"I did my best not to kill them," he told me, "but I killed two. Their bodies are back there in the water." I said it did not make any difference since the others would drown, and he said he hoped not. Later while Father was resting, Juganu flew back to get some of them. It was nearly dark then where we were.

Here I want to tell you about how Scylla went out to talk to the Great Scylla, but there are a couple other things I ought to tell about first, about the knives Father gave Babbie and what Scylla told Father at night in the dark.

So I am just going to put all that in here. Some of it he told me while we were waiting for daylight on the river boat, and some was while Juganu and Babbie were holding me down and he was straightening out my wound and bandaging it. (I was wiggling around quite a bit and he kept talking to me, I think mostly to try to keep me still.) Some was after that, too, while he was making potato soup with the fish.

To tell the truth, I am not exactly sure what he said where, so I am putting it all here.

About the knives. I wanted to know where he got them. I had been watching as good as I could in the dark and did not see him take them from anyplace. So he told me we could make things there that were not really real but were like real for as long as we wanted them. He said he had made the gold like that, but the captain probably did not know it was not there when he was not around because he had locked it in a strongbox. Naturally I wanted to know if I could do that, too; and he said I could but I would have to be careful or they would know it was a trick. I said I would be.

Scylla was Pas's daughter. Father talked like there were a lot of them, but he said she was the oldest one and the most important. She and her mother and some of Pas's other sprats had tried to kill him because they did not want people leaving the old whorl to come to Blue where they would not be the gods. So they tried to kill Pas, and for a long while they thought they had done it, and nobody would ever get to come. But Pas came back, and they had to hide.

There were two ways to hide, Father said. One was to hide in Mainframe. Scylla had talked about that, and he said she would know a lot more about all that than he did, but Mainframe was like the tunnels under the old whorl. There were branches and side tunnels and rooms and caves nobody knew about. So Scylla and the others that had tried to kill Pas hid in them, but not the way we would have. It was like I could hide my finger over here and my thumb over there. They had hidden little pieces of themselves all over, and Pas was still hunting for them and killing every little piece when he found it.

The other way was for them to hide in people. I had read about Patera Jerboa in the book, so I told him about it, and he said I was right. (This was while we were eating the soup. I remember now.) A god could hide in anybody who looked at a Sacred Window or even a glass, and once he was in there he did not have to do anything. If he just went in and kept quiet, it was just impossible for anybody to find out he was there.

But Scylla and the others found a new place. They found out that if they did it right they could go into animals. What usually happened, Father said, was that someone would bring an animal to sacrifice, for instance a goat. When they were getting ready to kill it, it would naturally be in front of the Window. Scylla or whatever god it was would get into it and break loose from whoever was holding it and run away.

"Pas soon realized what was happening," Father said, "and warned his worshippers. Thus when an animal went wild, they knew it had been possessed and hunted it down and killed it."

I said, "So it didn't work."

"Let us say it often failed. Some of the animals made good their escape, horses and birds particularly. There were other difficulties however. No doubt that was why the technique was almost never used until Scylla, Echidna, Hierax, and the rest were desperate to escape Pas. For one thing, most animals are not long-lived. You mentioned Patera Jerboa."

I nodded and said yes, I had.

"He was middle-aged when Pas possessed him, yet he yielded up his fragment of the god thirty years later. A horse may live for fifteen or twenty years, if it's well cared for; but that's extraordinary."

I said, "They can't talk either, except for Oreb."

"You are right." Father put down his soup. "But that is part of a larger and more serious problem. No horse or bull or bird has anything like the brain of a human being. If we think of the gods pouring themselves into us as wine is poured from a great cask into bottles, animals are small bottles indeed. If Scylla had possessed me instead of Oreb, the Scylla we would see on the Red Sun Whorl would still be far short of the Scylla who once existed in Mainframe. As it is, the Scylla we see is no more than a sketch of the original Scylla-of the daughter of the tyrant who assumed the name Typhon, the daughter who had pledged herself in secret to one of the sea gods of the Short Sun Whorl that would in time become our Red Sun Whorl."

I told him I had not known anything about that.

"She did," Father said. "It was a form of treason, of rebellion against her father. Abaia, Erebus, Scylla and the rest had taken posses sion of the waters, and were plotting to gain the land as well. According to what I was told on one occasion, they still are."

Juganu said, "Are you saying that our Scylla, the girl who comes out of Oreb, wants to ask this Red Sun goddess for help?"

"Yes. I thought you knew. She possessed Oreb, as I told you, because she knew he would soon be brought here. She felt sure-she told me this one night-that Pas would not have peopled Blue unless he had some way to go there himself to rule them. `Lord it' was the phrase she used. She was wrong, as I could have told her. In Oreb she searched this whorl for nearly a year, finding nothing better one or two landers with their glasses half intact. They would not or could not accept her-'Upload' was the word she employed. She'd been to the Red Sun Whorl with Jahlee and me, but hadn't let us know she was present. A few nights ago she spoke to me through Oreb, and from the way he talked and what he said, I knew the speaker was not he. She revealed her presence, and implored me to take her there again."

"Did she say Pas would kill her if he could?"

Father nodded and sipped from the wine bottle; sometimes it seemed like he was just pretending to eat and drink, and this was one of them. "That is indeed what she said, but I am not certain it's true and I'm not Pas."

Juganu had been listening to us, and had even swallowed some soup. He was a little and old again, about half the size he had been. "Pas will be angry with you. Isn't he your chief god?"

Father shook his head. "The Outsider is my chief god."

I said, "The only god you trust," because I was pretty sure from things like that he had said that I knew who he really was.

"Whom I don't trust half as much as I ought to, my son."

The bird lit on Father's shoulder about then. "Bird eat?"

"Of course. You brought the fish, so you are entitled to some of the soup."

I said it had already had the head and guts.

"Yes." Father smiled and shrugged. "Oreb's diet can't have been pleasant for Scylla, though she's never complained about it. Perhaps she is accustomed to it now; and since such things taste good to him, they may taste good to her, I hope so." He held up his spoon so the bird could get some in its beak. I had finished mine, and I do not think his could have been very hot.

I asked him about Pas. "You said she said she didn't think Pas would let anybody come here unless he could come, too. She must have known him for a long time."

Father agreed she had. "For three hundred years."

"Then why wasn't she right about that?"