"I do believe you, I do, Billin, I want to believe you so much, but that's it — what you tell about is so perfect, how can I trust it? It makes everything here so terrible, and Stipock says that this is the best place —"
"He says that because of the iron —"
"I know, I know, please go to bed now, Billin, you're tired —"
"I can't sleep."
But he did, and woke in the morning still filled with despair. Because sometime in the night he had wakened after dreaming of the place he had been to. The dream had seemed so real. He had tasted the fruits again, and swum again in the bay, and drunk from the cold river and lain in the grass growing thickly on the riverbanks. He had felt the rain cover him again, beating warm and fresh on his skin, making him clean.
And he wondered if it had been a dream before.
And, once he wondered, he knew that it had. How could it be real? He closed his eyes and tried to picture the place, tried to imagine the taste of the berries. But all he could taste was the dust that always hung in the air; all he could see when he closed his eyes was red.
So he didn't speak of it anymore, not for weeks.
It was time for the rains to come. The rains didn't come.
"Don't worry," Stipock said. "These things vary by as much as two or three weeks."
After six weeks the rains still hadn't come; but the winds came on schedule. Last year the winds had been cooling, drying out the soaking earth (for that short time of rain and then wind, the colony had been bearable); this year the winds were hot and dry, the breath of dying, and after four days of dust and sand whipping into ears and eyes and noses and mouths, burning the skin of those caught outside, drying out or silting up every barrel of water, every cistern, filling every ditch, tearing leaves off the trees, after four days of that one of Serret's and Rebo's younger twins died.
They buried him in the sand during one of the brief lulls in the wind.
The next morning the dessicated body was in the open, the skin flayed away. The wind, by one of those cruel freaks of nature, had blown the baby so that it jammed its parents' front door closed. Serret swore as he shoved the door open that morning — screamed and wept when he found what had closed it so tightly.
They burned the body at noon. The wind kept putting the fire out.
And the next day two more babies died, and Wevin, Weerit's wife, died when her baby tried to come four months early.
They couldn't bury the bodies, and they couldn't burn them, so they carried them out into the sand and left them, knowing the desert would surely dry them out.
That evening Billin huddled into his last cloak and crept against the wind to Serret's and Rebo's house. While there he told them what the water had tasted like in the land he had found. But he knew they hated him for saying it, since they believed he was insane, and it made it hurt even worse.
And from time to time during the terrible three weeks that the wind lasted, Billin dropped a word here and there. "Fruit," he would say, "growing off the trees. Wet and sweet." The person he was talking to would frown and move away.
"Sweet water in a wide, cool river." And the person would lick his lips and then say, "Dammit, keep your madness to yourself."
"Rain," he would say, and a child nearby would say, "What's rain, Mama?" and the mother would weep and curse Billin for his cruelty.
And Billin cursed himself, for he, too, wondered if he were mad. For now that he himself doubted what he had seen, he didn't know why he kept talking about it, why every morning and every night and the hours in between he would keep seeing that fruit before his eyes again, bushes more red than green, and water.
"Am I crazy?" he asked Cirith.
"Hopelessly," she answered, and kissed him. But he didn't know if she was teasing; finally was sure that she was not.
And then the wind stopped. One morning everyone awoke to the sudden silence, to the sudden heat (even before sunrise) when the wind didn't penetrate the cracks in the woodwork.
They put on their ragged clothing and went outside to see. The sky was clear. The dust had settled (mostly) to the ground. And now, for the first time, they could see the damage. They saw their suffering by moonlight, and realized before daybreak that they were through.
The sand had built up against the trees, in some places ten or eleven meters above the old level. Houses that had been on level ground now seemed to have been built leaning against sand dunes that were higher than they.
The irrigation ditches were all gone, with no trace left of where they had even been.
Two hundred meters to the west lay the new course of the stream, a wide shallow trickling stream, full of mud and barely drinkable.
The few sheep were all dead, except a couple of lambs that had been kept indoors.
There was no scrap of food anywhere that was not impregnated with sand. That was no surprise, since sand was the main seasoning and the main flavor that they had known for months. But the people, as they talked, realized that all the children were complaining of the pain of defecating, for their stools were filled with sand. And now all the bellies were distended, because food was short.
And water less yet.
And then, as the sun broke over the horizon, promising the terrible, unending heat they had known before, Billin scrambled up a sand dune that leaned against a house and cried out at the top of his voice, "It's enough! We're finished here!"
They turned and looked at him.
"There's no hope here anymore! We have no water, we have no food, we have no clothing, our children are dying!"
In alarm, Wix and Hoom came running to him. "Don't talk like that," Wix said.
"I take no orders from you," Billin said. Then he shouted to everyone, "It's listening to Stipock and Wix and Hoom and the Bitch that's got us where we are! I say I'm through taking their orders! Who made them Wardens! Who put them in charge?"
Hoom climbed up the dune and took Billin by the arm. "What did you call my wife, you bastard!" Hoom shouted at him.
"How did you know I meant your wife?" Billin said triumphantly. At that Hoom swung back his arm to hit him, but Billin dodged and cried out, "See! The murderer wants to kill again! Murderer!"
And at the word Hoom backed away, confused. By now all the people had gathered, even Stipock, who watched dispassionately from a few meters behind the rest.
Billin pointed his finger at Stipock and shouted (and his mouth was dry and it was hard to make the words come, but still he shouted), "There he is! The man who taught us that Jason wasn't God! Well, that's true enough. But neither are you, Stipock! You and your damned iron. Machines that fly through the sky! Where are they! What about a machine that keeps our children alive, what about that? Where's that, Stipock?"
People began to murmur to each other. Cirith came to the foot of the dune and spoke to her husband. "Billin, don't make people lose their hope," she said.
"Damn right," he answered. To the crowd he said, "I'm making you lose your hope, my wife says. Damn right, I say. Look around you! They say I'm crazy, but only a crazy man would look at this and still hope!"
"He's crazy!" Dilna shouted. "Don't listen to him!"
Billin ignored her. "Think for a minute! Think of this! You all saw how much food I took with me. Enough for three weeks! How long was I gone? How long?"
Three months, they realized.
"Why didn't I starve to death? I came back so weary I was sick, came back hungry because I had run out of food two days before. But not ten weeks before! That's because I found food! Whether you believe all that I said or not, you have to believe this: I found food out there! And that's more than you'll find here!"
Billin looked at Stipock and still the man didn't show any emotion at all. Billin looked at the impassive face and realized he had no hope of persuading anyone. When Billin had stirred crowds before, he had done it with the words Stipock had taught him. And now Stipock was silent and stood there uncaring, because he knew that Billin couldn't persuade the crowd on his own.