“But is it possible that we feel nothing? No movement?” whispered the baker, who had run off for a mid-morning drink without taking off his apron. He had looked around quizzically, obviously looking for someone to lash out at, and finally settled on Sgolot. For Luoth had wisely blended in by pretending to examine some papers he had with him. But he was listening. Unfortunately, he heard everything.

  “You forget that gommite is soft, it stretches and shortens smoothly without tugging,” the elder replied.

  The insectform girl brought him the sugar bowl. Luoth thanked her with a nod. But what the heck had he been stirring for half an hour, he muttered, looking grimly at the mint tea and then at the teaspoon in his fingers.

  “It's like living in a rubber band. We won't notice anything until the very end,” Moi explained.

  “Just as well,” muttered a harsh voice that Luoth had trouble recognizing as Seluma's.

  The owner had retreated to the darkest corner of the bar, to the right of the service door, among empty barrels and crates. At first, he had not even seen her, a motionless figure huddled in the half-light.

  She drank from a deep porcelain boot-shaped mug.

  The professor, a teetotaler, filled himself with snacks. Luoth could see him constantly fishing from the bowl and placing a handful in his mouth, seamlessly. He did not even stop to speak.

  “It was a small nest, just a nest of the Pipers,” he began to explain, chewing. “Nothing more than a lump of gommite in a crevice when the crack opened.”

  “Meaning what?” wondered the old man.

  He stood upright on his stool, his cap thrown back.

  “Faspath opens wide and woosh, gommite is dragged for three miles?”

  They were going a bit overboard with the rubber band thing, Luoth had to admit.

  But there was nothing he could do. Sgolot was a bit tipsy and very talkative.

  “Everyone knows that Nelatte has always existed! It was created by a horse-legged man who talked to the sun!” he declared, almost shouting at the ceiling.

  “What?” thundered Seluma. The Lumacid swayed, leaning forward to approach the light. But after a suspended moment, she fell backward in her inertia.

  “My grandmother said so,” said Sgolot, as lost as a scolded child. “And her grandmother said it to her. Or at least that's what my grandmother used to say to me, that she was told... Yeah, whatever.”

  His slurred voice faded to nothing. The man followed the pattern of the wood grain on the counter with his finger.

  “What's a horse?” the baker wondered.

  “A quadruped that runs very fast,” Moi explained.

  “Yes, and it has hoofed feet, like cows and sheep,” added Sgolot.

  “Let me correct you, gentlemen: the hooves of cows and sheep are split in two, but those of horses are not.”

  “What is a cow?” continued the boy.

  The man in the cap pounded the bench with a big fist that made the mug clink.

  “But yeah, let's forget that the rest of the world exists, let's not wonder where what we eat comes from, what we wear, what we...” he huffed, almost sputtered, and struck the surface again, this time with his open palm. “You know what the problem is with you kids today, with no traditions and no history? That for you there is only Nelatte!”

  “Soon they won't have that problem anymore,” the owner muttered from the shadows.

  “My grandmother knew more about it than all of you put together,” Sgolot sentenced.

  I'm going to get up now, Luoth thought. I'm going to get up and go home. He couldn't stand to hear any more nonsense.

  But he had been on the verge of getting up and leaving for at least an hour, and instead he did not move.

  He waited for the fragrant lady with the pink ringlets. Now that they might all die, would he find the courage to introduce himself?

  “Talking to the sun…” The professor sighed in his careful and polite tone. “I know that legend too, though I have only read about it. Ironically, it is not from Nelatte. That's what the northerners believe.”

  Seluma made his sarcasm audible.

  “How do you talk to the sun? Good morning, you look radiant today!”

  The professor showed a wry smile, too tired to take the joke.

  Luoth watched him from behind his clipboard of papers.

  The sight of him made him feel nauseous. He couldn't help but think back to that horrible moment.

  To reach the Square of a Thousand Drops, he had had to swim against the current. Why he had done so, why in the world he had wanted to see what was going on in the place from which everyone else was fleeing, instead of following common sense and fleeing himself, joining the crowds of madmen who were running aimlessly on the streets and bridges, almost coming to blows as they climbed into the elevator pipes... was still an unfathomable mystery. How had he not been infected by the panic of his fellow citizens? It would have been better.

