The ridge pointed northwest, and I went northwest. When it ended, I plunged down into the sand, and ran all day and all night, forbidding my body to sleep. I went by the fastest way any Schwartz could travel, and because none was faster than I, no pursuit could overtake me.

It took eight days. I slept while running, for my mind had to have sleep even when my body didn't. At last I reached a place where clouds skitted through the sky and where occasional clumps of grass poked from crevasses in rocks, and I was out of Schwartz. It should have been a relief, and I was glad enough to see green instead of the endless yellows and greys and browns of the desert, but I regretted leaving, so much that I stopped and turned around and almost started back.

I remembered my father's face. I remembered him saying, "Lanik, I wish to God there were something I could do." I heard his voice plead, "The body is ruined. Will the mind still serve me? Will the son still love his father?"

Yes, you land-hungry bastard, I thought. You're up against something you're no match for. And I'll come. I'm coming.

I turned back around and headed north into the high country of Sill.

The land had been wasted by war.

Burnt-over flelds were accented by the shells of houses and piles of ashes that had once been humbler huts. I walked kilometers of ruin, in what had to be farmland at best, this close to the desert. What purpose could be served by such destruction? No great military objectives lay nearby. All it could achieve was the starvation of the people. The land had been murdered. Tortured.

Yet I knew the people of Nkumi (as well as anyone could know them in their endless intertwining lies) and such destruction wasn't in their nature, not the people who stood at the lips of their treehouses and sang the morning. Even their endless, fumbling bureaucracy and the hypocritical denial that they bought and sold for profit-- these were more symptoms of good intention than of deep-seated corruption. Besides, greed would have left these fields intact. Only vicious, mindless hate could make someone want to destroy the land instead of conquering it.

But who could hate even the simple-mindedly violent people of Sill? My father had let them alone, even when he conquered their two neighbors, be cause for all their boisterous village life and boasting and raiding, they were ultimately harmless.

I got angrier the farther I walked.

At last I reached land that was watered by rivers and irrigation, and here there were people working to rebuild the canals. New houses were going up, makeshift homes to keep the rain off. I had lost track of seasons-- the rams would be coming soon.

Only now did it occur to me that I was naked, and nudity was frowned on in this part of the world. The idea of clothing seemed foreign to me-- I had been without it for a year, at least, ever since I fell from the birdnet in Nkumai. But how does a man get clothing when he has neither friends nor money, and people stare at him and avoid him when they see him coming?

The problem was solved for me. I slept, this time with body as well as mind, in the grass growing along the bank of the River Wong, and when I awoke three women were staring at me, I moved slowly, so as not to alarm them. "Greetings," I said, and they nodded. So much for conversation, I thought. "I mean you no harm," I said.

They nodded again. "We know."

I guess in my unclothed condition it was no secret I wasn't in the mood for rape. I couldn't think what to say to them next, except the obvious. "I need clothing."

They looked at each other in puzzlement.

"I don't have any money," I said, "but I can promise you I'll pay you within a month."

"Then you aren't the Naked Man," one of them murmured.

"Is there only one?" I asked.

"He walks through the fields from the desert. Some say he will take vengeance on our enemies."

So I had been noticed, and word had spread. Not at all odd that such people would take the mysterious and make of it a solution to their problems. "I'm the one," I said. "I cam from Schwartz. I'm going to find the army that did all this."

"Will you kill them?" whispered the youngest, who was far along in pregnancy.

"I will stop them from killing," I promised, wondering if I really could. "But in the meantime, I need clothing. It's time for me to dress."

They nodded, and walked away. They were in no hurry, and in the gently rolling countryside they were soon out of sight. I plunged into the water to wait for them, and amused myself by lying on the bottom of the river, watching the fish. Everything was ravaged above the surface of the water, but in the slow current of the River Wong the fish never noticed.

I realized I had been underwater a long time, surfaced, and began breathing again. No sooner had I brought my head into the air than a woman nearby screamed, and answering shouts brought others on the run. Again I realized I had fallen into the trap of thinking and acting like a Schwartz. I had to stop doing things that other people couldn't do.

"He was under there all this time," the woman was saying to the two-score people who crowded around her, glancing frequently at me, where I stood in the water. "He was under there all the time and I was here for an hour, for a whole hour."

"Nonsense," I said. "I couldn't have been under there for more than fifteen minutes."

They looked at me with respect and awe (and not a little fear) and the pregnant woman held out an armful of clothing. I walked out of the water, and they stared at me, as if they expected something unusual. I almost laughed to remember the way the sailors on the Singer ship had reacted to the way I looked before the Schwartzes cured me. If they could see me now-- in full possession of the sort of power the sailors had only imagined me to have before. Yet the way these people looked at me reminded me of my shyness about nudity when I was young and in Mueller. I dressed quickly, not waiting for my skin and hair to dry.

"Thank you," I said when I was dressed.

"We are honored," said a man who seemed to be in charge-- an old wan. I realized that there were no men of arms-bearing age.

"Your sons are all off to war?"

"There is no war anymore," the headman said.

The pregnant woman agreed, soberly. "For Sill, there is no war."

"There is no Sill," said the headman. "We're Nkumai now."

I looked at them, all nodding in agreement. "Is that so? Then what enemy do you want me to kill?"

They were silent. Until one old woman cried out bitterly, with tears in her eyes. "Nkumai! Kill the Nkumai! For God's sake, if you have any power at all--"

Others took up the cry. "Kill the Nkumai! For our sons, for our homes, for our land, kill the devils!"

I could hear the song of hate and death in their hearts, and I nodded softly and walked on.

"What's your name!" the pregnant woman shouted after me.

I turned and called out, "Lanik Mueller."

To my surprise, the crying and shouting died quickly. Some looked terror-stricken. Some wrinkled up their faces in distaste, as if I had made some obscene joke. Other faces simply froze, expressionless. Then they all silently left me and went back to their homes. Only the old woman addressed any kind of message to me. She spat in the dirt.

It could only have been my name that turned them from friendship and hope to hatred and fear. But what could my name mean in a place like this? In Mueller my name had been well enough known, being the heir apparent, but why should my name be familiar in Sill? I'd been gone for a year, throughout the whole war. I pondered the question as I headed north again, bearing a little west, on my way to Mueller-on-the-River. Could Dinte have hated me so much he spread stories about me as a traitor? Or blamed some atrocity on me? Impossible to believe that Father would let him do such a thing. Had I been gone so long that Father was no longer the Mueller? I could make no sense of it.