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She lowered her top "This is the one who fel from the sky and lived," she said "He claims to come fro and lifted his head again, as if hearing distant ed

"Have him say it"

I spoke the name of my birth-planet Now the old ed his squat, ar from one outstretched hand

"I know of it," he said "Marontik, that’s the biggest city"

"Yes!"

"Outside lie the lands of grass and sand and snow There is a place where the land splits like a woman, deep and shadowed, and rind and drop big stones from their jaws"

"Have you been there?" I asked

He shook his head "Not since I was a babe I don’t remember it But my best as older She came from there before me," he said "She caled it Erda She described it Not like this place"

"No," I agreed

Now the old e I had been raised with He spoke it fluently enough, but with an odd accent, and using some words that were not familiar He motioned me to coue, "That as a teler of the finest stories She filed reat flares of passion and drea me about his favorite wife," I said

Vinnevra lay down on her elbow on his other side "My mother’s mother She died in the city before I was born"

"We have been here for hts--er to hear about Marontik How is it now?"

I described the old city and its baloon rafts and farm-to-market squares, and the power stations left nearby by the Forerunners I did not go into my experiences with the Manipular or the Didact

Noas not the ti of baloon rafts," he said "But that was long ago Vinnevra tels me you lost a friend somewhere out there Was he one of the smal people with sweet voices?"

"He is," I said

"Wel, some of them are here, too, but not in the city or nearby

Way over toward the far wal We saw the walk They were honest, in their way, but had little respect for size or age"

Riser had been quite old when he tooklives

Finaly, Vinnevra said, "Gae where there is no good food You remember"

"I sent you there to look when the sky burned and the stars fel,"

the old"They stil don’t like s of al these stories Which were true? Perhaps for these People, on this broken wheel, it didn’t matter

"They have no rabbits," Vinnevra wheedled

"They eat al the gary They burn al the wood and then go cold, they flee the city but live nearby and fear to leaveand then they vanish But it is not their evil Forerunners carry soers are stiff with fear and don’t want to do anything

Pfaaah!" He threw the bare bone out into the bushes

"Share your meat and I’l tel you what I know," I said

Gamelpar stared into the fire and softly cackled "No," he said

Vinnevra glanced at me reproachfuly She kne to deal with Gamelpar, it seemed, and I did not "We went back, and the dead Forerunners are stil there Nobody has come for them"

The old man looked up, reconsidered for a moment, then made up his mind "Here, clean this branch," he said to Vinnevra, "and I wil spit and cook the second rabbit It wil be for both of you I have eaten my fil" When Vinnevra had stripped away the bark with teeth and nails, he thrust the stick through the rabbit, then tossed it directly into the fire, skin and al, and used the end of the stick to shift and turn it

And so we settled next to hi for the second rabbit to cook, beneath the fitful stars, with the bright silvery band of the sky bridge high above

Gaain on the coals The s to punish me for my presumption?

"Rabbit cooked in its skin is most succulent," Vinnevra explained

"Sreed "Tel htness, and you faling--what did it look like, from up there?"

I told hiry at each other, last time I ith them And the dead ones --"

"You ith them?" Gamelpar lay down on his side, then on his back, and contee

"I did not know theships Lots of ships But the brightness--the sky turning so white the eyes and head hurt--I don’t knohat that is Do you?"

Ga reHe knew souess, and noas testing ?" Vinnevra asked o-between for two old, dead warriors--not yet I fancied I was stila blotchy patch about a third of the way up one side of the band, "is where a big ship crashed into the hoop, before the brightness and the shooting stars, just before you fel from the sky" He reached for another, thicker stick, handed it to Vinnevra, and blew out through his lips She showed the stick to me There were many notches already "Mark another double handful," the old man instructed "A day or so doesn’t matter"