Upside down, crawling on the gommite structure, she felt like a spider in a web. Away from the center of Nelatte, the city was much thinner, and the airstream-induced tremors could be felt more intensely. Something had just fallen from above. Just a spot of moving color, glimpsed with her peripheral vision. The cargo yard was on the west side, where the destruction would come from. Seluma did not look in that direction, either because the setting sun was illuminating that very area, hurting her sensitive eyes, or because she feared seeing the Rift close in real time, a monstrous nutcracker with her in the middle of it.

  A cooing of flutes had already informed her of the Pipers' presence, but earlier, as she had delved into the lattice of gommite tendrils, she had been unable to tell where they were. Now she glimpsed fleeting black shapes passing above her, heard their calls closer. Coming out into an open area, a kind of perforated nest, she finally saw them: a small group gathered in one place, engaged in something that required concentration and cooperation.

  Forgetting her mission for a moment and needing to catch her breath, she paused to watch.

  One of the thinner Pipers was pulling something out of its mouth. A lump of soft, bluish material that it crushed several times in its fist, shaping it. A companion took some, pinched a small amount and pulled it out of the mass like a thread. The other continued to soften the material, while the second Piper produced and stretched the thin threads over a cord of gommite at its feet. A third went over the work of the two with care and attention, as deft with its claws as a goldsmith. The rest of the group had split up to do the same in other places.

  They were still repairing and smoothing the gommite in spite of everything.

  With the same clarity as a memory from a few hours ago —what were two centuries to a Lumacid?— she saw again the thin, weak little man with his white mane sticking up in all directions, a finger on his lips telling her to be quiet and move carefully.

  “I'm going to show you something special,” he promised. “Something no one else in Nelatte has.”

  And truly, she had been impressed, amazed, and incredulous as she stepped out onto the roof terrace of this private mansion, his luxurious residence. The terrace was partially covered with latticework, and dozens of Pipers dangled from the light wooden beams, quiet and tame, not at all intimidated by the presence of the two earth creatures. They ate, arranged around upside-down tables like well-behaved guests, helping themselves to bunches of bluish fruit and sipping from closed containers, managing not to spill a drop on the floor.

  “Even they appreciate my cooking,” he had told her with a shy smile. “I discovered it by accident and have since learned to enjoy their company. They are extraordinary creatures.”

  It had not taken her long to overcome her fears and get close enough to almost touch the Pipers, to examine them closely enough to notice the thin, rubbery scales that made up their skin, to study the curious shape of their noses, pierced like a musical instrument.

  He had grown serious, his voice firmer.

  “That is the second condition of our pact. I want you to continue to look after them. It will be expensive to feed them, but I will leave you more than enough to care for them.”

  Only then was the old man moved by the thought of his own impending death, the thought of having to leave his black friends behind.

  Myriaky. Why had she not met him before? She could have learned a lot from him —maybe she would have become a different person.

  Seluma had kept her promise, at first only because of her unwavering sense of duty, but then gradually she had learned to consider the Pipers as her friends as well, and their company brought back the past, warmed her with the illusion of having her second husband beside her, of still feeling his quiet affection.

  And now, seeing the Pipers so intent on their work, Seluma could not resist the temptation to call them. She wished she could say something to them, let them know how grateful she was for their superhuman dedication. But it was no use. If they heard her —and the movements of their pointed ears suggested that they did— they considered her voice no more and no less than background noise. None of the Pipers even glanced at her.

  Despite all the really hot peppers they had devoured at her place.

  With all she had been through in these horrible days, nothing had brought her so near to tears, nothing had hurt her like those turned backs.

  And the voice of reason rebuked her even harder. You do not do your duty to receive thanks; you do it because it must be done! Pull yourself together, Seluma.

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  “But that's okay,” she murmured to the void above their heads. “I'm glad I met you anyway.”

  She went further down. The lower levels were mostly occupied by warehouses in various states of use and maintenance. There was a certain hustle and bustle there, she saw as she ended her descent and regained her balance. Cargo wagons were passing by at a rate not seen even on market days. But it was not all goods they were carrying. Some of those wagons were full of people, poorly dressed people with somber faces, crammed into uncomfortable spaces that were certainly not designed for human travel. Ah, that must have been the help the notables gave to the poorest. Allowing them to share the wagon with a few tons of crates and packages. Salted meat, canned goods, bales of cotton, spools of wire, coal, cellulose, Nelatteses. Would they have been sold by weight or by the piece?

