Ala said quietly. "There are many like that. A wandering mind brings evil to the body it tosses about."
"But with us now, it is additionally hard," Will said. "Every instinct within us draws us away—as it was with you, Ala, in the Borderland."
"Yes," she agreed. "I know that."
We continued our passage toward the meeting house. That shrouded shape I had seen was not of my wandering fancy, for now I saw others. Peering at us from dark spaces; eyes that glowed unblinking; or shapes of mantled black skulking furtively along the streets. Avoiding us, yet always watching as we boldly passed.
"Brutars," Ala said. "Those who with Brutar would attack your world. They are everywhere now about the city. I am afraid of them."
We came upon the meeting house. It was a tremendous globe, in outward aspect no different from the others save that its size was gigantic. As we neared it I saw that upon its luminous grey surface were narrow circular bands of a lighter color—bands both vertical and horizontal. These also I had noticed on most of the other globes; a lighter color in bands, or sometimes in small patches. I questioned Ala; the lighter-colored parts were where one might safely enter, thus not to encounter the occupants, or the furnishings within.
We passed through one of the bands of the gigantic globe, and found ourselves in a single great room. A globular amphitheatre; to use earthly measurements it had perhaps a thousand feet of interior diameter. Its entire inner surface was thronged with grey-white shapes of people, save where, like aisles, the space of the outer bands divided them into segments.
The segments were jammed; the people seemed crouching upon low pedestals one close against the other. A few of the pedestals were vacant. None where we entered, and the nearest I saw were almost above us. We passed along an aisle to reach them. The globe and everyone in it appeared slowly turning over, so that always we seemed to be at its bottom with those opposite to us over our heads.
At last we were seated. In the center of the globe, suspended there in space by what means I could not know, was a ball some fifty feet in diameter. Upon it men were sitting. Dignitaries; leaders of the people facing from every angle the waiting throng. And one—a man of great stature—Ala's father, walking around the ball restlessly, awaiting the moment when he would begin his address.
A silence hung over everything. Again I was reminded of the utter soundlessness of this realm. I felt the suppressed murmurs of the people—but I know no physical sounds were audible. Nor indeed, had I ear-drums with which to hear them had such sounds existed.