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see you with me they'll either castrate me or ceremonially rape you—I don't know which rules you follow.
    Now go home!"
    "My people don't do that. And there is kinship between you and me," she said, her tone stubborn but uncertain.
    He turned to go.
    "Your mother's sister died in our tents—"
    "To our shame," he said, and went on. She did not follow.
    He stopped and looked back when he took the left fork up the ridge. Nothing stirred in all the dying forest, except one belated footroot down among the dead leaves, creeping with its excruciating vegetable obstinacy southward, leaving a thin track scored behind it.
    Racial pride forbade him to feel any shame for his treat- ment of the girl, and in fact he felt relief and a return of confidence. He would have to get used to the hilfs' insults and ignore their bigotry. They couldn't help it; it was their own kind of obstinacy, it was then- nature. The old chief had shown, by his own lights, real courtesy and patience. He, Jakob Agat, must be equally patient, and equally obstinate. For the fate of his people, the life of mankind on this world, depended on what these hilf tribes did and did not do in the next thirty days. Before the crescent moon rose, the history of a race for six hundred moonphases, ten Years, twenty generations, the long struggle, the long pull might end. Unless he had luck, unless he had patience.
    Dry leafless, with rotten branches, huge trees stood crowded and aisled for miles along these hills, their roots withered in the earth. They were ready to fall under the push of the north wind, to lie under frost and snow for thousands of days and nights, to rot in the long, long thaws of Spring, to enrich with their vast death the earth where, very deep, very deeply sleeping, their seeds lay buried now. Patience, patience ...
    In the wind he came down the bright stone streets of Landin to the Square, and passing the schoolchildren at their exercises in the arena, entered the arcaded, towered building that was called by an old name: the Hall of the League.
    Like the other buildings around the Square, it had been built five years ago when Landin was the capital of a strong and nourishing little nation, the time of strength. The whole first floor was a spacious meeting-hall. All around its gray walls were broad, delicate designs picked out in gold. On the east wall a stylized sun surrounded by nine planets faced the west wall's pattern of seven planets in very long ellipses round their sun. The third planet of each system was double, and set with crystal. Above the doors and at the far end, round dial-faces with fragile and ornate hands told that this present day was the 391st day of the 45th moonphase of the Tenth Local Year of the Colony on Gam- ma Draconis III. They also told that it was the two hundred and second day of Year 1405 of the League of All Worlds; and that it was the twelfth of August at home.
    Most people doubted that there was still a League of All Worlds, and a few paradoxicalists liked to question whether there ever had in fact been a home. But the clocks, here in the Great Assembly and down in the Records Room underground, which had been kept running for six hundred League Years, seemed to indicate by their origin and their steadfastness that there had been a League and that there still was a home, a birthplace of the race of man. Patiently they kept the hours of a planet lost in the abyss of darkness and years. Patience, patience ...
    The other Alterrans were waiting for him hi the library upstairs, or came in soon, gathering around the driftwood fire on the hearth: ten of them all together. Seiko and Alia Pasfal lighted the gas jets and turned them low. Though Agat had said nothing at all, his friend Huru Pilotson coming to stand beside him at the fire said, "Don't let 'em get you, Jakob. A herd of stupid stubborn nomads—they'll never learn."
    "Have I been sending?"
    "No, of course not." Huru giggled. He was a quick, slight, shy fellow, devoted