“Where from?” the chief asked.

“Offworld,” said Kurt from bloodied lips. He saw the ship beyond the chief’s shoulder, a sanctuary out of his own time that he could not reach. He burned with shame for their treatment of him, and for the nemet’s eyes on these his brothers, these shaggy, mindless, onetime lords of the earth. “That ship brought me here.”

“The Ship,” the others took it up. “The holy Ship! The Starship!”

“This is notthe Ship,” the chief shouted them down and pointed at it, his hand trembling with passion. “The curse-sign on it—this man is not what the Articles say.”

The Alliance emblem. Kurt had forgotten the sunburst emblem of the Alliance that was blazoned on the ship. They were Hanan. He followed the chief’s pointing finger, wondering with a sickness at the pit of his stomach how much of the war these savages recalled.

“A starman!” one of the young men shouted defiantly. “A starman! The Ship is coming!”

And the others took up the howl with wild-eyed fervor, the same ones who had lately thrown him in the dust.

“The Ship, ya, the Ship, the Ship, the machines and the armies!”

“They are coming!”

“Indresul Indresul! The waiting is over!”

The chief backhanded Kurt to the ground, kicked him to show his contempt, and there was a cry of resentment from the people. A youth ran in—for what purpose was never known. The chief dropped the boy with a single blow of his fist and rounded on the leaders of the dissent.

“And I am still captain here,” he roared, “and I know the Articles and the Writings, and who will come and argue them with me?”

One of the men looked as if he might, but when the captain came closer to him, he ducked his head and sidled off. The rebellion died into sullen resentment.

“You’ve seen the sign,” said the captain. “Maybe the Ship is near. But this little thing isn’t what the Writings predict.” He looked down at Kurt with threat in his eyes. “Where are the machines, the Ship as large as a mountain, the armies from the star-worlds that will take us to Indresul?”

“Not far away,” said Kurt, setting his face to lie, which was never a skill of his. “I was sent out from Aeolus to find you. Is this how you welcome me? That will be the last you ever see of Ships if you kill me.”

The captain was taken aback by that answer.

“Mother Aeolus,” cried one of the men, though he called it Elus, “the great Mother. He has seen the Great Mother of All Men.”

The captain looked at Kurt from under one brow, hating, just the least part uncertain. “Then,” he said, “what did she say to you?”

The lie closed in on him, complex beyond his own understanding. Aeolus—homeworld—confounded with the nemet’s Mother Isoi, Mother of Men: nemet religion and human hopes confused into reverence for a promised Ship. “She—lost you,” he said, gathering himself to his feet. They personified her: he hoped he understood that aright. “Her messenger was lost on the way hundreds of years ago, and she was angry, blaming you. But she has decided to send again, and now the Ship is coming, if my report to her is good.”

“How can her messenger wear the mark of Phan?” the captain asked. “You are a liar.”

The sunburst emblem of the ship. Kurt resisted the impulse to lose his dignity by looking where the captain pointed. “I am not a liar,” said Kurt. “And if you don’t listen to me, you’ll never see her.”

“You come from Phan,” the captain snarled, “from Phan, to lie to us and turn us over to the nemet.”

“I am human. Are you blind?”

“You camped with the earthpeople. You were no prisoner in that camp.”

Kurt straightened his shoulders and looked the man in the eyes, lying with great offense in his tone. “We thought you men were supposed to have these nemet under control. That’s what you were left here to do, after all, and you’ve had three hundred years to do that. So I had no real fear of the nemet and they were able to surprise me some time ago and take my weapons. It took me this long to escape from Nephane and come south. They hunted me down, with orders to bring me back to Nephane alive, so naturally they did me no harm in that camp, but that doesn’t mean the relationship was friendly. I don’t particularly Iike the nemet, but I’d advise you to save these three alive. When my captain comes down here, as he will, he’s going to want to question a few of the nemet, and these will do very well for that purpose.”

The captain bit his lip and gnawed his mustache. He looked at the three nemet with burning hatred and spit out an obscenity that had not much changed in several hundred years. “We kill them.”

“No,” Kurt said. “There’s need of them live and healthy.”

“Three nemet?” the captain snarled. “One. One we keep. You choose which one.”

“All three,” Kurt insisted, though the captain brandished his ax. It took all his self-possession not to flinch as the weapon made a pass at him.

Then the captain whirled the weapon in a glittering arc at the nemet, purposely defying him. The humans murmured, eyes glittering like the metal itself. The ax passed within an inch of Kta and of the next man.

“Choose!” the captain cried. “You choose, starman. One nemet. We take the other two.”

The howling began to be a moan. One of the little boys shrieked in glee and ran in, striking all three nemet with a stick.

“Which one?” the captain asked again.

Kurt kept his sickness from his face, saw Kta look at him, saw the nemet’s eyes sending a desperate and angry message to him, which he ignored, looking at the captain.

“The one on the left,” Kurt said. “That one. Their leader.”

One of the two nemet died before nightfall. The execution was in the center of camp, and there was no way Kurt could avoid watching from beginning to end, for the captain’s narrow eyes were on him more than on the nemet, watching his least reaction. Kurt kept his own eyes unfocused as much as possible, and his arms folded, so that his trembling was not evident.

The nemet was a brave man, and his last reasoned act was a glance at Kta—not desperate, but seeking approval of him. Kta was standing, hands bound: the lord of Elas gave the man a steadfast look, as if he had given him an order on the deck of their own ship; and the nemet died with what dignity the Tamurlin afforded him. They made a butchery of it, and the Tamurlin howled with excitement until the man no longer reacted to any torment. Then they finished him with an ax. As the blade came down, Kta’s self-control came near to breaking. He wept, his face as impassive as ever, and the Tamurlin pointed at him and laughed.

After that the captain ordered Kurt taken to his own shelter. There he questioned him, threatening him with not quite the conviction to make good the threats, accusing him over and over of lying. The captain was a shrewd man. At times there would come a light of cunning into his hair-shrouded eyes, and he doggedly refused to be led off on a tangent. Constantly he dragged the questioning back to the essential points, quoting from the versified Articles and the Writings of the Founders to argue against Kurt’s claims.

His name was Renols, or something which closely resembled that common Hanan name, and he was the only educated man in the camp. His power was his knowledge, and the moment Renols ceased to believe, or ceased to fear, then Renols could dispose of Kurt with lies of his own. The captain was a pragmatist, capable of it; Kurt was well certain he was capable of it.

The tent reeked of fire, of sweat, of the curious pungent leaf the Tamurlin chewed. One of his women lay in the corner against the wall, taking the leaves one by one. Her eyes had a fevered look. Sometimes the captain reached for one of the slim gray leaves and chewed at it half-heartedly. It perfumed the breath. Sweat began to bead on his temples. He grew calmer.

He offered the bowl of leaves to Kurt, insisting. At last Kurt took one, judiciously tucked it in his cheek, whole and un-bruised. Even so, it burned his mouth and spread a numbness that began to frighten him.