Sedon clapped Dvan on the shoulder, said simply, "Does it matter why we are moving?"

"She will not like it, Sedon."

"Ah." Sedons features took on that curiously blank expression again. He rose to his feet, aided Dvan to his, and said simply, "We are not asking her to."

- 7 -.

At the door chime, Robert sat up in bed and yawned until his jaws cracked, stretching."Command, open. Lights up."

The door to his quarters curled aside as the glowpaint scaled up. Dvan entered slowly, stood irresolutely just inside the doorway. Robert gestured at the room's two chairs. "Have a seat, William."

Dvan sank into the chair in delicate slow motion; Robert's suite was up a level from Denice's, in quarter gee. Two rooms, rather than the single in which Denice had been lodged; it was the suite he had stayed in five years prior, after accepting Chandler's invitation to partic.i.p.ate in a two-month study on low gravity and free-fall combat.

Robert rubbed his eyes, yawning again. "She's asleep?"

Dvan nodded. "Aye. Else I'd-"

"-be with her." Robert nodded. "I don't doubt it."

"I'd like to speak with you, night face."

Robert shrugged into a robe, moved barefoot into the kitchen, toggled the kitchen stasis field and pulled free the jar of mixed fruit juices he had made for himself. "No one is preventing you." He drank directly from the bottle, put it back and turned the field back on.

Dvan spoke plainly. "What is your interest in this matter?"

A smile touched Robert's lips, was gone. He sat back down on the bed, folded himself into half lotus and regarded Dvan."Which matter? There is a System full of them, you know."

"The Dancer."

Robert said slowly, "Sedon? I hardly care if he-"

A flicker of anger touched the black eyes. "Denice Castanaveras. What is your interest in her?"

"Ah. She is my student and my friend," Robert said equably.

Dvan's features darkened perceptibly."You taught her?"

Robert Dazai Yo said carefully, "Some things, yes. Why the anger?"

Dvan spoke in a voice low and shaky. "You are an abomination in the universe, a perversion of the Flame and of the Dance. And if you attempt to teach these things to Denice Castanaveras, I'll kill you."

Robert Yo laughed in his face. "Oh, comeon. You ugly, stupid, slow-moving ox, you're going to kill me for continuing to do what I'vebeen doing for eight years?"

"Yes," said Dvan with absolute sincerity. "I will."

A smile twitched around the edge of Robert's lips. "Okay. Thanks. I mean for the warning. I appreciate it," he said with a sincerity approaching Dvan's own, "and I certainly won't forget it."

- 8 -.

The years flowed by.

Sedon stayed behind, in First Town; his teacher Indo, and the exiled Dancers Ro, and Mietray, and Dola,' went to Second Town, and the Shield did not follow them. Dvan had lost track of the numbers of the children; by the twentieth year of exile it had reached into the hundreds. As they grew older, most of them were moved to Second Town; Dvan did not think it an accident. The children, particularly the male children, disturbed him; others among the Shield were of the opinion, stated with growing loudness, that the children of the exiles were no better than animals. The male children, between their fifteenth and twentieth years, sprouted hair in the most remarkable places; it grew on their cheeks, and the faint hair on their forearms, their chest, and legs grew darker and thicker until on some of them it resembled nothing so much as the pelt of one of the local animals. They were mostly short, considerably shorter than the average Shield, but possessed of a solidity, a density of bone and muscle, that once again struck most Shield as animal-like.

It was exactly the opposite of what Dvan would have expected, had he bothered to think about it ahead of time; given the gentler gravity of the prison planet, that the children would be shorter and denser than their parents made little sense. The Keepers' words came back to him; if it was true that the Flame People never truly ceased growing, though the rate of growth slowed dramatically as they aged, then it made sense that the children, doomed to die, should not reach their parents' height. The density of their muscle Dvan could not understand at all. Many of the male children, under the training of the Dancers, surpa.s.sed the strength of their Dancer teachers.

One or two of them, Dvan guessed, approached his own strength; and his strength was abnormal even for the Shield.

