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its own entrance. In case an outlander needs help at night, there is a corridor that comes into a storeroom of the hive, but it is seldom used except by those who serve the outlanders.
    The Cochim-Mahn leasehold is three cells built around a toilet place. We don’t use the manure of outlanders in our fungus cellars. There is some feeling it might kill the fungus. Instead we buy these closet things from the Alliance for our leaseholders to use, and when they get used up, we trade for new ones. So Bernesohn Famber’s place was a little corridor with five doors in it, one to the hive storeroom, one to the toilet, and three more to the three cells. The cell nearest the front, nearest the lip of the cave, had a door to the outside as well. All of the rooms had lie-down shelves around the sides. One back room was where Famber had slept, one he had used for storage, and the one with the door to the outside had his worktable and acomfortable chair and many strange devices and machines. These, Mama told me, were recorders and computers and analyzers, to help Bernesohn Famber with his work.
    â€œWhat was his work?” I always asked, each and every time.
    â€œFinding out about Dinadh,” she always said, winking at me. Grown-ups wink like that when they hint something about the choice. Or the House. Or the other world we had, before we came here. Things we are not supposed to talk about.
    â€œDid he find out?” I asked.
    â€œNobody knows,” she said, marching back through the cells to the back one, where she started with the broom and I followed with the brush, sweeping down the smooth mud walls, brushing off the sleeping shelves, making a little pile of dust and grit that got bigger the farther we pushed it from cell to cell, until at last we could push it right out the door onto the floor of the cave. Then I took the broom and pushed it across the cave floor, farther and farther forward, until it came to the edge and fell over, all that dust and grit and sheddings of the hive falling down like snow on the canyon bottom.
    Sometimes, while Mama was sweeping, I’d sit and look at the machines, longing to push just one button, just to see what would happen. It was forbidden, of course. Such things were not Dinadhi things. We had to live without things like that. We had
chosen
to live without them. We had
chosen
to give them up in return for what we were promised instead.
    After we cleaned Bernesohn Famber’s leasehold, sometimes we went down to the storerooms to pick something for supper. In summers, there are all kinds of things, fresh or dried melon, fresh or dried meat, different kinds of vegetables and fruit, pickled or fresh or dried. There is almost always grain, head grain or ear grain, eaten whole or cracked or ground for making bread. We have seeds forroasting, and honey too. We brought bees with us, from the other world.
    In late winter and early spring, though, there’s mostly fungus from the cellars, pale and gray and tasting like wood. The only good thing about fungus is that it’s easy to fix. It can be eaten fresh or dried, raw or cooked. We usually put some salt and herbs on it to make it taste like something. Most all of our cookery is done in the mornings, when the sun is on the cave. We use solar reflectors for cooking. The whole front edge of the cave is lined with them, plus all the level spots to either side, and any time of the morning you can see women scrambling across the cliff wall to get at their own ovens and stewpots.
    After food is cooked, it’s kept warm in padded boxes until eating time. None of our food is very hot, except in wintertime. Then we have fires in the hive, and we sometimes cook over them. It would take too many trees to have fires in summer. That was part of the promise and the choice as well. We have to protect the trees and certain plants because the beautiful people need them.
    Even though girls had much to learn, sometimes Mama would tire