“But it’s such a little planet,” Demair said, looking over Kuwilin’s shoulder at the manual. “And small planets like that are usually rich in metal. Metal makes technology so easy: You must all be wealthy. How can you not have enough of everything?”
Nita shook her head. “It would take me a long time to explain,” she said.
“You’ll be here for days,” said Demair. “Maybe you can make us understand. If not, don’t worry about it. This is supposed to be a holiday for you, so Quelt’s said.”
“Maybe it’s strange to us,” Kuwilin said, “that people from a rich inner world with so much technology would come here willingly to spend time with…”
“Shepherds,” Nita said. “That would be the word you’re looking for.”
“Shepherds. So you have ceiff well?”
“Ours don’t fly,” Nita said. “And maybe it’s a good thing, bearing in mind what Earth sheep eat, and how much of it they eat, and what they do with it afterwards…”
Kuwilin roared with laughter. “Still,” he said, “your planet sounds like a wonder-place! Ceiff that don’t fly…ground you can just dig the metal out of…cities all over the place, as many of them as grains of sand!”
“We have a lot of cities,” Nita said, and shook her head. “But I think maybe this is better.” The sun dipped toward that high, distant horizon, went oblate in the
thickening atmosphere of the edge of the world—flattened almost to an egg shape—and started to slide down behind the rim of everything. Slowly, high above, stars were coming out.
There was a pause. “About the shesh,” Kit said, “can I watch you make it tomorrow?”
“Certainly,” Kuwilin said. “I can always use help. Certain people”—he looked at Quelt with amusement—”are always off all over the planet, serving the world and doing Important Things, and can’t be bothered to stay home and deal with the beasts.”
“Tapi, you’re cruel to me,” Quelt said. “You know I’d sooner stay home and do not-Important Things here. But I have to go see about the Great Vein again tomorrow.” She turned to Nita and Kit. “We have just two veins of metal in our whole world’s crust that are close enough to the surface for me to use wizardry on to pull the metal out directly. Every now and then we need metal in bulk for replacing old machines that have worn out, or building new ones…and I’m the only one here who can get it out in such amounts. All the other metal comes from the plants—”
Kit looked up in surprise. “You get metal from plants?”
“Oh, yes,” Demair said. “See the reeds up there?” She pointed at the slope far behind them, behind the house.
“The ones we came down through?”
“That’s right. That’s ironwood. The plants were bred a long time ago to concentrate metal oxides from the soil in their tissues. We harvest the reeds and store them until the mobile smelter comes along, once or twice a year. Then we get the metal’s value to trade for other things, if we need them.”
“That’s such a good idea,” Kit said. “Who organizes this? The government?”
Kuwilin and Demair and Quelt all looked at Kit. “What’s a government?” Kuwilin said.
Kit opened his mouth, closed it again.
“If people over on, let’s say, Dafel Island, find that they need metal, they get together and do something about it,” Kuwilin said. “They make arrangements to trade for it; or they find empty islands and plant out ironweed for themselves; or they get in touch with Quelt here, and she helps them. Or they ask other people for it, and other people give it to them. Everybody knows that what you give to the world, the world gives back, eventually. That’s its job.”
Demair looked at Kit with slight puzzlement. “Do you mean you have some kind of machine that makes people give people things?” Demair said.
Nita had never thought of government in quite those terms before. “You could say that,” she said. “It’s still going to take a lot of explaining…”
“Not right now,” said Demair, putting her arms out to turn them all around as a group. “There’s the rest of dinner, yet.”
Kit groaned slightly. Nita gave him a look. Just keep quiet and feed Ponch under the table, she said silently. I told you you were going to be sorry for pigging out on the blue stuff!
They went back to the house in the glowing, golden twilight, and Demair moved about lighting little oil lamps in the various rooms and on the dinner table. The rest of dinner was much like the first part, except that the courses that Kuwilin
now brought out were sweeter, sharper, the flavors more acute. Nita wondered whether this had something to do with a walk on the beach helping her appetite get its second wind…or whether she was just getting even more relaxed.
“Don’t rush yourself,” Demair said, leaning toward her. “Everything here will keep. There’s time for everything, and you’ll be here for a while.”
“And tomorrow afternoon,” Quelt said, “when I get back from metal wrestling, you tell me what you want to do. We can go to the Cities, if you like. Or we can do tourist things.” She grinned.
“If you go to the Cities,” Demair said, “I have a list for you.”
Kit grinned and fed Ponch something under the table. “Not that I’m going to have time for your list if I’m with famous people,” Quelt said.
Nita looked up from considering one last piece of shesh. “What?”
Quelt laughed. “Of course you’re famous,” she said. “On a world with just one wizard, if another one turns up all of a sudden—or two—do you think people aren’t going to be fascinated? Your pictures are all over the talknets. Everyone thinks you’re very elegant. In fact”—and Quelt preened her ponytail—”normally they all take me for granted, but now I’m in danger of becoming famous myself.”
Kit and Nita burst out laughing. “It’s because you’re so small,” Quelt said. “Once we weren’t as tall as we are now. But in the days of the Ancients, everybody was more your size. Little.”
“I don’t mind being famous,” Nita said, “but what I really, really want to do is lie in the sand, by the water, and do nothing.”
Quelt grinned that grin at her and Kit again. To Nita, it seemed to threaten to go right around her face, suggesting that if Quelt did it any harder, the top of her head might fall off. “I like that, too,” she said. “It’s the only thing I like as much as wizard work.”
Then suddenly Quelt jumped up. “I forgot!” she said. “Pabi, it’ll be time for the keks pretty soon—”
“Yes,” Demair said. “You two might like to see that. Our beaches are famous for them.”
“Keks?” Kit said.
“Come on,” Quelt said. “Afterward, I’ll show you where we have couches put down for you, in the outbuilding—you can put your pup tents up there. But right now, hurry or we’ll miss them—”
Nita and Kit got up to follow her out. Ponch loitered briefly by the table, accepted a couple of final tidbits from Demair and Kuwilin, and then ran after.
Nita and Kit and Quelt started down the beach again together, but this time in the opposite direction from the way they’d gone before. Almost all the sunset glow was gone; stars were thick overhead, and they were bright—the broad band of the back side of the Milky Way was glowing almost as bright as a diffuse full moon in that night unbroken by any streetlight or other artificial light source. Ponch tore past the three of them, racing down the beach, running ahead and romping in and out of the water, a black shape shining in the bright starlight. “I should warn you,” Kit said to Quelt, “he’s going to do that the whole time we’re here. He likes the water.”
Quelt smiled. “So do we,” she said. “It’s no problem.” She looked up to their right, where the rise that ran behind the Peliaen house was more of a dune, bare of