"But that is what I must be!"

"At Sivishe you may decide otherwise. If we arrive, of course. We don't help ourselves going as Gzhindra." He pulled off his cloak. With her face angrily turned away she removed her cloak and stood in her gray undergown.

Reith rolled the cloaks into a bundle. "It may be cold at night; I'll take them with us."

He picked up the blue portfolio, which now represented excess baggage. He wavered a moment and at last slid the portfolio between the inner and outer layers of his jacket.

They set off to the northwest along the shore. Behind them the Khor grove became a dark blur; the far headland grew bulky and dark. Carina 4269 moved down the sky and the sunlight took on a late afternoon richness. To the north, however, a bank of purple-black clouds threatened one of the sudden Tschai thunderstorms.

The clouds moved inexorably south, muffling, half-concealing spasms of electric light. The sea below shone with the sallow luster of graphite. Ahead, close underneath the headland, appeared another grove of dyan trees. A sacred grove?

Reith searched the landscape but saw no Khor town.

The grove loomed above them, the exterior boles leaning outward, the fronds hanging down in a great parasol. The headland conceivably concealed a village, but at the moment they were the only animate creatures under the half-black, half-golden-brown sky.

Reith imparted none of his misgivings to Zap 210, who was sufficiently occupied with her own. Exposure to the sunlight had flushed her face. In the rather flimsy and clinging gray undergown, with the black hair beginning to curl down on her forehead and her ears, she seemed a somewhat different person than the pallid wretch Reith had met in the Pagaz refectory ... Was his imagination at fault? Or had her body become fuller and rounder? She noticed his gaze and gave him a glare of shame and defiance. "Why do you stare at me?"

"No particular reason. Except that you look rather different now than when I first saw you. Different and better."

"I don't know what you mean," she snapped. "You're talking foolishness."

"I suppose so ... One of these days-not just now-I'll explain how life is on the surface. Customs and habits are more complicated-more intimate, even more

'boisterous'-than in the Shelters."

"Hmmf," sniffed Zap 210. "Why are you heading toward the forest? Isn't it another secret place?"

"I don't know." Reith pointed to the clouds. "See the black trails hanging below? That's rain. Under the trees we might stay dry. Then, night is coming soon, and the night-hounds. We have no weapons. If we climb a tree we'll be safe."

Zap 210 made no further comment; they approached the grove.

The dyans reared high overhead. At the first lines of boles they stopped to listen, but heard only a breath of wind from the oncoming storm.

Step by step they entered the grove. The sunlight shining past the clouds projected a hundred shafts and beams of dark golden light; Reith and Zap 210 walked in and out of shadow. The nearest branches were a hundred feet above; the trees could not be climbed; the grove offered little more security from night-hounds than did the open downs ... Zap 210 stopped short and seemed to listen. Reith could hear nothing. "What do you hear?"

"Nothing." But she still listened, and peered in all directions. Reith became highly uneasy, wondering what Zap 210 sensed that he did not.

They proceeded, wary as cats, keeping to the shadows. A clearing free of boles opened before them, shrouded by a continuous roof of foliage. They looked forth into a circular area containing four huts, a low central platform. The surrounding boles had been carved to the semblance of men and women, a pair at each tree. The men were represented with long nutcracker chins, narrow foreheads, bulging cheeks and eyes; the females displayed long noses and lips parted in wide grins. Neither resembled the typical Khor man or woman, who, as Reith recollected, almost exactly resembled one another in stature, physiognomy and dress. The poses, conventionalized and rigid, depicted the act of copulation. Reith looked askance at Zap 210, who seemed blankly puzzled. Reith decided that she interpreted the not-too-explicit attitudes as representations of sheer sportiveness, or simple "boisterous conduct."

The clouds submerged the sun. Gloom came to the glade; drops of rain touched their faces. Reith scrutinized the huts. They were built in the usual Khor style, of dull brown brick with conical black iron roofs. There were four, facing each other at quadrants around the clearing. They appeared to be empty.

Reith wondered what the huts contained. "Wait here," he whispered to Zap 210, and ran crouching to the nearest hut. He listened: no sound. He tried the door, which swung back easily. The interior exhaled a heavy odor, almost a stink, of poorly cured leather, resin, musk. On a rack hung several dozen masks of sculptured wood, identical to the male faces of the carved trees. Two benches occupied the center of the room; no weapons, no garments, no articles of value were to be seen. Reith returned to Zap 210 to find her inspecting the carved tree trunks, eyebrows lifted in distaste.

A purple dazzle struck the sky, followed immediately by a clap of thunder; down came rain in a torrent. Reith led the girl at a run to the hut. They entered and stood with rain drumming upon the iron roof. "The Khors are an unpredictable people," said Reith, "but I can't imagine them visiting their grove on a night like this."

"Why would they come at any time?" demanded Zap 210 peevishly. "There is nothing here but those grotesque dancers. Do the Khor look like that?"

Reith understood that she referred to the figures carved upon the tree trunks.

"Not at all," he said. "They are a yellow-skinned folk, very neat and precise.

The men and women are exactly alike in appearance, and disposition as well." He tried to recall what Anacho had told him: "A strange secret folk with secret ways, different by day and by night, or at least this is the report. Each individual owns two souls which come and go with dawn and sunset; the body comprises two different persons." Later, Anacho had warned: "The Khor are sensitive as spice-snakes! Do not speak to them; pay them no heed except from necessity, in which case you must use the fewest possible words. They consider garrulity a crime against nature ... Never acknowledge the presence of a woman, do not look toward their children: they will suspect you of laying a curse.

Above all ignore the sacred grove! Their weapon is the iron dart which they throw with accuracy. They are a dangerous people."

Reith paraphrased the remarks to the best of his recollection; Zap 210 went to sit on one of the benches.

"Lie down," said Reith. "Try to sleep."

"In the noise of the storm, and this vile smell to all sides? Are all the houses of the ghaun so?"

"Not all of them," muttered Reith. He went to look out the door. The alternation of lightning glare and dying twilight upon the tree-statues presented the illusion of a frantic erotic jerking. Zap 210 might soon begin to ask questions to which Reith did not care to respond ... Upon the roof came a sudden clatter of hail; abruptly the storm passed over, and nothing could be heard but wind sighing in the dyan trees.

Reith returned into the room. He spoke in a voice which rang false even to his own ears: "Now you can rest; at least the sound is gone."

She made a soft sound which Reith could not interpret, and went herself to stand in the doorway. She looked back at Reith. "Someone is coming."

Reith hurried to the doorway and looked forth. Across the clearing stood a figure in Khor garments: male or female Reith could not determine. It went into the hut directly opposite their own. Reith said to Zap 210: "We'd better leave while we have a chance."