ark, anyway," said Webber.

The old people and the little children ran strongly.

"Is their village there?" Kieran asked, indicating the distant
mountains.

"They don't live in villages," Paula said. "But the mountains are safer.
More places to hide."

"You said this was a closed area. What is it, a hunting preserve?"

"The Sakae don't hunt them any more."

"But they used to?"

"Well," Webber said, "a long time ago. Not for food, the Sakae are
vegetarians, but--"

"But," said Paula, "they were the dominant race, and the people were
simply beasts of the field. When they competed for land and food the
people were hunted down or driven out." She swung an expressive hand
toward the landscape beyond the trees. "Why do you think they live in
this desert, scraping a miserable existence along the watercourses? It's
land the Sakae didn't want. Now, of course, they have no objection to
setting it aside as a sort of game preserve. The humans are protected,
the Sakae tell us. They're living their natural life in their natural
environment, and when we demand that a program be--"

She was out of breath and had to stop, panting. Webber finished for her.

"We want them taught, lifted out of this naked savagery. The Sakae say
it's impossible."

"Is it true?" asked Kieran.

"No," said Paula fiercely. "It's a matter of pride. They want to keep
their dominance, so they simply won't admit that the people are anything
more than animals, and they won't give them a chance to be anything
more."

There was no more talking after that, but even so the three outlanders
grew more and more winded and the people gained on them. The sun went
down in a blaze of blood-orange light that tinted the trees in even more
impossible colors and set the river briefly on fire. Then night came,
and just after the darkness shut down the patrol craft returned, beating
up along the winding river bed. Kieran froze under the black trees and
the hair lifted on his skin. For the first time he felt like a hunted
thing. For the first time he felt a personal anger.

The patrol craft drummed away and vanished. "They won't come back until
daylight," Webber said.

* * * * *

He handed out little flat packets of concentrated food from his pockets.
They munched as they walked. Nobody said anything. The wind, which had
dropped at sundown, picked up from a different quarter and began to blow
again. It got cold. After a while they