“We're asking the questions.” Swift stood over her. His knife blade caught the dancing flames of the fire.

Ruth swallowed her fear. “I'm sorry.” She tried to keep her voice steady. “What was it you wanted to know?”

“What is this 'Esper'?”

“The ability to develop special skills of the mind, so as to transmit thoughts and emotions and to receive and under- stand the thoughts and emotions of others.” She quoted from the primary text. “There's a lot more to it, of course.”Swift threw back his head and laughed. “If you can read minds why did you have to ask us who we were or what we had to do with Ark One?”

The Initiator broke in to try and explain the years of practice that had gone to making the Web, of daily psychic exercises, and of their deprivation since they had left Ark Three.

“But if it only works when you are all together in your own city?” Healhand asked gently. “What use is this Esper skill? It seems to me that although you mean kindly your skills are of no more use Outside than those of the soldiers or slave- drivers.”

“Soldiers? Slave-drivers? Are you talking about Ark One? Surely you’re mistaken. Perhaps, if you are not from the Ark, you have misunderstood…”

A growling dissent stopped her in mid-sentence.

“We are from Ark One. We know what we are talking about.”

“But ... I don't understand…”

“Oh, remember- something Karol said about an oppressed society ... ''

Ruth and the Initiator stared bleakly at each other. Into Ruth's mind came the picture of the bald man with the hunch-back beating the other, his arm rising and falling…

Swift looked round the group and then spoke with sudden formality to Ruth and the Initiator. “If you are not too tired we would like you to take part in a Sharing. Sit and listen. You will learn the truth.''

Healheand sent off some of the small children to bring firewood. Treefeller heaped it on the dying embers and a blaze roared up, scattering golden sparks into the darkened sky.

Without any signal the people linked hands and formed a great circle around the fire. They circled to the left and right in a simple dance that seemed to Ruth to be exactly right, as if she already knew every step of it.

As they danced they sang, and the tune too was familiar. It was the melody that had been running through Ruth's mind for the last year, the tune that Karol had identified as The Gypsy Lover. Now the words, coining together, made a terrible kind of sense.

“The Lords' whips cracked till our backs were sore

And the Three-eyes watched us bleed,

Till we Swore we'd not work any more-

Die or let's be freed.

So the Freedom Man danced out of the Ark

Over the hills so shady,

Into the light and out of the dark,

With his long-haired lady.