"Did you observe his eyes?"

She did not notice the twinkle in his own. "Grey. Nice eyes, Aariel. Steady. Not burning, like-not giving out light, like yours. More like human eyes, mine, and my parents' and brothers' and sisters'."

Aariel touched her gently on the shoulder. "Go on home, child. Do not fear to cross the oasis. I will see that you are not harmed."

"You and Eblis. Thank you." Like a child, she held her face up for a kiss, and Aariel leaned down and pressed his lips gently against hers. "You will not be a child much longer."

"I know ..."

He touched her lips again, lightly, and a moment later a large lion was running lightly across the desert.

Yalith turned onto a sandy path through a field of barley. At the end of the path was a stone road cutting through white buildings of sun-baked clay, low buildings, built to withstand the frequent earth tremors. Some of these low buildings contained small shops for baked goods, for stone lamps, for oil; there were shops with hanging meat, shops with bows and arrows, shops with spears of gopher wood. Some entryways were curtained with strands of bright beads, which tinkled in the evening breeze.

Out of one of these came a nephil, his arm around a young woman who was gazing up at him adoringly, leaning against him so that her rosy b.r.e.a.s.t.s touched his pale flesh. Her glossy black hair fell down her back, past her hips; and the eyes with which she regarded him were the deep blue of lapis lazuli.

Yalith stopped in her cracks. The girl was Mahlah, Yalith's sister, the only girl besides Yalich to be in the home tent. Their two older sisters were married and lived in another part of the oasis with their husbands. Mahlah had been away from the home tent a great deal lately. Now Yalith knew where she had been.

Mahlah saw her younger sister and smiled.

The nephil smiled, too, graciously acknowledging Yalith.

Before they came out of the shadows, Yalith thought he was Eblis, with a sense of shock and betrayal. But in the full starlight she could see that his wings were much lighter, a delicate lavender. She could not tell what color his long hair was, but it, coo, was lighter, and seemed to have an orange glow. He had a sinuous, snake-like curve to his neck, and hooded eyes. He smiled again, tenderly. "Mahlah will stay with me this night. You will let your mother know."

Yalith blurted out, "Oh, but she will worry. We are not allowed to stay out at night..."

Mahlah laughed joyously. "Ugiel has chosen me! I am his betrothed!"

Yalith gasped. "But does Mother know?"

"Not yet. You tell her, little sister."

"But shouldn't you tell her yourself? You and-"

"Ugiel."

"But shouldn't you-"

Mahlah's laugh pealed again, like little bells. "The old ways are changing, little sister. This night I meet Ugiel's brethren."

The nephil stretched a soft wing about Mahlah. "Yes, little sister. The old ways are changing. Go and tell your mother."

Yalith turned, and they watched her go, fingers waving at her in farewell. At the end of the street she heard foot-steps and turned to see a young man following her. She reached for a dart and put it in her blowpipe, but he disappeared around the corner of a building.

The low white buildings gave way to tents, each tent surrounded by the land of the dweller, at first the small plots of the shopkeepers, then groves and fields, sometimes many acres. Along the path she saw sheep, goats, camels grazing. Grapes were ripe on the vines.

Her father's tent was a large one, flanked by several smaller tents. She hurried into the main tent, calling out to her mother.

It was the smell that brought Dennys back to consciousness. His nostrils twitched. His stomach heaved. There was a smell of cooking, smoky, rancid. A smell worse than the rotten-cheese smell of silage which clung to the farm-hands near home. A smell far stronger than that of the manure spread on the fields in the spring; that was a fresh, growing smell. This was old manure, rotting. A smell that made the urinals in the lavatories at school seem sweet-And over it all, but not covering it, a cloying smell of per-fume and sweat, body sweat which had never been near a shower.

He opened his eyes.

He was in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, lit by the moonlight pouring in through a hole in what seemed to be some kind of curved roof, and by the equally brilliant light which poured from a unicorn's horn. The silver creature looked around, sniffing, pawing the dirty earthen floor. At its feet, a mammoth cringed.

Dennys almost cried out, "Higgaion!" But this mammoth was not the one who had accompanied j.a.pheth. This mammoth had matted fur on its flanks, and it was so thin that the skeleton showed through. Its eyes were dulled and it seemed to be apologizing to the unicorn.

