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her about buildings, thousands of them, so dose together they touched on every side except the front. And sometimes people would come along and build a new house right in front of yours, completely cutting yours off from the street, unless you had the money to hire thugs to drive them away. They could build right across a street, completely blocking it-except when passersby, angry that someone was trying to close their street, would dismantle the building as they passed.

It was hard to imagine such a place, so many people. In her entire life, Chveya had known only the people of their colony. The only new people she had met were the , babies who were born. The only buildings she had seen were the buildings they built with their own hands- and the impossible, magical buildings of the spaceport, and that was no city, since its population consisted entirely of the same people she had always known.

The diggers had a city, though, didn't they? Even though it was underground, except where the entrances of their tunnels were bored upward into the trees. Chveya imagined how they must have scrambled when the humans first arrived from Harmony and started cutting down the trees, extending the meadow where they had first landed. The tunnels that led to doomed trees had to be filled, so that when the humans looked down into the hollow trunks, they wouldn't see that tunnels opened out underneath them. And yet even with so many tunnels filled, the digger city was a vast network of connected chambers.

Chveya knew k was real. She could now see the connections among many, perhaps most of the diggers, and she knew that there were hundreds of them down there, constantly coming and going. It was the only real city she had ever seen, but she hadn't really seen it, probably never would see it. She would never crawl along the tunnels. She hoped she would never crawl through them, in the darkness. Her skin didn't glow the way Father's could, when he wanted it to. It would be night down there all the time. And she would be surrounded by strangers. It wasn't that they were so alien, so animal-like. It was that she didn't know them, didn't know what to expect. Even Elemak, even Meb and Obring, dangerous and untrustworthy as they were, seemed safer to her because after all she knew them. The diggers were all strangers to her.

And that's how it must have been in Basilica. Nobody could possibly know that many people, so walking along the streets must have meant being surrounded by strangers, by people you had never seen before and would never see again, people who could have come from anywhere, who could be thinking anything, who might be desiring terrible things that would destroy you or those you loved and cared for and you had no way of knowing.

How did they do it, the people who lived there? How could they bear to live their lives among aliens? Why didn't they just retreat to their homes, block the doors, and cower in a corner, whimpering?

For that matter, thought Chveya, why don't I? Right now, knowing that I am surrounded by diggers that I don't know, that I can't predict, who have the power to destroy me and everyone I love-why am I still going to bed at night, getting up in the morning?

Someone clapped their hands softly outside the door.

She got up and went to the door. It was Elemak.

"Is Oykib up?" he asked.

"Urn, .no," said Chveya. "But it's time he was."

"I'm up," said Oykib sleepily from the bed. "Awake, anyway."

"Come in," said Chveya.

Elemak came in. He stood until Oykib sat up in bed and indicated his eldest brother should sit at the foot of it. "What is it?" he asked.

"Volemak wants me to work with this digger hostage," said Elemak,

"If you want to," said Oykib. "I do my duty," said Elemak. He smiled nastily. "I took the oath."

"Well," said Oykib. "Then we're both supposed to learn his language."

"You have a head start," said Elemak. "I'd like you to teach me what you know about the language."

"Not much yet. Just a few words. I don't know the structure yet."

"Whatever you know, I'd like to learn it. I'd like Protchnu to learn it, too. Can you give us a class in digger language?"

"That's a good idea," said Oykib. "Yes, I will."

Someone was running around outside. Pounding feet. Protchnu stood in the doorway. "Father," he said.

Elemak