Lessons for

Leading
Change
The
Gatebuilder’s Trial

by Gordon Rowland
copyright 2009 Gordon Rowland
 Contents

Note from the author

About the author
Note on pronunciation
Prelude
1. The Prison Box
Build from common ground
2. Systemi City
Stay open
3. Natursys Wood
Everything relates
4. The Sound Engine
People aren’t machines
5. The Clover Field
First make it in your mind
6. The Factory
Ground it in users’ experience
7. Jood
Learn to see things differently
8. Devel Gorge
Wake up your power to make
9. Breaking Through
Create your self
10. The Next Leap
Create with others, not for them
Appendix Places and things
People
 Note from the author

The story ahead is an allegory, that is, a work of fiction filled

with metaphors. In it I tell the tale of a “gatebuilder” who helps
people create openings to new futures. In our world we would call
this person a leader of change. We would find him or her working
with and within organizations to help create new opportunities,
shape organizational culture or image, develop innovative
processes, and so on. Each of the gatebuilder’s adventures thus has
meaning for a leader of change and provides a lesson that is made
explicit in the chapter subtitle.
The lessons come from systems design, a field that I believe
has much to offer us in the coming decades. A system is a whole
made up of interdependent parts, and design means to create
something new that has practical utility. Therefore, systems design
refers to thinking in terms of wholes and interdependencies as one
creates. In this book I am most concerned with social systems, for
example, organizations and other social institutions, so the lessons
are about creating for human groups. I have attempted to capture
basic principles from the past 50 years of work in the field and to
express them in a form that instructs yet is enjoyable. I hope you
find as much pleasure in reading the book as I did in writing it.
Ithaca, New York 2009
 About the author

Gordon Rowland is Professor of Communications in the Roy H.

Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. He is author of
four books and over forty book chapters and articles. His teaching
and research focus on organizational change, social systems
design, and human performance improvement. He may be
contacted at rowland@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-1031.
 Note on pronunciation

Capital letters that appear within words, or at the beginning and are
followed by a consonant, are pronounced as you would individual
letters. For example, the N in Nquiry is pronounced “en” and the U
in CeeU is pronounced “you.”
 Devel Gorge

Natursys

Ntract
Gage Fiebak
River River
Kupling
Fiebak Graf

Rkit
Klasrum

Ndus

Ntropy
Nterior
Dinamk Bay
Nviro
Ridge
Sea ValU
Systemi
Nquiry
City
Ocean

Gensys Desert

Dyvr
Edge Opin Clows Khanvr
Bay Bay Edge

BoundRE Ice

L-urn
 Lessons for Leading Change
The Gatebuilder’s Trial

Gate — a design; an opening to a new future; a symbol or

marker of passage from the present to a desired or
desirable future; a term sometimes used colloquially,
and often inappropriately, to mean “solution.”

Gatebuilder — a designer; one who helps individuals or groups

build gates, see and understand their situations, and
create new futures for themselves.

Demiourgos, GN 740,
The New Gatebuilding Guild Dictionary
 Chapter 1. The Prison Box
Build from common ground

“But Mistress Gatebuilder Demiou, she doesn’t listen. We were

trying to build a new gate, and every time I gave her the next
step she put the stones in the wrong place.”
“Xenoth, you spoke the correct words, but building a gate
together requires communication. You see, communicating is
much more than speaking words. It is sharing meaning, and
our meanings come from our experiences. So before we can
act together, we need to appreciate each other’s
experiences.”
“So we have to build one thing to be able to build something
else?”

Xenoth awoke with a start to the sound of his door giving way and
knew instantly that the goons had finally arrived. Why did they
need to do this in the middle of the night? Would anyone be
surprised at his ‘vanishing’? He had said his good-byes over a
month ago. Friends had even given a farewell feast in his honor.
Perhaps it was for the best though. His friends might put up a fight
and get hurt if they knew he was being taken. It was better to
simply go along. After all, he knew the cost when he wrote the
manifesto. He would be held in prison and given a public trial. It
didn’t even matter what crimes they named. Conviction was
certain. If the judge were lenient he would be executed quickly, but
that was doubtful. The manifesto was simply too strong and would
be read by too many people. They would need to make an example
of him. They would let him die slowly and ‘naturally,’ the thought
of which made him shudder. He had seen his last rejuv, and it
might take a decade or more for his cells to give out. Now it began.
The goons burst through the door into his bedchamber. He
could see the green glow of their visors in the darkness as they
moved to his sleep tube and pressed the release. He remained still
as the nearest goon did his work. He felt the mask come over his
face and wondered why that was necessary. He wouldn’t scream
out. And he knew where they would take him, so the effort to hide
the path was wasted. Unconsciousness came quickly as the gas
took effect. Then nothing.
Awakening without a sense of how much time had passed,
Xenoth could feel the goons holding him from behind, their rough
gloves cutting into his arms. As the effects of the gas wore off he
recognized the entry slit of a prison box in front of him. A decade
ago when they had first noticed his behavior they had shown him
such a box. Deep inside he had known that it was only a matter of
time. His fate had been sealed with the first thought of dissent.
The goon to his right leaned close to his ear and whispered
“You’ll be tried when you’re together.” But before he had a chance
to ask what that meant, they thrust him through the slit. He
tumbled across the floor, and even before regaining his feet, he
began to wonder where and when he would find himself. He knew
that it would be from his past as that was all these boxes could
create. It was the torture of the box that he would be cut off from
the future. The box would continuously recreate and force him to
relive past events exactly as they had occurred. An entirely true
story told again and again. But at least it would be his own story
and he might find comfort in reliving his more pleasant
experiences. Maybe he could even revive old friendships.
But there was only darkness. He wondered if it would take
the box some time to study his memories and match his senses. But
after only a few moments something about the box seemed
familiar. He stood and turned back and forth reaching out carefully
to find a wall or any other objects that might be in the way. In
another breath he realized that it was the smell that was familiar.
What was it? “Unnngh,” he groaned as he recognized the scent of
machines and melting grease. A factory on Klasrum. Not a
pleasant memory at all.
An image came gradually, but remained unfocused. It was
like staring at a blurred photo. Everything was right in general, but
wrong in detail. Actually it seemed that there were no details.
Then a voice hit him like a thunderclap. “Hey you!” Xenoth
jumped back, quickly hitting a wall and feeling there was no where
to go.
“Get out of my box!” the voice said. For a moment Xenoth
thought that the crats were sending directly into his mind, but then
a figure moved, and he realized that he wasn’t alone. First an
outline, then a few details, then as clear an image as the dark box
would allow. It was a man way past rejuv, in dressings so tattered
and faded that it was hard to tell where they began and the man’s
long hair and beard ended. He sat hunched over on what looked
like a big rock, his hands planted on his knees. But the rock
seemed to move with him.
“I .. I’m sorry. This is where they put me,” Xenoth said,
thinking that the goons had accidentally put two people in the same
box.
“Well they screwed up. Now get out of my box you no good .
. .”
“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you. Obviously there’s been a
mistake. I’ll call a crat and uh . .” he said, turning to find the slit
through which he’d been thrown. There was no slit, at least none
that he could see. There was nothing to see in any direction but the
man and the strange unfocused world around him.
“Get out I tell you,” shouted the old man.
“I’d like to very much. If you tell me how, I’ll do so.”
“Just back through the slit you idiot . . . oh no.” The old
man’s voice trailed off as he pointed to the space where the slit had
apparently been. It was gone. “Now they’ve done it. My peace is
gone. Dag,” said the old man dejectedly.
Xenoth stared at the old man, trying to make out the features
hidden by the beard and the hair hanging across his face. He
glanced to where the man had pointed, then back again. “I’m
sorry,” he said knowing that it wasn’t his fault but recognizing that
he was now an intrusion in the old man’s world.
“Well, you got everything out of focus on me,” said the old
man.
“It’s out of focus for me too. Are we seeing the same thing?”
 “Least it’s not blank anyway,” said the man, ignoring
Xenoth’s question. “You’ve been to the factories so we got that
much in common. It’s a stone we can work from.”
“A stone?”
“Yeh. A stepping stone for us to leap from.”
“Oh.” Having shared with friends now and again, Xenoth
knew what the old man meant. The appearance of the factory
meant that they had both been there at some time and, therefore,
the box was able to create a world they both knew. Otherwise they
would be in complete darkness, the box’s version of nothingness.
But the timeplace of their visits must have been different causing
the world to remain out of focus. They would have to build from
what they had, one stone, one idea that is, at a time.
“And they just re-supplied, so they won’t be back for at least
a week. Stuck with a fuzzy world and a nitwit for a week. Chees
dag!” said the old man.
“Sir, I know I’ve intruded, but it’s not my fault. I didn’t come
here by choice,” said Xenoth, stepping forward with his palms
raised.
“Right. And I’m in a box because I’m innocent too. Save it
for the judge.”
Well, a bitter old man for a week. There was nothing Xenoth
could think to say that would help, so he looked away and reached
to touch the wall. It could be worse he supposed. Maybe he could
find a corner and stay out of the old man’s way as much as
possible.
 “Name’s Pax,” the old man mumbled. “Least it was until you
got here.”
Xenoth looked back and realized that the old man had just
introduced himself. The factory image was still vague, but the two
men were able to see each other more clearly. “And my name is
Xenoth.”
The old man’s face flashed recognition, and perhaps fear. His
eyes widened as he mumbled the literal translation of Xenoth’s
name “one who changes.” He had obviously heard the name
before, but either was unsure of where and when or didn’t want to
show it.
After a long pause, Pax pointed down to what had looked like
a rock that he sat upon. He said, “This is Kith.” The rock raised its
head to glare at Xenoth for a moment then returned to its nap. It
was a rocat not unlike one Xenoth had raised years ago. It had even
been given the same name as his, but it was, after all, a common
name.
“Greetings Pax. And greetings Kith,” he said.
The old man and the rocat grunted simultaneously
“Rrrmmm.”
At the sound of their grunt, the world seemed to come into a
better focus but only for a split second. Something had apparently
triggered a shared memory between them.
“Well, at least it looks like we’ll be able to share.” said Pax.
“Yes but how?” asked Xenoth to himself.
 “If we’re gonna be here for a week or more, we’ve got to get
some focus. Or would you rather stay in blurry Klasrum?” Pax
said, annoyed at Xenoth’s apparent inexperience.
“Well of course . . . I agree,” said Xenoth, trying not to argue.
If they could find shared memory the image would come into
focus.
“But I have to tell you that I was in the factory briefly as a
boy. It’s been centuries so I’m not sure how well I can remember,”
said Xenoth. Images of a factory began to take clearer shape
around them.
“The factory? I don’t want to spend a week on Klasrum.
Yuk!” cried Pax. And the images blurred.
“Well, what’s the alternative?” asked Xenoth
“We got to find some other timeplace we’ve both been.”
“I see,” said Xenoth, his voice betraying his pessimism and
his growing sense of depression. How could he possibly share
memory with this old man. What could he, a gatebuilder, have in
common with some criminal well past rejuv. They would be stuck
in an unfocused Klasrum factory for the entire week.
“You can image I assume?” asked Pax with a patronizing
tone.
“Of course,” answered Xenoth, frowning at the insult. “I can
ima . . .”
“Zeros at ValU. This date 15 degrees East 25 degrees North,”
directed Pax.
The box went dark instantly. Xenoth was slow to respond. He
would have moved to the orientation instantly using star-based
methods. But Pax had issued the command using the ancient
mariner’s city ValU as the reference, a land-based method that
Xenoth hadn’t used since his early training. The surprise even
caused Xenoth to be distracted by memories of his mistress’
explanations, an embarrassing prentice mistake.
“20 degree spread,” commanded Pax impatiently, and the
point appearing in the thoughtspace before them spread to a
detailed view of an area of the planet’s surface. “Now let’s see
where you’ve been,” said Pax without any trace of the patronizing
tone. Xenoth wondered how and why the old man seemed to
change his mood so quickly.
“How about Rkit?” asked Pax.
“No, but I spent a month on Ndus,” replied Xenoth.
“Nope, don’t want to go there,” said Pax as a brief flash of a
different image appeared around them then passed. Xenoth started
to ask what had happened but was quickly cut off.
“Scan south,” said Pax, and the image shifted upward. “Now
west,” and the image sped to the right. “Have you been to Dyvr
Edge, its on the point overlooking Opin Bay,” asked Pax.
“No, but how about Khanvr Edge over on Clows Bay?” and
again a flash quickly came then disappeared.
“Never heard of it,” said Pax
“But wasn’t that it?”
“Said I never heard of it!” shouted Pax, and then once again
in a completely different tone of voice said “Hmm . . . old people’s
places I suppose. Have to dredge up early times. . Does Gensys
ring a bell?”
 They were plunged into another image, no more focused but
entirely different. It was as if they were staring at reflections in a
pond. Wide areas drifted in and out of focus as the surface of the
image would move.
“Well, guess we’ve both been here,” said Pax, and Kith
added a grunt of agreement.
“Yes, but at different timeplaces,” answered Xenoth.
“Wheren were you?” asked Pax trying to get a closer where
and when timeplace to bring the image into focus.
“It was year GN675. It was a fine gate that we built.”
“Hmph . . a gatebuilder. Maybe if you tell me about it, we
can get this world into focus. My eyes are getting sore already,”
said Pax.
 Chapter 2. Systemi City
Stay open

“That’s a very well shaped gate, Xenoth. But why are the walls
so thick and the doors closed?”
“I made the walls thick enough to withstand any attack, and the
door is closed to keep out enemies, Mistress Gatebuilder.
Gate Xenoth 1 will last forever!”
“Far longer than the people inside will, I’m afraid. Walls that
thick and doors that are closed will suffocate them. Unless
we open our gates and exchange energy with the outside, the
stones we use to build our gates will be the walls of our tomb
rather than stepping stones to our future.”

“I had been invited to Systemi City to help them try to build a new
gate. Apparently over the preceding few decades the old gate had
become difficult to open. The City wished to retain the flavor of
the old gate but to fashion a new one in a different location. Many
didn’t quite understand it at the time, but they needed a gate that
would reopen and revive the city with new people and new ideas.”
“So you’re a gatekeeper then?” asked Pax
“Certainly not! I am a gatebuilder sir,” replied Xenoth,
obviously offended.
“Sorry. You don’t need to be so touchy.”
“I dedicated my life to building gates, and in the past century
I’ve seen more and more being kept,” said Xenoth with a bit more
force than he wished.
 “And with a tongue so full of fire its no wonder you’re here,”
said Pax pointing out the tone of Xenoth’s response, but also
testing his suspicion as to why Xenoth had been imprisoned.
“I don’t hide my feelings from the Travelers,” said Xenoth
taking the bait. “If the Gating Guild finds me to be a threat, so be
it. They’ve destroyed what once was great. Now they keep rather
than build. And when I try to show them what they’ve done, or
what we’ve done,” he admitted resignedly, “I’m brought here to be
silenced. But they can’t silence me now . .” He stopped short,
realizing he had already said too much to this stranger. He tried to
cover it up by saying “Well, I guess they have silenced me haven’t
they.”

Existing Shells
Abandoned Shells Gate
Xenoth 45

Desert
X breakdown

Old Boundary
Gate Lancas 19

Systemi City
 Xenoth felt surprisingly unsuspicious talking with Pax, but he
reminded himself that the crats were probably listening. Foolishly,
he had almost given away his plans.
“Okay Gatebuilder Zen-oath, so you angered your Guild.
Let’s get back to Systemi City and see if we can’t share,” said Pax
fearful that he would be the recipient of a week-long political
lecture.
“Fine . . . it’s Gatebuilder Xenoth.”
“Oh, Xenoth it is,” said Pax. “So you were at Systemi City.”
“Yes, as I said, I was there to help them build a new gate that
would reopen the city.”
“I was met at Gate Lancas 19,” said Xenoth recalling the
gate’s sign. Such signs told the name of the gate’s builder and the
chronological number of the gate in the builder’s career. “My
guide was named Elem. I recall that as we met, her smile didn’t
match the phrase she used to greet me. She said ‘close up’ and I
thought she meant for me to keep silent. That wasn’t the case. It
was simply the greeting she used. Elem was the finder of her cell.”
“Finder? What’s that?” asked Pax.
“Her role in the cell was to find things, for example, the path
between places, or water and food sources, or the way to meet cell
goals, and so on. Other cell members took roles such as maker,
counselor, grower, recorder . . . there were others, but I can’t recall
them all.”
Kith growled, and Xenoth recognized this as a sign of
irritation.
 “Oh. . carrier of course,” said Xenoth not meaning to offend
the rocat. It was never a good idea to offend a rocat. “As she
escorted me through Gate Lancas 19, I could see why they had
requested my services. Lancas 19 had been kept for a long time. It
looked ancient and in total disrepair. Not only had it been kept; it
had been ignored. We had to climb over stones that had fallen from
the arch and columns, and to squeeze through the slender opening
that remained. I was pleased that they wanted a new gate and not a
rejuv. For a gate in that condition, I don’t believe that rejuv would
have been possible.”
“Passing through the gate, I thought that I would find the city
waiting on the other side. But instead of buildings and vehicles and
people I found myself and Elem’s cell members still in the midst of
the Gensys Desert. Nothing but sand in sight. I asked where the
city was. Elem replied, ‘There are more people gathered in other
areas, but we are the city.’ I asked what she meant. She said that it
would make more sense to me as we traveled, but that the city was
its people. ‘We are the Ghest cell of the RelAshuns clan’ she said.
‘The City is currently made up of 85 clans. Also, most members of
this cell belong to the PursNL cult, but a few are members of
StructR and ProsS. No one in this cell is a member of MishN cult,
but perhaps I will join someday.’ She ushered us into their vehicle
and said ‘We must get started now or we’ll be caught in the desert
over night. Take your seat in the sandburner.’ And so I climbed
aboard the vehicle. The carrier taking the controls sped us off
along the surface of the sand. It was a smooth ride but very noisy.
A combination of the sand intakes sucking from the desert below
us and the jets roaring behind made it impossible to talk to one
another.”
“Actually no one seemed all that interested in communicating
anyway. They smiled at me when I looked in their direction but
seemed more interested in their work than in me. Here I thought
the visit of a gatebuilder would be a major occasion. As it turned
out they were quite accustomed to escorting people far more
important than me. . . but that’s another story I suppose.”
“Very interesting. Go on,” said Pax, but he seemed lost in his
own thoughts.
“It wasn’t more than a few hours before we had a bit of
trouble. We were still in the middle of the desert, although I could
see what appeared to be hills in the distance. I began to notice the
cell members communicating with one another, first through
simple hand gestures, then through words, and then in no time they
had built up to very loud shouts. As the burner slowed and settled
onto the sand, the noise of the intakes and jets diminished, but the
cell members kept shouting. When one started, all joined in. I had
no idea how they could separate each other’s voice from the
cacophony.”
“They all went suddenly silent when Elem raised the door
letting the hot desert air into the vehicle. She made the brief
statement ‘sequence possibilities’ to the group. I was able to learn
later that it had been a command to give her their impressions as to
why the burner had failed. The ‘sequence’ part was a courtesy to
me. They would offer their thoughts one at a time so that a person
such as me who was not familiar with simultalk could follow
along. It was part of their clan’s role to educate visitors, so they
were used to such requests, even though it slowed things down
considerably.”
“The recorder was the first to speak. He gave a running
account of events leading up to the failure. He had been monitoring
the speed of the vehicle and the noise level and had apparently
noticed a problem for some time. He reported that the carrier
responded well to the events leading to failure. He also compared
the pattern of events to two similar failures with the particular type
of sandburner in the past three months.”
“The carrier spoke next and verified the record of events. She
said that a sensor had warned of unbalanced intake and that her
efforts to compensate had been unsuccessful. She stated that she
was in the process of precautionary shutdown when the failure had
occurred.”
“The counselor sensing the carrier’s tension made sure that
everyone understood that the vehicle had in fact failed several
times recently and that no one was to blame. He had apparently
noted a bit of defensiveness in her voice.”
“The maker offered a possible cause which the team set out
to investigate. It didn’t turn out to be the true cause, but it did lead
them forward. And in the process of investigating this possibility,
the true cause was spotted. I think it was something jammed in a
pipe next to the intake, but I can’t recall precisely. I was more
interested in how they went about finding and solving the problem.
Each member looked at it a bit differently. They shared their
impressions, learned from each other, and jointly tested possible
causes. After the maker did the fix, we all simply got back in and
sped away. Quite an interesting process, but of course not one that
would work everywhere.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pax seeming to return from
reverie.
“I mean that not too many peoples are willing to give up their
individuality in such a way.”
“What makes you think they gave up their individuality?”
“The way they performed as a team. No member tried to be
the hero and solve the problem on his or her own.”
“And did these people have names or numbers?” asked Pax.
“Names of course.”
“Hmph. Gave up individuality, eh?”
“Uh . . . should I continue?” said Xenoth, not really
understanding the point of Pax’s remark.
“Good for many—good for one—good for many,” Pax
mumbled, then added more clearly “Yes, continue” before Xenoth
had a chance to ask what he meant by the phrase.
“We traveled for the remainder of the day, and I must admit I
grew very tired of the noise of the sandburner. We passed what
seemed to be the ruins of ancient buildings every now and then,
but it was too noisy for me to ask about them. Just before the
sunset, we came to the beginning of what I had thought from a
distance to be hills. The hill shapes were not created by rock or
soil, but by ‘bands’ of light in the sky, like rainbows but covering
the entire sky over an area of land. They were created by mist from
central fountains. The City’s makers had created these sort of
‘shells’ over the land by tapping into underground water. Great
pumps brought the water to the surface and fountains sprayed it
into the atmosphere. Circulating air masses somehow returned the
mist to the surface gently over a predetermined zone of land. It was
an incredible sight for me, but I soon discovered that it was far
more for the City members.”
“As it turns out, members of each cult trained themselves to
see different bands of light in the shells.”
“You mean they just saw blue or red or some other color of
their choice?” asked Pax.
“Yes and no. They all had the ability to see what you and I
can see. Some learned to intensify particular colors. Others
extended into other bands beyond our normal vision. For example,
some extended their vision into infrared while others extended into
ultraviolet. They described other bands as well, but I never did
understand. Quite literally, they saw more than you or I, and
different members looking at the same object or in the same
direction would see different things.”
“Hmph. Quite a novelty,” said Pax, seeming unimpressed.
“More than a novelty Pax. Through this training they became
far more attuned to their environment. They could share
perceptions with one another and expand the range of awareness of
a cell . . or of the entire City. If I hadn’t become aware of their
varying perceptions, I would have never understood how the City
worked. My gate would have been a failure as a result.”
 Pax shifted in his seat to get more comfortable and Xenoth
noticed that Kith didn’t make the slightest movement. The two
must have been together for a very long time.
“So we entered one of these shells. I could feel the mist about
me and I could smell the vegetation. It was quite refreshing after so
many hours in the burner. Night was falling so I couldn’t make out
many structures. Elem walked me to what she called a ‘cover,’ and
a bed awaited me inside.”
“I awoke in the morning feeling a bit stiff, but a few minutes
of stretching brought me around. I could barely remember laying
down. The journey must have taken more out of me than I had
thought. The ‘cover’ was a five-sided shelter, something like a tent
but more permanent. Each side was screened to let air flow in and
out, carrying with it the percent of mist desired by the occupant.
The mist itself seemed to regulate the temperature, I assume acting
as some sort of heatsink or condenser/evaporator on a large scale.”
“I walked out from the cover into the morning light. At first I
thought my eyes were simply not focusing well after I had just
awoke. But when they didn’t adjust as I would normally expect, I
realized I was seeing the way things were, or at least what my eyes
could see of it. The mist enveloped everything and with the sun’s
bright light made me feel like I was inside of a rainbow. The sky,
the bushes and trees, the grass, and the cover itself all took on a
variety of rich colors. A single blade of grass could be emerald in
the center, aquamarine at the edges, and yellow or red at the tip.”
“The cover was in a basin amidst low rolling hills. Perhaps
the area had been covered by sand dunes in the distant past. I
couldn’t see any other buildings or other people, but I did find a
trail leading away from the cover toward the top of a hill. As I
came to the top, I could see that I was near the edge of a shell.
Beyond that edge was the desert we had crossed. In other
directions, similar shells extended into the distance. And in the
center of each shell, I could just make out the fountains.”
“Engrossed in this truly beautiful sight I didn’t hear Elem
come up behind me. She was accompanied by another woman who
she introduced as Infu, a carrier of a ReCv cell. I commented on
the spectacular beauty of the shells in the morning. Infu replied
that all their mornings were the same. I couldn’t help feeling a bit
naive. Nor could I miss the tone of boredom or sadness in Infu’s
voice. Elem said that Infu would be introducing me to the City. I
thought that meant she would give me a tour, but instead it meant
that she would formally introduce me. That is, I was a guest who
needed to be introduced, sort of like ‘City, this is Xenoth. Xenoth,
this is City.’ I wasn’t welcome until such a proper introduction had
been given.”
“The manner of the introduction proved to be quite revealing.
I was asked to share a message that would be conveyed to the City.
The question was basically ‘What do you have to say to us?’ I
offered a very simple message that any gatebuilder would give.
Had I realized how important this message was, I would have
become quite nervous and struggled for ideas. What I said was ‘A
new gate arises.’”
“Infu asked me to ‘set the message across the mist.’ I didn’t
know what that meant, so she took my hand in hers and held her
other hand up into the mist. Then she told me to shout my message
as loudly as I could. Wanting to honor their customs, I shouted ‘A
NEW GATE ARISES.’ After a moment Infu smiled at me and said
that it was a good message. Elem left me with Infu and wished me
success. I wouldn’t see Elem again during my time there. I didn’t
know how, but my message was on everyone’s lips very soon
after. Infu walked with me across the shell and as we traveled,
other members would look up from their work or play, smile at me
and say ‘A new gate arises.’”
“I asked Infu how this had happened. She said that the mist
carried my message to the entire City. I thought ‘what magical
powers the mist must have’ at the time, and I suspect that’s what
the people of the City would have most visitors believe. I learned,
however, that the mist simply carried members’ shouts ahead of
me. Regardless, I also learned that Infu would have ended my visit
then and there and sent me back across the desert had my message
not been what the people wished to hear.”
“Given that I was the appointed gatebuilder, Infu was able to
tell me more about this process. She said that one of the duties of
ReCv cell was to judge messages. If a message had ‘potent fit,’
then the ReCv cell would pass it along to the Thru and MonitR
cells. The Thru cell would spread the message quickly across the
City and the MonitR cell would watch what happened. If MonitR
sensed broad acceptance of the message, MonitR cell members
would tell Thru to continue spreading it. On the other hand, if
MonitR sensed resistance, then cell members would tell Thru to
either stop spreading the message or, in an extreme case, to
contradict the message. In such an extreme, ReCv members would
be punished and reassigned to other cells, of course.”
“Whoa, slow down there,” interrupted Pax, looking up for the
first time in quite a while. “ReCv tells Thru, Thru checks with
MonitR, MonitR watches City?”
“No, ReCv judges message, Thru tells City, MonitR watches
City and tells Thru,” replied Xenoth.
“MonitR watches Thru and tells City?”
“No. MonitR watches City and tells Thru.”
“Who watches MonitR?”
“Uh. . I don’t know.”
“Aha!” shouted Pax, self satisfied.
“Snnrrrt” bellowed Kith in what seemed to be a giggle, if one
can imagine a rocat giggling.
Annoyed at the intrusion, Xenoth continued. “She described
this as the ‘season of the message.’ Messages that were judged to
have ‘good fit’ would stay on City members’ lips as their form of
greeting for a period of time. And so ‘a new gate arises’ took over
from ‘close up’ for at least as long as I was there.”
“It was during this time that I started to work out some of the
contradictions. There they were in what appeared to me to be an
ideal world, yet they didn’t seem very happy. While I marveled at
the colors and was invigorated by the mist, they seemed bored and
many were even lazy. I was met at the gate by a team of
professionals, yet that gate had nearly collapsed and closed. And
my words became the City greeting, yet those words had depended
on my chance thought of something that had ‘good fit.’”
 “Chance you say?” asked Pax with a touch of irritation in his
voice. “A gatebuilder’s message having good fit by chance?”
“Yes, by chance I believe,” replied Xenoth. “I gave it thought
certainly, but the precise words simply came to me as would any
other phrase in a conversation.”
“Hmph. Sounds like you underestimate the freemin . . uh I
mean the . . uh . . well go on with the story already.”
“You know of the freemind?” asked Xenoth, startled that Pax
would know about gatebuilding techniques.
“I heard about it from another prisoner . . years ago,” said
Pax.
Xenoth didn’t feel that Pax was being entirely honest, but
thought it best not to pursue it just yet.
“Go on, you were traveling with Infu,” said Pax. The old man
seemed to have grown more and more attentive as the story went
on.
“Yes, as we traveled from one shell to another I became more
and more aware of their condition. The City was beautiful to the
visitor and appeared to work well. But as the gate closed more and
more, the City was slowly dying. The shells had at one time
reached out to the gate. Now only a fraction of the former area
remained inhabited and much had returned to desert. Fountains
were breaking down more and more, throwing temperature control,
food generation, waste disposal, and every other interrelated facet
of the City into imbalance. What I was seeing as a full spectrum of
colors was apparently a narrow band of what had been in the past.
Likewise, members’ lives had become routine. They did the same
jobs over and over, traveled the same paths, lived in the same
shells, followed the same rituals. They had lost their energy. They
couldn’t let in new ideas because they had lost their ability to
adapt. They couldn’t build new shells because their makers had
skill only to maintain and repair, and shells were gradually wearing
beyond repair. And they repeated messages without understanding
their meanings. The new gate was a great challenge for me, and for
them. Actually, I admire them for recognizing what they had
become and for having the courage to ask for my help. Although in
the end I learned that it was a small rebel group that had brought
me to the City. Had others truly understood why I was there and
what a new gate would mean, I would have been thrown out, or
worse.” Xenoth paused. He seemed lost in his memories, almost
forgetting where he was.
“So tell me about the gate you helped them build,” requested
Pax, bringing Xenoth back to the present.
“Gladly,” said Xenoth with more than a little pride shining
through.
“Xenoth 45 was a fine gate that served them quite well. To
open a City that had been closing so long took a great deal of effort
from its members. I remember that the image came from a little
boy, no more than seven years of age. He had been brought to one
of the idea generation sessions by his parents, and as you might
expect, he became quite bored. In his restlessness he began to sing
an old folk tune. Let’s see, how did it go . . . hel found? . . hal
found? . . . hal fount . . yes, that’s it.
 hal fount under sand
hal fount over sky
hal fount inside City
share the mist or die.
His mother hushed him, but something made me ask about the
words. He and most others there thought that the words were ‘hal
found,’ Hal being a person who found something or other. A very
old woman corrected them. It was ‘hal fount,’ and through further
questions I learned that ‘hal’ meant both whole and health, and
fount was short for fountain. So the song was really about
preserving the health of the whole City by sharing the mist of the
fountains. Well, actually the first interpretation we had was
‘hearing the mist’ rather than ‘sharing’ it, so some wanted to send
out listeners rather than sharers.”
“What’s that?” asked Pax.
“Oh sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself,” apologized Xenoth.
“By exploring the meaning of the old song, the group came to
realize how essential the fountains were to their survival. Of course
they knew that they depended on the fountains for their physical
well-being. But they recognized that the concept of a fountain was
essential to the City in other ways. They came to see how the
fountains created shells under which they lived by forcing water
away from the ground, essentially giving up resources to the air in
order to receive back the mist. In fact, they had been trying to
concentrate the flow as the City grew smaller, and received less
and less mist back, leading to greater efforts to concentrate the
flow, and so on. A cycle of diminishing returns. But what they did
not see was that the same thing was happening in other areas of
their lives. They had gradually closed themselves off more and
more from the outside world and were receiving less and less back
as a result. They needed to re-conceive of the fountain as a sort of
net sent out to capture ideas rather than a shell keeping harm
outside.”
“Hold on. Back up a bit. Send less water into the air and get
less back. Seems obvious to me,” said Pax.
“I don’t quite understand the science, but they discovered
that that was how the fountains really worked. They captured
moisture from the air by spraying a small amount of moisture
drawn from below the surface into it. Some sort of special
chemical in the ground helped apparently.”
“Hmph. So what’s this net thing?” asked Pax.
“That was my contribution actually. I helped them flip the
way they were seeing the fountain—from what it kept out to what
it brought in—and to how it had to push things outward and away
to get something back. You see, the people of the City had been
trying to survive by closing themselves off and carefully filtering
the messages they let in. They had become listeners, and not very
good listeners at that, when they had to speak—to share of
themselves—to expect anything in return. So the gate I helped
them build was in the form of a fountain, but it symbolized an
outward spraying of thoughts so that those thoughts could return
with new ideas attached. In a sense, a net to throw and capture
ideas with, rather than a shield for defense. And rather than a gate
at the edge of the City, it would be a gate in the center. A focus to
be continually built rather than a barrier to be kept.”
“We raised our P&P flags in a site midway between what had
been considered the borders of the City. This happened to be just
outside the cluster of existing fountains.”
“P&P?” asked Pax.
“Oh sorry, Purpose and Plan. In most of my gates I have
raised flags at the site representing the purposes, and the plans by
which those purposes would be achieved. The flags capture the
image—in this case the fountain concept—and give everyone
guidance in selecting the R&S stones. Oh, sorry again. R means
Requirements and S means Strategy. They’re the little pieces that
make up the gate.”
“P P R S. Hmph. Peppers,” said Pax sarcastically.
“No, S P P I R S SppIrs as in the spires on each side of the
gate. It begins with S for the situation,” explained Xenoth. “The
gatebuilder’s first job is to help people understand the situation.
Well, I won’t bore you with the technical details.”
“Each member of the City brought a stone and we built the
gate with the spirit of a fountain inside. It was a grand day when I
signed the gate,” Xenoth continued with a smile, but his smile
disappeared as he said, “but now, of course, I find such signing to
be distasteful. A practice no longer appropriate. It should be
abolished along with all the other . . .” His voice trailed off.
“And what did the key say?” asked Pax.
“Hmm. . you do know more about gating than you admit,”
said Xenoth noting Pax’s use of the term key, but again not
wanting to appear too eager. “We inscribed the keystone to read
‘Messages on the mist—Enliven us.’ It sounds a bit trite now, but
it was a truly remarkable leap for them—a leap to opening
themselves to messages that didn’t simply follow the way things
were! They had to change what they meant by ‘good fit’ and to
actively seek fresh ideas. Of course, they didn’t have to change the
City with every new idea, but they had to be open to the
possibility. I imagine they have built other gates by now, but
Xenoth 45 was a great leap for them.”
It had not occurred to him before, being so caught up in the
story, but suddenly Xenoth realized that the box had become a rich
representation of Systemi City. If he didn’t known better he would
have believed that he actually was back there admiring Gate
Xenoth 45.
“How can this be, Pax? I had no idea we could share so
fully.”
“You tell a good story. I can image it quite well.”
“What a wondrous box this is.”
“Wondrous?!” cried Pax, and even Kith let out a roar of
disapproval. “You’re in prison. We’ll see how wondrous you think
it is soon enough.”
Remembering that he was in Pax’s box, Xenoth said “I’ll be
out of your way in just a week sir.”
“Hmm. . maybe not,” said Pax, looking away to avoid
Xenoth’s stare. “Oh, I suppose you’ll learn soon enough. It’s been
eight days. The goons have come with supplies and gone.”
 “What? How can that be?” asked Xenoth in disbelief. “Why
didn’t you tell me to stop?”
“You tell a pretty good story. I’d hate to miss the end,”
replied Pax.
But Xenoth couldn’t help feeling that he had done more than
tell a story. “You’ve kept me here another week. I thought you
didn’t want me in your cell.”
“Well, actually it’ll be a month this time. They seem to have
supplied us quite well,” replied Pax, not wanting to acknowledge
that he had come to enjoy the company.
“A month?” cried Xenoth. “I thought my trial would have
occurred already.”
“Oh, trials happen all the time I suspect. What’s your hurry?”
asked Pax.
Xenoth stared at the old man for a moment, then thinking
about the certain outcome of his trial replied, “good point.”
 Chapter 3. Natursys Wood
Everything relates

