"As long as you don"t ask me to do anything I don"t want to do."

"I want you to get to know this young giant. Find out where he comes from, why he is here. Wilt you do that for me?"

"With pleasure."

"Not too much pleasure," Rofocale chided. "I want him to be attracted to you. I do not want you to be attracted to him. You are mine. Are you not?"

She raised her lips to his. His lips were as red as hers, although no berry juice had been rubbed on them.

"Mine," Rotocale purred. "Mine, mine, mine."

In the cool of the evening. Sandy sat on the low bench made by the root of the old fig tree. Higgaion was curled up at his feet, making little bubbles as he slept and dreamed.

A man with a full brown beard flecked with white, and with springing brown hair, strode toward him, turning in from the public path and toward Grandfather Lamech"s tent. He went up to boy and mammoth. Stared. "You are the Sand."

"I am Sandy. Yes."

"They told me that you look like one boy in two bodies. Now I believe them."

"Who are you?" Sandy asked curiously.

"I am Noah. Your brother is in one of my tents, and my wife and daughters are taking good care of him."

"Thank you," Sandy said. "We"re very grateful."

Noah continued to stare at him. "If I did not know that the Den is in one of my tents, I would think that you were he. How can this be?"

"We"re twins," Sandy explained wearily.

"Twins. We have known nothing of twins before." He paused and looked at Sandy, then at the tent. "Is my father in his tent?"

Sandy nodded. "He"s resting." Then he added. "But I know he"d be happy to see you." He wished he felt as certain as he sounded. Grandfather Lamech struck him as being a very stubborn person, with his natural stubbornness augmented by age.

Without speaking further, Noah went into the tent.

Noah!

Suddenly the name registered. Sandy had not heard Noah called by name. Lamech referred to him, when he spoke of him, as "my son." The women who came with the night-light called him Father.

Noah.

The galaxies seemed to swirl. Sandy had been convinced that he and Dennys had blown themselves somewhere far from home, at least out of their own solar system, and probably out of their own galaxy. If this Noah was the Noah of the story of Noah and the flood, they were still on their own planet. They had blown themselves in time, rather than in s.p.a.ce. And to get home from time might be far more difficult than getting home from s.p.a.ce, no matter how distant.

But it seemed to fit. Desert people. Nomads, with tents. Cattle. Camels. People used to be smaller than end-of-twentieth-century people. Way back in pre-flood days it was logical that they would be a great deal smaller. Higgaion was small for a mammoth.

He put his head in his hands, suddenly dizzy.

Dennys sat with j.a.pheth and Oholibamah, and with Yalith, on one of the desert rocks. The sky was still flushed with light. The first stars were trembling into being, j.a.pheth looked at Dennys in the last light. "You talked with my father."

"Yes."

"Oh, I"m so glad!" Yalith cried.

"Father has gone off somewhere," j.a.pheth said. "In the direction of Grandfather Lamech"s tent."

Oholibamah looked up at the sky. "He will be happier now. All of us will be happier. Where there is an unreconciled quarrel, everybody suffers."

Dennys looked troubled. "I"m not sure he really listened to me."

"But you heard the stars," Oholibamah said, "and you were obedient to their command."

j.a.pheth added, "That is all anybody can do. Now it is in El"s hands."

Briefly, Dennys closed his eyes. -I hope Sandy doesn"t think I"m crazy. I hope I I don"t think I"m crazy. Obeying stars, yet. don"t think I"m crazy. Obeying stars, yet.

"I feel like running," Oholibamah said, and jumped down and ran fleetly across the desert, j.a.pheth following her.

"Come!" Yalith called, and leapt from the rock. Dennys, with his long legs, caught up with them easily, and suddenly he was holding hands with Yalith and Oholibamah, and the four of them twirled in a joyous dance. Moonlight and starlight bathed them. Dennys, leaping in the night, felt more alive than he had ever felt before.

Sandy and Higgaion sat up, startled, as they heard a roar from the tent. At first it seemed to be a roar of anger. Then laughter. Then there was absolute silence. Sandy could feel his heart beating faster. Higgaion"s ears were lifted in alarm. He raised his trunk.

"They wouldn"t hurt each other, would they-" Sandy spoke aloud. Higgaion stared at him out of bright, beady eyes.

Then the tent flap was shoved aside, and Lamech and Noah pushed through with difficulty, because they had their arms about each other, and tears were streaming down their cheeks.

Lamech"s voice was so choked with emotion that the words were m.u.f.fled. "This my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found."

Noah hugged the old man roughly. "This is my father, my stubborn old father. We are two peas in a pod for stubbornness." He looked at Sandy. "As you and the Den are two peas in a pod."

"Hey," Sandy said, "I"m glad you two have made up."

"It was the Den," Noah said. "He just kept at me and at me."

Sandy looked surprised. At home, at school, Dennys seldom talked first. He followed Sandy"s lead, but seldom initiated anything. "Well. That"s good."

"He is nearly healed now, too. Soon he will be able to come to you. My father-" He paused. "I would be happy to have the Den stay, but my tent is crowded, and noisy. And my father has invited you to stay with him."

"That"s terrific," Sandy said. "Thanks, Grandfather, thanks a lot. And Dennys can help me with the garden."

"So we should celebrate," Noah said, and handed his father a small wineskin. "There is not much of this, but it is my very best."

"A little will suffice." The old man held the wineskin to his lips, then smacked them in appreciation. "Indeed, your very best." He handed the skin to Sandy, who took a small sip, barely managed to swallow it without making a face.

