The thing rose at night a few hours after sunset, and dropped into the sea just before dawn. And the Goompahs watched.

Where was Melakar?

Where was Hazhurpol?

Behind the cloud, he was tempted to tell them. They’re there, and if you folks know what’s good for you, you’ll start thinking about packing up and heading for the hills.

It might have been the sense that Athens, Brackel, with its theaters and its parks and its scrolls, was approaching its demise: It might have been this realization that drove him through its streets like a ghost, savoring its life and its fragile beauty.

Kellie tried to slow him down. She told him he was becoming obsessed. Maybe, she said, he should think about going back. Going home. Get away from there.

But he would not do that. Wouldn’t consider it.

Kellie thought the kite might work. She knew Hutchins well and had a lot of confidence in her. Digger didn’t point out that Hutchins hadn’t hidden her feeling that the al-Jahani/Hawksbill mission was a long shot.

Now that they could wrap a lightbender field around the lander, it was much easier getting in and out of Brackel. Kellie usually brought them in among the orchards and open ground on the north side of the city. One day, she picked instead a glade a short distance off the isthmus road. “Breaks the monotony,” she said, as the invisible craft descended.

Digger looked at the woods, hunting for Goompahs, but Kellie reassured him. “Bill can’t see anybody down there,” she said. “It’s okay.”

Anybody.

It was, as far as he could recall, the first time.

HE EXPECTED THIS to be an interesting evening. Even more popular among the Goompahs than the theater was an event that was part lecture, part free-for-all. A speaker, usually a visiting authority of one kind or another, attempted to present a point of view on a given topic while the paying customers engaged him in open debate. (Or agreed with him, as the case might be, though, in Digger’s experience, it seldom was.) The visitor might be discussing the health benefits of sunlight, an abstract ethical issue of one kind or another, the merits of a drama that had recently been hooted out of town, or a supernatural visitation she had undergone and which had led to a spiritual awakening and the sure and certain knowledge that the members of her audience were groping through moral darkness and needed to get their act in order. It was all great fun, and Digger was often left in doubt whether any of the Goompahs on either side of the issue were serious. The attendees paid for the privilege, the speakers looked for subjects that would provoke outrage, and everybody had a good time.

They were called sloshen, for which there is no completely accurate English translation. Call it a felicitous quarrel, a happy argument, a glorious difference of opinion.

That evening’s guest speaker, according to notices that had been posted for several days, would be Macao Carista, who was described as a cartographer. Macao was from Kulnar, a city immediately northwest of Brackel. According to the displays, she was widely known throughout the Intigo.

While lingering several days earlier in the lobby of the building that would be used for the presentation, Digger had overheard enthusiastic patrons commenting that she always brought maps of places to which no one had ever journeyed, or sometimes of which no one had even heard.

She used the evenings, apparently, to talk about her travels, describing various kinds of fantastic creatures she’d seen, armored terps as tall as she was, bandars that spat venom at a range exceeding the diameter of the hall (which was considerable), flying solwegs, talking bolliclubs. Last time out, she was reported to have described two-headed Goompahs, which she’d seen on an island in the eastern ocean. One head, she’d said, always spoke the truth, and the other always lied. But you never knew which was which.

And there was Yara-di, the city of gold.

And the bridge across the bottomless Carridan Gap, built by unknown hands, using engineering principles beyond the grasp of any alive today. The bridge was so long that, when she crossed on the back of a berba, it had taken three days.

She’d spoken of the Boravay, the carnivorous forest, from which no traveler, save Macao, had ever returned.

“Sounds like a hell of a woman,” said Kellie.

Goompah, thought Digger. She’s a Goompah. Not a woman.

A strict and formal decorum was observed during the slosh. No hooting, no raised voices. “If the honored speaker would pause for a moment,” one might say, “before we wander farther into confusion—”

It was a cool night. A brisk wind blew off the sea, and management needed several fires to warm the hall to a comfortable level. Macao was obviously popular because Goompahs filled the building, and sat talking quietly to one another while they waited for her to appear.

The audience, about two hundred strong, were seated above the stage, amphitheater style, but restricted to three sides. Kellie and Digger, who had long since planted a pickup near the stage, lurked in the roped-off section, well out of the way. At the appointed hour, two workers pulled a large armchair into view, made a great deal of fuss getting it aimed in the proper direction, and returned with a frame on which Digger assumed Macao would put her maps. Then they brought out a roll of animal skin and leaned it against the side of the chair. They added a table and a lighted oil lamp, and when they had everything arranged to their satisfaction, they scurried off. A bell tinkled, the audience quieted, and a Goompah in red and gold entered from the side. He placed his palms together, the equivalent of bowing to the audience. Digger missed part of his comments, but it came down to, Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, please give a hand to our world-traveling guest, Macao Carista.

