"Ann came back to us. It took her a hundred days, she says. She was--is--skin and bone--" Paul said, "She'll recover, Ed. Only needs rest and food. She wants John and David--naturally. They're her children too, Ed." Spearman said almost absently, "Are they?" "What!" "I don't exactly believe your story, you know.... You must have been--watching--for a long time." Behind him Paul heard Nisana's miserable whisper: "What is it? What is it?" And Wright's muffled answer: "A sickness." "There's no truth in that, Ed," Paul said. "Five days ago we still supposed that you and Ann were lost when the lifeboat went down in the channel." Spearman shrugged. "Yes--I think you've come too soon. You should have worked longer in the dark. We had an epidemic here. Many died. And another trouble--mental--well, you've kept track of that, of course: the way they've fallen away from me, gone back to the forest and the old life, when I could have given them a golden age. A prophet without honor." He coughed and straightened heavy shoulders. "My God, I can't blame the poor fools--now that I know how it was done." His voice did not rise. "Without the conspiracy and interference, I could soon have started them in building a ship that--Never mind that now. I have the designs, of course. That what you came for?" Mijok broke in, utterly bewildered: "What are you saying?" Spearman dismissed the giant with a stare and a voice of cold politeness: "I don't blame you either. I remember you well. I suppose you had to do whatever your god ordered, without question...." The twin boys had appeared in the doorway, dressed like their father in bark fabric: slim, well-knit children, thin-faced like Ann, nine Earth years old. They halted uncertainly, perhaps driven by curiosity to violate an order of their father's. Paul tried to smile at them, and one responded but then blushed and looked worriedly away with a hand over his mouth; the other stared like a pygmy without expression. Spearman did not appear to notice them, though Paul's smile must have told him of their presence. Elis broke the silence: "Mijok and the others of my people do not create gods. We live by our own light so far as it reaches, without fear of the mysteries beyond it." His voice, so seldom loud in anything but laughter, boomed and echoed back from the thatched walls. "At Adelphi, orders derive from the laws, which are made by all of us and understood by all of us." "Yes," Spearman nodded, upper lip drawn in, as one who saw his saddest predictions verified. "Yes, he would teach you to say that." Arek said disgustedly, "There's no conversation here. He listens to his own mind, no other's. As it was on the beach, years ago--I remember--" Spearman said sharply, "Wright, be careful! You've brought your bullies here, but I ought to warn you, this is the country where I still rule. There are some left who love me and understand me."