Below him the Ella sisters came into view, ten of them, each a physical carbon copy of his mother. For a moment the vision of Molly peeking out from behind a bush, laughing with him, came to mind. It vanished, and he watched the girls walk toward the dormitory. Three of the Miriam sisters came out, and the two groups stopped and talked.

Mark remembered how Molly had made people come to life on paper, a touch here, another there, an eyebrow raised too much, a dimple drawn too deep, always something not just right, but which made the sketch take on life. They couldn't do that, he knew. Not Miriam, not her little Ella sisters, none of them. That was gone, lost forever maybe. Each generation lost something; sometimes it couldn't be regained, sometimes it couldn't be identified immediately. Everett's little brothers couldn't cope with a new emergency with the computer terminal; they couldn't improvise long enough to save the growing fetuses in the tanks if the electricity failed for several days. As long as the elders could foresee the probable troubles that might arise and train the young clones in how to handle them, they were safe enough, but accidents had a way of not being foreseen, catastrophes had a way of not being predictable, and a major accident might destroy everything in the valley simply because none of them had been trained to deal with that specific situation.

He remembered a conversation he had had with Barry. "We're living on the top of a pyramid," he had said, "supported by the massive base, rising above it, above everything that has made it possible. We're responsible for nothing, not the structure itself, not anything above us. We owe nothing to the pyramid, and are totally dependent on it. If the pyramid crumbles and returns to dust, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, or even to save ourselves. When the base goes, the top goes with it, no matter how elaborate the life is that has developed there. The top will return to dust along with the base when the collapse comes. If a new structure is to rise, it must start at the ground, not on top of what has been built during the centuries past."

"You'd drag everyone back into savagery!"

"I would help them down from the point of the pyramid. It's rotting away. The snow and ice from one direction, weather and age from the others. It will collapse, and when it does, the only ones who can survive will be those who are free from it, in no way dependent on it."