Sick at heart, Honath turned back, shielding his eyes from the miraculous light. There was a clear call in some unknown language from near the spindle. Then there were footsteps, several pairs of them, coming closer. It was time for the Second Judgment. After a long moment, a big voice from the darkness said: "Don't be afraid. We mean you no harm. We're men, just as you are." The language had the archaic flavor of the Book of Laws, but it was otherwise perfectly understandable. A second voice said: "What are you called?" Honath's tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. While he was struggling with it, Mathild's voice came clearly from beside him: "He is Honath the Pursemaker, and I am Mathild the Forager." "You are a long distance from the place we left your people," the first Giant said. "Don't you still live in the vine-webs above the jungles?" "Lord--" "My name is Jarl Eleven. This man is Gerhardt Adler." This seemed to stop Mathild completely. Honath could understand why. The very notion of addressing Giants by name was nearly paralyzing. But since they were already as good as cast down into Hell again, nothing could be lost by it. "Jarl Eleven," he said, "the people still live among the vines. The floor of the jungle is forbidden. Only criminals are sent there. We are criminals." "Oh?" Jarl Eleven said. "And you've come all the way from the surface to this mesa? Gerhardt, this is prodigious. You have no idea what the surface of this planet is like--it's a place where evolution has never managed to leave the tooth-and-nail stage. Dinosaurs from every period of the Mesozoic, primitive mammals all the way up the scale to the ancient cats the works. That's why the original seeding team put these people in the treetops instead." "Honath, what was your crime?" Gerhardt Adler said. Honath was almost relieved to have the questioning come so quickly to this point. Jarl Eleven's aside, with its many terms he could not understand, had been frightening in its very meaninglessness. "There were five of us," Honath said in a low voice. "We said we--that we did not believe in the Giants." There was a brief silence. Then, shockingly, both Jarl Eleven and Gerhardt Adler burst into enormous laughter. Mathild cowered, her hands over her ears. Even Honath flinched and took a step backward. Instantly, the laughter stopped, and the Giant called Jarl Eleven stepped into the oval of light and sat down beside them. In the light, it could be seen that his face and hands were hairless, although there was hair on his crown; the rest of his body was covered by a kind of cloth. Seated, he was no taller than Honath, and did not seem quite so fearsome. "I beg your pardon," he said. "It was unkind of us to laugh, but what you said was highly unexpected. Gerhardt, come over here and squat down, so that you don't look so much like a statue of some general. Tell me, Honath, in what way did you not believe in the Giants?"