“The rock, the rock,” Theriex’s companions responded.

“There is no growth on the run,” Theriex said. “Before rock Avata was tired and Avata was many and Avata had seen only the sea.”

“We must find the Avata sea . . .”

“But to grip a rock,” Theriex said, “to coil around it close and lie still, that is a new dream and a new life—untossed by the ravages of moon, untired. It was vine to leaf then, and in the new confidence of rock came the coil of power and the gas, gift of the sea.”

Theriex tipped his head back to look up at the metallic blue of the sky and, for a few paces, remained silent, then: “Coil of power, touch of touches! Avata captured lightning that day, curled tight around its rock, waiting out the silent centuries in darkness and in fear. Then the first spark arced into the horrible night: ‘Rock!’”

Once more, the others responded, “Rock! Rock! Rock!”

“Coil of power!” Theriex repeated. “Avata knew rock before knowing Self; and the second spark snapped: I! Then the third, greatest of all: I! Not rock!”

“Not rock, not rock,” the others responded.

“The source is always with us,” Theriex said, “as it is with that which we are not. It is in reference that we are. It is through the other that Self is known. And where there is only one, there is nothing else. From the nothing else comes no reflection of Self, nothing returns. But for Avata there was rock, and because there was rock there was something returned and that something was Self. Thus, the finite becomes infinite. One is not. But we are joined in the infinite, in the closeness out of which all matter comes. Let Avata’s rock steady you in the sea!”

For a time after Theriex fell silent, the band trudged and hobbled onward without complaint. There was a smell of acid burning on the whisking breezes, though, and one of the band with a sensitive nose detected this.

“I smell Nerve Runners!” he said.

A shudder ran through them and they quickened their pace while those at the edges scanned the plain around them with renewed caution.

At the point of the band walked a darkly furred figure with a long torso and stumpy legs which ended in round flat pads. The arms were slim and moved with a snakelike writhing. They ended in two-fingered hands, the fingers muscular, long and twining, as though designed to reach into strange places for mysterious reasons. The ears were motile, large and leathery under their thin coat of fur, pointing now one direction and now another. The head sat on a slender neck, presenting a markedly human face, although flattened and covered with that fine gauze of dark fur. The eyes were blue, heavy-lidded and bulging. They were glassy and appeared to focus on nothing.

The plain around them, out to the crags about ten kilometers distant, was devoid of motion now, marked only by scattered extrusions of black rock and the stiff-leaved plants making their slow phototropic adjustments to the passage of the red-orange sun.