The women were, in some ways, worse. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips tended to a heaviness that was uncomfortable for Dvan to look at; like the men, they were shorter and more solid than their parents.

And theybred. The second generation of children were born to children themselves not yet fourteen years of age; and where a woman of the Flame People, if allowed to breed, might bear one child ever tenth or twelfth year, the children boretheir children at an astonishing rate; some were pregnant again within ten to twentydays after delivering a child.

"I think, Dvan, you and I have never seen an adult human being," said Sedon one night in their twenty-second year of exile. Sedon sat in the darkness only a few paces away from where Dvan stood duty, outside the ship.

The normal complement of Shield stood duty with him, six others arrayed around the circ.u.mference of the ship. In the brilliant light from the full moon, the two Shield closest to Dvan could, Dvan knew, easily make out the features of the heretic keeping Dvan company during his duty.

It had been going on for many years now; at first Dvan had wondered if the Sentinel, or Keeper, might comment on it, but it had never happened.

Dvan was silent, listening to the distant, solitary cries of the night birds. After a while he said, "Perhaps you are right."

"There is a tribe of natives some twenty days' walk south of here. It-"

"That's where you went during the last warm season."

Sedon did not deny it. "They are interesting, though no better than animals. They do not speak, or use any but the crudest of tools. When I showed myself to them, they threw stones at me until I allowed myself to be driven away."

"And?"

"The children, Dvan, look more like them than like us. Oh, they are not identical; our children stand straighter, more like a Zaradin than like one of the natives. The native's skulls are shaped somewhat differently, as well, with a heavy ridge over their brows; and their jaws are immense, designed for the ripping of uncooked plants and flesh."

Dvan winced at the use of the word. It was another point where the children horrified the Shield; what had been whispered about their parents, that they had eaten the flesh of animals during the first two winters, was not even a thing of shame among the children; they hunted openly, had taken to showing smiles that bared their teeth, as though they were indeed one of the local carnivores.

"There are rumors," said Dvan after a moment, "that you have been endeavoring to teach the Dance to the male children."

Sedon's smile, at least, kept his teeth decently covered. "They are not rumors, and you know it. We have not succeeded, but I am not prepared to give up yet. Some few of them show promise."

"The Shield are concerned, Sedon."

Sedon replied with a touch of asperity. "The Shield will be recalled, and when you are gone,I will be left with these shortlived creatures to deal with. It will be an easier thing if there is an order they recognize, a Temple and-"

"You are going to build aTemple?"

Sedon was silent a long moment. He spoke slowly. "Not such a one as a Zaradin would recognize, no.

We are not Zaradin, and we will emulate them no longer. We will make us a temple forhumans, exiles and children alike."

"Be careful, Sedon. The Shield is slow to anger, but-"

"-I am frightening them."

"I am not even offended at your use of the word. Aye."

On a hot day in the warm season, twenty-seven years after the ship of exiles had first set down at the edge of a great plain of gra.s.s, a courier ship broke through the s.p.a.celace anchor in the exile System, and orbited the exiles' planet.

Near midnight of that day, Sedon brushed aside the door hangings at the home of the engineer Sura, one of the hundred or so engineers who had joined him in exile, and followed the man inside.

The Dancer Indo sat on one of the long wooden benches in the engineer's workroom, hands clasped together over his stomach, leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed. One who did not know the ancient Dancer might have thought him asleep.

"Tell me."

"I must begin by apologizing for the inaccuracy of my tools. With better equipment I could be more certain, and-"

Sedon cut him short, stared into the man's eyes. "You started withnothing but the clothes you took into exile and the data in your corders; not a hammer or a laser or a knife to work with, no metal, no gla.s.s, no plastic or silicon. You haveno need to apologize for what you have made out of nothing."

The engineer bowed his head. "Thank you." He swallowed visibly. "I've done my best."

"Tell me."

