"But, Marah, today we need only deal with eight Dancers, and we Shield, outnumbering them, armed as we are, are well able to do so."

"I"m glad you think so," said Marah drily. "You never faced them during the rebellion, did you?"

Baresst said stiffly, "You know I did not." It was a sore point with him; the rebellion had actuallybegun at the Temple where he had been Dedicated, but he had been serving duty off-planet when it happened.

"They are impressive fighters. Apparently the Flame cannot be used in combat, not even by them; be grateful. Had that resource been available to them, they would have beaten us, Baresst, and you, I, the Aneda themselves, would today be imprisoned or dead."

Baresst nodded, spoke the thought that had crossed the minds of most of the Shield at one time or another. "So, they aredangerous, even now. Among the exiles are none young enough to be trained as Dancers, Marah. But give them children, let them breed to fill this planet, and who knowswhat the heretics will do? Will you see them train their get as Dancers? In thirty years, or forty, we might find ourselves with not eight heretic Dancers to deal with, but eighty."

"Lad, we don"t even know we"ll be here when that hap pens."

"Marah, we don"t know that wewon"t." Marah shrugged; it was a true thing. "We"re here till they recall us. It might be four years, it might be a hundred."

Marah thought on the problem for a moment, and turned at last to where Dvan and the Shield Els were eating together. "Dvan, how do you think?"

Dvan was widely recognized as the most pious of the Shield, even if very nearly the youngest there. He said merely, "I am unable to know the will of the Aneda."

The argument ran long into the night. Baresst and Marah, who had started it, were soon reduced to observers, as the other Shield took up both sides of the argument. It came clear, well before the morning, that the general opinion among the Shield was that the child should not be allowed to live.

First thing in the morning, the Keeper-She had not even been approached with the problem-requested the Sentinel join Her, and said briefly, "Inform the Shield that the exiles, and their children, are not to be harmed, unless they offer violence."

She was within Her rights to deliver such an instruction; on the World, in a time of peace, Keeper and Sentinel between them shared spiritual and civic authority-but this was hardly such an occasion. Marah was not certain that the Aneda would accept him, if he wished to join it; but he had known Saliya for a very long time, and if She was not among the Aneda, it was only because She did not wish to be.

So he said merely, "My lady, as you will."

The child died anyway; but the argument was not forgotten.

The light was the worst; but the gravity and air followed a close second and third. The prison was better than thirty percent lighter than the gravity of the World. After a day outside, Dvan found himself made weary simply by returning to the starship, where the gravity ball still kept local gravity of the World. By their second cold season with the exiles, the annoyance had grown particularly acute. Dvan"s body, and those of all the Shield who made the daily transition between gravities, began to protest; his joints ached in unfamiliar ways, and his muscles sometimes trembled after exercise within the ship.

The air was but little better, generally too hot, too cold during the cold season, laden with strange scents that made many of the Shield sneeze. The pressure was slight enough that at the end of the day Dvan"s lungs ached from the unaccustomed effort of pushing the thin air in and out.

At times, returning to the ship in the evenings, Dvan felt not as though he were returning home, but as though he were entering a world in its own way as alien as the one he had just left; air cold and thick and dry, light too dim, and gravity unnaturally heavy.

At such times he found it easy to believe that the Flame People were not native to the World.

Somewhat to his surprise-it was virtually the only thing that made the duty tolerable-Dvan found he enjoyed his work.

The exile town was not large, but it gave the impression of largeness, wasting s.p.a.ce flagrantly. It sprawled in six separate cl.u.s.ters about the edge of a small forest of some hardwood trees. The trees were among the most familiar of the things with which the exiles were forced to deal. Though leafier than the trees of the World, and growing closer together, the prison trees were otherwise similar to those the exiles had known in their prior lives. Wood made the buildings in which the convicts lived, fueled the fires that enabled the convicts to survive the first two cold seasons.

During the second cold season, when another sixty of the exiles died of starvation, Dvan heard rumors that some of the exiles had taken to eating the flesh of the herbivores who freely roamed the wooded areas around the town. Dvan dismissed the vile rumors from his mind, and after the first time would not hear them spoken around him. The exiles were a low lot, and some of them would say anything to curry favor from the Shield. He could not even find it in his heart to be angry at the transparency of their lies; some who might have died, the first cold season and the second, did not only because of the patronage of their jailers. Though it was not required of them, many Shield, Dvan chief among them, labored in the fields alongside the exiles, broke ground with them, fought with them against the all-encroaching weeds of the planet; and aided the exiles in bringing in the crop once ready.

