“Everything is so bright and clean,” she told Pomma many times. “Everything shines with cleanness, even the people.” Taking Pomma’s thin hand with its pale translucent skin in her own sturdy brown fingers, Teera interlaced their fingers and smiled into the huge blue-green eyes.

  And even on that first day, when she had been so near to dreaming the final dream, Pomma had smiled back at Teera. Even though she was weak with pain and the drowsy comfort of the Berry, her smile had echoed Teera’s. And as the days passed, they had begun to echo each other in other ways.

  Hearba D’ok, the mother, said that before Teera came, Pomma had for many days been unable to eat any solid food—except for the soothing Berry, which she craved almost constantly. But watching Teera eat, watching her gobble her first whole pan-fruit in months and months, watching her learn with delight the taste of honey and egg and tree mushrooms, watching her revel and glory in every food-taking, Pomma began to feel a faint echo of appreciation of the act of eating. She began to taste Teera’s food in order to share her pleasure, and, very slowly, the pleasure began to be her own.

  There had been many other things to share as well. While Pomma was yet too weak to leave her nid, she began to share with Teera the songs of Kindar children and, in return, Teera taught her the songs sung by the children of Erda. Many of the songs were similar, passed down from the days before the Root when all the people of Green-sky were Kindar together. But others, like the Answer Song, were new to Teera, just as the sadly throbbing chants of Erda were new and fascinating to Pomma.

  Pomma loved the singing. Weak and sickly though she was, her fine, sweet voice rose and fell tirelessly, her face flushed and glowing, as if the music itself offered comfort and sustenance. Teera, too, enjoyed the singing, but she liked it just as much when they only talked together. For hours and hours she questioned Pomma, satisfying at last her avid curiosity about the Kindar and life in the forests of Green-sky. They talked endlessly about everything and anything, but eventually every conversation returned to two favorite subjects—gliding and the Garden.

  Teera had already known a little about the Gardens, where Kindar children spent their days, between the ages of two and thirteen years. Accustomed to the Academies of Erda, where one was taught a great deal about numbers and mathematics and a little about reading and writing, the curriculum of the Gardens seemed intriguingly exotic. Rather than classes in numbers and letter-carving, Kindar children attended Song and Story, and took courses in Love and Joy, and in the skills of the Spirit, such as grunspreking, pensing and kiniporting. It seemed to Teera that she would much prefer a Garden to an Academy—in spite of the fact that Kindar children were apparently required to spend a great deal more time at their place of learning than were the children of Erda.

  Teera, like all Erdlings, knew of the Spirit skills, both from the Verban and from the old tales that their ancestors had brought to Erda at the time of the exile. She knew that at one time nearly all the people of Green-sky could pense, sending and receiving exact words and phrases by means of Spirit-force. She had heard also of grunspreking, the art of influencing and controlling plant life, and she knew that it had been by means of this skill, magnified to the level of enchantment, that D’ol Wissener had transformed the Root from a normal growth into a barrier of supernatural strength and power. She knew vaguely, too, of kiniporting, although she had heard but little concerning its history and the great significance it once had had in Green-sky.

  “Why do they bother to teach it?” she asked Pomma. “Why is being able to make a leaf float through the air, or a cylinder roll towards you across a table, so important?”

  “I guess it’s not very important anymore,” Pomma said. “No one can do it anymore except very young children, and they can only move things of very little weight. But it was very important once, because of uniforce. Do you know about uniforce?”

  Teera had nodded uncertainly. “I think so,” she had said. “I think in Erda it means great power—something like magic.”

  Pomma nodded. “It’s like that. In the early days, before the waning of the Spirit, there were people who were able to combine their powers with those of other people, so that they were much stronger—hundreds of times stronger. It was by uniforce that groups of healers were able to end almost all sickness and the grunsprekers started the orchards. And uniforce worked with kiniporting, too. Most of the great temples and assembly halls were built by teams of kiniporters who were able to use uniforce to lift huge tree limbs and even the trunks of rooftrees and hold them in place for the builders. There are pictures of them, of the uniforce builders of Orbora, on tapestries all over Green-sky. And there are many songs and chants about them.” Pomma sighed. “It would have been wonderful to have lived in the early days,” she said.

