"Shetri, hear me. The Runa love their children, as you do," Sandoz said. "This war began with the slaughter of Runa infants by Jana'ata militia. How do you answer this?"

"I answer: even so, our children are innocent."

There was a long silence. "All right," Sandoz said at last. "I'll do what I can. It probably won't be enough, Shetri, but I'll try."

"GOOD MORNING, FRANS," EMILIO SAID THE NEXT DAY, AS THOUGH nothing much had occurred since his last transmission. "I'd like to speak to John and Danny, if you don't mind."

There was a slight delay before John's voice was heard. "Emilio! Are you safe? Where the hell have you-?"

"Listen, John, about that extra mile I was prepared to walk," Emilio said lightly. "If you and Danny don't mind coming down here to give my friends and me a lift, I think I'd rather fly."

"Not without an explanation, ace," said Danny Iron Horse.

"Good morning, Danny. I'll explain in a moment-"

Carlo cut in. "Sandoz, I've had quite enough of this. Mendes will give us almost no information and I'm certain she's lying when she does!"

"Ah, Don Carlo! I trust you slept better than I did last night," Sandoz said, ignoring the sounds of irritation. "I find that I must ask you for the loan of a lander. There's no money in this venture, I'm afraid, but I can get a very good poet to write an epic about you, if you like. I don't want the drone. I want the manned lander-with Danny and John-and I want it empty, except for a case of cartridges and Joseba's hunting rifle."

"What's the ammunition for?" Danny asked suspiciously.

"First principles, Danny: we intend to feed the hungry. The situation on the ground is not as we expected. If our information is correct, there remain only a few small enclaves of Jana'ata, and some of them are presently starving. Joseba believes the entire species may be on the brink of extinction." He waited for the clamor on the Giordano Bruno to die down. "He and Sean are determined to find the truth, as am I. want Danny and John down here as neutral witnesses. I'm afraid Sean and Joseba and I are not generating much in the way of objectivity anymore."

Frans said, "Sandoz, I've got a fix on your transmission site near what looks-"

"You needn't mention the coordinates, Frans. We may be overheard," Emilio cautioned. "I need an answer, gentlemen. There's not a lot of time to waste.'''

"An epic, you say?" Carlo asked, self-mockery plain. "Well, perhaps I can work out something more lucrative later. I'll send the lander, Sandoz. You can pay me back when we get home."

"Don't tempt me," Emilio warned him with a small laugh, and they made arrangements for the landing.

N'Jarr Valley October 2078, Earth-Relative HA'ANALA HAD TWO DREAMS THAT NIGHT. HER THIRD CHILD-THE unnamed stillbirth-appeared at the doorway, small and fetal but cheerful, his face full of mischief. "Where have you been?" Ha'anala cried when she saw him. "It's nearly redlight! You shouldn't stay out so long!" she scolded affectionately, and the baby answered, "You shouldn't worry about me!"

She roused briefly, with a sensation of tightness across her belly, but the visit from her dream son was reassuring and she drifted back to the heavy sleep that had characterized this pregnancy. The second dream was also of a dead child but, this time, she relived the last few minutes of Urkinal's life and awoke with a start, the hiss and rattle of his tiny lungs in her ears.

Suukmel, who had moved in with her while Shetri was gone, came awake in an instant. "Is it time?" she asked quietly in the thin light of dawn.

"No," Ha'anala whispered. "I had a dream." She sat up with a graceless lurch but as carefully as she could, not wanting to wake Sofi'ala, sleeping in the nest beside her. Another gray day, she noted, peering out through cracks in the stonework. There was no sound yet from the other houses. "The children came to visit again last night."

"Someone should tie ribbons on your arms," Suukmel said, smiling at the superstition.

But Ha'anala shuddered, as much from the chill of the sunless morning as from the memory of a small rattling chest. "I wish Shetri hadn't gone. Was Ma with you when your daughters were bom?"

"Oh, no," Suukmel said, getting to her feet and beginning the morning chores. "Ma would never have come near a birth-very unseemly. The women of my caste were always alone-well, not alone. We had Runa. Men generally had nothing to do with women and birth, apart from providing the impetus for the event. And I can't say that I'd have welcomed an audience."

"I don't want an audience, I want company!" Ha'anala shifted her position and rested her back against her husband's rolled-up sleeping nest. She felt vaguely uneasy, despite the fact that they'd received good news directly from Shetri, via the Bruno. He and the others were well and would be arriving today, with the foreigners, in an extraordinary craft that could bring them home quickly and without detection. "Even if Shetri can't stand to be here when the baby's born, I'll be glad-"

She stopped, face still. At last! she thought, welcoming the wave of cramp, rolling from top to bottom. When she raised her eyes, Suukmel was watching knowingly. "Don't tell anyone else yet," Ha'anala said, glancing significantly at Sofi'ala, who was beginning to stir. "I want company, not a fierno."