  Where there had been merriment and celebration only moments before, there were now screams of horror, the bright floor smeared with food and drink spilled and trampled in the fury, stalls and tables upturned, uncovered, smashed, decorations torn down. It looked like the end of the world.

  Two people remained alone at the center of it all. One was Moi, distraught, kneeling in the puddle formed by the dissolving bodies of the emissaries, his head thrown back to look up at a group of Pipers that were flying in circles above them, moaning flute notes.

  The other was the mayor, weeping. He was trembling, swallowing soft sobs, his regular features barely drawn together in a slight grimace of pain. The crown of stems hung limply from his neck as he shed tears that solidified in the air: needles, stills, and crystal beads that rolled like marbles onto the tiles. The guards hesitated to approach, horrified by the spectacle.

  Luoth would never forget it either.

  Now the professor had tidied up, found another good suit in the back of the closet, and sat with the calmness of a veteran accustomed to keeping himself polished; only the constant chewing of pretzels betrayed his nervousness.

  Who knew what had become of Attan Ze Kosh. No longer would he tease him, no longer would he think of him as devoid and incapable of normal emotions. But surely the mayor had gotten his act together, as had Moi, and perhaps even now he was preparing measures to deal with the crisis.

  The only one who wavered, who no longer knew which way to turn, was himself.

  He had believed he would find support in Seluma, confident that his friend's strong practical sense would give him the jolt he needed to get back on track.

  Instead, she lay there, shapeless and apathetic, like a slug.

  Seeing her like that filled him with a dull rage.

  He had spent his childhood watching a person remain inert in an armchair, tormented by passions so uncontrollable, extreme, and contradictory that they had completely paralyzed her. Luoth had never reacted then, had never allowed his pain to manifest, had stopped listening to it, had denied it until it was extinguished, a flame smothered by its own ashes.

  What if I catch fire myself?

  That had been his fear as a child. He had believed it to be his fate, inescapable, hereditary. But as he had grown up, he had left those fears behind; by now he had proven himself capable of overcoming any crisis by remaining calm, with a clear mind. He gave his passions prudent, well-balanced release valves to prevent them from accumulating, dismissing them with a detachment equal to the needs of the body.

  In this way he had always managed without being touched.

  But now, seeing his friend in that condition made his hands itch, clenched into fists by an intense and desperate desire to hit the sandbags, to break down the barrier. That desire, which he had thought had been extinguished, dulled, instead resurfaced more vividly and agonizingly than ever. His throat tightened in a spasm of crying.

  I am here, Mother, look at me!

  Recognize me!

  “She has locked herself in, Luoth.”

  “I want to open the lock!”

  He forced himself to breathe and loosen the clenched hands that were crumpling his papers.

  Seluma was nothing like her mother. Quite the opposite. Seluma was never distracted by passions; she systematically avoided them. This was just a difficult day, as it could happen to anyone. She would recover.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “It's a beautiful story,” Moi continued. “A city born from the expression of joy of an ancient god who breathes his own breath into it.”

  “The Pipers built it,” the baker objected, though he was respectful of the other's obvious intellectual superiority.

  “Built by the Pipers, created by the guy with the horse feet,” grumbled Sgolot, in a gurgle that came from the bottom of the mug.

  “I don't understand what they're for,” the young man insisted again, and with that last remark he took his leave. Shops and businesses were open as usual, and bread couldn't be more in demand.

  “Would you like some treats?” a high voice whirred in Luoth's ear. “We have orange cookies, strawberry cake, donuts...”

  How exactly did the strange creature speak? It had a mouth like an insect’s...

  “Orange cookies, please.”

  The waitress snapped away so quickly that the displacement of air caused him to shift the papers he was holding. Luoth took a small sip of tea. Still too hot.

  “Instead,” the professor continued, pondering, “it is said in the southern regions that a place like Nelatte has always existed in people's memories, a myth lost in the past.”