There was always too much to do.

The task of preparing the exiles for self-sufficiency was immense. Water seemed no problem at first, given how water literally fell from the sky, but food was, and from nearly the first day. The plants they had brought from the World did not adapt well; the native plants pushed them out, grew alongside them and choked them to death.

The seasons were far more extremethan those of the World; the prison planet"s processional wobble was p.r.o.nounced. Temperatures, from the cold season to the hot, varied by immense extremes; in the cold season the water often fell from the sky asice. It meant that crops could be planted only late in the cold season, for harvesting at the height of the hot season. With only one crop every local year, a single crop failure could mean disaster; and the first year, when better than three hundred died, did.

The second year, two children were born.

One of them, a girl, survived. The other, a boy, simply ceased breathing one night. Dvan wondered if it had been malnutrition, or if, perhaps, some Shield had visited that home during the night, and held a hand over the infant"s face until the baby had ceased struggling. Surely the parents would not have dared to stop him.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Dancers would, in time, have male children to teach, but, the thousand dark and light G.o.ds willing, that day would come long after the Shield were gone from this planet of exile.

By the slowly improving standards of the prison, the heretic Sedon lived in a palace.

His house was of uncured wood; in that year, all those on the prison planet were. They were yet two cold seasons away from the discovery that resins, applied to the wood while still fresh from cutting, would help protect the wood from the elements.

Most of the houses in the town were no more than crude huts, with perhaps a single door. From the outside, Sedons house, aside from being rather larger, resembled those of his neighbors. But where their houses might hold a dozen apiece, Sedon lived alone. Where most of their houses had floors of dirt, and lacked sufficient ventilation for a fireplace, Sedons floors were paneled with wood scrubbed until it was nearly white, and a firepit had been fashioned for him in the center of his house, with stone grates about it to keep the sparks from spitting out and setting the hangings alight, and an air trap built above it to guide the smoke upward through the roof.

It was difficult to see the scrubbed wood floors and walls; rugs and hangings covered nearly every surface, as though Sedon wished to remove all evidence of the rude dwelling in which he lived. To a surprising degree he succeeded; on the odd occasions Dvan visited, he was able, if he chose, to forget his duty on this distant planet, to pretend for a moment that he was back on the World, at home in the city of Kulien.

During the workday Dvan was approached by one of the exiles, with word that Sedon would be pleased by his company. Dvan came near the fall of night. Sunset that night was a spectacular event; the sky turned a deep shade of blue, and the clouds, scudding by at a perceptible clip, glowed a vibrantpink, another color that did not even exist on the World.

Sedon sat talking into his personal corder when Dvan entered; Dvan left the door open behind him. The corders wereall the technology the Dancers had been allowed to bring with them, and they had not been given access to even them until well after debarking from the ship.

The corders were a significant thing; with the information stored in them, on metallurgy, mining, farming, weaving, and a thousand other subjects, they were the margin of survival for the exiles. Much of the information stored was useless, given the lack of tools the exiles had been allowed to bring with them; but physics and chemistry do not change, and everything else is engineering.

There were better than a hundred engineers among the four thousand exiles.

Sedon was dressed in a crude semblance of a Dancer"s finery, a long scarlet robe tied with a white sash.

His feet were bare, and his head. He did not rise at Dvan"s entrance, but ceased speaking to the corder and set it to one side. "My friend." He gestured to the cushions before him. "Will you join me for your meal?"

Dvan declined, seated himself. "Lon, if you have it. Water, if not."

"We have not learned to brew lon yet, though it cannot be said that the engineers are not trying." Sedon smiled at Dvan. "They have created an alcoholic drink with one of the native plants, but I am told it is near undrinkable." He did not even look at the breeder, standing patiently in the corner of the main room: "Water for my friend."

The woman placed the mug before Dvan cautiously, clearly more afraid of the huge Shield than of the heretic Dancer she served, and scurried back to her corner quickly.

Sedon said without preamble, "You have not seen the Dancer Lorien in some while."

Dvan thought back. "Aye."

"I sent him away."

"Ah."

Sedon seemed mildly irritated by Dvan"s paucity of response. "He is searching for a good location for a new town. In time, as children are born to us, we will need to relocate to a better location, one better suited to farming, better suited to industry. He went south."

