Afsan tried to pull the mysterious hands out of the body cavity, but soon another pair appeared, and then another and another, all trying to grasp a piece of the kill, greedily tearing out chunks of flesh. Afsan tried to slap them away, but they began to tear at his own arms, the claws scratching his skin, long blood trails running along his forearms all the way from wrist to elbow.

More arms appeared. They seized Afsan’s own upper arms, their sharp clawpoints digging into his skin. Afsan fought to free himself, but stringy tendons and bones — his own radius and ulna — were now glistening gray-white beneath his torn flesh.

Afsan brought his muzzle down and chomped through one of the foreign arms, then shook his head, flinging the thing aside. He heard a scream coming from somewhere, and the shadow of the purple wingfinger moved again and again across the scene. Afsan’s neck darted once more and another arm snapped off. Meanwhile, he fought with all his strength to twist free of the arms holding his own. Finally, after chomping through five, ten, twelve, fourteen phantom limbs, Afsan, his own arms reduced to articulated skeletons, dug into his meal, getting every last bit of meat for himself.

*10*

"Your name is Sal-Afsan, correct?" asked Mokleb.

"Of course," said Afsan, irritated.

"Tell me about that," Mokleb said.

"Tell you about what?"

"Your name. Tell me about your name."

Afsan shrugged. "It means ’meaty thighbone.’"

"Unusual name for a skinny person."

He sighed. "You’re not the first to have observed that. But what choice did I have? The name was given to me by the creche masters in Pack Carno. I had no say in the matter."

"Of course not. But what about your praenomen syllable?"

"Sal? Ah, now, that I did get to choose, of course. It’s in honor of my mentor, Tak-Saleed."

"Tell me about your relationship with Saleed."

"Well, I didn’t meet him until I was — what? — twelve kilodays old. I was summoned to Capital City to be his apprentice."

"How did that make you feel, to be summoned clear across the continent?"

"It was, and still is, an honor to serve at the imperial court."

Mokleb waved her hand. "Doubtless so. But you were torn from your friends, your creche-mates. Creche-mates are as one."

Afsan nodded. "I rarely think of my creche-mates. There was Dandor and Keebark. And Jostor, who became a famous musician."

"Yet you were torn away from them — ordered to leave your home and undertake the long and arduous journey to the Capital."

"I’ve made much more arduous journeys since."

"Granted," said Mokleb. "But this was your first time traveling."

"Pack Carno traveled all the time. We moved along the shore of the Kreeb river, following the herds of shovelmouths."

"But on those journeys you moved with your Pack and your creche-mates. I’m asking what it was like to have to leave all that and set out on your own. You’re avoiding the question."

Afsan’s tone carried a slight edge. "I never shy away from questions."

Mokleb clicked her teeth. "Oh, no, not from questions about the stars or the planets or the other moons. But you do shy away from personal questions. Why?"

Afsan was quiet for a time. Then: "I value my privacy."

"As do we all. But for this process to work, you must be forthcoming."

He nodded. "Very well. I was frightened and disoriented by the move. But when a rider brings an imperial summons, one has no choice."

"And what about leaving your creche-mates? Your friends?"

A scrunching of the muzzle. "Creche-mates I had, yes, but friends? No, I had few of those."

"Why?"

"Why?" Afsan sighed again. A single question that brought back all the pain of his youth. "Why?" he repeated. "Because…" He turned his head, facing vaguely in Mokleb’s direction. "Because I wasn’t very good at athletics. Because I was very good at mathematics. Whatever problem the teaching master gave us, I had no trouble solving it."

"And this irritated your classmates?"

"I guess so. That certainly wasn’t my intention."

Mokleb dipped her muzzle. "The sad truth, Afsan, is that often what we intend has little to do with what we achieve."

Afsan was silent.

"So it would be fair to characterize your childhood as unhappy?"

"If one had to characterize it, yes, I suppose that word would be as good as any."

"What word would you use?" asked Mokleb.

"Alone."

"That’s an unusual word. One rarely hears it applied to people." Mokleb was silent. "I mean, as a race, we like being separate. We like the distance that keeps us apart, the territorial buffers we maintain."

"Indeed," said Afsan. "But we also do like some interaction. Not for long periods, of course, but we do like spending time with others, and we take comfort in knowing that those others enjoy the time they spend with us."

"And?" said Mokleb.

"And, of those my age back in Carno, none of them wanted to spend time with me. It…"

"Yes?"

"It didn’t seem fair, that’s all. It seemed that somewhere there should have been people more like me, people who shared my interests, people to whom my mathematical skill was nothing special."

"But there was no one like that in Carno."

"No. Except perhaps…"

"Yes?"

"Nothing."

"No, you must share your thoughts."

"It’s … it’s gone now. I’ve forgotten what I was going to say."

"You were suggesting that there perhaps was someone in Carno who would have been more like you," said Mokleb patiently.

"No, there was no one like that. I — I just wish there had been, that’s all." Afsan turned his head so that Mokleb could clearly see his muzzle. "That’s all."

Rising up from each corner of the square hole at the apex of the blue pyramid were thin poles, each about as thick around as Novato’s leg. These poles, too, seemed to be made of the super-strong blue material. They were being pushed up as new material was added from underneath, the strange machines Novato had briefly glimpsed presumably manufacturing them. Their growth was shockingly quick: on the first day that they appeared, they’d already pierced the bottoms of the clouds.

Every forty paces or so, the poles were joined by cross struts, making the whole thing look like four absolutely vertical ladders arranged in a square. And every fifth crosspiece had a large cone attached to it, made of copper-colored metal instead of the blue stuff. Each cone was affixed to the strut’s outermost edge by its apex, so that the open funnel faced away from the tower.

Novato guessed that the vertical tubes were hollow, meaning they’d not require much material to build. Still, given the tower’s height, a huge amount of sand or rock must have already been converted into the blue building material. Indeed, the cliff had now been devoured for a large distance on either side of the giant base of the pyramid and was still receding. The pyramid itself was now standing free at the edge of the beach. And from the square hole in its center, the four ladders continued to grow toward the stars.

"You know, Mokleb," said Afsan as she made herself comfortable at the beginning of their session, "you’ve chosen an unusual boulder to sit on. Most of those who come to talk with me sit there." He indicated a boulder about ten paces upwind from the one he was straddling. "It’s nothing major, but I’ve been meaning to mention it since we began these meetings."

"I — prefer it here," said Mokleb. "The view…"

Afsan shrugged slightly as he lowered his belly onto his own rock. "Of course."

"Today, I want you to talk a bit about your … family," said Mokleb, "although I admit it’s strange to use the word in relation to any except the imperial clan."

"Tell me about it," Afsan said dryly.