He shrugged. "Are you so certain she was wrong?"

"You said she and the bird couldn't find anyplace."

"Correct. Pas has not yet come, perhaps. Or perhaps he has, and Oreb simply failed to find the place that Pas found or created. You pointed out that she had long years in which to learn the nature of her father."

He grinned at me then, and I laughed too.

"Yet she believed that she and her mother-with Hierax and Molpe, though Molpe cannot have been of much help-would prove strong enough to destroy him. She was clearly wrong about that; she underestimated him, and badly."

He stopped to think and give the bird more soup. It would pick flakes of fish and cut-up potato out with its beak. "Would you like my opinion?"

I nodded, and Juganu said, "Very much, Rajan."

"Then I believe Pas knows that as the years pass we will come to realize how much we need him, and bring him. New Viron sent me for Silk. That was foolish, because no mere man could repair all the evil there. Silk did his best for Viron itself, but left it scarcely better than he found it. The same impulse will be applied to Pas in another generation, surely."

I asked if he thought a god could do it, and he said that the people themselves would have to, even if a god helped them.

We both wanted to know why Scylla wanted to talk to that other Scylla in the Red Sun Whorl, and he said, "She wants to describe her efforts in the Long Sun Whorl, and to obtain the Greater Scylla's advice. No doubt she is hoping for help as well, though she will not say so. If she were to leave Oreb and return to Mainframe-we would have to visit the Long Sun Whorl, of course-she would be destroyed. At least she believes she would be, and that's deterrent enough. If she simply remains where she is, she will perish when Oreb dies."

"No cut!" the bird said, which made me and Juganu laugh.

Father also said, "I am by no means eager to overhear their conversation, if it takes place; but I would like a word with that Greater Scylla myself."

He got his second wish, but not the first one, when we went back to the boat on the river.

We sailed through the delta. The river breaks into five big streams there, the captain told us, and so many little ones that nobody could count them. They were always changing anyway, he said, so we had to pick our way along.

Scylla went out on the bowsprit. It was long and she went almost to the end. I sat on the big carved railing and let my feet hang over. I had left my wound behind on Blue, mostly. There were no bandages anymore and I was not bleeding, but it sort of hurt and I did not feel strong. Father had said I could make things, but he had worried about me making cards or anything like that. So I did a couple little things I did not think would bother him or anybody, a nail was one, and a seashell. The way you did it was to hold your hands together and think about what you wanted, them pull them apart slowly getting whatever it was right. When I had each thing the way I wanted it, I tossed it in the water.

Then I looked around to see if anybody was watching, and I made Hide. That was a lot harder. It was nice to have him with me and be able to sit and talk to him about everything; but it was hard, too, to keep him there, and after a while I let him go. Now he says he cannot remember being there or anything we said.

What it was, was like I remembered him better than I have really remembered anything in my life. As long as I did, he was there with me. But the delta was interesting, everything very green and wrecked ships up on the islands, some mostly buried in the mud and little shacks that did not even seem to know they were just little shacks made out of driftwood where it had been palaces and forts. You saw walls leaning so far it seemed like they couldn't stand another day. And one time I got to looking at an old statue there that seemed to me like if only I could have talked to her it would have been the most wonderful thing in my life, and then I looked around to say something to my brother, and he was nearly gone. He came back fast and said, "Sorry!" Right after that I let him go.

The delta was all swampy, and the water was black. Before I guess I thought it was only black because it was night, but now the Red Sun was up and it was still black. Looking at the delta, that bright green everywhere, I got the feeling that I was looking at a body so old moss was growing on the bones and the hard dead meat of it. About then I saw there was nobody around anywhere, that the little driftwood shacks had nobody in them, and what had happened was the stone forts and palaces had lasted because they had been built the best, and the shacks because there had been people in them not so long ago and they had not had time to fall down. But they were empty now, and the houses and buildings that had been between the palaces and the little shacks had rotted away or maybe burned, and there would never be anybody there again, but people like us.

When we got out of the delta, that was the open sea that they call Ocean. It was like our sea and it was not. If you wanted to look for what was the same, there was a lot. But if you wanted to look for what was different, there was a lot too. The smell was different. The color was not the same, either, but it was hard to say just what was changed. That may have been the dark sky, mostly, and the stars. This sea knew night was coming, when everything would die. There was more foam, and I think this Red Sun Sea had more salt in it.

Out on the bowsprit, the girl started calling. She did not say a name or anything. She did not say any words. It was like people sitting on the sand clicking shells together and sometimes blowing through them. It did not sound bad, it was almost like music. Only you knew she was calling something, and when it came it was going to be bigger than anything and you were not going to like it.

That went on for a long time, so long that I got worried about us back in our boat. I think Babbie did, too, because a couple times he came up to Father and pulled on his sleeve. Babbie never could talk but you generally knew what he wanted. He had tied a piece of rope around him and put the knives Father gave him through it.

Here I want to say something else about them. This may not be the best place, but I want to make sure I say it so everybody who reads this understands and this is where I am writing. After I got shot, when Juganu and Babbie were holding me down, Babbie was trying to smile at me. He is not very good at it and does not try much. This time he did, I think because he knew how much it hurt and he wanted me to see that he was not holding me out of meanness, but he liked me and was trying to help. People hunt huses and shoot them and eat them. Sinew used to a lot, and I have done it myself. But after getting to know Babbie the way I did on the boat I could never do it again.

Anyway, his mouth was sort of open, not just the ends of the lips turned up, and looking in it I saw those knives. They were the big ripping tusks in his bottom jaw. The curve was the same and the shape was almost the same except the knives were longer. The tusks he had here were the knives in the Red Sun Whorl.

If I had been the girl, I would have given up after an hour or so. Maybe not even that long. She did not, and after a while I just wanted to get away from there. I went down in the waist, which was what you call the middle of a boat, and watched Juganu wrestle a sailor.

When I went back up on the foredeck, she was still singing. The bird was on her shoulder, and Father was out on the bowsprit too, maybe four cubits behind her. He called me over, and when I had come as far as the grating, he told me to tell the captain to strike all sail. I took Babbie with me, and the captain did it. After that we just drifted, rolling a little. We were on the open sea, out of sight of land.