The people of the band showed only remote kinship with their human ancestry. Most of them turned to a tall companion as their leader, although this one did not walk at the point. He had ropey gray arms and a narrow head crowned by golden fuzz, the only suggestion of hair on his slender body. The head carried two golden eyes in bony extrusions at the temples, but there was no nose and only a tiny red circle of mouth. There were no visible ears, but brown skin marked the spots where ears might have been. The arms ended in supple hands, each with three six-jointed fingers and opposable thumb. The name Theriex was tattooed in green across his hairless chest.

Beside the tall Theriex hobbled a pale and squat figure with no neck to support a hairless bulb of head. Tiny red eyes, set close to a moist hole which trembled with each breath, could stare only where the body pointed. The ears were gaping slits low at each side of the head. Fat and corded arms ended in two fingerless fleshy mittens. The legs were kneeless tubes without feet.

Others in the band showed a similar diversity. There were heads with many eyes and some with none. There were great coned nostrils and horned ears, dancers’ legs and some stumps. They numbered forty-one in all and they huddled close as they walked, presenting a tight wall of flesh to the Pandoran wilderness. Some clung to each other as they stumbled and lurched their way across the plain. Others maintained a small moat of open space. There was little conversation—an occasional grunt or moan, sometimes a plaintive question directed at Theriex.

“Where can we hide, Ther? Who will take us in?”

“If we can get to the other sea,” Theriex said. “The Avata . . .”

“The Avata, yes, the Avata.”

They spoke it as a prayer. A deep rumbling voice in the band took it up then: “All-Human one, All-Avata one.”

Another spoke: “Ther, tell us the story of Avata.”

Theriex remained silent until they were all pleading: “Yes, Ther, tell us the story . . . the story, the story . . .”

Theriex raised a ropey hand for silence, then: “When Avata speaks of beginning, Avata speaks of rock and the brotherhood of rock. Before rock there was sea, boiling sea, and the blisters of light that boiled it. With the boiling and the cooling came the ripping of the moons, the teeth of the sea gone mad. By day all things scattered in the boil, and by night they joined in the relief of sediment and they rested.”

Theriex had a thin whistling voice which carried over the shuffling sounds of the band’s passage. He spoke to an odd rhythm which fitted itself to their march.

“The suns slowed their great whirl and the seas cooled. Some few who joined remained joined. Avata knows this because it is so, but the first word of Avata is rock.”