After a time, when some of Koshmar’s fears of the city’s dangers had subsided, he went out sometimes with Orbin as his companion. Orbin, though no older than Hresh, had always been bigger and sturdier, and now he was growing so fast that it looked as if he would be as big and strong as Harruel himself before many more years had gone by. Later still, Hresh took Haniman as his companion and bodyguard. To everyone’s surprise, Haniman too was growing tall and strong, and even in a way agile. He had become very unlike the Haniman Hresh had known in the cocoon, slow and pudgy and clumsy and, so it seemed, irritatingly stupid. The trek across the continent appeared to have transformed him, or, Hresh thought, perhaps there had been more to Haniman all along than he had been willing to see.

It made no difference who he went with, Konya or Staip, Orbin or Haniman, or where in the city he went, north or south, east or west. To his shame and consternation he could discover nothing of any imaginable value, only an occasional useless scrap of twisted metal or bit of dull glass.

“You look sad,” Taniane said. “It’s very disappointing, isn’t it?”

“There’s plenty out there. I’ll start finding things soon.”

“I know you will.” Taniane seemed very interested in his explorations. He wondered why. Perhaps he had underestimated her, too. She was taller than he was, now, growing up fast, and her mind seemed to be broadening, deepening, extending itself. There was an unusual expression about her eyes, a strange searching gleam that seemed to hint at hidden complexities. It was as if her coltish girlishness were only a mask for something more somber and strange. One day she asked him to teach her how to read, which surprised him greatly. He began to give her lessons. There was unexpected pleasure in going off with her to some quiet place and explaining the mysteries of the holy craft. But then a little while afterward Haniman expressed interest in learning how to read also, which spoiled everything. Hresh could hardly refuse him, but that was the end of his going off alone with Taniane, for there was no time to give each of them private instruction; and after a time he began to think that Haniman had asked Hresh to teach him to read for precisely that reason.

The great round of the seasons moved on. The mild rainy winter gave way to a drier, hotter time, and then a time of cooler east winds fore-tokening the return of winter. Resolutely Hresh went on searching the ruined city. Through one dark empty dusty shell of a building after another he prowled, finding nothing. He seethed with impatience. He wondered if he would ever find anything worthwhile at all.

It was beginning to seem as though Vengiboneeza was entirely useless.

What about the prophecy of the Book of the Way? Was it only a lie and a deception? Suppose he never discovered a thing in these ruins, as was beginning to seem likely? Did that mean, then, that the treasures of the city truly were reserved only for the real humans, whoever and wherever they might be? And that the People were in fact nothing more than glorified monkeys who had intruded where they did not belong?

Hresh fought bitterly against that dismal conclusion. But again and again it came swimming up from the depths of his mind to plague him.

He searched on and on, ranging farther and farther from the home settlement. Often now he went too far to return in a single day, and he begged and won permission to pitch camp overnight at some distant site of exploration. For those journeys he had to take two bodyguards, usually Orbin and Haniman, so that one might remain awake, sitting sentry through the dark hours. But they never encountered danger, though occasionally some wandering animal of the jungle browsed by, and once or twice a flock of monkeys went noisily through the upper stories of the buildings around them, swinging hand to hand in and out of empty windows and leaping wildly from one tower to another.

The size and complexity of the city still bewildered him, but after nearly a year Hresh knew it far better than any of the others. He was the only one for whom Vengiboneeza was something other than a wholly incomprehensible maze. He divided the city into zones, naming each sector for one of the Five Heavenly Ones, and subdividing each of the five into ten lesser zones that he named for members of the tribe. Then he drew a simple map which he carried with him at all times: a roughly sketched outline on an old strip of parchment.

Taniane saw it once, when he took it by accident from his sash. “What’s that?” she asked. “Are you learning how to draw pictures now?”

“It isn’t anything important.”

“Can I took?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“I won’t make fun of it, I promise.”

“It’s — a sacred thing,” he said lamely. “Something only the chronicler can look at.”

He wondered why he had told her that. There was nothing sacred about the map. Indeed, not only was there no reason to conceal it from her, but he knew that he probably should make copies of it, so that the others could at least begin to gain some understanding of the city. But somehow he found himself reluctant. The map gave him power over the city, and power too over the rest of the tribe. The pleasure he took in his private knowledge of it was not, Hresh knew, particularly admirable. But it was real pleasure all the same and he prized it.

On a day in early winter when he felt oppressed to the depths of his soul by the disappointment and frustration of his fruitless search, Hresh returned to the main southern gate, where he had encountered the three gigantic artificials that the sapphire-eyes had left behind. They stood just where they had been, near the great pillars of green stone, silent, motionless, majestic.

He walked around them until he stood before them. He stared up at them without fear or awe this time.

“If you were anything more than machines,” he said, “you’d know that you’ve been wasting your time standing guard here all these thousands of years.”

The one on the left looked at him with something like amusement in its huge shining blue eyes.

“Is that the truth, little monkey?”

“You mustn’t call me that! I’m a human! A human!” Hresh pointed angrily at the center sapphire-eyes, the one who had finally granted Koshmar and her people permission to enter the city. “You admitted it yourself! ‘You are the humans now,’ you told us.”

“Yes. That is correct,” said the center sapphire-eyes. “You are the humans now.”

“Do you hear that?” Hresh said to the left-hand one.

“I do. And I agree: you are the humans now. For whatever that may be worth to you. But why do you say we have wasted our time, little monkey?”

Hresh fought back his annoyance.

“Because,” he said frostily, “you guard an empty city. Our books say that useful things are supposed to be stored here. But there’s nothing but ruined buildings, calamity, chaos, dust, trash.”

“Your books are correct,” said the center one.

“I’ve searched everywhere. There’s nothing. The buildings are empty. One good sneeze would bring half the place toppling down.”

“You should search more deeply,” said the left-hand sapphire-eyes.

“And search with that which can help you find what you seek,” said the right-hand one, speaking for the first time.

“I don’t understand. Tell me what you mean.”

The hissing sound of their laughter showered down about him.

“Little monkey!” said the left-hand one, almost affectionately. “Ah, impatient little monkey!”

“Tell me!”

But all he could get from them was the hissing of their laughter, and their indulgent, patronizing crocodile smiles.

Hresh was with Haniman, a month or two afterward, in the sector of the city that he called Emakkis Boldirinthe, when finally he made his first discovery of a working artifact out of the Great World.