"I'm hungry!" Sofi'ala whined, eyes still closed. It was the inevitable morning greeting, this time of year.

"Your father's bringing wonderful things to eat," Suukmel told the child gaily, and smiled a little sadly when the child's glorious lavender eyes snapped open at that news. They could hear other households awakening nearby, and the first wisps of smoke from Runa dung fires were beginning to reach them. "He'll be here soon, but why don't you go to Biao-Tol's hearth and see what's cooking there?"

"Wait-" Ha'anala called as Sofi'ala ran out to join the other children, who spent their mornings dashing around the village, peering into pots, hunting for the most abundant or tastiest meal available. "Sipaj, Sofi'ala! Don't be a nuisance!" Suukmel chuckled at that, but Ha'anala insisted, "She is! She is a nuisance! And I hate the way she orders the other children around."

"You see yourself in her," Suukmel told her. "Don't be hard on the girl. It's natural for her to try to dominate them."

"It's also natural to defecate whenever and wherever the urge arises," said Ha'anala in riposte. "That doesn't make it acceptable behavior."

"But even the Runa children resist her! It's good training," Suukmel parried. "They all gain strength."

They spent the morning jousting like this, enjoying the mental combat, but the tempo and strength of the contractions were constantly on their minds. "They should be quicker now, and stronger," Ha'anala said, when all three suns were up, the brightest a flat, white disk burning through the cloud cover overhead.

"Soon enough," Suukmel said, but she, too, was concerned, watching with some dismay as Ha'anala curled up in her nest and fell silent.

By that time, Ha'anala's daughter had worked out what was going on, and Suukmel turned her attention to reassuring the child and greeting the guests who began to gather, alerted by Sofi'ala's anxious wail. Though the Jana'ata considerately withdrew after conveying their good wishes, the house was soon crowded with Runa, who brought enthusiasm and encouragement and food for the assemblage, along with the warmth of their bodies and of their affection. Like the Runa, Ha'anala believed a birth was an occasion for festivity and seemed happy for the distraction, so Suukmel did not drive the visitors off.

If the contractions did not quicken, they did at least increase in intensity and Ha'anala welcomed that, despite the pain. In the midst of an endless discussion of what might hurry the labor along, a boy ran in with news of the lander and soon they all heard its horrifying noise, the room emptying abruptly as the crowd moved off to witness this astonishing arrival.

"Go on-see what it's like!" Ha'anala told Suukmel. "Tell me about it when you come back! I'll be fine, but send Shetri!"

"Orders, orders, orders," Suukmel teased as she left for the landing site at the edge of the valley. "You sound like Sofi'ala!

Alone at last, Ha'anala rested as best she could, surprised by how tired she was so early in this labor. She listened as the roar of the engines abruptly ceased, heard the buzz of conversation indistinct in the distance. Days seemed to pass before Shetri came to her; despite all she wanted to ask him, the only words she spoke aloud were, "Someone is cold."

Shetri went to the door and shouted for help. Soon Ha'anala was lifted to her feet and, though she stopped and squatted now and then, hit by another contraction, she was able to walk slowly to a place where game in miraculous quantity was spitted and roasting over smoky fires. Smiling at the spontaneous carnival that had erupted, her eyes sought out the foreigners in the crowd. One was close in size to Sofia, the others as tall as Isaac, but with none of his wandlike slenderness. Dark and light; bearded and hairless and maned. And the languages! High K'San and peasant Ruanja and H'inglish-as hilariously mixed in the confusion of the cooking and greetings and stories as Ha'anala's own speech had been when she'd first met Shetri.

"They are so different!" she cried, to no one in particular. "This is wonderful. Wonderful!"

Cheered by warmth and the prospect of rapprochement with the south, Ha'anala knelt heavily, bearing down with a will, certain that this was the moment when the new child should be brought into light and laughter. She felt instead a tearing pain that made her scream and silenced the others, so that only the hiss of fire and the distant warbling of a p'rkra could be heard. When she could breathe again, she laughed a little and assured everyone wryly, "I won't try that again!"

