med. A band of
those-who-may-not-enter-cities attacked us, and we defended ourselves. I
travelled with so many men only because I feared to travel the passes
alone."

"But does that explain why you have returned at all?" The reason and
reproach in his voice made sense.

Finally I said, "Old One, we come as suppliants. My people appeal to
your people in the hope that you will be--" I started to say, _as
human_, stopped and amended "--that you will deal as kindly with them as
with me."

His face betrayed nothing. "What do you ask?"

I explained. I told it badly, stumbling, not knowing the technical
terms, knowing they had no equivalents anyway in the trailmen's
language. He listened, asking a penetrating question now and again. When
I mentioned the Terran Legate's offer to recognize the trailmen as a
separate and independent government, he frowned and rebuked me:

"We of the Sky People have no dealings with the Terrans, and care
nothing for their recognition--or its lack."

For that I had no answer, and the Old One continued, kindly but
indifferently, "We do not like to think that the fever which is a
children's little sickness with us shall kill so many of your kind. But
you cannot in all honesty blame us. You cannot say that we spread the
disease; we never go beyond the mountains. Are we to blame that the
winds change or the moons come together in the sky? When the time has
come for men to die, they die." He stretched his hand in dismissal. "I
will give your men safe-conduct to the river, Jason. Do not return."

Regis Hastur rose suddenly and faced him. "Will you hear me, Father?" He
used the ceremonial title without hesitation, and the Old One said in
distress, "The son of Hastur need never speak as a suppliant to the Sky
People!"

"Nevertheless, hear me as a suppliant, Father," Regis said quietly. "It
is not the strangers and aliens of Terra who are pleading. We have
learned one thing from the strangers of Terra, which you have not yet
learned. I am young and it is not fitting that I should teach you, but
you have said; are we to blame that the moons come together in the sky?
No. But we have learned from the Terrans not to blame the moons in the
sky for our own ignorance of the ways of the Gods--by which I mean the
ways of sickness or poverty or misery."

"These are strange words for a Hastur," said the Old One, displeased.

"These are strange times for a Hastur," said Regis loudly. The Old One
winced, an