Staring at the unicorn, still unaware of Dennys, were several small people. But, just as the mammoth was unlike Higgaion, so these people were unlike j.a.pheth. They smelled. The men's bodies were hairy, giving them a simian look. Their goatskin loincloths were not clean. There were two full-bearded men, and two women, naked except for the loincloths. Both the women had red hair, and the younger woman's hair was so vivid it almost seemed like flame, and some care had been taken with it. The older woman was wrinkled and discontented-looking.

The unicorn's light flashed against the younger woman's green eyes, making them sparkle like emeralds. "You see!" she cried triumphantly. "I knew our mammoth could call us a unicorn!"

The light in the horn dimmed.

The younger of the two men, who had matted brown hair and a red beard unkempt and spotted with food, snarled at the girl. "And now, dear sister Tiglah, that we have a unicorn in the tent, what do you want of it?"

The girl approached the unicorn, her hand held out as though to pet it. The horn blazed with blinding brilliance, and then the tent was dark so suddenly that it took several seconds for Dennys's eyes to adjust to the moonlight coming through the hole in the roof.

The men roared with laughter. "Ho, Tiglah, you thought you could fool us, didn't you?"

Even the older woman was laughing. Then she saw Dennys, who was struggling to his knees. "Great auk, what have we here?"

The redheaded girl gasped. "A giant!"

The older, bowlegged man approached Dennys. He held a spear, and Dennys, gagging from the stench in the tent, felt an overriding surge of fear. The man nudged him with the spear, so that he fell back onto a pile of filthy skins.

The man flipped him over, using the spear, which scratched but did not cut him. He felt the tip of the spear as it was drawn lightly along his shoulder blades.

"Is this one yours, Tiglah?" the younger man asked. "I thought you were seeing a nephil."

Tiglah looked curiously at Dennys. "He's no nephil."

The older woman stared. "If he's a giant, he's a baby giant. He can't hurt us."

"What will we do with him?" Tiglah asked.

The brown, hairy man withdrew his spear "Throw him out." His voice held no particular malice. Dennys was just a thing, to be disposed of. He felt two pairs of hands lifting him, as the younger man helped his father. The mammoth whimpered, and the older woman kicked at him. Certainly, Dennys thought, anything would be better than this horrible-smelling place full of horrible little people.

There was a brief whiff of fresh air. A glimpse of a night sky crusted with stars. A smoky redness on the horizon, like the light from some enormous industrial city. Then he felt himself being flung, thrown, like offal. He felt him-self rolling down a steep incline. He gagged. Vomited. He had been thrown into what was evidently a garbage dump. It was even worse than wherever he had been before.

He managed to pull himself up onto his knees. He was in some kind of pit. There was an overwhelming stench of feces, of rotting flesh. He did not know what else was in the pit with him, and he did not want to know. Frantically he scrambled up the side, climbing, slipping on bones, on ooze, on decaying filth, sliding back, climbing, sliding, slipping, scrabbling, until at last he pulled himself out and up onto his feet and stood there tottering, filthy and terrified.

There was no sign of Sandy. No sign of the unicorn. Or of j.a.pheth and Higgaion. He had no idea where he was. He looked around. He was standing on a dirt path which bordered the pit. Beside it was his rolled-up bundle o clothes. On the other side of the path were a number of tents. He had seen pictures of bedouin tents in his social-studies books at school. These were similar, though they seemed smaller and more closely cl.u.s.tered. It was probably from one of these tents that he had been thrown. Beyond the tents were palm trees, and he staggered toward these.

He needed to shower. Did he ever need to shower! He carried with him the smell of the pit. He ran, barely keeping himself upright, to the grove of palms. Beyond these he could see white. White sand. The desert. If he could only reach the desert, he could roll in the moon-washed sand and get clean.

"Sandy!" he called, but there was no Sandy. "Jay! Jay!" But no small, kind young man appeared. "Higgaion!" He shuddered. If he never saw any human being again, he would not go back to the tent where he had been poked at with a spear, and from which he had been thrown, like garbage.