Slowly the merriment and conversation resumed, but she could smell Shetri's anxiety and this worried her. "Tell me about your journey!" she commanded affectionately, but he was frightened and made an excuse to help the foreigners distribute meat, sending Rukuei to sit behind her like a Runa husband. Suukmel came as well, and Tiyat, with her youngest riding her back. Content to have her cousin's arms around her shoulders, Ha'anala leaned back against his belly, his legs drawn up around her own, his cheek resting near hers, and listened as Rukuei sang of his adventure in a spontaneous poem with the rocking rhythm of a steady walk. She was genuinely interested in the story, and drifted along, buoyed by the tale, laughing when Rukuei made comedy out of the fright he had been given by the little foreigner Sandoz.

"Small individuals can be surprisingly powerful," Ha'anala observed breathlessly, leaning over to press her lively belly between her chest and legs, glad that she could summon up a little humor even now.

Hearing his name, Sandoz had joined them, making an obeisance rather than offering his hands..When the introductions were over, he sat where he too could watch the party: silent, hunched and rocking slightly, his arms crossed over his chest. His posture very nearly mimicked her own during a contraction, and Ha'anala's first words to him were, "Funny, you don't look pregnant."

He stared and then hooted, startled by the remark but apparently amused. "If I am, we're definitely going to have to start a new religion," he replied, and if she didn't understand all of his words, she liked his smile. He had eyes like Sola's-brown and small-but warm, not stony. "My lady, what language best pleases you?" he asked.

"Ruanja for affection. English for science-"

"And jokes," he observed.

"K'San for politics and poetry," Ha'anala continued, pausing as the wave crested and then receded. "Hebrew for prayer."

For a time, the five of them watched Runa tending fires and roasting sticks of root vegetables now that the Jana'ata had been able to eat their fill. "We have dreamed of this," Suukmel said, smiling at Tiyat and then reaching out to grasp first Rukuei's ankle and then Ha'anala's.

"Dreamed of what?" Sandoz asked. "Eating well?"

Suukmel considered him for a time and decided he was being ironic. "Yes," she agreed easily, then swept an arm across the panorama. "But also of this: all of us together."

"Someone's eyes feel good to see it," said Tiyat. She looked down at her sleeping son, and then at the people surrounding Ha'anala. "Three kinds are better than one!"

"Sandoz, tell me about each of your companions," Ha'anala said, in the language of politics.

He motioned toward the one with the bare skull first and answered her in the language of affection. "Djon has clever hands, like a Runa, and a generous heart. Look now at his face, and you will learn how a human appears when he enjoys something. Someone thinks: to help others is Djon's greatest pleasure. He has a talent for friendship." He paused, and switched to K'San. "I believe he is incapable of lying."

"The one next to him?" Ha'anala asked, glancing at Suukmel, who was also listening carefully.

The answer was in Hebrew. "He is called Shaan. He sees very clearly, without sentiment." Sandoz paused, looking at the others, and realized that only Ha'anala spoke Hebrew. In K'San he said, "Sometimes it is necessary to hear hard truths. Shaan is fierce, like a Jana'ata, and unsparing. But what he says is important." He gestured then toward Joseba, and simplified the name. "Hozei also sees clearly, but he is subtle. When Hozei speaks, I listen carefully."

"And the black-haired one?" Suukmel asked, when Ha'anala was silenced by another contraction.

Sandoz drew in a chestful of air and let it out slowly. "Dani," he said, and they waited to hear which language he selected. "He may be of use to you," he said in K'San. "He knows from his own people's experience what the Jana'ata face, and he wants very much to be of aid to you. But he is a man of ideals, and has sometimes chosen them over ethics."

"Which makes him dangerous," Suukmel remarked.

"Yes," Sandoz agreed.

"The one who is singing?" Ha'anala asked. "He, too, is like a Jana'ata, I think. Is he a poet?"

Sandoz smiled and continued in Ruanja. "No, not a poet, but Nico appreciates the work of poets, and his voice graces it." He glanced at Tiyat and chose his words carefully. "Nico is more like a village Runao, who can be led easily by anyone who is forceful." He paused as the three Jana'ata exchanged looks. "Nico can be a danger, but I trust him now. In any case, he won't stay with you," Sandoz told them. "He is a member of a trading party that will only be here long enough to do business in the south. The others wish to remain here, to be of use and to learn from you, if you will permit it."

"And you, Sandoz?" Rukuei asked. "Will you stay or go?"

He did not answer because Ha'anala closed her eyes, folding over her belly, and this time, gave a strangled cry that brought Shetri to her side. When her breath returned, she said, "It will be well. I am not afraid."

AS THE LIGHT FADED, SO DID THE PAINS, WHICH SEEMED NOW TO BE AT some distance. Her attention flickered like the fire that warmed her and lit up the night, but she continued to listen to the quiet conversation around her, marveling at Sandoz's voice, so unlike Isaac's-not loud and halting but soft and musical, its pitch rising and falling, its cadences varied and flowing. Ha'anala had forgotten that humans could speak that way, and she was saddened by the years that had passed since she had last heard Sofia's voice.

