"Yes, dear, I recall that. He put that in words...." In a way, Paul did not want her to go on, living it over again, but she had a need to speak of it. "I suppose his plans made a kind of sense if you accepted the premise. As I couldn't, of course. When he said you were all lost, I believed (I had to believe) that he was--not lying perhaps, but telling something he hadn't truly seen. I know that was where I let go--I raged and screamed, and when he grabbed my arm (probably just wanting to quiet me down)--well, if he's living he'll have two or three white scars down his cheek. Uh-huh: the Dope comes clean. I ever think I was trying to get hold of my pistol when Arek took it away, and took his away too. After that she forced him to give a precise account of everything that had happened, every detail. She made him tell it five or six times, watching for contradictions. She was--justice embodied. I was afraid of her myself even while I loved her for it. I knew what he told us then was the truth: the fuel was low, he'd come direct to the island with no real knowledge of what had happened to you. He was saner after the telling. He lost a--a certain look of exalted listening, as if somebody behind Arek's shoulder were telling him what to do. Arek never gave back his pistol. We were on the beach. The giants had been bringing wood all day for a beacon fire. I remember the exact shape of a big shell at my feet, the look of a bit of driftwood tossed in by the channel breakers...." "And Ann--" "Oh, Ann! Tom two or three ways as usual. She was very much in love with him, you know, from our first days on Lucifer. But her mind was a battleground with no armistice. I think Ed always knew that. When he pleaded with her--reasonably too--she couldn't think, she could only cry and say: 'I won't go with you--I won't go.' He stopped trying--suddenly, as if he'd knowingly turned off a light inside himself--unsteady light and the only one he had, I reckon. He said, 'So much for the human race: but I'll see what one man can do here before I'm dead without issue.' And he walked off to the lifeboat, while Arek let his pistol dangle from her finger--and, Paul, I shall always think he knew Ann would run after him. I saw her tugging, trying to pull him out of the boat--but she was pulled in and it was gone." "And I remember," said Dunin, "what you did after we lost sight of it." "What I did...? What was that, Dunin? I'm blank there." "You went to the beacon fire and put on more wood." "Well," she said vaguely, "of course. We all did.... That _is_ smoke, Paul. Lantis' pygmies or the wild giants couldn't be there on the cliffs." Dunin said, "Oh, there are no giants in that country, Dorothy. Those low hills I remember west of the first camp--those kaksma hills were an impassable boundary in the old days. The country west of them--nobody went there, ever. And south of them--Vestoia. My wild kindred are all very far north of here...."