The way across land was through dense jungle, and an approach from the sea was difficult because along the entire rocky coastline there was only one small jetty. The Qataari community seemed to be self-sufficient in every way, and their customs, culture, and social structure were all but unknown. The Qataari were thought to be of unique cultural importance in the world: their society apparently represented an evolutionary link between the civilized nations of the north, the people of the Archipelago, and the barbarians and peasants of the south. Several ethnologists had visited the peninsula over the years, but all had been frustrated in their work by the same silent waiting that Jenessa had described. Only one aspect of their life had been established, although its details were as much conjecture as knowledge: the Qataari dramatized. Aerial photographs, and the reports of visitors, revealed that there were open-air auditoria by every village, and there were always people gathered there. The speculation was that the Qataari depended on drama as a symbolic means of action: for decision-making, for the resolution of problems, for celebrations. What few pieces of Qataari literature had reached the world’s libraries were baffling to a non-Qataari readership: the prose and verse were impenetrably elliptical, and any character named played a symbolic role, as well as having a seemingly endless list of contracted, familiar, or formal names, and appeared to represent a part in a scheme much larger than what could be inferred as the subject matter. The writing of theses on Qataari literature was a popular activity in northern universities. The few Qataari who traveled, who visited the northern continent, spoke obliquely of such matters, seeing themselves as actors in a cultural play. One Qataari, in Ordier’s country a few years before, had been secretly filmed while he was alone; evidently deep within a personal drama, the Qataari remonstrated with himself, declaimed to an imaginary audience, wept and shouted. A few minutes later the same man had been seen at a public reception, and no one present had discerned anything unusual about his behavior. The war had come, inevitably, to the Qataari peninsula. It had begun when one of the two combatant sides had started the construction of a deep-water refueling base on the northernmost tip of the peninsula. As this was an area hitherto unclaimed by either side, it constituted a breach of whatever neutrality the Qataari had enjoyed until then. The opposing side had invaded the peninsula, and before long a devastating struggle had begun. Soon the Qataari knew, as the rest of their continent knew, the shattering totality of the war, with its neural dissociation gases, its scintillas, its scatterflames, its acid rains. The villages were flattened, the rose plantations burned, the people killed in thousands; in a few weeks the Qataari society was destroyed. A relief mission was sent from the north, and within a few more weeks the surviving Qataari were evacuated unresisting from their homeland. They had been brought to Tumo—one of the islands nearest to the peninsula—and a refugee camp had been built for them. They were housed and fed by the Tumoit authorities, but the Qataari, independent as ever, did what they could to close their camp to the outside world. In the first few days huge canvas screens had been put up around the perimeter fence, silent guards stood by all the entrances. Everyone who had entered the camp since—medical teams, agricultural advisers, builders—returned with the same report: the Qataari were waiting. It was not polite waiting, it was not impatient waiting. As Jenessa had said, it was a cessation of activity, a long silence. Ordier realized that Jacj Parren and Jenessa were still arguing, and that Parren was addressing him: “…You say that if we climbed this ridge of yours, we should see guards?” “Yes.” Jenessa answered for him.