“There!” she cried, pointing, “There! You see, there’s one! There’s a True Angel!”

“Please, explain. I don’t know what you mean.”

“And His angels will cover your wastes with manna, making green fields of desert and Heaven of barren worlds. We have been waiting, for so many years. We knew, that if we were faithful, and prayed, He’d send His angels to rescue our fields. And there’s one.”

Asach peered at this new variety of creature. “Your fields?” The marshland extended in all directions as far as the eye could see.

“Yes, our fields. We’re only five miles from Butterfield station.”

“But what do you mean? What fields? We’re in the middle of a river delta.”

Laurel was emphatic. “No. I know exactly where we are. We’re south of the seep at Ocotillo Wells. We’re east of Butterfield station. This was all desert last year.”

“Last year? Surely you mean last gathering.”

“No! Early last year! Well, OK, nearly two years ago, but still! Now do you believe?”

Asach thought: well, maybe some massive irrigation project could be done in a year, but… “But surely this was here.” Asach’s hands spread to take in the city. The extent of the glass-and-stone construction was massive, and deep. It looked accreted over centuries.

But Laurel was shaking her head. “No, no, no! I’m a Seer. It’s my job to know every route into and out of Swenson’s Mountain.” She stopped abruptly. Flushed. “I mean, His Eye. When the time approaches, I re-ride every route, checking whether His Eye awakes. Last month, I skirted past here, and saw an Angel, and saw that they had come.”

Asach groaned. “Just in time for the Revelation.”

“Yes!” nodded Laurel emphatically.”

Asach began another question, but Enheduanna shouted “Hold!” pulling them up so abruptly that the Warriors behind nearly ran them down. The hissing started again.

Asach shifted focus to the traffic at the tables. Every Porter stopped at one or another of them. Whites came out to inspect every load. Their fingers clacked; they removed part of each; they reached into buckets beside the tables, scooped a gob of something, smacked it onto the container, stamped the gob with a carved stone sigil, and conveyed the reserved goods inside. The operation was efficient. Laurel stared, openly. She’d grown up on New Utah. She’d been to Bonneville. She could count. Simultaneously, she and Asach blurted:

“It’s a tithe house!”         “It’s a customs house!”

Then Enheduanna chirped, and Warriors closed in, and began pulling at their clothes. Laurel screamed. Asach shouted “Hold! Hold!” but this time there was no effect. In a moment of sheer stupidity, Asach physically shoved between Laurel and a Warrior, and furiously disrobed. Laurel gasped. Enheduanna barked. The Warriors backed off as Asach let the last article of clothing drop. Then, before the others could react, Asach snatched up the vest, shouting “One!” while holding up one finger, and laid it on the bench. Then the trousers, “Two!” and two fingers. Then the belt, the underwear, the socks, the boots. Finally the cloak. Holding it as a screen, Asach hissed to Laurel: “Strip!” She shook her head emphatically: no. Asach hissed again: “Do it! If you don’t, they’ll do it for you! I won’t look! I swear! I’ll hold up the cloak!” The Accountant examined the articles of clothing piled upon the table.

Trembling, Laurel peeled, her eyes riveted on her own feet. When she’d done, Asach wrapped the cloak around her, then repeated the counting-clothes performance, buck-naked in the sun. The Accountant ceased twisting a boot to watch them. Frantically, Asach scanned the ground; spotted a small, white pebble; shouted “One!” and made a scratch-mark on the counter. “Two!” This time two scratch-marks, and underneath the numeral two. “Three!” And so on, until ten, when Asach circled all that had gone before, made one more mark, then wrote the digits: the one, the zero. The Accountant looked down at the table; up at Asach. Reached forward, seizing Asach’s wrist with its gripping hand. Asach did not resist. Pulled Asach’s hand forward, palm-to palm with its own. The sizes were not vastly different—save for the Accountant’s second opposable thumb, located where Asach had no digits at all. With its second hand, it placed the pebble into Asach’s arrested one; guided it to the counter beside the “10.” Forced Asach to make two more marks, then let go. Without hesitation, Asach wrote “12,” then offered the pebble to the accountant. The Accountant quickly scratched a glyph that looked like—two hands, clasped, edge on. Asach reached for the pebble. The accountant paused, then handed it over. Asach circled the twelve, circled the glyph, then drew a line to the ten and dropped the pebble. Holding up both hands, Asach said: “Base ten!” Reaching forward, cautiously, but firmly, Asach took the Accountant’s hands: “Base twelve!” Then pointed to the numerals again: “Ten! Twelve!” and the glyph: “Twelve!”

The Accountant listened carefully. Then, cautiously, made the same hand-gesture, indicating first the numerals. “Ten!” it said. “Twelve!” Then, very slowly, it indicated the glyph, leaning forward toward Asach “Ten!”

“Yes!” said Asach, “Ten, base twelve.”

Assured, the Accountant moved rapidly, holding forth one of its hands. “Base six,” then seizing Asach’s two hands, “base ten.” It grabbed the pebble, made six chalk marks, then wrote one-zero. “Base six,” it said. Then made ten chalk marks; wrote one-zero. “Base ten,” it said.

Asach made a huge sigh of relief. “Can we get dressed now?”

The Accountant said to Enheduanna, “You can inform the Protector that this one knows advanced mathematics. I have recorded it as entire. The other one—the shrieking one, with manna-colored eyes—I have recorded it as anathema. Let me know if that assessment changes. For the record.”

Enheduanna swept one arm, indicating of course. “Give me a Protector’s Runner.”

“Supplied.”

As the Runner streaked ahead, a path opened for the entourage, now ordered triple-file with Enheduanna at the head, followed by Asach, Laurel, and the senior hand leader, with two ranks of Warriors either side. The Warriors adopted an odd, half-turned, outward-facing, click-step-click-step-click-step gait with gripping arms extended that Asach presumed was some sort of formal march. It had the effect of making each rank a moving, living barrier fence. Sandwiched as they were inside the formation, it was difficult to see much. Laterite pathways led to gaping openings; pockets of green filled most blank spaces between the lumpy mounds.

Then, at one turning, in a glimpse Asach saw a team of brown workers engaged in creating additional space. The process looked more like a complicated mining operation than home-building. One pair excavated earth. Another packed some kind of powdered coating onto the freshened wall. A third employed a series of mirrors and lenses to vitrify the tunnel mouth. A different team spread the newly-excavated clay as guttered paths, then used reflectors with a rolling, tunnel-like contraption to dry, pre-heat, and bake it to brick in place. Smaller versions of the mole-like one packed earth into baked depressions with narrow drain-grooves adjoining the gutters. The entire operation seemed slow and labor intensive. On the other hand, Asach reflected on the legions of stone cutters, brick-makers, transporters, house-builders, and landscapers that would be required to achieve the same purpose, and concluded that for the scale it was extremely efficiently organized. It also made Laurel’s assertions more plausible.

They were shortly to find themselves incarcerated in the end result of such an operation. The room was domed, the ceiling high. Rosy baked-earth steps, hard as concrete, rough-polished like travertine, led them downward into a glassy space, its swirled rainbow-green-black walls slick and hard as tile or thick obsidian. There was no join at the floor: it appeared that it, too, had been vitrified, then overlain with more warm-colored laterite. Windows ringed the uppermost reaches, giving the feeling of a cathedral cupola. The room was chilly. Laurel huddled in the warmth of the sun’s rays.