will be all right." My mother went on packing pigi-roots into her net. "A rape is a very, very bad thing for the settled men," said Noyit to me."It means the women won't come to them. If the boys raped some woman, probablythe men would kill all the boys." My mother was finally listening. She did not go to the rendezvous with Borny, but all through the rainy season she wasutterly miserable. She got sick, and old Dnemi sent Didsu over to dose herwith gagberry syrup. She made notes while she was sick, lying on her mattress,about illnesses and medicines and how the older gifts had to look after sickwomen, since grown women did not enter one another's houses. She never stoppedworking and never stopped worrying about Borny. Late in the rainy season,when the warm wind had come and the yellow honey-flowers were in bloom on allthe hills, the Golden World time, Noyit came by while Mother was working inthe garden. "House on the Skyline Man says things are all right in theboygroup," she said, and went on. Mother began to realize then that althoughno adult ever entered another's house, and adults seldom spoke to one another,and men and women had only brief, often casual relationships, and men livedall their lives in real solitude, still there was a kind of community, a wide,thin, fine network of delicate and certain intention and restraint: a socialorder. Her reports to the ship were filled with this new understanding. Butshe still found Sorovian life impoverished, seeing these persons as meresurvivors, poor fragments of the wreck of something great. "My dear," shesaid -- in Hainish; there is no way to say "my dear" in my language. She wasspeaking Hainish with me in the house so that I wouldn't forget it entirely.-- "My dear, the explanation of an uncomprehended technology as magic isprimitivism. It's not a criticism, merely a description." "But technologyisn't magic," I said. "Yes, it is, in their minds; look at the story you justrecorded. Before Time sorcerors who could fly in the air and undersea andunderground in magic boxes!" "In metal boxes," I corrected. "In other words,airplanes, tunnels, submarines; a lost technology explainedas supernatural." "The boxes weren't magic," I said. "The people were. Theywere sorcerors. They used their power to get power over other persons. To liverightly a person has to keep away from magic." "That's a cultural imperative,because a few thousand years ago uncontrolled technological expansion led todisaster. Exactly. There's a perfectly rational reason for the irrationaltaboo." I did not know what "rational" and "irrational" meant in my language;I could not find words for them. "Taboo" was the same as "poisonous." Ilistened to my mother because a daughter must learn from her mother, and mymother knew many, many things no other person knew; but my education was verydifficult, sometimes. If only there were more stories and songs in herteaching, and not so many words, words that slipped away from me like waterthrough a net! The Golden Time passed, and the beautiful summer; the SilverTime returned, when the mists lie in the valleys between the hills, before therains begin; and the rains began, and fell long and slow and warm, day afterday after day. We had heard nothing of Borny and Ednede for over a year. Thenin the night the soft thrum of rain on the reed roof turned into a scratchingat the door and a whisper, "Shh -- it's all right -- it's all right." We wakened the fire and crouched at it in the dark to talk. Borny had gottall and very thin, like a skeleton with the skin dried on it. A cut acrosshis upper lip had drawn it up into a kind of snarl that bared his teeth, andhe could not say p, b, or m. His voice was a man's voice. He huddled at thefire trying to get warmth into his bones. His clothes were wet rags. The knifehung on a cord around his neck. "It was all right," he kept saying. "I don'twant to go on there, though." He would not tell us much about the year and ahalf in the boygroup, insisting that he would record a full description whenhe got to the ship. He did tell us what he would have to do if he stayed onSoro. He would have to go back to the Territory and hold his own among theolder boys, by fear and sorcery, always proving his strength, until he was oldenough to walk away -- that is, to leave the Territory and wander alone tillhe found a place where the men would let him settle. Ednede and another boyhad paired, and were going to walk away together when the rains stopped. It

was easier for a pair, he said, if their bond was sexual; so long as theyoffered no competition for women, settled men wouldn't challenge them. But anew man in the region anywhere within three days' walk of an auntring had toprove himself against the settled men there. "It would 'e three or four yearsof the same thing," he said, "challenging, fighting, always watching theothers, on guard, showing how strong you are, staying alert all night, allday. To end up living alone your whole life. I can't do it." He looked at me."I'ne not a 'erson," he said. "I want to go ho'e." "I'll radio the ship now,"Mother said quietly, with infinite relief. "No," I said. Borny was watchingMother, and raised his hand when she turned to speak to me. "I'll go," hesaid. "She doesn't have to. Why should she?" Like me, he had learned not touse names without some reason to. Mother looked from him to me and finallygave a kind of laugh. "I can't leave her here, Borny!" "Why should yougo?" "Because I want to," she said. "I've had enough. More than enough. We'vegot a tremendous amount of material on the women, over seven years of it, andnow you can fill the information gaps on the men's side. That's enough. It'stime, past time, that we all got back to our own people. All of us." "I have no people," I said. "I don't belong to people. I am trying to be a person. Whydo you want to take me away from my soul? You want me to do magic! I won't. Iwon't do magic. I won't speak your language. I won't go with you!" My motherwas still not listening; she started to answer angrily. Borny put up his handagain, the way a woman does when she is going to sing, and she looked athim. "We can talk later," he said. "We can decide. I need to sleep." He hid in our house for two days while we decided what to do and how to do it. Thatwas a miserable time. I stayed home as if I were sick so that I would not lieto the other persons, and Borny and Mother and I talked and talked.Borny asked Mother to stay with me; I asked her to leave me with Sadne orNoyit, either of whom would certainly take me into their household. Sherefused. She was the mother and I the child and her power was sacred. Sheradioed the ship and arranged for a lander to pick us up in a barren area twodays' walk from the auntring. We left at night, sneaking away. I carriednothing but my soulbag. We walked all next day, slept a little when it stoppedraining, walked on and came to the desert. The ground was all lumps andhollows and caves, Before-Time ruins; the soil was tiny bits of glass and hardgrains and fragments, the way it is in the deserts. Nothing grew there. Wewaited there. The sky broke open and a shining thing fell down and stoodbefore us on the rocks, bigger than any house, though not as big as the ruinsof the Before Time. My mother looked at me with a queer, vengeful smile. "Isit magic?" she said. And it was very hard for me not to think that it was. YetI knew it was only a thing, and there is no magic in things, only in minds. Isaid nothing. I had not spoken since we left my home. I had resolved never to speak to anybody until I got home again; but I was still a child, used tolisten and obey. In the ship, that utterly strange new world, I held out onlyfor a few hours, and then began to cry and ask to go home. Please, please, canI go home now. Everyone on the ship was very kind to me. Even then I thoughtabout what Borny had been through and what I was going through, comparing ourordeals. The difference seemed total. He had been alone, without food, withoutshelter, a frightened boy trying to survive among equally frightened rivalsagainst the brutality of older youths intent on having and keeping power,which they saw as manhood. I was cared for, clothed, fed so richly I got sick,kept so warm I felt feverish, guided, reasoned with, praised, befriended bycitizens of a very great city, offered a share in their power, which they sawas humanity. He and I had both fallen among sorcerors. Both he and I could seethe good in the people we were among, but neither he nor I could live withthem. Borny told me he had spent many desolate nights in the Territorycrouched in a fireless shelter, telling over the stories he had learned fromthe aunts, singing the songs in his head. I did the same thing every night onthe ship. But I refused to tell the stories or sing to the people there. Iwould not speak my language, there. It was the only way I had to besilent. My mother was enraged, and for a long time unforgiving. "You owe your