The following day, Johanna cycles to her school as usual and conducts her class as usual, although the children seem a little quieter than they were. The day after…

At first Johanna thinks she must have made some mistake on her way to the school. Perhaps she took the wrong lift (but it looked right) or descended to the wrong level (but the fence was in its usual place by the side of the ledge-path). She looks around. Yes; the opposite Stilt is in its expected place and at its expected distance. She leans over the edge of the platform (something she would not have dared to do only a week or two earlier) and looks down. Yes, it is the correct distance from this flet to the rocks below. The acoustic - the way the sounds of the wind and the distant ocean are absorbed and reflected by the spaces around her - is familiar. This is the right place, then, or at least it seems so. But where is the school? Where has it gone?

The flet is totally bare - a simple wooden platform. There are no walls and no roof, no desks, no chairs and no table. They have all gone. Johanna looks around her in bewilderment, still not completely sure that she has not made some foolish mistake. She pushes her bicycle to the rock wall and leans it up against it just as, only a day earlier, Luis had done. Faithful Luis; Johanna smiles to think of him. But wait - this is silly. She has come to the wrong place, of course she has, and even now her class is probably running riot and she will be in trouble for not supervising them properly. Johanna takes hold of her bicycle. She will go back up to the top of the Stilt and try again. Up there, everything will be clearer and she will be able to laugh at herself for being such a dope as to come down the wrong Stilt, as she is rapidly convincing herself she must have done. Come on now, Johanna. Let's get moving.

She gets as far as the path, but can proceed no further. There is someone blocking the way - the gleaner-woman who heads the Council of Stilt Town. She is a person with no formal powers. The land of Edge, with its ultimate authority derived from the Board, owns, and has responsibility for, the operation and management of Resource Extraction Point Three. The Council is merely an administrative convenience. It saves the Governor the trouble and expense of policing Stilt Town. So long as shipments of raw materials reach the processing plants in Shore regularly and to quota, it little matters to the Board how the Stilt Towners run their ramshackle neighbourhood.

'Please,' says Johanna, 'I need to get to my school. I seem to have come to the wrong level or something. Can you tell me the right way to go?'

The woman says nothing, but continues to obstruct the path. Johanna is more puzzled than angry. 'Please?' she says. 'I'm terribly late - the children will be missing me.'

'The children will not be missing you,' the gleaner-woman replies at last. 'They are not coming to your school any more.'

'Sorry? I don't understand? Not coming?'

'Your school is closed. The children will not be attending your school, or any other school for that matter.'

'What? Not attending my school?'

'That is what I have just told you. Are you stupid, girl, that you do not understand me? Do they train dunces on Horn?'

Is she trying to provoke me? Johanna's hard-won patience is starting to wear thin. Who is this woman, anyway? She takes a deep breath and composes herself.

'No, I am not a dunce and I am not stupid. But my school, which was here, I'm sure, yesterday, has gone. Will you not tell me why?'

The woman is six inches shorter than Johanna and she is of the humblest imaginable birth. Despite these differences, there can be no doubt who is in command of this situation. Still, she recognises that this silly high-born girl, who has done something so serious that she cannot be allowed to continue working with the community's children, has at least shown the good sense and courtesy not to try to browbeat or threaten her. She deserves an answer, maybe even an explanation, and she shall have one, like it or not. With the greatest ease and naturalness the woman sits on the floor of the flet, pulling her knees up in front of her. Johanna follows her example. The woman speaks:

'Two days ago, you read to your class.'

'Yes.'

'You read from a book, did you not? How We Came To Glory?'

'Yes. I've brought it with me. It's in one of my saddlebags.' Johanna points to her bicycle. 'Would you like to see it?'

'Not just now, thank you. Did you enjoy reading the book to your class?'

'Yes, very much.'

'Did your class enjoy having it read to them?'

'Yes. I'm sure they did.' Where is all this leading to?

'Tell me, Miss Chen, do you like teaching?'

'Yes. Yes, I do.'

'Are you a good teacher?'

Johanna pauses for a moment. 'I try my best. I'm sure I've got plenty of room for improvement.'

Johanna's lame joke passes the gleaner-woman by; or she chooses to ignore it. 'You have no training, though.'

'No.'

'A shame. Had you been trained properly we might not have been having this conversation today. May I see the book, please?'

Johanna fetches How We Came To Glory and gives it to the woman.

