'She was born out of the Earth, from the clay and sea-water that G.o.d shaped with His own hands. When G.o.d breathed the breath of life into her, she came alive and took her first step upon the Earth.'

'That ... is a beautiful story,' Danlo said. In truth, he didn't doubt what Reina An had told him, remembering as he did how the Solid State Ent.i.ty had created an incarnation of Tamara in an amritsar tank on another Earth far away.

'All the firstborn came into life in this way,' Reina An said. 'Niu An was born as a full woman she never knew what it was like to be a child.'

'But she knew G.o.d?'

'She talked with G.o.d.'

'She heard his voice, then?'

'She saw His face.'

'His ... face?'

Reina An nodded her head. 'On the beach, out over the waters, the sea was burning and there was a great flash of light. And G.o.d appeared to Niu An.'

'I ... have always wondered what G.o.d would look like,' Danlo said. He glanced down at the impa.s.sive face of Nikolos Daru Ede, and he almost smiled.

'G.o.d's face blazes like the sun,' Reina An said. 'His eyes shine like stars, and his lips burn with fire.'

'I ... see.'

'When G.o.d opened his glorious mouth to tell Niu An about beauty, he gave the fire of speech unto her lips.'

'Then it was G.o.d who taught Niu An to speak, yes?'

'It was G.o.d,' Reina An said. 'G.o.d taught all the firstborn what they needed to know to be Sani.'

'I see.'

'And the firstborn taught our grandmothers and grandfathers everything they needed to know to be beautiful.'

'I see,' Danlo repeated. And then, as he turned his face to the hot fire before him, after a moment's reflection, he said, 'And now G.o.d is watching and waiting waiting to ee what kind of beauty the Sani bring forth out of the Earth, yes?'

Reina An turned to stare at Danlo for a long time. Ki Lin Shang, too, and his wives, Hon Su Shang and Laam Su, fell silent as they stared at this tall, strange man from the stars. Danlo drew in five slow breaths, and now all the Sani were staring at him, through the mist and the cold air of astonishment rippling through the village, silently staring.

'Again, you speak the words of the Yasa,' Reina An said.

'Truly?'

'Without hearing them and yet you know.'

'Perhaps.'

'How is it that you could know this?'

'I ... do not know.'

'How is it that you could know what none of the others knew?'

'What ... others?'

'The other people who came before you.'

Again, Ede's translation frustrated Danlo. He did not know whether Reina An meant 'people' or 'peoples'.

'Do you mean the other peoples who walked the Earth before the Sani?'

'No,' Reina An said. 'The others. The other people from the stars.'

Danlo sat completely still, staring at the fire. His heart began to thump in his chest like a bunda drum, and he wanted to jump up and dance around the fire and yet he remained as motionless as a snow tiger watching a sleekit through the winter woods.

'How ... long ago did these others come to your Earth?' Danlo asked at last.

'Oh, perhaps five years ago when I was a new great-grandmother.'

'They came here ... from where?'

'From their Earth, I suppose.'

'You never heard these people call their world by a name, then?'

'No, but they had a name for themselves. A strange and ugly name.'

Danlo watched the flames dancing along the logs of the fire, and he said, 'Yes?'

'An ugly, ugly name they called themselves the Architects of G.o.d.'

Now Danlo finally moved, slowly turning his head to look at the devotionary computer that projected Ede's hologram into the misty air. Danlo finally understood why none of the Sani had shown much curiosity over such a magical-seeming piece of technology. Not long ago, it seemed, the Sani must have grown used to the sight of these ugly, little computers.

'Where ... are these Architects, now?' Danlo asked. He looked off through the dark forest, where he could almost hear the rush of faraway voices. 'Do they still dwell upon your Earth?'

'Oh, no,' Reina An said, looking down at her hands. 'They are gone.''Gone ... where?'

Ki Lin Shang, who had remained silent for quite a long time, suddenly broke in, 'Gatei, gatei gone, gone. Why do you wish to know where they have gone?'

'I ... was only curious,' Danlo said.

While Ki Lin Shang and Reina An traded significant looks, Danlo caught the faint sound of a Sani woman whispering something. It almost seemed that she was saying: 'Gatei, gatei, para sum Edei gone, gone, into G.o.d.'

