She wailed, and took the little bag of gold coins from her bosom, and he snatched them from her.

Everyone was shocked — Mara too. Angry — but Mara knew the dreadful anxiety that had been gnawing Dann. She went to stand by him.

"It was only a game, Dann," said Dromas. "Ida was only playing."

"Then it's our lives she was playing with," said Dann.

The good humour, the charm, of the occasion had gone. In a moment everyone would have left. Mara said to Candace, "I want you to show everyone that wall of yours. I want to say something."

On this evening the curtain was hiding the map, and Candace was unwilling to show it. But as Mara stood confronting her, Candace at last got up, went to the wall, and pulled back the curtain. Most people had seen what was there, but had not really understood, as Mara had found out. It was just some old thing that had nothing to do with them, that old map, which for some reason Candace valued. Now all the Kin turned so they could see the wall. Candace moved lamps so that it was illuminated. Mara would remember that scene, hold it in her mind, and come back to it when she thought of Chelops. There were about twenty people in the room. The women sat in their soft tinted gowns, their black hair loose on their shoulders; the men were in their yellow house robes; and all the alert and apprehensive faces seemed to float above bubbles of soft colour, the whole scene glowing in the light from the lamps.

At first it seemed that the picture they were looking at had been blanked out with white: the top half was white from one edge of the frame to the other. Beneath this nullity of white hung, or projected, fringes or edges of colour, on a background of blue. Blue filled the bottom half of the picture, and in it were bigger coloured shapes, and two very large shapes, one of which had scrawled across it, IFRIK. This map was no delicate creation: it did not come from the same world of accomplishments as the robes Mara and Meryx had on. It was painted crudely on white leather: the joins of the hides that had gone to make this great map had to be identified and discounted in the general picture.

The other big shape, which resembled Ifrik, was South Imrik. Both were merely outlines on the white, crudely coloured, with dots for towns and their names, and black lines for their rivers.

Mara, who had sat in this room with Candace and with Dann, sometimes for hours, knew that what it said could not be grasped without explanation. And now Candace began, in a heavy, reluctant voice, and with many pauses.

"This white represents ice," she said. "None of us has ever seen ice. It is what water becomes when it is very cold. Water becomes solid white, like rock. All of this..." — she walked slowly along the wall, pointing — "is ice or snow." She pointed to the bottom half: "And this part of the world is free of ice. It is where we live. Ifrik." And she pointed to a black dot somewhere in the middle of Ifrik: "This is where we are. This is Chel-ops." At this there were sighs, almost groans, because of the littleness of their world. "When we say the world, we should not see it flat, like that map. It is round. Like this." And here she said, "Wait a minute." And she reached into a niche in the wall under the map and brought out a very big, round shape, and set it on a table. It was one of the gourds grown for the milk beasts to eat. The surface had been rubbed smooth and white chalk rubbed in, and the information on the wall map was done here in black for the outlines and blue dyes for background. But on this globe there was no white mass covering the top half.

Candace pointed to the very top of the globe. "Look," she said, and they saw a small cap of white. "Ice," said Candace. "Just a little, at the top of the world. And at the bottom, too, this small shape of ice. That is how the world was once — they say about twenty thousand years ago, but perhaps it was more — there was no ice or snow here." And she swept her hand over the white expanse on the map. "It was warm. All of this." — and she walked again, from one edge of the wall map to the other, pointing at the white — "it was all free of ice, and there were cities and very large numbers of people. They think that for fifteen thousand years all this area was free of ice, and during that time there were civilisations. They were much more advanced than anything we know. And then the climate changed, and the ice came down and covered all this space." And she walked, pointing. "The cities and civilisations disappeared under sheets of ice. The 'world' for us is this." And she swept her hand over the fringes and projections from the ice, and the two big shapes, Ifrik and South Imrik. "But once the world was this." And she pointed to the globe.

Mara knew, because she had gone through the process herself, that all present were wrestling in their minds with immensities. Yet, at the same time, with smallness. They looked at Ifrik, and knew with their minds that it was vast because they could see the dot called Chelops; looked at a little triangular projection beneath the white that Candace said was Ind, a large country, full of people — so it was believed, or it had been in the past — and then at Chelops again, which was their world, and the centre of Hadron, which Candace outlined with her finger: just a little shape there in the middle of that immensity, Ifrik.

"These have never had ice," said Candace, pointing. "Ifrik has never known ice. South Imrik has never known ice. The climate has changed for us, many times, but never ice. Or so we believe. Nor Ind. Nor..." And she pointed to the east of Ind where thick fringes of colour hung below the white, and dots and splodges of colour spread out. "Islands," said Candace. "None of us has seen the sea, and probably won't ever see it. I know some of you have not heard of it. It is water. Salt water. Most of the surface of the world is water." And she turned the big gourd so that they could see how much blue there was.

"How do you know all this?" asked one of the girls, and could not conceal her resentment. Mara knew this resentment well: it was what people feel when being asked to take in too much that threatens their idea of themselves, or their world.

"It was all in the sand libraries," said Candace. "Our Memories knew it." And now she said to Mara, "You want to say something, I think."

Mara went to the wall and from there looked back at the faces which, every one, showed something like anger, or reluctance. They did not want to know all this. She said, "All this happened quickly — so Candace told me. This." — and she indicated the globe, with its tiny caps of ice top and bottom — "was how things were for fifteen thousand years. And then the ice came down, quite fast, in a hundred years."

"Fast?" jeered one of the girls. She was seventeen. To her the hundreds, and the thousands, and the tens of thousands, meant no more than the kind of talk children overhear: grown-ups conversing above their heads using words they do not know.

"It began," said Mara, "when these lands here." — and she pointed to the north of the globe — "which had people and towns and plenty to eat, had to empty because it got so cold, and they knew the ice was coming. And that took." — she looked at the girl who had spoken — "not much more than twice seventeen years."

The girl burst into tears.

"These things can happen quickly," Mara pleaded, imploring them, begging them. "Just imagine: all of this, all." — and she made the globe spin slowly — "all of it here, the top half, beautiful and good to live in, and then the ice came down over it."

The people were restless, their eyes evasive and gloomy, and they sighed, and wanted to leave.

Juba said, "Mara is concerned for us all. She wants us to leave Chelops."

"Where to?"."When?"."How, move?" — came from various people.