Artists had visualized the wings of God as if they were the great laced lifting fans of the hoiela, the one insect that could soar halfway around the globe before it died. How the hoiela sparkled on the breezes! The fine tough fabric of the wings was so iridescently beautiful that it was prized by women to sew into their sexual finery. God’s wings, myth said, were even more beautiful but so fragile that they did not float on air but took lift only from the purest blackness, a black so black that even light was eaten without a trace.

In the morning, wild and elated screams were interlaced with Gael’s dreams. They were happy screams but bloodcurdling enough to send all the beetles within a day’s walk scuttling for their burrows. Ah, the revel is still alive, he thought, waking up. The boisterous merrymaking continued while he washed his face and shaved — until his curiosity was tickled enough for him to peek down over the courtyard.

Five grown men and eight children were chasing a contraption about the flagstones that was circling this way and that in mad escape manned by a frantic og’Sieth youth whose feet were pumping up and down but never touching the ground. The “wagon” he was propelling was hardly a wagon. It had only three wheels, two large ones in front and a small “rudder” wheel in the rear. The wheels were so insubstantial that there seemed to be no supporting structure between axle and rim. Even the wagon framework was missing, being replaced by what appeared to be light steel tubing.

Later Gaet examined the machine after it had broken down and been removed to a thatch-roofed shed for extensive rethinking and redesign. The argument of the evening, evidently, had continued to evolve after he went to bed and since it was a party of craftsmen, not all of them articulate, they had settled the matter by building what their drunken imaginations had conceived. Only drunks would start by postulating an unfueled, massless wagon that could keep up with the wind. And only a tribe of sloshed og’Sieth would try to build one during a festival. They were still sleeping under the shed’s tables.

Gaet smiled like a child who has just seen the insides of his first clock. He took a morning walk beneath the mountains to breathe in some of the possibilities. His trained Kaiel mind blocked out new futures. Which to make real? He saw, for one, the breaking of a stalemate.

No priest clan of the sea had ever been able to dominate Geta because the eleven seas were isolated from each other by the land; neither had any landlocked priest clan been able to dominate because land passage was so slow. Now he saw fleets of these three-wheeled ships, pumped by strong Ivieth, racing over mountain and across prairie with the speed of a flung stone. It was a heady image for a politician. Imagine what it might do for tax collection!

Gaet sought out his Ivieth friend to discuss his vision over rolls and tea. The powerful giant only smiled as if the wire-wagon was a mere toy. “Running with the ease of walking is a thrill, but the roads are too rough for such flimsy spider work. It will break every thousand man-lengths! Men are stronger than steel.” And he grinned. He had been bred to outlast steel.

A sober Gaet returned to the shops for still another viewpoint. Benjie lay in stupor but a fresh crew of og’Sieth were at work. They laughed at the idea of men being stronger than steel, and though they did not back up their laughter with convincing words, one rash youth whacked Gaet across the chest with a hammer to illustrate their feeling.

They had little time for Gaet, chattering as they were about the drive rods and gears which jammed repeatedly, brainstorming alternate mass-conserving designs. They could not talk long without hammering or boring or chiseling metal on the lathe, and the talk remained cryptic — phrases about tempered wire and torque and crushing strength. None of the failures seemed to upset these people. They were already calling the massless wagon a skrei-wheel after the twelve tenuous long legs of the rock-skittering skrei, as if their device was worthy of a permanent name.

WHAT DID YOU DO to her?” Teenae raged.

“I’m pleased not to have been there for the attack. She nearly killed Eiemeni.”

Teenae was impatient with such chit-chat. “Is she alive?”

“For a person as tough as her, death comes slowly. She’s fast, too. Her surprise lasted a mere half wink. She’s a deadly killer.”

“She’s all gentleness!”

“I’m glad I didn’t make the mistake of believing she is what she writes when I planned the ambush. I learned respect. She’s quite capable of killing a whole Kaiel family with her bare hands.”

“You did not answer my question!”

“Whether she is alive?” Joesai mused.

“Yes.”

“I thought to be cleverly misleading and use the Mnankrei Death Rite opener. We fastened her to an iron-reed basket through her wrists and floated her in a cove.”

“What a horrible way to die,” said Teenae acidly. “You don’t dare bleed to death so you drown yourself. She died?” Teenae felt helpless.

“The Mnankrei prescribe seven ways to escape from the first trap, each more difficult to perceive but each easier than the last. She could hardly have failed.”

“She’s alive?”

Joesai laughed and lay down against the pillows, facing the bay. “I escorted her home. I have an ironical sense of humor. It pleases me to know the enemy from the start.”

“Then she’s alive. Thank God. Tell me where she is!”

“Even knowing where she is would be cheating. I let her vanish.”

“You’ll hunt her down again?”

“The next time there will be six ways for her to escape.”

“You’ll kill her in the end.”

“She’ll go at least to the fifth level, that hurricane. I like her.”

Teenae took a wrap, a crocheted lace of marching and flying insects, and left the inn for a walk along the stone quay of the harbor so that she might be away from Joesai. The wind from the sea this day was cold and she held the wrap tightly to her body, while the brisk air flapped her black hair and froze the shaved centerline of her scalp.

The Joesai of Sorrow was different than the husband she knew in Kaiel-hontokae and she was not pleased. Her anger came, she thought, from the frightening coolness with which he faced someone else’s death, but she was not aware of how much of her rage derived from the mere fact that he was winning the game to which she had secretly challenged him. Real life walked on more legs than a kolgame. Joesai had the experience while she had only wisdom. It was intolerable.

She stopped at a fisherman’s stall along the quay and bargained with an old grandmother for five swimmers. These swimmers were eight-legged armored creatures as big as a man’s fist. They were tasty but almost more trouble than they were worth. They could not be cooked in their shells because then the poisons diffused throughout the body of the meat; they had to be cracked and carefully dissected. Only the brain and gills were edible, perhaps two fingers worth of morsel, a modest mouthful. The remaining muscular flesh might safely be eaten if it was carefully sealed with a special bacterium and left to rot until it reeked. There were recipes to disguise or boil out the oily ripeness. Some people preferred such dishes to human flesh. Teenae did not.