But Sumpter didn’t want to just take her, though she seemed quite ready, and his own attempts to give her time were apparently making her nervous. “Sit here for a minute,” he said. “Once we mate, I’ll have much to tell you about the Speakers’ background; how we came here, traditions we hope to pass on. But we maintain this place in ways that you don’t yet understand. One day all of it will be yours; it will belong to the children of matings such as ours. Still … we’ll vanish from the face of the Earth as we are. Mingling, we give up certain qualities that we’d retain if we kept our stock pure—”

Ma-ah sat there listening, wondering if the Speakers really mated or only talked about it. At the same time Sumpter’s voice had a soothing hypnotic quality that she enjoyed, and a liquidlike fluidity of feeling rose and fell within her as she listened. “We’ll retain our most characteristic natures,” he said. “We’ll go truly inward, though, reaching men in the dream state, where words are really only symbols—”

She suddenly looked truly curious. “Why, that’s like the old man, I suppose,” she said. “I see him in my dreams often. Or I did. I can’t remember seeing him lately.”

“Speakers appear frequently in people’s dreams and sometimes they are seen as old men. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Sumpter stared at her, amazed.

“He’s just the old man,” Ma-ah said. “He isn’t a Speaker because he isn’t as tall as your people—”

“Is he always an old man?”

“Of course,” she said firmly.

“Are you aware of him at other times?”

“No. Well, sometimes there are thoughts that don’t seem to be mine, so I suppose they’re his. I don’t know why—like the time I ran up the pyramid steps. It was like having a dream while I was awake.”

Sumpter’s face grew so serious that she broke off. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong—”

“Well, then. I feel better.” Ma-ah started to throw the robe off, this time with mischievous haste. Sumpter stared at her. She was there, offering herself so carelessly, yet he had to meet her on the terms she offered now. After what she’d just told him, a meeting of the Tribunal was a necessity. Only for the moment he had to relate to her as the person she thought she was, and try to forget the person he suspected she might be. She was right: something happens and reality begins shifting. And most important, Ma-ah had been … that “someone else” the day she went running up the pyramid steps.

Chapter Seventeen

Seven’s Blackboard in the Sky (and Aspects Four and Five)