planted to replace the old tree; only a wild rose, rejoicing in the light,flowered thornily over the ruin of its stump: Hamid walked on, gazing aheadat the house he now knew so well, the massive slate roofs, the shutteredwin-dow of the room where Makali was sitting beside her husband, waiting forhim to wake. "Makali, Makali," he said under his breath, grieving for her,angry with her, angry with himself, sorry for himself, listening to the soundof her name. The room was dark to his still sun-bedazzled eyes, but he wentto his patient with a certain decisiveness, almost abruptness, and turned backthe sheet. He palpated, auscultated, took the pulse. "His breathing has beenharsh," Makali murmured. "He's dehydrated. Needs water." She rose to fetch the little silver bowl and spoon she used to feed him his soup and water, butHamid shook his head. The picture in Dr. Saker's ancient book was vivid in hismind, a woodcut, showing exactly what must be done--what must be done, thatis, if one believed this myth, which he did not, nor did Makali, or she wouldsurely have said something by now! And yet, there was nothing else to be done.Farre's face was sunken, his hair came loose at a touch. He was dying, veryslowly, of thirst. "The bed must be tipped; so that his head is high, hisfeet low," Hamid said authoritatively. "The easiest way will be to take offthe footboard. Tebra will give me a hand." She went out and returned with theyardman, Tebra, and with him Hamid briskly set about the business. They gotthe bed fixed at such a slant that he had to put a webbing strap round Farre'schest to keep him from sliding quite down. He asked Makali for a waterproofsheet or cape. Then, fetching a deep copper basin from the kitchen, he filledit with cold water. He spread the sheet of oilskin she had brought underFarre's legs and feet, and propped the basin in an overturned footstool sothat it held steady as he laid Farre's feet in the water. "It must be keptfull enough that his soles touch the water," he said to Makali. "It will keephim cool," she said, asking, uncertain. Hamid did not answer. Her troubled,frightened look enraged him. He left the room without saying more. When he returned in the evening she said, "His breathing is much easier." No doubt,Hamid thought, auscultating, now that he breathes once a minute. "Hamiddem,"she said, "there is ... something I noticed " "Yes:" She heard his ironic, hostile tone, as he did. Both winced. But she was started, had begunto speak, could only go on. "His ..." She started again. "It seemed ..."She drew the sheet down farther, exposing Farre's genitals. The penis layalmost indistinguishable from the testicles and the brown, grained skin of theinner groin, as if it had sunk into them, as if all were returning to anindistinguishable unity, a featureless solidity. "Yes," Hamid said,expressionless, shocked in spite of himself. "The ... the process isfollowing ... what is said to be its course." She looked at him across her husband's body. "But-- Can't you--?" He stood silent a while. "It seems that-- My information is that in these cases--a very grave shock to thesystem, to the body,"--he paused, trying to find words--"such as an injury ora great loss, a grief--but in this case, an injury, an almost fatal wound-- Awound that almost certainly would have been fatal, had not it inaugurated the... the process in question, the inherited capacity ... propensity ..." She stood still, still gazing straight at him, so that all the big wordsshrank to nothing in his mouth. He stooped and with his deft, professionalgentleness opened Farre's closed eyelid. "Look!" he said. She too stooped tolook, to see the blind eye exposed, without pupil, iris, or white, a polished,featureless, brown bead. When her indrawn breath was repeated and againrepeated in a dragging sob, Hamid burst out at last, "But you knew, surely!You knew when you married him." "Knew," said her dreadful indrawn voice. The hair stood up on Hamid's arms and scalp. He could not look at her. He loweredthe eyelid, thin and stiff as a dry leaf. She turned away and walked slowlyacross the long room into the shadows. "They laugh about it," said the deep,dry voice he had never heard, out of the shadows. "On the land, in the city,people laugh about it, don't they. They talk about the wooden men, theblockheads, the Old Islanders. They don't laugh about it here. When he marriedme--" She turned to face Hamid, stepping into the shaft of warm twilight from

