hat I wish to speak. But first of all, I must hear your
words, and know what is in your minds. Who is the eldest among you? Let
him come forth and sit in the front, where I may speak with him."

Then he relaxed while they argued in respectfully subdued voices.
Finally one decrepit oldster, wearing a cloak of yellow ribbons and
carrying a highly obscene and ineffably sacred wooden image, was brought
forward and installed on the front-and-center cushion. He'd come from
some village to the west that hadn't gotten the word of the swarming;
Gonzales' men had snagged him while he was making crop-fertility magic.

Miles showed him the respect due his advanced age and obviously great
magical powers, displaying, as he did, an understanding of the regalia.

"I have indeed lived long," the old shoonoo replied. "I saw the Hot Time
before; I was a child of so high." He measured about two and a half feet
off the floor; that would make him ninety-five or thereabouts. "I
remember it."

"Speak to us, then. Tell us of the Gone Ones, and of the Sky Fire, and
of the Last Hot Time. Speak as though you alone knew these things, and
as though you were teaching me."

Delighted, the oldster whooshed a couple of times to clear his outlets
and began:

"In the long-ago time, there was only the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit
made the World, and he made the People. In that time, there were no more
People in the World than would be in one village, now. The Gone Ones
dwelt among them, and spoke to them as I speak to you. Then, as more
People were born, and died and went to join the Gone Ones, the Gone Ones
became many, and they went away and build a place for themselves, and
built the Sky Fire around it, and in the Place of the Gone Ones, at the
middle of the Sky Fire, it is cool. From their place in the Sky Fire,
the Gone Ones send wisdom to the people in dreams.

"The Sky Fire passes across the sky, from east to west, as the
Always-Same does, but it is farther away than the Always-Same, because
sometimes the Always Same passes in front of it, but the Sky Fire never
passes in front of the Always-Same. None of the grandfather-stories, not
even the oldest, tell of a time when this happened.

"Sometimes the Sky Fire is big and bright; that is when the Gone Ones
feast and dance. Sometimes it is smaller and dimmer; then the Gone Ones
rest and sleep. Sometimes it is close, and there is a Hot Time;
sometimes it goes far away, and then there is a Co