“Mistress Gatebuilder? You asked me to pull out a stone. But

each time I select a stone and pull it out, the entire gate
falls.”
“Try again, Xenoth.”
“But the stones are all the same.”
“No, Xenoth. They look the same in a drawing or when they are
laid on the ground apart. In the gate, each has its unique
place and purpose, and all are interconnected.
“But if each stone has a special purpose and they are all
interconnected, how can one be removed . . or even changed
a bit?”
“Only with great care.”

After a long sleep Xenoth awoke under a shell in Systemi City. At

least for the first few moments that’s where he thought he was.
“Morning,” said Pax startling Xenoth and forcing him to
recall that he was in a prison box.
“Yes, good morning,” replied Xenoth groggily as he tried to
stand. “Goodness, I feel like I’ve slept for a week. My joints are so
stiff.”
“Not a week. Only 2 days in fact,” said Pax, his sober
expression telling Xenoth that it was true. Xenoth had slept for two
full days recovering from the drugged capture and the long telling
of his tale about Systemi City.
 “Here eat, it’ll help,” said Pax passing Xenoth a plateful of
food. “There’s liquid over there.”
The meal was quite good, and Xenoth felt that he could
imagine far worse prisons. Systemi City brought back good
memories, and he wouldn’t mind staying here for a while, even if it
was an illusion of the box.
“So where shall we go?” asked Pax.
“You mean we can leave the cell?” Xenoth said, thrilled at
the possibility of escape and of return to his home and friends.
“No, course not. I mean let’s find another timeplace to
share.”
“Why? We have Systemi City here in focus. Why would we
want to change this?” said Xenoth disappointed and not at all eager
to change images so soon.
“Xenoth, it’s bad enough having to live only memories. To
stay with just one for the month would be terrible,” said Pax, the
pain of experiencing a single memory clear in his voice. A quick
flash of another world came and disappeared instantly.
“Not there!” cried Pax throwing his hands over his eyes.
Xenoth jumped away sending his food flying through the air.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Never mind. We have to find a new world. I won’t stay
here,” said Pax. “Zeros at ValU. 40 degrees North 0 degrees,” he
commanded, and before Xenoth could object, the box was again
plunged into darkness. Xenoth’s mind took him to the position Pax
had specified and the view of the planet surface came into focus.
 “How about Ntract. You been there?” asked Pax pointing
with his outstretched arm.
“No. Not even close.”
“Fiebak River down by the city?” shifting his arm to the
right.
“Sorry, never went down that far.”
“Kupling where the rivers join?”
“No again,” said Xenoth still sorry to have left Systemi City.
“Well, back to the early days again. Your turn then,” said Pax
rising from his seat atop Kith as he spoke. Pax reached for his cane
to keep his balance. Even in the light of the fake stars Xenoth
instantly recognized the type of wood the cane was made from and
before thinking spit out, “natursys wood.”
The image was instantly moving. The stable feeling of a floor
underneath their feet and the thoughtspace projection of the
planet’s surface disappeared. Xenoth’s head spun as he lost all
orientation, and he could feel his stomach churn. He realized that
he was falling and that his back was pressed up against someone
else. He assumed it was Pax, but it wasn’t Pax’s voice.
“Hold tight, Gatebuilder Xenoth,” said the voice as they
plummeted and the day became night.
“Where am I?” The falling and his fear and being pressed up
against this person were all familiar, but it was so long ago. Then it
came back in a flash. He was in a bubble vehicle along with a
saprider entering a giant Natursys tree. They were riding inside
runoff water from a rainstorm and entering the launch tube that
would take them into the root system of the tree. From there they
would travel upward along with the water through the sapwood of
the tree all the way to a leaf. At the leaf they would watch
photosynthesis occur, and then they would travel back down with
the sap inside the inner bark.
He was here to heal Gate Balans 37, and this tour of the tree
was part of his preparation.
“We’re inside the launch tube now,” shouted the saprider
trying to speak above the roar of the falling water. “We’ll slow
down and enter the root in about thirty seconds.”
Realizing where he was helped to relieve his physical
discomfort. But as the physical effects disappeared, the mental
confusion took over. This was a very different experience from his
recollection of Systemi City. That had been a story that he told to
Pax. They had found themselves in a projection of Systemi City at
the end, but only because they had apparently shared similar
experiences in the City at some time. This was much more real. He
felt that he was actually back inside the bubble vehicle in the forest
of Natursys Wood reliving the events themselves. It was more than
a setting to view. It was the actual timeplace of his memory, years
before his work with Systemi City.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m still here. You just tell the story,”
said Pax.
Xenoth spun his head back and forth searching for the old
man. “Pax where are you?” he shouted.
“What was that?” asked the saprider.
 “Just tell the story,” Pax’s voice replied, and Xenoth realized
that there was no space for another person in the vehicle. It was
just a voice in his mind.
Gate Balans 37 had been constructed as a model for
management of the Natursys forest in the northern region of the
planet’s main continent. The forest was an extraordinarily
important resource for the region and had to be managed with great
care. The gate was composed of a giant Natursys tree, the sapriders
who cared for the tree, and the master chem plans that the sapriders
followed. The sapriders would be called growers in Systemi City.
Here they got their name from the curious way they needed to
travel in their work.
Xenoth had been brought in to investigate reported problems
with the Balans 37 tree. Gatebuilder Balans herself was
unavailable—political problems Xenoth seemed to recall—and so
he had been selected for the job. The tree had begun to shed leaves
and insulate itself when it should have been trying to grow, and to
try to grow when conditions were not favorable. The sapriders
charged with monitoring the tree’s cycles and following the Balans
37 chem plans had made a number of adjustments, but they
couldn’t figure out what was happening. The tree still had many
years of life ahead—there was still much space for growth. But it
was giving signs of decay and would not survive many more
seasons if the present pattern continued. And the trees of the entire
forest had connected roots. Balans 37’s responses to change
triggered similar responses in surrounding trees, and whatever
happened to Balans 37 would eventually affect the entire forest.
The sapriders had asked Xenoth to find the problem and to heal the
tree.
The vehicle started to slow and Xenoth could begin to make
out features on the outside.
 “Okay, tree entry in 7 6 5 4 . . . Hold tight for the shift, sir,”
and without any more notice, the downward movement had shifted
to sideways. “We’re in the tree root now,” said the saprider. “Relax
as best you can. The ride up from here is slow.”
Xenoth recalled that the ride up through the sapwood of the
tree inside the water that surrounded the vehicle would take days.
A slow and uneventful period, if they avoided getting too close to
the cambium of course. In the cambium, the living layer between
wood and bark, they could see the tree grow but they could also be
confused for a nutrient and get themselves dissolved fairly easily.
But if this were his memory to be relived, he wouldn’t know that
just yet. He would have to experience the close call again.
“If you’d like, we could go over to the cambium and watch a
few cell births on the way up,” said the saprider.
And before Xenoth had a chance to think he had responded,
“That would be splendid, Ment.” He was surprised to remember
the saprider’s name, but was even more surprised that he would
accept such an offer knowing that it would lead to danger, to one
of the most frightening experiences of his life, in fact. Could he do
nothing but repeat his very actions and words? If that were the
case, then he surely could understand what Pax meant about it
being awful to stay in one timeplace in memory, and how this was
a prison after all.
“Brrmmb” trumpeted Kith, and Xenoth realized that the rocat
was there in his mind as well.
Sure enough, on the second day the saprider offered to steer
close to the cambium and watch a cell division. And as he had
done years earlier, Xenoth excitedly accepted. Without control of
his own voice, he would have to relive the nearly fatal event.
“Pax,” he said in his mind “you wouldn’t happen to know
how to skip ahead would you?”
“Sorry, I’m just along for the ride like you,” Pax’s voice
replied.
As they approached the cambium, the saprider said, “We’ll
have to be careful here. We don’t want to get caught in a sap flow
or we’ll be headed down . . . and this will be a short trip.” Xenoth
tried to close his eyes and shut out what was about to happen, but
he couldn’t.
“Here we are,” said Ment. The walls of the pathway they had
been following suddenly started to move. They could see a cell the
size of the vehicle changing shape before their eyes. “Watch the
mother divide, Gatebuilder Xenoth,” said Ment waiting for the
mother cell to divide into two daughters. “One daughter will
become a new mother and go on to divide herself. The other will
become wood here on the inside. If we were on the outside, it
would become bark. We might see that on the way down,” he said,
then realizing that Xenoth did not get the joke, he added. “Of
course, we don’t really want to see that because it would mean we
were dangerously close to the outside of the flow and we might get
taken for food.”
Xenoth cringed inside at the reminder. Then as he knew to
expect, the cell split in two. The vertical elongated shape suddenly
broke across the center and became two cells. And as the split
occurred, he and the saprider became more than casual observers.
The vehicle was sucked through the space between the new cells.
They were thrown about and the saprider’s efforts to control the
vehicle were futile.
“Caterpillars! We’re caught in a sap flow,” shouted Ment.
“And we’re too close to the edge of the flow!” Without a quick and
drastic response they soon would be caught within living tissue and
be used as nutrients for tree growth. The saprider would have to
trigger the vehicle’s emergency shield. The shield entombed the
vehicle in a toxic chemical that would allow the saprider time to
guide it back to the center of the flow, or if he were very skilled,
even out of the flow and back to the water. But it would also kill
the tree cells it touched. Triggering a shield inside a tree that was
already in poor health would lead to a severe reprimand, maybe
even a demotion from Balans 37 duty.
Of course, the saprider did trigger the shield, but was skilled
enough to guide them back to the water through several rays, that
is, cells that resembled ribbons on their edge running horizontally
from the center of the tree outward. The saprider caused as little
harm to the tree as he could, something Xenoth would note when
he pled Ment’s case and kept him from demotion several weeks in
the future.
“The tree has a new vein, and I’ll need thick bark,” said
Ment, dejectedly anticipating his punishment. This was Xenoth’s
first experience with the sapriders speaking of the trees as having
human qualities and themselves having tree-like qualities. A rider
might say that a cut in his arm bled sap, or that a tree was angry or
proud.
 The remainder of the trip up through the sapwood was
uneventful. Xenoth used the time to learn as much as he could
from the saprider about Balans 37, in particular what had led them
to call for help from the gatebuilders. He learned that the trees of
the Natursys forest were harvested on an on-going basis but,
supposedly, only in ways that made the forest stronger. Every
piece of a tree was used for one purpose or another and nothing
was simply discarded. Seedlings were planted to replace any tree
that died. Branches were trimmed if they interfered with one
another. And most importantly, the living growth process of a tree
was monitored and controlled through the chem plan modeled in
Balans 37. This involved the introduction of various chemical
agents that would speed or retard specific processes and thus
artificially enhance the tree’s growth and productive capacity.
Xenoth was also able to piece together some historical facts,
but these would have to be checked out more carefully with other
sources. According to the saprider, early settlers of the forest had
worshipped the trees. They believed that the trees were god-like
and would reward or punish depending on how well the people
cared for them. Only dead wood could be gathered and used for
fuel or shelter or other needs. To strike a tree or to harm it in any
other way was a sin.
A more modern approach had been introduced by the
gatebuilder Balans. She had shown the people how to control the
growth of the forest and to manage it carefully so that the trees
would supply an ever-increasing source of energy, energy not only
for use by the people of the forest, but for others in the Biosys
region and beyond. The wood and other parts of the tree had
become a commodity to be traded to others. Meeting trade
demands had pushed the sapriders to find ways to improve
productivity in tree growth and efficiency in the harvest. The
problems with Balans 37 now threatened that trade.
On the third day, the water they rode within angled off, and
the saprider informed Xenoth that they had entered a limb. After
two more days, the saprider selected a path into a twig and they
were now approaching a leaf toward the tip of the twig.
“This will be the hard part,” said Ment. “We have to
maneuver our way to a place where you can observe the reaction
but not get caught in it.”
Years ago when this had really happened, Xenoth had
difficulty hiding his near panic. He wanted no part of something
that the saprider thought was harder than the escape early in the
trip. However, being able to recall that this would be a successful
observation, he was quite relaxed this time around.
The artificial light of the bubble vehicle began to fade as they
approached the leaf. The sunlight filtering through the leaf made
the world about them turn various shades of green.
“Watch how this happens now,” said the saprider starting to
explain the process of photosynthesis. “The water we have ridden
and gas from the air, carbon dioxide to be precise, will combine
and become something new. That stuff over there is chlorophyll,
the catalyst that gets things going. The heat you’re feeling is not
just the energy from the sun. It’s a byproduct of the reaction. And
if it weren’t for some of the water evaporating off the leaf through
transpiration we would burn up. The outputs of this process are
oxygen returning to the air, and the sugars that help the tree grow.
We’ll be traveling with those sugars in the sap on the way down.”
In the original trip, Xenoth had anticipated a violent jump
from the water to the sap. It was far smoother than that. In fact, it
was difficult to pin down where the turnaround had occurred. It
simply became darker, and he began to notice other things floating
in the water. The sugars had mixed with the water that remained
after photosynthesis and transpiration, and they were riding in the
resulting sap solution. They were already on the way back down
through the twig and into the branch.
The trip down would be slower than the trip up. They were
inside the living bark and would need to stay in the center of the
sap flow to keep moving steadily, yet avoid the cambium where
they could be dissolved. “Notice how these cells are maturing,”
said the saprider. “These daughters are becoming bark. They will
change shape for about a week after birth. Then they’ll grow their
secondary walls. There, you see the secondary wall starting to
appear on that cell over there. We’ll be taking the lignin sample
from a secondary wall fairly soon.”
The lignin sample was used in a key monitoring process in
the chem plan. Lignin fortified the cellulose that made up the
secondary wall of cells and could be used to determine how cells
were responding to the sapriders’ adjustments. Asking many
questions about these processes, Xenoth learned that recent
changes had been made. In the past, the lignin tests had been
performed by the saprider while she or he was still inside the tree.
Recently, as part of the effort to improve efficiency, the sapriders
had begun to extract lignin samples from the tree and to carry those
samples with them for later analysis. This saved a great deal of
time. The saprider did not have to stay stationary for the five-hour
test—at a large cost in energy fighting the downward flow. And
outside of the tree, the testing could be performed on a large set of
samples simultaneously.
When it came time for the sample to be taken, the saprider
maneuvered the vehicle near a cell that was approximately four
days old. The cell was still not permanently fixed in size and
shape, but had a noticeable secondary wall. He extended the
scraper from the rear of the bubble vehicle, lined up some lignin in
the sights, and as the vehicle spun, a piece of lignin was scraped
away from the secondary wall. Operating the controls to achieve
this maneuver was quite complicated and so the saprider
concentrated on his instruments and relied on the scraping sound to
tell him that the sample had been gathered. Xenoth, on the other
hand, with his back to the saprider and no tasks to perform, was
able to watch it occur. He noticed as the sample came away from
the wall that its shape and color changed slightly. Glancing back
and forth from the sample to lignin still on the wall, he could see
that they were not the same.
“When did this change in testing procedure occur?” he asked
the saprider.
“Eight months ago, as part of our fourth round of efficiency
measures,” answered Ment.
 “And when did the problems with the Balans 37 tree begin to
be noticed?”
“About six months ago, I think.”
“I see. And the lignin sample is used to monitor chemical
adjustments, you say?”
“Yes, that’s correct, gatebuilder.”
“And so, I can assume that a change in the lignin will result
in a change in chemicals introduced to the tree cells?”
“Precisely . .” said the saprider with a questioning look on
his face. “Did I miss the lignin with the scraper?” he asked, certain
that he had not, but confused by Xenoth’s question.
“No, but I fear that you now have a sample of ‘extracted’
lignin, not a sample of lignin as it exists in the secondary wall.”
Xenoth explained what he had seen occur, and he and the
saprider agreed to spend the five hours testing lignin intact in the
cell wall. If the readings did not match those obtained from their
scraped sample when it was tested outside, they would confirm
that the efficiency measure had, in fact, introduced an error into the
process. Of course, that is what Xenoth already knew they would
find and that this particular efficiency measure would be repealed
immediately.
After nearly a week and a half of travel in the sap, the
saprider announced that they were nearing the escape tap and that
Xenoth should prepare himself for a stimulating end to the trip.
Without control of his voice, Xenoth couldn’t comment on the
sarcasm of ‘stimulating.’ His memory was that it was more than a
little stimulating. It was downright violent and frightening.
 As they entered the escape tap, they shifted to a slightly more
horizontal direction and accelerated rapidly. Once again, Xenoth
tried to close his eyes but couldn’t. Their fall into the landing pool
as they exited the tap was every bit as ‘stimulating’ as their fall
through the launch tube. It seemed to go on forever, falling and
falling, faster and faster, the drop of sap around them hiding the
outside world but not the frightening feeling of downward
acceleration. They hit the turbulent pool of sap and were thrown
about, spinning this way and that, nearing the surface for a moment
only to be driven back down by another falling drop of sap.
Eventually they floated to the surface clear of the flow and the
saprider used the last bits of stored energy to maneuver the vehicle
to the recovery area. There it was captured by the arms of the
recovery crane and they were lifted from the pool.
The saprider explained the possible problem with lignin
extraction to his superior, and after his suspicion was verified
through testing of the sample, he and Xenoth were escorted to the
head saprider’s office.
“Greetings, Gatebuilder Xenoth. I trust your journey was
successful,” said Pith, the head saprider.
“Praise Natursys, yes,” replied Xenoth using the ancient
phrase.
Pith was caught off guard by the phrase, but she quickly
recovered and gave the appropriate response, “The Forest Grows.”
“What have you discovered, and how long before we are
back up to speed, gatebuilder?” asked Pith.
 Noting Pith’s concern with production, Xenoth replied, “We
have seen that the lignin extraction method induces error, Pith. The
lignin appears to change as a result of extraction. The samples you
have been testing outside the tree are chemically different from the
lignin inside the tree.”
Pith immediately recognized the implications of this. “Are
you sure? If that’s so, then the process has been the cause of the
problem. Termites, what a catastrophe! The testers will be
reassigned immediately.”
“Were they not simply following instructions?” asked
Xenoth.
“Yes, you’re right. It was the chief chemist’s instructions. He
will be fired.”
“Well, maybe your chemist should have recognized this, but
what led him to recommend this new method?” asked Xenoth.
“Our customers require more Natursys wood. We must
become more efficient.”
“And are you more efficient today?” asked Xenoth.
“We will be, gatebuilder. As soon as we get Balans 37 back
growing properly. Thank you, and I hope your return voyage will
be pleasant,” she said ushering Xenoth toward the door.
“My work is not complete, Pith.”
“My apologies, gatebuilder, but I am a very busy woman,”
she said, trying to hurry Xenoth along. But Xenoth didn’t move.
Pith looked away and could hear the nervous tension in her own
voice. “Gatebuilder, please excuse me.” Then when he did not
move, she turned to Ment and said “please wait outside.” Ment left
the office and closed the door behind.
“Gatebuilder, the quality of saprider training is poor and
needs my attention. Morale is low. Vehicle maintenance is falling
off. The launch tubes are not being cleaned properly. There have
been too many emergency shields used lately. We have had three
vehicles destroyed when a saprider needed to blow free from a leaf
and parachute down. I must spend more and more of my time with
customers and crats. . . I . . I’m grateful that you found our lignin
problem and look forward to a return to production schedules.
Thank you once again,” she said desperately trying to dismiss
Xenoth and to get back to preparations for her meeting.
Xenoth continued to stand silently. Pith returned to her desk,
but she could not work. She stared out the window wondering if
being the head saprider was worth all the aggravation and how
long it would take to replace her once the scope of their problems
was reported.
Xenoth thought about the long list of symptoms Pith had
offered. If he were to leave now, it was only a matter of time
before other crises occurred. The Gating Guild would judge his
efforts a failure, Balans 37 would fall, and the Natursys Forest
would likely die.
“Pith, I must speak bluntly to you,” said Xenoth. “You’ve
mentioned a number of issues that you and the sapriders are
facing,” said Xenoth. “I don’t doubt that you can manage these
issues effectively in the short term, but I believe you will see more
issues, more serious issues in fact, rising in their place. The issues
you are concerned with are related to more fundamental
problems.”
Pith stared at him uncomfortably for a moment, then asked
“And what might those problems be?”
“What does you name mean, Pith?” asked Xenoth, surprising
Pith with this apparently unrelated question.
“Uh, it is the title of honor I was given when I was named
head saprider. It is a very old tradition.”
“I see. And would you mind if I called you Motor or Gear?”
“Gatebuilder, you don’t need to insult me,” said Pith
nervously.
“So you find Motor and Gear to be offensive. I see. Now let’s
suppose we were to look outward from the center of Balans 37.
What would we see?”
“We would be in center of the heartwood so we would look
along the rays and through the growth rings.”
“Pith, I asked you to look out from the center of Balans 37—
the gate, not the tree.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I asked you about Balans 37, you saw only the tree.
And when I asked you about your name, you thought it was merely
your title. Your saprider told me that Pith means the center of the
tree. As the tree grows upward, pith cells are left behind.”
“Yes, that’s correct. But I don’t understand what this has to
do with . . . um . . . I am the center of the tree?”
“Yes, you are the center in a sense, but what you are the
center of is an important issue. You’ve come to see the Natursys
tree as an artificial resource, or even as a factory to be managed.
You, at the center, see yourself as the manager. But this view is
very limited. It leads you to make changes without careful
consideration of how they affect the whole. Natursys is more than
the tree. It is the tree, certainly. But it is also you, and all the
processes you use. It is the chemicals, your vehicles, the office we
sit in, the rain that falls. . . and most importantly, it is the relations
among these things. It is the whole . . . all of them together,
everything that works together to create and sustain the forest and
your people. Your efforts to make more wood more quickly have
severed these connections. You’ve started seeing Natursys as
separate parts and as a result cannot see the interdependencies. The
tree is not a factory of your creation. It is a living organism, a
complex, barely understandable whole. It can serve you well only
if you appreciate that fact.”
“I . . . understand. I must fire myself?” said Pith, hoping that
the gatebuilder would disagree and restore her confidence.
“Yes you must,” replied Xenoth causing Pith to sink into her
chair and her eyes to fall. “You must fire Pith the manager of a
factory,” continued Xenoth. “Then you must hire Pith the caretaker
of your gate—one who recognizes its human, organic, and
mechanical components and can get those components back to
helping one another. It’s not too late for us to heal Balans 37, but
we must heal the whole gate, not just the tree.”
Pith looked up slowly as she came to see the wisdom of what
Xenoth said. “Your argument is strong, gatebuilder,” she said.
“But I have to admit that I cannot fire or hire myself. That is up to
the leaders of our regional government. We will need to take your
arguments to them.”
“You can stop there,” said the voice in Xenoth’s head.
“Pax?”
“Yes. A good story, but you can stop now. I could use some
sleep.”
“But don’t you want to know how it ends?”
“Well, that’s obvious. You and Pith go to the leaders, explain
the problems and they argue with you. Then you convince them
using their ancient traditions as the wedge, and they let you rejuv
Balans 37. Excuse me, you change the name to Xenoth something
or other. I assume you re-signed the gate.”
“Yes, Xenoth 29 actually.”
“There you see . . .” said Pax as he crawled up against Kith
and closed his eyes for a rest.
“But Xenoth 29 is so different from Balans 37. An entirely
new gate in fact. A restored balance with the trees giving not only
oxygen and wood but giving meaning to the sapriders’ lives. And
the sapriders in return finding renewed appreciation, even love for
their forest home. Wouldn’t you like to . . . hear about it?”
Xenoth realized that he was speaking through his mouth and
that he was back in the box. Or had he ever left? Pax and Kith were
fast asleep.
 Chapter 4. The Sound Engine
People are not machines

“Xenoth, your task is to quickly complete the arch of this gate.”

