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watchers in the heavens.
    Their reach extended and extended, aided by new relays, and the watchers often foretold events that had used to surprise the world.
    Part of what the young men loaded onto the beshti with the tents this morning was, in fact, another relay tower, which, unfolded to the sky, anchored to the rock and powered by the sun, made contact with such adventurers as themselves much more dependable.
    And that made the Refuge much less worried about them.
    Marak himself had watched the hammer fall, when the ondat had brought retribution on the world. Hati had seen it. The two of them together had seen the rain of fire in the heavens, had seen ice fall in the desert, had seen the heavens wrapped in the smoke of volcanic fires beyond the sea, and the air turned to suffocating poison.
    Through all of it, they lived.
    They lived, while the earth and even the sea died and stank of corruption, deprived of light and clean air, leaving life only in the depths of vents and the cracks the hammerfall had made.
    They had lived to see the first rockets go out, bearing spores on the raging winds and landing the first relays.
    They had seen the rains fall and the air begin to clear. They had seen the desert change and flow with water, seen volcanoes belch out molten rock, seen the world crack and new rifts begin to move.
    They had seeded the land and shed life into the waterways that ran down to the sea.
    And, eventually, chafing at the restrictions of the Refuge, they had saddled up the beshti and gone out to see their handiwork. To this day, when something was in the offing, he and Hati found themselves a handful of willing young people to go with them—not that they needed the help, but company on the long treks was welcome . . . and safer. And it passed on the knowledge into the generations that lived and died around them. The two of them were immortal, for all practical purposes, immortal as the Ila, who shut herself among her records and dealt in knowledge for what she wanted; immortal as Memnanan, who served her with re-

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    markable patience and remained mostly loyal . . . immortal as Ian and Luz, who were older than the fortress in the sky, but not as old as the Ila. Ian and Luz ruled the Refuge, and their word was law, though they spoke very seldom in matters that regarded the tribes.
    They, themselves, Marak and Hati, ruled all the tribes. There were long periods of dull routine in the camps around the Refuge; and there were times when they shook the dust of the ordinary off them and rode out into the world.
    But whatever they did, they had the watchers in the heavens with them, in their heads, hearing what they said, making records.
    Ian and Luz could speak to them, through that means.
    And they had that other observer, the Ila’s au’it, the recorder of their travels, herself both old and young. She slept, or not, in the shadows of the tent near them.
    But from the caravan master to his boys, the younger company was awake and rolling up their mats. The youngest boy began to make tea, while the master packed for the day’s journey.
    There was enough light now to claim it was daybreak. A great event was imminent in the south. The Southern Wall had grown fragile, and lately trembled with quakes. Consequently they hastened to extend the relays toward that region, widening their view of the world in that direction.
    A beshta complained to the coming sun, protesting its day’s work.
    “If we get up,” Marak murmured into his wife’s ear, “the boys can strike the tent.”
    “If we refuse to get up,” Hati said, “we can strike it after morning tea.”
    “The Wall may break, and us not there to see it.”
    Hati sighed. And sighed again, and sat up, her dark braids, gold-banded, falling loose about her face and swaying against his cheek as she leaned to kiss him. “Up,” Hati said. Hup . That word they used to the beshti. And he gathered himself up. A clean, cold wind was