That was long ago, another person. But how could the crystal contain a memory of an event that obviously took place before the crystal was implanted?

No sooner had the question occurred to her than the answer came, a mother speaking to a daughter; she was the mother and the daughter, hearing the conversation from both sides, speaking both sides of the conversation herself. It was confusing, but exhilarating.

"When the scepter first enters your brain, it searches for your most potent memories and copies them and keeps them."

"You won't know my memories, will you?"

"No, darling, but you'll know mine. You'll know what I'm thinking at this very moment, how much I love you, to give you this gift while I'm still alive."

"I'm afraid."

"The first thing you think of is always our great ancestor, who first chose to bear the scepter. He is our courage, and part of him becomes part of you."

Why didn't Father help me, as this mother helped her daughter? Then she couldn't remember who Father was, or who she was, except the mother, except the daughter.

"You're safe as long as you don't think of certain things."

"What things?"

"If I tell you what they are, my foolish child, then how will you stop yourself from thinking of them?"

I know what they are, thought Patience. They are the gebling kings in whose brain the crystal first grew. They are the wyrm-hearted gebling kings that I mustn't think of.

And that very thought brought her to the memories most to be feared, a terrible alien viewpoint. She knew at once that she had taken the step into the abyss. She could feel a faint buzz of feeling, like peripheral vision, like background noise, like a metallic taste in her mouth, like a smell redolent of sweet and bitter memories, like the touch of a thousand tiny flies upon her skin; gradually she realized, as the gebling whose mind now dwelt in hers realized, that these were her brothers, her sisters, the life of them speaking to the firstborn, the gebling king, myself.

The other geblings are still tearing their way out of their soft-skinned shells, their hair curled and matted. I am curled by my mother's exhausted body, her black segments trembling from her labors. Beside me lies my father, his poor, weak, hairless body covered with sweat.

Come to me, Father, open my mouth-

"Full-grown. Whatever it is, it's no baby." The voice is soft. "Haven't you heard of babies around here?"

His mouth moves and the sounds are beautiful. Teach me how to make these sounds.

Father's face is twisted as he looks at me. "Full-grown little apes." He touches me. He pushes me. "You brought me here so you could give birth to these!"

Another egg opens, but with something black inside.

Black like Mother. The tiny, tiny head like Mother. It's hungry. I can feel it being hungry. It wants to kill Father.

It wants to kill me. It wants to kill everybody and eat all the world.

Father taught me what to do. Already he saved me.

Father taught me pushing. I push the black one, I push him but he hurts me very much. I cry out with my fear.

Mother, help me. Father, save me. I hear a terrible frightened sound and it is my own sound coming out of my own mouth like Father. I scream and scream.

They fight, Mother and the black one. Father is shouting and shouting-

"Stay here and die, all of you stay and for God's sake eat each other!"

The sound of his voice says fear and I am also afraid.

Father goes through a hole in the wall of the birthing place. Father knows the way. Father we are coming! Come with Father I shout with my silent voice and they hear me with their othermind. I go and so all the others go, all those who look like me, and some of the littler ones and taller ones, all who can move, all who do not writhe on the ground dying because their bodies don't work. We cry out to him we're coming, Father, but he doesn't hear us because we don't make a sound and in the silence he is deaf. I see it in his eyes when he looks at us, he doesn't understand our cries, he only hears our screaming.

Behind us the black one that looks like Mother is eating her belly out and he will eat us all if he can.

Hungry, hungry, he pushes his hunger out into all of us. Come to me, says his hunger, come and fill me, and I can feel my brothers and sisters yielding to him, stopping, going back toward the birthing place. No! I cry!

No! Come with Father, come away. With Father with Father tell everyone to come with Father.

And the strongest ones take up my call, they call also, Come with Father, and we are stronger as we call together, stronger and stronger until we have overcome the Mother-eater's hunger.

Down into the black tunnel, all of us in the black tunnel, where are you, Father? Where are you?

I see you, bright sisters and brothers, I feel your path in the darkness, I know where you are, every one of you, in so many different tunnels. From Father's footsteps splashing ahead of me I know the path outward. Follow the water. Follow the running water. It goes away from the birthing place, follow the water-

Patience cried out with joy as she saw the light of the world for the first time. From a cavern's mouth in the face of a high cliff she looked down on a vast forest, with the heads of the River Cranwater joining to form a single river flowing away from Skyfoot. Even as she remembered she was Patience, she could also remember being the first gebling king, feeling the presence of every other gebling as each came out of his or her own tunnel to find the sky, the water leaping out from each cavern mouth. Again she saw through the gebling's eyes.

We all stand here, looking at the bright light, like-me and bigger and littler, I can feel us all here at the edge of the world. And beside me is Father, I have found him, there is water on his face. "I sold my soul for you," he says. "All I wanted was that wyrm back there. How could I want her." He shudders. "It was eating her.

What kind of monsters-"

I try to feel him, too, like I can feel all the others, but he isn't there, my eyes see him, my nose smells him, but my othermind can't find him. I touch his cheek and taste the water on his face. It is salt, not like the clear water of the cave. He sees my tongue and wrinkles his face. Then he reaches to me and touches my cheek and his mouth says, "You're not a wyrm, though, are you? It's not your fault, is it?"

Then he stands and takes my hand and leads me to the edge and holds out his hand to point to the bright blue dazzle that blinds me and all the children of man and wyrm.

"Sky," he says.

"Sick." I speak. I am like him, not like Mother.

She was eaten by the wyrm in the birthing place, but Father lives and I am like him.

"Born an hour ago, and already you can talk. What have I made here? What can you become?" Patience watched the time flow faster. The babies born, the Starship Captain teaching them everything. To build houses, to hunt for food, to tend their children and teach them. Language came easily, all learning came easily to these new people who never forgot anything once they had done it a single time. They invented their own words faster than Father could teach them, until they hardly came to him for learning anymore.

The gebling king, who never had a name for himself, he came to Father often. "Wyrm," Father said. "Your mother is the wyrm, and I am your father, but most important of all is the monster that ate your mother and drove us from the birthing place. He looks like a wyrm but he isn't a wyrm. He's your brother and he'll kill you all if he can, and if he ever comes out of the mountain you must kill him first."

So the gebling king was the first gebling who learned to kill, and he used the secret knowledge of murder just as human beings had used it from the start-to gather power to himself. I have the terrible secret. I can kill you if you disobey. But if you obey me, I can share the secret with you and you, too, can have power-