'Do not worry,' she says. 'I have washed my hands this morning. I will not soil your book.' Johanna, who had genuinely not considered that the gleaner might accidentally mark the pages, is nevertheless abashed. If the woman notices Johanna's reaction she makes no sign of it. Instead, she carefully leafs through the book, studying each page in turn. Johanna cannot help but notice that her lips move as she reads.

'This is a lovely thing,' the gleaner says eventually, letting the book fall shut with a last soft rustle. 'A very lovely thing. Thank you for letting me see it.'

Johanna, who has waited as patiently as she can for the woman to finish, takes the book from her and replaces it in her saddlebag. 'Please,' she says, returning to her position on the floor, 'are you saying that it was wrong for me to show the children my book? Are you saying it's too good for them?'

'No!' The gleaner-woman's face flushes briefly. 'Nothing is too good for our children.'

'You don't think I was giving them ideas above their station? Showing them something they could never hope to own themselves? Sowing discontent? Fomenting discord among the future workers?'

'They work now! Everybody works!'

Johanna presses her point. 'But if they see that there's a better life outside Stilt Town, they might not want to carry on working here. They might want to better themselves. They might leave.' And then where would be your authority, Council Leader?

'And do what? Move to the north? Work in the mines? Live in Scarp or Shaft or Scree or Precipice? Never see the Blessèd sun for fumes and mist? Die of choke-lung?'

'Is that all you think they're good for? Mining? Or scraping a living off the beach? Running away from the tides day and night?'

'No!' The woman stands up. 'Do not talk of things you do not understand!'

Johanna rises to her feet. 'Don't tell me what I understand and what I don't understand! I was born on Edge, just like you. I know perfectly well how fast the tide runs. I know all about the risks you take every day; the quicksands, the Beasts, the winds. I know how hard you work to extract the materials we all need.'

'You do not!'

'I do. I have seen it in the eyes of the children.' Johanna puts her hands on her hips. She lowers her voice. 'And so have you.'

The gleaner-woman's shoulders slump a little. 'So I have. Let us sit down again and calm ourselves.'

When they are comfortable once more, Johanna says, 'You told me just now that nothing was too good for the children.'

'Yes.'

'And you told me that I was not wrong to show them my book.'

'Yes.'

'But what if I said that the book was full of lies? Do the children deserve to be told lies?'

'I have read no lies in your book.'

Johanna hesitates. 'Do you know what we mean by falsity in exception? There is a phrase for it in old Latin. It's a legal term and it means to lie while telling the truth, usually by the omission of material facts.'

'I have not heard the expression, but I understand what you mean.'

'Then what I am affirming is this: although How We Came To Glory contains no direct lies, it nevertheless omits material facts in such a way as to deny the truth.'

'And the truth is what you told the class after you had finished reading from the book?'

'Yes it is. My conscience would not allow me to leave the children with the impression that the book told, as we put it, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Is the reason you want to shut down my school that I told my class the whole truth? Would you have me lie to them?'

'No, I would not.'

'Then you must agree with me that I did what I had to do and that my school must be allowed to continue.'

'I'm sorry, but that cannot be.'

'But why not, in the name of Glory?'

'You are young, Miss Chen, and you are fierce and ambitious-'

'Don't patronise me!'

'Peace. The young make one kind of mistake, the old make another. That is our nature. But the old have already made the same mistakes the young make and, if they are wise, they remember them. You wanted to help the youngsters in your class; now let me help you.

'When you read from your book, with its lovely bright pictures and its exciting story of mankind fleeing the dying Earth and reaching the safety of Glory after a long and arduous voyage, you gave them something good. You gave them inspiration, you gave them a message of hope. But when you went on to talk about all the things that are bad and wrong about this world, you took hope and inspiration away from them again. Don't you think they know how unfair life is? Don't you think they know how hard it is, how treacherous? Of course they do. They took that knowledge in with their mothers' milk. There is not one of those children who has not lost a loved one or a friend; in a fall, or drowned in the sea, or lost in the sands, or crushed between the jaws of a Beast.'

'But-'

'Let me finish. Even so, if you had stopped there, the damage would have been serious but not fatal. But when you went on to tell them that their lives - all our lives - are meaningless, that was the cut to the throat.'

