de the evening breeze. Somewhere a dog barked. Somewhere else a woman
called her family home to supper. Old sounds. Older, literally, than
this world.

"What are the people like, out there?"

He looked at her face, eager and worried at the same time, and he
smiled. "You'll like them, Trina," he said. "They're like--well, they're
more like _this_ than anything else."

He gestured, vaguely, at the farmhouse lights ahead of them, at the slow
walking figures of the young couples out enjoying the warm spring
evening, at the old farmer leading his plow horse home along the path.

"They live in villages, not too different, from yours. And in cities.
And on farms."

"And yet, you like it there, don't you?" she said.

He nodded. "Yes, I like it there."

"But you don't like it here. Why?"

"If you don't understand by now, Trina, I can't explain."

They walked on. Night came swiftly, crowding the rose and purple tints
out of the western sky, closing in dark and cool and sweet smelling
about them. Ahead, a footbridge loomed up out of the shadows. There was
the sound of running water, and, on the bank not far from the bridge,
the low murmuring of a couple of late lingering fishermen.

"The people live out in the open, like this?" Trina said.

"Yes."

"Not underground? Not under a dome?"

"I've told you before that it's like Earth, Trina. About the same size,
even."

"_This_ is about the same size, too."

"Not really. It only looks that way."

The fishermen glanced up as they passed, and then bent down over their
lines again. Lucas Crossman, from Trina's town, and Jake Krakorian from
the southern hemisphere, up to visit his sister Lucienne, who had just
had twins....

Trina said hello to them as she passed, and found out that the twins
looked just like their mother, except for Grandfather Mueller's eyes,
and then she turned back to Max.

"Do people live all over the planet?"

"On most of it. The land sections, that is. Of course, up by the poles
it's too cold."

"But how do they know each other?"

He stopped walking and stared at her, not understanding for a minute.
Girl's laughter came from the bushes, and the soft urging voice of one
of the village boys. Max looked back at the fishermen and then down at
Trina and shook his head.

"They don't all know each other," he said. "They couldn't."

She thought of New Chile, where her cousin Isobelle was married last
year, and New India, which would follow them