The deepest pessimism invaded Koshmar’s soul.

Then, as the tribe was going around the rim of a huge black lake in the midst of a zone of dank boggy land, the dark waters stirred and boiled wildly and out of the depths a bizarre colossus began slowly to rise, a thing of enormous height but so flimsily constructed that it seemed a gust of wind could shatter it — pale limbs that were no more than thin struts, a body that was only a filmy tube interminably extended. As this thing rose up and up until it half blotted out the sky in front of them Koshmar threw her arm across her face in astonishment, and Harruel roared and brandished his spear, and some of the more timid members of the tribe began to flee.

But Hresh, holding his ground, called out, “This must be one of the water-strider folk. It’s harmless, I think.”

Higher and yet higher it mounted, erupting from the lake to a height ten or fifteen times that of the tallest man. There it halted, hovering far above them, balancing with wide-splayed feet on the surface of the water, which it seemed barely to disturb. It peered down out of a row of glaring green-gold eyes, surveying them in a melancholy way.

“You! Water-strider!” Hresh shouted. “Tell us how to find the city of the sapphire-eyes!”

And, amazingly, the huge creature replied at once in the silent speech of the mind, saying, “Why, it lies just two lakes and a stream from here, in the sunset direction. Everyone knows that! But what good will it do you to go there?” The water-strider laughed in horrible clangorous tones, a shrill hysterical laugh, and began to fold itself, section upon section, down toward the lake. “What good? What good? What good?” It laughed again; and then it disappeared beneath the black water.

On the afternoon of the day of the water-strider Threyne came to Torlyri, holding her hands to her sides, and announced that her time was upon her. Indeed Torlyri could see that it was true: the unborn was moving eagerly against the girl’s distended belly, and there were other signs of imminent birth.

“We can’t go onward so soon,” Torlyri told Koshmar. “Threyne has come to her time.”

For an instant unconcealed disappointment flickered in Koshmar’s eyes. Koshmar was in a fever to race onward to Vengiboneeza, Torlyri knew, now that she had learned the great city was so close. But she would have to wait. The birth of a child took precedence over everything. Threyne must be made comfortable; the child must be brought safely into the world.

In the cocoon days the birth of each new child had carried with it not only joy but also a hidden darker aspect, for the only time someone new was allowed into the world was when someone else was nearing the time when it was necessary to leave it: there was no room for expansion within the cocoon, and birth was inextricably mixed with death. Thus the limit-age, so that the People would not be faced with a choice between an intolerable smothered existence and a virtual prohibition against new births. Out here, where so much was altogether different for the tribe, there was no need to fear overcrowding. Quite the opposite: they needed all the new life they could produce, and more beyond that. No one would have to die to make room for children any longer. Whoever had the childbearing power, Torlyri thought, owed it to the tribe to be hatching an unborn of her own. She was beginning to toy with the idea even for herself.

They went as far as they could get from the bog and its black lake. No one wanted the water-strider bursting forth again to fill the air with its horrifying laughter while Threyne was having her baby.

Some of the men cut down saplings to make a leafy bower for her. Minbain and Galihine and a couple of the other older women washed her and held her hands as the pains grew strong. Preyne, who was the child’s father, crouched beside her for a while, touching his sensing-organ to hers and taking some of the discomfort from her, as was his obligation and privilege. Torlyri prepared birth-offerings to Mueri in her role as Comforter and to Yissou the Protector and also to Friit the Healer, for afterward. The labor was a long one, and Threyne groaned more than most women did. It was the hardship of the trek, Torlyri thought, that had put this pain in her.

Koshmar, who had been pacing tensely all afternoon, came to the bower toward sunset and stared down at Threyne’s swollen middle. To Torlyri she said, “Well? Is everything going as it should?”

Torlyri beckoned Koshmar aside, out of Threyne’s hearing, and said, “It’s taking too long. And she’s in great pain.”

“Let Preyne take the pain from her.”

“He’s doing his best.”

“Is she going to die?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Torlyri said. “But she’s suffering. She’ll be very weak for days afterward, if she lives.”

“What are you saying, Torlyri?”

“We won’t be able to break camp for a while.”

“But Vengiboneeza—”

“—has waited seven hundred thousand years for us,” Torlyri said. “It can wait another few weeks. We can’t risk Threyne’s life with your impatience. And Nettin’s baby is almost due also: two days, three. We might as well stay here until they’re strong enough to go onward. Or else divide the tribe, send Harruel and some of the other men ahead to look for the city, and we stay here to care for the mothers.”

Koshmar looked bothered. “If anything happens to Threyne I’d never forgive myself. But can you see how I feel, with the city so close?”

Tenderly Torlyri put her hands to Koshmar’s shoulders a moment, and held her. “I know,” she said softly. “You’ve fought so hard to bring us here.”

From Threyne just then came a new sound, higher, sharper.

“Her time has arrived,” Torlyri said. “I’ll have to go to her. We’ll be on the march again soon, I promise you that.”

Koshmar nodded and walked off. Torlyri, watching her go, shook her head. It amazed her that Koshmar, ordinarily so level-headed and clear-minded, had needed to be told that they would have to halt here for a while, and probably even now was having trouble accepting the idea. But Koshmar lacked all aptitude for these matters of women. She had never let a man put his hand to her thighs; she had never thought for a moment of bearing a child; she had aimed herself from childhood on for the chieftainship and nothing but the chieftainship, and to Koshmar that had excluded the idea of motherhood. Chieftains did not bear children: it was the tradition. But only because it had been necessary to regulate population within the cocoon so strictly, Torlyri thought. All sorts of traditions about who could bear children and who could not had sprung up over the centuries, but the underlying reason was always the fear that unlimited breeding would choke the cocoon and drive the tribe out into the harshness of winter before the true time.

Minbain called to her. The child was coming.

Torlyri hurried to the bower, just barely soon enough. Already a tiny head was jutting from between Threyne’s thighs. Torlyri smiled. Koshmar could never bear to watch the moment of birth, but Torlyri thought it was beautiful. She knelt at the foot of the bower, holding Threyne lightly by her ankles as she uttered the prayers to Mueri the Mother.

“A boy,” Minbain announced.

He was very small, noisy, wrinkled, pink all over, with scattered patches of thin grayish fur that would eventually expand to cover his entire body. His little sensing-organ moved stiffly from side to side, beating the air: a good sign, a sign of vigor and passion. Torlyri remembered when she had helped at Minbain’s own childbed nine years before, when Minbain had been delivered of Hresh, how Hresh had whipped the air furiously with his sensing-organ. Certainly he had lived up to the omen, had Hresh.