'They have gone home,' Ki Lin finally said.

'To their world?' Danlo asked. 'Have they returned to their star?'

Again, Ki Lin Shang and Reina An looked at each other, but they said nothing.

'Does their star have a name, then? Do you know which is their star?' Reina An looked up at the impenetrable, iron-grey sky for a long time. And then she said, 'I know. It is a star of the Fish constellation. If it were a clear night, I could show you.'

Danlo grasped the devotionary computer with such force that its sharp edges cut into the palms of his hands. At last, he thought, he might be close to completing his quest to find Tannahill as close as the fall of night, as close as a good clean wind that would blow away the clouds and reveal the Vild's millions of beautiful stars.

Just then, however, there were voices from the forest and everyone turned to watch three old men make their way down the muddy main street of the village. Like the rest of the Sani, these elders from the nearest band were brown of skin and utterly naked. Their feet and legs were spattered with mud, and they moved very slowly as if they had been walking through the cold for a long time. They walked past the smokehouses and the barking dogs; they walked among the excited children right up to the edge of the fire-pit where Danlo sat with Reina An and Ki Lin Shang. After Reina An had made the introductions, two of the three men bowed low and turned to smile at Danlo. The third elder, a stern-faced man who was known as Old Fei Yang, would not meet Danlo's eyes. He would not sit on the bearskins near Danlo, nor would he accept the cup of blackberry beer that young Toshu Luan offered him.

Instead, he scowled down at the devotionary computer glittering in Danlo's lap and fingered the deep wrinkles marking his small, toothless mouth. And then, in an ancient voice that sounded like two pieces of dried bone rubbing together, he shrilled out, 'Have we forgotten our manners? Is this the way to honour a stranger? We should make a feast to honour this man's journey.'

'A feast!' someone suddenly called out. And then, many others, 'Let's make a feast!'

'A beautiful feast,' Old Fei Yang said. 'Let this poor tired man rest while we prepare our most beautiful foods.'

Old Fei Yang then suggested that the Sani elders meet together to organize the feast while a young man named Ten Su Minye and his two strong and beautiful brothers escorted Danlo to the guest house at the very edge of the village. For a moment, it seemed that Reina An and Ki Lin Shang might dispute this rather rude and peremptory decision of Old Fei Yang's. But after all, Old Fei Yang was the Oldest of the Old, and his word carried a great weight among all the Sani, even here in this little village that was not his own. And so in the end, things went as he had said. Ten Su Minye and his brothers big men with muscles bulging from the logs they cut and hauled through the forest everyday showed Danlo to a little log house sitting in a huge puddle of mud and held the heavy door open while he stepped inside. Instantly, Danlo smelled the terrible nearness of dank bearskins and stinking old fish, and then the door banged shut leaving him alone with his devotionary computer. He began pacing around the room like a caged tiger as he awaited the feast and the sight of the star that he had sought for so long.

CHAPTER TEN

The Feast

Know, O beloved, man was not created in jest or at random, but marvellously made for some great end.

- Al Ghazzali.

After their first moments together in the house, with the rain beginning to patter on the roof above them, the Ede hologram's face screwed up into the very embodiment of confusion. 'I had thought that we were about to learn the location of Tannahill. And now we're supposed to wait here while the Sani prepare a feast! Who can understand such a people?'

For the time, Danlo paid the devotionary little attention. He set it down on one of the many bearskins spread out over the dirt floor and walked about the house. Like all the Sani houses it had no windows but the fireplace was ablaze with sweet-smelling spruce logs and a low table was set out with dried salmon, walnuts, and bowls of fresh blackberries. Danlo did not know how long he would be required to wait for the Sani's feast, but at least he would not be too cold, nor would he starve.

Ede seemed annoyed by Danlo's silence, and so he said, 'I confess that I don't like waiting in this village for the sky to clear. There must be another way for the Sani to describe the star of Tannahill.'

