'About doctors, yes,' said Hal, managing to grin a little. 'But I do not exaggerate much. And it is true that science is not advancing in geometric progression as it once did. There is a lack of time for the scientist and too little communication. He cannot be aided in his own research by a discovery in another field because he just will not hear of it.'

Hal saw a head stick out from the base of the statue and then withdraw. He began to sweat.

Fobo questioned Hal about the religion of the Forerunner. Hal was as taciturn as possible and completely ignored some questions, though he felt embarrassed by doing so. The wog was nothing if not logical, and logic was a light that Hal had never turned upon what he had been taught by the Urielites.

Finally, he said, 'All I can say to you is that it is absolutely true that most men can travel subjectively in time but that the Forerunner, his evil disciple, the Backrunner, and the Backrunner's wife are the only people who can travel objectively in time. I know it is true because the Forerunner predicted what would happen in the future, and his every prediction was fulfilled. And–'

'Every prediction?'

'Well, all but one. But that turned out to be an unreal forecast, a pseudofuture somehow inserted by the Backrunner into The Western Talmud.'

'How do you know those predictions which haven't been fulfilled aren't also false insertions?'

'Well... we don't. The only way to tell is to wait until the time for them to happen arrives. Then...'

Fobo smiled and said, 'Then you know that that particular prediction was written and inserted by the Backrunner.'

'Of course. But the Urielites have been working for some years now on a method which they say will prove, by internal evidence, whether the future events are real futures or false. When we left Earth, we expected to hear at any time that an infallible method had been discovered. Now, of course, we won't know until we return to Earth.'

'I feel that this conversation is making you nervous,' said Fobo. 'Perhaps, we can pursue it some other time. Tell me, what do you think of the ruins?'

'Very interesting. Of course, I take an almost personal interest in this vanished people because they were mammals, so much like us Terrans. What I cannot imagine is how they could almost die out. If they were like us, and they seem to have been, they would have thrived.'

'They were a very decadent, quarrelsome, greedy, bloody, pernicious breed,' Fobo said. 'Though, no doubt, there were many fine people among them. I doubt that they all killed each other off, except for a few dozen or so. I doubt also that a plague killed almost all their kind. Maybe someday we'll find out. Bight now, I'm tired, so I'm going to bed.'

'I'm restless. If you don't mind, I'll poke around. These ruins are so beautiful in this bright moonlight.'

'Reminds me of a poem by our great bard Shamero. If I could remember it and could translate it effectively enough into American, I'd recite it to you.'

Fobo's V-in-V lips yawned.

'I shall go to bed, retire, wrap the arms of Morpheus around me. However, first, do you have any weapons, firearms, with which to defend yourself against the things that prowl the night?'

'I am allowed to carry a knife in my bootsheath,' said Hal.

Fobo reached under his cloak and brought out a pistol. He handed it to Hal and said, 'Here! I hope you won't have to use it, but you never know. We live in a savage, predatory world, my friend. Especially out here in the country.'

Hal looked curiously at the weapon, similar to those he had seen in Siddo. It was crude compared to the small automatics in the Gabriel, but it had all the aura and fascination of an alien weapon. Plus the fact that it resembled very much the early steel pistols of Earth. Its hexagonal barrel was not quite three decimeters long; the caliber looked to be about ten millimeters. A revolving chamber contained five brass cartridges; these were loaded with black gunpowder, lead bullets, and percussion caps containing, he guessed, fulminate of mercury. Strangely, the pistol had no trigger; a strong spring pulled the hammer down against the cartridge when the finger released the hammer.

Hal would have liked to see the mechanism that turned the revolving cartridge chamber when the hammer was pulled back. But he did not want to keep Fobo around any longer than he could help.

Nevertheless, he could not refrain from asking him why the Siddo did not use a trigger. Fobo was surprised at the question. When he had heard Hal's explanation, he blinked his large round eyes (a weird and at first unnerving sight because the lower eyelid made the motion), and he said, 'I have never thought of it! It does seem to be more efficient and less tiring on the handler of the gun, does it not?'

'Obvious to me,' said Hal. 'But then, I am an Earthman and think like one. I have noticed the not unsurprising fact that you Ozagens do not always think as we do.'

He handed the gun back to Fobo, and he said, 'I am sorry I can't take it. But I am forbidden to carry firearms.'

Fobo looked puzzled, but evidently he did not think it politic to inquire why not. Or else he was too tired.

He said, 'Very well. Shalom, aloha, good dreaming, Sigmen visit you.'

'Shalom to you, too,' said Hal. He watched the broad back of the wog disappear into the shadows, and he felt a strange warmth for the creature. Despite his utterly alien and unhuman appearance, Fobo appealed to Hal.

