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“There hasn’t been a common-front truce for as long as I can remember,” Wolff said. “I remember Mother telling me that there had been one once, four thousand years before I was born, when the Black Sellers threatened the Lords. Urizen has performed two miracles. He has trapped eight Lords all at once, and he has forced a truce. May this be his downfall.”

Wolff then said that he would swear to the truce. By the name of the Father of all Lords, the great Eponym Los, he swore to observe all the rules of the peace-agreement until such time as all agreed to abandon it or all were dead but one. He knew even as he took the oath that the others could not be relied upon not to betray him. He knew that Rintrah and Vala were aware of this and trusted him no more than he did them. But at least they would all be working together for a while. And it was not likely that any would lightly break truce. Only when a great opportunity and strong likelihood of escaping punishment coincided would any do so.

Theotormon whined, “Jadawin. My own brother. My favorite brother, he who said he would always love me and protect me. You are like the others. You want to hurt me, to kill me. Your own little brother.”

Vala spat at him and said, “You filthy craven beast! You are no Lord nor brother of ours. Why do you not dive to the deeps and there drown yourself, take your fearfulness and treachery out of our sight and the sight of all beings that breathe air? Let the fish feed upon your fat carcass, though even they may vomit you forth.”

Crouching, extending a flipper, Theotormon shuffled towards Wolff. “Jadawin. You don’t know how I’ve suffered. Is there no pity in you for me? I always thought you, at least, had what these others lacked. You had a warm heart, a compassion, that these soulless monsters lacked.”

“You tried to kill me,” Wolff said. “And you would try again if you thought you had a good chance of doing it.”

“No, no,” Theotormon said, attempting to smile. “You misunderstood me entirely. I thought you would hate me because I loved even a base life more than I did a death as a Lord. I wanted to take your weapons away so you couldn’t hurt me. Then I would have explained what had happened to me, how I came to be this way. You would have understood then. You would have pitied me and loved me as you did when you were a boy in the palace of our father and I was your infant brother. That is all I wanted to do, explain to you and be loved again, not hated. I meant you no harm. By the name of Los, I swear it.”

“I will see you later,” Wolff said. “Now, for the present, be gone.”

Theotormon walked away spraddle-legged. When he had reached the edge of the island, he turned and shouted obscenities and abuse at Wolff. Wolff raised his beamer, although he meant only to scare Theotormon. The thing squawked and leaped like a giant frog out over the water, his rubbery legs and webbed toes trailing behind him. He went into the water and did not come up again. Wolff asked Vala how long he could stay under the surface.

“I do not know. Perhaps half an hour. But I doubt that he is holding his breath. He is probably in one of the caverns that exist in the roots and bladders that form the base of this island.”

She said that they must go to meet the others. While they walked through the frond-forest, she explained the physical facts of this world, as far as she knew them.

“You must have noticed how close the horizon is. This planet has a diameter of about 2170 miles.” (About the size of Earth’s moon, Wolff thought.) “Yet the gravity is only a little less than that of our home-planet.” (Not much stronger than Earth’s, Wolff thought.)

“The gravity fades off abruptly above the atmosphere,” she said, “and extends weakly through this universe. All the other planets have similar fields.”

Wolff did not wonder at this. The Lords could do things with fields and gravitons that the terrestrials had never dreamed of as yet.

“This planet is entirely covered with water.”

“What about this island?” he said.

“It floats. Its origin is a plant which grows on the bottom of the sea. When it’s half-grown, its bladder starts to fill with gas, produced by a bacterium. It unroots itself and floats to the surface. There it extends roots or filaments, which meet with the filaments of others of its kind. Eventually, there’s a solid mass of such plants. The upper part of the plant dies off, while the lower part continues to grow. The decaying upper part forms a soil. Birds add their excrement to it. They come to new islands from old islands, and bring seeds in their droppings. These produce the fronds you see and the other vegetation.” She pointed at a clump of bamboo-like plants.

He asked, “Where did those rocks come from?”

There were several whitish boulders, with a diameter of about twelve feet, beyond the bamboos.

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