In most of the mountain valleys, however, rain fell often, and snow-fed streams never disappeared. The ground was rarely level, and farming required terracing. But nimble goats and sheep thrived on the grass that grew wherever the snow abated, and if winters were long, there were many labors that resulted in artifacts for trade. It was a good life for people who were willing to work hard, and each community learned to be self-sufficient.

Singhfold was also a linguist’s heaven, or would be, if anyone but Singhex traveled enough to realize how many languages were spoken, and how they revealed deep secrets of history by the groups and families of languages, and how they were interlaced among the valleys.

Along with the languages came a variety of folkways—from which valley the young people of a village might seek a spouse, and into which it was forbidden to marry. Some villages practiced strict exogamy; some regarded “foreign” spouses with suspicion and treated their children and grandchildren as strangers.

“I love Singhfold,” said Ram Odin. “My regret is that because I’ve tried to prolong my life by sleeping through the years in stasis, I never have time to visit here for more than a few days. It’s the life I think humans were meant to lead—intensely involved with a community that knows you too well, that’s always in your face and in your business.”

“I think those sound like reasons not to like the life here,” said Rigg.

“People don’t understand how evolution has shaped us to hunger for human company,” said Ram Odin. “Even the shyest of introverts suffer from being alone.”

“Meaning yourself,” said Rigg. “Because what human on Garden has been as much alone as you?”

“I feel it more than most, it’s true,” said Ram Odin. “But that doesn’t mean my observation isn’t true. Shy people might take their doses of companionship like an ill-tasting medicine, but they need it, and they suffer a thousand maladies, physical and mental, if they don’t have it.”

“Well, then, this must be the healthiest place in the world,” said Rigg.

“It is,” said Ram Odin. “Partly because there’s no anonymity. Everybody is always with people who know who they are.”

“No traveling merchants or peddlers? No show people, no bards? No wars to force one village to bow to another?”

“At different times and places such people have arisen, and such events have happened. It’s in human nature to come to blows sometimes. Every few generations, one of the cities of the plain, weary of the struggle to live with little water, gets the grand idea of conquering the mountain valleys.”

“But they fail?”