Hal turned and walked toward the statue of the Great Mother. When he got to the shadows at its base, he saw the woman slipping into the darkness cast by a three-story heap of rubble. He followed her to the rubble only to see her several stone-throws ahead, leaning against a monolith. Beyond was the lake, silvery and black in the moonlight.

Hal walked toward her and was about five meters from her when she spoke in a low and throaty voice. 'Baw sfa, soo Yarrow.'

'Baw sfa ,' he echoed, knowing that it must be a greeting in her language.

'Baw sfa ,' she repeated, and then, obviously translating the phrase for his benefit, she said, in Siddo, 'Abhu'umaigeitsi'i .'

Which meant, very roughly, 'Good evening.'

He gasped.

Of course! Now he knew why the words had sound vaguely familiar and the rhythm of her speech remind him so strongly of a not too unrecent experience. Som thing about it stirred up a memory of his research in tiny community of the last of the French speakers in Hudson Bay Preserve.

Baw sfa. Baw sfa was bon soir.

Even though her speech was, linguistically speaking, very decayed form, it could not disguise its ancestry. Baw sfa. And those other words he had heard through the window. Wuhfvayfvoo. That would be levez-vous, French for 'get up.'

Soo Yarrow. Could that be, must be, Monsieur Yarrow? The initial m dropped, the French eu evolved to something resembling the American и sound? Must be. And there were other changes to this degenerate French. Development of aspiration. The abandonment of nasalization. Vowel shift. Replacement of к before a vowel by a glottal stop. Change of d to t; l to w; f shifted to a sound between v and f; w changed to f. What else? There must also be a transmutation in the meanings of some words, and new words replacing old ones.

Yet, despite its unfamiliarity, it was subtly Gallic.

'Baw sfa,' he repeated.

And he thought, How inadequate that greeting! Here were two human beings meeting forty-odd lightyears from Earth, a man who had not seen a woman for one subjective year, a woman obviously hiding and in great fear, perhaps the only woman left on this planet. And he could only say, 'Good evening.'

He stepped closer. And he flushed with the heat of embarrassment. Almost, he turned and ran. Her white skin was relieved only by two black narrow strips of cloth, one across her breasts, the other diapered around the hips. It was a sight such as he had never seen in his life except in a forbidden photograph.

The embarrassment was forgotten almost at once as he saw that she was wearing lipstick. He gasped and felt a shock of fear. Her lips were as scarlet as those of the monstrously evil wife of the Backrunner.

He forced himself to quit shaking. He must think rationally. This woman could not be Anna Changer, come from the far distant past to this planet to seduce him, to turn him against the real religion. She would not speak this degraded French if she were Anna Changer. Nor would she appear to as insignificant a person as Hal. She would have come to the chief Urielite, Macneff.

His mind gave the problem of the lipstick a quick flip and considered its other side. Cosmetics had gone out with the coming of the Forerunner. No woman dared . . . well, that wasn't true ... it was just in the Haijac Union that cosmetics were not used. Israeli, Malay, and Bantu women wore rouge. But then everybody knew what kind of women they were.

Another step, and he was close enough to determine that the scarlet was natural, not paint. He felt an immense relief. She could not be the wife of the Back-runner. She could not even be Earthborn. She had to be an Ozagen humanoid. The murals on the walls of the ruins depicted red-lipped women, and Fobo had told him that these had been born with the flaming labile pigment.

The answer to one question bore another. Why was she speaking a Terran language, or, rather, a descendant of one? This tongue, he was sure, did not exist on Earth.

The next moment, he forgot his questions. She was clinging to him, and he had his arms around her, clumsily trying to comfort her. She was weeping and pouring out words, one so fast after the other that even though he knew they came from the French he could only make out a word here and there.

Hal asked her to slow down and to go over what she had said. She paused, her head cocked slightly to the left, then brushed back her hair. It was a gesture he was to find characteristic of her when she was thinking.

She began to repeat very slowly. But, as she continued, she speeded up, her full lips working like two bright red creatures independent of her, packed with their own life and purpose.

Fascinated, Hal watched them. Ashamed, he looked away from them, tried to look into her wide dark eyes, could not meet them, and looked to one side of her head.

She told her story disconnectedly and with much repetition and backtracking. Many of her words he could not understand but had to supply the meaning from the context. But he could understand that her name was Jeannette Rastignac. That she came from a plateau in the central mountains of this continent. That she and her three sisters were, as far as she knew, the only survivors of her kind. That she had been captured by an exploring party of wogs who'd intended to take her to Siddo. That she had escaped and had been hiding in the ruins and in the surrounding forest. That she was frightened because of the terrible things that prowled the forest at night. That she lived on wild fruit and berries or on food stolen from wog farmhouses. That she had seen Hal when his vehicle hit the antelope. Yes, it had been her eyes he had thought were those of the antelope.