“Well . . . Efficie and Forma could stand on the columns and
Materia and Fina could stand on their shoulders and hold
the keystone like we did in the stacking game.”
“That’s a possibility, but how long will your fellow prentices
wish to stand still on top of each other holding the stone?
They are not stones.”

Xenoth looked about him and remembered that what surrounded

him was an artificial recreation of a world he had visited in the
past. He could see the images of the Natursys Forest around him,
but gone were all the sapriders and any hint of recent activity.
Lying in the shade of a fallen leaf were Pax and Kith, fast asleep.
He was sure that the story had been long, but he wasn’t sure how
long. He felt exhausted from the telling. But he wished that Pax
had let him finish. It was rude for the old man to have cut him off
and guess how things turned out—with surprising accuracy. In a
very few minutes, Xenoth’s disappointment faded and his eyelids
grew heavy. He too crawled under a leaf and was asleep in
seconds.
The goon thought he had waited long enough. The prisoners
were certainly sound asleep. He had recharged the box with energy
from the outside. Now he stepped quietly inside to resupply the
foodstores. He was just about finished when one of the metal bins
slipped from his grasp and clanged shut. Xenoth was lying nearby
and facing the foodstore area, and so as he came awake he could
see the goon before him.
“Is it time for my trial?” he asked, and began to get up.
“Stay where you are, prisoner,” the goon whispered. “You’ll
be tried when you’re together.”
“But what does that mean?” asked Xenoth.
“You’re separate,” replied the goon looking at Xenoth, then
glancing across to notice Pax and Kith under the leaf.
Xenoth followed his glance but not his meaning. When he
turned back, he found that the goon was gone, as was the opening
to the box. He walked across to where he thought the opening had
been, but he could find no trace. “Another month perhaps,” he said
to himself. “I wonder where our memories will take me this time?”
He glanced back to Pax lying peacefully, and at the Natursys wood
cane propped underneath the edge to hold up the leaf. As he
walked close, he asked himself who this old man was and why he
too had been imprisoned in the cell.
As Xenoth came within a few feet he stopped short. He had
the unmistakable feeling of being watched. He slowly scanned to
the left and right, then as he looked back to the leaf he found that
Kith was wide awake and staring up at him. He knew that a rocat
was not to be feared, at least in terms of any physical harm it might
do to him. But Kith’s stare caught him off guard and frightened
him. He could see something in the rocat’s eyes that was at once
familiar and strange. Surely the rocat was protecting his
companion Pax. But there was something else in his stare telling
Xenoth not to back away but to stay perfectly still and try to
understand the moment.
“I mean no harm to you or Pax,” Xenoth said softly not
wanting to disturb Pax. “I have seen many rocat in my lifetime.
But you are familiar to me Kith . . Have our paths crossed before?
Perhaps we have traveled together?”
No less suddenly than before, the world changed. Everything
was out of focus. The leaves and the forest were gone. The floor
seemed to move. The shapes and colors and sounds and smells
about him were all different. Yet somewhere in this change there
was a sense of connection. It was a different world, yet one he had
been drawn into from inside the rocat’s stare. It was as if he had
been sucked into the rocat’s eyes to be surrounded by what he saw
within.
“CLANG BBRRRRAAAANNNGG ZZZZZZZ
SSSSSSHHH RRRR!”
Xenoth’s hands leapt to his ears trying to protect him from
the deafening sounds.
“BZZZZ MMMMMMM DIDIDIDIDI RRRR CLANG!”
“What in gatecollapse could be happening?” he thought.
“KKKKK RRRRRRR CLANG BBRRRRAANNNNNGGG!”
Try as he might, Xenoth could barely open his eyes. The pain
started in his ears but bore straight through his head and body.
“ZZZZZZZZ AKAKAK SSSSSSSHHHH UUNNGG!”
Then it came to him. “AAAAOUCH HELP!” he cried. It was
the sound engine of a probe ship operating in the deep sea, and he
was inside the SEND/RECEIVE area unprotected. “Somewhere
else quick,” he shouted thinking that he was still in the prison box
and that this was all illusion. But his shout was nowhere near loud
enough to be heard above the engine. “Back to Natursys! Help
PAAAXX!” he cried in desperation as he fell to the floor.
And then the movement was over, and the sound stopped.
Xenoth lay writhing in pain, the effects continuing just as strongly.
He knew that he had just a few seconds to find a port and to get out
before it began again, but it was so difficult to move.
Finally, he struggled to his feet and spun about trying to find
a port. As he spun he smashed into the Tech who had come to help.
The Tech had been busy monitoring sending apparatus but had
heard Xenoth’s cries. She had come to help as soon as she could.
She ran to Xenoth’s side, only to be thrown to the floor as he stood
and spun about.
She recovered quickly, being familiar with the symptoms of
sound exposure, grabbed Xenoth by the arm and shouted,
“Gatebuilder, you must have dropped your protect unit.” She held
the unit in front of Xenoth who eventually realized that she was
trying to help him and stopped trying to free himself. He grabbed
the unit from her and threw it on his head. With the Tech’s help,
the unit was strapped on before the next movement began.
Even though he was well protected, Xenoth jumped as the
movement began.
“POW ZZZZZZZ AKAKAKAK BBRRRAAANNNGGG!”
It would take days for the symptoms of exposure to wear off.
 Transducer Array

Damper
Send/Receive

AMP AMP
Power
Generator
FILT FILT

DAC ADC

Channel
MEM
Fuel
ALU
Thruster Thruster

ALGO
Hydroplane Hydroplane
Sound Control
Engine
Ballast

Ballast
Bus Navigation
Storage

Galley
Medical

Dining

Living Area
& Toilets
Showers

Quarters

Crew
Rocat

Quarters

Propulsion

Propeller

Thrusters

Probe Ship Physdesys

“TITITI SSSHHHH CLANG CLANG!”

“Are you all right Gatebuilder?” asked the Tech.
“I will be fine, I think,” replied Xenoth realizing that the
protect unit masked the engine sounds. He could still hear the
incredibly powerful transducers, but at a low volume. The unit’s
masking feature made it so that the Techs could talk to one another
even when the engine was sounding.
 “My head. . .” said Xenoth, clearly still in pain.
“We’ll get you to medical at the next intermission. I must
return to my readings now. You can sit here by the wall,” said the
Tech helping Xenoth to a bench off to one side of the area.
Xenoth could see the transducers of the SEND/RECEIVE
area looming above him. The transducers turned electrical signals
into powerful soundwaves to be sent out and bounced off the
surface features of the surrounding terrain. The Tech was off to
one side watching instruments and taking readings. She glanced
over to Xenoth, sensing that he was looking at her. Her smile
seemed to say that he would be all right and that the pain would go
away soon, but it was so intense he thought that he would pass out.
He knew it would be a very long recovery.
“NNNNN AKAKAKAK BBBBRRRRAAANNNGGG!” the
sounding continued.
Xenoth didn’t know how long the movement would last, but
the Tech had hinted that an intermission would be coming soon.
He had time to gather his memories of this timeplace and to recall
what lay ahead. But something was wrong. It took him a few
minutes, but then he realized that he had no memory of actually
experiencing sound exposure. He had heard about it, and seemed to
remember witnessing the effects on another man. But he could not
remember being exposed himself during his time aboard the ship.
“Pax?” he said in his mind thinking that the old man would
be with him again, but there was no response. “Am I still in the
prison box?” he asked to himself. “Could that sound have been so
loud that it erased my memories?” He didn’t know which was
worse, the physical pain or the confusion.
The movement came to an end and the Tech finished her
readings. She walked over to Xenoth and said, “We’re in
intermission. I can take you to medical now.”
“Thank you,” replied Xenoth as he rose from the bench. The
room swirled about him for a moment and he thought that he was
changing worlds. “Emen,” he said as he nearly fell to the floor.
“I’ve got you,” said the Tech coming quickly to his side and
helping him regain his balance. “The exposure will continue to
affect your balance for a while so don’t stand up quickly,” she
explained.
“Emen . . your name is Emen?” asked Xenoth.
“Yes, of course Gatebuilder,” she replied a bit amused. She
had learned the symptoms of exposure in her training, of course.
But she didn’t recall loss of memory as one. She had been his
escort for the past several days and they had, she thought, come to
know one another quite well. Why would Xenoth not recognize
her?
She led Xenoth through the port and into the channel. Once
inside the channel, Emen pressed a button on the wall to request a
bus, and in a few seconds one arrived. The ‘bus’ was simply a flat
rectangular surface that moved on wheels within the passageway
or channel. Emen pressed the ‘medical’ button on the bus and it
moved away.
As they rode along the channel toward medical, the bus
passed the ports to a number of different areas, and Xenoth could
recall some of their purposes. AMP area where signals were
boosted before being transduced and sent. FILT where final
modifications were made. DAC and ADC where signals were
converted from numbers to waves and vice-versa. MEM area
where numbers were accumulated and stored and ALU where
computations were carried out.
“Did you think we had already made the turn, Gatebuilder?”
asked Emen trying to be polite, but curious as to why Xenoth had
been in the SEND/RECEIVE area without a protect unit. “We’re
still several days from Ntropy Bay.”
“I’m not sure what happened,” Xenoth replied buying some
time to search his memory for more information about where he
was and what they were doing.
He was aboard the probe ship Physdesys, he recalled. By
what Emen had just said, he gathered that they had not yet reached
their destination of Ntropy Bay. There they would ‘turn’ and start
the journey back to Klasrum, the home of the Gating School he
was attending. “Yes, of course,” Xenoth whispered to himself.
“I’m still training.” He looked down to see his young hands and
wondered what he would see in a mirror.
The trip aboard Physdesys was his final assignment, an exam
of sorts, before he would become a gatebuilder. He would gain use
of the title ‘gatebuilder’ after successful completion of this trip.
Being called gatebuilder now was an affectionate tease, at least
from Emen. It had started out as a sarcastic remark from the Chief
Tech named CeeU. Xenoth had made a major mistake that could
have cost the crew a great deal of the mission’s potential. CeeU
caught the error in time but made it clear to Xenoth that he would
never become a gatebuilder if he made another such error. Since
then it had become his nickname, used affectionately by most crew
members, but always a reminder of the early mistake.
He was accompanying the crew of Techs aboard Physdesys
as they charted a zone of the Dinamk Ridge, an undersea mountain
range in the Nviro Sea. For this area along the ridge, the
gatebuilders needed to develop new charts often because extreme
volcanic activity constantly changed the shape and position of
various features. Navigating with the same chart from one year to
another, or even one month to another, was extremely dangerous.
Where the chart showed a valley, there might by a new mountain
waiting to crush an unsuspecting ship.
He was acting as the Guild’s representative, overseeing the
effort on their behalf and making sure their interests were served.
He was more than an observer, though. The crews of probe ships
relied on the Guild students’ special knowledge of spatio-temporal
dynamics. And so, CeeU had been angry over the potential cost of
Xenoth’s error, but he was also nervous about getting home safely.
If Xenoth proved incompetent, he would have to interpret
anomalies himself based only on what skills he had obtained from
watching other students on other trips.
Medical is outside the sound engine, Xenoth recalled. The
sound engine was the ship’s instrument for taking space
measurements. It would send out a series of sounds from their
submerged position, then record the sounds’ reflections. Based on
the pattern of reflections, the crew would get information on the
position and shape of features in the area. On their return to
Klasrum, the chart would become part of the Guild’s library, an
invaluable source of information for gatebuilders’ travels along the
corridor to the main continent.
As the bus continued down the channel, Xenoth could see the
port to Living Space come into view. But before they could make
it through, the channel was suddenly bathed in red light and the
bus came to a halt. A voice announcement said, “Gateprentice
Xenoth to Control immediately.”
“It must be something important because they used my true
title,” thought Xenoth. And once again he realized that the event
seemed unfamiliar. If the events were new to him, how could he be
in the prison box experiencing only past memories, he wondered.
The bus reversed direction at Emen’s touch. “Sorry,
Gatebuilder. Medical will have to wait,” she said.
They arrived at Control area and Emen took Xenoth’s arm to
steady him as he stood and walked through the port. Inside the
area, CeeU stood at a monitor within a wall of instruments. Two
other Techs were busy at work nearby.
“Gateprentice, a troubling situation before us,” said CeeU,
the seriousness of the situation evident in his voice. “Perhaps you
can help,” he said as a command not a request.
As the Guild’s representative, Xenoth was required to offer
his assistance, even when the situation fell outside his special
expertise, but CeeU’s motives were clear. Here was a problem that
might jeopardize the mission, and CeeU was going to share the
blame with Xenoth, or even give it completely should the worst
occur. This student had already shown himself capable of a serious
error in judgment. Why not let him take the Guild’s criticism for
this as well. He surely wasn’t gatebuilder material anyway.
“This is how they’ll try to weed me out from those students
who will make builders some day,” thought Xenoth with a bit too
much familiarity. He wondered if he might be in his past after all.
“Algo has failed to interpret a reflection,” said CeeU. So it
was close to Xenoth’s area of expertise after all. The Algo or core
of the sound engine was a set of instructions specified by the
engine’s maker. Apparently the Algo could not make sense of a
reflected wave.
Xenoth noted how CeeU referred to the core as ‘Algo,’ not
‘the algo’ and had the distinct impression that this was somehow a
key to what lay ahead. But he couldn’t recall why and how. “The
exposure must still be affecting my perceptions and memories,” he
thought. Some of what was happening triggered memories, say of
names and feelings, but he couldn’t recall the events.
“You’ve checked calibration?” asked Xenoth, deciding that
he would have to play along and do what he could.
“Twice, and everything in the SEND/RECEIVE area seems
to be functioning properly,” replied the female Tech standing off to
CeeU’s side. “The wave we have received has no match in the
tables. We cannot determine what caused it, or where it bounced.
Neither can we determine which of our signals it reflects,” she
added.
Xenoth, trying to get more information about the situation
asked, “We have been sending signals in this space for how long?”
 “For 2 hours in 10 minute movements,” the Tech replied.
“And up until this point we have received reflections that the
Algo could interpret and plot?”
“That’s correct”
“Have the sent signals been normal?”
“They were generated precisely according to Algo’s reading
of recent patterns,” answered CeeU, taking over for the Tech.
“And what percent of predicted features have been accounted
for?”
“Seventy four percent.”
“Hmm . . that’s already within standard range for an area this
fluid. Anything anomalous in the past soundings?”
“Everything normal,” replied CeeU starting to become
irritated at having to answer such obvious questions, questions he
had already posed and answered himself.
“So how is this new wave different and why doesn’t it match
anything in the tables?” asked Xenoth, sensing that he better cut to
the heart of the issue.
“It is a pattern that we have no record of having encountered
before,” replied the Tech.
“Here, sit down, gateprentice,” said Emen. She had noticed
how unsteady Xenoth was and had brought a stool. CeeU frowned
at the pair wondering why a prentice would need to sit in Control.
“Oh . . I’ve been exposed,” said Xenoth reluctantly, but
saving Emen from having to report it to her superior.
“Gatebuilder indeed,” remarked CeeU.
 The ship began to shake, and the other Tech standing near a
Control monitor said, “CeeU, we are receiving another new wave.
Its like the first but looks a bit modulated. Shall I submit it to
Algo?”
“Certainly,” replied CeeU, irritated that the Tech would need
to ask.
The Tech gave several commands to the engine then waited
for a few seconds. CeeU and Emen had gathered around the
monitor while he worked. “Foreign Wave. Error in subroute
REC309.4,” appeared in the monitor below a map of the wave.
“Same problem as before,” said the Tech.
“What’s the lookup for that error?” asked Xenoth who had
hobbled over to join them.
“It indicates a mismatch with known or expected reflective
patterns,” replied the Tech.
“And how is this wave different from the first you received?”
asked Xenoth.
“Seems modulated, but in some strange way. I’ll do a
comparison,” said the Tech and issued a series of commands to the
engine. The two waves appeared together on the monitor and a
wash of color across them indicated that the comparison was being
made.
“Timeplace displacement indicates acceleration through
pulsed propulsion,” the monitor read, giving the results of the
comparison.
 “Pulsed propulsion is only a theory,” said CeeU reminding
Xenoth of the obvious. “What do you suggest now, Gatebuilder?”
CeeU continued, the sarcasm of the title a clear threat to Xenoth.
“I . . . I suggest that we engage in a share and debate group
exercise to determine possibilities,” said Xenoth, fighting back the
continued pain in his head.
“Ha!” exclaimed CeeU. “Where do you think you are? That
may be how you do things in school, but we don’t have time for
such nonsense in a probe ship.” Even Emen lowered her eyes in
embarrassment at Xenoth’s suggestion.
Again Xenoth had a flash of memory that told him that this
feeling was familiar, but the event itself was difficult to recall.
“Gateprentice Xenoth. I formally take Control of all ship’s
operations,” said CeeU with a half smile showing that he had been
looking for an excuse to do so. Xenoth realized that he had just
become an observer for the remainder of the trip. His release from
the advisory role by the Chief Tech would indicate failure to the
schoolmasters and his future as a gatebuilder was in serious
jeopardy.
“But Chief Tech CeeU, I have only suggested a process, one
which the Guild finds valuable in many situations,” pleaded
Xenoth.
“I am in Control,” repeated CeeU, and Xenoth knew
argument was futile.
Emen escorted Xenoth first to Medical and then to his
quarters in Living Space. “Perhaps he will reconsider,
Gateprentice,” said Emen trying to soften the blow.
 “No, I don’t think so, but thank you Emen”
“I must return to finish my shift,” and as she left, Xenoth
could hear the seal secured. She was only following procedures, he
knew, but to be confined like a prisoner was too much to bear.
Xenoth passed the time searching his memory for clues regarding
what had happened in the real trip. “This must still be an illusion of
the box,” he thought, but he could not remember the events and he
could not communicate with Pax. Or perhaps Pax was choosing
not to communicate with him. Maybe it was the exposure. Another
wave struck the ship shaking everything and everyone aboard.
While Xenoth searched for answers alone in his quarters,
CeeU and the other Techs were baffled by the newly received
waves. The waves continued to modulate in a fashion that Algo
said indicated pulsed-propulsive acceleration, but that wasn’t
possible. No vessel existed that was so equipped. Even if it did, no
one would dare take it into the corridor during a probe mission. It
had to be something else. The volcanic matter in the area couldn’t
reflect waves in such a manner. There was no explanation. But
they needed one quickly.
The sound waves continued to grow in intensity, so much so
that the receive dampers were maxed out and were on the verge of
collapse. The ship was already shaking violently with each wave
that struck.
“CeeU, we should turn,” said the female Tech.
“Not until the chart is finished,” replied CeeU.
“We cannot finish a chart without Receive,” she pointed out.
 “I will say when to turn, Tech. Continue with your readings,”
said CeeU angrily.
“Dampers at 106 percent. Sound intensity at 1020 and
increasing. Physdesys structural integrity threatened at 1025.”
“Just the readings, Tech! I am aware of thresholds . . . Oh,
bugs. 1020 . . Discontinue sounding. Hold steady,” commanded
CeeU reluctantly. “If we can’t figure out what’s going on with this
reflection, then we can’t continue to feed it. Tech, mark the most
recent send. Maybe when the reflections stop we’ll at least have a
clue as to which of our sends is involved.”
“Gateprentice, are you well?”
“Emen. You shouldn’t come here. I am confined, and you
could get in trouble with CeeU.”
“CeeU is very busy. He hasn’t been able to determine what is
causing the waves.”
“Well, he better do so quickly. I can feel them hitting us
more strongly each time.”
“Yes, the ship can’t stand this much longer. We’ll have to
turn soon,” said Emen.
“You mean we are continuing forward?”
“CeeU is stubborn. He will refuse to return without the
chart.”
“There won’t be a chart, or a ship if we continue.”
“CeeU has stopped the sounding, and so the reflection should
cease. I imagine he will send a few test waves of low intensity to
try to determine . .”
 A sound wave stronger than any previous struck the ship, and
Xenoth and Emen were thrown to the floor.
“CeeU, we must turn,” cried the Tech from across Control.
“That has to be the last. The feedback loop will dissipate.
Hold position,” said CeeU regaining his footing and holding tight
to a railing by the monitor. “Reading and comparison,” he
commanded.
“1022 . . and again unknown modulation . . attributed to
pulsed-propul—”
“Stop with the propulsion explanation. I know better,”
interrupted CeeU.
“We can blame the Gateprentice,” she pled, knowing that this
would be attractive to CeeU. They could return without the chart
and simply blame Xenoth for their misfortunes.
“We will blame the gatestudent. But we’ll also return with
the chart in spite of his incompetence.”
Another wave struck the ship, throwing the Techs about and
breaking busses and other equipment free from their moorings all
over the ship.
Xenoth and Emen had just gotten up when the new wave hit
and threw them to the floor again. This time they didn’t try to
recover their feet. They lay on the floor and held on to the legs of
Xenoth’s sleep tube.
“But what if it isn’t a reflection?” asked Xenoth.
“Uh. . what else could it be?” replied Emen.
“I don’t know. But consider what we have assumed. We are
in a very fluid area with forces that the Guild is just beginning to
understand. We are moving through this timespace in what we
believe to be constant increments.”
“And we will recreate those increments in reverse after the
turn,” added Emen.
“Right. Now we receive a reflection that cannot be explained
and the algo tells us that pulsed-propulsive acceleration is
involved. But we believe that no one has figured out a way to
create the forces for this type of propulsion. Maybe there is
something else going on. Maybe we are simply assuming
something that we shouldn’t. What if our own rate of travel is not
constant, say something in the area is causing our motion to be
pulsed. Or what if the region somehow displaces timespace in a
manner that the algo interprets as pulsed propulsion. And what if it
is, in fact, a pulsed-propulsive force? What if it isn’t a reflection at
all?”
“Then we’re about to be destroyed,” concluded Emen.
“1023 . . CeeU please . . Physdesys cannot withstand this,”
pled the Tech recovering from the strongest wave yet.
“Algo my friend, tell me why this is happening,” said CeeU,
lost in thought as he entered commands to the engine.
“If it isn’t a reflection then what could it be?” asked Emen.
“An independent source perhaps?” suggested Xenoth,
doubting the idea as he spoke it.
“Of course!” cried Emen, and she ran from Xenoth’s quarters
leaving the seal unsecured.
“Well, they’re going to kick me out anyway,” said Xenoth as
he took advantage of the opening and ran after her. . or rather,
stumbled after her. He found that the effects of exposure were still
strong.
“CeeU! It’s not a reflection. It’s a response to our message,”
yelled Emen as she ran into Control.
“Be quiet Tech. I have to concentrate. . Algo will save us,”
replied CeeU not looking away from his monitor.
“CeeU, look at me!” cried Emen pulling him away from the
monitor. She could see the fear in his eyes and knew instantly that
she would not be able to reach him in time. He was too scared and
confused to listen to reason.
Emen ran to another monitor as CeeU simply stared into
space and repeated, “Algo will save us.”
Her entries to the engine were quick and precise:
• EMEN, TECH CLASS1B, ASSUME CONTROL;
CLEARANCE: XCUT-7
• TREAT RECEIVED AS NEW FORM
• ANALYZE AS WORD MESSAGE
• UNKNOWN LANGUAGE--TRANSLATE
After a second that seemed to last years, the engine
responded “WHO?”
Another even stronger wave struck the ship, throwing the
Techs across the room. Power flashed off then on again as
emergency backups took over.
“1024 . . structural integrity breach with next wave,” the male
Tech shouted as they recovered and scanned the monitors.
“What does it mean?” asked Xenoth looking over Emen’s
shoulder.
 “I don’t . . . Yes! Yes I do!” said Emen. She entered:
• REPLY: PROBE SHIP PHYSDESYS--IN PAIN
Xenoth could hear the sound engine send the message. They
sat staring at the monitor, waiting for the sound wave to strike and
for their ship to be destroyed. When it came after a long wait, they
dropped to the floor and threw their arms over their heads, but the
ship remained intact and the wave was far less intense than they
feared.
“1016 . . I don’t understand,” said the Tech.
Emen entered:
• TRANSLATE ALL FURTHER
“WHY PAIN?” appeared on her monitor.
• REPLY: INTENSITY OF YOUR MESSAGE HURTS
US
“WHO?” came the reply, at a lower intensity.
“What’s happening? What is the algo saying?” asked Xenoth.
“It’s not the algo. We have company,” said Emen. As she
looked up to speak to Xenoth, she could see that CeeU was
watching the messages on his monitor and beginning to
understand.
“I can resume, Tech Emen,” CeeU said unsteadily, not as an
order but as a wish.
Rather than risk humiliating him, Emen complied and entered
the command to return Control to him.
• REPLY: WE ARE THE PROBE SHIP PHYSDESYS,
CHARTING THIS REGION FOR THE GATING
 GUILD. I AM CHIEF TECH CEEU, IN CONTROL
OF THE PHYSDESYS ALGO..
“HELLO PHYSDESYS, WE ARE WANDERERS.”
Xenoth woke to find himself lying in bed in his quarters. He
had passed out in Control soon after communication with the
Wanderers had begun. The effects of exposure, combined with
being thrown about by the incoming sound waves, had taken their
toll. He hoped that it had not been another long sleep, like after the
Natursys forest. There was so much to learn about what had
happened. The excitement of meeting a new intelligent species.
Surely his assistance would make up for his previous failures.
Well, maybe not. CeeU had been so unreasonable. He swung his
feet over the side of the bed, and after some testing found that he
could stand and walk. “A good wash perhaps,” he thought as he
walked to the sink.
“Ugh . . you look terrible,” he said glancing into the mirror
above the sink.
“You should see yourself!” said the face in the mirror.
“Aahh .. ,” he cried jumping away. “Pax, it’s you.”
“Who did you think it was? Some ugly wanderer?” said Pax.
Xenoth walked toward the mirror again and realized that
there were two faces, his own and that of Pax. He looked around to
where Pax should be for him to be reflected as he was, but Xenoth
found that he was alone in the room. He even tried to look behind
the mirror to see if it was a trick, some sort of window/mirror
combination. It wasn’t.
 “You’re in a prison box, remember?” said Pax seeing
Xenoth’s absurd search.
“But we’re aboard Physdesys. How could we be sharing
this?” asked Xenoth.
“I’m here. You’re here. What’s the difference?” said Pax
shrugging his shoulders and sitting down on Kith. Then the sink
seemed to disappear and the ‘mirror’ covered the entire wall. The
image was an exact reflection of Xenoth’s quarters, but it included
Pax and Kith.
“Another good story,” complimented Pax.
“But it wasn’t just a story from memory. It was new. I was .
.”
“Purposes!” shouted Pax, and Kith bellowed along.
“Stop yelling at me,” Xenoth said, quickly covering his ears.
Then he realized that he did not need to cover his ears because the
pain of exposure was gone. The Wanderer’s technique, developed
to compensate for the tremendous pressures generated by their
pulsed propulsion, was very effective. The Wanderers? It all came
flooding back to him. The Wanderers were sea creatures who
travelled by filling huge internal cavities with water and violently
expelling the water in rearward pulses. They communicated to one
another, and after contact with the crew of Physdesys, with
humans, by vibrating their entire outer skin as a sort of giant
speaker. The combination of powerful waves sent outward in all
directions from central sources and the pulsing movement had
made their messages uninterpretable by the ship’s algorithm. They
had learned all this about the Wanderers before they had turned to
bring their chart back to Klasrum. On the return trip Xenoth had
helped CeeU and the other Techs revise the algo to include the
possibility of Wanderers. The Techs had even taken some of his
advice on how their jobs might better fit with the functioning of the
sound engine based on a clearer sense of how their reasoning
processes were different from the algo.
On their return to Klasrum he had convinced his teachers to
reconsider the purposes of the training exercise, extending those
purposes from charting and practice in spatio-temporal dynamics
to possible engagement and sharing with new species. The teachers
had helped him understand how this work had created a new gate,
Xenoth 1, and he had thus begun his career as a gatebuilder.
“It wasn’t new. I remember it all now,” said Xenoth, excited
to find his memories restored. “It must have been the exposure
after all.”
“Nope,” said Pax as a matter of fact.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the box. It makes you think you’re living.”
“You mean it takes away my memory only to give it back
again?”
“You could look at it that way. One thing to always
remember. This is a prison, and no fake life is going to change
that.”
Nothing changed in the room as far as Xenoth could tell, but
he realized that he was, in fact, back in the box. The rest of
Physdesys was not through the seal. It was gone in his past. Emen
and CeeU and all the other Techs of Physdesys had been lost on
their very next trip. A gatestudent error no less. “If only I could
have warned them,” he thought, making the pain of the memory
worse.
“You ought to have something to eat,” said Pax.
“Yes you’re right. It’s been a while I guess. How long this
time?”
“About a week.”
Xenoth walked to the foodstore area and found the new
supplies. Then realizing that Pax’s presence had somehow
triggered the return of his memories, he asked “Pax, how did you
know about purposes . . Pax?”
When no response came, Xenoth turned to see if Pax had
fallen asleep. The old man had disappeared from the image.
 Chapter 5. The Clover Field
First make it in your mind

“I can see the river and the forest. Now the city is coming into
focus. Hey! Turn the lights back on!”
“Continue working, Xenoth.”
“ But how? I can’t see what I’m doing.”
“Use your mind. We can take ourselves only to places we can
image, and we can make with our hands only what we can
see in our dreams.”