  “But people can still pense in Green-sky, can’t they?” Teera asked.

  “Well, the Ol-zhaan can, of course. And all little children still play Five-Pense. But most of them never reach the fifth level. When I was very small, I could do Signals and Choices, and then when I was five, for just a little while, I could do Images. But I haven’t been able to pense at all for a long time now.”

  “Let’s try it,” Teera had said. “Show me how to play Five-Pense, Pomma.”

  “I can show you how it’s done,” Pomma had said. “But we won’t be able to do it.” And so, sitting cross-legged, facing one another, with palms joined, looking into each other’s eyes, Teera and Pomma had pretended to play the sacred game of childhood. The game played by all children young enough to retain their inborn Spirit-gifts, and reverenced by Kindar of all ages as symbolic of the sacred nature of childhood, and as a vestige of the time when the gifts of the Spirit were common to all those who were born beneath the green sky.

  Pomma showed Teera how, at the first level, a small bowl was placed upside down beside the players; one player then covered his eyes, while the other lifted the bowl and placed something beneath—or, at times, only pretended to. By pensing, a signal was given, telling whether the bowl was full or empty. And then there would be smiles and sometimes laughter, when the sending was truly received, clear and strong and accompanied by the deep sharp thrill of Spirit-touch.

  Pomma had said they would only pretend, since they were much too old to Five-Pense, but almost at once Teera found that she could receive Pomma’s signals, and it was not long before Pomma, too, was truly receiving. Teera had been delighted, but Pomma was almost beside herself with joyous excitement. It was not long before they had progressed to Choices and, very recently, they had begun to do Images; and there they had found a new fascination.

  Through Teera’s mind, Pomma found that she was able to see the tunnels and caverns of Erda, and through Pomma, Teera saw all the beauties of Green-sky—and even experienced, almost as if she were doing it herself, the glorious freedom of the glide. Pomma had shared with her the thrill of the first swooping fall from the branchpath, the long clean sweep of the glide through green-lit corridors of space, and the feeling of power and control when the slightest motion of arms and legs initiated a bank or turn or a soft easy drop to a landing.

  “I know I could do it now,” Teera told Pomma. “Now that I’ve imaged it. I know I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. At least, not if you were there with me.”

  And Pomma’s enthusiasm had echoed Teera’s own. “I know you could,” she agreed. “And just as soon as I’m strong enough and you don’t have to be a secret anymore, we’ll glide all over Orbora. And you’ll glide just as well as if you learned at the Garden like everyone else.”

  Getting to her feet, Teera moved to the doorway where she could see into the alcove, but Pomma was still sleeping peacefully. It was mostly because of Pomma that the days had passed so quickly. And with the passing days Teera had grown more content and the fears and sorrows that had come with her to Green-sky had faded and diminished. It was only at night with the coming of darkness and the soft whispering voices of the night rain that Teera still, sometimes, lay awake and cried softly, her tears running down into the silken comforters that lined her gently swaying nid. She cried most often for her parents.

  Although she had run from them in anger, she had long since ceased to blame them for the edict that would have taken Haba from her. As her father would have said, she had behaved like a true Erdling— feeling and acting first, and thinking afterwards; and now that she had thought, it was too late. And so she cried, missing her mother and father and Raula and Charn and all the others she had loved and who surely mourned her now as dead.

