She tethered her bowhorn and made a fire. The night was cloudless. She lay on her back. Above her the Great Moon rose. It was three-quarters full. She watched it for a while, then went to sleep.

In the morning she looked at the stone. The lines represented animals: bowhorns, mostly. But there was another animal that she didn’t recognize. It had a thick body and short horns. What was it? Nia scratched her head. There were hunters on the stone: men with bows. They made a circle around the animals. Off to one side was a man by himself. He was bigger than the others, and he had horns. They were short, like the horns on the unfamiliar animal. Who was he? A spirit of some kind, apparently. But no spirit she knew. The Master of the Herds had long curved horns. The Sky Spirit was hornless. She scratched her head again. Then she made breakfast.

At noon Anasu appeared. He rode down the trail into the clearing where the stone was. He reined his bowhorn.

Nia stood up. “Brother!”

He was bigger than she remembered and very broad through the chest. His fur was coarse and dark. He wore a red kilt, a wide belt, high boots, a knife with a silver pommel. “Nia?” he said after a moment. He stared at her. “You are past the lust.” His voice sounded harsh and disappointed. “Someone else got to you.”

“What kind of thing is that to say? Can men think of nothing except sex?”

He laughed. It was not entirely a friendly sound. “This time of year I think of little else. I think—if I were brave, I’d go north. Then I think, I’m not old enough to confront those men. What are you doing here?”

She made the gesture of uncertainty.

“You have never known your own mind.” He dismounted. “Do you want salt? I have it.”

“No. I want to talk. How are you?” She took a step toward him.

He held up a hand. “Stay where you are. I’m not used to people.”

She stopped.

After a moment Anasu said, “I am fine. Is there nothing you want to give me in exchange for salt?”

She took off her belt. “Do you want this? I made the buckle. It’s gold mixed with silver.”

He hesitated. “All right.” He turned toward his saddlebag.

“I don’t want salt. I want a conversation.”

He turned back and stared at her. “Why?”

“Brother, when I think of you, I feel lonely.”

Anasu scratched the back of his neck. Then he made the gesture that meant “so be it” or “these things happen.”

“Is there no way we can talk?”

For a long while he was silent. She waited. At last he said, “I do not think that what you want is words. I could give you words, though it would not be easy. I’m no longer used to talking much or saying what is on my mind. But I think you want something else. I think you are like the woman in the old story, whose children turned into birds. She left her tent and wandered on the plain, trying to find them. But she never did; and in the end she died and became a spirit—a bad one, a hungry one.” He paused and frowned.

Nia opened her mouth.

He held up his hand. “No. Wait. I want to follow the track of my own thought.” She waited. At last he said, “I think you want something that is gone.”

“No.”

“I know you, sister. I think I am right. In any case, I don’t want to talk anymore.” He mounted his bowhorn. “Whatever you are trying to do, I don’t want to be a part of it.” He made the gesture of farewell, then turned his animal and rode away.

Nia doubled one hand into a fist and hit the magic stone. Aiya! How that hurt! She groaned, opened her hand, and felt it. As far as she could tell, no bones were broken. But the skin was scraped along the side of her hand where there was no fur. She licked the scrape, then sat down and rocked and groaned. It did no good. Her hand kept hurting and grief stayed in her, as solid as a stone.

Toward evening she got up and built a fire. All night she sat watching the flames and thinking about her childhood.

In the morning she put out the fire and saddled her bowhorn. There was no point in staying. Anasu wouldn’t come back. He had always been stubborn. She rode north. The sky was cloudy. A cold wind blew. Flower petals drifted down onto the trail. They were yellow or greenish white.

In the afternoon it began to rain. She stopped and made camp under an overhang. She went to sleep early. Sometime in the night she woke.

Her fire was still burning. On the other side of it was Enshi. He was plucking a bird.

She lifted her head. He made the gesture of greeting, then held up the bird. It was large and fat.

“I found it on a nest. I have the eggs, if they haven’t broken. How was Anasu?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me. What are you doing here?”

“You’re in my territory; and I thought you might be hungry. Also, I thought I would like to talk some more.”

“Why are you so different from other men?”

“I don’t know.” He looked embarrassed for a moment. Then he went back to plucking the bird.

Nia went to sleep.

In the morning they cooked the bird with its own eggs stuffed inside it. They ate, then Nia got ready to go.

“Can I go with you?” Enshi asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to visit my mother. I thought you could show me the way to the village.”

“But the old women will curse you.”

“Not if you tell me where my mother’s tent is, and I sneak in at night. The old women will never know.”

“This is wrong.”

“Maybe. But I have lost all my parting gifts. I won’t last through another winter with what I have. I intend to live, if I possibly can. And I don’t care if I do a few things that are shameful. Who knows what the spirits of the dead feel? I’d sooner be alive and a little embarrassed.”

Nia looked at him a moment. He was certainly thin, and his tunic was very ragged. She rubbed her hand, which still hurt. Then she sighed. “All right. I’ll help you. I expect I’m going to regret this, though.”

Enshi saddled his bowhorn. They rode north together.

Eight of us were set down, each one alone: three on the big continent, which sprawled around the south pole of the planet, many-fissured and many-lobed. The center of the continent was ice. The coasts were green, blue-green, and yellow: prairie and forest and desert, according to the people who analyzed the holograms.

Another four went to the small continent, which lay north of the equator. It had no ice worth mentioning and almost no desert, but plenty of vegetation. There were mountains: a range in the west along the coast and other lesser ranges in the east and south. Nothing impressive, nothing like the Rockies or the Himalayas. But two of the ranges were volcanic, according to the planetologists. One was active. The other might be.

The final person was set down on one of the many islands in the archipelago that stretched in a curve from the big continent past the equator, almost reaching the little continent.

Other islands dotted the rest of the planet-ocean. They were tiny and widely spaced. Interesting to the biologists, of course. There is nothing like an island for studying evolution. But not, we decided, the place for us to begin.

I went to the northeast coast of the northern continent. I was equipped with a denim jacket and a light cotton shirt. My boots were plastic, tough and flexible. In my right forearm, under the skin, was a row of capsules that provided me with vitamins not available on this planet. In my gut were five new kinds of bacteria, designed to break down the local proteins, turning them into amino acids that I could digest.

I had a pack that contained a radio, a medical kit, a poncho, another shirt—exactly like the first one—and a change of underwear. One big compartment was full of trinkets. The trinkets were made from native materials. We didn’t want to introduce anything alien except ourselves.

Finally, I had a medallion on a gray metal chain. The medallion was metal, flat and dark, inset with pieces of glass. It was an AV recorder and almost indestructible, I was told. No matter what happened to me, it would survive.