Joesai left a small crew in his ship and sneaked the rest of his men out onto the peninsula within striking distance of the granary. He deployed them efficiently. None of his watchers were in sight, but they could maintain patrols that kept the coast impenetrable. Any small waterborne vessel that might attempt to beach itself could be captured within a matter of heartbeats.

Scowlmoon, fixed in the sky, overlaid six times as much of heaven as did Getasun. At sunset it was darkly huge but as the night progressed and the crescent expanded from its evening sliver, the moon began to cast considerable illumination. On the moonless side of Geta a surprise maneuver under cover of night might have been possible — but not there. By halfmoon Joesai was ready to believe that it was already too bright for an attack. Either sea priest Tonpa had changed his mind or the boy was a mischievous liar.

Joesai glanced at the granary and for no particular reason was staring right at it when the orange roiling balls of flame erupted. The flames had soared to four man-heights before he heard the explosion. Firebombs! His first impulse was to run toward the fire — until the horror of their situation struck his imagination. The bombs had long been in place! Probably they had been set off by fireproof Kaiel clockwork.

He had been keel-hauled twice in one day!

There would be no Mnankrei about. But Joesai and his band were close to the fire and they would be blamed because there was no way to sneak back to the village without being seen. Thus it was an emergency. They were heartbeats away from their lynching!

“Ho!” He was rising as he yelled. “Avalanche formation! Run!” The piercing cry from his caller’s pipes echoed his order.

The only thing they had going for them in their dash was that, though they might meet angry people on their way, none of these people would know how to fight or attack. Such were the children of the Stgal. And so nothing stopped Joesai’s wedge until it reached a growing crowd on the stone wharf where their small ship had judiciously retired to a moat’s distance. The ugly crowd half retreated as the wedge appeared but one braver group penetrated the Kaiel ranks — and were quickly catapulted into the water. The crowd moved back while Joesai lunged to protect his wife.

“Teenae!”

But Teenae was already falling with two stab wounds, crumpling, then pitching forward crazily. Raging, Joesai and five men slashed the crowd back while simultaneously their ship docked, first inflowing two men bearing the dying Teenae, then the other Kaiel in exact formation, and finally the rear guard, bumping the quay only once before casting off. With one reach of his massive hand Joesai retrieved the knifeman from the sea by his hair, tossed him to a subordinate, and returned to Teenae.

Eiemeni was tending her on the deck.

“Back off, you meat-dresser. I’m the surgeon.” Joesai had had hours of meticulous practice on rejected babies of the creche before they were sent to the abattoir. “I need a cloth!”

One was produced instantly from some back. On Geta there was no need to sterilize for routine surgery. Sacred bodies killed profane bacteria just as sacred wheat killed the beetles who tried to eat it.

“I’m dying,” came a feeble voice.

“Yeah, yeah. The pieces need to be sewed together. How can you kill an o’Tghalie body?” he said gruffly. “They make them out of chromium-nickel-iron. God knows from where they get the gene combinations. They locate them with some kind of damn mathematical juggling. They don’t tell us how they do it. It’s a damn clan secret.”

“I’m weak.”

“That’s because you need a transfusion. As soon as I can plug Otaam into you, you’ll get it.”

“Dearest Joesai, even if you lose at kol every time you play, I’m glad… to have you around.”

“Shut up.”

Otaam, who had her blood type, was spliced into her. He did not move while she slept. Joesai stood guard until Scowlmoon was full and the eclipse came and passed. No ships attacked them. He promised himself that he would someday bring her those leather boots etched with the flying-storm-wave cicatrice of the Mnankrei. Silly, how he was willing to do anything for this strong-headed and rather foolish woman.

TEENAE AWOKE AT DAWN. Blood-red Getasun bathed her from its perch above the mountains with hands that rippled redly over the bay. She examined the pain of her wounds with her mind. “I would drink blood for my strength,” she said, meaning the blood of her assailant.

Joesai was brooding out across the bay and was not aware that she had finally roused from her delirious sleep. He did not hear her faint voice.

She rolled her head toward him and raised her voice. “I would drink blood for my strength!” she repeated angrily.

“Is that wise?” counseled Joesai, still deep in his reverie. “He is one of Oelita’s people. She showed us mercy. I am in her debt. We can return mercy. Tae ran-Kaiel once said that you can only hold a land where you have three times as many friends as enemies.”

“I do not forgive a man who tries to kill me. I have contempt for a man who tries to kill me and is captured. I wish to see his generous offering to the Race so that the Race may be purified.”

“Revenge should wait until your pain has healed.”

“No.”

Joesai shrugged. “It will be dangerous to bring him on deck and to give him a knife he might throw at you.”

“The obvious continually eludes you,” she said impatiently. “Strap the knife to a mat so that it cannot be thrown. Leave one arm of my assailant free to rub his wrist against the blade.”

And so they carried to her the youth bound upon an iron-reed frame. Joesai, in his role as priest, invoked the ceremony in the expected musical monotone. His bearing changed. He spoke for the Race.

“We did not have kalothi. We died of the Unknown Danger.” The pain of the Race was in his voice. Then his voice became resonant until it challenged even the sea. “And God in His mercy took pity and carried us from the Unknown Place across His Sky so that we might find kalothi. We wept when He gave us Geta. We moaned when He cast us out. But God’s Heart was stone to our tears. Only in a harsh place beneath His Sky might we find kalothi. And only with kalothi shall we dare to laugh our laugh in the face of the Unknown Danger.”

Joesai brought out the priest’s Black Hand and White Hand, each with special scars, each carved from wood and mounted on short rods. He held them above his head so that he became long-armed. “Two Hands build kalothi.” With a vibrating sound that was half formal laughter, half formal grief, he meshed the wooden fingers together. “Life is the Test. Death is the Change. Life gives us the Strength. Death takes from us the Weakness. For the Race to find kalothi the Foot of Life follows the Road of Death.” The small ship heaved upon the waves. No land, no sea on Geta was immune from this ritual.

Joesai’s voice was implacable. “All of us contribute to God’s Purpose. All of us help distill the racial kalothi. Some of us are here to give Life. Some of us are here to give Death. Of these the greatest honor is to contribute Death for we all love Life.” He paused for only a moment but in that moment spliced irony into his monotone. His gaze was upon the youth. “It is with awe that I accept the offering of your defective genes.”

“It is against the Code to kill,” said the youth serenely.

“Oelita’s code, not mine!” snarled Teenae with such a thrust of hatred that her wounds stabbed her again.