After a while Hresh could no longer bear to be near them. He backed away from them as he would from a blazing fire, and moved onward, still searching, still finding.

There were still other races in the city, in even smaller numbers than the humans. They were strange creatures, of many startling sorts. Of some he could find no more than four or five representatives, of some a single one only. They looked like nothing that his studies of the chronicles had prepared him to encounter. Hresh saw beings with two heads and six legs and beings with no heads at all and a forest of arms. He saw beings with teeth like a thousand needles set round circular mouths that gaped in their stomachs. He saw beings that lived in sealed tanks and beings that floated like bubbles above the ground. He saw ponderous things moving with an earthshaking tread, and light, fluttering ones whose motions dazzled his eye. From them all came the unmistakable glint of intelligence, though it was not an earthly intelligence, and the emanations of their souls were puzzling and disturbing to him.

In time Hresh realized what these beings were. Star-creatures. Visitors from the worlds that circled the bright cold fires of the night. In the era of the Great World there must have been constant comings and goings of star-travelers among the worlds of heaven. From one of these strangers, maybe, had come the very Wonderstone that had granted him this vision.

And us? he thought. The People? Are we nowhere to be found in this mighty Vengiboneeza?

Nowhere. Not a trace. We are not here.

It was shattering. His people were altogether absent from the splendor and grandeur of the Great World.

He struggled to absorb and comprehend it. He told himself that this scene he saw was unfolding itself in the unimaginable past, long before the coming of the death-stars. Perhaps whole peoples are born just as individuals are, he thought: perhaps, on this age-old day that I have journeyed to, our kind is yet unborn. Our time is not yet come.

But that was small consolation. The deeper truth resonated and reverberated with terrible force in his soul.

You are not human. What you are is monkeys, or the children of monkeys.

The proof lay before him, and still he could not accept it. Not human? Not human? His mind whirled. He knew what it meant to be human, or believed that he did; and to be excluded from that great skein of existence that stretched backward into the depths of time was an agony beyond endurance. He felt cut adrift, severed from every root that bound him to the world. For a long while he hovered motionless in some sphere of air above ancient Vengiboneeza, numb, bewildered, lost.

Hresh had no idea how long he stood by the device in the underground vault, gripping the knobs and levers, while the Great World poured in torrents through his dazzled mind. But after a time he felt the vision beginning to fade. The shining towers turned misty, the streets blurred and melted and ran in streams before his eyes.

He gripped the levers more tightly. It was no use. His spirit was drifting upward now toward the stony reality of the cavern beneath the tower.

Then ancient Vengiboneeza was gone. But he was still under the spell of the Barak Dayir, and as he rose he saw once more the pattern of the ruined city in his mind as he had seen it upon his descent, those inter-locking circles, the blazing points of red light. Suddenly he understood what those red lights must be: the places where the life of the Great World still burned in the ruins. Wherever he saw those dots of hot light, there would he find caches of the treasure he sought.

Hresh had neither time nor strength to deal with that now. He felt dazed and weak. And yet a powerful exaltation lingered within his soul, mixed with great confusion, with self-doubt, with despair.

He looked around in disbelief at the huge hollow of the cavern: the dry earthen floor strewn with drifts of dust and cobwebs and bits of rubble, the dim lights, the half-seen statuary rising in insane profligacy along the walls. The Great World still seemed vivid and real to him, and this place only a shabby dream. But from moment to moment the balance was steadily shifting; the Great World slipped beyond his reach, the cavern became the only reality he had.

“Haniman!” he cried.

His voice came out cracked and ragged and thin, and half an octave too high.

Hresh tried again. “Haniman! Bring me up!”

There was no response from overhead. He stared up into the musty blackness, squinting, peering. He heard the sounds of chittering things moving about in the walls. But nothing from Haniman.

“Haniman!”

He bellowed it with all his strength. There was a sound as if of fine rain. Rain, down here? No, Hresh realized. Tiny pebbles, bits of sand and dirt, falling from the roof of the cavern. His voice alone had brought them down. Another such shout and he might bring the roof itself down upon him.

His nerves trembled like lute-strings. He wondered if Haniman had abandoned him in this tomb — simply walked off to leave him to rot and die. Or perhaps he had wandered away on some excursion of his own. Maybe it was just that Hresh was so far below the surface that Haniman was unable to hear his calls. Yissou! Hresh considered calling again. This place had endured the earthquakes of seven hundred thousand years; could it be tumbled by a single shout? “ Haniman!” he called once more. “ Haniman!” But once more his cries produced nothing but a further shower of fine particles from above.

What should he do? Starve? No. Climb? How?

He thought of using his second sight to catch Haniman’s attention. That was a forbidden thing, to turn one’s second sight upon a fellow member of the tribe, and thus to violate the sanctuary of his mind. But was he supposed to rot here in the darkness rather than go against custom?

Gathering his strength, Hresh sent forth his second sight.

Upward through the darkness went the tendrils of his perception. Someone was up there, yes. He felt life, he felt warmth. Haniman. Asleep! Dawinno take him, he had fallen asleep!

Hresh gave him a jab with his mind. There was a stirring overhead. Haniman murmured and grumbled. Hresh had a sense of Haniman turning in his sleep, perhaps brushing at his face as if trying to brush away a bothersome dream. He jabbed again, harder. Haniman! You imbecile, wake up! And harder yet. Haniman was awake now. Yes, sitting up, eyes open. Hresh saw the upper floor through Haniman’s eyes. That was a weird sensation, being in someone else’s mind. Hresh knew that he should withdraw. But he remained, lingering another moment, out of sheer curiosity. Feeling Haniman’s mind all around his like a second pelt. Touching Haniman’s little yearnings and hungers and angers. Discovering something of what it had been like to grow up fat and slow in a tribe of thin agile folk. Hresh felt an unexpected flood of compassion. This was almost like a twining; and in some ways it was more intense, more intimate. His annoyance with Haniman remained; but now it was like being annoyed at one’s own self, an irritation tinged with amusement and forgiveness.

Then Haniman’s mind shook itself angrily, tossing Hresh aside, and hastily Hresh withdrew, shivering at the impact of the breaking of the contact.

“Hresh? Was that you?”

Haniman’s voice floated downward, faint, vague, shrouded in echo.

“Yes! Bring me up, will you?”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I’ve been calling for ten minutes. Were you asleep?”

“Asleep?” came the voice from far above. But Hresh could not be sure whether it was Haniman repeating his word, or his own voice returning to him from the vault of the cavern.

In a moment the slab emitted its familiar groaning, sighing sound. Hastily Hresh scrambled aboard it, and it began to rise. He lay still, feeling the ache of fatigue in all his limbs.