They approached, but seemed to become even more obscure. They went up to it carefully, keeping an eye on the grove in case another one should fall. In the calm morning, with only a faint breeze stirring the leaves, it seemed impossible that a mighty thing like this should ever topple, but here it was. What does it do? And then a faster dripping, a trickle, a running of water. A short, stubby key with black tape wound around it. A vicious, probing curiosity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion or sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You are a cesspit of moral filth. There is no world of the dead. He knew exactly where it was, and how to open the chamber, but the brilliant light and the glittering surfaces in the laboratory, not to mention the constant coming and going of technicians, made it impossible for him to do anything about it there. You will not know until you are on the water, and then it will be too late. But you all have to leave that part of yourselves here. There is no passage to the land of the dead for such as him. He came along much later. He was very different. The great ribbed belly of the zeppelin bulked over the bomb, straining at its cables in the wind, its silver sides running with moisture. And then the first great drops of rain came down. And as a token, we have been granted a responsibility. We would like to show you what this means. I mean a swim. If you saw one of em in your world, would you know he was a ghost? Instead, he contemplates deeper mysteries. You must stay the night in my house and we will talk and eat together. The mulefa loved them, but it was hard for them to move on the sand and gather them. They were hammering at it with fists and rocks, shrieking and yelling. Then he stepped off the threshold and stood still, almost at a loss. But the blade would be just as sharp, and it would work. Will took his notebook and copied it exactly. It showed a glacier with a curious serpentine shape, flowing down between three almost identical mountain peaks. He spread his pale hands and shook his head. He felt her tremble, and then under his hands the delicate bones of her back began to rise and fall, and he heard her sob quietly. He stroked her warm hair, her tender shoulders, and then he kissed her face again and again, and presently she gave a deep, shuddering sigh and fell still. Then, their clumsy movement on land giving them a swaggering strut, the birds went back to the water and sailed away downstream toward the sea. She took a coil long enough to reach over one of the branches of a high tree and back down to the ground, and strong enough to bear several times her weight. They nodded and murmured and stroked her with their trunks as she stepped down. She was daunted by what she had agreed to do. The same kind of edge.