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Ericson returned to an awareness of his personal identity quitesuddenly. He had an impression that it was a long time, months atleast, since he had been in a state of normal consciousness. At theback of his mind a memory of pain had imprinted itself as a signetmakes an impression in hot wax; he shied away from it. "Where am I?"he asked.

The green-skinned girl squatting beside him in the coppice looked athim sideways out of her dark jade eyes. "Hungry?" she asked.

"But where am—yes, I am hungry. Yes."

Mnathl—he knew, somehow, that that was her name. Didn't he rememberher from the other side of the gulf in his memory, from the days whenhe had begged food in the streets of Penhairn? Mnathl handed him anicely-roastedbosula rib. He ate it avidly. He had always thoughtthebosula was the best of the food animals of Fyhon.

When the bone was gnawed clean she passed him, in a folded fresh greenleaf, a mixed grill consisting of bits ofbosula liver, kidney,tripe, salivary glands, and eyes. He ate that, too. When his stomachwas full Ericson lay back with his arms under his head and looked atthe big puffy clouds drifting overhead. He had no desire to think abouthimself or the things that had been happening to him in the last threeor four months, but the thoughts came anyhow.

The chief thing was pain—remorseless, long-continued, pain. Mnathl hadcome to him one day when he was sitting on the dock in Penhairn andtold him they were going to Lake Tanais. He had got up and gone withher obediently; abyhror addict has little will of his own. The painhad begun after that.

There had been a barren island in the middle of the brackish, poisonouswaters of the lake, and most of the time, until just latterly, he hadbeen kept bound for fear he would drown himself in them. Mnathl ...Mnathl had swum over from the mainland to tend him; she had bathed himand kept his body free of sores and vermin, set food before him andtried to coax him to eat. And twice a day she had given him injectionsof mercapulan with a hypodermic syringe. His arm was pocked with theneedle marks. Where had she got the syringe and the drug? She must havestolen them from the big Colony Hospital in Penhairn.

The injections had brought on the pain. Ericson, at the thought, feltsweat break out on his upper lip. What he had endured had been just atthe edge of what a man could stand and still live. (His ordeal, hadhe known it, had been very much less than it would have been had hetaken the drug cure in the hospital in Penhairn. Mnathl, though she hadnot disdained the help of terrestrial science, knew things about theFyhonese flora and its properties that no terrestrial even suspected.Still, the ordeal had been bad enough.) Ericson shifted his positionand sighed.

Mnathl had cured him ofbyhror addiction. In return, he had hatedher. There had been weeks, he remembered, when his brain had heldnothing but horrible pain and the wish to kill Mnathl. Once, when shehad untied him for exercise, he had shammed sleep until she came closeto him; then he had caught her by the throat. He had come close tokilling her then. And no doubt in those long, maniacal days there hadbeen other times.

Ericson raised himself on one elbow and looked at her. She was pouringwater into a clay pot above the small, workman-like fire she had built,and was putting in bits of choppedbosula meat. Her greenish skin,the skin of a native of the South Polar continent, glittered slightlyas she moved. "Mnathl ..." he said.

She turned toward him quickly, but did not speak. "Mnathl, I'm sorry Itried to ... hurt you on the island. I must have been pretty bad."

Mnathl almost smiled. "No matter," she said. "Pretty soon, soup."

The incident seemed to be closed. Ericson lay back in the shade againand watched the movements of the cloudscape across the deep turquoiseof the sky. His eyes felt as fresh as Adam's. The trees were greenwith the greenness of living emeralds, and the sun had an ardor and arichness like no sun he had ever known before.

Winds blew with caressive, sweet-smelling tendrils over his face, andfrom the warm soil beneath him he could almost feel strength soaking upagain into his body cells. He had visited several planets since he hadfirst left earth; he had loved none of them as he did Fyhon. Fyhon....

Arnaldo, the chunky little head of the paleo-biology department ofPenhairn University, had told him once that terrestrials loved Fyhon sobecause conditions on that planet were like those on Terra during thepart of the Cenozoic when man was beginning to become man. Fyhon, hesaid, appealed to some deep-seated memory in humanity of what a planetought to be.

