Reception Ss'tan wiped the lichen across her sister's face, leaving another parallel orange line. Ss'tap smiled, with her eyes closed. "You must be making me hideous. I can hear you giggling." "Can not." Ss'tan ignored Ss'tap's needling to apply a dark green line to her cheek. "Besides, the Downslopers probably like their women ugly. Maybe I should paint on a second head ..." "That's enough," said Aunty Ke, her fingers tapping authoritatively on the leather carpet of the hearth room. "Enough of that, and enough paint too. We all know Sh'je is a strapping young man, with a strong jaw. Better that she marries him than one of the cousins that chase you down the hallways, Ss'tan." Ss'tan's mouth opened in mute outrage, and her hand moved to launch a cutting reply about Ke's glances at the cousins, but her aunt talked straight over the top without giving her a chance. "Ss'tap, stand up. Turn around, and let us have a last look at the girl who leaves us." A patter of appreciation went around the women in the hearth-room, as the lamplight flickered over the Ss'tap's nude body. She was indeed a beauty: her unusually round body, padded with the rotund birthright of a tribal princess, was also unusually symmetrical. Her left eye drooped a little lazily, but it was masked tonight by the dark paint marked in long curving lines all the way from her feet, across her torsoed skin, up to her face. She shone with joy, and pride, and a little smugness. She was nearly four and a half feet tall. The women dressed her again in her best hide, smiling and chattering, and before long one of the tribe's boys arrived as messenger from the chief. "Ss'tap, your husband is here! Come and meet him!" the boy Hmf'ke yelled, his hands slapping hard together. "Very good, Hmf'ke," replied Aunty Ke. "We will be there soon." She picked up Ss'tap's head binding in both hands, as everyone else began to stand up. Hmf'ke ran over to Ss'tap and whispered. "Ss'tan, they are nearly ready upstairs, but your brother has gone missing. We've looked all over the cave for him, but you know how he can wander off. The Chief asked you to look. He said if anyone would know where to look, you would." Ss'tan must have frowned in anger, because he added, "Don't be angry. He's just a little slow is all." "You're slow," Ss'tan snapped back. "He's broken." She squeezed past the women already milling into the passageway, and ran upslope. The passage zigzagged in a familiar way, past the subclan and maidboy caves, empty today, with everyone caught up in the wedding. She knew her stupid little brother would be in the top cave, making mouth-noises at the goats. Everyone knew where he was. Her father was just sending her looking to save face. She stopped for a moment, her fist clenched around the handle of the bone-knife on her belt. She had to go the the whispering edge of The Loudness, with the pigs and the shit, while her stupid fat sister was fawned on by two tribes of men! Everyone else knew that Heaven punished the mouth. Every babe learnt to cry with their hands, every child learnt that mouth talkers go outside to Hell, to come back as animals, and make pathetic mewling sounds amongst themselves. She pulled her knitted beanie down to sloppily cover her ears. She should go mad just to spite them. From behind her came a plaintave slapping cry of "Wait up". Ss'tan could hear Hmf'ke's hands yelling as he ran to catch her. "Wait up!" He was pretty close, so she dashed off again, up past the passages to the midden and mushroom caves, up towards the sunlight and the sound. She slapped her hands in reply. "Fuck off." "But the Chief told me to follow you ... " came his whining response. She stopped: she had reached the entrace to the goat cave. Ss'tan's entire village wasn't very large: it was at most 40 metres tall, with caves and tunnels crossing and cutting deeper into a massive mountain. The entrance to the goat cave was sunlit, and the goats were corralled in with a stone wall topped by a wooden gate. At the corner of the entrance hung a wooden tube, the loudtube, as long and thick as a man's forearm, and a battered bell crudely made of old, rusty metal. Ss'tan squinted as she picked up the hollow loudtube. As she tapped her fingers on it the words echoed through the cave. "Je'tan, you stupid baby brat, stop making your sinful noises at your stupid goat friends and come here!" Ss'tan could here the whispering from here, even through her beanie. Not Je'tan, the