"No, I--only walked through the streets.... Doc, some had English
words--a few, badly spoken. No one could pronounce _d_ at the
beginning of a word, and they had absurd turns of speech I don't
understand. One woman said to me, 'One fella goddamn skirt belong you
what name?' I thought she was asking about this skirt I made in the
old fashion, but then we spoke in the old tongue: I found she only
wanted to know who I was and where I came from. It seems that now,
under Spearman-abron-Ismar, they indicate--what word do I
want?--social--social levels----"
"Castes?"
"Castes, that is it, Paul--they indicate castes by the color of a skirt. In
the old days there were only two castes--soldiers and voluntary laborers,
not considering the family of Lantis or the slaves at the bottom. Now
there are--oh, ten, twenty, I don't know. Those who work at the dye pots
must never do anything else, and they can look down on the workers in
hides; this woman was a maker of arrowheads and despised both.... I told
her (and some others) that I was a stranger from a distant village, and I
said I had heard by rumor of other gods and giants, who would come one day
soon to talk with Spearman-abron-Ismar--yes, they call him that,
Spearman-male-issue-of-Ismar. It frightened her: she made excuses and ran
away. I told it to another, an old woman, who broke out cursing and
weeping. She said, Oh, no more of them! No more----' And sat down in the
street and scattered dust on her head."
"Did you see--him?"
"No, Paul. I saw the palace--changed, with new tall doors. There were
soldiers at the entrance, so I did not dare go near. They wore a
headdress--it was the old bark fabric, I think, but a shape I never
saw. I saw the great stockade--always the biggest thing on the shore
of North Lake--still in repair; there was the same sluice, to wash
away the blood of the meat slaves. There is still a ferry near it,
where the crossing is narrow at the lake's inlet; I could see
across--streets and tree-sheltered houses. And outside the city I saw
a mound, very foul. Once the city was clean. There was a boy playing
near it--ran when he saw me, but I caught him and asked him about that
mound. I could hardly understand his gabble. It seems that nowadays in
Vestoia children have reason to be afraid of grown women. When we
could talk he told me the mound was the grave of the False Empress,
the Wicked One--everyone who passes is required to defile it. A law."
Pakriaa laced her wrinkled hands at her throat, smiling at Christopher
Wright, quoting a few of his own words: "'The laws are living things:
let men guard them against crippling and disease.'"