He and Chveya had speculated recently, for she, too, had been catching glimpses, out of the corner of her eye, of inexplicable threads, not connecting one human to another. "And yet I can't possibly be seeing any such thing," she had told him. "I only see the threads connecting people that I can see, or at least people that I know. Yet I've seen no one that these threads could belong to."

"Or you've seen them out of the corner of your eye," Oykib had suggested. "Seen them without knowing what you've seen."

"If that's the case, then dozens of them have been gathered all around the village and the fields, and we haven't seen them. Not once, not ever. That's really a pretty silly idea."

"But they tire gathered around us, all the time."

"Around us, but far. You said what you heard was faint."

"Compared to the Oversoul, that's all. Like trying to hear a distant concert when somebody's tootling on a fife right next to you."

"See? You said it yourself-a distant concert."

"What if someone is watching us?"

"What if they are?" Chveya had answered him, "Let them watch. The Keeper is also watching them"

Naturally, all those who believed in the truth of dreams were watching for the winged flyers and the burrowing rodents-what had Hushklh and Luet called them? Angels and Diggers. But in all Oykib's listening, in all of Chveya's glimpses of someone's threads of loyalty and concern, they heard and saw nothing to tell them which of the strange species they had dreamed of their watchful neighbors might be. If it was either of them.

Whatever or whoever these strangers were, though, Oykib had been getting more and more disturbed by the dreams and desires coming into his head. The desire to eat something warm and salt-blooded, still quivering with life-when he first understood that one, it set him to retching with self-revulsion that he could desire such a thing. And even though he knew that the desire came from outside him, it stiO haunted him as if it had been his own desire. For the warm and salt-blooded something that he wanted to eat alive was, he understood, a soft, tender infant. There was something confusing in his image of it-a dazzle of sky, a leathery crackling blanket. Like all the communications between the Keeper and these strangers, nothing was every really definite. But this much Oykib knew: It had been a prayer from one of these creatures to the Keeper of Earth, and the prayer had been for the living flesh of a youngling.

What kind of monsters were these people?

I must tell someone, he thought; but he couldn't. To tell anyone but Chveya would be to let them know that he had been overhearing all their most secret communication with the Oversold for many years. It would make them all feel spied upon, robbed, violated. And to tell Chveya would be to terrify her about the safety of their firstborn child, already growing in her womb; about the safety of the little children she was teaching in the school every day.

So while he could tell her most of what he overheard, he couldn't tell her the worst things; for this past week, he couldn't explain to her why he woke up sweating and gagging in the middle of the night, or why he had grown silent in the past few days, barely speaking to her or to anyone.

Tonight, though, tonight had answered so many questions. For when this bat with its leathery wings came down and landed on the roof of a nearby storage tent, Oykib had sensed a different kind of being entirely. This creature, too, was getting an almost continuous stream of communication from the Keeper in yet another unfamiliar language of desires; but it was brighter and clearer, though more fearful as well. There were questions, and they were formed in ideas that Oykib could understand; best yet, they were linked with language. He didn't understand the words, but he knew that the language could be learned.

The desires, though, he understood very well indeed. A wish not to disappoint others; a desire to protect his wife and children; a hunger for secrets.

Hunger for secrets. Into Oykib's mind, as he watched the creature there on the tent roof, came an image of whose secrets the flyer was trying to decipher. Two pictures came into his mind almost at once. A vague image of a human head made of unfired clay, large and monstrous; and then, much more clearly, the image of Nafai in the flesh. Only it wasn't Nafai. It was a creature just like this one, only with patchy hair and tattered wings, unable to fly, and yet respected, being listened to by all the others.

It was Narai, but it was also not-Nafai.

Then, suddenly, he understood. It's this creature's word for us, for human beings. Old man. Old people. We're the old people.

But that would imply that they knew that humans had once lived on Earth before. That was absurd. Nothing could possibly be remembered for forty million years. And how could they remember anyway? As far as he knew, these creatures had not yet evolved into sentient beings when humans last walked upon the Earth.

Then the creature leapt from the tent and swept quickly over the clearing to the base of the starship. There, as he touched the metal, then rapped upon it with his fingers, he was speaking to the Keeper-no, singing to the Keeper, so rapturous was his mood. Oykib felt as if this creature's awe and rejoicing were inside him. He had a thought, as clear as if it were his own thought: "The Old Ones still put music into the things they make."

He had understood it, even though the words attached to the idea were in a language he had never heard before. No real sound had been uttered, and yet he knew inside his memory what this creature's voice would sound like. High and musical, rich in subtle lingering vowels, but with no sibilants or nasals or even fricatives. The only consonants were plosives and stops, and yet they were no less musical than the tonguing of a flautist, making fluttering interruptions in a tune. T's and K's, G's and P's, B's and D's, and a guttural consonant that Oykib knew his own throat could not possibly make. Sometimes these consonants had an extra puff of air; sometimes they were stopped. It was a beautiful language.

More important, though, was the fact that the desires were not dark and violent, and the Keeper did not seem to be struggling to restrain this creature. Rather than distracting him, the Keeper was encouraging him, reinforcing his desires. The contrast came as such a relief to Oykib after all these weeks and days of confusion and darkness that he spoke aloud. "At last the Keeper has brought a friend to us," he said.

He had forgotten how careful and watchful the creature-no, the angel-had been. He hadn't realized that the angel hadn't seen him there in the darkness. But as soon as he heard his own voice, he knew it was too loud, too sudden. The angel leapt almost a man's height into the air and then beat his wings in a frenzy to rise higher, out of harm's way.

But terror didn't rule him. He flew back, swooping around as if to get a good look at Oykib. Well, look to your heart's content, said Oykib, standing with his hands open and spread wide. I'll not harm you, Oykib tried to say with his body.

And then to the Keeper he said, Help him to know I'm not his enemy.

As usual, there was no answer. Others could get their dreams and their whispered silent words of guidance; Oykib could only overhear them, never receive them directly for himself. For once, though, with the memory of the angel's language and desires still fresh, Oykib did not regret the lack. Perhaps it was the better gift, to hear others.

When the angel winged its way into the night sky, heading up the canyon in moonlight, Oykib walked around the starship and headed back to his house. He could see the flash of the lantern. Who was on duty tonight? Meb? Vast" One of the Elemaki, at any rate.