He argued for making the trek up to Pori, such as remained of it, if anything remained on the Lakht. He found it hard even yet to think that nothing at all had survived. Luz sent her fliers up there, and they found nothing different than what was below, but Marak thought a man might see more, do more, find out more.

The ondat remained suspicious. He knew about them. He knew about other worlds. He knew how the Ila’s people had pushed too fast in their own investigations of territory, antagonized the ondat and fought a war with makers—the details were disputed, and the Ila claimed that never was the case, but Luz thought otherwise, and the ondat seemed to.

He knew how the Ila had come here and done everything she could to survive, fearing Luz’s kind as much as she feared the ondat—which argued that the Ila had known there was a wrong, and justice for it.

He knew very many more things about the world he owned than he had ever suspected. He knew that they were allowed to live here, that Luz had made some arrangement with the ondat, that, in a sense, they were as observed as Luz’s specimens in the lab, to see what the makers in them would do, and to see how the world recovered.

The hammer had come down in the sea, and the shock had rung around the world until it melted the rocks of the eastern ocean, and cracked the world, as Norit had put it, like a broken pot. The earth poured out floods of molten rock, and went on shaking, and sent up smoke to darken the sun—but Luz showed the villagers how to build walls that would not fall in earthquake, and promised the tribes new tents that, with very little effort, could keep out the cold.

It was all what people had done once before, the Ila said, disdainful of their effort. And she would have shown them those things if they had needed them.

They knew. They had put together all the books that reached the tower, and there were no secrets. Deep in the tower depths now was the record of everything that had been erased off the earth. He was written there. So were all of them, every bearer of every book, and all they had done. So were things written there that the ondat might not like to know—he had no idea: certain books he knew Luz and Ian and the Ila kept to themselves. He knew various things, being what he was, that those three might wish kept quiet, but he had no disposition to talk about them, and no one cared, outside, anyway. All the excitement these days was about the outposts, and the beshti that were being let out.