Ericson had laughed at him. He was new to Fyhon then, with a temporaryappointment as ethnographer to the South Polar Ethnographic Commission.Racial memory had seemed to him as out-moded a concept as spontaneousgeneration. But his temporary appointment had been extended once,and then once again, and by the end of the second period he had beenwildly, hopelessly in love with Fyhon. He had hoped to get a permanentappointment, had hoped to stay on Fyhon for the rest of his life.

Ericson sighed again. After a while he raised one hand above his headand looked at it. He could see the bones and the joints of the bonesand the movements of the sinews under the pale gold skin. The marks ofMnathl's hypodermic needle were faintly red. He ran his fingers downhis body, surprised at the largeness and hardness of the rib cage, andthe prominence of the sockets of his hips. His body felt attenuatedand worn. But it was his body, no longer the property ofbyhror andthebyhror emptiness. He held up his hand once more and looked at itagainst the light. He was beginning to realize that he was alive.

He drifted off into sleep. When he woke, Mnathl was holding out asteaming bowl to him. "Soup?" she said.

They stayed for some eight days in the coppice, while Ericson knottedhis memories together.Byhror and the need for it were sinking backwith the passage of each successive day into the status of thingsunalterably in the past. Mnathl set snares and hunted—she would notallow him to move a hand—and Ericson watched her almost incuriously.He felt a little more conscious every hour how good it was to be alive.

On the ninth day Mnathl poured water on the cooking fire. She nestedthe cooking pots together, slung them deftly over her shoulder, andcontrived a belt of twisted vines for her hunting knife. "Go now," sheannounced.

Ericson got up obediently. "Are we going back to Penhairn?" he asked.

The corners of Mnathl's mouth twitched. "No," she said. "Way on up. Onin. In Dridihad." She pointed with her thumb.

Ericson stared at her. "Dridihad?" he said. He'd heard the name before.It was ... now wait ... yes, it was the name the natives applied to theheart of the almost unknown South Polar Minor continent. "I can't gothere. I've got to go back to Penhairn, now that I'm well. I've threeyears ofbyhror addiction to make up."

Mnathl's eyes narrowed. "Dridihad," she repeated stubbornly.

"But.... Listen, Mnathl, I'm terribly grateful to you for what you'vedone for me. I never can thank you enough. But I couldn't go toDridihad now, wherever it is. I'd need equipment—cameras, notebooks,guns, a tent. Right now I've got to go back to Penhairn, see aboutgetting a job."

"All sorts of things to see," Mnathl said. She edged up to him. "Youlike. You like good." There was a prick in his arm. Mnathl had madeother things in her cooking pots the last few days beside soup.

Ericson felt a peculiar glassy lethargy creeping over him. Thesensation was not entirely unpleasant. It was as if he looked at hislimbs and his body through a sheet of perfectly transparent crystal. Hecould see his actions and his movements with absolute clarity, but hehad nothing to do with them.

"You like see Dridihad," Mnathl said. "All sorts of things foreth—ethnog—for man like you to look at. Come on. You like good." Shestarted along a shadowy, green-roofed trail.

While Ericson watched with resentful detachment, his body beganobediently to follow her. Speech as well as volition had deserted him,and all he could do was to move silently in her steps.

As mile succeeded silent mile, memory and common sense came to hisaid. There had been a time, nearly three years ago, when he had setout to explore the periphery of the minor polar continent by himself.His temporary appointment had expired, and he had been moving heavenand earth to get it made permanent. The one-man expedition had been apart of the general heaven-and-earth moving process; it had occurredto him that the Ethnographic Commission might be inclined to view hisapplication more favorably if he could offer the Commission a piece oforiginal ethnographic research, such as a report on the natives in theperiphery would be.

His attempt had been a miserable failure; indeed, he owed his formerbyhror addiction to it. His supplies had been eaten by animals, hehad poisoned himself with taintedchornis liver, fever had attackedhim. In his fits of feverish delirium he had thrown away nearlyeverything, even his hunting knife. In order to get back to Penhairn atall he had had to resort to chewing the leaves of thebyhror plant.The leaves contain a remarkable stimulant; Ericson had been able to gethis fever-racked body back to civilization alive. But it had been atthe cost of slavish addiction to the drug.

And now Mnathl—bless her greenish skin and queer flat eyes—wasoffering him a journey to the mysterious heart of the minor polarcontinent. Offering it to him on a silver platter. A piece of originalethnographic research. He had been ungrateful and a fool. "You likegood," she had said. Well, she ought to know.