'But the Doom-'

The gleaner-woman holds up her hand. 'We do not speak of it. It is like Death. We are all going to die someday, but it is useless to spend all our time talking or thinking about our deaths, for to do so is to make our lives meaningless. What is the point of telling the children about an arbitrary fate, that may strike at any time, whose effects are terrible, and about which they can do nothing at all? The people of Earth did that. Everybody could talk to everybody else at once and everyone knew what was happening anywhere in the world at any time, all the time. Fears and threats and horrors sped from land to land in moments. But it didn't make them any happier, and when the Ochre Plague struck it came out of nowhere, or so it seemed.'

'You would rather live in ignorance, then.'

'We are not ignorant. Am I ignorant?'

Obviously the Leader of Stilt Town Council is not.

'We had to tell the children that you had told them some dreadful lies and that you were so wicked we had to send you away. I am sorry for that. It was a terrible thing to do, but it was the thing I had to do. That is what it means to be a leader. They tell me that one day you will be high in the offices of the Governorship - perhaps be a Monitor or even a Board member. I think that when that day comes you will understand.'

'So you will continue to be stunted in your ambitions? You never want to be anything more than you are now?'

'Better that, than to have our children walk in needless fear. Please go now, Miss Chen. Despite what I have had to say in Council, I do not think you are a bad person. Far from it - you are honourable, decent and honest.'

'Too honest?'

The gleaner shrugs her shoulders. 'This flet is solid and well-built. It will make an excellent weighing station or loading dock for our materials, or we might build ourselves a gathering-place here. We like to play and sing the old songs to one another. Did you know that?'

'No.'

'One day you must come and hear us. I am told I do a memorable rendition of Heartbreak Hotel. Goodbye, Miss Chen.'

Both women stand and take each other's hands. They bow to one another. Then Johanna pushes her bicycle to the path and wheels it to the lift. Invisible hands operate its mechanism and she rises to the top of the Stilt. From there she rides furiously to the Spine, watched closely by concealed eyes, and thence to her home in Maybe - an uphill journey of thirty miles in all. She arrives at her father's house tired, hot and thirsty, but she does not stop to drink or take a bath. All the way home a suspicion, planted in her mind by the Council Leader's last words, has been growing like a weed and she must root it out as soon as possible. So instead of pausing to refresh herself, Johanna goes directly to the back of the house, to the herb garden, and bursts into her grandfather's apartment, dumping her bicycle outside and paying no attention to the presence or otherwise of the tell-tale vase on the kitchen windowsill. She storms into the sitting-room.

'You knew! You knew all along!' She thumps the back of the old man's chair.

'Sit down, Jo.'

'No I will not! You set me up! You've been talking to that woman.'

'Which woman do you mean?'

'You know who I mean. That dwarf who thinks she runs the place. You're in it together, the pair of you. You set out to humiliate me, from day one. Teach young Jo a lesson, you thought. Put her in her place. Just because she's been to Horn doesn't mean she doesn't need taking down a peg or two. You and Dad… It was revenge, because I made him look stupid at dinner. Don't bother trying to deny it.'

Pappy knows better than to try interrupting Johanna when she is as angry as this. But later, when she has talked - or shouted - herself out, and they have both shed a tear or two and he has finally persuaded her to accept a cup of tea and a piece of apple strudel, they both find that they cannot fight one another for very long. They kiss and Johanna leaves, to go to her room and arrange to meet some of her old, neglected friends, and Pappy sits back in his chair and sighs. Presently he falls asleep.

You are a rascal!

Yes, I admit it.

Did you really know Jo's school would fail?

I thought it was likely. Actually, it lasted longer than I thought it would. That's our granddaughter for you.

She's very upset.

She'll get over it. And, you know, she was never really suited to be a teacher. She's much too combative. But she stood up to Grace Latimer-

Your Council Leader friend-

Yes. She stood up to her much better than I could have done at her age. She’s got guts, our Jo.

And…

And yes. We've done some good, I think. First, to Jo. She's never failed in any of her projects - not up until now. I think she'll learn something useful from this little setback of hers.

And...

Well, we've persuaded the Stilt Towners to let us build them a really strong, solid new flet. Either they'll use it as a meeting-place, which'll help bind them together…

I’m not sure those idiots on the Board would appreciate that. Or...

Or it'll become a safe place for storing materials and it'll help reduce their losses and boost their output.

And our profits.

That's true.

Like I said, you're a rascal.

I never denied it.

Goodnight, Pappy.

Goodnight, Granny. Goodnight.