“Huh? Hey, move over. You’re heavy.” Xenoth woke to find Kith
lying up against him. “Come on Kith, I can’t breath.”
“Rrrgh,” growled the rocat as she rolled over.
Xenoth sat up and looked around. He was in a large field of
grass. No, not grass, it was clover. The rocat and he were at the
edge of the clover field, laying outside a small hut. The sun was
low in the sky and had begun to burn away the night’s moisture
from the ground. Xenoth could feel the dampness in his clothes, at
least in the areas that Kith had not covered.
“Oh weeds, I’ve slept late again,” said Xenoth leaping to his
feet. “Demiou will make me work overtime if I’m not ready for
search.” He ran behind the hut to the small pool, threw off his
clothes and jumped in.
“YIKE!” he shouted. He’d jumped into the pool every
morning for three months, but the cold water was always a shock.
Nearly as quickly as he had jumped in, he climbed out, grabbed his
clothes, and sprinted into the hut. Inside he could see that his bed
was still made from the day before. “Well, that will save me the
trouble today,” he thought. Demiou told him to spend evenings
studying the star patterns, but she had not meant for him to fall
asleep on the ground. He brushed a towel over his back and front,
not drying himself well, but taking most of the cold water before it
ran to the floor. He threw on a new set of clothes, then reached into
the food container for some fruit, thinking that he might get a few
bites before Demiou arrived.
“Ahem.” No such luck. Mistress Gatebuilder Demiou stood
in the doorway of the hut.
“Late again prentice?”
“I’m sorry, Mistress. I studied the star patterns late into the
night.”
“For how long before you fell asleep in the grass?”
“For at least two . . . uh.” He wondered how could she tell so
easily. Maybe she had just looked at the bed that was still made.
“I’m ready for search,” he said, knowing that was the only
thing he could say in the situation.
Demiou turned and walked down the steps of the hut toward
the field of clover.
“Which square, Xenoth?”
“Today is the twenty-first day of the third month, so square
81.”
The Mistress and Gateprentice walked along the edge of the
field until they came to a pile of three stones, marking the third
month. Demiou stepped back and let Xenoth get into position for
his leaps. Twenty one leaps of exactly six feet each. It would have
been impossible for him to make the leaps accurately just a few
months ago. Now it was second nature.
Xenoth made the leaps and Demiou followed behind,
meeting him at the 81st square. There Xenoth turned and faced the
Mistress. Demiou closed her eyes and stood perfectly still for
several minutes, letting her mind wander freely. Xenoth tried to do
the same, but couldn’t help thinking that it was a waste of time.
She always asked him what technique they should use, and he
always responded the same.
“How shall we search today, Gateprentice Xenoth?”
“An S-shaped pattern on one knee.”
“A good choice, but the same as every other day,” replied
Demiou.
“If we don’t use the same pattern every day, we are bound to
miss the 4-leaf,” said Xenoth. Demiou nodded acknowledgment,
not necessarily agreement, and stepped to the center of one side of
the square. Xenoth stepped to the center of the opposite side. They
each dropped to one knee and began searching for the four-leaf
clover.
After precisely one hour, they met in the center of the square.
Demiou stood, turned back toward the side of the field and walked
away. Xenoth followed as always. He tried to guess which square
they would find 4-leaf in. Each day cut the number of squares
remaining, so it wouldn’t be too long now.
 When they returned to the hut, Demiou turned to Xenoth and
said, “You’ll search the field on your own from now on. I will
return when you are finished.”
“Yes, Mistress.” He wasn’t very excited that it was going to
take him twice as long without Demiou’s help. But he wouldn’t
have to get up so early either. He could sleep as late as he liked just
so long as the search of a square and all his other tasks were
finished. On the other hand, his tasks were getting more and more
tedious, and he was looking forward to finding the 4-leaf and
moving on in his training.
“How will you know when I’ve found the 4-leaf?” he asked.
“Why do you need to know?” Demiou answered.
“Well, because I won’t know what to do then.” Xenoth had
grown extremely fond of Demiou, but he didn’t like how she
always seemed to answer a question with another question.
“You needn’t worry. To your duties now,” she commanded,
and with that she turned and walked away.
Through third month and into fourth, Xenoth followed the
pattern precisely. There was only one more month, and so he was
sure to find the 4-leaf soon. As fourth month came to an end,
however, he started to grow impatient. “It must be the very last
square,” he mumbled. “Demiou will return at the end of fifth
month just after I find the 4-leaf in the last square.”
And so on the last morning of fourth month, instead of
searching the square for that day, he went directly to the last square
of fifth month and searched there. But the 4-leaf was not there
either. He worried that Demiou would learn that he had broken the
sequence, and so the next day he got up early and searched both
the square for the present day and the day before. He didn’t find
the 4-leaf, but he did discover that he could search two squares and
still have time for his other tasks. By searching two squares a day,
he would find the 4-leaf twice as fast. So from that day forward, he
searched two squares per day, getting faster and faster as he went.
He finished searching all the squares in the next 15 days—
without finding the 4-leaf. “What am I going to do now, Kith?” he
said, wishing that the rocat could actually help him. “Demiou will
be back at the end of the month, and I don’t have a 4-leaf to show
her.”
Xenoth went about his other tasks for the rest of the day, but
as he lay studying the star patterns that night, he could think only
of the 4-leaf and of what he was going to say to Demiou.
In the morning, he walked to the edge of the clover field and
stared out over the squares. He imagined somehow attaching a
fourth leaf to a 3-leaf, but knew that Demiou would never be
fooled. “I must have missed it, Kith,” he said to the rocat that lay
by him at the edge of the field. “I must have rushed too fast and
missed the 4-leaf somewhere in this last month of squares. I’ll have
to do fifth month again.”
Xenoth spent the next 15 days searching fifth-month squares,
once again two per day to be able to finish on schedule. As the
days ran out, and still no 4-leaf had been found, he began to panic.
He was sure that they would end his prenticeship. He would never
become a gatebuilder. But fifth month ended, and Demiou did not
return.
 “She’s given me a reprieve, Kith,” he said to the rocat. Kith
glanced up, looked at Xenoth for a moment, then returned to her
nap. Taking advantage of the extra time, Xenoth decided to search
earlier squares. Of course, he would only search the areas he
himself had covered. A Mistress Gatebuilder such as Demiou
could not have missed the 4-leaf.
After nearly another month of this, he still had not found the
4-leaf and was losing all patience. He had become less systematic
in selecting squares, so he did not know which he had searched
only once, and which he had searched more than once. He had
abandoned the S-shaped search pattern, not by conscious choice
but out of frustration.
Finally, one morning he could not bring himself to search the
field. He lay in bed the entire day staring at the roof of the hut
without any idea of how he could find the 4-leaf before Demiou’s
return. That night he tried to study the stars, but could think only of
the clover field. He fell asleep on the ground alongside Kith and
dreamed that he was out in the field searching.
The vision of the 4-leaf came to him in the night. He could
see that it was two steps from the corner of the 23rd square of
second month. A large 4-leaf standing out separate from all the
surrounding 3-leafs. He didn’t need to search. All he needed to do
was reach down and pluck it from the field. He did so, and as he
held the 4-leaf up to the sky, he felt the wisdom of the Gating
Guild flood into him.
Xenoth awoke with the vision clear in his mind. He shoved
Kith off his side and raced out to the field without washing or
eating. There in the 23rd square his 4-leaf would be waiting. He
made the 23 leaps in second-month squares and took two steps
from the corner. He had only to reach down and pluck the clover
from the ground and hold it up to the sky and feel the wisdom
flood . . but it was not a 4-leaf. “Aaaaugh weeds!” he cried. Maybe
he had grabbed the wrong one. He started to pluck the clover from
the field around the one he had taken. He held each one to the
light, but all were 3-leafs. Before he could stop himself, he had
ripped up an area as wide as he was tall. “Oh no, Demiou will
surely send me away now. I’ve destroyed the square.” Dejected
and sure that his career as a gatebuilder was lost, he walked back to
the hut.
Xenoth did none of his tasks that day. What was the point if
he would be dismissed anyway. That night he lay in the grass with
Kith, sure that it would be his last night as a gateprentice. As he
gazed upward, he began to see the sky as a flat cover over his
world rather than a field of stars. It was an oppressive view, one
that made him feel imprisoned and barely able to move. But in
another way, it provided him with a greater sense of place.
When he finally fell asleep, the vision came again. The 23rd
square of second month, two steps from the corner . . a large 4-
leaf, held to the sky . . the flood of wisdom. “Rrrrrgg,” rumbled
Kith waking Xenoth from his sleep. “What is it, Kith?” he asked,
but Kith remained silent and seemed to have spoken in her sleep.
He lay back and again saw the night sky as a cover. But this time,
he was drawn to a certain sector and star pattern. He was stunned
to realize two things simultaneously. First, the star pattern was just
about where the 23rd square of second month would be if the sky
were the clover field. And second, the pattern was that of a 4-leaf.
“It’s not in the field, it’s in the sky!” he shouted, and Kith opened
an eye to see what the fuss was all about.
“But what does it mean?” he asked, expecting the flood of
wisdom to come. He thought about his searching of the clover field
and the technique he had selected. He tried to recall things that
Demiou had said to him. He thought about his studies of the star
patterns. But when morning came, he still had no answers. The 4-
leaf star pattern had fallen below the horizon hours ago, and now
the night sky had given way to daylight. He continued sitting on
the ground with his back against Kith, looking out over the clover
field. He was completely confused. So what if a star pattern looked
like a 4-leaf. It wasn’t real. It had probably been a dream, and
when Demiou arrived he would still have nothing to show.
“Your search has ended I assume?” asked Demiou. She stood
behind Xenoth and the rocat and noted from Xenoth’s disheveled
appearance that he had not been to bed or washed himself.
Probably had not eaten either.
“Yes . . well . . . no,” said Xenoth without looking around.
His time was up. He would confess to destroying the square and
pack his things and leave without argument.
“I’ve destroyed a square.”
“I see. Show me which one.”
Xenoth stood and walked out to the field. Demiou followed
behind. Xenoth did not make the leaps. They weren’t necessary as
he could see the bare spot in the square all the way from the edge
of the field. Perhaps she would ask him to replant it before he left.
It was only fair since he had done the damage. But it would be a
bitter task, ending his time with the Gatebuilders by creating a field
for some other prentice to search.
As they reached the square, Xenoth saw that one clover had
escaped his destructive hands. Off to the side of the bare patch,
amidst the scattered 3-leafs that he had torn up, a single clover
stood out and taunted him—reminded him of what he had done. It
would be even harder to replant if he had to work around a
surviving clover, so he reached down to pull it out. He would
replant it among the 3-leafs at the edge. But as he grabbed the
stem, his eyes jumped wide. It was a 4-leaf.
“Congratulations, Gatebuilder,” said Demiou, smiling down
at him and signaling with the ‘gatebuilder’ title that his time with
her was at an end and that she was confident that he would succeed
in his final assignment and become a builder.
“But it wasn’t here, it was in the sky!” blurted out Xenoth
before he could think about what had happened. “It must have
grown in the night.” But he knew that wasn’t possible. It must have
been there all along and he had missed it. Maybe he had trampled
it as he ripped up the others. No, that didn’t make sense. This 4-
leaf stood alone and undamaged. And sure enough, as he glanced
to the corner of the square he could see that it was precisely where
it had been in his vision.
“You’re confused Xenoth?” asked Demiou seeing the
surprised look on his face and the way he looked about.
 “Yes, Mistress. I have to confess that I didn’t know that this
4-leaf was here, at least I didn’t think it was really here. I saw it in
a dream, but when I came out to the field I found only 3-leafs.
Then I saw it in the sky. . . but as you can see, I didn’t treat the
field well when I couldn’t find it.”
“You’ll need to repair the damage before you leave.”
“Of course, I’ll do it right now,” replied Xenoth feeling
embarrassed by what he had done, but at the same time filled with
excitement at moving on in his training.
“Good dreams to you,” said Demiou and she began to walk
away.
“Thank you, Mist . . but Mistress Demiou, I have so many
questions,” said Xenoth grasping the significance of her words and
realizing that she was leaving him for the last time.
Demiou stopped and turned back. “What questions may I
answer?” she said.
Xenoth could hear it coming. He would ask questions and she
would respond with other questions. He knew that he always
learned more that way . . but maybe this time was different. “I
don’t understand how the 4-leaf grew overnight,” he said.
“You made space for it. What other questions do you have?”
Xenoth had to think quickly. He hadn’t expected such a
straightforward answer, and he knew that he would miss the
opportunity to ask other questions if he tried to make sense of it
now.
“Uh . . is the sky a clover field?” he asked, trying to come up
with a question about his dream but not finding the right words.
 “Yes and no. What else?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Yes sometimes and no others?
Yes in some ways and no in other ways?”
“No and yes.”
“Uh . .”
“Let me explain, Xenoth,” said Demiou.
“At last,” he thought, “an explanation without a question.”
“We build gates in fields of clover and in fields of stars. It
depends on what the people and their worlds need. Our gates may
be planted in the ground or elsewhere, but they are first in our
minds.”
Demiou could see that Xenoth was beginning to grasp these
important gating concepts. She was so proud of him. Of course,
she could not show it. “What other questions do you have?”
“Well, I don’t mean to complain Mistress, but why did we
search the field every day when the location of the 4-leaf would
appear to me in a dream?”
“Your dreams cannot take you where you are not prepared to
go, Xenoth. It was the daily search that made your dream possible.
As you searched the field, your mind readied itself to find the 4-
leaf.”
“But for so many months? I’d given up. I couldn’t follow the
pattern, and at the end, I couldn’t even go to the field.”
“The discipline of the pattern was important. But equally
important was knowing when the pattern wouldn’t help any more.”
“You said that it was a good pattern.”
 “Yes, a good choice. It seems so, at least, since you did find a
4-leaf. But one never knows if a good choice will lead to the 4-
leaf. A good pattern is good preparation for the dream. But it isn’t
itself a dream,” said Demiou. She knew that it would take Xenoth
some time to understand this more deeply, so she thought it best to
move along. “I should mention also that I suspect you had to stay
away from the field in order for the dream to happen.”
“What do you mean?” asked Xenoth.
“The search gets you ready, but often the dream won’t come
until you stay away from the field for a while. You have to give it
space . . like you made space for the 4-leaf here in the field.”
Xenoth knew that he would have many questions soon
enough, but he couldn’t think of them quickly. He could feel the
tears start to build at the edges of his eyes. He knew that he would
probably never see Demiou again.
“May I keep the 4-leaf for luck, Mistress?”
“No, 4-leafs are so rare. We should let it continue to grow
and reproduce.”
Xenoth knew she was right. Demiou seeing his sadness
added “But the 4-leaf will always be with you . . in the sky and in
your mind. It’s a powerful tool for you to carry with you, and
certainly more than mere luck.”
Demiou knew that it was time to go. She had just one more
answer to give, and it was to a question Xenoth had not yet asked.
“You have studied well, Xenoth. You have begun to master the 3
leaves of viewing, doing, and using. Now you have added the
fourth leaf—that of building. Dream wonderful gates, dear
Xenoth.” And with that wish, the first she had ever ended with
such affection, Demiou turned and walked from the field, hopeful
that Xenoth would find a new and powerful path.

DO

praxis USE

techne

BUILD
poiesis VIEW
theoria

The 4-leaf
“Braauugh,” roared Kith as she ran through Xenoth’s legs,
knocking him to the ground. Or rather, to the floor. As Xenoth
regained his feet and looked about, he found himself in the prison
box. It still had the appearance of the clover field, but he knew he
was in the box with Kith and Pax awaiting his trial.
“A good tale, my friend,” said Pax walking out from behind
the illusion of the hut.
“Hello, Pax . . Pax? I . . I’ve just been a gateprentice. I was
with Demiou in the last stage of my prenticeship, at the clover field
and . .” His memory of the field and of all the other events of his
life came back. “Pax, I was there. I relived it. It wasn’t just a
memory. I was young. I was a prentice with none of the memories
of life since.”
 Pax simply walked past and said “You have to watch out.
That rocat’ll keep knocking you off your feet if you’re not
careful.”
“Kith! Kith, it’s you! You were there!”
 Chapter 6. The Factory
Ground it in users’ experience

A lovely new gate, Xenoth. Well proportioned and attractive to

the eye. Now destroy it.
Destroy it? But why?
Because you created it for yourself rather than for the travelers
who must use it.

“So Kith was there and now she’s here. Big deal,” said Pax getting
annoyed at Xenoth’s persistent questions.
“But Pax, how can Kith be here with us in this box? She died
years ago on the BoundRE Ice.”
“How would I know such things?”
“Did she come here with you? Has she been with you long?”
“Forever, it seems. Let’s get away from this field. It was a
good story, but I’m tired of it.”
“Pax, wait, don’t you understand? Dent found her and gave
her to me as a kitten. Kith was with me for more than a century.
But when they threw me in here with you, I didn’t even recognize
her.”
“Zeros at ValU. 37 degrees West 45 degrees Nor . .”
“Hey! Not so fast, old man! I want to know how Kith got
here with you. She and I were together all the way back to the
factories where I began my studies.”
A flash of another world came and went.
 “Not there!” shouted Pax. “37 degrees West 45 degrees . .”
“Kith, you remember the factories don’t you?” asked Xenoth.
“Aaaaaagggg,” cried Pax throwing his hands over his eyes.
“Wake up 83!” shouted the overseer Teech, prodding
Xenoth in the back with a chawk stick.