  “Meaning?” asked Sgolot. “How can something be a myth if it is true?”

  Moi sighed, a puff of breath lingering as he stared sadly at the nearly empty bowl of pretzels. The automaton bartender immediately replaced it with a full cup, but he had lost interest.

  “It is said that an old Lumacid told this story as she wandered from city to city with a strange human friend... that she spoke of a city floating in the void when Faspath did not yet exist. Don't you know this legend, Seluma?”

  Seluma barely grunted.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Your kind usually knows a lot.”

  The other did not answer.

  Luoth swallowed a long gulp of tea, annoyed. It was not true that Seluma did not know this legend; he was sure that he himself had told her about it more than once. However, he did not know about the version that included a strange human friend.

  “It's hard to imagine a time when Faspath didn't even exist,” Sgolot quipped, suddenly sober. “What was here? Just land?”

  “There's a story in my family,” a lively voice interrupted, as the plate of cookies materialized next to Luoth's cup.

  The insectoid maid waved her antennae under all the stares.

  “Sorry, I shouldn't speak and interrupt you gentlemen,” she said and retreated with her head bowed.

  Moi held her back, hungry for news.

  “No, speak, please!”

  She was shaking all over, unable to stand still.

  “A distant ancestor of mine used to say that here, in this very place, before the earth opened up, there was a fabulous garden city ruled by a beautiful queen, a city where people never went hungry or cold and never had to work for a living. There were only games, music, and jokes. But one day the queen got sick and died, and the city was destroyed when Globus fell.”

  “Globus?” asked Moi and Sgolot at the same time.

  The waitress perked up.

  “The big sphere that fell from the sky,” she said, and before anyone could ask any more questions, she was gone, dancing between the tables like an insect.

  “Those ball stories again,” Seluma muttered gloomily.

  The professor's gaze had become hazy, lost in the distance. Surely, he saw more than the club's smoke and the gleaming walls of the shell.

  “What about the Pipers?”

  Luoth was too far away to be sure, but he could have sworn he saw tears in Moi's eyes.

  “The Pipers will be saved. They will fly away,” he murmured, before remembering that he definitely did not want to get involved in this crazy discussion.

  The professor turned to him with what sounded like a growl.

  “You think so? Sure, it's easy to think that flying creatures don't have to do anything but get up in the sky and go! No danger! Off they go!”

  “And isn't it?” muttered Sgolot, half lying on the counter.

  “Nelatte is their life, not just a home. They can't just break away from it and move on as if nothing happened!”

  “Why not? Look, you're confusing them with those other poor people, the worms,” Luoth said, shaking his head. They were all in a highly altered mental and emotional state. Easy to get on each other's nerves and argue for no reason.

  “You don't understand anything,” the professor blurted out, running his hand through his hair so quickly like he wanted to tear it apart. “To you they are just things, ugly, misshapen animals that make a racket! But they are the real inhabitants of Nelatte!”

  He looked around, backed away from the bar with frantic steps, his eyes wide. There, now he looked possessed again, just as Luoth had seen him in the square.

  “And I, I, I'm almost there. I'm almost there and I can understand them and be understood, build a bridge between our civilization and theirs. Because even the Pipers have traditions and stories and a whole culture that we are too presumptuous to see! I'm almost there, and I'm not going to stop!”

  He grabbed his hat and hurried out, the cloak swirling behind him, catching the doorframe for a moment.

  Luoth tapped his palm on his forehead, rolling his eyes. But no one met his gaze.

  “The professor's head gets too cold when he stands on the terrace of the academy; his brain freezes,” he judged.

  “It wasn't that cold,” objected Sgolot.

  “But it is up there. It's the highest point in Nelatte!”

  “Nah, the highest point in Nelatte is the golden antenna of the communications building.”

  “Whatever, the highest usable point in town.”

  “And then there's that roof where they put all that weird weather control stuff...”

  How much patience was needed with some people.

  “Sgolot, that's the terrace of the academy.”

  “Ah... And what does it do there?”