Racing, he was suddenly out of the grove of palms and sliding in sand. He fell down, rolled and rolled, then picked up handsful of sand and rubbed it over himself, wiping off the slime and filth of the pit. He pulled off his turtleneck and flung it away. Rolled again in sand. His underclothes were filthy from the pit and he tore them off, flinging them after the turtleneck. He did not even realize that he was sc.r.a.ping off his own sunburned skin, so eager was he to get clean. The sand was cool under the daisy field of stars, and he took off his sneakers and socks, flinging them after his clothes. They would never be clean again. He rubbed more sand on his feet, his ankles, his legs, not even realizing that he was sobbing like a small child.

After a while, from sheer exhaustion, he calmed down. Began to a.s.sess his situation. He was badly sunburned. He had made it worse by scouring himself with sand. He was shivering, but it was not from cold; it was from fever.

He sat there, naked as Adam, on the white desert, his back to the oasis. The not yet full moon was sliding down Coward the horizon. Above him, there were more stars than he had ever seen before. Ahead of him was that strange reddish glow, and then he saw that it came from a mountain, the tallest in a range of mountains on the far horizon. Of course. If he and Sandy had somehow or other blown themselves onto a young planet in some galaxy or other, naturally volcanoes would still be active.

How active? He hoped he wouldn't find out. At home the hills were low; old hills, worn down by wind and rain, by the pa.s.sing of the glaciers, by eons of time. Home. He began to sob again.

With a great effort, he calmed himself. He and Sandy were the practical ones of the family, the ones who found solutions to problems. They could do minor repairs when the plumbing misbehaved. They could rewire an old lamp and make it work again. Their mother's reading lamp in the lab was one they had bought at a church bazaar and made over for her. Their large vegetable garden in the summer was their pride and joy, and they sold enough of their produce to augment their allowances considerably. They could do anything. Anything.

Even believe in unicorns. He thought of the unicorn. The unicorn he had come to think of as a virtual unicorn, and who had, somehow or other, brought him to that tent of horrible, primitive little people who had thrown him into the pit. The sad, undernourished mammoth evidently had called the unicorn, and Dennys had been called back into being, too. But the unicorn had gone out in a blaze of light. A unicorn, even a virtual one, evidently could not stand the smell.

All right. If he thought that a unicorn couldn't stand the ugliness of the smell, it must mean that he believed in unicorns. Virtually.

Of course there were no unicorns. But neither was it possible that he and Sandy, tapping into their father's partly programmed experiment, could have been flung to wherever in the universe they were, on a backward planet of primitive life forms. Again he looked around. The stars were so clear that he seemed to hear a chiming of crystal. From the mountain came a wisp of smoke, a small tongue of fire.

"Oh, virtual unicorn!" he cried. "I want to believe in you, and if you don't come, I will die." He felt something cool and soft nudging his bare body, and there was the scraggly little mammoth, touching him tentatively with the pink tip of its long grey trunk And then a burst of silver blazed in front of him, and was reduced to a shimmer. A unicorn knell before him on the sand. Dennys did not have the strength to mount the unicorn and sit astride. He gave the mammoth a look of mute grat.i.tude, then draped himself over the unicorn's back. He closed his eyes. He was burning with fever. He would burn the unicorn. He felt that they were exploding like the volcano.

Mahlah, Yalith's sister, betrothed to Ugiel the nephil, lay on a small rock ledge, ten minutes' walk into the desert. Her heart beat rapidly with excitement Ugiel had brought her to the rock, covered her with kisses, and then told her to wait until he returned with his brethren to seal their betrothal She heard the beating of wings and looked up, catching her breath. Above her a pelican, white against the night sky, flew in circles which grew smaller as it descended It touched the ground and raised its great wings until they seemed to brush the stars, and there was no longer a pelican in front of Mahlah but a seraph, with wings and hair streaming silver in the desert wind, and eyes as bright as stars.

Mahlah scrambled to her feet, letting her long black hair swirl about her. "Aland-"

The seraph took her hand, looking down into her eyes "Are we really losing you?"

She withdrew her hands, dropping her gaze, laughing a small, self-conscious laugh "Losing me? What do you mean?"

"Is it true that you and Ugiel-"

"Yes, it is true," she said proudly "Be happy for me, Aland. Ugiel is still your brother, is he not?"

