A roll of thunder sounded from above. Afsan looked up at the leaden sky.

Palsab grunted. "I take it you’re about to blaspheme again," but even she recognized that the sound from the sky was coincidence. Teeth clicked around the circle.

But Afsan swallowed hard. This was important, vital. Those who hadn’t believed what he’d told them so far certainly wouldn’t accept what he was about to say. The weight upon him was almost palpable. At last, he forced out the words. "The world is coming to an end."

The reaction was as he’d expected: expressions of disbelief or derision, and, on a few faces, of fear. Afsan raised a hand, careful, despite his excitement, to keep his claws sheathed. "What I say is true. It’s a consequence of the other discoveries I made. We’re too close to the Face of God; our path around it is not stable. Our world will be torn apart."

"Nonsense!" shouted one voice.

"You’re wrong!" called another.

"The eggling’s insane," muttered a third.

"I am not insane. I am not imagining things." Afsan fought to keep his voice calm. "What I’m saying is the absolute truth — the demonstrable truth."

Palsab’s claws extended. "You cannot prove what cannot be."

"No," said Afsan, "I cannot. But I can prove this."

Palsab wiggled her fingers, but the onlooker next to her — the same fellow who had taken offense when Afsan suggested that Palsab read his paper — spoke quietly to her. "Let him talk, Palsab. He’ll put a knot in his tail, I’m sure."

Afsan had wanted to make his case in writing, to carefully set up each potential argument, then, piece by piece, show why his interpretation was correct. But here, on a public street, with the first spits of rain hitting his head, here, surrounded by a mob of illiterates, of people who didn’t have the training or temperament to follow an intricate line of reasoning, here, facing those he was arguing with directly, instead of through the safe and neutral medium of an academic paper, a document that would be hand-copied by scribes and circulated quietly to a few hundred academics, here he was very much in trouble indeed.

Still, what choice did he have? Was that not Galbong, the newsrider, now at the back of the crowd? Wouldn’t she spread the story that Afsan didn’t have the courage of his convictions, that he had run rather than defend his wild ideas?

Afsan leaned back against his tail, a passive, nonthreaten-ing posture. "To understand what I’ve come to believe, you have to understand some basic astrology."

"We all know about portents and omens," snapped Palsab. "No, no. The symbolism of what’s seen in the sky is a matter for priests to interpret, or at least for more senior astrologers than myself…"

"You see!" cried Palsab to the crowd. "He admits his own ignorance."

"I’m honest about which things I know and which things I don’t know. Everything I’ve come to believe about the way our, our — system — works I can justify and demonstrate to anyone who cares to listen. I’ll warrant those who claim to foretell your personal futures by reading the sky can’t do the same." Afsan saw Yenalb, at the periphery of the group, scowl, and he realized that again he’d spoken rashly. But, by the prophet’s claws — by Saleed’s claws — it was the truth!

"Look," said Afsan, trying to remain calm. "It’s a simple chain. If those of us who sailed aboard the good ship Dasheter managed to travel from the east coast of Land back to the west coast simply by continuously sailing east, then the world cannot be sailing down an endless river. It must be round." He tipped his muzzle from person to person in the inner concentric circle around him. "It must be."

"If," said Palsab bitterly.

"It’s true; it cannot be denied. I speak of it here in the light of day, and even if I’m confused — which I’m not — you can hardly believe that Var-Keenir, or the other sailors aboard his ship, could become mixed up about which direction they were sailing in."

Palsab opened her mouth as if to speak, but someone on the other side of her — presumably an intimate acquaintance, for he dared to lightly touch her shoulder — said, "Let him finish."

Afsan nodded politely at this new benefactor. "Thank you." He looked now not at Palsab, who seemed no longer to be the speaker for the group, but rather, by lifting his head slightly, he made it clear that he was addressing them all equally. "Now, if the world is round, then what is it? Well, we see many round objects in our sky. We see the sun. But our world is not like the sun. It does not burn with white flame. We see, when we take our pilgrimage, the Face of God. But our world is not like the Face of God. It is not covered with bands of swirling color. And, although our world seems big to us, I have sailed around it, so I know now its approximate dimensions. The Face of God is gigantic; our world is not. Finally we see the moons. Some have cloudy surfaces, some have rocky ones. All go through phases, meaning parts of their surfaces are alternately illuminated and in darkness, just as parts of our world are in night and parts are in daylight. Indeed, as I’m sure some of you know, if a daytenth glass is turned over immediately every time it runs out during a pilgrimage voyage — so that it always has sand flowing through it — you can see that when it’s midnight here in Capital City it is high noon when one is observing the Face of God."

Thunder cracked the air again. The drops grew fatter. Afsan saw that some of those assembled were following what he was saying. "And I can provide similar chains to take you through to my other conclusions: that the Face of God is a planet, that we revolve around the Face of God, that we are in fact the closest moon to the Face of God." Afsan flashed back to his conversation with Dybo on the deck of the Dasheter. He looked directly at Palsab. "So, you see, what I’m saying isn’t that bad. We’re closer to the Face of God than anything else. Isn’t that an appealing thought?"

"It would be," said Palsab, "if you didn’t go on to say that the Face of God was nothing more than, than a natural object. ’The creator is inexplicable,’ say the scriptures."

"And," Afsan said, pretending now to ignore Palsab, pressing on to the bitter conclusion, "my knowledge of the laws that govern the way things work tells me that because we are so close to the Face of God, this world is doomed. Our world will be torn asunder by the same stress that causes the volcanism and the landquakes."

"They are worse now than in the ancient past," said someone from the middle of the crowd. Palsab stared at the speaker. "Sorry," he said with a shrug, "but we’re not all unable to read."

She turned, fuming, looking now neither at Afsan nor the fellow who had spoken of the history of landquakes.

"So you claim we are doomed," said another voice, female, sounding frightened.

This was the chance, Afsan realized, the opportunity to test the reception Saleed’s ideas would have.

"No," said Afsan. "I claim only that our world is doomed."

"What’s the difference?" said the girl whom he’d spoken with earlier. "If the world crumbles beneath us, then surely we will die."

"Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?" demanded Palsab’s friend.

"Well, consider. We now build ships to ply the River…"

"You said it was not a River," said Palsab.

"No, it is not; it’s more like a vast lake. But the name ’River’ will endure, I’m sure, just as we still refer to the Fifty Packs, when there are many more than that number."

She nodded, conceding Afsan at least this much of his story.

"Well, we build ships for travel in water," continued Afsan. "We know travel by air is possible…"

"What?" said Palsab.

"Wingfingers do it," said Afsan simply. "So do many insects. There’s no reason we cannot."