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slumped to the floor. Barthel stood rigid against the wall, eyes wide and staring into the
opposite corner of the cell.
"What did they make me say?" Bar-Woten asked.
"Nothing," Barthel snapped. The Khemite looked into the comer and flinched as if from a blow.
What Bar-Woten had revealed under hypnosis was slowly mangling Barthel's insides. He had never
suspected....
Overhead they heard the sounds of distant explosions. Kiril peered through the window and saw
the guard standing away from the cell, looking anxiously down the hall.
The lights went out. After an hour they slept. Bar-Woten snored loudly, head lolling between
his legs. Kiril hung on the edge of sleep. He heard someone move in the cell, but stirred and
drifted off.
"No," Barthel said. He closed his eyes but couldn't block out what he saw. In the corner,
standing above the reclining
Kiril, was Barthel's mother. She glowed faintly like the sea, and her throat opened into a
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second smiling mouth. What she murmured to him he could not accept. But it was true. He had heard.
"Not now," he said.
She spoke to him again.
"No."
He turned away from the corner and butted his head softly against the padding.
The lights came on again. Kiril stood and stretched in the cramped space. Barthel slept on,
standing with his head wedged into the corner. Bar-Woten looked at Kiril specula-lively from his
spot on the floor.
"You're the chosen one," he said. "They're sure you're the one who'll get them into the Wall."
"Get who in?"
"The thin ones. You told the right story, I suppose. Barthel didn't. I'm sure I didn't. The
one who isn't human, it spoke to the guard while they were making Barthel talk. It spoke English
but I could understand. There are three of them here."
"Three of who?" Kiril asked, mind still foggy from sleep.
"The thin, strange ones. They aren't from this part of Hegira. They came across the Wall in a
ship of some sort. They've made a pact, and they're sharing knowledge with the English-speakers."
"They want me to take them to the Wall?"
"You're lucky," Bar-Woten said, nodding. "You'll reach your goal. I doubt if we will."
"I don't want to help them with anything," Kiril said. "They don't deserve it."
"The thin ones might be more friendly than the English-speakers. They didn't like the
slaughter at the Obelisk camp. Seemed to think there might have been more like you. Dead pilgrims
are no good to them."
"What are the English-speakers doing for them?"
"Didn't say." Bar-Woten's face crinkled into a smile. "It's fairly obvious, though. The thin
ones want to get back to where they came from."
"Through the Wall?"
"Any way they can. Perhaps the English-speakers are building them another rocket."
"Then I pity them. They'll be double-crossed."
Bar-Woten shrugged. "I don't understand much of anything now."
Barthel jerked and pulled away from his corner. He nibbed his eyes, then looked over Kiril's
shoulder and seemed relieved.
The door opened an hour after they were all awake. Another officer, paunchy and florid,
ordered them out of the cell and took them down the hall in the direction opposite the laboratory.
Two young, wan-faced guards followed with holstered pistols.
A hovercraft waited on the concrete airstrip. Craters ten and twenty meters across had been
punched into the pavement and the surrounding rocky hills. Fragments of metal littered the area.
The fat officer rapped the butt of his gun on the port of the hovercraft. The port swung open,
and a ladder came down. "Climb in," he told them. They went up the ladder into the ship. The
guards followed, and the officer managed to squeeze through with some straining. A low, round
metal tube led them around the circumference to the main cabin. A small barred cell had been
welded to the floor and ceiling of the adjacent passenger cubicle. The guards put them in and
locked the door behind.
The hovercraft coughed and roared. Somewhere metal screeched across concrete. Then she lurched
and rose. The pilot, hidden behind a thick steel shield, took them across the apron and over the
lake.
They could get glimpses of their flight only through the edges of the clear canopy that
extended beyond the shield. Gray, cragged mountains came toward them as they skirted the perimeter
of the lake. The rocks passed away abruptly as the hovercraft made a long, slow turn to the right
toward the middle of the lake. Rock walls flashed by on both sides as they passed through a narrow
sound.
Barthel stared with determination through the bars at the shield. Bar-Woten sat relaxed with
his back wedged into one corner of the cell, studying the slender view of their travel. Kiril
alternated between his two companions and the view, trying to puzzle what had happened to all of
them.
The trip took an hour. The hovercraft slowed and pulled into a narrow harbor ringed with walls
of slate-black stone. It vaulted with a rumble and a slight bump up a ramp of wooden pilings. The
guards came alert suddenly and opened the cell on orders from the fat officer. They were led
outside.
"We have a special treat," the officer said, slipping the words conspiratorially from the side
of his mouth as they walked beside him. "A parade. You should enjoy tomorrow."
Ahead of them lay a solid mass of grayness, as though concentrated storms had packed so
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thickly they merged without feature. Nearer, clouds broke from the monotony and asserted their own
turmoil. Rain fell in wind-blown draperies onto the green, jungle-covered hills and valleys that
butted up against the ascending curve of the Wall. Nearer still, obscured by plummets and feathers
of mist pouring over the hills, were masses of buildings, angular, like scattered blocks of lead.
The sight made Kiril's heart sink. A land of no cheer, no variety ... it choked the eyes. Yet it
had an unmistakable, grave grandeur.
The officer was obviously proud of his city. But he was also a little cowed, as though the
solemnity and monotony were not exactly what he'd expected. Thunder pranced near the gray end of
the world. The Wall flashed sheet-white with an eyelike wink -- roof of clouds the upper lid, gray-
green jungled hills and peaks the lower. The gaze was cold and expectant, like the eye of an
untersay draken.
"Faster," the officer said. The wind picked up and ruffled their matted hair.
A long, sleek silver train waited for them at the end of the wood ramp. Steam hissed from the
engine. The rails made plaintive squeaks. The air smelled of lightning and storm. It tickled Bar-
Woten's nose, and he wriggled his face, making his patch bob. He threw a side look at Kiril as he
rubbed his nose. Clearer than anything, it told Kiril the Ibisian was worried.
"This car," the officer directed. They climbed into the stepwell, then waited as the inner
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