Cyrulla murmured “What is it, Maerion?”

Maerion answered as quietly: “I felt that I saw into the future, and knew that none of us would ever be this happy again.”

The boy raised his thoughtful eyes to the horizon outside the open door, but the gazes of Cyrulla and Perspice flew to the Balcony in the Upper Salon where mixed and remixed daily all the possibilities of the their futures.

“We’re getting old, I suppose” Perspice said. “That makes it more delightful to be down here but brings the day of going up there ever closer.”

“I hadn’t connected the two thoughts so closely” Maerion shrugged, looking aloft at last.

Hugo laughed. “I don’t understand - though my father’s explained it a thousand times - I honestly don’t understand how mature thoughtful people like us can turn into such animals as that crowd above. Do you suppose we’ll act like that?”

“My mother says it’s The Heat.” Cyrulla offered. ”When it comes, she says, everyone loses their minds and acts on some feverish instinct. Like a cat or a rat.”

Perspice shuddered, and Cyrulla caught the motion and looked at her asking, “Are you afraid? I’m not. I want to feel passion and fever.”

“They say it’s like hunger” Hugo said. “Yet I am still bewildered. When I am hungry for food, I don’t come to the table like a street-dog. I recline in some genteel attitude and pick at my food like a gentleman should, even after I’ve been riding the Desert Road all morning.”

“May the Goddess grant your wife that you approach her as delicately” said Perspice a little primly. Her three friends stared at her a moment, and then all four erupted into hilarious laughter which drew stares from the Lower Salon Guards.

After they had quietened, Maerion sighed and returned to his gazing out the doorway. “I suppose that’s what The Cage is for. It’s like training a young man or woman how to be restrained in his newly awakened appetite, and by the time one marries, it is hoped that one will be able to … approach the table like a gentleman.

Cyrulla shuddered. “Can you think of anyone for whom you would spend months inside The Cage?”

Hugo looked at her, then around the Lower Salon, and frowned. “I don’t think I’d do it for any girl” he said. “I think I’d do it because I have to in order to escape mutilation.”

Maerion turned back to the table and leaned toward Hugo. “What about Virtue?” he said. “Wouldn’t you do it for Virtue’s sake?”

“I hope I would” Hugo said. “But I just don’t understand.” He glanced again at the Upper Salon, where a very loud race was on between some of the older girls who were glad of the chance to lay aside their outer garments before such a large crowd of eligible young men.

“I’m just not convinced I’ll turn into one of those - cats or rats. I’m not sure I need a cage to preserve my virtue.”

Cyrulla stared at him, perplexed. “But no one can do it that way” she said, “unless granted a miracle by the Goddess. Isn’t that - “

But she stopped and gazed at the howling crowd above.

“Unless there’s some other reason why people act like that up there” she continued a moment later. “But that would mean everyone was wrong. Is it possible?”

“It’s happened before” Hugo said. He turned and touched Maerion on the shoulder. “I offer you a challenge” he said. “I believe we can go up there and act as rationally as we do down here.”

Then he turned to Cyrulla. “I’ll wait for you” he said. “If you don’t come up within the first five months, I’ll calmly weigh my choices and pick the next best candidate.”

Cyrulla’s eyes widened. Few proposals of marriage happened in the Lower Salon, because fortunate families such as hers viewed such activity as the province of less-learned and less refined people from the southern half of the City of Wells and Stars.

But “Don’t tell anyone” was all she said, and Hugo responded with a light reassurance.

“I’ll try it, as well” Maerion said at last. “It can hardly hurt to attempt how much rational function it is possible to preserve in the Heat. I wonder if anyone has ever looked into it before.”

He brightened. “We can write dissertations on it once we are married.”

“In that case, Cyrulla and I will make the attempt as well” Perspice announced, “and put out dissertations of our own.”

The boys laughed.

“Women writing dissertations!” Hugo said. “Who would read them?”

“We’ll submit them at the temple” Perspice said. “I believe they are rather more approving of femininity than not up there.”

Hugo laughed again, and Cyrulla, watching him with a new morbid interest, thought she noticed a crack in his voice. She shuddered. Six months a piece they had to cross one another’s path in the Balcony above.

Hugo left soon after with his father, and Cyrulla’s personal slave arrived to escort her back to the feminine wing of her father’s home. As they hugged goodbye Perspice whispered “Don’t worry, but accept whatever comes with happiness”.

As day ended, the Lower Salon became empty and lamps were extinguished there, even as others were being lit in the Upper Salon, which grew more crowded and louder. Perspice, alone now with Maerion, turned back and saw him leaning against his chair and gazing toward the balcony with a frown.

A young man shouted rudely down at him from above: “Don’t worry, baby-face, you’ll come up soon enough!”

Maerion continued to stare at the half-drunk fellow with scientific interest. Perspice walked over and stood by his side.

“Are you trying to imagine whether that young man could help what he just said?” 

He nodded.

“Yes. Also, which is the real point, whether we can possibly take what we have down here, and holding it safely, pass through that” (he gestured above) “into our next lives.”

“It’s like looking at life whole for a moment” she whispered. “What does it all mean?”

“It means we’re standing on an edge or a border between two closed places and for a moment we get to see everything.”

“I hope we come out of the two closed places into the open.”