Danlo examined the house's walls, then the tightly-fitted logs c.h.i.n.ked with dried clay as hard as stone. He looked up at the sloping, solid wood ceiling, wondering if he might find some place where the beams were loose or rotten. But the ceiling seemed as well-made as the rest of the house. In a way, it had a kind of simple, st.u.r.dy beauty, as all the Sani houses did.

'If only we'd come here five years ago,' Ede said, 'then we might have simply accompanied the Architects back to Tannahill.'

At last, Danlo sighed and sat down crosslegged facing the devotionary computer.

He looked at Ede's brooding little hologram and said, 'The Architects did not return to Tannahill.'

'What?' Ede's face was as featureless as a bowl of mud; then, a moment later, the alarm program took control of the light beams composing Ede's cheeks, mouth, and eyes.

'The Architects ... never left this Earth.'

'What?'

'The Sani killed them.' Danlo closed his eyes while he rubbed the lightning scar cut deep into his forehead. 'They invited the Architects to a feast beneath the stars. And then ... they murdered them. With knives, each man and woman they murdered.'

'How do you know this?' Ede asked. His face fell through a series of emotions: doubt, fear, hate, awe, resentment, calculation, and finally, doubt again. 'How could you know?'

Danlo sat listening to the rain falling through the forest outside, and he wondered how he could ever explain to Ede how he knew what he knew. How could he explain it to himself, this way of seeing that was beyond logic, beyond all s.p.a.ce or time?

Once, he had called this mysterious vision by the Fravashi term 'yugen'. But how could any word ever encompa.s.s the terrifying (and lovely) cascades of images that sometimes rushed through his inner eye with all the power of a waterfall? How could he describe the connectedness, the utter strangeness like the cold, clear joy of beholding a distant seascape from a single sh.e.l.l sparkling in the palm of one's hand?

From the fear and hate written on Old Fei Yang's face, Danlo had seen the death of the Architects. Even now, as he closed his eyes, he could still see this little tragedy as if it were occurring at that moment. As if it always would be occurring: in Old Fei Yang's village, deep in the forest some miles away, the Sani sat feting a group of Architects. There were nine of these strangers, five men and four women, each dressed in the traditional white sikon kimonos, each holding in his or her hands a devotionary computer similar to Danlo's. At the height of the feast, when the Sani and their guests had filled themselves with fish and bread and blackberry beer, the Sani smiled to see their guests so relaxed and comfortable. As was their custom at any gathering, they recited lines from the Yasa. They talked with the Architects about the mysterious nature of G.o.d. And then they surprised the Architects with the fish knives which they had hidden beneath their bearskins. Men, women, and children fell upon the Architects in a fury of slashing and stabbing and high, terrible screams that pierced the quiet of the dark woods. They made quick work of their murder, hoping that the souls of the nine Architects would eventually understand that in all those things which must die, the sight of blood was always beautiful to G.o.d the Destroyer.

'I know,' Danlo said. 'The feast occurred five years ago. Five years and ... thirty- three days.'

'But why did the Sani make such perfidious murders?'

'You truly do not understand, then?' Danlo asked.

'I suppose they didn't want to be proselytized by a group of religious fanatics.'

'Yes, of course but it is more than that.'

The Ede hologram made a sarcastic face. 'Please tell me.'

'The Architects had no ... love of beauty.'

'And for this they were executed?'

Danlo sat there in silence, listening to the beat of the rain on the roof and the beating of his own heart. He smiled sadly but did not speak.

'And now the Sani are preparing another feast.'

'A feast,' Danlo finally said. 'Yes.'

'To murder you?'

'Perhaps.'

'Perhaps?'

Danlo smiled down upon the alarmed hologram of Nikolos Daru Ede. It amused him that Ede, who was always alert for dangers in the environment, who fancied himself as a master cetic and reader of minds, could so easily misread the human heart.

'There is an even chance that I will be executed or ...'

'Or what?'

'Or honoured. Even as we speak, the Sani are making their preparations. It will either be a blood feast or ... a welcoming.'

'Then you don't believe that Old Fei Yang has determined your fate?'

'No,' Danlo said. 'He is full of fear and anger, even hate, but there is something other, too.'

'And what is that?'

'Beauty,' Danlo said. 'He loves all that is beautiful in the soul of man.'