Now that he was a little more used to it, there was an excitement to all that was happening that was greater than anything he had ever experienced before in his life. He walked, filled with a great elation, over a wide blue plain. It was flat in front of him, and apparently endless, while on both sides it swept up in an easy curve. Above him, where the sky should have been, the world was suspended. Sharp-tipped mountains came down on both sides and cut across in front of him. It was ground, solid rock beneath his feet, he knew that now, so that it no longer bothered him that the world he had grown up in, the only one that he had known up until a few days ago, hung over his head like a monstrous weight. He was a fly, crawling on the ceiling of the sky, looking down on the poor prisoners trapped below. When he had placed enough distance between himself and the sun he stopped to rest, sitting on the blue sky, and opened the container of water. When he raised it to his lips he looked up at the valley above, at the pyramid and temple almost directly over his head. He put the water down and lay flat on his back, his arms under his head and gazed down on his home. When he looked hard he could almost make out the workers in the fields. The cornfields looked rich and green and would be ready for harvest soon. The people went about their work and their lives without realizing that they were in a prison. Why? And their captors, prisoners themselves in their termite tunnels, what was the hidden reason for their secret observation and the girl’s strange talk about the Great Designer?

Yes, he could see tiny figures moving from the fields toward Quilapa. He wondered if they could see him up here, and he moved his arms and legs about and hoped that they could. What would they think? Probably that he was some kind of bird. Maybe he should take the metal weapon and scratch his name in the sky, flake away the blue so that the rock could be seen. CHIMAL it would say, the letters hanging there in the sky, unmoving and unchanging. Let the priests try and explain that one!

Laughing, he rose and picked up his burdens. Now, more than ever, he wanted to find out the reason for all this. There had to be a reason. He walked on.

When he passed over the rock barrier that sealed the end of the valley he looked up with interest. It was real enough, though the great boulders looked like tiny pebbles from here. Beyond the barrier there was no continuation of the valley, just gray rock from which rose the peaks of mountains. Artificial, all of them, made to give an illusion of distance, since the farther peaks were smaller than the ones closest to the valley. Chimal walked over them and past them, determined to see what lay beyond, until he realized that he was walking up a slope.

It was only a small angle at first, but the slope quickly steepened until he was leaning forward, then climbing on all fours. The sky ahead stretched in a monstrous curve up and up until it reached the ground, but he was never going to get there. In a sudden panic, afraid that he was trapped in this barren sky forever, he tried to climb higher. But he slipped on the smooth sky and slid backward. He lay, unmoving, until the fear had ebbed away, then tried to reason his way out of this.

It was obvious that he could not go ahead — but he could always retrace his steps if he had to, so he was not really trapped out here. What about moving to the left and right? He turned and looked up the slope of the sky to the west, where it rose up and up to meet the mountains above. Then he remembered how the tunnel under the sun had appeared to curve upward yet had been flat all the way. There must be two kinds of up in the world outside the valley. The real up and the one that just looked like up, yet appeared to be flat when you walked on it. He took the container and the weapon and started for the mountains high above.

This was the up that really wasn’t. It was as though he were walking in a giant tube that turned toward him as he advanced. Down was always beneath his feet, and the horizon advanced steadily. The mountains, which had been above him when he started, were halfway down the sky now, hanging like a jagged-edge curtain before him. They drifted downward steadily with every step he took forward, until they finally lay directly ahead, pointing at him like so many giant daggers.

When he came to the first mountain he saw that it was lying flat on its side against the sky — and that it only came up to his shoulders! He was past surprise, his senses dulled by days of wonder. The peak of the mountain was tipped with something white and hard, apparently the same substance as the sky only of a different color. He climbed onto the tip of the mountain that lay flat on the ground of the sky and pointed at him like a great wedge, and walked along it until the white ended and he came to the solid rock. What did this mean? He saw the valley, now only halfway up the sky ahead of him and tilted on edge. He tried to imagine how this spot would look from the valley, and closed his eyes to remember better. Looking from the base of the cliff beyond Zaachila you could see over the pyramid to the great mountains outside of the valley, and the even more distant, immense and high mountains, that were so tall that they had snow on their peaks all year round. Snow! He opened his eyes and looked at the shining white substance and laughed. Here he was perched on a snowy mountain peak — if they could see him from the valley he must look like some sort of monstrous giant.

Chimal went on, climbing among the strange, lying-down mountains, until he came to the opening in the rock and the familiar metal rungs that vanished out of sight below. It was another entrance to the tunnels.

He sat down next to it and thought very hard. What should he do next? This was undoubtedly an entrance to the burrows of the Watchers, a part he had not been to yet, since it was far across the valley from the doorway he had first used. He had to go down here, that Was certain, since there was no place to hide among the barren rocks. Even if there were a place to hide, his food and water would not last forever. This reminder of the food sent a rumble of hunger through him and he took out a package and opened it.

What was he to do after be entered the burrow? He was as alone as no one had ever been before, with every man’s hand turned against him. His people in the valley would kill him on sight, or more probably hamstring him so the priests would have the pleasure of giving him a protracted death. And the Master Observer had called him a non-person, therefore a dead person, and they had all worked very hard to put him into that condition. But they had not succeeded! Even their weapons and their cars and all the things they knew had not helped them. He had escaped and he was free — and he intended to stay that way. In which case a plan was needed to insure this condition.

First he would hide his food and water out here among the tumbled rocks. Then he would enter the tunnel and, bit by bit, would explore the surrounding caverns to discover what he could of the secrets of the Watchers. It was not much of a plan — but he did not have any other choice.

When he had finished he hid his supplies, and the empty food wrapper, then threw open the lid of the entrance. The tunnel below was rock floored and began just below the opening. He went along it cautiously until it joined a wider tunnel that had two sets of tracks down the center. There were no cars in sight, nor could he hear any approaching. He had no choice but to go down this tunnel. Holding the killing thing ready he turned right, toward the valley’s end and set off between the tracks at an easy trot, covering the ground quickly. He did not like this exposed position and he turned into the first opening that appeared. This proved to be the opening to some circular metal stairs that ran down and around and out of sight in the rock below. Chimal started down them, going steadily even though he became dizzy from the constant turning.