  But there were other times when she cried for fear. The Ol-zhaan D’ol Neric had come twice now alone, to do healing ceremonies for Pomma and to question Teera long and carefully. And although she knew, by pensing, that he still felt kindly towards her, she also knew that he still thought she was a Fallen. She knew also that he was still determined to find out more about her, and about all those who lived below the Root. Someday soon, Teera knew, he would find a way to discover her secret. Or, someday, he might take her away to see other, crueler Ol-zhaan, who could steal your thoughts from the very bottom of your mind. Till now, when he had questioned her, he had spoken mostly concerning things that she was able to discuss without betraying herself. She had answered carefully and slowly when his questions concerned such things as the food eaten in Erda, and the use of fire, and what smoke was and if it was dangerous. And so far, when he asked more threatening things, things about her family and about the appearance of those he called the Pash-shan, her tears had been enough to make him stop. But someday he might not stop. And then, too, there was always the possibility that Pomma might forget her promise and tell what she knew about Teera and the Pash-shan.

  Of course Pomma knew. One cannot Five-Pense and keep secrets, and besides, through imaging, Pomma had seen the caverns and caves of Erda, as well as the people who lived there. She had, at first, been terribly surprised and excited. When she fully understood the import of what she had learned—that there were no long-clawed monsters below the Root, but only people who looked almost exactly like Kindar and who called themselves Erdlings—her first reaction was to share her amazing news. She wanted to tell her mother, her father, anyone and everyone. She became so excited that Teera could not make her listen to reason—until, at last, Teera began to cry. Not gentle Kindar crying either, with only big liquid eyes and quivering lips, but good, loud, Erdling wails and sobs and flooding tears.

  Pomma had stared at her in shocked amazement. “What is the matter? Don’t do that, Teera. Don’t be so—so awful.” It was clear that Pomma was not just sorry for Teera’s grief, but also embarrassed and horrified at her free expression of it.

  “They’ll kill me,” Teera had wailed. “The Ol-zhaan will kill me if they find out. They always kill Pash-shan if they can. The only reason they haven’t killed me already is that they think I am a Fallen. If you tell anyone at all, the Ol-zhaan will find out for sure, and they’ll kill me.”

  But Pomma had never really believed her. She kept insisting that the Ol-zhaan would never kill anyone—or “dead” them, as Pomma always said, blushing. There was, Teera had discovered, no Kindar word for kill, and the use of dead as a verb to mean the same thing was considered highly indecent. But whatever it was called, Teera felt absolutely certain that the Ol-zhaan would do away with her very quickly if they knew who she really was. At last, Pomma agreed not to tell anyone, but she promised still protesting and obviously not convinced of the necessity, so that Teera was quite sure that it would take very little to make her forget her promise. So Pomma and her promise was one more thing to worry over, and sometimes to cry about while the soft forest darkness hid her tears and her sobs were muffled by the sound of the weeping rain.

  Returning to her resting place at the edge of the balcony, Teera sighed and dipped another slice of pan-fruit into the saucer of honey, and the thought of dark, shadowy worries faded in the comfort of sweetness on the tongue. There was comfort, too, in the sight of Haba napping comfortably in the padded sleeping basket of Pomma’s pet, the sima called Baya. The little creatures were cuddled together, and one of the sima’s long thin arms was looped protectingly over the round body of the lapan. Teera sighed again, more happily, but at that moment the door hangings of Pomma’s chamber were pushed aside and the mother, Hearba, entered.

  She was carrying two lovely new shubas, a deep, soft red one for Teera and another of blending pinks and golds for Pomma.

  Pomma, who had awakened at her mother’s entrance, was still exclaiming delightedly over the new shubas—holding the red one up to Teera and saying how well it suited her, when Hearba interrupted.

  “Put them on,” she said. “Put the new shubas on quickly and then come out into the common room. It is time for D’ol Neric to return, and this time he will bring Raamo—D’ol Raamo, with him.”

  Pomma squealed with delight, and Teera, too, felt pleasure at the thought of once more seeing the young Ol-zhaan whose deep feelings spoke to her as well and easily as any Erdling’s. But her pleasure was mixed with fear because, although she had pensed him to be gentle and friendly, everything she had ever learned about Ol-zhaan told her that he should be feared and hated.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ON THE FIRST DAY, the search for the missing daughter of Kanna and Herd Eld was a massive enterprise, involving more than half the population of Erda. Greatly moved by the sad plight of the Elds, the High Council had taken extreme measures, declaring a first-degree emergency, thus releasing all but the most essential workers from their duties, in order that they might take part in the search. Children had been lost before in the tunnels of Erda, and the Council had acted before to release workers to help in the search. But in most cases the emergency was given a much lower classification, and only selected teams from each industry or institution were sent out to take part. Herd Eld was, of course, grateful for the Council’s response, although it soon became apparent that the reasons behind their decree, as well as its results, were not, perhaps, of the best.

