"You see these clans?"
They never saw them. They were related peoples, but without any political or blood ties, for the constant incursion of the atomic peoples—the Degraded—made any close association of these mountain clans impossible. Always, the Elder said, the thousands of the Degraded swarmed up through the valleys, searching for the mountain people, hunting them.
"For them, the Degraded, there is never any work—they do not need wood for fires or animals for food or copper for their utensils," said the Elder. "There is no risk in their lives, other than the risk of hunting us. They do not want to destroy us—they want only to take us to replenish their blood, to halt the sickness. But we wish death to mating with them. They are animals. Surely you know?"
"I do not know."
"They were like us once," said the Elder. "That is the story of my fathers' fathers—they were like us once, when all of us lived in the lowlands, the great plains toward the rivers. But that was in the first years."
"What do you mean by the first years?"
The Elder tried to answer. "It was a time of great things and great triumphs. No one was hungry and no one needed to hunt for food. Have you seen from the flying thing the vast glistening colored objects lying in the valleys? That is a part of it—that was left from the first years. People lived in piles of stones and the sun provided them with everything they needed. But it was long ago. It has no meaning now, no real meaning that I understand. For something happened that had to do with the sickness and our people fled from it. I had heard the old men of the clan, when I was a child, thirty years ago, attempt to explain what they remember their fathers telling them and they could not make it clear to me."
"Thirty years ago. You were a child then?"
"Yes, thirty years ago. That is an old age, older than most."
"These children—?"