"It and the poem are entwined," Bram Forest said musingly. "I know they are. Together, they're my destiny." "And the destiny of all Tarth?" "Perhaps. Portox liked to think so, I guess." "I like to think so, Bram Forest." She smiled up at him tremulously. "And my destiny as well." "Ylia," he asked abruptly, "what do you know about the Golden Ape? You mentioned it to me once, when you thought I ... well, when you thought I endangered your virginity." "Why, nothing beyond what the legends say." "And what do the legends say?" "It is written in the most ancient of our religious beliefs that the messenger to the Place of the Dead is a Golden Ape. Naturally, in these same beliefs, a defiled virgin is supposed to kill herself. Thus, in a way of speaking, she goes to the Golden Ape. You see?" * * * * * Bram Forest smiled down at her. "What would you think if I told you the Golden Ape was real? If I told you that there actually was a Place of the Dead?" "For the spirits of the departed?" Ylia asked in a very small voice. "No. Man can't presume to know about that. It's in the realm of the gods. I mean a place which somehow borders on Tarth and yet ... yet is beyond the stars. A place which, when wayfarers returned from it miraculously long and long ago, gave rise to the legends." "Borders on Tarth ... yet beyond the stars? How can this be?" "Portox found it and explained it with his science," Bram Forest insisted. "Earth and Tarth, twin worlds, yet so different, forever unseen one by the other, on opposite sides of the sun. They're unique in the solar system, Ylia. Portox thought--if the memory he planted in my mind is correct--that they're unique in the entire universe. Somehow, a million million years ago, a world split, becoming two worlds. But ordinary space ... I don't know, the memory is confused ... could not hold them. There is a warp of space, a place where space bends. Learn to master the warp and you go instantly from Tarth to Earth, or back again. That was the way Portox brought me, as an infant, to Earth." He held aloft his arm, showing her the steel-silver disc. "With this I can travel back and forth at will. Without it, either Earth or Tarth would be my prison...." His voice trailed off. Then he blurted: "'A prison without bars!'" "What...." "The prophetic poem. Part of the poem. Anyway, Ylia, Earth and Tarth exist at either end of this space warp, connected thus through normal space where there should be no connection. And someplace along the warp--where ordinary space-time distances don't matter...." "I'm sorry, Bram Forest. I don't understand you." * * * * *