The effects of the drug she had pricked his arm with must be wearingoff. Ericson found he could smile. "Why are we going to Dridihad,Mnathl?" he asked a little later.

Mnathl shook her sleek green head without even turning around to him."No," she said.

The trip in to Dridihad was a seduction, an enchantment, a bliss.Ericson's strength came flooding back to him. His sick pallor wasturning to rich gold. On the second day he whittled, under Mnathl'sguidance, a spear and a throwing-stick for it, and on the third andfourth she taught him to set snares and kindle fires with a sliverofonchian. The country grew wilder and more beautiful, the treestaller, the sky a deeper blue, the waterfalls more loud. He tried toquestion the girl, but she never answered anything except "No", andafter a little, in his happiness, he gave up asking questions.

What did it matter, after all? He was learning from day to day secretsthat any geographer or ethnographer would have given the best yearsof his life to learn; the piece of original ethnographic research wasbecoming a reality; and who, except a fool, questions someone who hasnot only restored him to life but is giving him his heart's desire?

On the eighteenth day, when Ericson's body had filled out and beenturned to a living gold by the sun, they came across the pyramid. Itstood in a swale with purple flowers growing around it and a smallriver flowing around one side, and it was so tall that Ericson, lookingdizzily up, swore he saw clouds floating around its top. He wantedto stay and look at it, to record it in his mind, but Mnathl was notimpressed. She let him have two hours, and then she urged him on.

"But who built it, Mnathl?" he demanded when he had been pulledreluctantly away. "How did it get here?"

Mnathl seemed to be debating whether to answer him. He could neverdecide whether she was naturally taciturn, or whether she reallygrudged telling him things. "My people built it," she said at last."Deidrithes. Long time ago.Long time ago." She motioned vaguely withher hand.

Something in the gesture made Ericson see with sudden clarity how deepthe abysm of the past, even on this young world with the ardent sun,really was. Fyhon was young; but the Deidrithes had been living onFyhon a long time.

Two days later Ericson, contrary to their usual custom, was in thelead, breaking trail. Mnathl caught him suddenly around the waist andpulled him back, but she was not quick enough. The huge, thick-bodiedsnake with the red bandings lashed out at him and just fell short. Butone glistening fang grazed his foot.

She pushed him back, but not quickly enough.

Mnathl, bleached by fear to the color of an inferior grade of jade,killed the snake with a stone. Then she made Ericson sit down on thegrass, and slashed at his foot with her hunting knife.

"What is it, Mnathl?" Ericson asked. The wound was not especiallypainful, but his heart had already begun to beat slowly and wearily,as if beating were a burden almost beyond its strength, and at the sametime it seemed to have grown until it threatened to burst his chest.

"Outis," Mnathl answered briefly. She hesitated for a moment. "Bad,"she said, as if to herself. "Very bad. Could kill me too." Then sheleaned over and set her lips to the bleeding gash her knife had made.

Ericson tried to draw away from her. He was so dizzy that he couldhardly see. "No," he croaked, "don't. You mustn't suck it, Mnathl. Idon't want you to risk your life."

The green-skinned girl shrugged. "No matter," she answered. "Will do.O.K."

Ericson tried to push her from him, but he was too weak. The world wasreceding from him in black waves. She sucked blood and poison from thewound, spat, sucked, spat, and sucked again.

He would have liked to protest, to thank her for her sacrifice, but hehad no time. His pulse had begun to flutter feebly, and he fainted.

For the next several days he was in a stupor most of the time. Wheneverhe came back to consciousness, he saw Mnathl lying exhausted in thegrass near him, and he knew without being told that the poison she hadsucked from his wound was moving sluggishly and with slow malignitythrough her veins. Nevertheless, the wound on his foot was alwayscleanly dressed and plastered with fresh herbs, and from time to timeshe opened it with her knife and let the pus escape.

When they were finally on the road to Dridihad again, he tried to thankher for what she had done.

"Anything I can do for you, Mnathl," he wound up with someembarrassment (it is difficult to thank someone who refuses to look atyou), "anything I can do for you, why, you let me know. I could havedied there, without ever getting my permanent appointment or seeingDridihad. We're friends, aren't we, Mnathl? Friends." He took her hand.

Mnathl nodded curtly. "O.K.," she said. She pulled her fingers fromhis. The Deidrithes, Ericson thought not for the first time, were animpassive, unemotional folk.