Aland dropped to one knee, so that he no longer towered over her 'Yes, we are still brothers, though we have chosen very different ways "

"And you're sure yours is the better way?" There was scorn in Mahlah's voice.

Aland shook his head sadly "We do not judge. The seraphim have chosen to stay close to the Presence."

"But you're too close to be able to see it. The nephihm have distance and objectivity." He looked at her, and her glance wavered for a moment "Yes. Ugiel told me that"

Aland rose slowly to his full height. With one silver wing he drew her briefly to him, and she smelled starlight. Then he let her go "You will not forget us?"

"How could I forget you' ' she exclaimed "You have been my friend since Yalith took me out to greet the dawn and I met you and Aanel "

"You have not greeted the dawn lately."

"Oh-I am learning about the night "

Aland bent down and kissed the top of her dark head. Then he walked slowly across the desert. Tears fell silently onto the sand.

Mahlah looked down. When she raised her head, she saw a pelican flying up, up, to be lost among the stars.

Yalith hurried into her family tent "Mahlah is betrothed to one of the nephihm1"

No one heeded her. Her parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law were lying around on goatskins, eating, and drinking wine her father had made from the early grapes. Several stone lamps lit the tent with a warm glow; too warm, Yalith thought. Almost no breeze came through the open tent flap, or the roof hole. The moon was descending, and only stars were visible. She looked around for j.a.pheth, her favorite brother, but did not see him. Probably he was still out looking for the brother of the young giant in her grandfather's tent.

Her mother was stirring something in a wooden bowl, intent on what she was doing. A mammoth, well fed, with l.u.s.trous long hair on its flanks, lay sleeping at her feet.

Someone had been sick, probably Ham, who had a weak stomach, and the smell of Ham's sickness mingled with the smell of wine, of meat from the stewpot, of the skins of the tent. Yalith was accustomed to all these odors, and noticed only that Ham was lying back on a pile of skins, looking pale. Ham was, in any event, the lightest-skinned in the family, and the smallest, having been, according to Matred, born a full moon early. Anah, his red-haired wife, knelt by him, offering him wine. Languidly he pushed it away, then pulled Anah down to him, kissing her full, sensual mouth.

Yalith went up to Matred, her mother. Repeated: "Mahlah is betrothed."

Matred looked up briefly. "She's not old enough."

"Oh, Mother, of course she is. And she is."

"Old enough?" Matred was preoccupied with what she was doing.

"Betrothed."

"Who is it this time?"

"It's not one of us. It's one of the nephilim."

Matred shivered, but went on stirring, without focus. "Mahlah has changed. She is no longer my merry little girl who was satisfied to see a b.u.t.terfly, or a drop of dew on a spider's web. She is no longer satisfied to be with us in the home tent." A tear dropped into the bowl.

Yalith patted her mother's arm. "She's grown up, Mother."

"So have you. But you don't go chasing about the oasis at night. You don't run after nephihm."

"Maybe the nephil ran after her?"

"She's pretty enough. But it is not right for me to hear something like this at secondhand. That is not how things are done. That is not how my daughter behaves."

"I'm sorry," Yalith said uncomfortably. "I was walking home from Grandfather Lamech's, and I saw them, Mahlah and a nephil. His name is Ugiel. He asked me to tell you, so that you would not be worried."

"Worried!" Maned exclaimed- "Just don't tell your father, that's all. What's to prevent this L'gh-"

"Ugiel."

"This nephil from coming himself, with Mahlah, to tell me and your father, according to the custom."

Yalith frowned worriedly. "He said that times are changing." Eblis had said that, too. She felt a jolt of insecurity in the pit of her stomach. She did not tell her mother about Eblis.

Matred put down her wooden spoon with a bang. "There are many who think it an honor to be noticed by a nephil and accept their ways. Anah"-Matred looked across at her son Ham's wife, redheaded, still luscious, but beginning to be overblown-"Anah tells me that her younger sister, Tiglah, is being singled out by a nephil for marriage. Anah is thrilled."

"But you're not."

"Tiglah is not my daughter. Mahlah is." Matred turned away. "Child, I am not star-dazzled by the nephilim. They are very different from us."