw how the cooks did it. Sosa says I should always be able to do for myself, 'cause sometime I might have to. Let's see, this is a 'lectric range, and this button makes it hot'
One word stuck in his mind as he watched her busily hauling out utensils and supplies. Sosa. That was the name of her stepmother, he knew. The little woman he had encountered underground, who had thrown him down so easily. The Master had spoken the name too. But there was something elso Sos! Bob of the mountain had called the Master Sos! And so had Tyl, earlier, he-remembered that now. As though the Nameless One had a name! And Sos would be the original husband of Sosa!
But Sol was married to Sosa, there in the mountain. And Sos was married to Sola. How had such a transposition come about?
And if Soil were the child of Sol and Sola was there also a Sosi, born of Sos and Sosa? If so, where?
