One of the landmasses was gigantic, filling nearly an entire face of the world. When he went around to the globe’s other side he saw two more, one above the other, and the fourth was at the bottom of the world, an icy place from which came a perceptible chill.

“Where is Vengiboneeza?” Hresh asked, and a dazzling green light appeared near the left-hand side of the uppermost landmass on the side of the globe that had two.

“And Thisthissima?” he asked. “Mikkimord? Tham?”

As fast as he could name other cities of the Great World, they sprang into light, and the globe turned to display them. Then his little store of names was exhausted, and he ordered the globe to show him every city all at once. It obeyed instantly; and so many blazing points of light sprang out on the globe, and it turned so rapidly, that he shrank back, blinded for the moment, covering his eyes in terror. When he dared to look again the globe was gone.

He never tried to summon it a second time. But the image of that round world with its immense seas and its colossal landmasses speckled everywhere with the blinding light of a myriad cities would remain with him forever. And he understood how great the Great World in fact had been.

Something else that showed him the immensity of what had been lost was a structure that he guessed to be the Tree of Life, of which Thaggoran had sometimes spoken.

It was not really a tree at all, but more of a tunnel, or set of tunnels, for it lay horizontally upon the ground for many hundreds of paces in an open parklike space. Its floor was below ground level, and it was roofed over with arches of some absolutely clear material, so that it did not appear to have a roof at all. A great central gallery was at its core, from which smaller passageways branched, and even smaller ones from those.

At the tip of each branch was a round chamber; and in each of those chambers a little family of animals lived, each in what must have been its natural surroundings, for some chambers were dry and desertlike, others were lush with moist foliage. It was possible to walk through the Tree of Life past branch after branch without disturbing the creatures in it in any way.

Hresh had seen no animals like these when the tribe was crossing the plains. But they resembled some that he had seen depicted in the Book of the Beasts in the chronicles. So these must be the creatures that had dwelled in the world before the coming of the death-stars: the lost animals, the vanished denizens of the former world.

There were huge slow ambling black-and-red ones with horns like trumpets that opened into wide bells at the tips, and there were delicate long-legged ones with pale yellow fur and round, startled eyes as big across as Hresh’s hand, and there were fierce little low squat ones that seemed to be all snout and teeth and claws. There was something tawny with black stripes that waded in a marsh, standing high above it on four scrawny legs, and swooped down with its long neck and long toothy beak to snatch hapless green creatures from the mud.

There were round drumlike animals that made jovial booming sounds with their distended blue bellies. There were snakelike things with triple heads. There were shy huge-eared little beasts that were covered with green moss and thickets of small flat leaves, so that Hresh could not tell whether they were animals or plants.

He wandered wonderstruck through all these chambers, astounded by the abundance and complexity. A deep sadness came over him at the thought that all these beasts probably were gone from the world now, unless somehow they had been set aside in some cocoon to wait out the cold centuries. He doubted that. They all were gone, gone with the sapphire-eyes.

In a chamber near the uttermost tip of the Tree of Life he came to something that took him totally by surprise: a group of what seemed to be people of his kind, going about their lives in what appeared to be a miniature version of his old tribal cocoon.

They were not exactly like him. At first glance they seemed the same; but when Hresh looked more carefully he saw that their sensing-organs were thinner and hung at a different angle, that their ears were large and set back on their heads in a way that looked very odd to him, that their fur was exceptionally dense and very coarse. The adults were shorter than the adults of his tribe and their bodies were not as stocky. Their hands joined their wrists at a strange angle and had fingers that were long and black and palms that were bright red, not pink as Hresh’s were.

He felt his chest constrict. This was a devastating revelation.

It was as though they were an earlier version of the People, a first attempt. They were as much unlike him as they were like. But he could not deny the similarities. The kinship. These were people of his own kind. They had to be. But they were ancient. This was the way the People had looked in the time of the Great World.

It said in the Book of the Beasts that Dawinno the Destroyer constantly altered the forms of all the creatures of the world. The changes were so small that from one generation to the next they could scarcely be observed, but over the great span of time they mounted up into significant differences. Now Hresh saw the proof of that. The race that had emerged from the cocoons at the end of the Long Winter was much different from the one that had entered them seven hundred thousand years before.

A deeper and more staggering truth lay behind that one. He would have hidden from it if he could. But it was inescapable.

Beyond much doubt the Tree of Life was nothing more than a collection of animals, assembled here, perhaps, for the amusement of the citizens of Vengiboneeza. There were no sea-lords here, no hjjks, no vegetals, none of any of the civilized peoples of the Great World: only simple beasts. And his own ancestors were here among those beasts.

Hresh’s muscles writhed in angry protest. But there was no way he could reject the evidence. Step by step, this city had forced him to admit the thing that he had been struggling to deny since the People first had come to Vengiboneeza: that in the time of the Great World his own race had not been considered human at all, but mere beasts, not to be ranked with the Six Peoples. Superior beasts, perhaps. But beasts nevertheless, that could be kept on display like this, one exhibit among many in this place where all the animals of the ancient world had been displayed.

He felt stunned and shaken and crushed. For a long time he stood in numb silence, staring. The people in the chamber — the creatures in the chamber — those beasts who were his kin — ignored him. Perhaps none of the animals on exhibit in the Tree of Life were able to see those who came to see them.

He waved to them. He drummed on the clear wall of their chamber. In a hoarse, ragged, defiant voice he called to them, “I am Hresh your brother! I have come to tell you good tidings, that your children’s children’s children will inherit the world!” But the words came out in a jumble, and the creatures in the chamber never once looked up.

After a time he crept away and wandered outside to the boulevard. He saw the green Citadel of the Dream-Dreamer folk crouching above him on the hill. Somber as it was, it blazed at him now with the fury of a thousand suns. He turned away from it, flinching. That was a place for humans. He knew that beyond question now. Their temple, their hostelry, their special headquarters, whatever. Their place, he thought. Not ours. A place for humans. And whatever we may think we are, we are not that.

Once more he imagined that he heard the awful hissing laughter of the guardians of the city gate.

Little monkey. Little monkey. Never confuse yourselves with humans, child.

He let the vision fade, and came up out of old Vengiboneeza like a drowning man flailing his way to the surface of the water.