For the hundredth time Ruth was in conference with the Four. She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just don't have those kind of answers. I know you gave me a list of things to think about before I went to sleep and I have tried. Yes, my dreams are still going on. But it's as if no one was listening. I dream, but I'm getting no useful information. I don't even know if Ark One looks like this ... except for that one room.” She fell silent, remembering the huge Assembly, the white stone and the blood. No one had understood the meaning of that dark dream. The stone like an altar. And blood. Human sacrifice? The idea was unthinkable ...

“But you are still dreaming?”

“Oh, yes. Just as I did before. Two kinds of dreams. One is more like a message than the other. It's as clear as if I were watching a video, clearer, because I'm inside it, part of it. Most of the dreams are about outdoors. They are all beautiful, with meadows and forests and a wide river, much bigger than our little one. I feel happy and free in those dreams and I wake up feeling good inside myself.''

“Do you see the same people? Do you recognise them?”

“Oh, yes.” Ruth grabbed a piece of paper and began to draw. “This man is older than the others and I sense that he's recently suffered a great deal, but that he too is now free and happy. Then there's this couple. I guess they must be about forty years old. And this girl is their daughter, I think.”

“I recognise her.” The Warden stabbed his finger on the paper. “I've seen her before.”

“She's the girl with the hoc, the red-haired girl. She seems to be very important in the dreams, as if she were the leader…”

“Go on. “

“When she appears in the dreams I feel that she's someone I once knew and loved very much. And that she's gone. Perhaps she's dead. Yet I keep feeling that I must go and look for her. I'm sorry. I e's awfully muddled.”

“I wish we knew what they were really like. For all we know they may have reverted to some savage state and that is why they wear furs instead of synthetic.”

“What a macabre fancy, Initiator. Surely they must be at a high level of development, since they're able to communicate with us - better, I say, than we can communicate with them. “

The Warden smiled drily. “That's the point, isn't it? Are they communicating with us? It seems sometimes that they are just broadcasting at large, since Ruth alone is able to pick up their messages, if messages they are.”

“Is it really likely that they are savages?”