"No one wishes to die," Cadnan said. "You'd be surprised," Dodd told him. He moved and opened the door. For a second he stood in the entrance. "People can wish for almost anything," he said. "You'd be surprised." The door banged shut and he was gone. * * * * * Cadnan sat staring at the door for a second, his mind a tangle of ideas and of new words for which he had no referents whatever. When he turned away at last his eye fell on Dara, curled in a far corner. She was looking at him but when he saw her he looked away. That disturbed him, too: the rules were very clear on matings. Cadnan wanted to tell someone what he felt. He wanted information, and he wanted someone to follow. But the masters were masters: he could not be like them. And in the room where he slept there were no elders. The thought of speaking with an elder, in any case, gave him no satisfaction. He did not want an elder: he could not join the masters and ask questions. Somewhere, he told himself, there would be someone.... Somewhere.... Of course, there was Marvor. Later in the night, while Cadnan still lay awake trying to put thoughts and words together in his mind, Marvor moved closer to him. "I want you with me," he said. But Marvor, Cadnan had decided, was bad. "I sleep here," Cadnan said, a trifle severely. "I do not move my place." In the dimness Marvor shook his head _no_, like a master. "I want you with me in the plan I have," he said. "I want you to help me." That was different. The rules of the elders covered such a request. "Does a brother refuse help to a brother?" Cadnan asked. "We are from the same tree and the same time. Tell me what I must do." Marvor opened his mouth wide, wider, until Cadnan saw the flash of his many teeth, and a second passed in silence. Then Marvor snapped his jaws shut, hissing, and spoke. "The masters tell us what to do. They make our life for us." "This is true," Cadnan muttered. "It is evil," Marvor said. "It is bad. We must make our own lives. Every thing makes its own life." "We are slaves," Cadnan said. "This is our life. It is our place." Marvor sat up suddenly. Around them the others muttered and stirred. "Does the plant grow when a master tells it?" he asked. "Does the tree bud when a master tells it? So we must also grow in our own way." "We are not plants or trees," Cadnan said. "We are alive," Marvor said in a fierce, sudden whisper. "The masters, too, are alive. We are the same as they. Why do they tell us what to do?" Cadnan was very patient. "Because they know, and we do not," he said. "Because they tell us, that is all. It is the way things are." "I will change the way things are," Marvor said. He spoke now more softly still. "Do you want to be a master?" "I am no master," Cadnan said wearily. "I am a slave."