It took them nearly a month more to get to Dridihad. On the waythey had to ford two swollen rivers and beat off the attack of amust-maddened bullrhodops. Neither of these incidents had anyconsequences. On the sixty-sixth day after their departure from LakeTanais, they came to the foot of Dridihad.

For a week or so the ground had been rising steadily and the airgrowing crisp and thin. They had labored uphill, uphill. Dridihaditself, built on a high plateau, had been visible for three days beforethey reached it, a silhouette, faintly pinkish, against the clouds.When they had first caught sight of it, Ericson had felt an almostpainful anticipation seize him, and even Mnathl, usually so impassive,had shown, in her glowing face and quickened breathing, how excited shewas.

The ascent to the plateau itself, along a path so precipitous thatEricson was always having to clutch it with hands as well as feet, wasso toilsome that fatigue had dimmed his curiosity a little when theyarrived at the top. Earlier that day Mnathl had thrown the cookingpots and the knife contemptuously over the side of the cliff, and now,cupping her hands around her lips and standing almost arrogantly erect,she strode up to the rosy-red, eroded battlements.

"Klarete laoi!" she called. "Laoi, klarete!" So far as Ericson couldsee, no one at all was listening. But after a moment the massy doors ofthe gate began to open outward, ponderously, in the twilight. They wentin.

Dridihad, Ericson saw at first glance, was much larger and morepopulous than he had supposed from below. The low, stepped buildings,all made of the rose-pink stone, seemed to stretch out for mile uponmile, as far as he could see. They made upon him an impression ofantiquity so strong that it was almost disturbing. The small greenishpeople like Mnathl were everywhere. In dots, trickles and rivulets theywere pouring out into the streets.

Mnathl's eyes fell on a man near her. She spoke to him. Instantly hebowed profoundly before her, and made a second, shallower obeisance toEricson.

"Go with him," Mnathl said, turning to the ethnographer. "Sleep in hishouse." Obediently, Ericson followed his guide. When he looked aroundtoward Mnathl, she had already disappeared.

The man (his name seemed to be Boator) took Ericson to an airy suiteof rooms on the top floor of one of the biggest of the houses of redstone. Attendants waited on him with food and drink and water forbathing. They took away his dirt-encrusted, ragged clothing and broughthim a heavy greenish robe. After Ericson had bathed and put it on, heinspected himself in the sheet of polished metal that served for alooking glass and decided that the color of the fabric made his curlingbeard and fair skin look as if they had been cast from yellow gold.

He was tired, but far too excited to rest.

The chief thing, the indubitable, the incredible thing, was that therewas a very old, a very populous city, a city whose existence no one hadeven suspected, in the heart of the South Polar Minor continent. It wasnews to inflame an ethnographer to the point of hysteria. When Ericsongot back to Penhairn with his report, it was going to revolutionizetheir whole concept of Fyhonese history; one would hardly exaggerateto say that it would be epoch-making news. No doubt there would be aperiod when they'd consider him the biggest liar since Marco Polo. Butafter the first skepticism wore off he'd have a permanent ethnographicappointment almost forced upon him. His report would shake establishedreputations, found new schools, would—oh, if he only had something towrite on!

When the attendant came in again, Ericson made motions of writing inthe palm of his hand, but the man's face remained blank. And when heasked for Mnathl the attendant merely shook his head and went out.

For want of anything better the young man hung out of the windowwatching the smoky flicker of lights in the city around him. It was notuntil the last one had gone out that he went, reluctantly, to bed.

Next morning, immediately after breakfast, Mnathl came to visithim. He hardly knew her at first. The scanty garments she had wornunconcernedly on their journey to Dridihad had been replaced by thestiff, hieratic folds of a dull purple robe embroidered in blue. Onher head there was a silvery crown of antique workmanship, set withluminous purple stones, and she moved with the conscious dignity of aprincess or a priest.

Her manner toward him, too, had changed. She smiled faintly when shefirst saw him, and everything about her seemed freer than Ericson hadseen it before. She was animated, almost vivacious.

He asked her for something to write with. "No," she answered, stillwith that faint smile, "no use. Hunt now."

They left Boator's house by a side door (to avoid the crowd that wouldappear at once if they were glimpsed in the streets, Ericson surmised)and entered a small, walled court. There four improbably stripedanimals, about the size of small ponies, were waiting for them. Ericsonmounted one of them, and Mnathl, tucking up her skirts, bestrodeanother. With two attendants they rode circuitously through Dridihadand out into the high plain.