"I take it he is endeavoring to live off the native plants?"

Sedon said carefully, "In part."

"Surely he could not carry any great amount of food with him?"

Sedon shook his head. "No. Look, Dvan, I would speak plainly with you, as we used to."

Dvan sipped from the mug, let the flat water sit in his mouth a moment before swallowing. "I have missed the conversations, to be sure. They were a distraction, but an interesting one."

"When the ship is recalled, you will leave with it."

Dvan blinked. At first he simply did not understand the point Sedon was trying to make. "Aye. Of course we do not know when-" His voice trailed off. "Aye," he said again after a moment. "I shall."

"Why?"

The blunt question threw Dvan, as it was clearly intended to. He fell back on the obvious answer. "It is my duty."

"What awaits you on the World, Dvan? Perhaps in a century or two you might receive a posting as Shield Sentinel. You will serve aboard warships whose purpose is to avoid combat as they ferry men and equipment to and from-mostly from-colonies we intend to abandon. If you are fortunate you will be one of the Shield to die in combat with the sleem, to make some slight gesture toward fulfilling the destiny for which you were made. If not, then in time you will work on the Sphere Project; perhaps you will even see it completed within the life allotted you, and then find yourself trapped inside one small planetary system for all eternity, or until you wear away, as the Aneda hide themselves, and you, from the Continuing Time that they so fear. You will play at romance with Shield as bored of life as yourself."

Sedon leaned forward slightly. "Dvan, youlove it here. In your life you have never had work that mattered in any real sense; here you do. Here you can step on with work thatmatters, building a civilization in a new system. This planet is so far from the haunts of the sleem, it will be twenty or thirty thousand years before we have any danger of encounter with them. In that time we canprepare, and when the sleem reach this planet, as they will, they,will find not a single planetary system, or two, or three, arrayed against them, but an entire corner of the galaxy."

The vision Sedon drew, of a humanity prepared to do battle with the sleem, struck Dvan with real force.

It was a great frustration of the Shield that the Aneda had not allowed them to take the battle to the sleem, but had rather insisted that the warships of the Flame People avoid conflict, flee when possible, or, when combat did occur, scuttle themselves at the first sign that the sleem were gaining the upper hand.

Sedon continued. "Have you a partner waiting your return?"

Dvan shook his head slowly. "Not to speak of; one who was a boy with me, but... I did not hesitate when offered this duty."

"I will tell you plainly, Dvan, the gene pool we have been granted to work with here is not of the best.

Our best, engineers and breeders alike, were Demolished for no other reason than that theywere our best. Among our breeders is no woman with a Keeper in her lineage, going back to the Eight; and only a few among them at the Sixteen. Shield and Dancers are scattered among their ancestors, but in smaller proportion than I like. We can make use of you, Dvan, of a man capable of breeding one of our women, with a lineage as good as that of any Dancer, or any Keeper."

Dvan was not offended by Sedon"s a.s.sumption that he would be bred if he stayed; it was one of the ways in which the Shield were used. Dancers were sometimes bred when very young, before being Consecrated to the mystery of the Dance; but once Consecrated, never. Heretic though he was, Sedon remained a Dancer; it did not even occur to Dvan to question Sedon"s a.s.sumptions regarding which actions were proper for Dancers, and which for Shield; they were his a.s.sumptions too.

"Have you never wondered," said Sedon, "about the a.s.sumptions the Flame People make about themselves, about what behavior is normal for humans?"

"I am not certain what you mean."

"Did you know that among the Zaradin, breeders were not intelligent?"

"I did not. So?"

"Has it ever struck you that we treat our own breeders, intelligent though they undeniably are, as the Zaradin treated theirs?"

"Are you saying," said Dvan slowly, "that they are treated badly?"

Sedon shrugged. "Badly? Let us say, inefficiently. I do not suggest that one could Dance, or learn the disciplines of the Shield; such thoughts are plainly ridiculous. But their best are raised to serve as Keepers of the Flame, and serve that pa.s.sive role better than any man. Might not one learn the engineer"s art? Or those of a healer? I suspect, Dvan, that the breeders might make fine healers; they are better in tune with things of the body than many men." He paused, grinned abruptly. "And we surely have need of healers, since the Aneda were so cheap as to deny us any among the exiles."

"These are-disturbing thoughts."

