"That's what you always say: soon. Soon, or the day after tomorrow. Maybe you think it's the same thing? Well no, you've learned to talk now. At first you mixed everything up, mixed everything up, mixed the hut up and the village, grass and mushrooms, even people and deadlings, mixed them up you did and then you'd mutter away. We couldn't make it out, couldn't understand a word..."
He opened his eyes and stared at the low, lime-encrusted ceiling. The worker ants were on the move in two even columns, from left to right loaded, right to left empty. A month ago it had been the other way around, right to left loaded with mushroom spawn, left to right empty.
A month hence it would be the other way again unless someone told them to do something else. Dotted here and there along the column stood the big black signalers motionless, antennae slowly waving, awaiting orders. A month ago I used to wake up and think I'd go the day after tomorrow but we never went, and long before that even I used to wake up and think the day after tomorrow we'd be off at last and we never went. But if we don't go the day after tomorrow, this time I'll go on my own. I used to think like that before as well of course, but this time it's for sure. The best thing would be to go now, straight away, no talking or trying to persuade. But that needed a clear head. Better not. The best thing would be to decide once and for all: as soon as I can wake with a clear head, be up, and straight out into the street and away into the forest, and not let anybody start talking to me. That's vital: don't let anybody start talking to you, distracting you with their whining, starting your head buzzing, especially just here above the eyes, till your ears start ringing and you feel like vomiting and the whining goes on and on right through you. And Nava was already talking...
"... so that's what happened," Nava was saying, "the deadlings took us along in the night, and they can't see very well at night. Blind as bats, anyone'll tell you that, even that Humpy, though he doesn't belong here, he's from the village that was next to ours, not this one of ours where you and I live now, but ours where I lived with mam, so you can't know Humpy, in his village everything's covered in mushrooms, the spawn fell and that's something not everybody likes, Humpy went away from the village straight away. It's the Accession, he says, and now there's no place for people in the village... So-o-o. There was no moon that night and they probably lost the track, anyway they all bunched together, us in the middle, and it got so hot, you couldn't breathe..."
Kandid looked at her. She was lying on her back, legs crossed, arms folded behind her head. Only her lips moved endlessly, and from time to time her eyes flashed in the half darkness. She went on talking even when the old man came in and seated himself at the table. He drew a pot toward him, sniffed at it noisily and with a slurp set to. At that Kandid got up and with his palms wiped the night sweat from his body. The old man was champing and slobbering, not taking his eyes from the bin with the lid protecting it from mold. Kandid took the pot away and set it next to Nava to stop her talking. The old man sucked his teeth comprehensively.
"Not very tasty," he said, "it's the same everywhere you go these days. And that path's all grown over I used to go along; I used it a lot too, I went to the training there and just bathing, I often went bathing in those days, there was a lake there, now it's just a swamp and it's dangerous but somebody still goes along there otherwise how come there's so many drowned bodies? And reeds. I can ask anybody: how come there's paths through the reeds? And nobody can tell me, and no more they ought. What have you got there in that bin? If it's berries in soak I'll have them, I love soaked berries, but if it's something of yesterday's then it doesn't matter, I won't eat leavings, you can eat your own leavings." He paused, looking from Kandid to Nava and back again. Getting no answer he went on:
"You can't sow anymore where the reeds have grown over. They used to sow there before. They had to for the Accession, and they took everything to Clay Clearing, they still take it there but they don't leave it on the clearing, they bring it back. I told them they shouldn't, but they don't know the meaning of the word. The elder asked me straight out in front of them all: 'Why shouldn't we?' Buster was standing there, look, where you're standing, closer even, and Ears just here, say, and over there where your Nava's lying, there are the Baldy brothers, and he asks me in front of them, in front of everybody. I tell him don't you realize, I tell him, we're not alone here... His father was a very wise man, or maybe he wasn't his father, some say he wasn't and to be sure it doesn't seem like it. 'Why,' he asks me, 'can't I ask why I shouldn't in front of eyeryone?' "
