"I like to listen to them. I like to hear of the time when the ruins were living cities and the earth was green--when there was an abundance of food and water for everyone.... Surely you believe there was such a time. The words of the Dance--" "I don't know," Ryan said. "Sometimes I think the words of the Dance are lies." Merium shook her head. "No. The words of the Dance are wisdom. Without them we could not live." "You talk like an old woman yourself!" Ryan said. Abruptly he stood up. "You _are_ an old woman. An ugly old woman!" He strode across the sand to the fire, leaving her alone by the water. The tribe had broken up into groups. The old men huddled together in one group, the younger men in another. The women sat by themselves near the wavering perimeter of the firelight, crooning an ancient melody, exchanging an occasional word in low tones. Ryan stood by the fire alone. He was the youngest male of the tribe. He and Merium had been the last children to be born. The tribe had numbered in the hundreds then, and the hunting had been good, the dogs still tame and easy to find. There had been other tribes too, wandering over the dust-veiled land. Ryan wondered what had become of them. But he only pretended to wonder. In his heart, he knew. It was growing colder. He added more driftwood to the fire and watched the flames gorge themselves. Flames were like men, he thought. They ate everything there was in sight, and when there was nothing more to eat, they died. * * * * * Suddenly a drum throbbed out and a woman's voice chanted: "What is a tree?" A voice answered from the group of old men: "A tree is a green dream." "What has become of the living land?" "The living land is dust!" The drum beat grew louder. Ryan's throat tightened. He felt the refreshing warmth of anger touch his face. The opening phase of the Dance always affected him, even when he was expecting it. One of the old men was moving out into the firelight, shuffling his feet to the beat of the drum. The light reddened the wrinkles on his thirty-year-old face, made a crimson washboard of his forehead. His thin voice drifted on the cold night air: "_The living land is dust, and those who turned it into dust are dust themselves_--" A woman's voice took up the chant: "_Our ancestors are dust: dust are our gorged ancestors_--" There were other figures shuffling in the firelight now, and the beat on the dogskin drum head was sharper, stronger. Ryan felt the quickening of his blood, the surge of new-born energy. Voices blended: "_Dust are our gorged ancestors, our ancestors who raped the fields and ravished the hills, who cut the forest chains and set the rivers free; our ancestors who drank deep from the well of the world and left the well dry_--"