"El has talked with you, too?" Lamech asked his son.

"He has. When El spoke, I used to understand what was being said. Now it is all confusion. What does El say to you?"

Grandfather Lamech put his arm about his son"s shoulders. "El tells me these are end days."

"End of what?" Noah asked.

"Of all that we know, I think," the old man said. "It is not just a question of moving our tents to where there is more water and better pasture for your beasts. Sometimes I, too, feel that the words are all confusion. El talks of many waters, but there is no water anywhere around, except in the wells."

Sandy, sitting next to the old man, with the mammoth lying nearby, shuddered. Grandfather Lamech, if he did not die first, and Noah and his family, and a good many animals, would be the only ones to escape drowning in the great flood.

I already know the story, he thought, and was glad that the night hid his deep flush of embarra.s.sment. It did not seem right that he should know something that Grand-father Lamech and Noah did not know.

But what did he know? Vague memories of Sunday school. G.o.d, angry at the wickedness of the world, and sending a flood, but telling Noah to build an ark and bring the animals on. And then there were terrible rains, and finally a dove brought Noah a sprig of green, and the ark landed on Mount Ararat. Not much of a story unless you were part of it.

Was Grandfather Lamech in the story? He did not remember. Grandfather patted Sandy gently, his usual way of expressing affection, and went on talking. In his concern about the flood. Sandy lost track of the conversation. He heard Grandfather Lamech saying, "My grandfather, Enoch, was three hundred and sixty-five years, and then he was not."

Sandy"s ears p.r.i.c.ked up. "What do you mean, he was not?"

Grandfather Lamech said, "He walked with El. He was a man of warm heart. And El took him."

It was a weird story. "El took him? How?"

"I was only a boy," Grandfather Lamech said. "He-my Grandfather Enoch was walking through the lemon grove-the same lemon grove I will show you tomorrow-he was walking through the lemon grove with El-and then they were not there."

If this was part of the story of Noah and the flood. Sandy did not remember it. "Is it customary," he asked, "for someone just to be not?"

Grandfather Lamech laughed. "Oh, dear, not at all customary. But my Grandfather Enoch was not an ordinary man. He went away from us to be with El at a very young age. He was only three hundred and sixty-five years old."

"That"s exactly a solar year," Sandy said.

"A what?"

"A solar year. For starters, it takes our planet three hundred and sixty-five days to go around the sun."

"Nonsense," Noah said. "We don"t go around the sun. It goes around us."

"Oh," Sandy said. "Well. Never mind."

Grandfather Lamech patted his knee. "It is all right. Things may be different where you come from. Do you know El?"

"Well, yes, sort of, though we say G.o.d."

Grandfather Lamech appeared not to have heard. "My Grandfather Enoch-how I do miss him. El talks with me, and sometimes I am able to understand, but I have never been able to walk with El in the cool of the evening, like two friends."

"What do you think happened to him, then, to Grandfather Enoch?"

Lamech nodded and nodded, as though answering. Finally he said, "El took him, and that is all I need to know."

"Father," Noah said. "you talk with El more than anyone I know."

"Because my years are long, my son. It was not always so. I am glad indeed that you have come to me before I die."

"You"re not going to die for a long time yet!" Noah cried. "You will live as long as our forefather Methuselah."

"No, my son." Grandfather Lamech"s arm about Noah"s shoulders tightened again. "My time is near."

"Perhaps El will take you, as he took Grandfather Enoch."

Grandfather Lamech laughed again. "Oh, my son, I am full of years, and now that; you have come to me, I am ready to die. El does not need to take me in the same way he took Grandfather Enoch."

Sandy looked at the two small men, hugging and laughing and crying all at the same time. It seemed likely that Grandfather Lamech would die before the flood. How soon? And how soon was the flood? He had come to love Grandfather Lamech, who, with Higgaion, had nursed him so tenderly.

And what about Yalith? He wondered suddenly. He did not remember her name in the story.

And what about us, Sandy and Dennys? What would happen to us if there was a flood?

7 The Seraphim Sandy slept that night as usual on Adnarel"s cloak. He wondered if Adnarel knew about the coming flood and the destruction of almost all life on earth. His arms tightened about Higgaion, with whom he slept much as, when he was a small boy, he had slept with his arms around a small brown plush triceratops. His fingers moved through Higgaion"s s.h.a.ggy hair, stroked a great fan of an ear. Felt something hard. The scarab beetle. It gave him a feeling of comfort, although he found it difficult to a.s.sociate the bronze beetle with the great seraph. Well. Thinking about this could wait till morning. Dennys was the thinker. Sandy the doer. The gentle tip of Higgaion"s trunk stroked the back of Sandy"s neck, and he relaxed into sleep.

Adnarel came in the morning, in his seraphic form. Sandy said, "I"ve been thinking." After all, not only Dennys could think.

Adnarel smiled. "Sometimes that is a good idea. Sometimes not."

"Dennys and I are in the middle of the story of Noah and the flood, aren"t we?"

Adnarel"s azure eyes regarded him. "So it would seem."

"How are we going to get home?"

Adnarel shrugged his golden wings. "The way you arrived, perhaps?"

"Somehow, I don"t c.h.i.n.k, that"s going to be possible. In the meanwhile, Dennys is in one of Noah"s tents, halfway across the oasis."

"That is true. But he is nearly ready to come to you."

"It"s a long way. Is he strong enough to walk it?"