ut I must discuss
it with the Spokesmen of the Gens!"

On the table before Sarka was a row of vari-colored lights, whose source
was beneath the floor of the laboratory, out of the heart of the
master-mountain, part of the intricate machinery of this laboratory
which had been almost twenty centuries in the perfecting. In the
dwelling place of each of the Spokesmen was a single light, colored like
one of the lights on Sarka's table. To speak with any one of the
Spokesmen Sarka had but to dim the properly colored light by covering it
with the palm of his hand. The light in the home of the thus signalled
Spokesman was dimmed, and the Spokesman would know that Sarka desired
to converse with him.

Sarka noted the blue light, and shuddered. For if he covered it with his
palm it would summon Dalis, a great scientist, but an erratic one, as
Sarka the First had so clearly shown.

Sarka turned again to the Beryl. The area of which Dalis was Spokesman
was, roughly speaking, that part of what had once been the Pacific
Ocean, north of a line drawn east and west through the southernmost of
the Hawaiian Islands, northward to the Pole. The home of Dalis was in
the heart of what had once been an island historians claimed had been
called Oahu, now a mountain peak still retaining a hint of the
pre-Discovery name: Ohi.

* * * * *

The total number of the Spokesmen, the oldest of earth's inhabitants,
was twelve, and the remainder of the Earth not under the tutelary rule
of Dalis was divided up among the other eleven Spokesmen. Cleric, for
example, father of Jaska, was Spokesman of that area which men had once
called Asia, the vast valleys of the once Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean; while the youngest of the Spokesmen, in a manner serving
his apprenticeship, was tutelary head of the vast plateau once called
Africa. The name of this man was Gerd.

"He, at least," thought Sarka, thinking of each Spokesman in turn and
cataloguing each in his mind, "will be with me. I wonder about the
others, and especially Dalis. He has always hated us!"

Then, with the air of a man who has made up his mind and crosses his
particular Rubicon in a single step, Sarka rose to his feet and passed
along the row of vari-colored lights, covering each one with his hand in
rapid succession.

Then he sat down again, almost holding his breath, and waited. As he
stared at the row of lights his eyes lingered longest on two which w