“Of course,” she cried, and jumped from the couch. Instant comprehension flooded her features, giving him the weirdest feeling that she understood something that he didn’t; that the scene had a completely significant personal meaning for her that was impossible.

The pupil’s gateway to the city was to the left. He hadn’t intended to introduce her to the city itself until they’d held several orientation periods, but she rushed to the gate and opened it before he realized what had happened. And why did she run to that one entry which she could not have known led to the city?

It was Oversoul Seven who inadvertently gasped through Ma-ah’s lips, and again, impulsively rushed Ma-ah to the city gateway. But Ma-ah’s astonishment at the view dislocated Seven’s consciousness. She stood amazed, unable to speak. Her look of clear knowing vanished so completely that Sumpter wondered if he’d imagined it, though he knew he hadn’t. Instead, Ma-ah just looked dazed and frightened. (“And no wonder,” Cyprus would say, later, to Seven.)

Incredulous, Ma-ah found herself staring at three huge triangular objects that towered into the sky. They seemed to have just grown up from the Earth, isolated, not a part of any other structures such as mountains or cliffs. Yet they were made of rock, and she knew they were man-made. Broad at the base, they gradually narrowed to a peak top and were, she saw now, equipped with stairs. Around them, Sumpter’s giant-sized people looked like ants as they hurried about, engaged in too many activities for her to take in at once.

Courtyards surrounded the structures, and a series of stone platforms dotted with all kinds of foliage. There were other buildings of various sizes facing several squares. Squinting, Ma-ah suddenly let out a yelp of panic and disbelief. She pointed, trembling, at one of the foundations that had just caught her eye—water shooting up from the ground, instead of coming down upon it, like rain. Water raining up from the Earth, instead of down from the sky! This terrified her above all else she’d seen. It was … wrong, impossible … against all she knew of nature and the world. Appalled, she stood staring, oblivious to everything else.

“Ma-ah,” Sumpter said.

She looked at him, her eyes wide with unwilling sharp perception of her predicament and the power of Sumpter and his people. If they could reverse nature, make rain fall upside down, then she was obviously at their mercy. Sumpter saw that recognition in her taut face as she looked up at him, that grudging awe. But her glance also disclosed an instant intelligence that was shrewd and inventive. Despite it all, she wouldn’t be brow-beaten. Already she half-shrugged, accepting her present position but somehow rising above it.