  In the square of the freight yard, amidst wagons, hoists, cranes, and workers still intent on moving boxes, another group was waiting. A sparse group of a dozen standing motionlessly, straight and composed, symmetrically arranged like pawns on a chessboard. Charcoal robes and ruby belts, white hoods framing faces like ovals, making them all look the same, male and female, human and not, the only difference being the color of their skin. The real Palvi monks.

  How often had Seluma secretly made a superstitious gesture when seeing them, deliberately projecting a hand-shaped appendage. Depressing people who brought bad luck, everyone thought. But their dark religion did not pry into other people's lives, did not threaten punishment. When they preached, it was to find new followers, not to force their systems on families.

  In the panic of the moment, things must have gotten out of hand.

  Seluma stopped as soon as she heard the noise of the mad procession. They were coming down a ramp that spiraled around a huge pylon, its gommite so old and thick it looked white.

  Despite all the way down, the voices had not subsided, nor had the fury of those who rattled bells, tapped membranes, and shook foils. The patter of hundreds of feet —shod, webbed, and clawed— from a vibration in the air had become a thunderous wave, the roar of a raging river. Seluma stiffened in irrational fear of being overwhelmed by an unstoppable force of nature.

  The monks, standing in disciplined anticipation, straightened their shoulders and tightened their lips. There was a stick-like creature among them —it was impossible to tell its gender— with eyes like bulging buttons on either side of its narrow head. It looked like a staff from which they had hung a robe, but even that commanded respect, and the aura of its determination and moral strength to resist acts suggested by pain was a bubble of warmth that lapped the rough stone pavement. There was another Batracid, forced by his conformation to remain crouched, but even in that compressed position he radiated strength, the feeling of being faced with an immovable boulder.

  The procession did not slow at the sight of them, nor did the intensity of the lamentations and foul incantations diminish. But they all stopped and suddenly fell silent as one when the first line was three or four yards away from the group waiting for them. They could not have passed without a fight, and that was not the goal of any of them.

  Seluma crouched behind a pile of crates. The lower part of her body shook like pudding. She did not mind being seen. But behind the Palvi monks there was only the loading platform, a semicircular area jutting into the void, equipped with structures and scaffolding to ensure docking for airships and other aerial vehicles. It was empty now. The last freighter had just left, workers were picking up ropes and moorings.

  She was certainly not afraid of heights; nature had endowed her with the ability to move upside down, to cling to most surfaces; she had often used those qualities of hers in everyday life, but the platform was something from which not even a Lumacid could lean without shivering, without feeling chills, for it was really a balcony overlooking the abyss, the gaping maw of Faspath, and looking into it, the Rift became the whole universe, the only possible reality, boundless and ravenous.

  Even in his atheistic pragmatism, Seluma understood the monks' feelings and worship of Faspath. Faspath was the manifestation of a powerful and terrible goddess in this world, an essence that could be benevolent and generous, but that one could not hope to understand. And who had now decided to end it all, to withdraw and change the face of the planet. And all of them, little fleas on the back of a giant who had decided to scratch his own back, where could they expect to escape?

  One of the monks stepped forward, two steps toward the opponents who stood before him like a solid wall. Faces distorted by madness, drooling mouths and glaring eyes following his movements did not intimidate him. He raised his arms in a universal gesture of peace, and even Seluma was flooded with the desire to go up to him and receive his blessing.

  “Brothers, please, let's talk,” he said in a measured voice, the tone of an understanding parent.

  He had addressed the leaders of the procession, the individuals in the hats that attracted flies. His former followers, in all likelihood. A schism had arisen in a congregation that for five centuries had resisted change and passing fashions, the words of new missionaries, the ill-concealed hostility of certain politicians, the suspicion of various classes of citizens. Their unshakable faith had finally known doubt, had asked itself a question whose answer had dug a rift as deep as Faspath itself, to the point of splitting the sect in two.

  The end of the world could have that effect, Seluma thought, ashamed of her own cynicism. For now, she had no lifeline, no illusion, however childish or insane, to give her the impetus to react.