"The city is a desolation." Miniaan slipped out of shadow into the clearing, where the others waited for her without a fire; she was shaken, short of breath. No longer young, she had hurried on the ten-mile return journey from Vestoia through high-noon heat of jungle. "I could not even find the house where I was born. Oh, Pakriaa--Paul--of every ten houses, seven are empty. The streets are dirt and rubbish. No one knew me. Well, that's not strange. Those I met supposed I was a stranger, probably from the east. But the ones who were suspicious did not challenge me--they slipped into their sorry houses and stared at me through the cracks." She sat down in weariness, wiping sweat from her scarred head and shoulder. "Word of what I said will travel quickly. But not one followed me here. I made sure of that." Arek asked, "Have you had anything to eat?" "No, I--only walked through the streets.... Doc, some had English words--a few, badly spoken. No one could pronounce _d_ at the beginning of a word, and they had absurd turns of speech I don't understand. One woman said to me, 'One fella goddamn skirt belong you what name?' I thought she was asking about this skirt I made in the old fashion, but then we spoke in the old tongue: I found she only wanted to know who I was and where I came from. It seems that now, under Spearman-abron-Ismar, they indicate--what word do I want?--social--social levels----" "Castes?" "Castes, that is it, Paul--they indicate castes by the color of a skirt. In the old days there were only two castes--soldiers and voluntary laborers, not considering the family of Lantis or the slaves at the bottom. Now there are--oh, ten, twenty, I don't know. Those who work at the dye pots must never do anything else, and they can look down on the workers in hides; this woman was a maker of arrowheads and despised both.... I told her (and some others) that I was a stranger from a distant village, and I said I had heard by rumor of other gods and giants, who would come one day soon to talk with Spearman-abron-Ismar--yes, they call him that, Spearman-male-issue-of-Ismar. It frightened her: she made excuses and ran away. I told it to another, an old woman, who broke out cursing and weeping. She said, Oh, no more of them! No more----' And sat down in the street and scattered dust on her head." "Did you see--him?"