"Prepare to be more disturbed," said Sedon evenly. "I know how you were raised, and taught; in some ways it is not so different from the training of Dancers. What I am about to say will shock you, will strike you as the greatest of heresies; and after that, I have another and worse one. Are you prepared?"

Dvan stared at him. "Aye."

A smile moved across Sedon"s features, warm and genuine. "Good. Listen, Dvan, if I were ever to try a Speaking with you, you would kill me, or die in the attempt. Perhaps both."

The point did not seem to require a response from Dvan; he offered none.

Sedon"s voice took on a calm a.s.surance. "On the World, Shield who have heard us Speak, if they do not die of their own hand, are taken to Demolition. Do you know why the Aneda fear our Speaking, fear it so greatly that they have trained you to die rather than experience it, face to face, with a Dancer? When I Speak, Dvan, I speak toyou, to your soul. I Speak from love, for there is no other way to do it; I love you, not as some person in a group, seated at the steps of the Temple before I Dance, but as yourself, as a good and decent man worthy of my love. I know you as I know myself, Dvan, the dark places within you, where you feel shame, and the good clean places where you plan and dream. There is nothing you can do, ever, that would dismay me, or hurt me, or change the nature of my love for you."

Dvan found his mouth dry. He had to take another sip of the water before he could speak. "So?"

Sedon"s voice was quite gentle. "The habits of Dancers and Shield are not so different, Dvan. The bond to be found between men is no bond any breeder could ever give you."

Dvan shook himself slightly. "Water is wet, and stones hard. So?"

"There is no reason, Dvan, you could not experience the love Dancers share among themselves."

The muscles in Dvan"s stomach clenched, seized up on him so violently he thought he might be sick. The rude clay mug in his hand broke into shards. He spoke in a very thick voice. "No."

Sedon gestured to the breeder; she darted forward, cleaned up the mess of the broken clay, wiped the water from Dvan"s legs with a rough cloth, and backed away again.

Sedon watched Dvan carefully. "Not now," he said, and Dvan did not think he was being spoken to.

"Not yet. How do you feel?"

"Do not speak of this to me again, not ever."

Sedon said slowly, "As you wish. I will say this carefully, to save you further distress; think on it, Dvan, that the needs of your body, and the needs of your soul, might be found in the same person. It is a better thing than the soulless couplings the Aneda have allowed the Shield."

Dvan"s hands had curled into fists; he flexed them, made them flatten against his thighs. "You are a Dancer; of course you would think so."

"There is a last thing I would discuss with you tonight, Dvan."

Dvan was aware of the faint dampness on his thighs, of the water as it evaporated. "If you wish."

"Once again, it concerns the Zaradin, how we were shaped by them."

Dvan had very nearly regained control of himself; his voice was steady as he said, "Step on."

"You asked me if the Dancer Lorien had carried enough food with him to survive his journey, and I said he had not, that he intended to eat what this world gave him."

"Aye?"

"The Zaradin ate only plants, Dvan, and as their servants we emulated them. Yet if you study our relatives, here on the world from which we were taken, the ridge-browed ones, you will find not only that they eat the plants around them, but that theyhunt."

"What is that word, hunt?"

"I have made it up," said Sedon, "as we have made up the names of the trees and animals around us. It is a new word, and it means to track down and kill an animal, for the purpose of eating it."

Dvan was nodding, following the flow of Sedon"s words; he was done for several seconds before the import of what he had said sunk in on Dvan.

Dvan found himself on his feet of a sudden, backing toward the open door behind him. He stopped as he realized the image he must present, as though he were in retreat, froze in place and with the stiffest dignity he could summon, said, "We are done with this-disgusting-discussion. I will hear no more of your heresies."

Sedon nodded as though he were not surprised. He spoke with all seriousness. "We will talk of this again."

By the end of the third cold season-winter,the exiles had taken to calling it, another of the new words-the exiles had ceased bothering to plant crops of the World. They grew poorly, with yields nothing like those they gave on the World, for this planet lacked the bacteria they required for proper growth. Instead, at the end of the third cold season, they planted local crops; a shrub that provided tart red berries, each berry about the size of a man"s thumb, and a crawling vine that bore another kind of red fruit, a bulbous thing with a thin skin. Both of them were sour, though it was a different kind of sourness in each, and Dvan could not find it in him to think much of them. But they grew easily, met most of the body"s needs, and, after being dried in the sun, stored well over the course of the winter.