Swept by mourning, she grieved for the past, and also for the future she would not know, for there came a private moment when she knew that she would die-not with the unfocused theoretical understanding that she was mortal but with the physical certainty that death would come for her sooner rather than later. To her surprise, she slept, waking briefly with each gripping muscular wave, aware that she drew on a diminishing reserve of strength each time she rejoined the living. Once she came fully alert in the darkness, and told the others, "When I am gone, take the children to my mother." Soothing murmurs succeeded shocked silence, but she said, "Do as I ask. Remind her of Abraham. For the sake of the ten..." This said, she sank back into oblivion.

At dawn, her husband's snarl brought her back to the world. She was in the house now but warm, covered with blankets the likes of which she'd never seen. Without moving, she could look out the door to a ghostly landscape softened by fog. "No! I won't permit it!" Shetri was insisting. "How can you even think of such a thing?"

"Are you giving up then?" she heard a foreigner demand, his harsh accusatory whisper carrying easily in the still dawn air. "You needn't lose them both, man-"

"Stop!" Shetri cried, turning away from Shaan, ears clamped shut. "I won't hear of it!"

Closing her eyes, Ha'anala listened to Rukuei explain why she had to die, his words coming to her in scraps and tatters. "There's no help for it... necessary... prevent generations of suffering in the future... the greater good..."

Ha'anala did not recognize the next voice, but it might have been Hozei who said, "This is not a thing of abnormality but weakness brought on by hunger!"

"Shetri, I think you are right and that Ha'anala will die soon," Sandoz said steadily. "I think Shaan is wrong. The procedure he wishes to try will kill Ha'anala. None of us is an adept-we don't know how to do this in a way that will preserve the mother's life, and I think Ha'anala is too weak now to survive it. I am sorry. I am so very sorry. But-among us, when this happens, the child sometimes lives for a very short time after the mother dies. Please-please, if you will permit it, perhaps we can at least save the child."

"How?" Ha'anala called, firm-voiced. "How do you save the child?"

She saw the small foreigner's outline in the doorway, black against gray, and then he was at her side, kneeling, his hands in their strange machines, resting on his thighs. "Sipaj, Ha'anala, someone thinks that after you are gone, for a few moments, the child will live on, It would be necessary to cut open your body and lift the child out."

"Desecration," Shetri hissed again, standing above them both, tall and stiff backed. "No, no, no! If-. I don't want the child! Not now, not this way! Ha'anala, please-"

"Save what you can," she said. "Hear me, Shetri. Save what you can!"

But he would not agree and Suukmel was arguing now, and Sofi'ala wailing, and the foreigners- Suddenly, Ha'anala knew what it was to be Isaac, to have the music within her drowned out by noise. "Get out, Shetri," she said wearily, too far gone to tolerate the fierno another moment, too used up to be kind or tactful. "All of you: leave me alone!"

But she reached out and hooked her claws over Sandoz's arm, and held him fast. "Not you," she said. "Stay." When the room was empty except for the two of them, she told him slowly, in the language of prayer, "Save what you can."

FOR NINE HOURS MORE, HE DID WHATEVER SHE ASKED OF HIM, TRYING to ease her any way he could. Assured that there was hope for her child, Ha'anala rallied, and Emilio allowed himself to believe that she'd manage on her own. Ashamed of himself for panicking, his greatest concern for a time was how he would ever apologize adequately to Shetri for making this birth so much more frightening than it already was for a terrified father who'd lost two earlier children.

But the labor went on and on. Toward the end, thirst was her main complaint, and he tried to help her drink, but she couldn't hold anything down. He ducked outside the crude stone hut to ask about ice, but the small glacier that had formed between two peaks near the valley was too far away to be of use. John ran to the lander and got the oldest, softest shirt out of his pack; soaking a section of it in water, twisting it like a nipple, he handed this to Emilio, who offered it to Ha'anala. She sipped at the liquid this way and did not vomit, so for a time, Emilio simply dipped the cloth into water, over and over, until her need abated.

"Someone likes the sound of your voice," Ha'anala told him, eyes closed. "Talk to me."

"About what?"

"Anything. Take me somewhere. Tell me about your home. About the people you left behind."

So he told her about Gina, and Celestina, and they fell silent for a while, first smiling about rowdy little girls, then waiting for another contraction to pass. "Celestina. A beautiful name," Ha'anala said when it was over. "Like music."

"The name is from the word for heaven, but it can also mean a musical instrument, which sounds like a chorus of silver bells-high and chiming," he told her. "Sipaj, Ha'anala, what shall we call this baby?"

