Because of this, all eight of Afsan’s children by Wab-Novato were allowed to live. The bloodpriests, an order closely allied with the Lubalites, refused to devour any of The One’s egglings.

And now, apparently, this remarkable fellow is having nightmares.

I’ve long suspected that genius and madness were closely allied. Well, I’ll soon learn whether the individual pushing us to the stars is merely troubled, or, as some of his detractors have always claimed, completely insane…

Rockscape had lost some of its appeal. Oh, visitors to the Capital still trekked out to see the ninety-four granite boulders arranged in patterns, spread across a field of tall grasses by the edge of a cliff overlooking water. No one knew exactly when the boulders had been laid out in these designs, but it had been in a time before written history.

Still, Rockscape seemed insignificant compared to the ancient spaceship unearthed by Toroca in Fra’toolar. That giant ark was millions of kilodays old. Rockscape, even if it was the oldest known Quintaglio settlement, couldn’t compete with that.

Nonetheless, Afsan continued to visit Rockscape most days, using it as an open-air classroom for his students, and, when alone, as a restful, isolated spot for quiet contemplation.

Except, of course, he was rarely alone. His lizard, Cork, was usually with him, lying on its favorite Rockscape boulder, warming in the sun. Afsan also had a boulder he was partial to. He was straddling it now, tail hanging off the back, his sightless eyes turned toward the cliff’s distant edge. He could hear the pipping calls of wingfingers as they rose and fell on the air currents and the sounds of crickets and other insects in the grass. Although he was a good piece north of Capital City’s harbor, Afsan could also make out the identifying drums and bells of ships and occasionally the shouts of merchants arguing over what constituted a Sair trade for newly arrived goods. There were many smells, too, including a salt tinge to the wind and a rich variety of pollens and lowers.

"Permission to enter your territory?" called a voice Afsan didn’t recognize.

He turned to face where the words had come from. "Hahat dan," he said. "Who’s there?"

The voice grew closer but the wind was blowing the wrong pay for Afsan to catch any whiff of pheromones, so he couldn’t tell whether his visitor was male or female.

"My name is Nav-Mokleb," said the voice, now, judging by its volume, no more than fifteen paces away. "Late of Pack Loodo in Mar’toolar province."

There was no need for Afsan to reciprocate with introductions, there were few blind people in Capital City, and his sash, half black and half green, the colors of the exodus, removed any possible confusion about which blind person he might be, even if one didn’t know that he frequented Rockscape. Still, with typical modesty, Afsan identified himself, then bowed concession and said. "I cast a shadow in your presence, Nav-Mokleb. Dybo said he would send you out to see me." Dybo had referred to Mokleb is female, yet she was still downwind of Afsan, so he’d had no idea of that himself.

"It’s my pleasure to serve," Mokleb said. Then, after a moment, I hear, ah, you are having difficulty sleeping."

Afsan nodded.

"And I received word today from Dar-Mondark that your eyes have regenerated, but you still cannot see."

"That, too, is true." Afsan was quiet for a time. "Is there anything you can do for me?"

"No." said Mokleb at once, "nothing at all." She raised a hand to forestall Afsan’s objection, then clicked her teeth, realizing bat Afsan couldn’t see the gesture. "Don’t misunderstand me, though. The talking cure can indeed help you, but I do nothing. the problem is within you, and so is the cure. I just facilitate the process."

Afsan scrunched his muzzle. "I don’t understand."

"What do you know about psychology?"

"It’s the study of the mind," said Afsan. "The ancient philosopher Dolgar is often thought of as its founder."

"That’s right," said Mokleb. "But Dolgar was way off base. She thought of the head and tail as being discrete repositories for opposing forces in our personalities — the artistic and sensual residing in the head, and the strong and insensate in the tail."

"Yes, I remember that," said Afsan.

"That’s an outdated view, of course. Oh, there are two opposing forces — the high mind and the low — but they reside in our brains, not various parts of our bodies. The high mind contains the conscious, the understood, the learned — that of which we are aware. The low mind consists of instincts and base impulses, of drives; it’s the province of the subconscious. The struggle between high and low mind produces the personality."

"But surely the high mind is who we really are," said Afsan.

"No. The high mind may represent who we want to be, or who the church says we should be, but we are just as much our low minds as we are our high; the low mind shapes our behavior, too."

"But if the low mind is unknowable, then it’s as if it didn’t exist," replied Afsan. "Dolgar’s contemporary, Keladax, said nothing is anything unless it is something. In other words, a concept without material reality is meaningless."

"Ah, indeed," said Mokleb. "Perhaps I’ve spoken imprecisely. The low mind is normally unknowable, but together we can explore it. Just as the far-seer allowed you to learn things about the heavenly bodies that previously had been secret, so my technique allows us to see that which is normally hidden. There, Sal-Afsan, if you are willing to undertake the journey, in the part of yourself that you don’t really know, the part that is suppressed and hidden, that’s where we’ll find the cause of your problems."

It looked like the ark was melting.

The alien ship still jutted from the cliff face, but the rocks immediately beneath it were now the same blue as the ship itself, as if melting residue were flowing down the steep slope. Except the ship wasn’t melting at all — it still had sharp edges. And yet the blue stain on the cliff continued to grow.

Novato scrambled down the precipice like a green spider, using the web of climbing ropes attached to the cliff by metal spikes. She was overtop of plain downrock layers, but about fifteen paces below, the web crossed the lowest lobe of the amorphous blue. She continued down, tail hanging off her back, until she was over the blueness.

The coarse ropes of the web normally shifted slightly in the breeze, but here they seemed to actually be stuck in the blue material coating the cliff. Novato negotiated her way to where the blue stopped and the cliff face was exposed again. She ran her fingertips over the join between the rock and the blue material. She’d expected the blue stuff to have stood slightly proud of the cliff, the way rivulets of sap do on a tree, but it seemed, if anything, to be recessed. Still, that could make sense: the blue material must surely have been liquid before it hardened. It would naturally have flowed into the declivities in the wall of sandstone.

But if the material had been fluid before it had congealed — the melting-wax analogy still seemed appropriate — it was completely dry now. There was no tackiness to it at all, no sense that it had ever been anything but solid.

The stuff had to be leaking out of the ship, so the blue material surely only formed a thin veneer over the rock. Except for the orange dust that had marched outside, nothing had left the ship, and even if the material comprising the blue coating was only eggshell-thin, there still was much more of it than the total volume of all the dust grains.

Novato lowered herself farther down the climbing ropes, moving with difficulty over the part where the ropes had become mired in the blue material. She was at eye level with one of the spikes that anchored the ropes to the cliff face. But this spike was now completely surrounded by blue stuff. Proof, she thought, that the blueness had originally been liquid: it had flowed right around the spike, which was buried in the rock except for its flared head.