“Huh? Oh . . time for work,” said Xenoth, not wanting to get

out of bed. But it was better than feeling what Teech would do
with the chawk if he used it for real. While Teech woke the others,
Xenoth rolled out of bed and headed for the bath at the end of the
barracks. If he got there quick, he’d be able to dress and get to the
front of the mess line. Mess food certainly was not something to
look forward to, but getting to the mess early meant getting to the
work line early as well, and that meant a station farther away from
Teech in the shop.
“Morning Dent,” Xenoth said to the worker next to him in
line. He and his friend Dent had this down to a science. At least
they thought they did. They were eighth and ninth in line. Not too
early to look like grovelers, but not so late that they’d end up close
to Teech in the shop.
“Morning Xenoth,” Dent said softly, looking around to make
sure no overseer was near enough to hear them. They knew not to
use each other’s name in front of an overseer. Here everything was
numbers. You answered to your number. You punched in at the
shop by your number. You were paid your token salary by your
number.
They marched into the mess and gave their numbers.
“37,” said Dent.
“That’s 2 rolls and 4 samples,” said the mess worker,
handing him his tray of prescribed food.
“Great,” he replied with a large smile. The worker shot him
an angry look. Dent was okay, but his sarcasm was going to get
him in trouble one day.
Ever since they had switched to the new system, the food was
so bland they could hardly eat it. It was supposed to be better for
them, but what awful tastes! He wondered if the idiot who had
come up with the system had ever eaten any of the food himself.
“83,” said Xenoth.
“1 roll, 3 samples, and a pie.”
“Hey, how’d you rate dessert?” complained Dent seeing the
pie on Xenoth’s tray.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s that kiss I gave Teech yesterday,”
Xenoth joked. They tried hard, but couldn’t keep themselves from
laughing out loud. Luckily, none of the overseers saw or heard.
They’d have been cleaning the stables for sure if they had.
“Rt today,” stated Dent confidently as they sat on the bench
to eat.
“Yeh, you’re going to win today,” replied Xenoth. Chances
were very low that they would win the jousts, though, so neither of
them really let their hopes up. When they were new to the factory,
they had expected Rtime regularly. But it was canceled whenever
their team lost the jousts, which was almost all the time.
Xenoth had been quite an Rtist before coming to Klasrum.
He had made up some interesting moves, and had created a few
very interesting sounds. But he was out of practice now, and the
factory work was making it more and more difficult for him to
move. What would his mother think now? Did she know what she
was getting him into sending him to gateschool? He suspected that
she probably did. “I’ll be so proud of you,” she had said, meaning
she’d be proud when Teech and the others had changed him into
something better.
 “Form up!” shouted Teech. A good thing they had been at the
front of the mess line. As it was, they had to stuff the last bites of
their food into their mouths as they ran to the work line.
“Eleventh and twelfth,” thought Xenoth as he looked down
the line. Still not too bad. They marched out of the mess and down
the hall. As they passed the auditorium, Xenoth recalled the weeks
of standing recitation they had given there. Training had started
with memorization of the production procedures. The overseer had
shouted the phrases, and they had shouted them back. Over and
over until they could repeat all the procedures by themselves. “Still
don’t know what they mean,” mumbled Xenoth.
Across the yard, they entered the shop area. As they passed
the clock, workers took their numbered cards from the OUT rack,
punched in at the clock, and put their cards in the IN rack. Then
they moved quickly from the clock to get to their work area for 1st
Clang. 1st CLG, actually. It stood for Changing Labor Group, but
the workers called them clangs after the bell sounds that started
each one.
Xenoth and Dent took advantage of their places in line. As
they entered the work room, they hustled to positions as far as
possible away from where Teech would sit to watch their work.
But not too far from the doorway to the next area, or else they
would be farther back in line when it came time to move for 2nd
Clang.
“CLANG,” the bell sounded once to signal 1st CLG. The
workers stood at their positions and as soon as Teech gave the
signal, they recited the gatebuilders pledge, then the procedure for
the production area.
Gatebuilder’s Pledge
Hearts open free
through pillars and key
stone by stone
we build our gates
Procedure 1
One requir one strat
requir stone strat stone
make plan hold arch
tie image groun
The overseers always seemed to refer to the pledge and
procedures when they criticized the workers products, but neither
Xenoth nor Dent, nor any of the other workers for that matter,
really knew what they meant. Xenoth wondered if the overseers
even knew, but he certainly wouldn’t be the one to find out.
Work began immediately after the recitation. Here they
would build a gate part called a requir. As far as Xenoth knew if
was a simple block of stone with holes in some places and pins
sticking out in others. He had learned to make them by looking at
one that he found lying under his desk and by watching other
workers when Teech wasn’t around. They made requirs of several
different sizes, but other than that, the parts were all the same.
Xenoth had asked Teech what the requirs did, and how they fit in
with other parts, but Teech had just gotten angry and told him that
he would learn when he was more worthy of such knowledge.
 Xenoth hadn’t asked many more questions after that. He
figured that he wouldn’t get an answer and would probably be put
in his place again anyway. He didn’t understand why he needed to
be put in his place. What was a place anyway? “I don’t know this
stuff, but I’m not stupid,” he had complained to Dent. “Why
couldn’t Teech just answer my question?”
Dent and Xenoth watched the clock out of the corner of their
eyes. As it came closer to 2nd CLG, they began stalling on their
requirs. They had to time it just right to be next to the bin when the
bell went off. That way they could step right into line.
“CLANG-CLANG” went the bell signaling the start of 2nd
CLG. The workers ran from their positions to line up. Teech pulled
a couple of them back to clean up the work they had left undone.
Xenoth and Dent were right next to the bin putting in the
completed requirs, so they stepped directly into the line.
As they marched to the next work area, Teech came up
alongside Dent. “Seven requirs today, 37?”
“Yesir,” answered Dent knowing that he had met quota.
“Eight tomorrow.”
“But Teech . .”
“Eight tomorrow, and nine the next day if I see you timing it
again.” Dent knew better than to complain any more.
“Eight for you as well, 83,” said Teech. Xenoth had thought
he had gotten away with it.
The workers took up positions in the next work area and
recited the procedure for making strats.
 “Why does Teech pick on us? Everybody times it once in a
while,” said Dent.
“Shut up, you want extra strats as well?” warned Xenoth.
“Well, he picks on us all the time,” whispered Dent.
“He’s just ticked that he has to watch us miserable grNts
make requirs and strats all the time,” whispered back Xenoth,
looking around to make sure that the overseer wasn’t watching.
“If he wasn’t such a stoner maybe they’d let him watch
imagekeys.”
“I heard that that’s not how it works. He’s got to spend a
half-dozen years watching grNts before they’ll let him watch
smRts.”
“Hey, who you calling a grNt?” asked Dent.
“You ya stoner. You’re a grNt, and so am I. Why do you
think one of us ends up cleaning the stables all the time?”
“Yeh, well you don’t have to remind me.”
“Well if you don’t shut up . .”
“37, front and center,” commanded Teech. He had seen them
talking, but had let it go, until they stopped working and just
talked.
“Well, young strat. Will we be seeing you joust this
afternoon?” Teech asked, a clear threat that he would choose
someone else to take Dent’s turn.
“Yes Teech,” Dent replied.
“And will we be having Rt?” the overseer challenged.
“Yes Teech, Rt today,” Dent said defiantly.
 “Well 37, if you are so confident, then perhaps we’ll have a
hero among us.” A hero was a worker who had the courage to joust
without a helmet, a very dangerous thing to do.
“Don’t do it!” shouted Xenoth. But his shout was drowned
out by the other workers.
“Hayho 37! Stonem 37! A hero for us today!” they cried.
Dent stood steadily, trying hard not to expose his fear. To
back down now would be to let Teech humiliate him in front of the
others.
“Rt today,” he repeated, and the workers cheered. Xenoth
simply stared at him, angry at what his friend’s pride could easily
cost.
Lunch was the same as usual for most. The mess worker had
heard that Dent would ride unprotected, so he added a pie to
Dent’s tray.
“Last meal?” Dent asked the worker.
“So why bother eating at all?” replied the worker, angry that
Dent couldn’t even say thanks for the dessert.
Xenoth and Dent were at the end of the line so they had to sit
near the overseers. Xenoth was still angry with his friend. But they
had been through a lot together, and all of the work group knew
that Dent wasn’t a good rider. Maybe he’d do okay if the other
rider wasn’t good either.
“So what will you do at Rtime today?” Xenoth asked, trying
to give Dent some confidence.
“I’ll make my coffin,” replied Dent bitterly.
 “Come on. You’ll do fine. Maybe a few bruises or
something.”
“Or something . . like a broken neck,” said Dent.
Nobody jousted without getting hurt. The giant rocats ran too
fast and the riders were either too scared to relax or too crazy to
protect themselves well. When they thrust the rams at each other,
there was nothing but crashing arms and legs and feet and heads.
Dent could remember the last two times someone from their work
group had jousted. Both workers had lost and both had been hurt.
Neither had returned to the lines. Nobody asked, because nobody
wanted to know.
“Your hero, 37!” shouted Teech standing at the end of the
mess and raising his glass in salute. The workers all stood and
raised their glasses as well. “37,” they shouted together. Then the
overseer escorted Dent to the jousting field.
“We have many past workers and sponsors here today,” said
Teech. “If you should win, our factory stands to gain new
machines and gate contracts. More than that, we will be able to
place our banner atop the Guild pole until the next joust,” he added
thinking that it would instill greater pride in the rider.
“Who cares?” thought Dent, “I just don’t want to get killed.”
The jousting field was circled with the workers from Dent’s
factory and from his opponent’s factory. To the sides of the
collision point were the past workers and gate sponsors, all decked
out in their suits and gowns. The sound engine blared from one
side of the field. Dent could see the rocats being led from the stable
area off to the other.
 “Your opponent, 37,” said Teech pointing to another worker
being escorted to the field.
“Oh stones,” said Dent, recognizing the veteran jouster. It
was 196—Joc the monster. A huge boy, even though he was no
older than Dent. He and Xenoth had watched Joc win his last six
jousts and knew that he needed only one more win to retire as a
champion. As Joc came closer, Dent could barely keep himself
from breaking down. He had no hope. They might as well not
explain the rules. They loved a champion, so they would let Joc get
away with anything today.
Sensing his worker’s fear, Teech nonchalantly put his arm
around Dent’s shoulder—not to comfort him but to keep him from
running away. “Look, hero 37, your parents are here to see you
joust.” Dent looked up in the crowd and saw his mother and father
smiling and waving to him. He raised his hand and gave a slight
wave back to them. “Now now, 37,” said Teech seeing Dent’s
glance over to the helmet he could wear if he chose. “You
wouldn’t want to disappoint your parents and the factory would
you?”
“You don’t fool me Teech. Joc can have his championship. I
won’t wear a helmet, but I’m jumping out,” Dent said defiantly.
That was the plan he had worked out with Xenoth during lunch.
When the two riders met at full speed and were supposed to strike
at each other, Dent would make it easy for his opponent to win by
leaping off the rocat making it look like the other worker had made
a clean hit. Sure, the other rider would win, but Dent might not get
too badly hurt.
 “You do that, and 83 will be our next hero,” Teech sneered
giving Xenoth’s number.
There was no choice then. Dent couldn’t betray his friend to
Teech or anybody. He would have to try to win the joust. He
couldn’t imagine how he could come up with enough force from
his small body to push Joc off, but maybe he could strike some sort
of glancing blow that the monster wouldn’t expect.
The two riders were taken to opposite ends of the field, and
they climbed aboard their rocats. “Grrrnnnt,” growled the rocat as
Dent grabbed hold of the straps. A rocat could sense a rider’s
inexperience in a second. The sound engine went silent, and the
Master Gatebuilder sent by the Guild gave the signal for the joust
to begin.
Dent’s rocat leapt away almost hurtling Dent to the ground.
Faster and faster the animal sprinted toward the center of the field.
Dent could hear the roar of the crowd to his sides but could think
only of how he could survive the impending collision. He could
see Joc aboard the back of his rocat, getting larger and more fierce
looking as the two came closer and closer together.
The collision point was only yards away when Dent saw Joc
take his straps in a single hand and set himself for the thrust. The
monster let out a scream that went straight through Dent’s heart.
Dent screamed as well. “HEELLP!!” he cried as he collapsed
flat on the rocat’s back and held on for dear life. He felt Joc’s ram
sail over his head and the other rocat fly by his side. As he realized
what he’d done, he looked backward to see Joc turning and
screaming insults after him. Something about “coward” no doubt.
A few past workers hid their giggles while most of the sponsors
shouted angrily about Dent’s factory having to pay for his act.
Dent was still trembling as they brought him back to the
starting point. There stood Teech holding Xenoth by the arm. Dent
knew what this meant. He would ride again and fight Joc, or
Xenoth would have to do so in his place.
“I can do it,” he said.
“No Dent. Let me,” Xenoth offered.
But before there could be any discussion, Dent kicked into
the Rocat’s side and held tight as the animal sprinted down the
field. Joc had just turned when he saw his opponent starting before
the signal was given. He drove his heels into the rocat below him,
determined to make the miserable coward pay for spoiling his
championship ride. The two rocats were warmed up by the first
pass and ran faster than ever. As they approached the collision
point, Dent did his best to set himself for the thrust. Then as the
two riders screamed and sent the rams at each other, Dent’s feet
slipped out from under him.
It happened too fast for the crowd to see. It looked like Joc
had made the most magnificent score ever. Dent simply flew back
in the direction from which he had rode. But in truth, Dent’s slip
had sent him slamming into Joc’s rocat, and it was the huge animal
that had sent him flying. Joc had simply flown through the air
above. Joc was paraded about by his fellow factory workers and
celebrated as a great champion. Dent was carried away as his
fellows were quickly ushered back to their factory.
 There was no Rt that day, or any other day for the next two
weeks in Xenoth’s factory. The workers had to put in 6 CLGs a
day rather than 5. Teech said it was because the factory was having
to make do with fewer resources. He complained of the other
overseer’s jeers, but the workers could think only about what had
happened to Dent. Xenoth had started to ask about Dent once, but
was cut off. Teech threatened that he would be next if he tried to
pursue it. But Dent was his friend and, in the end, had sacrificed
himself for him. There had to be a way of finding out what had
happened.
From a dangerous bribe of another overseer, Xenoth learned
that Dent was still on Klasrum, in a hospital not far from the
jousting field. He was determined to see his friend one more time.
So late one night, he sneaked out of the barracks and made his way
to the hospital. At the agreed upon time and place, the overseer
came through on his end of the bribe and snuck Xenoth up to
Dent’s room.
The lights were low, but Xenoth could see some of Dent’s
belongings in a corner of the room. His friend lay in bed,
apparently sound asleep.
“Dent, it’s me Xenoth,” he whispered. Dent didn’t move.
“Dent . . Dent,” Xenoth said a little louder as he approached the
bed.
“Aaaauuhh,” Dent moaned.
“Shhhh, be quiet. I’m not supposed to be here.” Xenoth
stepped up to the side of the bed and looked down into Dent’s face.
“Huhhh,” he gasped at the sight. Dent’s skull had been crushed and
then reconstructed. He had apparently hit his head square into the
thick hide of the rocat. The bandages covered all but his mouth and
one ear. Dent breathed with an awful rasping noise and was
apparently not able to move any of his limbs. Xenoth was too
afraid to lift the sheet to see what condition the rest of Dent’s body
was in.
“Dent? Can you hear me?”
“Uuuuh . . Xen . .”
“Yes, it’s me Xenoth.”
“Go away . . catch you . . make you . . ride . .”
“Oh Dent, I’m so sorry,” and Xenoth could feel the tears run
down his cheeks.
“Take care . . Kith.”
Xenoth remembered Dent telling him about the rokitten that
his parents had given him. Dent really loved the rokitten. To ask
Xenoth to care for her meant that he didn’t think he would recover.
“You’ll be okay, Dent.”
“Go . .” Dent couldn’t say any more. He was exhausted from
the effort of getting out a few words and he gasped for air. Xenoth
knew that Dent was right. The injuries were too severe.
“Of course I’ll take care of her, Dent. I . . I have to go,” he
struggled to say. Xenoth could hear someone coming down the
hallway, and the overseer had dissappeared. Looking out the
window he could see that he was only one floor up and was just
above a cover over an entrance. He climbed out the window and
lowered himself down.
 The world swirled in and out of focus as Xenoth ran. He
slowed to a walk and then he stopped. He bent over panting, his
now old heart beating fiercely, and the tears still streaming down
his face. He knew that he was back in the prison box, but the
memories of Klasrum were so strong in his mind—as if they had
just happened. He sat on the floor to catch his breath and slowly
recalled how the remainder of his time on Klasrum had been spent.
He wiped away the tears on his sleeve and saw that Pax was there,
sitting on Kith off to the side of what still looked like the road back
to the factory on Klasrum.
“A very sad story, Xenoth,” said Pax.
“Yes, it was a difficult time, Pax . . Pax? You’re crying,”
Xenoth said seeing the tears in the old man’s eyes.
“Ahem . . well, you’re such a good story teller,” said Pax
reaching for a rag to clean his face. “So did you get caught?”
“Uh . . oh you mean running back to the factory. No, I was
able to slip back in without notice.”
“Brrrrooohh,” trumpeted Kith.
Xenoth smiled at the rocat, not understanding how she could
be there with them, but happy to see her nonetheless.
“Kith arrived in a crate a week later. Dent had somehow
gotten word to his parents that he wanted me to care for her.”
“A rocat in a factory?” asked Pax.
“Yes. Actually, the other workers were glad to have her
around, even Teech. It seems that rocats do a good job of keeping
other animals away, other animals that aren’t very pleasant to have
around, that is.”
 “A good hunter she is,” Pax agreed patting the rocat.
“You still haven’t told me how she could be here with us.”
“So how long did you remain at the factories?” asked Pax
ignoring Xenoth’s question.
Xenoth knew better than to try to pursue it just now. Pax
would just get angry and nothing would be gained. It would make
the time together more difficult. Xenoth walked to the food stores
and gathered a few things. He took for granted that the goons had
been and had re-supplied the box.
“I was there for three more years before my prenticeship with
Demiou and my assignment aboard Physdesys. Well, three and a
half actually. They kept me on past the other workers’
doorclosing.”
“Doorclosing … hmmm,” said Pax.
“Oh, sorry,” said Xenoth, interpreting Pax’s statement to be a
question. “Doorclosing is the ceremony when the workers finish
their time at the factory. As they leave the factory for the last time,
they get to slam a big door shut.”
“Quite a way to end the time,” commented Pax.
“Yes, it sort of helped us begin to forget and get on with the
rest of our lives.”
“You wanted to forget your training? Hmmph. Some
training.”
“It’s not training at all,” said Xenoth angrily. “The school is
an indoctrination center. It’s a relic. It has nothing to do with a
gatebuilder’s craft. It’s a prison.” Then looking about he saw the
irony of the statement.
 “Why did you have to spend the extra time?” asked Pax.
“They lied to me. Well, not exactly a lie, but they let me
believe something that wasn’t true.”
“And what was that?”
“After about a year, I was transferred to a different factory. I
found myself with a bunch of smRts. I thought that they had made
a mistake at the time, but I suppose I deserved it. With this group, I
had only three CLGs per day and we worked mostly on flags and
imagekeys. And Rt every day. It was a pretty good life when I look
back on it. A lot better than what it was like with the grNts, of
course. But I bet that most of the grNts could have done as well if
they were treated the same way we were.”
“The half year extra was added because I had to make up for
time I spent out of line. After a year with the smRts, I came up
with an idea for how we could do a better job making imagekeys. I
skipped many CLGs working out the details. And it turned out
very well—better keys from a better process. But I learned the hard
way that that didn’t matter.”
“Why’s that?” asked Pax.
“The factory was part of the Gate Corporation, and the Gate
Corporation had a monopoly. So when I came up with a new key
that was a better match to what builders really needed, they never
let it go into production.”
“Why not, if it was better?”
“It was different, and it would have cost them to make the
changes. More importantly, it didn’t do what the crats wanted—
what they said that gatebuilders needed. I spent months coming up
with the new process, then it was judged by the same old rules. Of
course it didn’t follow those rules. They were stupid rules. They
were centuries old and led us to make keys that gatebuilders could
barely use. But since they were the only keys around, who could
do anything but buy them?”
“You talked to customers?” asked Pax.
“Yes . . that’s what did it. They would have let me back in
line if I hadn’t showed my new keys to some visiting customers.
The customers thought the new keys were great. But I didn’t have
permission to show them. So that was that. An extra half year. . .
how did you know the gatebuilders were called customers at the
factory?”
“So the new keys were forgotten?” said Pax, again ignoring
Xenoth’s question.
“Maybe they forgot. I didn’t. In fact, I used them a number of
tim . . Oh keepers, I’m in this box anyway. They were good keys
and served well.” Xenoth realized a moment too late that he had
admitted making and using illegal keys. The goons would tell the
crats. But the crats probably knew anyway.
 Chapter 7. Jood
Learn to see things differently

“Every time I make a new connection between things that seem

different at first, you say that I’m closer to finishing my
training. But I never finish. When is this going to end?”
“Soon, Xenoth. And never.”

“Xenie? Xenie? . . Oh here you are. The gatebuilder is here. Please

come out and say hello. And remember what I told you. Your best
behavior, Xenie.”
“Yes, mom,” Xenoth said sullenly. All he knew about the
gate school was that it was on some island called Klasrum and
lasted for years. He wasn’t at all interested in leaving his friends
behind to go learn to be a gatebuilder, whatever that was.
“Gatebuilder Jood, this is Xenoth,” his mother said.
The gatebuilder paid no attention to her name being
misspoken. An unimportant detail. “Hey there Xenie! Ooooh, look
up from the floor there little guy. Rocat got your tongue?”
“Spiders,” Xenoth thought. It was a girl.
“Xenoth, please say hello,” his mother asked, her tone of
voice saying it was more than a request.
“Hello,” he mumbled not looking up from the floor.
“Well, we’ll share soon enough,” the gatebuilder said seeing
that he was just obeying his mother. “But in the Morz Jungle they
take eye contact as a sign of respect, and people who don’t respect
each other get their eyes burned out.”
 Xenoth’s mother gasped. But it had the desired effect.
Xenoth’s head flew up, his eyes wide with fear looking at this
strange girl from the gate school. Well, more of a woman now that
he got a look at her. But she wasn’t too old he guessed. The way
she dressed and the way she talked certainly weren’t like most
grownups.
“Hey guy, relax. I was just kiddin ya. Show me to my room.
I’m beat. It’s a long way from Klasrum ya know,” Jood said to
Xenoth as she picked up her two small bags.
Xenoth looked at his mother who nodded back to him. “This
way,” he said.
“Whew! What a trip. They stuck me on a barge to come up
river to here. Haven’t had a bath in days.” Xenoth wanted to say
that he could tell, but thought better of it.
“So what do ya do for excitement around here kid?”
“Me and Knol squish caterpillars,” he blurted out, then
realized that wasn’t at all what she had in mind.
“Wow. That’s great. Let’s do some later,” she replied.
Xenoth looked back at her, totally confused. What kind of a
woman would want to squish caterpillars?
“But I could use some rest first. Is this my room?”
“Uh huh,” Xenoth said stepping out of her way. He stood in
the doorway as she dropped her bags and lay down on the bed.
“You can wash over there. My mom laid out a towel for you.” But
she was already drifting off to sleep.
Jood sure must have been tired. Every time Xenoth peeked in
around the corner he could see that she was still fast asleep. She
hadn’t even moved in over a day. He had been all prepped to take
the tests for the gate school when she arrived. This waiting was
driving him crazy. Maybe if he made some noise or shook her bed,
she’d wake up and they could get on with it. Xenoth checked to
make sure his mother was busy in another area of the house. Then
he sneaked into Jood’s room. There she lay, the same way as
before, in what he thought must be the most uncomfortable
position imaginable. One leg twisted over the other, one arm
underneath her side and the other over her head. Didn’t even cover
herself with a blanket. This woman was weird.
He stood at the head of her bed for several minutes trying to
figure out what to do. He had settled on dropping a pillow and
running, and had just about gotten up the courage, when he heard
her speak.
“Whadda ya say, kid?”
Xenoth nearly jumped through the ceiling. “I . . I was just
seeing if you were awake yet.”
“Hey, no problem.” She swung her legs over the side of the
bed and tried to get her balance before standing up. Xenoth’s heart
still thumped through his chest, but at least he didn’t think he was
going to get in trouble for waking her up.
“How could you sleep so long? I mean, uh, it’s been a whole
day.”
“You get used to it. Sometimes after an adventure a
gatebuilder might sleep for a week or more.”
“A whole week?” Xenoth thought she must be kidding.
Nobody could sleep a whole week.
 “Well, when you go for a month without sleeping it’s pretty
easy.” Before Xenoth could ask any more questions, Jood stood up
and made her way to the bath. “Plenty of time to tell you about it,
kid,” she said.
She bathed as long as she slept. At least it seemed that way to
Xenoth. He peeked around the corner once, wondering if she had
drowned or something. She just smiled and said how good it felt.
It was already late in the day by the time Jood had bathed and
eaten. Breakfast time for her. Xenoth and his mother had already
finished dinner.
“Good food, eh kid?” Jood said.
“It’s okay . . my name is Xenoth,” he replied, finally
mustering the courage to tell her that he hated being called kid.
“No problem, Xenie,”
He could see that she wasn’t going to give him a break on
anything. He would just take the tests, flunk them on purpose, and
she would go away. The sooner the better. “So how long do they
take?” he asked.
“How long does what take? Oh, you mean the tests. We’ll get
to the tests soon enough. They’re pretty easy, kid. . uh Xenie.
Nothing to worry about. But you know, I really could use some
exercise first. One heck of a trip here. My body’s a mess.”
“You could hike Devel Gorge,” said Xenoth sarcastically, not
truly meaning it, but imagining that it would be an easy way to get
rid of her.
 “Xenoth!” his mother shouted. “I’m sorry, Gatebuilder . . I
don’t think he understands what a wonderful opportunity he is
being offered.”
Jood smiled to Xenoth’s mother and then stared at Xenoth as
she continued to eat.
Xenoth’s mother excused herself and reminded him to clean
the table when Jood was finished.
“So tell me about the gorge,” Jood said.
Xenoth frowned and said “It’s no big deal. Just a bunch of
rocks and trees and stuff.”
“So you’ve been there?”
“Of course,” said Xenoth defiantly.
Jood studied his face for a moment, then said “Maybe you
could take me there.”
“Uh . . you wouldn’t like it . . It’s real dangerous. Nobody
goes there.”
“But you said you’ve been there.”
“Sure I’ve been there.” Xenoth had to find a way to change
the subject quick. He had walked up close to the mouth of the
gorge once. His mother had been furious. But with all the tales and
warnings how could a kid resist taking a look for himself.
“We’ll leave first thing in the morning,” Jood proclaimed as
she stood and began to clear the table.
“But . . mom says nobody should go there. It’s . . it’s real
dangerous.”
“Exhilarating! See you first thing,” Jood exclaimed. She
finished cleaning up quickly then walked away to her room.
 Jood didn’t need much sleep that night so she was ready to
move bright and early the next morning. “Wake up kid. Let’s go,”
she said shaking Xenoth.
He had laid awake most of the night trying to figure a way
out of going to the gorge with her. He was sure that his mother
wouldn’t allow it. But what if Jood convinced her? He would have
to be the one to bring it up. That would surely get his mother
angry. Then she wouldn’t even think about letting them go.
“Your mom says it’s a good hike to the gorge, so time’s
wasting.” Xenoth’s face filled with surprise and fear. Jood just
giggled. “Let’s go!” She tore the blanket off of him.
There were no paths, at least none that Xenoth knew of, so
they struck out for the gorge across the forest not far from
Xenoth’s house. They would be back soon enough, Xenoth
thought. Jood had done the packing, and he could see that they
didn’t carry enough food for more than a day. He would eat
heartily all day and they would have to turn back. “A good plan,”
he thought.
The forest was thick with underbrush so the going was slow.
Xenoth fought his way through, not wanting to let on that he
wasn’t entirely sure of the way. It was annoying to get scratched
by the prickers, but at least she was getting scratched too, he
thought. By the time they stopped for lunch he was very tired. Jood
didn’t seem tired at all. And she must have been watching where
he got scratched and avoiding those spots because she wasn’t
nearly as scratched up as he was. Staying with his plan, Xenoth ate
as much as he could. Jood only smiled and commented on how
hard work increased the appetite.
 By mid-afternoon, Xenoth was tired and frustrated. Every
time he started to slow down, Jood would make some stupid
comment like “trees’ll grow around you” or “snakes’ll think you’re
dead.” He wasn’t exactly sure of where they were, but at least by
the position of the sun he could tell that they were headed in the
right direction—back toward home. “She must be really stupid,”
he thought, not to notice that they had circled back. Running out of
food was a good plan, even better if they were a short distance
from home. He’d let her get hungry and decide to go back, then
he’d circle around a bit more to make it seem like the way back
was just as far. But he had miscalculated and they ran into Kwit
Brook.
Kwit Brook ran south into the Gage River below the gorge.
They would have to circle around the springs where the brook
started in order to get back home.
“Ah . . this feels good. Come on in, Xenie.” Jood had taken
off her shoes and waded into the brook. Xenoth sat down leaning
against a tree. He had to think fast.
“I’m kinda turned around. Does this run north?” she asked.
“No south to the river . . no . . uh, north like you said.”
Without thinking he had blurted out too much.
“Which is it?”
“South.”
“And you said it goes to the river?”
“Yeh.”
“Then we just follow it, meet the river and head up stream to
the gorge?”
 “Course,” he agreed, not wanting her to figure out what he
had done. Now he couldn’t avoid going to the gorge. Not only that,
they were taking the longest route he could think of. Well, they
were still going to run out of food, and he could retrace the same
circular route back.
All afternoon, they followed the brook. Xenoth thought about
trying to circle away from it, but he knew that would probably just
lead them to the river more quickly. Near dusk they finally came to
where the brook met the Gage River. From there they would turn
upstream to the east. Xenoth was clearly exhausted, so they made
camp for the night. Xenoth gathered some sticks and made a fire.
Jood cooked what food they had left.
“It’s another day to the gorge,” said Xenoth trying to get
Jood to realize that they wouldn’t have enough food.
“Good, I could use another flat hike to get my muscles
stretched before climbing,” she replied.
“Climbing?” Xenoth asked.
“You know . . up into the gorge.”
“Oh . . yeh . . course.” Xenoth hadn’t thought they would
really reach the gorge, and he had only been to the mouth. He had
been warned throughout his childhood about the dangers of
climbing in the gorge. But with no food . .
“Looks like we hunt and gather from here on,” Jood said,
holding up the empty food containers. She looked away, hiding her
wide grin.
In the morning, Jood gathered some roots and berries and
shared them with Xenoth. He was, of course, used to such food and
to finding it for himself. He never thought that this gatebuilder
woman would know how. So much for the plan. The hike was
easier than the previous day. It was up hill, but gradual and the
underbrush wasn’t nearly as thick. Jood let Xenoth take the lead all
morning. He didn’t dare try to walk away from the river. She
would catch on too easily. So he tried to think of some other
excuse for turning back. He had nearly settled on a twisted ankle,
when she commented on how somebody could trip over the big
branches of the trees. Could she read his mind or something?
“Scratch that idea,” he thought.
At some points where recent flooding had cut into the banks
and then receded, they were able to walk in the sand or on the
stones in the riverbed. It was easier going than the forest. Jood
whistled and sang, never finishing one tune before starting another
and always off key. It drove Xenoth crazy, so he tried to gain some
distance between them. But she always kept up.
“You go first for a while,” he said. If she were in front, the
noise would at least travel away from him, and maybe he could
drop back farther and farther. Maybe she’d get lost and wouldn’t
ever be found. Eaten by the gorge monsters.
“Hey Xenie, looksee,” she shouted as she leapt from one
stone to the next. He hadn’t played looksee in years. It was a little
kid’s game. Why did she keep thinking of him as a kid.
“I’ll go first,” she said, looking back and seeing his frown.
“The rocks here are like ideas. You jump on one, then it gives you
a chance to jump to another, and then to the next and the next and
the next . .” and she continued to jump from rock to rock up the
stream, laughing and shouting “and the next” with each one.
“She’ll get real tired that way,” Xenoth thought. “Maybe
even slip.” But it sure looked like fun. Before long he found
himself leaping behind her.
Xenoth’s expression changed quickly to a scowl when Jood
turned and caught him smiling.
“Pretty good, huh ki . . uh Xenie?”
Xenoth continued walking past her and climbed back into the
woods where the river widened to fill its bed.
“Your turn, but I pick,” she said. She really was going to
make him play the game, Xenoth thought. She was more of a kid
than he was.
“The tree trunk,” said Jood, pointing to the bottom of a large
tree. Xenoth continued walking for a few steps, then stopped and
turned to look back at what Jood was pointing to. Well, the more
she played the longer it would take to get to the gorge. More
chances of turning back. Why not.
“It’s like the leg of a big monster in the sky,” he offered.
“No, it’s more like a home for tiny people,” she replied. “
Look at their caves, and their moss lawns.”
“Wa . . .” Xenoth barely caught himself before complaining.
She wasn’t playing fair. You weren’t supposed to criticize
somebody else’s see, especially when you picked. But if that’s how
she was going to be, he’d have to fight back.
 “They’re not tiny people. It’s a giant tree. We’re in a forest of
giant trees, with huge bugs and snakes that are going to bite us and
chew us up and spit us out because they don’t like people.”
“Good one, Xenie!” she cried and laughed. “Your turn.”
That showed her, Xenoth said to himself proudly. You don’t
mess around in looksee with this kid. But what was he doing
playing looksee with this woman? Now he couldn’t help but look
for something to pick for her.
A few minutes later Xenoth pointed to the ground and said,
“That pine cone.”
“Oh . . that’s part of a machine,” Jood tried.
“What kind of machine?” Xenoth wasn’t about to let such a
lousy answer pass. You could say ‘part of a machine’ about
anything.
“Well, it looks like a way of getting rid of excess heat, maybe
if you spin it like this. So a part of a motor.” She held the small
spherical cone up by the stem and spun it in her hand.
“Okay, sort of,” Xenoth agreed tentatively.
“Hmmph. Can you do better?”
“Sure, it’s not a part of a motor. It’s the whole motor. See it’s
like a motor that changes one idea into another rather than
changing fuel into force.”
“Say what?” Jood asked.
“Well, it’s just the frame of the motor. The stuff inside is
gone. It used to be an idea motor, grown from the center out so that
all its parts were as close together as possible so they could talk to
each other really fast. Only now the stuff got sucked out by the
giant snake.”
“Okay, okay . . I give. That’s a good one.”
Xenoth took the lead, giving Jood a chance to scribble a
quick note in her book as they walked on.
Lunch was about the same as breakfast, but Xenoth gathered
for himself. Better stuff than she found, he made sure to point out.
The afternoon hike was easy. The mosses and needles underneath
their feet were like a bed, not soft enough for their feet to break the
surface, but not so hard that their feet got sore. The tree branches
started way above their heads and there was little underbrush.
Some trees had vines hanging down that another time Xenoth
would have enjoyed climbing.
The trees grew more closely together and the vines more
numerous so gradually that Xenoth took no notice. By the time he
felt the first thread he was already well inside. He wiped the thread
off his face, then felt another, wiped that off, then another and
another. The threads were all over him.
“Joo . . Jood!” he screamed as he tried to rip himself free. But
there was no answer and his legs were caught together. More and
more threads fell and wrapped around him. He could barely twist
and move his arms, and then he couldn’t move at all. There was
still enough space between threads for him to see through one eye
and to breath through his nose, but his mouth and his ears were
covered. Any effort to move seemed only to make the threads
tighten more around him. As if he weren’t frightened enough, he
could feel himself being lifted upward.
 As his feet left the ground, his weight grew more than the
threads could bear. First one, then all snapped, and Xenoth fell to
the ground. He lay there struggling for several minutes before
finding that he could unwrap himself if he relaxed and moved very
slowly. He backed away carefully, watching to see that no other
threads were dropping to catch him, trying to see, and at the same
time not to see what was above him in the trees. Just a few more
steps, then he spun and ran as fast as he could back down what he
thought was the way they had come.
Where was Jood? Had it got her? Xenoth trembled at the
thought of Jood being caught in the threads and maybe eaten by
whatever was in the tree. Then again, he wouldn’t have to go the
gorge, or to the stupid school. But she wasn’t so bad. At least when
she wasn’t playing stupid games. He ought to at least try to find
her. Then he wouldn’t have to lie about it to his mother, anyway.
“JOOD! JOOD!” he called.
“XENOTH!”
“Aaauugh,” Xenoth cried in surprise. Jood was in a tree
directly above him.
“Don’t do that!” he shouted angrily, recovering from this
latest scare.
“Well, don’t yell at people when they’re right next to you,”
she said as she climbed down the vine out of the tree, sharing a
farewell with the tree dwellers as she did.
“I was caught and nearly eaten!”
“Really? Sorry I couldn’t watch,” Jood said sarcastically as
she burst out laughing.
 “I . . I was in a web and they were drawing me up into the
tree. I fell and then . .”
“That’s good. Let’s see . . spiders could be so big and live up
in the trees and eat little kids that come by. Let me try to build on
that one.”
“I’m not playing looksee! It really happened!”
“Hmm . . a spider web. Maybe a net to catch ideas. Yeh, an
idea net so that when minds come running in, their ideas can’t get
away.” Xenoth thought she was teasing, but by the expression on
her face he could see that she was really playing the game.
“It really happened. . . What were you doing in the tree,
anyway?”
“Oh, at first I shared with an eagle.”
Xenoth could see that he wouldn’t get anywhere with her.
Nearly eaten and she keeps playing a stupid game.
There were a few hours of sunlight left, so Jood suggested
they move on. But Xenoth refused to go back into the vines. He
insisted that the only way he would go upriver was on the other
side. The river was fairly narrow, but deep and a bit too fast to
swim. Jood found a tree hanging out over the edge with a vine they
might be able to swing across on. But when she tried it, she found
that the branch it was attached to didn’t extend far enough out over
the river. She was barely able to catch another branch and get back
without falling in.
Xenoth had noticed that Jood packed some rope so he
suggested that he could tie a rock or stick onto the rope, swing out
over the river, and throw the rope so it caught on something on the
other side. Jood said that she didn’t quite understand what he had
in mind, but she gave him the rope anyway. He tied one end to a
tree trunk and the other end around a stick. He swung out over the
river on the vine, and holding the vine in one hand, threw the stick
across. He had to try this a couple times before the stick caught
between two rocks on the other side. Then he tightened the rope to
the tree, and the two of them were able to hold on to it as they
made their way across the river.
“Something for the notebook tonight,” said Jood to herself.
They dried themselves and the contents of their packs off as
best they could in what sun remained for the day. There was no
point in trying to hike further until morning.
“Idea net’s a stupid idea, anyway,” said Xenoth as he rolled
over to dry his back.
“What? Why?”
“Well, if you really want to catch lots of ideas you wouldn’t
just set up a net and sit still and wait. You’d send the net out. Make
it real big and getting bigger all the time. Then you could pull it
back in every now and then and look at what you caught.”
Jood’s eyes grew wide and her faint smile revealed her
appreciation. Her note written later that night read “Perhaps this
child will be one of us, Demiou.”
 Chapter 8. Devel Gorge
Wake up your power to make

“Now close your eyes and hold firmly to the image. Do you see
it?”
“Yes, I . . . I lost it again. But I can hold it when I keep my eyes
open.”
“With your eyes you see only what exists. To see the future, look
in your heart.”