  The banker sighed loudly.

  “His experiments to observe the Pipers. It's one of their favorite gathering places, and Moi is a great scholar on the subject...”

  “Yes, yes, I know: He is writing a paper. But I wonder, is it necessary to climb into the middle of the Nine Gates to look for the Pipers? But if they come here to eat!”

  The old man's words drew a few laughs from the audience.

  “He wants to see them in their own environment, without outside influences,” Luoth said. What bunch of rough people was he wasting his time with?

  “I don't see us influencing them; they don't even notice us!”

  Luoth lost his patience.

  “Oh, I mean, think about it. What paper does he publish? “Behavior of the Pipers in Seluma's Restaurant”? You have to immerse yourself in the natural environment of these creatures. If you want to study someone, you have to go to their home, not the other way around!”

  This seemed to silence his drinking companion. But only for a few moments. A mischievous gleam returned to animate Sgolot's drunken gaze.

  “I will not have him in my place! Study or no study!” he ranted, slamming his hand on the bar and bursting into a fat laugh. He almost dropped his cap.

  Luoth did not answer. He picked up his cup and moved to another seat, far away from the other drinkers he no longer wanted to deal with, and closer to the dark corner and the silent creature brooding in solitude.

  The boot-shaped mug lay forgotten, still half-full.

  “It would be nice to mope and all that.” He sighed. “But we have no time to curse our luck. We must begin the preparations. The city must be evacuated; there is no other way. I expect the announcement of the state of emergency at any moment.”

  Sgolot had heard, and leaned out, his hand cupped around his ear, toward the front door, waiting for the megaphones and alarms.

  “I'm not coming,” Seluma's voice said as she remained in the shadows. She must have shrunk, thickened, retracted her antennae and eyes into her head, and perhaps even her head into her body, for to Luoth she appeared to be a shapeless pile of rags.

  “What are you talking about?” he blurted.

  And he had thought she would be the one to spur him on!

  “This is the stage of life when you just want to stay in your shell and enjoy the rest and the fruits of your labor,” she explained, her voice muffled and distant. “Certainly not the time to drop everything and start all over again.”

  Well, it was time to be honest, even brutal. As one does among friends.

  “Seluma, you came here as a girl, two hundred years ago, if I'm not mistaken,” he began.

  “One hundred and forty-seven,” she corrected him.

  “Very well. You started to build this place, opened the shop...”

  He remained silent. He waited.

  The dark silhouette of her friend made a thin extroflexion, a sketch of an antenna.

  “And?” she asked. She showed little interest in the dull tone of her voice, but by now both eyes were back in Luoth's direction.

  “Forgive me for saying so, but it seems to me that you've been in your shell all your life!”

  He heard her huff.

  “So what? Is it mandatory to move around? You don't understand...”

  “No, in fact, Moi has already told us. Ignorant and insensitive. But I guess he had it in for you, too.”

  Seluma hesitated with a snap, a catch of dry breath that almost sounded like a sob.

  “My species is different from yours. I hold within me the memories of all those who have gone before me, memories as vivid as if they were my own. To these I add the knowledge of my husbands, and the husbands of each of my ancestors. I am the sixth in line.”

  Luoth shuddered. Except to explain why talking heads occasionally popped out of her, Seluma had never mentioned anything about her biological peculiarities, and the banker realized he had no idea how Lumacids lived, what kind of civilization they belonged to.

  “I've seen it all,” she confessed, pulling herself together.

  “Eh, seen it all, come on!” he burst out. He jumped off the stool, this time even abandoning the cup, and though he knew he was taking a risk, he took a few steps toward his friend, his hands gesturing. “Who on earth can see everything, even in six lifetimes? Do you know how big the world is?”

  Talking in fits and starts seemed to be the only thing that could cheer Seluma up. Sometimes he was able to make her laugh.

  “Have you ever visited the other two rifts? Huh?”

  “No,” she whispered, uncertain, and reached out to spread her tentacles at the sides of her mouth.

  “They will close as well,” a drunken voice croaked.

  Thank you, Sgolot.