She began to run, up and over the mound–scrambling among the brush and the rocks. A gray caliban was there, down the slope and another–near her, that jolted her heart. It lashed about in the brush, caliban‑like: it skittered down the slope and along the ridge, headed toward the river past the rocks–it must be going to the river…

In a flash she realized where she likely was, near rocks that thrust through the mounds: rocks and the river below the cliffs.

She stopped running when she had spent her breath, slumped down amongst the trees and took stock of herself, her remnant of clothing, that she put to rights with trembling hands. She sat there in the brush with tears and exhaustion tugging at her, and she fought the tears off with swipes of a muddy hand.

“Hey,” someone said; and she started, whirled to her knees and half to her feet, like something wild.

From the Camp: they were two of the men from the Camp, Ogden and Masu. She stood up, shaking in the knees, and the blood drained from her face, sudden shame as she stood there with her clothes in rags and her pride in question. “There,” she yelled, and pointed back over the ridge, “there–they caught me and dragged me off–they’re there…”

“Who?” Masu asked. “Who did? Where?”

“Over the ridge,” she kept crying, not wanting to explain, not wanting anything but to see it wiped out, the memory and the smiling, silent lot of them.

“Take care of her,” Masu said to Ogden. “Take care of her. I’ll round up the others. We’ll see.”

“There’s Calibans,” she said, looking from one to the other of them. Ogden took her arm. Her coveralls were torn almost beyond staying on; she reached to cover herself and gasped for breath in shock. “There’s calibans–a kind no one ever saw–” But Ogden was pulling her away.

She looked back when Ogden had hastened her off with him. Fire streaked across the sky, and she stared at the burning star.

“That’s a flare,” Ogden said. “That’s Masu saying we found you.”

“There are people,” she said, “people living in the mounds.”

“Hush,” Ogden said, and squeezed her hand.

“It’s so. They live there. The Weirds. With the calibans.”

Ogden looked at her–old as her father, a rough man, and big. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. “Can you run?”

She caught her breath and nodded, shaking in all her limbs. Ogden seized her hand and took her with him.

But they met others, coming their way…and one was her father and the other her mother. She might have run to meet them: she had the strength left. But she did not. She stopped still, and they came and hugged her, her mother and then her father, and shed tears. She was dry of them.

“I’m going back after Masu,” Ogden said. “It may be trouble back there.”

“They should get them,” Jane said, quite, quite coldly. She had gotten her dignity back, had found it again, used it like a cloak between her and her parents, despite her nakedness.

“Jane,” her father said–there were tears in his eyes, but her own were still dry. “What happened?”

“They caught me and dragged me in there. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Her father hugged her, and her mother did. “Come home,” her mother said, and she walked with them, no longer afraid, no longer feeling anything but a cold distance between herself and what had happened.

It was a far way, to the Camp; and her father talked about medics. “No,” she said to that. “No. I’m going home.”

“Did they–?” That her mother found the question hard struck her as strange, and ominous. Her face burned.

“Oh, yes. A lot of times.”

viii

“There has to be law,” Gallin said, in Council, in the dome–looked down at all the heads of departments. “There has to be law. We rout them out of there and we have to do something with them. It was a mistake to sit back and let it go on. We can’t be having this…this desertion of the young. We set up fences; we organize a hunt and clear the mounds.”

“They’re our own kind,” the confessor‑advocate objected, rising from her chair, grayhaired and on the end of her rejuv. “We can’t take guns in there.”

“We should,” Gutierrez said, also on his feet, “mobilize the town, dig foundations that go far down; we ought to make the barriers we meant to make at the beginning. We can shoot them–we can level the mounds–and it happens all over again. Time after time. It never works. There’s more going out there than we understand. Maybe another species–we don’t know. We don’t know their habits, their interrelations, we don’t know what drives them. We shoot them and we dig them out and it never works.”

“We mobilize the azi,” Gallin said. “We give them arms and train them–make a force out of them.”

“For the love of God, what for?” the advocate cried. “To march on calibans? Or to shoot their own relatives?”

“There has to be order,” Gallin said. He had gained weight over the years. His chins wobbled in his rage. He looked up at them. “There has to be some order in their lives. The tape machines are gone, so what do we give them? I’ve talked to Education. We have to have some direction. We make regiments and sections; we mount guard; we protect this camp.”

“From what?” Gutierrez asked. And added, because he knew Gallin, because he saw the insecure anger: “Sir.”

“Order,” Gallin said, pounding the able for emphasis. “Order in the world. No more dealing with runaways. No more tolerance.”

Gutierrez sank down again, and the confessor‑advocate sat down. There was a murmuring from the others, an undertone of fear.

The calibans had come closer and closer over the years and they had found no occasion to say no.

But he had qualms when he saw the azi marshalled out for drill, when he saw them given instruction to kill. He walked back on that day with a lump in his gut.

Kate and Jane met him, daughter like mother–so, so alike they stood there, arms about each other, with satisfaction in what they saw. A change had come about in Jane. She had never had that hard‑eyed look before she went out into the mounds. She had grown up and away, to Kate’s side of the world. No more curiosity; no more inquiring into the world’s small secrets: he foresaw silence until that threat out there was swept away, until Jane saw the world as safe again.

While azi marched in rows.

ix

Pia Younger set the bucket down inside the door, in the two room house that was theirs, a house hung with clothes and oddments from the rafters–drying onions, dried peppers, plastic pots balanced on the beams, and her own bed in this corner, her parents’ bed in the other room. And rolled pallets that belonged to her brothers, who prepared for another kind of leaving.

Her mother sat outside–a woman of silences. She went out again and stooped to take her mother’s hand, where she sat sharpening a hoe–stroke, stroke of a whetstone across the edge. Her father–he was off with the boys. Her mother paid little attention…had paid little at all to the world in recent days. She only worked.

“I’m going out,” Pia Younger said. “I’m going to see how it goes.” And quietly, in a hushed voice, bending close and taking her mother’s hands: “Listen, they’ll never catch Green. They’ll go up the river, all the lost ones do. Don’t worry about them shooting him. They can’t.”

She felt guilty in the promise, having no faith in it, having no love for her brother. And it all failed with her mother anyway, who went on with her sharpening, stone against steel, which reminded her of knives. Pia drew back from Pia elder and as quietly drew away. She lifted her eyes to the borders of the town, where another kind of camp was in the making.

Her father was out there following born‑man orders; her brothers pretended to. And very quietly, Pia elder never noticing, Pia Younger walked down the street the opposite way, then cut through at the corner and doubled back again.