The variety and abundance of game were amazing. There seemed to be moreanimals than there were trees, and they came in all sizes, shapes,colors, and coats. There was even a big blue-hued thing that remindedthe young man a little of a kangaroo. He enjoyed himself, but he couldnot help wishing that he knew more about Fyhonese zoology than hedid—to appreciate all those properly.

They got back to the city just before dark. Ericson ate, and thenMnathl took him to the temple. It was the tallest building in Dridihad,a stepped pyramid of unusually reddish stone, and Ericson was to growfond, later, of the view from its flat top. The naos itself, however,was a small room skimpily scooped out of one side of the pyramid, andit was very badly lighted. Ericson, who had resolved, in default ofpaper to write on, to impress all he saw and heard irremovably upon hismind, had to strain his eyes to see anything.

Mnathl officiated. His first feeling that she was a priestess seemedto be correct. As to the ritual itself, it was highly impressive,especially when one considered that he did not know the language inwhich it was going on. It ended with the sacrifice of an animal likeabosula; while two attendants held it, Mnathl cut its throat,caught the blood in a cup, and poured it on the altar fire. Then sheroasted pieces of the meat over the coals and dealt them out amongthe celebrants of the ceremony, partaking first herself. None ofthe collops was offered to Ericson; but, then, he could hardly beconsidered a communicant of the religion of the Deidrithes, whatever itwas.

As the days passed, a possible explanation of Mnathl's treatment ofhim began to come to Ericson. He was not a conceited man, or it mighthave occurred to him earlier. And it bothered him to think that she wasattracted to him, whereas he had never found her attractive in any way.Still, what other hypothesis would account for the facts?

They were together almost constantly and, except for the attendantswho were always armed with heavy axes, always alone. She hunted withhim, showed him the city, rode with him; she even taught him to playa rather childish game, something like the Sicilian Mora, which shealways beat him at. Day after day she took him with her to witnessreligious rites which were obviously of the most hallowed character.Ericson had the impression that the rites were leading, in a series ofslight graduations, up to some supreme event! and he tried to note andremember everything.

The climax came suddenly. One lovely evening, just as the full moon wasrising, Mnathl took him with her up the steep sides to the top of thepyramid. The two attendants hovered discreetly in the background. Forall practical purposes, he and the girl were alone.

Mnathl looked at him. There was a glint, warm, glowing, and facile, inher eyes that he had never seen there before. There was a short butrather embarrassing silence. At last Ericson, feeling like a boor anda churl, took her hand.

"Mnathl," he said, "I'm so grateful to you. You've done so much for me,helped me so much. You ... mean a lot to me, Mnathl." That, at least,was true.

Mnathl pulled her fingers away and regarded him. "What you mean?" sheasked blankly. "What you mean?"

"That you ... that I ..." he stopped, too embarrassed to go on.

Mnathl threw back her head and laughed. It was the first time he hadever heard the sound from her, and there was something strange in it.She motioned to the axmen with her hand.

"Not like, not hate," she said blandly. "Let you see, let you hear, soyou tell Them all that Deidrithes do. You our messenger. Then we eat."

Then we eat.... For a moment the words echoed meaninglessly inEricson's mind. The axmen were forcing him to his knees near adepression in the center of the pyramid. "But why ..." he said.

"We hear about you the first time you try trip," Mnathl said."Everybody know. No other men your color in Fyhon."

His color. Ericson began to understand. Mnathl's devotion, herself-sacrificing tenacity, her long kindness to him, everything—hadall been nothing but the prelude to a ritual meal in which his rareblonde body was to be the chief support. No doubt a man of his colorwould be an especially choice offering to the gods. The gleam he hadseen in Mnathl's eyes had been not love, but a kind of religiousgluttony.

He began to laugh. Irony had always appealed to him; and besides he wasremembering a sentence in the Ethnographic Commission's preliminarysurvey: "There is no doubt that ritual cannibalism is unknown among thenatives of Fyhon."

"O.K., Mnathl," he said, recalling what he had been saved from, what hehad seen and learned. "I'm ahead, no matter how you look at it. It'sO.K."

He was still smiling when the axman on the right struck and Ericson'ssevered head went rolling along the surface of the pyramid.