"Early this morning heat output from the ship jumped dramatically." The engineer handed Sedon a flat black block of some smooth material. "We keep two of the scopes in the forest, trained on the ship's heat radiators at all times, with these filters placed inside the scopes. They're sensitive to infrared light, and normally they change colors, from transparent to black, over the course of four to five days. That filter you're holding lastedone day; we changed it yesterday. The Dancer Indo checked the filters this afternoon, found them black, and changed them." The engineer handed Sedon a second black filter.

"Again, sometime this afternoon, they flushed waste heat from the ship."

"Testing the engines?"

"No. I've rigged some crude gravity shears; if the ship's gravity ball had even burped I'd know about it.

No, Dancer; they cycled a JumpDoor. Twice. It's the only thing that'd leave them needing to get rid of that much excess heat."

"Ah. Then there is a ship in orbit."

Sura climbed a small ladder, lifted up on the roof above his head. A section came free, and he handed it down to Sedon, stepped back down and went into another room to get the telescope itself. The scope was wrapped in oiled cloth to protect the metal parts from rust. Sura unwrapped it, handed the slightly oily instrument, as long as a man's arm, to Sedon. "Look at the Temple."

Sedon directed the telescope upward, toward the constellation the exiles had taken to calling the Temple; it was a name that Sedon would not have chosen, himself. "I don't-"

"Down now, slightly to the right; it's leaving the Temple. A low orbit; if you watch it long enough you'll see it move. It's only a courier, not-" Sura saw the Dancer's features go blank, completely without expression, and knew that he looked at such rage that, were it directed at him, he would not survive. He prudently silenced himself.

After a bit Sedon lowered the telescope, handed it back to Sura, and wiped his hands clean on his robe.

"Thank you, Sura. I am in your debt."

Indo spoke without opening his eyes. "Anton, do you think?"

Sedon said absently. "Likely."

"Should have killed him when you had the chance."

"Aye." Sedon paused. "Well, I will not make that mistake again." He turned to Indo. "Has a runner been sent?"

"To the first station," Indo agreed. "After that, by semaph.o.r.e. They'll be evacuating Second Town before morning comes."

In the hour before sunrise, Dvan brushed aside the doorway hangings at Sedons house, and entered.

Sedon awaited him, alone, in a room lit only by the embers of the fire. A rarity, that; usually there were others present, if only the Dancer's servants, and usually at night the fire burned high.

"My friend," said Sedon quietly. "Thank you for coming. Join me."

Dvan knelt, still wearing his shadow cloak; he had been approached while standing guard. "What's the urgency, Sedon?"

In the gloom Sedon's gaze, half hidden in shadow, met his with a disquieting impact. "We are born broken," he said softly, "and live by mending."

Dvan said automatically, if a touch confused, "I see that I am broken."

"You are a Shield, a servant of the Living Flame. Will you live in the service of the Flame?"

Dvan stared through the gloom at the Dancer. "What is this?"

Sedons voice gained force as he spoke: "Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan, I am a Dancer of the Flame, and by your Name Irequire that you answer me." His voice cracked like a whip:"Will you live in the service of the Flame?"

Dvan drew a long breath, and said steadily, "I will."

Sedon nodded slowly, relaxing visibly. "We have come to a time of decision, you and I. You are my friend, Dvan, and I love you. You know this is true."

It took a conscious act for Dvan to gentle the beating of his heart. "Aye," he said finally. "I know this is true."

"There is a ship in orbit, Dvan."

Silence descended then. At length Dvan said, "How do you know that?"

"Does it matter? The ship is there, Dvan, and the situation cannot continue as it has."

"I see that."

"You see, do you?" Sedon studied him."Do you? Dvan, you know that the Aneda do not intend this colony should succeed?"

Dvan found the words difficult. "I know this."

Sedon said relentlessly, "You know they do not intend that I be allowed to live?"

Dvan shook his head. "I donot know that, Sedon. That they have treated the colony badly I cannot deny, but-"

Sedon pressed on. "Dvan, what are the things a shipmight mean? Will you answer me honestly?"