eyes as the white-haired, bearded old man told the naked clan-children
the story of the War of a Thousand Suns.
Cadillac knew the story off by heart. It was the two hundred and
eighth time he had heard it, and it was not new to the sixty young
children of the settlement that squatted in a half-circle before
them.
It did not matter. The children sat spellbound, hanging on every word,
just as they had the first time. Most of them didn't remember Mr Snow
telling them the story before. But then, most of them hardly
remembered anything for very long - and never would.
But Cadillac could.
Cadillac remembered everything. All he had ever seen and heard, down
to the minutest detail. That was why he had been chosen by Mr Snow to
learn all that had happened to his people from the beginning of the New
Time. When Mr Snow left them to go to the High Ground, Cadillac would
take his place as the clan's wordsmith. It would then be Cadillac's
task to find a young child capable of memorising the series of events
that made up the nine hundred year history of the Plainfolk.
Before that, stretching back beyond the reach of even Mr Snow's memory,
was the uncounted span of years known as the Old Time when the world
trembled before the feats of Heroes with Names of Power.
Mr Snow knew a few tales of the Old Time, when there were as many
people on the earth as there were blades of grass. When huts were
built on top of one another to form settlements that rose high in the
sky like the distant mountains. When the crumbling hardways, that once
ran across the land like veins along his arm were choked with a
never-ending stream of giant beetles that carried people from one
place to another so that no one would ever find himself alone.
As Mr Snow rippled his fingers up the length of both arms to describe
how, in the War, the falling Suns had burned the flesh from every
living thing, Cadillac stood up and walked away down the slope towards
the settlement.
The morning sun warmed his bare back and cast a slim, broad-shouldered
shadow in front of him.
Cadillac took a deep breath to fill out his chest, stretched his arms
out sideways then brought them together above his head.
His shadow did the same.
It never failed to fascinate Cadillac. The shape of his shadow pleased
him. It was different from the shadows cast by most of the others in
