Mark returned to his book, but he was not seeing it now. What happened to them? he wondered. Why were they all so afraid? There wasn't anything in the woods. No animals, nothing to hurt anyone. Maybe they heard the voices and that made them afraid, he thought. But then, if they heard the voices too, the voices had to be real. He felt his pulse racing suddenly. For several years he had believed the voices were only the leaves, that he was only pretending they were really voices. But if the brothers heard them too, that made them real. The brothers and sisters never made up anything. They didn't know how. He wanted to laugh with joy, but he didn't make a sound to attract attention. They would want to know what was funny, and he knew he could never tell them.

The camp was a large clearing several miles from the valley. Twenty boys, ten girls, two doctors, and Mark sat about the campfire eating, and Mark remembered that other time he had sat eating popcorn at a campfire. He blinked rapidly and the feeling that came with the memory faded slowly. The clones were uneasy, but not really frightened. Their large number was reassuring, and the babble of their voices drowned out the noises of the woods.

They sang, and one of them asked Mark to tell the woji story, but he shook his head. Barry asked lazily what a woji was, and the clones nudged each other and changed the subject. Barry let it drop. One of those things that all children know and adults never do, he thought. Mark told another story and they sang some more, and then it was time to unroll the blankets and sleep.

Much later Mark sat up, listening. One of the boys was going to the latrine, he decided, and lay down again and was asleep almost instantly.

The boy stumbled and clutched a tree to steady himself. The fire was dim now, no more than embers through the tree trunks. He took several more steps and abruptly the embers vanished. For a moment he hesitated, but his bladder urged him on, and he didn't yield to the temptation to relieve himself against a tree. Barry had made it clear they had to use the latrine in the interest of health. He knew the ditch was only twenty yards from the camp, only another few steps, but the distance seemed to grow rather than decrease and he had a sudden fear that he was lost.

"If you get lost," Mark had said, "the first thing to do is sit down and think. Don't run. Calm down and think."

But he couldn't sit down here. He could hear the voices all around him, and the woji laughing at him, and something coming closer and closer. He ran blindly, his hands over his ears trying to blot out the ever louder voices.