“Go on with the story,” said Pax.

“Huh? Oh, where was I?” Xenoth rubbed his eyes. He must
have dozed off. “You made it across the river,” Pax prompted.
Xenoth continued the story. “We had crossed the river to stay
clear of the tree dwellers. It was getting dark so we camped there
for the night. I began to ask Gatebuilder Jood about the school. I
wasn’t very interested at that point, and still didn’t want to go,
mind you, but I was intrigued by this woman. She was just so
different than any other adult I had met before.”
“What was so different?”
“Well, she teased me a bit about small things, and kept on
calling me kid or Xenie, which I hated. But she never complained
as she watched me do all sorts of rotten things, including trying to
mislead her. Most of all, I think I liked her so much because she
was so alive. An adult with more energy than me.” Xenoth could
feel a lump in his throat. After all these years he could still feel so
strongly for her.
 “Did you love her?” asked Pax.
“Uh . . well . . yes, I suppose I did grow to love Jood, in a
way.”
“Hey, come on kid. This is gettin too sappy for me,” said
Jood shaking Xenoth awake. “Come on, out of your dream and on
to the gorge.”
“Jood? I . . I was . . I can’t remember.” Xenoth sat up and
looked about. He was on the bank of the river they had crossed the
day before, when he had escaped from the threads. But he felt like
he had been somewhere else or that he had been here before.
“Come on kid. Oops, I mean Xenie. Let’s get moving. Don’t
want those spiders to get you again,” she teased and laughed.
As they started along the riverside, Xenoth recalled their
conversation the night before. He had asked all sorts of questions
about the gate school. Jood had answered some but not others. But
she had been polite about it. When he asked about something she
wasn’t supposed to talk about, she just said so. She didn’t make
him feel bad about it or anything.
He remembered her saying that it was like metamorphosis. If
he were accepted, he would enter like a caterpillar and exit like a
butterfly. That hadn’t been a very attractive view for him, and he
had complained that he didn’t feel like a caterpillar, but she simply
smiled. Always smiled. This woman was always smiling and
laughing at something. Oh well, it could be worse. She could be
mean and nasty he supposed.
 The morning hike was fairly easy once again. A gradual rise
along the river’s edge, sometimes in thick wood, but mostly in
open ground.
Toward mid-day, the river began to narrow and become more
active. Xenoth could tell that they were getting close to the gorge.
They stopped for lunch and Xenoth nervously played with his
food, something that could hardly escape Jood’s notice.
“Looksee,” she said with a smile.
“The mouth of the gorge is just ahead,” said Xenoth, not
wanting to play a game when such dangers were close by.
“Great. I’m ready for an adventure,” Jood said
enthusiastically.
“Sure. . me too.” It wouldn’t do for her to think that he was
scared.
As they rounded the bend, the mouth came into view and the
sounds of the churning water grew loud. It didn’t look quite as
frightening as Xenoth remembered. He had been just a kid. But it
was still dangerous. Piles of large boulders were stacked on both
sides of the river and half filled the riverbed, making the water
shoot over top and in between. Above the boulders they could see
the start of the gorge. High cliffs on both sides, the left nearly
straight vertical, the right a series of steps with trees and bushes
clinging to each.
They stopped for a moment. Jood gazed across the cliffs and
water, her smile steady, while Xenoth fought back his fears. How
much was real danger, and how much had they instilled in a little
kid to keep him from wandering off, he wondered.
 “Let’s do it!” Jood shouted, and before Xenoth could reply
she was off at a stiff pace toward the boulders. He couldn’t see
where she was going to go. It didn’t look like there was a way to
get around the boulders. But when they reached them, she didn’t
even hesitate. She climbed right over the first, jumped to another,
climbed again, jumped, climbed, jumped. Xenoth had all he could
do to keep up. If he had stopped for a moment and thought about it,
he probably would have gotten stuck. The distance between the
boulders, and the height of each was extraordinary for somebody
his age and size.
Jood stopped near the top where they got a clear view of the
cliff face to their left. “Whew! Hey, Xenie, looksee the rocks over
there,” Jood said as she pointed to the left wall.
Didn’t she ever get tired or serious, he wondered. The north
face of the gorge was striped horizontally with different layers of
rocks. At one point, however, the rock layers were twisted nearly
vertical and rectangular slabs of stone jutted out into the air. “Uh . .
well,” Xenoth said trying to catch his breath, “maybe houses all
stacked up on each other. A city on a cliff.”
“Hmmph, can’t you do better than that kid?”
“Don’t call me kid.”
“Sorry . . but a city? Come on.”
Xenoth frowned but couldn’t resist the challenge. “Sure it’s
houses. Its on a planet with so many people that they have to live
in houses that are stacked on top of each other. The rich people live
on top of the poor people.”
“Hmm . . a little better I guess.”
 Now Xenoth was getting angry. It was a decent see, and he’d
just climbed a bunch of huge boulders. “The richer you get the
higher you can build. The really rich get to see the sunrise and
sunset because their buildings are above the others. They throw
shadows on the others. In fact, the really really rich have buildings
that move up and down.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“Lots of reasons. Like then they could pretend to be poor
sometimes and fool people. And they could make it so that the
poor people were underground, so somebody visiting wouldn’t see
them.”
“But aren’t the poor people’s houses holding up the rich
people’s houses?”
“Yeh, exactly. That’s what makes the buildings grind each
other up like the cliff.”
“Uh . . Oh, I get it,” said Jood glancing back at the cliff face
and nodding, her fingers unconsciously searching for her pencil.
Grabbing on to bushes and tree roots, they were able to climb
up to the first step of the south wall. On the step they found it
possible to walk along farther and farther into the gorge. The
looksee had distracted Xenoth enough that he hadn’t thought about
the fact that he was in the gorge until now. “Maybe she did that on
purpose,” he thought.
“Keep sharp, Xenie.” Jood had taken up the rear and was
keeping an eye on him. Good thing. He was getting too close to the
edge sometimes and didn’t seem to be concentrating.
 The step widened briefly and they stopped to rest. They could
find only a few berries to eat, but those they found were ripe and
sweet.
“What are we going to eat up ahead?” Xenoth asked.
“What lies ahead?”
“Uh well . . it’s like this here . . sort of.”
“I’m sure we’ll find something,” she said kindly.
“I haven’t been much further before,” he offered, seeing that
he had to get out of the fib quick.
“Then it will be a new adventure for both of us.” She smiled
with relief.
Xenoth looked out over the river from their perch. He could
see the forest they had walked through and he sighted along the
direction where he thought his home was. Why couldn’t he be back
there doing stuff with Knol and the others. Why should he have to
be the one to go to some stupid school. Looking upriver he could
see that the gorge took a northward turn. He didn’t see how they
would get around since the step they were on seemed to disappear.
The river was more than thirty feet below them and he could barely
make out the noise of the water splashing around the boulders back
at the mouth.
Jood stood and stretched a bit and decided to take the lead.
She warned him not to get too close to the edge. He didn’t mind. It
really was a long fall, and she didn’t say it like he was a kid. After
a half hour, the step was down to about 4 feet wide, and Xenoth
could see looking past Jood that it continued to blend in with the
rock face. They wouldn’t be able to climb up to the next step, and
it was straight down to the river to their left. He couldn’t
understand why she just kept walking forward.
“I haven’t been this far before. I don’t see a way up or
down,” he said, thinking that she may not have been paying
attention.
“Always a way if you don’t think about it too hard,” she
replied.
What was that supposed to mean? She didn’t even slow
down. It wouldn’t last long, though. He could see that they were
only a little ways from where the step disappeared.
“Okay, ready?” Jood asked. She had stopped and turned
toward the river.
“Ready for what?”
“I could use a bath, couldn’t you?”
Xenoth realized what she had in mind and backed away,
grabbing for a branch or something to hold on to. She was crazy.
They were way too high up to jump. He looked down over the
edge fearfully, expecting to see the rushing river full of rocks
waiting to break him apart. Sure enough, there was the rushing
water, and there were the rocks, but just below them was a pool.
The water had apparently cut this circular shape, then left it to the
side as it rushed by.
Xenoth started to think about how this might have occurred,
but Jood grabbed his hand and shouted “Jumping gatebuilders!”
with a huge smile.
It happened so quickly. He would either be dragged over the
edge holding the two of them against the cliff, most likely hitting
rocks along the way, and definitely smashing upon them at the
bottom. Or he would jump with her. He jumped. They flew
together out over the edge and down into the pool. It must have
been deep because they never touched bottom. It was certainly
cold.
“Whoa, that was great,” she shouted as they came to the
surface.
“Yeh . . great,” Xenoth replied wondering how he had
actually brought himself to trust this crazy woman. They crawled
up on the flat sheet of rock surrounding the pool and lay in the sun
to rest and to dry themselves and the gear they had packed.
They hiked along the edge of the river for much of the
afternoon. The gorge gradually opened up and the cliffs became
hills. Hills with extremely steep sides, but hills nonetheless. They
could see that the river would make a bend to the right up ahead,
but it was too far off for them to make before nightfall. Xenoth
remembered one of the tales he had heard about the gorge, and
warned Jood that the river could rise very suddenly and sweep
them away if they camped too close. So they climbed up the
hillside to the right of the river, holding onto bushes and tree
branches as best they could to keep from slipping back down.
“Guess this is as good as anywhere else,” said Jood. A large
tree had fallen and lay perpendicular to the hill, caught by other
trees from rolling down the hillside. They could make camp above
the tree, and sleep lying up against it.
“Okay, you make the fire Xenie.”
 “All right,” replied Xenoth, and then looking at where they
were, “but, uh . . a fire against a dead tree?”
Jood smiled at him and laughed, then began to eat some
berries she had gathered along the riverside. Xenoth could see that
he had to keep on his toes or she would always have the best of
him.
They talked for a while, again about the gate school. It didn’t
sound quite as bad as he had imagined, but Xenoth still wasn’t
keen on leaving home.
“What does a gatebuilder do anyway?” he asked.
“We do many things. Mostly, we help people.”
“Help them do what?”
“Help themselves.”
“So, what do they need you for if they can do it themselves?”
“What ‘it’ do you mean?”
“Uh . . whatever ‘it’ it is you say you help them do.”
She laughed and said, “Goodnight, Xenie.” Now he was
thoroughly confused. It was a simple question, he thought, but she
had to make it seem so complicated. Maybe he could try again in
the morning. He was tired from the long day of hiking and
climbing, and even jumping into a pool. He still couldn’t believe
how high they had jumped from. The ground up against the tree
was surprisingly comfortable, and sleep came quickly.
“Tap ti-ti-ti-ti tap tap TAP ti-ti-ti-ti-ti tap ti-ti-ti.”
Xenoth woke to the noise. It seemed to be coming right
through the tree.
“Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti tap tap ti-ti-ti.”
 He could feel the cool morning air on his face and the dew on
his clothes. He sat up and tried to stand but was quickly reminded
that he was on a hillside. He fell and had to grab a branch to keep
from tumbling over the tree and rolling down the hill. He was wide
awake now, but not a very nice kind of awake. The kind of awake
that you get from a friend jumping you from behind, and scaring
you half out of your mind.
“Shhhh . . ti-ti-ti tap ti-ti-ti-ti ti-ti tap.”
He looked around and after he wiped some sleep out of his
eyes he could see Jood standing a few feet away hitting the tree
with a stick.
“Ti-ti-ti-ti tap tap ti-ti-ti.”
“What are you doing?”
“Shhhh . . ti-ti-ti-ti.” She held her finger to her lips and
continued to hit the tree with the stick.
“Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti.”
As she paused, Xenoth could make out in the distance, “ti-ti-
ti-ti tap tap ti-ti-ti-ti.”
Jood used her stick again, “ti-ti-ti tap ti-ti tap ti-ti-ti.” She
smiled at Xenoth and continued to listen to the sound in the
distance and then to make what Xenoth realized were similar
sounds on the tree.
“I speak woodpecker,” she whispered and giggled.
Right. And he was a gatebuilder, whatever that was. He
turned away scowling and began to get his gear packed up. It only
took a minute, of course. He had anticipated a two-day hike and
they were already gone for almost twice that. So if I go to
Klasrum, I get to learn to hit a tree with a stick, he thought. Great.
“Which way?” Jood asked as she adjusted her pack.
“Back down to the river, I suppose,” said Xenoth, but he was
in no particular hurry to get back near the water, now that he had
had some time to think about how dangerous their jump had been.
“Or else we could hike over top of the hill. We’re almost half way
up now, and we could maybe walk along the top of the gorge.” He
had heard stories of people getting killed or going into the gorge
and never coming out again. But that all seemed to happen in the
gorge. He didn’t remember hearing about anything happening to
people who walked above it.
“Sounds good,” and she was off up the hill.
They weren’t anywhere near half-way up the hill, as Xenoth
had thought, so by the time they reached the top they both needed a
long rest. At least it didn’t look as steep going down the other side.
In fact, it looked as if they could follow along the ridge for a ways
and not have to climb up or down. After some stretching and a
small lunch of leaves and nuts that Jood had gathered, that’s what
they decided to do.
The ridge seemed to run parallel to the river, as far as they
could tell. It was fairly thick with trees. In a couple places, it got so
narrow that they had to be very careful not to slide down one side
or the other, but it was easy walking. Jood pointed out flowers that
she had not seen before and Xenoth told her what his mother called
them, at least those he could remember. They walked along the
ridge so long that Xenoth wondered if they were, in fact, staying
near the gorge. Not that he wanted to get back close. But he wasn’t
sure where the alternative might take them either. He didn’t need
to worry. The ridge took them straight back to the gorge where the
river wound southward.
The trees began to thin and they could feel the daylight
growing on all sides. And then there were no trees at all. And then
no ridge. They were high above the gorge looking out across to
cliffs along the northern side. The river came around the bend from
the south as they had expected, then it turned almost back on itself
below them. They were on a promontory. A great view of the
gorge, but offering no possible way forward. The rock face below
them was far too steep to climb. It even disappeared at some points
meaning that it was cut out below. They would have to go back the
way they came.
Xenoth had gotten used to the heights so he wasn’t too shy
about getting near the edge.
“Careful, Xenie. It’s a long way . .”
“Aaaiiieee,” he cried as the ground disappeared underneath
him.
“Xenie! Xenie!” Jood screamed as she ran to where he had
been standing.
“Aaiiee,” she screamed as the ground disappeared underneath
her as well.
Xenoth landed with a thump. Moments later, Jood landed
next to him. Both had expected a long deadly fall down the face of
the cliff. But their slides had gone the wrong way—away from the
cliff—and to firm ground interrupting their fall. They spun their
heads back and forth trying to see in the dark, then looked above
them where the dim light filtered in through the hole they had
fallen into. They had not fallen down the cliff. They had fallen into
some sort of cave.
“Are you okay?” asked Jood.
“Yeh, I guess so,” replied Xenoth feeling his arms and legs,
“how about you?”
“Yeh, me too. Wow. I thought we were goners.”
“Me too. Where are we?” he asked.
“How should I know?” she replied. Xenoth felt a bit
embarrassed. It was a stupid question he had to admit, but he had
said it more as a question to himself than to her.
“Look away from the hole and let your eyes adjust,” she said.
After a few minutes they could see several things. First, the cave
was huge. They must have been walking over top of it for quite a
while. Second, the hole they had fallen through was way above
their heads, and not along a wall. There was no way they would be
able to climb up and out.
“So what do we do now, future gatebuilder?” Jood asked
softly.
Xenoth didn’t answer. He was busy trying to see what was
around them and searching his memory for any stories of caves in
the gorge. Something struck him as familiar, but he couldn’t place
it. He started to walk around slowly to see if anything else in the
cave might give him a clue. He touched the wall expecting it to be
dirt or rock. “It must be rock,” he thought, as he ran his hand over
it. But it felt so smooth and vertical, straight vertical in fact, with
no breaks or angles or ridges. No wait, here were some
indentations. They were somehow regular, though, and the surface
around them felt so smooth, so flat. The indentations were cut, he
realized, and then stepped back in horror.
“In the. . uh . .” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Jood asked
“In the stone along the side, the feathered men will eat your
mind.” Xenoth’s voice shook, and his legs and arms froze in fear.
He had recited the phrase as a child, skipping along paths with his
friends. He never knew what it meant, nor did the other children
who had passed it along for generations. Now Xenoth knew, and
was scared beyond belief. He had even uttered the phrase, surely
bringing the feathered men here to discover who had broken into
their cave.
“Hey, Xenie. You sound like you heard a ghost,” said Jood.
Then she too found the markings on the walls.
“We . . we’re in the . . the feathered men’s cave,” said
Xenoth.
“The who? “
“The feathered men. I didn’t understand,” he whispered. The
warnings his mother had given, her horror when he had been found
at the mouth of the gorge years ago. His own fears which he
thought were just a reaction to his mother’s paranoia. All of them
came rushing back. He was petrified, and this woman calling
herself a gatebuilder was to blame.
“Huh?” He spun around at the scratching sound. They were
coming to get him. There was the sound again. He spun back, then
looked up as the light through the hole suddenly dimmed even
further. They were coming down the hole. He ran as fast as he
could across the cave, even though he didn’t have any idea of
where he was going. He just had to get away before the feathered
men got him. Slam! He ran straight into the wall in the darkness,
nearly knocking himself unconscious. He fell to the ground, but
rose again quickly and felt for the wall. He found it quickly, by
chance reaching in the right direction. If he had stepped the other
way he would have lost it, maybe moving right back the way he
came, right back to the feathered men.
He felt along the wall. It was so dark. He had no idea of what
he might find. He had to find some way out of the cave. Another
hole, perhaps. It didn’t matter as long as he could fit through and
get away.
“Xenie,” Jood called, but her voice only echoed through the
room sending Xenoth into more of a panic, if that were possible.
He spun at the sound and jumped backward, purely by
accident finding a way out. He fell backward through an arched
entrance to the room and down a long set of stairs. “Yaaahh,” he
howled. Recovering quickly and realizing that he had found an
escape, he ran down the stairs in the dark, feeling the wall to the
side. The stairs might end in solid rock, or they might drop him
over an edge to fall to his death. It didn’t matter. It was away from
the feathered men behind him.
The stairs went on forever, winding down and down inside
the rock. Xenoth recovered his senses gradually, enough to realize
that he was exhausted. He slowed to a walk and finally found
himself thinking about what lay ahead as well as what was behind.
His heart pounded, and he finally began to feel the pain in his face
and shoulder from having run into the wall.
“Xenie,” he heard echoing from above as if it were a ghost’s
whisper. “Xenie, wait for me.” It was Jood. She had apparently
heard him fall and had found the stairs.
He waited as her footsteps grew loud enough to indicate that
she was near then growled angrily, “Rrrrrr.”
“AAEEE,” she screamed.
“Quiet!”
“Xenie!” she shouted, then continued at a whisper “Xenie,
don’t do that. Are you all right?”
“I’m about to get eaten. . again,” Xenoth said, remembering
the threads she had led him into . . and then wouldn’t believe his
story. He had had enough of her adventure. She had gotten them
into this. She should have to get them out.
“I want to go home,” he spit out.
“Well, kid. I wouldn’t mind getting out of here myself. What
do you suggest?”
“I suggest that you find us a way back home.”
“Down or up?” she asked patiently. She didn’t even get angry
the way other grownups did.
“I’m not going back up there.”
“Fine. Down we go. You lead.”
“Why me?”
“The feathered men are above us right?”
 “Oh yeh,” he replied in agreement. If they were going to get
somebody, why not her.
Xenoth started down again. He hadn’t noticed before how
cold it was. And there was no light whatsoever. He could have
closed his eyes, and it wouldn’t have made any difference, but he
fought to see anyway. They didn’t speak but they could hear each
other’s foot steps. After what they could only guess were hundreds
of steps, Xenoth stumbled and cried out. He had expected another
step but the path had flattened.
“What’s the matter?” whispered Jood.
“It’s flat. Maybe we’ve reached the bottom.” It could have
been a landing of some sort or a floor. It was too dark to tell.
“Where are you?” asked Jood as she too reached the flat.
“Right here,” he replied turning toward her voice.
“Do you think this is the bottom?”
“I don’t know. Feel along the wall.”
Xenoth’s anger toward Jood was gone. He had too much else
to think about, most importantly finding the way out.
“Let’s not get separated. Can I hold your hand?” asked Jood,
her voice telling Xenoth that he would have to look out for her as
much as the other way around. They felt out each other’s hand,
then moved ahead with their backs to the wall.
“I can feel an opening here,” said Xenoth feeling around a
corner.
“An opening to a new passage, or does this one just turn?”
“I can’t tell. Come up next to me and see if you can feel the
other side.”
 “Okay. Don’t let go of me.” Jood walked slowly around to
Xenoth’s right feeling forward with her feet and right hand.
“I feel the wall,” she said, “and it’s . . across the way we
were coming. It must be that the passage takes a turn.”
“Okay, you keep touching that side and I’ll stay on this side.
That way we’ll feel if another passage goes off.”
“That sounds good. . Hey!” she squealed feeling her left wrist
hit the wall.
“Hey yourself!” Xenoth shot back. They had released each
other’s hand when their wrists struck the wall. They reached out
for each other but felt only stone.
“Xenie, where are you?”
“I’m right here.”
They moved toward the sound of each other’s voice, and
simultaneously got back to the corner. They realized that they had
taken two different tunnels, separated by a column of stone.
“Great, so which one do we take,” complained Xenoth.
“You smell,” answered Jood.
“What?”
“Go ahead. Stand in each and take a good smell.”
“Great. And what do we do, take the one that smells less like
dead people?”
Jood giggled and said, “not a bad idea.” How could she find
anything remotely amusing about this. Maybe she laughed
differently than other people. Maybe she was really cruel and got
pleasure from other people’s pain. But there did seem to be a
difference in the smells, or was that just his imagination. What did
it matter. They had to take one or the other. And he surely didn’t
want any part of splitting up.
“This one smells better. Let’s go.” And they began walking
down the tunnel to the left.
The tunnel went on and on, gradually downward in what
seemed to be a perfectly straight line. They rested every now and
then, but never sat down or stopped feeling the wall. And they only
let go of each other’s hand when they were leaning against the wall
and could feel themselves against each other’s side. They hadn’t
heard anything behind or in front of them, but that didn’t lessen
their fear of where the tunnel might be taking them. It had been so
long since they had anything to eat or drink. At least they hadn’t
run into the feathered men. Eventually, and to their relief, the
tunnel flattened and began to go upward.
“Looksee,” said Jood.
“See what?” asked Xenoth. “It’s totally dark.”
“In the dark you can make anything appear,” she answered,
then added questioningly, “Xenie, I think that I’m starting to be
able to see.”
“Me too, I think,” said Xenoth also unsure.
“mmmmm.”
“What’s that?” Xenoth whispered. Had they done all this
walking only to be caught anyway.
“Shh. Don’t say anything and don’t move,” commanded
Jood.
“mmmmm.” The sound was coming from ahead of them.
 “MMMMMM,” hummed Jood. She had begun to imitate the
sound. She squeezed Xenoth’s hand to remind him not to move.
“mmmmmm,” came the sound.
“MMMMMM,” replied Jood.
“mmmMMMM.”
Xenoth felt something rub against his leg. He froze, trying
not to alert whatever it was that he was there. The rubbing seemed
to go on forever, and then it stopped.
“MMMmmmm.”
“mmmm . . It’s okay now,” Jood whispered.
“What was that? . . No, tell me later. Let’s just get out of
here.”.
As they went on, at a quickened pace, they found that it had
in fact begun to grow light. They were able to see each other’s
outline, then features, and finally they could see the source of the
light up ahead. They could also hear a steady noise in the distance.
“Xen . .”
“I know, let’s not run out there till we see where we are.”
Jood smiled to herself and squeezed his hand lightly. He felt
the squeeze and remembered that they were still holding hands.
While they were trying to keep from being separated in the dark, it
had been necessary and he had gotten used to it. With the light
coming up they didn’t need to do it anymore, but it felt okay
anyway.
As they approached the light, they found themselves at the
bottom of another set of stone stairs. They followed the stairs
upward, winding around in a three-sided pattern, the center an
open shaft. The light became brighter and the noise grew louder
and louder as they climbed. They approached the top of the stairs
and needed to slow down to let their eyes adjust. They found
themselves standing before an arched doorway to the outside,
covered by vines that made a pattern like the bars of a prison. They
fought their way through the vines, Jood forcing them as far apart
as she could while Xenoth slipped between, then Xenoth doing the
same for her. The noise became a roar. They spread apart the
underbrush and discovered an enormous waterfall no more than
fifty feet in front of them.
They squinted in the direct sunlight and saw that they were
near the bottom of a bowl at the base of the waterfall. High cliffs
surrounded them on all sides except a space off to their right where
the water rushed violently away over a second set of falls. There
were steps down the side of the cliff and they followed these to the
bottom of the bowl. As they continued to look around and began to
think of how they would get out, they realized that they were on
the opposite side of the river. The tunnel had crossed underneath.
Not only that. The sunshine was hitting the western cliff high
above them. It was morning and they had walked underground
through the entire night. Or was it a day and two nights? They had
no way to tell.
“We can’t go down river,” shouted Xenoth above the roar. It
wasn’t just fear. It was a fact. He had walked up as close as he
could to the top of the second falls and could see that they crashed
violently onto rocks far below. And if those weren’t enough, the
water continued to fall over a third set of falls below that. They
wouldn’t survive trying to exit the bowl that way. Jood joined him
and looked around, then nodded her head. She gazed back up the
stairs to the doorway to the tunnel. Xenoth shook his head making
his position clear.
“Hey,” she shouted, “looksee the falls.”
Xenoth laughed and returned her smile. Why not?
“It’s a sound engine,” he screamed to her.
“You can do better,” she screamed back laughing.
Xenoth stared at falls for a moment, then shouted back “It’s
not the engine, it’s the sound. It’s there,” he said pointing up
toward the top of the falls, “and it’s there,” pointing down toward
the bottom, “and it’s everywhere between at the same time.”
“What do you mean?”
“What?” Xenoth screamed.
“What do you mean it’s everywhere?” she screamed back.
“We hear it now, but we hear it before and after as well. It’s
in places and in times, and they’re all in our head.”
Jood’s eyes brightened as she nodded and smiled.
“How are we going to get out?” shouted Xenoth, stating the
obvious question.
Jood just shrugged her shoulders. They stood for quite a long
time considering the possibilities. In a way, it was a battle between
the known and unknown. They knew that they would be hurt
badly, if not killed, if they tried going down the river. But what
dangers lay in the tunnel they had chosen not to take were every bit
as frightening.
 Jood’s smiles and laughter were gone. Finally, after nearly an
hour of looking around the bowl, she sat down looking defeated
with her back against the cliff, her knees folded up to cover her
face. She covered her ears with her hands to block out the roar of
the falling water. Xenoth couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
What was a kid going to do if a grownup gave up. “Let the
feathered men come take me,” he thought. Better than sitting here
and doing nothing but waiting and probably starving to death
before anyone came to find them. Find them? Nobody would ever
find the way in here. He felt tears start to well up, but he shook
them away.
“Looksee!” he shouted at Jood in desperation.
She looked up from between her knees, her expression blank.
“The vines,” he said, pointing above her head.
She glanced around, then turned back to Xenoth, saying
nothing, either not realizing that he was playing the game or not
caring.
“Fine!” Xenoth screamed. “I’ll play without you. They’re
threads sent down by the feathered men to grab you up!” he said
angrily, not wanting to blame her, but doing so anyway. He
realized the moment he shouted it, that the vines were, in fact, the
way out. Why hadn’t they thought of it before? He had seen them
only as barriers to fight through. He slapped her leg and yelled,
“come on,” and ran up the steps to the door.
Jood sat for a moment, then as a flash of concern came across
her face she sprang to her feet and ran after him. But by the time
she caught up, Xenoth was already climbing up the vines and was
nearly to the top of the door.
“Xenoth, they go only a little way up the cliff!” she shouted,
but he was too busy climbing to pay any attention. “What will you
do when you reach the end of the vines,” she said softly and
therefore to herself. She began to climb after him. Xenoth poured
all his energy into the climb, succeeding in his attempt to let his
body take over for his mind. He didn’t want to think, not about the
tunnels, not about Jood or anything. But the vines grew thinner and
he grew weaker, and when he finally glanced up, he saw that the
vines were about to end and he was nowhere near the top of the
cliff.
He had to stop. There were no more vines to grab and hold.
The bushes that the vines grew from made a short line across the
cliff face. He held on to one of the bushes and for the first time
looked down and realized how high he had climbed, and how
precarious his hold on the cliff face was. Jood was just below him
and was struggling to catch up.
“Xenie, hang on. . let me . . catch,” she groaned. The roar of
the falls was not quite as loud as it had been, but still too loud for
him to hear her words clearly.
Xenoth had a good hold on the bush so he held out his hand
and helped her up the last few feet. They held on together for a
long time, trying to catch their breath, not saying a word or looking
at each other.
“We have to go back down, kid,” Jood shouted with a stern
look into Xenoth’s eyes. Xenoth felt the word ‘kid’ burn, and a
rage built within him like he had never experienced before. He had
gotten them a third of the way out of the bowl anyway. What had
she done? What did she expect to go back down to? The tunnel?
The river? Just to sit against the wall? He felt so much rage. He
was angry with the situation really, but focused it entirely on Jood.
There was no way he would do what she said, especially not what
she ordered him to do. Without thinking for a second of the danger,
he spun toward the cliff and began to scramble upward.
“Xenie, no!” she cried and tried to grab him.
It was too late. He was already out of reach. If he were to slip
now, he would fall too quickly to catch a bush or a vine and would
plummet to the base of the cliff. She had no choice and climbed
after him as best she could.
“It’s not so hard after all,” Xenoth thought. Each time he
needed a new hold for his hand or step for his foot, one would
appear. It was just like a ladder, only you had to make the rungs as
you went. Step here. . see a handhold . . grab above. . see a
foothold . . step here . . It was looksee, only you didn’t look. You
just saw inside and there it was.
“Xen . . Xenie, help!”
Xenoth paused and looked down. Astonished at what she saw
Xenoth doing, Jood had lost her concentration, had slipped and lost
her foothold. She held on with her right hand while trying to find
something to grab with her left or something that would catch her
feet. “Now what have I done,” Xenoth said to himself realizing
how serious her predicament was. “I’ve gotten Jood hurt or
worse.”
 “Just see it!” he screamed down to her.
Jood looked up and their eyes met, but only for a split second
before her hand slipped and she began to slide down the cliff. She
tumbled, gathering speed, sure to plummet to her death on the
rocks below.
“JOOD!” Xenoth screamed, his mind bursting in terror.
“JOOD! EEEEIIIIIEEAAKK,” he shrieked into the air with a
voice louder than he was capable. “EEEEIIIIIEEAAKK.” His
thoughts spun out of control. Where did such a cry come from?
And the vision with it. He had seen the feathered men. They
weren’t men at all. They were giant birds, each as large as a man,
souring over the gorge. They twisted and plunged through the air,
seeing what no person could.
The bird burst out from the aerie, twisted in the air, and shot
across the face of the cliff wall. Jood smashed into its back in mid
air, breaking her fall and bouncing her onto one of the bushes they
had left below a few minutes before. “EEEIIAAKK
EEEEIIIEEEKK” the bird shrieked as it spun downward and
recovered just before it would hit the bottom of the gorge. A
second bird, then a third, and a fourth rushed out into the sky, and
crisscrossed the cliff face screaming their cry and watching the two
shapes that had invaded their domain.
“Jood . . Jood . . are you okay?” Xenoth shouted down,
thinking only of her and not the enormous birds.
Jood couldn’t hear him, but after a moment she did look up.
She was hurt, but gave a slight wave, trying to get Xenoth to
concentrate on what he was doing.
 “I . . I’ll get help!” and he began to climb again. See . . step .
. see . . hold . . see
“‘You speak bird well, Xenoth,’ Jood teased me. We sat
around the fire in the camp we had made at the top of the cliff. She
was bruised up pretty bad, but was still able to climb the vines I
had found and tied together and sent down to her. She was . . .” He
could not find the words. “We talked about gatebuilding for much
of the evening. I suppose that it really was there where I began to
understand, and when I decided that I really did want to attend the
school.”
“So you gatebuilders climb around and talk to animals, eh?”
asked Pax.
“Oh, much more than that,” Xenoth smiled and laughed
lightly. “We create paths.”
“Hmm . . and so how did you get home.”
“We flew with the Sohl. Oh I forgot to say, that’s what the
creatures called themselves. Birds, but with legs nearly like those
of humans. Beautiful, intelligent beings actually.” He half-
expected Pax to laugh at the idea of birds being large enough to
carry people, but the old man only nodded and scratched the
ground with his cane. “From them I learned that my fears were my
own, and only I could overcome them. An awfully powerful lesson
that took me years to appreciate.”
“And Le, er, Jood?” Pax asked.
“Jood . . I never saw her again. The Sohl carried me to my
home, but as we descended, I saw her fly on. Our eyes met and she
touched her fingertips to her forehead and then was gone.”
 “I see,” said Pax quietly. “Never heard from her at all?”
“I did get a quick glance at her report to the Guild some years
later when I was attending the school, but when I asked, the crats
wouldn’t tell me where she was. They’re pretty secretive about
their scouts. I have to admit, though, I didn’t try very hard. Might
have been able to bribe one of them. I wish I had. There always
seemed to be so many other things to do,” Xenoth sadly replied.
“Now here I am reliving my life. In fact, reliving it backward it
seems.”
Xenoth glanced over to Pax and to Kith, and then around the
prison box which now held an image of his home, the way it had
been when he was young. There on the floor before him and
scattered all about were the toys he played with centuries ago. “Am
I now to become a child again, Pax?” he asked seeing the toys. If
the pattern were to hold, reliving his childhood would be next. He
half thought that even making the suggestion out loud would send
him back to that timeplace. He would find himself reliving his
youth, then telling about it, the two confused. But he remained in
the box, looking around his old room. It was just as he remembered
it, except for the old man sitting on the rocat with his chin on his
hands resting on a cane.
 Scouting Report
from Judges Division (JUD)
to the Gatebuilding Guild

