At last she said, "Rafe, do you know a girl named Fiona?"

"Yes, fairly well; a beautiful redhead in New Skye. But you needn't be jealous, darling, as a matter of fact, I think she's living with Lewis MacLeod just now. Why?"

"You know a lot of people in New Skye. Don't you?"

"Yes, I've been there a lot lately, why? I thought you had them down for disgusting savages," Rafe said, a little defensively, "but they're nice people and I like their way of life. I'm not asking you to john them. I know you wouldn't and they won't let me in without a woman of my own--they try to keep the sexes balanced, though they don't marry--but they treat me like one of them."

She said with unusual gentleness. "I'm very glad, and I'm certainly not jealous. But I'd like to see Fiona, and I can't explain why. Could you take me to one of their meetings?"

"You don't have to explain," he said, `They're having a concert--oh, informal, but that's what it is--tonight, and anyone who wants to come is welcome. You could even join in, if you felt like singing. I do sometimes. You know some old Spanish songs, don't you? There's a sort of informal project to preserve as much music as we can remember

"Some other time, I'll be glad to; I'm too short of breath to do much singing now," she said. "Maybe after the baby's born." She clasped him hand, and MacAran felt a wild pang of jealousy. She knows Fiona's carrying the Captain's child, and she wants to see her. And that's why she isn't jealous she couldn't care less... .

I'm jealous. But would I want her to lie to me? She does love me, she's having my child, what more do I want?

They heard the music beginning before they reached the new Community Hall at the New Skye farm, and Camilla looked at MacAran in startled dismay. "Good Lord, what's that unholy racked"

"I forgot you weren't a Scot, darling, don't you like the bagpipes? Moray and Domenick and a couple of others play them, but yon don't have to go in until they're finished unless you like," he laughed.

"It sounds worse than a banshee on the loose," Camilla said firmly. `The music isn't all like that, I hope?"

"No, there are harps, guitars, lutes, you name it, they've got it. And building new ones." He squeezed her fingers as the pipes died, and they walked toward the hall. "It's a tradition, that's all. The pipes. And the Highland regalia--the kilts and swords."

Camilla felt, surprisingly, a brief pang almost of envy as they came into the hall, brightly lit with candles and torches; the girls in their brilliant tartan skirts and plaids,

the men resplendent in kilts, swords, buckled plaids swaggering over their shoulders. So many of them were bright-haired redheads. A colorful tradition. They pass it on, and our traditions--die Oh, come, damn it, what traditions? The annual parade of the Space Academy? Theirs fit, at least, into this strange world.

Two men, Moray and the tall, red-headed Alastair, were doing a sword dance, leaping nimbly across the gleaming blades to the sound of the piper. For an instant Camilla had a strange vision of gleaming swords, not used in games, but deadly serious, then it flickered out again and she joined in the applause for the dancers.

There were other dances and songs, mostly unfamiliar to Camilla, with a strange, melancholy lilt and a rhythm that made her think of the sea. And the sea, too, ran through many of the words. It was dark in the hall, even by the torchlight, and she did not anywhere see the coppery-haired girl she sought, and after a time she forgot the urgency that had brought her there, listening to the mournful songs of a vanished world of islands and seas;

O Mhari Oh, Mhari my girl

Thy sea-blue eyes with witchery

Draw me to thee, off Mull's wild shore

My heart is sore, for love of thee... .

MacAran's arm tightened around her and she let herself lean against him.

She whispered, "How strange, that on a world without seas, so many sea-songs should be kept alive... ."

He murmured, "Give us time. Well find some seas to sing about--" and broke off, for the song had died, and someone called, "Fiona! Fiona, you sing for us!" Others took up the cry, and after a time the slight red-haired girl, wearing a full green-and-blue skirt which accentuated, almost flaunting, her pregnancy, came through the crowd. She said, in her light sweet voice, "I can't do much singing, I'm short of breath these days. What would you like to hear?"

Someone called out in Gaelic; she smiled and shook her head, then took from another girl a small harp and sat on a wooden bench. Her fingers moved in soft arpeggios for a moment, and then she sang:

The wind from the island brings songs of our sorrow

The cry of the gulls and the sighing of streams;

In all of my dreaming, I'm hearing the waters

That flow from the hills in the land of our dreams.

Her voice was low and soft, and as she sang Camilla caught the picture of green, low hills, familiar outlines of childhood, memories of an Earth few of them could remember, kept alive only in songs such as this; memories of a time when the hills of Earth were green beneath a golden-yellow sun, and sea-blue skies... .

Blow westward, O sea-wind, and bring us some murmur

Adrift from our homeland of honour and truth;

In waking and sleeping, I'm hearing the waters

That flow from the hills in the land of our youth.

Camilla's throat tightened with half a sob. The lost land, the forgotten... for the first time, she made a clear effort to open the eyes of her mind to the special awareness she had known since the first wind. She fixed her eyes and her mind, almost fiercely, with a surge almost of passionate love, on the singing girl; and then she saw, and relaxed.

She won't die. Her child will live.

I couldn't have borne it, for him to be wiped out as it he'd never been.. .

What's wrong with me? He's only a few years older than Moray, there's no reason he shouldn't outlive most of us... but the anguish was there, and the intense relief, as Fiona's song swelled into a close;

We sing in this far land the songs of our exile,

The pipes and the harps are as fair as before;

But never shall music run sweet as the waters

That flow in that land we shall never see more.

Camilla discovered that she was weeping; but she was not alone. All around her, in the darkened room, the exiles were mourning their lost world; unable to bear it, Camilla rose and blindly made her way toward the door, groping through the crowds. When they saw that she was pregnant they courteously cleared a way for her. MacAran followed, but she took no notice of him; only when they were outside, she turned to him and stood,

clinging to him, weeping wildly. But when at last she began to hear his concerned questions, she turned them aside. She did not know how to answer.

Rafe tried to comfort her, but somehow he picked up her disquiet, and for some time he did not know why, until abruptly it came to him.

Overheard the night was clear, with no cloud or sign of rain. Two great moons, lime-green, peacock blue, hung low in the darkening violet sky. And the winds were rising.

Inside the Hall of the New Hebrides Commune, music passed imperceptibly into an almost ecstatic group dance, the growing sense of togetherness, of love and communion binding them together into bonds of closeness which were never to be forgotten or broken. Once, late in the night when the torches were flaring and guttering low, two of the men sprang up, facing one another in a flare-up of violent wrath, swords flickering from their flamboyant Highland regalia, crossing in a clash of steel. Moray, Alastair and Lewis MacLeod, acting like the fingers of a single hand, dived at the two angry men and brought them sprawling down, knocking the swords out of their hands, and sat on them--literally--until the gleam of wolfish anger died in the two. Then, gently freeing them they poured whisky down their throats (Scots will somehow manage to make whisky at the far ends of the Universe, Moray thought, no matter what else they go without) until the two fighting men embraced one another drunkenly and pledged eternal friendship and the love-feast went on, until the red sun rose, clear and cloudless in the sky.