"The Face of God is a planet, too." And then he told her everything he’d come to believe during his voyage with Var-Keenir aboard the Dasheter, told her how the Dasheter had sailed around the world at his suggestion, proving that the story of Land being an island floating down an endless River was just silly myth, proving that the world they called home was nothing more than one of the moons that moved in circular paths around the planet known as the Face of God.

Novato knew at a glance that Afsan was relaying what he believed to be the truth. Yet her expression made it clear that she was having trouble digesting it all. But at last she nodded slowly. "It’s incredible," she said, "but it explains much." She wrinkled her muzzle. "Our world a moon…"

"That’s the easy part," Afsan said softly.

Novato nodded. "Indeed. The other part…"

"God merely another planet."

"It frightens me to even hear those words," she said.

"It frightened me, as well."

"How can it be thus?"

"How can it be anything but thus?" Afsan gestured at her sketches. "You’ve seen that what’s in the sky often isn’t what it first appears to be. I didn’t set out to disprove the existence of God. I was simply looking at things to make sense of what I saw."

"But for there to be no God…"

Afsan’s voice was softer still. "There may still be a God."

"But you said the Face was nothing supernatural."

"That proves only that what we call the Face is not really God. There may still be a God."

Novato looked excited. "You’ve seen something else, then, something that could be God?"

Afsan dipped his muzzle. "No. No, I haven’t."

"Then…?"

"I’m not sure. People believed in God long before Larsk returned with his story of having seen Her directly."

"That’s true," said Novato.

"Perhaps Larsk was wrong. Perhaps no one has ever seen the real face of God."

"But She may still exist." Novato’s voice gained strength. "She must still exist."

"I don’t know," said Afsan. "I just don’t know. Have you read the ancient philosophers? Dolgar? Keladax? People like that?"

"I read a little Keladax, kilodays ago."

"You know his dictum: nothing is anything unless it is something. That is, a concept without material reality is meaningless."

Novato bobbed. "So he said. But Spooltar disagreed. She stated, ’A true belief is stronger than the mightiest hunter, for nothing can bring it down.’ " She paused, looked at the ground. At last she said, "I still believe in God, Afsan. Nothing can bring that down."

"I’m sure of what I said about the Face, though," Afsan said gently. "I’ve been sure for over a hundred days, but your sketches have made me even more sure." He leafed through the pages, steering the conversation back to matters of observation and deduction. "Look at the way you drew Kevpel and Bripel, which are the closest other planets to us. You’ve got them both striped horizontally. Like the banded clouds that cross the Face of God."

Novato shook her head. "I never thought of that." Then she looked up, bringing her mind back to practical matters, as well. "But you say the Face is a sibling to Kevpel and Bripel, right? Similar to them in structure and each with a large entourage of moons. Then why do Kevpel and Bripel each have rings around them and the Face does not?"

"Exactly," said Afsan. "Why not, indeed?" He scratched the underside of his muzzle. "Have you mapped the circular paths of the moons around Kevpel and Bripel?"

Novato looked blank. "I don’t know what you mean."

"I mean, have you examined how far to the left and the right each of the moons appears to get from the disk of the planet? Do any of them move less far left or right than the outermost edge of the planet’s ring?"

"No. They all extend farther than the ring — much, much farther in most cases."

"Then the moons move outside the ring; they travel beyond it."

"If you say so."

"They must; they move in circular paths. The farthest apparent distance from the planet indicates the radius of that circular path."

N’ovato was quick. She nodded. "And the rings are circular, the particles within them must be moving in their own circular paths."

Afsan thumped his tail over the back of the bench. "Egg-shells! Think about it: I know from my observations that the farther out a moon is from a planet, the slower it moves in its circular path."

"All right."

"And the farther out a planet is from the sun, the slower it moves in its circular path. Kevpel revolves around the sun faster than our planet, the Face, does, and the Face revolves around the sun faster than more distant Bripel does."

"All right."

"So: the particles on the inside of the ring must travel faster than the particles on the outside. It couldn ’t be a solid ring: the stress between the inside parts wanting to move quickly and the outside parts wanting to move slowly would tear it apart."

Novato closed her eyes, struggling with the concept. "I’m not sure I understand."

"Do you have more paper?" Afsan asked.

"Yes. There." She pointed across the room. Afsan got up, retrieved a leaf and a piece of charcoal, and returned to the bench, sitting even closer to Novato than he had been before.

"See," he said, sketching a solid circle in the middle of the page. "This is a planet." Novato nodded. He made a dot. "Well, here’s an object moving around it in a tight circle. That object could be a particle in a ring, or it could be a moon, like the one we live on. Well, let’s say it takes one day to rotate around the planet." She nodded again. "Now, here’s an object farther out, moving around the planet in a looser circle. Again, it could be a more distant moon, or it could be a particle in the ring that’s farther out. Say this more distant one takes two days to move around the central planet." He drew the paths of the two objects, so that his planet now had two concentric circles around it.

"So there’s a difference in the, the force, that makes the object swing around the planet, right?" said Novato. "The closer the object, the faster it wants to move in its path."

"Exactly."

She reached over, took the charcoal stick from his hand. "But a moon isn’t a point; not when seen through a far-seer, that’s for sure. It’s a sphere."

Afsan’s turn to look somewhat lost. "Yes?"

"Well, don’t you see?" She drew overtop of the two dots Afsan had made to represent his two different particles, making them into fat circles. Then she pointed with an extended claw. "The inner edge of a moon is closer to the planet that it rotates around than the outer edge is. The inner edge wants to move quickly; the outer edge wants to move slowly."

"But a moon is a solid object."

"Right," said Novato.

"So it can only move at one speed."

"Perhaps it splits the difference," said Novato. "If the inner edge wants to take one day to revolve around the planet and the outer edge wants to take two, then the whole thing does it in one and a half days."

"That makes sense," said Afsan. "Really, for most moons it wouldn’t be any big deal. Take a distant moon, say one like Slowpoke that takes a hundred days or so to revolve around its planet. Well, maybe the inner side wants to take ninety-nine days and the outer side wants to take a hundred and one. That’s only a one percent variation, nothing major."

"True," said Novato.

"And, of course, those moons that are farther out rotate on their own axes at different rates than they revolve around the planet. So it’s not like the same side is always going slower. The stress of going too fast or too slow is evened out over the whole thing."

"What’s this about rotation rates?" said Novato.

"Well, the moon we’re on always keeps the same side toward the Face of God. That’s why the Face of God is never visible from Land. So the part with Land on it is always moving around the Face of God faster than it really wants to. And the pilgrimage point, directly beneath the Face, and on the other side of our world from Land, is always moving slower than it wants to."