Winter in Eden

Paramutan who knows how to sail. That will be enough. The three of us will be able to do it—I have worked out completely how it can be done."
    "How?"
    He looked about suspiciously as though afraid of being overheard, then shook his head. "I cannot tell you yet. I must get it perfectly right before I can tell anyone. Now you must ask Kalaleq to come with us. He is strong and not afraid, he is the one that we need."
    "He refused last time when you asked him."
    "That was last time. Ask him again."
    Kalaleq lay under his robes chewing desultorily at a piece of ancient fish—but he sat up and smiled when Armun approached.
    "Many days of storm, many more days of winter." He lifted the fur and reached for her and she pushed his hand away.
    "Why don't you leave winter, sail south to summer?"
    "It is not done. The Paramutan are of the north and die when the days are hot all of the time."
    Winter in Eden - Harry Harrison
    "Do not go that far, not to the summer that never ends. Just part of the way. Sail to Kerrick's island then return. Help me."
    "The island? He still thinks about it?"
    "You must help me, Kalaleq, help him. There are strange things happening in his head and I am afraid."
    "This is true!" Kalaleq called out excitedly, then covered his mouth with his hand when Angajorqaq and Kukujuk both turned to look in his direction. He was silent until they looked away again, then went on in a whisper. "I thought perhaps, because of the way he talks, but did not think that it could be true. How happy you must be."
    "Happy? What can you mean?"
    "To have such good fortune. To have your own hunter who has been spoken to by the spirits of the ocean and the wind. They talk to very few—and very rarely. And those who can hear their voices can then speak with the rest of us. That is how everything is learned. That is how we learn to make the things that we do. They told us how to build the ikkergaks so we can catch the ularuaq and grow fat. Now they talk to Kerrick and he will tell us what they say."
    Armun did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Don't you know what they say? They say only one thing over and over. Go south to the island. That is all that they say."
    Kalaleq nodded and chewed at his lip. "That is what they say? Well then, that is the way it must be. We shall just have to go south to the island."
    Armun could only shake her head in complete disbelief.
    CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
    yilanèhesn farigi nindasigi ninban*
    Yilanè apothegm
    Until a fargi is yilanè she has no city.
    The new city had to come first, Ambalasi knew that, but she regretted every moment not spent studying the Sorogetso. That was what she had named these close relations of the Yilanè, the silent ones, for Winter in Eden - Harry Harrison
    though they could communicate it appeared that they could do so on only the simplest of terms, as though they were still young elininyil in the sea. Even this was only an assumption made after her first contact with them; this success had not been repeated. The Sorogetso did not come near the wasteland of the peninsula, but stayed hidden in the jungle beyond. And she was too occupied with the endless problems of growing a city, with the indifferent help of the Daughters of Desperation, to have any opportunity to seek them out. She was also feeling her age.
    Now she lay in the shade of a quick-growing shrub and examined the culture specimens in her sanduu.
    The eyelens of the greatly mutated creature was in the sunlight, the projected image clear in the shadow.
    Most of the microscopic life was familiar to her. There were no pathogens to see, nor had any harmful fungi grown in the sterilized soil. Good.
    "Send for Enge," she ordered her assistant Setessei, who had been changing specimens for her.
    Then she lay back on the resting board and sighed. Life was too short for all that she wanted to do.
    Lanefenuu had been generous to her and life in now-distant Ikhalmenets a pleasure of relaxed research.
    How many years had she stayed there? She had lost count. She would be there still had she not grown interested in the biological aspects of the Daughters' philosophy. Then, on sudden impulse, she had thrown away all the comfort in exchange for this rude plank under a spiny shrub. No!—her body moved with the strength of her thoughts. Perhaps the study of the Daughters of Despair had been a mistake—but the voyage here had not been. What a wealth of new material she had discovered; how she would be revered for bringing