Case 84-275: GN 393; Xenoth, of Root Village

Scout: Leme, JUD

The subject is recommended for admittance to Gate School with

an 1A rating and M1 priority. Over a standard period of
observation the subject displayed especially rich character and
fine ability to learn. In the three-leaf knowskills he demonstrated:

VIEW: excellent power; sees patterns well, including multiple

streams of timespace; good imagination
DO: fine concentration; motivated; bias to act
USE: appreciates and makes creative and appropriate use of
tools

Also observed was an incident of unusual talent in making. Mark

as Potential Master.

(See attached incident records).

 Chapter 9. Breaking Through
Create your self

“I’ve done it, Demiou! This gate is a clear stepping stone.

I’m destined to become a master gatebuilder.”
“It is an excellent gate, Xenoth. I can see that you learned
much about building and, as a result, much about your self
from the assignment. But be very careful. While your daily
accomplishments do take you down a path of your
creation, do not ascribe this to destiny. Destiny does not
exist. It is a dangerous veil that will blind you to your
responsibilities.”

“Don’t bother. They’ve forgotten us,” Pax said to Xenoth who was
looking about to find the food stores. Xenoth kept searching for a
moment, thinking that Pax might have missed something. Finally
giving up, he returned to the center of the prison box where Pax sat
with Kith. The image of his room in Root Village still surrounded
them, but it seemed less real than before. It was pale, not
necessarily out of focus, but fading from view. A pile of his toys
sat on the floor, and Pax moved them about with his cane. The old
man looked frail as he hunched over the toys. He inspected each
one, first looking at it as if it were something he might be able to
find a way to eat, but then moving it into what had become a sort
of pattern, as if he were making something. Xenoth glanced down
at the toys for a moment, then looked again with more curiosity.
The shape Pax was making was somehow familiar.
“Xenoth? Time for supper.”
“Okay, mom. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“That’s what you said before. Come here before it gets cold.”
Xenoth frowned, but got up and walked toward the door of
his room. Half way out, he turned and looked back at the toys on
the floor. There was something special about the way he had
arranged them, or had almost arranged them. Something was still
not quite right. If he could only figure out what it was.
“Xenoth!” barked his mother storming down the hallway to
his room. “Your toys will still be there after supper. Now come out
here and eat.”
He had no choice but to leave his Rt behind, just when he
was at the defining moment. He sat and picked at his food, but his
thoughts remained with the toys. He moved each of them in his
mind, trying to find the pattern that awaited discovery.
“What are you doing in there that’s so important?” his
mother asked.
“I’m making a bridge. . Huh? That’s it!” His head jerked up
from his food and his face lit up. He ran from the table back to his
room.
“XENOTH!” his mother shouted after him. She started to get
up to chase him, but sat back shaking her head in defeat.
Xenoth ran into his room and dropped to his knees staring
down at the toys. “It’s a bridge! If I just move this here . . and this
one over here like that . . then people can walk through on their
way to all sorts of magical worlds.” He sat back in triumph. Now
he could eat supper. Of course, by the time he got back to the
dining room, the table had been cleared. “Oh well,” he thought, “it
was worth it.”
“What do you see?” asked Pax.
“It’s a bridge I built as a child. How did you . . ”
“A bridge? Hmmph.” Xenoth realized that Pax had started to
play looksee. Had the story of Jood and the gorge gone to his
head?
“Why a bridge?” asked the old man.
“Well, it bridges across here, these pieces make this side, and
these others match from the other side, and it opens a space below
for people and things to pass through,” replied Xenoth pointing to
features in the pattern.
“Oh, you mean a gate then?”
“Well, sure I suppose, uh . .” Xenoth stopped in mid-sentence
and stood frozen in astonishment. He didn’t know what to say. Pax
was absolutely right. It was a gate, not a bridge. He had built a gate
as a child. “How could I have . . it . . it . . a gate there in the toys,”
he stammered.
“In the toys or in your head?” asked Pax.
“In the toy . . well, in my head, of course. Well, in the . .”
Xenoth was too dumfounded to think clearly. “The shape came to
me at supper, but it was there waiting in the toys. Well, not waiting
really. I just had to see it. But not see what the toys were already.
See what they could be. Like . . like the steps in the cliff.”
 Suddenly he was back on the cliff face. “I’ll get help!”
Xenoth shouted down to Jood. She waved back weakly from her
perch against the bush, in obvious pain from the fall. Xenoth
turned back to the cliff face and started to climb. He would have to
pace himself this far down from the top. See the step . . step . . see
the hold . . reach for it . . see . . step . . see . . hold . . see . . He
gradually made his way up the cliff, seeing the next step or
handhold in his mind then moving to it. Were these notches in the
rock really there? Was he simply finding them in the rock? Or was
his mind so focused that he was creating them? There was no time
to think about it. Jood was hurt and he had to keep moving.
“Concentrate,” he commanded himself. See . . hold . . see . . step . .
The screeches of the birds crisscrossing behind his back would
have scared him half to death had he given them the slightest
thought. See . . hold . . see . .
“Won’t get out that way,” said Pax, stating the obvious.
Xenoth was up against a wall of the box. He looked to be
trying to climb the wall, but he only moved his feet and hands up
and down. His concentration broken by Pax’s voice, he slowly
realized where he was and what he was doing. He stopped and
stared at the wall, a fading image of the wall of his childhood
room. He turned and faced Pax and said, “Is this how it goes now?
Jumps back and forth between my memories and the box? Are we
going to continue to relive bits and pieces of my life?”
“I can’t say.”
Xenoth stood looking at the old man, wishing that the goons
would come and take him. This was surely a prison. He couldn’t
stand the thought of growing old here like Pax. He hated the old
man for a moment, then was only sad. He saw that Pax looked
older and more frail than ever. The old man’s eyes drooped. His
hands shook as he pushed his cane out and scattered the toys.
Xenoth walked over to sit beside him.
As he crossed the box, Xenoth looked down at the toys and
saw that they were no longer toys. They were requirs and strats,
and his thoughts went to Klasrum. And then he was there.
Looking around the work area of the factory, Xenoth
mumbled, “ugh, why must I be here on Klasrum again . . wait, I’m
here but I remember the box!” This was like the Natursys Forest.
He was in his former body, but remembered the future. He saw the
overseer Teech at the front of the room, and to his left was Dent
working on a requir. Poor Dent.
“How about cleaning the stables this afternoon, 83?” Teech
said. It took Xenoth a moment to remember that he was 83, then he
realized that Teech was warning him to get to work. He picked up
the requir in front of him and began to work on it, but continued to
look around trying to figure out why he was in the Gate School on
Klasrum yet retained his future memories. This wasn’t like
anything before. Had he escaped the box somehow? If so, would
he now have to relive his entire life from this point forward?
“Psst. Xen, the clock.” Xenoth looked to his left. Dent
pointed to the clock, and Xenoth realized that he was saying that it
was coming up to the time for the next Clang. They would have to
finish their requirs just in time to be next to the line when the bell
rang. But could this be the day they were caught? If so, Xenoth had
to stop Dent from timing it. Otherwise Dent would be intimidated
into jousting without protective gear that afternoon.
“No, not today,” he whispered to Dent.
“What do you mean not today? You want to sit next to the
overseer next Clang?”
“No, just don’t time it today.”
“You do what you want,” Dent replied as he started toward
the door with his finished requir.
“CLANG CLANG.”
Dent had timed it well. He was sixth in line for moving to the
next work area. Xenoth finished his work then joined the line. He
was well back, somewhere around forty-fifth he estimated. Dent
glanced back as Teech passed by Xenoth. Teech paused by Xenoth
and shot him a glance. Xenoth knew what it meant, but only
because he could remember the future. Teech was indicating that
he was aware of their timing. He was smirking about the fact that
Xenoth had missed it today. “If only we had known,” Xenoth
thought, recalling Dent’s fate. But it hadn’t happened yet. He could
prevent it. He could convince Dent not to time it anymore, and
Dent wouldn’t be selected for the joust. He wouldn’t get hurt. But
what would that do to his own future? Would he change things in
some way that endangered his own future life? The lives of others?
They marched into the next work area, recited the
procedures, and began work on strats.
“So what are you making?” asked Pax
“A strat,” replied Xenoth out loud as he looked up to see the
old man. But he wasn’t in the box. He was still in the work area,
and the other workers and overseer were staring at him. Pax was
nowhere in sight.
“What’s a strat?” continued Pax.
“It’s . . oh, of course,” Xenoth started to whisper, then
remembered that he only had to think the words. The workers
around him continued to glance his way, wondering if talking to
yourself was the first sign of going crazy.
“Keep working, the overseer is watching you,” said Pax.
Xenoth glanced up and saw the overseer glaring at him. He picked
up the strat and returned to work.
“You can see through me?” he asked Pax.
“Through you? Yes, I see what you see, and hear what you
hear. We share.”
“Then tell me why I’m back here on Klasrum but I can still
remember the box.”
“The box shows only the truth.”
“I know, that’s what scares me. What if I change
something?”
“So what’s a strat?” Pax asked ignoring Xenoth’s question.
“It’s part of an arched gate. Strats form one column and
requirs the other. The gatebuilder matches sets of the two, then
caps them off with the arch.”
“Hmm, quite a process,” commented Pax.
“Yes, I suppose. Of course, that’s not how we really do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we learned how to make pieces here, then later
how to put the pieces together. They made us memorize some
archaic phrases, then taught us a set of strict procedures to follow.
But that’s not how we really make gates.”
“How do you make gates then?” asked Pax.
“We see them in the . .”
“WHAP!” Xenoth shook from the pain shooting through his
hands and up his arms. A violent strike from a chawk stick across
his knuckles.
“If you don’t wish to work then you’ll clean stables for the
month. Or, perhaps we have a hero in today’s joust. Workers, your
hero, 83!” roared the overseer.
“Yoo, 83! Bash ‘em, 83!” shouted the workers.
“Pax, help me. I never jousted. I’ll be killed,” whispered
Xenoth as he was escorted to the jousting field. “Pax . . Pax!” he
said more loudly. There was no answer. He saw the crowds of
workers and overseers, and toward the center of the field, the past
workers and sponsors.
“Xenoth, I’m proud of you,” shouted his mother as he found
her face in the crowd. He couldn’t believe that this was happening,
but his body and voice wouldn’t obey his commands.
“83.”
He recognized Dent’s voice.
“Jump out,” Dent shouted between his hands. Xenoth
understood and tried to nod but couldn’t. Then he was aboard the
rocat and the sound engine went silent. The signal was given and
the rocat sprang away. Faster and faster toward the contestant from
the other factory.
 “This can’t be real,” Xenoth thought. He had lost control of
his muscles. He felt himself rise into position for the thrust. At the
last minute he saw the face of his opponent. “No it can’t be,” he
screamed inside. It was his own face. He snapped the ram into
position and shrieked “EEEAA . .
. . AHH!” Xenoth came down on his feet, but nearly fell on
his face from the suspended movement. He stood in the center of
the box, still poised to crash into his opponent in the joust. But
there was no opponent and there was no joust. Only the dim image
of his room, and Pax sitting on the floor up against one wall.
“That won’t help either. I tried screaming for quite a while
when they put me in here,” explained Pax.
“I was in the joust, and . .” How could he have jousted with
himself? It had felt real, but he had no control of it. And he had
retained his memories.
“Pax, did this happen to you?” he asked. Since the old man
had been in the box so long, Xenoth thought that he might have
had similar experiences. How long had Pax been here anyway.
Xenoth had never asked. He walked over to where Pax sat and was
startled to see that the old man had aged considerably. His hair had
thinned, and his skin had shriveled. How could this be? They had
been here in the box only . . Xenoth couldn’t remember how long.
He sat down near the old man, confused, and watched the walls of
his room fade from view.
“Pax,” he said softly, “it was only just . . I was thrown in here
with you and Kith.” He shot a glance to his side, then around the
room. “Pax, where’s Kith?”
 Pax turned his head slowly, and Xenoth saw in his eyes that
Pax didn’t know who Kith was.
“Oh no, I jousted instead of Dent,” he said to himself,
realizing that he wouldn’t have been given Kith if Dent had not
jousted. “What else has been changed?” he wondered aloud. “How
could I have jousted myself?”
“What’s that?” a female voice asked.
Xenoth looked back to the source of the words. It was
Demiou. He was leading her across the clover field. He smiled at
seeing her and said “nothing, just talking to myself.” How could he
explain to her that he had gone on to become a gatebuilder, and
was now in a prison box reliving the past. Or would it matter? Was
this really happening? Kith was there and then not there. The rocat
shouldn’t have been there at all. It was all an illusion, he thought.
Perhaps just confusing images that the box manufactured as power
drained away. But was his exhaustion and hunger an illusion?
He continued to walk out into the field. It was good to be
back with Demiou, but something was out of place. It was the
walking, he realized. If they were going out to search a square he
should have been leaping the number of days. There was only one
time that they had walked this way.
“The 4-leaf dream is a powerful one, Xenoth,” Demiou said.
This must be the day we found the 4-leaf, he thought. He
looked out further into the field and he could see the bare spot. He
knew that the 4-leaf would be there waiting for him. Such a joyful
memory.
 “It tells us of our responsibilities in the world,” she said as
they continued to walk. “A gatebuilder is a person, no more no
less. But the 4-leaf symbolizes for that person a responsibility to
act on her dreams. It is her role.”
Xenoth could not remember these words, but they certainly
rang true. They arrived at the square and could see where he had
ripped up the clover. He looked for the lone clover standing out
against the dirt, then gasped, “It’s not here! The . . the 4-leaf was
right there.” The dirt was bare except for the scattered 3-leafs he
had torn up. Without the 4-leaf he would be dismissed by the
Guild. He would not become a gatebuilder.
“Of course not,” said Demiou, puzzled. “The 4-leaf is just a
dream, Xenoth.” She looked at him with concern, questioning
whether he had had the dream after all.
Xenoth looked pleadingly into her eyes then back at the dirt.
But what lay below him was the solid floor of the box.
He didn’t bother looking up. It was no surprise to be back in
the box. After a minute, he stomped his foot, then walked to the
wall and pounded on it. It was real enough. At least as real as his
senses could tell him. The image of his room was gone. All that
remained were the bare walls, and the ceiling and floor, and Pax
resting against the wall . . and the goon trying to hide.
“Hey!” Xenoth shouted spotting the goon. The goon ran
toward the wall on Xenoth’s left. Xenoth realized immediately that
that must be where the slit to enter and exit the box was located.
He ran to cut the goon off.
 “Stay back, Xen . . uh . . prisoner!” the goon commanded. By
the voice, Xenoth could tell that she was a female, but her features
were masked by the loose robe and hood. She had stopped short
seeing Xenoth run in front of her. Apparently, he was between her
and the slit.
“I just want to ask you a question,” Xenoth said.
The goon hesitated and then said cautiously, “ask.”
“I . . I’m confused. I was brought here to be tried. Yet you
have left me in a box, here with another prisoner, for . . for how
long I can’t even tell. What is happening?”
“When you’re together you’ll be tried,” repeated the goon
moving to the side to try to get past.
Xenoth stepped in front of her and said “but what does that
mean?”
“I cannot say, Xeni . . gatebuil . . I cannot say, prisoner,”
replied the goon.
“Your voice. I . . do I know you? You’re not a goon.” As
Xenoth walked toward her, she jumped to the side and ran past
him, slipping through the slit before he could react. He ran to
where the slit had opened but couldn’t find any evidence that it
even existed.
“Pax, I knew her. She was a gatebuilder not a goo . . Pax!”
The old man had slipped off his cane and lay on his side. Xenoth
ran to him. Pax breathed heavily and with a rasp. Xenoth could see
it in his eyes. The old man was dying.
“Pax . . Pax stay with me. Don’t leave me here.” He ran back
to where the woman impersonating a goon had exited. He pounded
on the wall. “Hey! Help! He needs help!” But there was no
response. He walked quickly back to Pax and knelt by his side.
“Pax, you’ll be okay. Here, let me help you up.”
“No,” whispered Pax pushing Xenoth’s hands aside with
what little strength remained. “Build a gate . . for yourself,” he
gasped.
“I . . I don’t know what you mean.”
“Build . . a gate . . now . .”
Xenoth looked deep into Pax’s face trying to understand what
the old man was saying to him. In Pax’s eyes, Xenoth began to see
shapes. Toys and requirs, and vines and bubble vehicles, and
transducers in a sound engine, and then a 4-leaf and the sohl flying
above the gorge. And then Pax’s eyes widened, and he saw a
reflection of himself. More than a reflection. It was himself. First
his own eyes, then his shape, and as his focus moved back, he saw
that Pax was himself. Only old and dying. And then he realized
that the entire body before him was an image that had begun to
fade, but a true image nonetheless.
“It’s me,” he cried, backing away in horror. How could it be?
As he watched, the image of the old man—of himself—faded
away, almost to nothing. “I’m dying,” he said to no one. His mind
fought with the idea that he had been in the box with his future self
all along. Beyond that he could think of nothing but the terror of
watching himself die. He heard Pax’s voice in his mind saying,
“Build . . now . . .”
Pax’s eyes froze in death. He breathed out but could not
breathe in again.
 “Build. . build . . build a gate . . how, and with what?”
Xenoth stammered. He looked frantically about the box for
materials and ideas. “Think, gatebuilder!” he shouted at himself.
“There must be a way. . Ask of the situation. Generate
alternatives,” he recited the gatebuilding processes that he had used
so often. “I’m alive. I’m in prison. My future self has been shown
to me. How could this happen, and what does it mean? I have to
concentrate and do what he, uh, I said. If I don’t act quickly I’ll die
here like this. No more rejuv. Just left in the box until I grow old
and perish. But . . . but how could the box know the truth of the
future? Do my memories destine me to this? Is my life going to be
a haunting, watching myself relive memories over and over?”
Xenoth paced nervously back and forth across the box trying
to think of some sort of action he could take. He stopped in front of
Pax and said, “My same clothes even. How could I have not seen
who he was before. It was the only way we could have shared so
much and so clearly.” He looked up and down his future body,
trying not to believe. Something caught his eye by Pax’s feet. A
small piece of paper had worked it’s way out just a fraction of an
inch from the sole of his left shoe. “The manifesto,” he exclaimed.
What did it matter if the goons heard him now. He reached down
and pulled the paper from Pax’s shoe, held it up in his hand and
shouted, “I’ll renounce all criticisms of the Guild!”
Xenoth thought that such a proclamation surely would satisfy
the crats. Isn’t that what they were after all along? He waited for a
response that didn’t come. The box must be monitored, he thought.
Or was it? Sadly, he knelt by Pax’s side—his own side, he
reluctantly accepted.
“Build . . now,” he heard faintly echoed in his mind, but he
saw no movement in his dying body.
“But what can I build?” he asked of himself. In a flood of
memories, what he thought must be a sharing of the moment of
death, Xenoth saw the gates and peoples of his life. Elem and the
other members of her cell by a fountain of Systemi City. A child
singing a song that would trigger the idea for the City’s new gate.
Standing in a village beside a natursys tree. The sapriders’ renewed
respect for the complexity of the tree. Emen and a Traveler aboard
the Physdesys. Breaking free of assumptions to see things in a
different way. The clover field and vision of the 4-leaf in the night
sky. The ability to build.
But as the events continued to flood his mind, he saw truths
that he had tried to deny. He saw Systemi City in the months and
years after he had directed the building of their new gate. It
attracted so many visitors that the fountains could not supply
enough water. Additional water needed to be pumped in through
long pipelines across the desert, and visitors unaccustomed to
sharing a limited supply stole and hoarded far more than their
share. Others were left thirsty. The riots of the following years
could not be avoided.
Then he saw the sapriders gathered in a memorial service for
their leader, Pith. She had given herself to the tree, unable to
handle the pressure of so much change in so little time, unable to
rid herself of the blame for decisions that had nearly killed the
forest.
And then he imagined himself aboard Physdesys on its last
voyage, the gateprentice so caught up in the challenge of finding
new species that he ignored the signals of a rift about to open in the
sea floor. He felt the shock wave hit the ship and the hull collapse
about him. “No . . .” he screamed, writhing in pain on the floor of
the box as he imagined his body crushed. He had never wished for
death before, but the physical pain, combined with the visions that
his gatebuilding had caused so much harm, was unbearable. “Is
there nowhere I did good for others?” he cried in agony.
Xenoth went numb. On the brink of breaking down
completely, a vision of a Klasrum factory appeared. But the factory
was different. It wasn’t a factory at all, but a school. The overseers
were teachers, kind and caring, fathers and mothers to the young
gatestudents. Instead of pain and sadness he saw happiness in
everyone’s face. He walked into what he had known as a dingy
workroom and found warm bright colors and an air of curiosity.
On a desk before him lay a strat that some student had apparently
not put away. But as he tried to pick it up, his hand went straight
through. It was an illusion, floating in the air.
Was everything an illusion? He raised his hands and saw that
they were not his own. Searching the room with his eyes he found
the old portrait of Socrat, the gatebuilder who had planned
Klasrum. Then it was not a portrait but a mirror and he realized
that he was Socrat, and that he had planned Klasrum himself. And
then the truth of what Klasrum had become—not the school he had
envisioned but an awful factory—returned to him, and the part of
him that was Socrat cried out in horror and shame.
The images came faster and faster. The forest, the sea, the
desert. In each one, Xenoth was himself and then another person
who had lived there his or her entire life. He was Elem, and then
Emen, then Ment. Pushing through his confusion and the
exhaustion, a pattern began to emerge. He saw Socrat’s shame as
his own and knew Klasrum as Systemi City and as Natursys Forest
and as all the gates built in the past. The eyes of his self and all
others began to merge and the images of past and future slowly
disappeared. He realized how the efforts of his life had been
misguided by pride.
He was in the box, in a single moment outside time. No pain,
no joy, moving neither toward nor away, standing in an endless
instant of here and now.
Slowly time began to creep forward. He looked to the floor
and into Pax’s face, and he felt a calm release of all that had been
his past. He saw death and birth, and in that moment realized that
he could build a gate for himself. Then his mind turned
inexplicably to Jood in the aerie screeching to a Sohl. “Eeaakk,” he
heard and felt the power of the screech burn through his body.
“EEEAAKK,” came the screech, louder, as if a Sohl were standing
beside him. “EEAAKK!” Xenoth stood tall and slowly turned
about, feeling that the sound was real. “EEEAAKKK. EEEAAKK”
And then he realized that the sound was coming from his own
mouth. “EEEEEAAAAKKKK!” he screeched more loudly and
with greater power than even the time on the cliff. “YOU ARE
ME!” he screamed at the body he had known as Pax.
“EEEEEAAAAKKKK!! EEAAKK!!!” He felt the joy and
freedom rush through him, and as he gave an almost hysterical
laugh, he looked down to his future body and watched it first grow
young and vital, then disappear.
Xenoth stood absolutely still as the events of the previous
moments snaked their way into his consciousness. He barely
breathed, unable to speak or to hear, unable to feel anything at all.
Then finally tears began to flow. He closed his eyes and shook,
then sank to the floor, held himself and cried. For a long time he
sat this way, rocking back and forth, sobbing. When the tears had
dried on his cheeks, he continued to sit and stare, looking into his
forearms and knees but seeing nothing at all.
Then with a deep breath and a long sigh he emptied himself,
seeming to release his entire mind, body and spirit. In the void as
the stuffing of his years disappeared, he saw a fine web of silken
threads remain. The threads were extraordinarily thin and flexible
and suspended across open space by invisible energy. Yet the web
was strong and powerful. Then with a more penetrating gaze, he
saw that it was alive and continually growing. And somehow the
more it grew, the greater the space became. It expanded outside of
his self to include the people he had known, then all people, then
all living and unliving things. And in this moment he became a
child, and a prentice and a builder and an old man, all at once,
connected in a timeless web. Finally, as his gaze slowly re-
accepted the physical world that his eyes could reveal, he saw the
walls of the prison box disappear.
 “Hello, Paxenoth,” the figure beside him said, gently laying a
hand on his arm.
“Hello . . . Demiou? It is you, Mistress Gatebuilder Demiou,”
he said, knowing that she was real. “It’s . . it’s been so very long.”
Decades had passed since his prenticeship at the Clover Field. He
had seen Demiou only in the images of the box since then.
“Yes, it has been many years, Paxenoth.”
“Paxenoth?” he asked, but then realized that he and Pax now
were one. “Of course,” he said, giving a slight nod.
“I am sure that you have many questions, and I shall try to
answer them. First come. Let us eat and then rest.”
It was as if her words were a command to his body. He had
been lost in a place where food and sleep were not possible. Now
he had returned, and he was famished and exhausted.