the one unshuttered window so that her clothing glimmered white. "When Farreof Sandry, Farre Older courted me and married me, on the Broad Isle where Ilived, the people there said don't do it to me, and the people here said don'tdo it to him. Marry your own kind, marry in your own kind. But what did wecare for that? He didn't care and I didn't care. I didn't believe! I wouldn't believe! But I came here-- Those trees, the Grove, the older trees--you'vebeen there, you've seen them. Do you know they have names?" She stopped, andthe dragging, gasping, indrawn sob began again. She took hold of a chair backand stood racking it back and forth: "He took me there. 'That ismy grandfather,'" she said in a hoarse, jeering gasp. "'That's Alta, mymother's grandmother. Dorandem has stood four hundred years.'" Her voice failed. "We don't laugh about it," Hamid said. "It is a tale--something thatmight be true--a mystery. Who they are, the ... the olders, what makes themchange ... how it happens... . Dr. Saker sent me here not only to be ofuse but to learn. To verify ... the process." "The process," Makalisaid. She came back to the bedside, facing him across it, across the stiffbody, the log in the bed. "What am I carrying here?" she asked, soft andhoarse, her hands on her belly. "A child," Hamid said, without hesitating andclearly. "What kind of child?" "Does it matter?" She said nothing. "His child, your child, as your daughter is. Do you know what kind of childIdi is?" After a while Makali said softly, "Like me. She does not have theamber eyes." "Would you care less for her if she did?" "No," she said. She stood silent. She looked down at her husband, then toward the windows,then straight at Harold. "You came to learn," she said. "Yes. And to givewhat help I can give." She nodded. "Thank you," she said. He laid his hand a moment on his heart. She sat down in her usual place beside the bed with adeep, very quiet breath, too quiet to be a sigh. Hamid opened his mouth."He's blind, deaf, without feeling. He doesn't know if you're there or notthere. He's a log, a block, you need not keep this vigil!" All these wordssaid themselves aloud in his mind, but he did not speak one of them. He closedhis mouth and stood silent. "How long?" she asked in her usual softvoice. "I don't know. That change ... came quickly. Maybe not longnow." She nodded. She laid her hand on her husband's hand, her light warmtouch on the hard bones under hard skin, the long, strong, motionless fingers."Once," she said, "he showed me the stump of one of the olders, one that felldown a long time ago." Hamid nodded, thinking of the sunny clearing in thegrove, the wild rose. "It had broken right across in a great storm, the trunkhad been rotten. It was old, ancient, they weren't sure even who ... thename ... hundreds of years old. The roots were still in the ground but thetrunk was rotten. So it broke right across in the gale. But the stump wasstill there in the ground. And you could see. He showed me." After a pause shesaid, "You could see the bones. The leg bones. In the trunk of the tree. Likepieces of ivory. Inside it. Broken off with it." After another silence, shesaid, "So they do die. Finally." Hamid nodded. Silence again. Though helistened and watched almost automatically, Hamid did not see Farre's chestrise or fall. "You may go whenever you like, Hamiddem," she said gently. "I'mall right now. Thank you." He went to his room. On the table, under the lampwhen he lighted it, lay some leaves. He had picked them up from the border ofthe lane that went by the grove, the grove of the older trees. A few dryleaves, a twig What their blossom was, their fruit, he did not know. It wassummer, between the flower and the seed. And he dared not take a branch, atwig, a leaf from the living tree. When he joined the people of the farm forsupper, old Pask was there. "Doctor-dem," the saddler said in his rumblingbass, "is he turning?" "Yes," Hamid said. "So you're giving himwater?" "Yes." "You must give him water, dema," the old man said,relentless. "She doesn't know. She's not his kind. She doesn't know his needs." "But she bears his seed," said Hamid, grinning suddenly, fiercely, atthe old man. Pask did not smile or make any sign, his stiff face impassive.He said, "Yes. The girl's not, but the other may be older." And he turned away. Next morning after he had sent Makali out for her walk, Hamid studied