No ... this is real land ... open to the sky. I am here and I am not narced.
"They think they'll sterilize this land and they'll never have nerve runners here," the carpenter said. "The fools are wrong! Nerve-runner eggs are in the sea everywhere. Flamethrowers will be needed for as long as people live here."
The carpenter moved across his shadowed area toward a brown cloth folded on a bench. He sat on the end of the bench and opened the cloth, revealing a paper-wrapped package of cakes, dark brown and glossy. Twisp smelled the sweet stickiness rising from the cakes. The carpenter lifted a cake in thick knuckle-swollen fingers and held it toward Twisp.
In that instant, Twisp saw that the man was blind. The eyes were cloud-gray and empty of recognition. Hesitantly, Twisp accepted the cake and sampled it. Rich brown fruit in the cake sweetened his tongue.
Again, Twisp looked at the scene in the bowl of open land. He had seen pictures and holos from the histories but nothing had prepared him for this experience. He felt both attracted and repelled by what he saw. This land would not drift willy-nilly on an uncertain sea. There was a sense of absolute assurance in the firmness underfoot. But there was a loss of freedom in it, too. It was locked down and enclosed ... limited. Too much of this could narrow a man's vision.
"One more cake, Abimael, and then you go home," the carpenter said.
Twisp stepped back from the carpenter, hoping to escape silently, but his heel encountered a stone and he tumbled backward, sitting sharply on another stone. An involuntary cry of pain escaped him.
"Now, don't you cry, Abimael!" the carpenter said.
Twisp heaved himself to his feet. "I'm not Abimael," he said.
The carpenter aimed his sightless eyes toward Twisp and sat silent for a moment, then: "I hear that now. Hope you liked the cake. You see Abimael anywhere around?"
"No one in sight but the men with the flamethrowers."
"Damned fools!" The carpenter swallowed a cake whole and licked the syrupy coating off his fingers. "They're bringing Islanders onto the land already?"
"I ... I think I'm the first."
"They call me Noah," the carpenter said. "You can take it as a joke. Say I was the first out here. Are you badly deformed, Islander?"
Twisp swallowed a sudden rise of anger at the man's bluntness.
"My arms are rather long but they're perfect for pulling nets."
"Don't mind the useful variations," Noah said. "What's your name?"
"Twisp ... Queets Twisp."
"Twisp," Noah said. "I like that name. It has a good sound. Want another cake?"
"No, thank you. It was good, though. I just can't take too much sweetness. What're you making here?"
"I'm working with a bit of wood," Noah said. "Think of that! Wood grown on Pandora! I'm fashioning some pieces that will be made into furniture for the new director of this place. You met him yet? Name's Gallow."
"I haven't had that ... pleasure," Twisp said.
"You will. He sees everybody. Doesn't like Mutes, though, I'm afraid."
"How were you ... I mean, your eyes?"
"I wasn't born this way. It was caused by staring at a sun too long. Bet you didn't know that, did you? If you stand on solid ground so you don't move around, you can stare right at the sun ... but it can blind you."
"Oh." Twisp didn't know what else to say. Noah seemed resigned to his fate, though.
"Abimael!" Noah raised his voice into a loud call.
There was no answer.
"He'll come," Noah said. "Saved a cake for him. He knows it."
Twisp nodded, then felt the foolishness of the gesture. He stared across the enclosed basin. The land glared at him from all sides, everything highlighted by the brightness of Big Sun. The buildings were stark white, shot through with streaks of brown. Water or the illusion of water shimmered in a flat area near the far cliffs. The flamethrowers had been silenced and the Merman workers had gone into a building toward the center of the basin. Noah returned to his woodworking. There was no wind, no sound of seabirds, no sound of Abimael, who was supposed to be coming to his father's call. Nothing. Twisp had never before heard such silence ... not even underwater.
"They call me Noah," Noah said. "Go to the records and look up the histories. I call my first-born Abimael. Do you dream strange things, Twisp? I used to dream about a big boat, called an ark, in the time when the original Terrahome was flooded.