The tour began in the Americas, with visits to Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Titicaca, Panama, Mexico, Westamerica, Eastamerica, and Quebec. In Mexico Josif and Kyaren stayed three extra days, revisiting the places and redoing the things seen and done when they first loved each other. They had their son with them, of course, little Efrim- Josif chose the name because an earlier Josif, thousands of years before, had given his favorite son that name. History, Kyaren had snorted. A ridiculous name. She actually liked it quite a bit.

Efrim was only a year old, but thought of himself as an accomplished athlete. He was unusually well coordinated for his age, but not so adroit as he thought, and he broke his arm in a fall from a ledge in the ruins of the Olympic Stadium.

Efrim is doing fine, Kyaren complained. It's you that's driving me out of my mind, Josif.

I get worried.

You get worried obnoxiously, Kyaren stud. It just takes two weeks' rest, and then he's fine. I'm taking care of him. You're just making him nervous.

I can't stand sitting around doing nothing, Josif said.

And so they decided that Josif should rejoin the manager's tour in Quebec, and they would meet again when Efrim was well, in Europe. Shouldn't you go, and I stay? After all, you're the personal adviser. I'm just a spouse.

He doesn't need me with him. And Efrim doesn't need you with him. Just see the sights and study the history and let Efrim keep busy healing instead of trying to constantly entertain, his father. He had the hiccoughs for half an hour yesterday, you got him laughing so hard.

I'm going, then, if you want to be rid of me.

She kissed him. Get out of here, she said. He got out, sorry in a way to be leaving her, but delighted not to be missing the weeks in old Europe, which, more than any other region, had preserved the ancient nations intact.

Ansset noticed him almost as soon as he returned. Back with us already?

Kyaren's staying with the baby. She kicked me out, I was impossible.

I hope the boy heals fast. And then busy again, meeting with the self-styled king of Quebec, a title only barely tolerated by the emperor because the kings of Quebec were properly subservient and remarkably hated by their people. No danger of rebellion, and therefore not a problem needing to be corrected.

Over the next several days, however, Ansset and Josif were thrown together more and more. Ansset thought at first that the meetings were accidental. Then he realized that he himself was setting them up, deliberately going to places where he knew Josif would be. He and Josif had had little contact over the months-while Ansset knew from his voice that Josif didn't dislike him, Josif still avoided him, rarely staying in a conversation very long, leaving Ansset always alone with Kyaren. Josif's shyness needed no explanation to Ansset. He respected it. But now his closest confidante and friend, Kyaren, was gone, and he needed to talk to someone. So he didn't stop himself from meeting with Josif. In fact, he began to make it more obvious. He invited him to meals, asked him along on walking tours, talked to him at night. Ansset couldn't understand why Josif always seemed reluctant to accept, yet never refused an invitation. And gradually, over the days, through Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Stratford, Baile Atha Cliath, with rain always making the air deliciously cool and comfortably dim, Josif lost his reticence, and Ansset began to understand why Kyaren was so devoted to him.

Ansset also began to notice that Josif was sexually attracted to him. Hundreds of men and women had been before. Ansset was used to it, had had to put up with it through all his years in the palace. Josif was different, though. His desire seemed not so much lust as affection, part of his friendship. It intrigued Ansset, where years before such things had repelled him. He was curious. He had grown seventeen centimeters since his appointment to Babylon, and his voice was deepening all the time. There were other changes, and he found himself with longings he did not know how to satisfy, with questions he did not dare to ask only because he already knew the spoken answer, and the other answer he was afraid of.

At the Songhouse little was said of the drugs that singers and Songbirds were given. Just that they put off puberty, and that there were side effects. There were also whispers that it was worse for men than for women, but how it was worse, or even how it was bad, was never said. The drugs gave them five more years as children, five more years with the beautiful voices of childhood.

Well, Ansset had lost his songs and so didn't need his voice, except for the coarse singing involved in making every national leader completely devoted to him, easy tricks that he was ashamed of even as he used them. His five extra years of childhood were over, and he wanted to know what happened next.

After the meeting with the Welsh chief, who affected coarse manners but whose Gaelic was beautiful to Ansset, the planet manager and the assistant minister of colonization went to Caernarvon Castle together. It had been domed thousands of years before, the last castle of Britain to survive with some of the original stones in place. They walked together on the walls, overlooking the dense green of the grass and the trees and the blue of the water that spread between the castle and the island of Angelsea. The only sign of modern life was the flesket and the guards beside it, and the trail where the grass grew lower because of the vehicles that passed over it. There were others in the castle, of course-it was maintained as a luxury hotel, and they would spend the night there. Security guards were going through the place on a final check. But where Ansset and Josif stood, there was no one. Birds skimmed back and forth over the sea.

What is this place? Ansset asked. Why is it kept like this?

A castle was like a battleship, Josif answered. All the men would come in here when their enemies attacked, and the walls kept them out.

This was before lasers, then.

And before bombs and artillery. Just bows and arrows, spears. And a few more choice things. They used to pour boiling oil over the walls to kill the men trying to climb them.

Ansset looked down, hiding his revulsion easily, curious to see how far the drop was to the ground. It seems dangerous enough just to stand up here."

They lived in violent times.

Ansset thought of his own violent times. We all do, he said.

Not like then. If you had a sword, you had power. You ruled over everyone weaker than you. They were always at war. Always trying to kill each other. Fighting over land.

Mikal ended wars, Ansset said.

Josif laughed. Yes, by winning all of them. It's probably the only way ever to have peace. Other ways have been tried. They never worked. Josif's hand rubbed along the rough stone.

I lived in a place like this once," Ansset said.

The Songhouse? I didn't think that was a castle."

No one poured down boiling oil if that's what you mean. And it wouldn't have stopped a determined army for more than, say, half an hour. But it's stone, like this.

Ansset sat down, took the shoes off his feet, and let his bare soles touch the stone.

I feel like I've come home. And he ran lightly along the stone into one of the turrets, where he climbed a winding staircase to the top. Josif followed him. Ansset stood at the edge, the highest point of the castle, feeling giddy. It reminded him of the High Room, only here it would never be cold and the wind would never blow, because of the almost transparent dome that protected the rock. He began to get a sense of the age of the thing. The Song-house was a thousand years old. And men had lived on Tew for two thousand years before the Songhouse had been built. And when Tew was first settled, three thousand years ago, this castle had already been sixteen thousand years old, had already spent ten thousand of those years under the dome.