  Herd Eld, in his capacity of Health Councilor, was well known in Erda, and most of the members of the High Council knew him personally, or at least knew of him. His passionate advocacy of smaller families and a reduction in the population of Erda was well known to almost all Erdlings; and his advice was widely respected, if not often heeded. To the Erdlings, who were quite accustomed to leaders who spoke eloquently and passionately in support of noble standards that they were seldom able to maintain personally, Herd Eld’s limitation of his own family to one small daughter seemed a sacrifice greatly to be admired. And that that one small daughter might now be lost to him seemed a great injustice. Living, as they did, under the curse of the great injustice of their imprisonment, the Erdlings were highly sensitive to all injustices. Their response to even the smallest and most obscure tended to be quick and unpremeditated.

  During the first day of the search for the lost Teera, Kanna and Herd had reason to wish that, in this particular case, the Council had considered a bit longer and had been a little less generous in their response. The workers had been released so quickly and in such great numbers that adequate preparation and organization had been impossible, and the tunnels around the city were packed with searchers, crossing and recrossing the same areas, and occasionally stopping to ask each other exactly whom it was they had been sent to rescue.

  On the second day, at Herd’s request, the decree was reclassified, and a smaller number reported for search duty. By now, experienced tunnel workers—miners and plak hunters—had been appointed as organizers, and teams were formed, areas allotted, and path markers issued, so the search became more orderly and much more effective. In teams of three or four, the searchers ranged far into the outlying tunnels and caverns, marking the paths carefully so that they themselves would not become lost in the vast labyrinth that surrounded the city of Erda.

  Kanna and Herd, having asked to be assigned to the far reaches, were included in a team led by one of the most experienced tunnel-men in all Erda. Yagg Olf was an old man who had spent most of his life as a hunter of plak and lapan. Since the small creatures of the forest floor rarely entered the Erdling tunnels, it was necessary to set traps above the surface of the earth by reaching out through the Root. Tramping daily through the outlying tunnels, far from the well-hunted areas around Erda, he had set traps from the mouths of ventilation tunnels in areas long since abandoned, and had even dug new surface tunnels in unexplored or forgotten areas. During his lifetime he had, himself, rescued two Fallen infants, and had found and led to Erda three terrified, exhausted Verban, whom he had encountered wandering in the far reaches. Perhaps no one in all Erda was better acquainted with the vast underground wilderness that stretched out apparently endlessly below the Root. But even Yagg Olf’s knowledge was limited and incomplete.

  “No one can know the tunnels,” he told Herd, “not all of them. For myself, I wouldn’t try to know them all. It is not meant that they should be known.”

  “But I’ve heard that you have led expeditions of the Nekom Society to look for the end of the Root.”

  “Yes,” Yagg said, “I led them. I told them that I knew it was useless—a waste of my time and theirs. But they had petitioned the Council for the right to make the expedition and had asked for me as their guide, and the Council had granted their requests. So I led them. But I told them what I thought. I told them that the Root could not be outdistanced any more than it could be cut or burned. The Root, I told them, is not matter but meaning, and meaning is infinite.”

  “Are you, then, a believer in the Gystig philosophy?” Kanna asked.

  The Gystig faith, once widely held in Erda but now waning in influence, taught that Erdlings were born to the Root as punishment for their sins and the sins of their ancestors, and that humble acceptance of their fate would ensure rebirth to the high forest when their Erdling life was over. It seemed strange to Kanna that Yagg, who was obviously a simple and practical person, would be interested in mystical philosophies.