The walls were eleven feet in height. Rak and Muson rested on the coolness of bare ground within; Rak pointed at the top of the walls where rafters would rest. "Slow," he said, "and good." Rak could not be sure how old he was. When Mijok had first persuaded him to the camp ten months ago, Rak had won his English with the grave precision of a mason selecting fieldstone. His language had none of the flexibility and scope that Mijok and others had achieved, but it served him. After absorbing basic arithmetic, Rak had deliberated on the problem of his age--squatting at the gate of the stone fortress by Lake Argo, spreading out rows of colored pebbles to indicate years, rainy seasons, episodes of hunting or fear or passion too keen to forget. At last he had come up with the figure of 130 years. "But," he said, "there are two times. In here"--he patted an ancient scar on his belly--"and there." He pointed at the red crescent moon. "I'll cook supper," Arek said. Muson bubbled and shadowboxed with her daughter. Muson would laugh at anything--the flutter of a leaf, a breath of breeze on her red-brown fur. Paul followed to help Arek trim the carcass of an asonis killed the night before. Hornless, short-legged, fat, the bovine animal was abundant on the island; its one enemy here was what Arek called _usran_, a catlike carnivore the size of a lynx, which could tackle only the young asonis or feeble stragglers. Rak hunted in the old way. Bow, club, spear, even rifle, had been explained to him, but the stalk, the single rush and leap, the grasp of a muzzle and backward jerk that snapped the neck before the prey could even struggle--these were Rak's way still. In the old life, Rak's age would have led him eventually to a few dim years with a band of women, who would have fed him until he chose to wander into deep jungle, preventing any from following. When far away, he would have sat in the shadows to wait--for starvation or the black marsh reptiles or a great mainland cat, _uskaran_, which never attacked a giant in the prime of strength. Rak would have taken no harm from the young men in this weakness: his own territory would have been inviolate, and he would have joined the women, in a taciturn farewell to life, only when teeth and arms had failed. ("We're gentle people," Mijok said, puzzled at it himself. "In the Red-Moon-before-the-Rains we only play at fighting. It's not like what we see the other creatures do at that time. How could one 'possess' a woman? Do I possess the wind because I like to run against the touch of it...?") The meat hung from a makeshift tripod; Arek jumped back, startled, as a furry thing scampered down. It was like a kinkajou except for the hump on the back (a true hindbrain in the spine: Sears had long ago verified that guess of Wright's). "Little rascal," Paul said. "Let's tame it." "What?" Arek was bewildered. "Do what?" "Do these live on the mainland?" "I never saw one till I came here. Too small to eat. Tame it?"