whispering Outside. The Loudness. The goats bleated, and Ss'tan could hear boots across the straw covering the cave floor. Hmf'ke ran up to her and was about to yell, but Ss'tan cut him off, and gestured silently above the loudtube. "Listen to the goats," she said. "They're spooked by something, but Je'tan would usually calm them down." Ss'tan climbed the two stone steps up to the gate and untied the latch, swinging the gate away from her. In the centre of the cave, twenty metres away, her brother's body lay on the ground in a puddle of blood, the back of his skull crushed. A few goats, milled around him - some were clearly gone, and the outside gate swung open. Holding back a wail, she jumped down and ran over to him. Ss'tan had seen goats butchered: it was pretty obvious he was dead. She heard Hmf'ke jump into the cave, and looked back to him. Next to him, lined against the back wall, were five or so men with axes and clubs. Under their fur caps, their ears were tightly bound with a long strip of fabric, as for someone going Outside. Downslopers! One of the downslopers was walking over to grab her. The rest turned on Hmf'ke, crunching blows hitting him in the body and the head. Ss'tan backed away from the Downsloper, unsure. His axe was in his belt, and he reached out with his left hand and grabbed her head, getting a handful of beanie and greasy hair. He then swung at her head with his meaty right fist, but she ducked away more strongly than he expected and he only clipped her head. His left hand came away holding the beanie, and crouched at his knee, Ss'tan grabbed at her knife. She threw herself upwards, knife thrusting at his belly, and as she pushed hard with her legs it drove deep into her enemy's chest. She let go of the knife and ran, her hand red with blood. She ran for the open gate to the outside. As the Downslopers realised what had happened, Ss'tan scrambled over the stone wall and into the sunlight. Her head was filled with noise. Animal noises, grunts, squeals, bellows and bleating, but made by people, a thousand thousand people inside her ears. Chatter and screaming and whistles and nonsense and there was no-one nearby. Blue sky hung above white-topped mountains. Ss'tan ran into an alpine meadow of grass and flowers, gulping sweet clear air into her lungs, and barely held back from whimpering. She ran down the steep slope towards the bottom entrance. She could hear the wailing. She tried to cover her ears and slid down some scree. It was getting louder, how could it get louder? She slapped her hand on the loudtube, pleading the unseen people to stop. A stone axe flew past her head: the Downslopers reached the Outside. Ss'tan barely noticed. A thousand thousand voices started singing in her head. She screamed and wailed like an infant; for a moment it seemed to wane, only to return moments later louder still. Another axe grazed her arm, but she was at the main entrance. She tore through the seven curtains, fur and leather, one foot apart. She ran through to the main hall. Could the voices be waning? She could still hear the whispering. Shut up shut up shut up shut up her footsteps said. She fell into the main hall. The tribe were ranged around, with her sister Ss'tap seated with Sh'je and the other Downsloper men. She looked towards her father, wearing the threadbare bearskin of the Old Chief, and said a single word: "Betrayal". -- And the shaman recited at the funerals, "And Heaven saw that Man spoke with his mouth, and was clever, and arrogant. And Man talked with his fellow, and built a tower, even unto Heaven And Man changed the very essence of his life, and the life of the animals on Earth And he filled the air with insects, and voices which displeased Heaven and Earth. So the Earth struck down his towers, and Heaven struck down men as they walked under the Sun And Heaven sent voices to torment the arrogant And Earth and Heaven said to the righteous: Go to the high places we have made, and worship there Go into the deep places of Earth, and live there. No longer shall the sons of man live between Heaven and Earth Live in the Earth, and speak not with your mouths, lest Heaven torment you Speak not, and you shall be taken into Heaven, in silence, and be at peace. So spake our Fathers and Heaven. Let that which is of the Earth return to the Earth; that which belongs to Heaven shall return to Heaven." And they released all of the naked bodies, painted with lichen, into the crevasse.