"That is for Shetri to say. Tell me about Sofia, when she was young." When he hesitated, she opened her eyes and said, "No, then. Nothing difficult now! Only easy things, until the hard one comes. What did you love when you were a child?"

He was ashamed to have failed her, and Sofia, but found himself describing La Perla and his childhood friends, losing himself in old passions and simple beauties: the solid smack of a ball into a worn glove, the swift arc into second base, a whirling throw to first for a double play. She understood very little but knew the joy of motion, and told him so in short, breathless phrases.

He helped her take more water. "Music, then," she said when she could. "Perhaps your Nico will sing."

Nico did, sitting in shafted light: arias, Neapolitan love songs, hymns he'd learned at the orphanage. Soothed, her thirst slaked, Ha'anala said once more, "Take the children to my mother." She slept; Nico sang on. Tired himself, Emilio dozed off, and awoke to a song that was surely the most beautiful he had ever heard. German, he thought, but he knew only a few of the words. It didn't matter, he realized, transfixed and at peace. The melody was everything: supple and serene, rising like a soul in flight, obeying some hidden law...

All around them, the VaN'Jarri listened as well, children clinging to parents, everyone aware that the time was very near. Opening his eyes, Emilio Sandoz saw the last fall of the chest, drew back the blankets and studied the abdomen; saw the faint movement and thought, Still alive, still alive. Nico, wide-eyed, handed him the knife.

As though from a great distance, Sandoz watched his own unfeeling hands cut quickly and decisively. For hours, he had feared this moment, afraid that he would cut too deeply or too hesitantly. In the event, there was a kind of wordless grace. He felt purified, stripped of all other purpose as this body opened up beneath him, layer after layer, blossoming, glistening like a red rose at dawn, its petals bathed in dew.

"There," he said softly, and slit the caul. "Nico, lift the baby out."

The big man did as he was told, swarthy face paling in the shadowy hut at the awful sound-sucking and wet-as he pulled the child free. He stood then, thick-fingered hands supporting the infant's fragile form as though it were made of glass.

John stood just beyond the door, ready to clean the baby and take it to the father, but when he saw what Nico carried, the steam rising wispily from its fine, damp fur, he threw back his head and cried, "Stillborn!" Nico burst into tears, and there was a great howl from the others that fell away when Sandoz lurched like a madman through the doorway and whispered in direct address, in denial and defiance, "God, no. Not this time."

Abruptly he snatched the child away from Nico and dropped to the ground with it, supporting his weight on his knees and his forearms, the tiny body so close he could feel the lingering warmth of its mother's corpse. With his mouth, he sucked the slimy membrane and fluid from the nostrils and spat, enraged and resolved. Tipping the damp head back with one ruined hand, holding the blunt little muzzle closed with the other, he put his mouth over the nose again: blew gently, and waited; blew gently and waited, over and over. Eventually he felt hands on his shoulders drawing him back, but he wrenched his body from their grip, and went back to the task until John, more roughly now, yanked him away from the little body, and ordered in a voice ragged with weeping, "Stop, Emilio! You can stop now!"

Beaten, he sat back on his heels, and let a single despairing cry into the air. Only then, as the sound torn from his throat joined the high, thin wail of a newborn, did he understand.

The infant's squall was lost in the eruption of astonishment and joy. Fine Runa hands gathered the baby up and Emilio's eyes followed the infant as it was cleaned and wrapped, round and round, with homespun cloth, and passed from embrace to embrace. For a long time, he stayed slumped where he was, blood-soaked and spent. Then he pushed himself to his feet and stood, swaying slightly, looking for Shetri Laaks.

He was afraid the father would mourn the wife and curse the child. But Shetri was already holding the little one to his chest, eyes downcast, oblivious to everything but the son he jounced gently in his arms to quiet its crying.

Emilio Sandoz turned away and ducked back into the stone hut, where he was greeted by the wreckage of a woman, as forgotten as he was in the rejoicing. We cremate our dead, Rukuei had said. When? Two days ago? Three? So the Pope was right, Emilio thought numbly. No grave to dig.... Drained of emotion, he sat down heavily, next to what had been Ha'anala. If anything could prove the existence of the soul, he thought, it is the utter emptiness of a corpse.

Unbidden, unlocked for, the stillness came upon him: evoked by music and by death, and by the shadowless love that can only be felt at a birth. Once more, he felt the tidal pull, but this time he swam against it, as a man being swept out to sea fights the current. Putting his head in his hands, he let the weight of his skull press down on the hardware of his braces, for once in his life seeking a physical pain that he could rule, to block out what was beyond his control.