The audience rapped politely on any available flat surface, and Macao made her entrance. To Digger’s eyes she was pretty much indistinguishable from the other females. She wore a bright yellow blouse with fluffy sleeves. Green leggings. And animal-hide boots. A gold medallion hung on a purple ribbon about her neck.

“Well,” she said, “this looks like a desperate bunch.” And they were off and running. Macao, it seemed, had just returned from a long overland journey to the north. Through the desert and beyond the jungle where, she claimed, it grew cooler again. She regaled her audience with tales of the mystical Lyndaia, where the gods had placed the first Goompahs; of attack bobbos and the flying groppe, and a giant falloon, which had half a dozen slithery tentacles, and “only last year, as we all know, dragged a full-masted ship to the bottom.” And finally she spoke of Brissie, the city on the edge of forever. “From its towers, one can see the past and the future.” She recognized a hand in the audience. “Please give us your name,” she said.

“Telio. And what did you see, Macao?”

“Do you really wish to know, Telio?”

The questioner had a smashed ear. It was the same Telio he’d seen on the isthmus road what now seemed a long time ago.

“Yes,” he said. “Tell us.”

“Be aware first that I looked to the west, to the past. What’s past is done, Telio. There’s no point gazing that way.”

“So what did you see?”

“Well.” Feigning reluctance. “In the east, I saw a world filled with gleaming cities. Where our ships crossed the seas, and no part of the Intigo was hidden from us. Where travelers could find (something) wherever they went.”

Digger and Kellie were off to one side, but at the edge of the stage. They were getting everything—Macao, Telio, and the audience reaction. Dave Collingdale’s people would love this.

“Orky,” said someone in the audience. A female. “Crossed the seas to where?”

“Oh, yes,” Macao said. “That is the question, isn’t it?” She hadn’t sat down yet in the chair. She was using it instead as a prop. She circled it, gazed at her audience from behind it, leaned on its arm. Played to the expectant silence. “What do you think is on the other side of the sea?”

“There is no other side,” the questioner said. “The sea goes on forever. There may be other islands out there somewhere, but the sea itself has no end.”

“How many believe that?”

About half the hands went up. Maybe a bit more than half.

Macao fastened her gaze on the questioner. “The sea is (something),” she said. “It never stops. That sounds like a lot of water.”

Orky made the rippling sound that passed for laughter among Goompahs. A few pounded on chair arms. “If the sea has an end, what kind of end is it? Does the water simply stop? Is there a place where you can fall off, as Taygla says?” Macao, obviously enjoying herself, flowed across the stage. “It’s really an interesting question, isn’t it? It almost seems there is no satisfactory answer to these things.” She got up, opened the roll of animal skin, and withdrew a map, which she put on the frame. This was an attempt at cartography on a much larger scale than anything they’d seen at the library, which had been limited to the area in and around the isthmus. Her map showed icy regions in the south and deserts to the north, both correct. But it showed a western continent much closer than it actually was, and the big pole-to-pole continent a few thousand klicks east was missing altogether.

But the map contained a shock. “Wait here,” he told Kellie.

“What?” she whispered. “Where are you going?”

He was already up on the stage, moving behind Macao, until he stood directly in front of the map. It reminded him of those sixteenth-century charts that showed personified clouds blowing in different directions, or whales spouting. There were no whales or animated winds on this one. But it did have what appeared to be a graphic of a human being. A male.

It was at the bottom of the chart, riding a winged rhino.

It wasn’t done in sufficient detail to know for sure that it was human. But it was close. Eyes, mouth, and ears were all smaller than a Goompah’s. It had pale brown skin, and it looked a lot better than the natives. Its clothing was standard, a loose-fitting shirt and leggings. And it carried something that looked like a harpoon.

“The sad thing is,” Macao was saying, “we really don’t know whether Orky is right or wrong. We don’t know whether this map is right or wrong.” She advanced without warning in Digger’s direction and he had to scramble clear. Damned things were quicker than they looked.

“It’s one of us,” Digger told Kellie.

“What is?”

“On the chart.”