“Good morning, Paxen,” Demiou said as she saw him stir.

“Have I slept long?”
“Only three days. Less than I would have expected after so
long in the box.”
For a moment Paxenoth wondered if he were still in the box
and if Demiou were just another image haunting him with his own
memory.
“Don’t worry, Paxen. Your trial is over.”
“You could always read my mind, Demiou,” he said, rubbing
the sleep from his eyes. “Uh . . . why do you call me Paxen?”
 “Oh, we mistresses and masters have the habit of calling each
other by the shortened forms of our names. I was Iourgos before
Demi and I became one, actually.”
“Ah, I see. You went through . . ? Wait. ‘Masters’ did you
say?”
“Yes. You are now Master Gatebuilder Paxenoth. The trial
was a test, you see.”
“A test? You mean you are the one who put me in prison?”
“Yes,” said Demiou, not concerned that Paxenoth still saw it
as a prison. It would take a little time for him to turn his new
perspective toward recent events.
“How . . why . . What if I had failed the test?”
“I’m sorry, Paxen. If you had failed, you would have died as
Pax. That would have brought me great pain.”
“You would have let me die?”
“No, Paxen. I would not have done so. If you had been let
free, you would have distributed that manifesto of yours, and you
would have been imprisoned by the crats and died as you saw.”
“But the manifesto is true. I still feel as I did. Our schools
and our gates should be destroyed. They do more harm than good.”
“Paxen, I think you will find we are sympathetic to your
views. We would not have secretly helped you become a master
otherwise. But your methods, like some gates, would have done
more harm than good. They would have merely stated words to be
misinterpreted, politicized, or just cast aside. Your concerns are too
important for us to let that happen.”
Paxenoth stared into the distance lost in thought.
 “Look at me now,” said Demiou.
He brought his eyes to meet hers. “Who is ‘we’?” he asked.
“Shhh . . Paxen. Just look at me,” she replied. “How do you
feel right now?” she asked, but Paxenoth realized as he heard her
words, or as he felt her words enter his mind, that her lips had not
moved. “How do you feel?” she repeated, again speaking to him
without opening her lips.
“I . . . I feel . .”
“Shhh . .” Demiou whispered, bringing her finger to his lips.
“Tell me this way,” she continued without voice.
“I feel confused,” Paxenoth said in his mind.
“What questions may I answer?” Demiou asked.
“How are we doing this? I shared so with Pax because he was
me.”
“You are a master now, Paxen. You will find that spoken
words are a primitive way to share. Far more important will be
your actions.” And with that Paxenoth realized that he was
experiencing much more than words. He was far more deeply
aware of what those words meant to Demiou, of what she intended
to express with them. The words were now just reflections off the
surface of a deep river of meaning, a flow he had previously left
almost entirely untapped.
“How do you feel?” Demiou asked for the third time, this
time getting an answer.
“I feel afraid and still confused . . and yet strong and peaceful
. . and joyful at the same time. My memories fill me, yet there is
great space for the future. The past and the present and the future
are all here in me in this moment. And I feel . . connected. I feel
whole. My mind and my body and my spirit are all somehow
together. I had no idea they were separate before.”
“You are one, Paxenoth. That is what a master must be
before he may build true gates.”
“I have built many gates before, Demiou.”
“Yes, Gatebuilder Xenoth built many, and those gates did
more good than the harm you may have imagined. But they were
mere hints of what you may now do.”
A brief flush of pride crossed Paxenoth as his life’s work was
categorized as ‘mere hints,’ but he knew that his pride was foolish
and that some of the harm he had imagined had been real. In his
heart, he knew that she was right.
“Paxen, you would not be here today, you would not be a
master if we did not respect your work as Xenoth. They were good
gates because you are a good person. You built gates out of respect
for others and out of good will. Those are vital qualities, but they
are not enough. More powerful gates require that you truly
appreciate the power of gatebuilding. And there is only one way to
gain such appreciation. It is through understanding the risks, and
the transformation, and the consequences of creating gates for
yourself. This is the process of gaining understanding of your self.
By creating for yourself, you create your self. Only with this
knowledge can you be a master. Your choice to become Paxenoth
rather than accept the fate of Pax, which, by the way, your self led
the box to create, has made you a master.”
 Paxenoth could feel a strength building within himself, and
between himself and Demiou. They were sharing something
ancient yet entirely new, a connection with themselves and each
other and with other peoples and with the world. In a grand
tapestry of possibilities an important gate had come to be.
 Manifesto
on
The Conditions of Gatebuilding
______________________________________________________

~People of L-Urn, Travelers through gates,

~Builders of all true gates, mistresses and masters of the
gatebuilding art,
~Officers of the Guild, owners of wisdom and makers of paths,

With pain and sadness, I Gatebuilder Xenoth must state that the
most exciting and wondrous creations of the past—our gates—are
neither exciting nor wondrous for today. I fear they may never
have been. Recall the Gatebuilders’ Creed. I use it fairly to
partition and explain what has come to be:

hearts open free

through pillars and key
stone by stone
we build our gates

We have lost the meaning of these the four statements of our creed.
With each in turn we have gone astray.
Hearts open free
We have become gatekeepers rather than gatebuilders. We
fashion and keep guard over gates that close in, restrict access,
and limit Travelers’ paths. We fail to build gates that open
outward and free us all to new futures. We sign our gates ‘beware’
rather than ‘welcome,’ and they become exits to feared unknowns
rather than entrances to exciting new possibilities. We place our
gates at the boundaries of worlds, unconnected to either the world
or what lies beyond, offering narrowest views of both. Common,
therefore, is the Traveler who sees no gate, or through a gate sees
nothing, or an abyss, or a wall rather than many paths.

We create gates to create gates, not to open up new worlds for

those that would pass through, and we seek change for the sake of
change rather than for Travelers’ benefit. Our gates are places
where Travelers claim baggage, packages they must carry with
them as a burden, rather than places where passports are offered,
tickets to where their hearts wish to journey.

We see gates as physical entities, switches and valves to open

and close, doors and windows to see or pass through. We have lost
the power and beauty of gates in the mind and heart—gates to
understanding, to knowledge and wisdom, gates to new worlds of
our own making. We value gates for what they are rather than for
what they help Travelers be and become.
through pillars and key
Our gates are no stronger than the pillars on either side. We
fashion ends to the right and means to the left in patterns of
balance and stability. For stones of requirement on the right, there
are stones of strategy on the left. For banners of purpose on the
right wave banners of plan on the left. Matched are the base
stones, the crowns, and the peaks.

We have come to find humor in the apparent unbalance of

ancient or more recent ‘experimental’ gates. We see their large
and small stones, asymmetric to our perceptions, as the
consequence of primitive cutting and carrying. We must awaken to
the fact that beneath the surface there is magic in the unbalanced
appearance, a structure more elegantly filled with possibilities.
Our focus on appearance, on evens and squares, blinds us to
underlying strength. For there is elegance and great strength in
many strats or stones of means balancing a single requir or stone
of ends, and many requirs balancing a single strat. Our Perfect
Approach gives us Perfect Gates that float in the air not through
magic but through lack of anchor or root in the ground.

We take reference to ‘key’ to mean one must own a gate key to

be able to pass through. In keeping our gates, we assess who holds
keys and who does not. Our own records reveal this to be a
misinterpretation and, perhaps, an injustice done many Travelers.
Rather than refer to a key to a lock, the phrase means the key stone
in the arch of the gate. ‘Through pillars and key’—through the
pillars and through the key—not through the gate after obtaining
and using a gate key.

The keystone unites the pillars, links the SppIrs, and carries the
arch. Without it there would be no gate. Recall the ancient practice
of mapping the features of the world on the face of the keystone. In
this way, one saw the gate as representation of what lay beyond.
The keystone served as basis for the Traveler’s understanding of
the new world he or she entered thereafter. Our current policies of
efficiency and standardization in the fabrication of keystones
leaves every world entrance the same. Travelers no longer even
gaze at the keystone, no longer stand and appreciate the gate. And
they no longer see the gate itself as a key. As a consequence, they
cannot see the Gift of the Gate, what the gate offers to others and
themselves.

stone by stone
With each generation we create new patterns for gates. We
fashion the Grand Gate in recent times, the gate through which
multitudes may pass. For this gate we seek grandness in the
number of stones, the number of steps the Traveler must climb, and
the number of Travelers passing through each day. We create gods
who demand that standard stones be laid and certain steps be
climbed. We forget that these gods are of our making, and
grandness of our choosing. Frightening it is but true that neither
may serve the Traveler well.
 Instead of single Grand Gates built stone upon stone, we must
build many small gates, each a stepping stone to the next. The
Traveler’s path is stone by stone, from gate to gate, each stone
representing a leap to new ideas and possibilities. Our gates must
be milestones, not endpoints. They must be markers of evolution,
not revolving doors.

Travelers of our Grand Gates see massive structure in the

future and in the past and view themselves and others as being
after or before. Judgment is passed on them for what they carry
rather than who they are or what they understand and can do. In
contrast, receiving Travelers as ones who move stone by stone, we
offer them capacity to locate their own gates and to judge for
themselves. The value of the path and the beauty and power of the
gates are theirs to determine. Ours is to help them fashion nets to
drag behind and to extend before, all directions to locate new
visions, and with those visions, new paths. With these nets they
would not capture but appreciate, not ignore the unusual but
explore its potential. They would come to see that the Gift of the
Gate lies not in the gate itself.

we build our gates

We interpret ‘we’ as us, the members of the Gatebuilding Guild,
the privileged holders of the art, an elite class with knowledge and
skills the common Traveler can never attain. This leads us to build
our gates for ourselves and our Noble Sponsors rather than for
those who pass through, and to argue the majesty of the gate
rather than understanding the Travelers’ lives.

Gone are the days of magic. We have replaced them with the
great machines and calculus of gating. But the essence of the gate
flows from neither magic nor machine. Worshipping these false
images we squander opportunities to take risk and to purposely
wander in search of truth. As a result, truth wanders away from us.
We fail to recognize that truth is ever changing, and the making of
all peoples. It is not the property of our Guild.

We continue the practice of signing our gates giving credit to

ourselves as creators of masterworks. Instead, we must de-sign
them, and take away names so that things may be seen for what
they are or what they might be. To de-sign would be our great act
of generosity, to share creation with those who pass through. The
Travelers would see us and we would see ourselves differently, of
course, but with this act there would be greater not lesser
responsibility. This is the essence of the Gift of the Gate, central to
our being builders not keepers.

Alas, most damning, we assume that Travelers follow paths and

walk through gates of our construction. We assume that Travelers
of sufficient talent and learning who have invested much time and
effort in the gate factories, have prenticed and traveled along the
proper paths in proper sequence for proper lengths of time, may be
able to fashion gates themselves. In this we fail to recognize that
all people including ourselves are Travelers and that all Travelers
build their own gates and follow their own paths. Our task as
members of the Guild must be to help others build gates for
themselves: to help bring focus to a vision, to help find good
requirs and strats to use, to help separate mortar from dust, to
challenge with a possible path, to help find the strength to rise
another step, to help prepare for the leap. All else for us is illusion.

And so, I Xenoth recommit myself to gatebuilding, not to

preserving the Grand Gates of the Guild, but to helping the
common Travelers build their own gates. In truth, this is all that
can be done. By this act, I carry out my oaths to L-Urn. With each
journey I will come to know my fellow Traveler. Together we will
learn reverence for our worlds and earn respect from one another.
We will evolve to something at present unknown, we will keep our
nets open to possibilities, and humbly, we will consider all gates
unfinished.

______________________________
Xenoth, Gatebuilders Guild, GN 702
 Chapter 10. The Next Leap
Create with others, not for them

“It is time for me to return to my work and to leave you to

your own path.”
“I understand, Demiou. But don’t you have any last words of
wisdom for me?” Paxenoth shared with a grin to his
former teacher.
Demiou returned his grin but wouldn’t let him get away with
the tease. “Seeds are planted well in you, Paxen, and they
will grow if you allow your future friends to nourish them.
We will all find joy in their fruit if you find joy in their
growing.”
Paxen nodded and replied, “I don’t understand a single word
of that, but I’ll think about it.” He surprised even himself
sharing with the honesty of a child. “Ah, to be wonderfully
ignorant again,” and they joined in deep, heartfelt
laughter.

“We need to remove the roof of each spire first, then everything
above the arch. We’ll have to support the columns as the key is
lifted out,” Gatebuilder Embar instructed Dreme and the other
grNts. They were here to take down Paxenoth 2, the largest
traditional 2-column gateform ever built.
“But why are we taking down PX2?” asked Dreme.
“Just do your job. Plenty of time for questions later.”
“But wouldn’t it be safer doing this during the day?”
 “Do your job, grNt, or I can find someone else,” barked
Embar.
It didn’t make any sense to Dreme. PX2 had stood for only a
month. But a job was a job. If she didn’t do it someone else would.
So she walked off to get her gear, her eyes adjusting to the dim
lights around the site. Still not pleased with the task ahead, she
muttered to herself, “Why PX2? It’s so grand.”

flag of plans flag of purposes

build OUR gates hearts open free

Image
Keystone

GG

Strats Requirs
(stones of (stones of
means) ends)

Situation

Gate Paxenoth 2
 “Yes it is, but that’s really why it has to fall,” said a man’s
voice from off the path. Dreme stopped and turned toward the
voice, but she could barely make out the man’s outline. “Why do
you say that?” she asked.
“Everything has its time and its purpose. PX2 has served
quite well. That’s why it has to come down.”
“But everyone said PX2 was a masterpiece. At its opening
they said that PX2 would stand for centuries.”
“Yes, that’s what people believed at first. But that wasn’t
what Paxenoth intended at all.”
Dreme walked closer and could see that the man wore a robe
and leaned on a cane, even though he did not seem to need the
latter. But she couldn’t see who he was because he had the hood
raised from his robe, hiding his face in shadow.
“Rrrrgg.” Dreme froze, instantly realizing that the man had a
rocat.
“It’s all right, Kith. No threat here,” the man said. Dreme
knew that she had nothing to fear from rocats, but their growls
always frightened her anyway.
“You seem to know an awful lot,” Dreme said, not really
believing the man, but not dismissing his words either. “Tell me,
what did Paxenoth intend?” she asked.
“He intended this night.”
“This night? You mean the Guild hiring a bunch of us to
come out here and tear down PX2 while people slept so that they
wouldn’t know about it until it was too late?”
 “Well, the time of day doesn’t really matter. I suppose doing
it now just saves some of their pride. As you imply, there probably
would have been protests if they did it in the middle of the day.
But perhaps not so loud as you might think. I believe that many
people, many Guild members in particular, have come to see PX2
for what it really is.”
“And what’s that?” asked Dreme, growing increasingly
curious.
“It’s a bunch of stones. No more, no less. People see other
things in it, of course,” the man explained. “At first the Guild saw
it as a grand keeper of tradition. Hmm .. keeper .. quite right.
Ahem . . They thought it was Paxenoth’s apology to them for
writing a silly manifesto. And with that big Guild emblem on the
keystone they even thought it was a tribute to them.” Dreme
detected something between sadness and embarassment in the
man’s reference to the emblem, but didn’t quite understand the
link. He continued, “Some see PX2 as a symbol of what our people
have come to be. And there is the issue. They see it as important,
as expressing their heritage and their way of life. But I’m afraid
it’s just stones.”
“I . . I like it,” Dreme said, trying to understand why this man
would think it was a good idea to destroy a marvelous gate.
“Oh, I do too, I suppose. Quite an accomplishment to get
something so painfully conventional to stand, really. But you see,
the grander the gate, the greater the danger of it being kept. That’s
why Paxenoth built it so large and put on those enormous doors
and locks. He made it so big that the Guild had no choice but to
see.”
“To see what?”
“Well, to see that they—the Guild members themselves—
were behaving as these stones,” said the man, his arm pointing
toward the gate.
“Guild members . . stones? I don’t follow you.”
“They hold up each other, nothing more.”
“But . . it’s Paxenoth’s masterpiece,” she said, getting a
glimmer of what he meant but not enough to see why the gate
needed to be torn apart.
The old man dropped his chin to his chest and kicked at the
ground. “Masterpiece? I certainly hope not,” he spoke softly. Then
looking up, he said “I’m sorry Dreme. Let me explain.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Oh, I’ve learned that I cannot help people who I don’t know.
But you needn’t worry about that just yet,” he said sidestepping her
question. “You see, PX2 is an abomination. Although I admit it is
an important gate, in the sense that it showed us our foolishness.
The Guild has been making these gates for centuries. It has become
a ritual whose meaning is lost. Gates aren’t stones stacked up like
this. They are openings in our minds and in our hearts. They’re not
monuments. They’re ideas—ideas that take us to new futures. We
build one gate only to get us to the next one. It’s what we do.”
“Who? The gatebuilders?” Dreme asked.
“Yes, all of us,” the man replied.
“You’re a gatebuilder?”
 “As you could be, if you wish. Or you could be something
more powerful perhaps.”
“Ha! I’m gonna be a crat too.” The thought of a grNt
becoming a gatebuilder. Impossible. She had better stop wasting
her time. If Embar found her off talking to someone rather than
working, she’d be looking for another job. But her curiosity
wouldn’t let her walk away just yet. “Me a gatebuilder,” she
repeated softly.
“Yes, you. You have vision, and you have faith.” He could
hear Dreme’s disbelief in her voice and added, “You are a grNt
only if you see yourself as one. When you are ready to be more, I
and others are here to help.”
His words frightened her in a way. Ambition was a
dangerous thing for a grNt. But somewhere deep inside Dreme
knew he was right. “How can this man know so much about me,”
she thought, then asked aloud, “So who are you anyway?”
“I know only a little about you. And I used to be an angry
and troubled man, before bringing together my selves.”
“Your selves?” There were too many confusing pieces for
Dreme to connect. “Well . . what were you angry about?”
“I saw terrible things in the world. Fear and injustice and
great harm being done to people and to the land and forests and the
seas. I thought I could do something about that by criticizing and
creating plans for other people. Well, criticizing was not a bad
thing to do, but making plans for other people’s lives? That was
downright arrogant. Until I found it possible to create for myself
and learned just how exciting and rewarding, and at the same time
frightening and dangerous that was, and until I learned to live with
the consequences, I had no business creating things on other
people’s behalf.”
“But I always thought that gatebuilders were like
missionaries going out and building gates for other people.”
“Yes, we do some of that. But so often we have built for
others when we should have built with them. It’s simply not ethical
to do otherwise.” The old man paused, giving Dreme a chance to
think, and wondering how much more he should say. “Those of us
who have found it necessary to build gates for ourselves
understand this sort of thing. Meeting that enormous and important
challenge gives us a much deeper understanding and appreciation
and compassion for others.
“I . . I really must get back to work.” Dreme remained
confused, but she sensed that this man somehow deserved her trust.
She wondered if after the work here tonight she might be able to
talk with him again. “It was . . interesting talking to you
Gatebuilder . . uh”
“Oh, forgive me. You still want to know who I am. It’s hard
to say. I’m becoming so much more than I used to be. You can
hear my name, and in the future you might come to know it if you
wish.”
“Uh . . is this a puzzle or something?” She really needed to
get to work.
“I am peace-filled change,” he said to her without moving his
lips.
 Dreme felt rather than heard his words. She stood, captured
by the strange intensity, puzzled for the source, wondering if she
had merely imagined his voice. It had been so strong yet calm. So
filled with caring and respect. So clearly a voice of both humility
and self-confidence. A voice so open to possibilities. So filled with
joy. All of these things at once. Then as the man strolled away, she
realized that her question had indeed been answered. He had
shared with her the meaning of his name.
 Appendix

Places & Things

adventure - the name used by some gatebuilders to refer to
gatebuilding assignments/missions
algo - the set of instructions to run the sound engine
Balans 37 - a gate in the Natursys forest
bubble vehicle - a transparent bubble in which sapriders travel
inside a natursys tree
build - to construct a gate
bus - a vehicle for carrying people and materials in a channel
within a probe ship
carrier - one role of a member of a cell
cell - a group of individuals working and living together in Systemi
City
channel - a passageway in a sound engine
chawk - a stick-like instrument used by overseers to punish
workers in a Klasrum factory
chem plan - the plan for chemical support and enhancement of
Natursys tree growth
City - the whole created through combined clans
clan - many cells joined together for common purposes
Clang - slang term used by factory workers to mean CLG; sound of
the bell marking the beginning of a CLG
CLG - changing labor group; a pattern of specific time periods
devoted to work on different parts in a factory on Klasrum
cover - a shelter inside a shell in Systemi City
crats - those who control social institutions, e.g., government,
education, judicial systems, prisons
counselor - one role of a member of a cell
cult - the political affinity of individuals in Systemi City
damper - a device used to decrease the intensity of a received
sound wave
Dinamk Ridge - an undersea mountain range subject to frequent
change due to intense volcanic activity
dream - the image of a future gate
escape tap - a tube inserted into a Natursys tree to provide an exit
for a bubble vehicle
finder - one role of a member of a cell
focus - degree of understanding of shared memory
4-leaf - a four-leaf clover; a star pattern in the shape of a four-leaf
clover
freemind - an exercise performed by gatebuilders; involves freeing
the mind of current concerns in order to allow new ideas to
emerge
Gage River - river running through gorge near Xenoth’s childhood
home
gatebuilder - one who creates new gates
gateprentice - a person working as an apprentice under a mistress
or master gatebuilder
gatestudent - a student at the gating school
Gating Guild or Guild - the controlling organization of
gatebuilders
Gensys - desert in which Systemi City is located
Ghest - a cell type in Systemi City
good fit - property of a message accepted by Systemi City
goons - hired thugs; those who do others’ bidding without question
GN - great or grand number; standard year designation
grNt - lower class factory worker; manual laborer in general
grower - one role of a member of a cell
image - to create a mental picture of a timeplace
intermission - a pause between soundings
joust - a sport conducted on Klasrum
keep - to control access through a gate; to maintain the status quo
Klasrum - home of the Gating school; also, used colloquially to
indicate a world where young people are sent but do not
appreciate
Kwit Brook - brook running through a forest near Xenoth’s
childhood home
landing pool - a small pool of sap to catch bubble vehicles as they
fall from an escape tap
launch tube - a vertical tube running from ground level down into
the root of a Natursys tree; allows bubble vehicles to enter the
tree inside water
line - standard procedure in Klasrum factories for worker
progress/advancement; also the way workers move from one
place to another in such factories
living space - areas of a probe ship outside of the sound engine
looksee - a game of imagination; a player looks at an object and
tries to see it in different ways, to see it as something else
maker - one who creates; also, one role of a member of a cell
mishN - a clan of Systemi City
MonitR - a cell type in Systemi City
Morz - a mythical jungle where evil resides
movement - a section within a sound transmission
natursys - a type of tree
Ntropy Bay - a bay within the Nviro Sea; the destination of the
probe ship Physdesys
Nquiry Ocean - the body of water east of the main continent of L-
urn
Nviro Sea - the body of water surrounding Klasrum
Physdesys - a probe ship sent out by the Gating Guild
pick - to choose an object for an opponent to see in the game of
looksee
port - a passageway inside a sound engine
potent fit - property of a message that could be accepted by
Systemi City
prentice - short for gateprentice
prison box - a device/space in which wrongdoers are imprisoned;
creates realistic, “truthful” images of the past, so prisoners
cannot go forward, they can only relive their experiences
prosS - a clan of Systemi City
protect unit - a device worn over the ears to protect one from
transmissions by a sound engine; masks the frequencies of such
transmissions but allows other frequencies such as human
voices to pass
PursNL - a clan of Systemi City
RelAshuns - a clan of Systemi City
ReCv - a cell type in Systemi City
re-collection - the gathering of reflections (reflected sound waves)
and responses; a function of the SEND/RECEIVE area of a
sound engine
recorder - one role of a member of a cell
recovery crane - device used to retrieve bubble vehicles from a
landing pool
rejuv - process of rejuvenation, of obtaining a continued youthful
body; also applies to rejuvenation of physical objects
rocat - a sedentary animal whose external appearance is that of a
rock; can be ridden when mature; moves quickly and powerfully
when aroused
rokitten - a young rocat
Root Village - Xenoth’s childhood home
Rt - short for Rtime; time devoted to leisure/artistic activities
Rtist - one who is especially talented in some leisure/artistic
activity
saprider - one who’s work involves riding in a bubble vehicle in
sap or water inside a natursys tree
search - to look for a 4-leaf; to look for an image of a future gate
season - the useful lifetime of an idea or message
SEND/RECEIVE area - the area of a sound engine where sounds
are transmitted to the environment and echoes are re-collected
share memory - rich communication making joint imaging
possible; or to be in the same timeplace
shell - an area of land encapsulated by mist from a fountain in
Systemi City
sign - the identifying marks inscribed on the keystone of a gate that
specify the builder by name and the chronological number of
the gate in the builder’s career
simultalk - the communication practice of cells; involves members
speaking and listening to other members simultaneously
sleep tube - a type of bed
smRt - upper class factory worker
sohl - giant birds living in the gorge near Xenoth’s childhood home
sound exposure - a condition brought on by being exposed to
sound transmissions unprotected
sound engine - a device used to probe underwater space; can be
adapted to serve other purposes above the surface
sounding - a complete cycle of sound transmission and re-
collection
square - an area of ground in the clover field normally searched in
one day
stone - stepping stone, a leaping point; a starting point for sharing
meaning or memory
structR - a clan of Systemi City
Systemi City - a city in the Gensys Desert
tech - an operator of an area of a sound engine
timeplace - a time and place
thoughtspace - a shared field of experience created and used in
imaging
Thru - a cell type in Systemi City
turn - a reversal or change in direction in timespace travel
ValU - ancient city on shore of Nquiry Ocean; sometimes used (to
honor early mariners) as a reference point for land-based
imaging methods
Wanderers - a people encountered by the crew of Physdesys
wheren - where and when; a timeplace designation

People
Balans - builder of the old gate for the Natursys Forest
CeeU - chief tech aboard probe ship Physdesys
Demiou - a mistress gatebuilder; shortened form of Demiourgos
Dent - given name of worker 37 on Klasrum
Dreme - grNt assigned to help tear down Gate PX2
Elem - finder of a Ghest cell in Systemi City
Embar - gatebuilder assigned by the Guild to tear down Gate PX2
Emen - tech aboard the probe ship Physdesys
Infu - carrier of a ReCv cell in Systemi City
Joc - worker 196 on Klasrum; a champion jouster
Jood - pronunciation of acronym (JUD) for Judges Division; name
by which Xenoth knows Gatebuilder Leme
Kith - Pax’s rocat
Knol - boyhood friend of Xenoth
Lancas - builder of the old gate to Systemi City
Leme - a scout for the Gatebuilders Guild; known by Xenoth as
Jood
Ment - a saprider
Pax - old man found by Xenoth in a prison box
Pith - head saprider in the Natursys Forest
Skolr - name of worker 1 on Klasrum
Socrat - a gatebuilder who planned Klasrum factories
Teech - an overseer in a gate factory on Klasrum
Traveler - a person who visits, uses or appreciates a gate
Xenoth - a Gatebuilder