"So what you're telling me is that you refuse even to offer my daughter the possibility of marrying one of the finest young men I know in this whole empire, solely because her brother can't grow out of his childish rage?"

"We have no way of knowing what it was that happened inside Akma, Father Akmaro. He may have been a child, but that doesn't make the things he felt then childish."

Akmaro took the last bite of his flatcake. The bean paste having been used up, it tasted dry and salty. "I need a drink of water," he said.

"The Milirek has no pure source," said Didul, "and it flows from low mountains, some of which lose their snow for much of the year."

"I drink the water that the Keeper gives me in every land," said Akmaro.

Didul laughed. "Then I hope you won't go down out of the gor-naya! The slow-flowing waters of the flatlands aren't safe. They're muddy and foul and things live in them. I know a man who drank it once without boiling it, and he said his bowels didn't stop running until he had lost a third of his body weight and his wife was ready to bury him, if only to save the trouble of digging yet another latrine."

Akmaro grimaced. "I hear those stories, too. But somehow we have to learn to live in the flatlands. We've had peace for so long that people from all over are coming here. Former Elemaki, people from hidden mountain valleys, coming to Darakemba because under the rule of Motiak there's peace and plenty. Well, the peace will last, I hope. But the plenty ... we have to find a way to use the flatlands."

"The diggers can't tunnel there, it all floods," said Didul. "The angels can't perch there because the trees are so thick-limbed and close together that the jaguars can reach them everywhere."

"Then we should think of some way to build houses on rafts or something," said Akmaro. "We need more land. And maybe if we opened up new lands, my young friend, where diggers and angels and humans had to live in the same kind of house, we might be able to create the kind of harmony that is so hard to bring to pass here in the gornaya."

"I'll think about it," said Didul. "But I hope you also give this problem to cleverer men and women than me."

"Believe me, I have and I will again," said Akmaro. "And to cleverer ones than me, too. I learned that from Motiak. Don't waste your time asking advice from people stupider than you."

"That's comforting advice," said Didul.

"How so?"

"I can ask anybody," he said, laughing.

"False modesty is still false, no matter how charming it might seem."

"All right, I'm smarter than some people," Didul admitted. "Like that one teacher who says that angels are afraid to go down into digger holes."

"Aren't they?"

"I know three angel physicians who do it all the time, and they've never been harmed."

"Maybe," said Akmaro, "our teachers would be less afraid if they believed their teaching was as valuable a service as the herbs of the physician."

"Well, there we are," said Didul. "If the believers weren't so torn by doubt, they might do a better job of persuading the unbelievers."

"Oh, I don't even mind their doubt," said Akmaro. "If they could just act as if they believed, they'd be more persuasive."

"If I didn't know you better," said Didul, "I'd think you were praising hypocrisy."

"I would rather live among people who behave correctly than among people with correct opinions," said Akmaro. "I've noticed no higher incidence of hypocrisy among the former than among the latter, and at least the ones who behave well don't take up so much of your time with arguing."

Bego puffed along behind Akma and Mon, complaining the whole time. "I don't see why we couldn't have this discussion, whatever it's about, in my study. I'm too old for this, and you may have noticed that my legs are less than half the length of yours!" To which Akma heartlessly replied, "So fly then." From behind, Mon gave Akma a shove in the shoulder, sending him stumbling into some brush beside the path. Akma turned, ready to be angry, ready to laugh, depending on the intention he read in Mon's eyes.

"Have respect for a friend of mine," said Mon softly, "if not for his age and office."

Akma smiled at once, his most winning and charming smile, and it worked as it always worked, suggesting as it did a sort of self-effacing humility, a believable protest of innocence, and a promise of friendship-whatever good thing the other person wished to read into it. Mon always wondered at that smile even as it triumphed over his own anger or envy. Where could such power over others come from?

"Ah, Bego, you knew I was teasing, I hope," said Akma. "Forgive me, old friend?"

"I forgive you everything, every time," said Bego wearily. "Everyone does, so why do you bother to ask anymore?"

"And do I offend so often that forgiving me should be a habit?" asked Akma, with more than a little pain in his smile this time. It made Mon want to clap an arm around his shoulders, grip him hard, assure him that no one took offense. How does he do that!

"You offend no more often than any other brilliant and undisciplined and leisured and lazy young man of twenty years," said Bego. "Now, here, in the middle of this grassy field. If you look not to be overheard, here we are."

"Ah," said Mon, pointing overhead. "Have you- overlooked the prying eyes from above?"

"The fixed star," said Bego. "Yes, yes, well, they say the Oversoul sees through roofs and leaves and solid earth, so what does it matter."

Akma threw himself to the ground and landed immediately in the grass in an elegant sprawl that would have looked practiced in anyone less lithe and natural. "Who knows how many hundreds of digger tunnels intersect under this meadow?" he asked.

"It's not a meadow," said Mon. "It's my father's park, and no one is allowed to dig under it."

"Oh, then we know that even the earthworms shy away from the boundaries," said Akma.

Mon laughed in spite of himself. "So, Father's authority isn't universal."

"Why are we here?" asked Bego. "Sitting isn't my most comfortable perch."

"But Bego," said Akma, "humans and angels and diggers are all alike now, didn't you know? The Keeper has spoken."

"Well, the Keeper had better give me a new bottom if he wants me to set it on chairs or other miserably uncomfortable places," said Bego.

"Mon and I have been thinking," said Akma.

"The two of you together?" asked Bego. "Then perhaps you have woven a thought, if you've done it long and often enough."

"We've been studying the histories of the Heroes. And the history that the Zenifi found thirteen years ago."

"The Rasulum," said Bego.

"And we wanted to try out an idea on you," said Mon.

"Which you couldn't do in my study? Perhaps immediately after I gave school to the youngest of the king's boys?"

"Our question is possibly treasonable," said Akma.

Bego immediately fell silent.

"We know that you have respect for scientific inquiry, and would never report us. But who knows what might get said by someone else, overhearing us? Perhaps exaggerating what was said?"

"What possible treason can there be in the ancient records?" asked Bego.

"If we're right," said Akma, "then we think you've been trying to hint about this for about ten years."

"I don't hint," said Bego. "And if you want to know whether you're right, it's Mon who has the gift of certitude."

"Well, that's the problem," said Mon. "If we're right, then there's no reason to trust in that supposed gift of mine. And if we're wrong, well, we get the same answer-no certainty from me."

"So we ask you," said Akma.

"You think that your own gift from the Keeper might be imaginary?" asked Bego, incredulous.

"I think that many things can come to someone's mind out of hysteria," said Mon.