The acolyte John Gearchange Spindle Bushing held his hands in front of him, arms bent at the elbow, palms cupped and upturned. He was a big man, over five feet, tall for a Sapiens. As he moved off the old road and onto the trail that twisted up the cliff-side, his bronzed and slightly balding forehead knotted in concentration and the strands of his shoulder-length brown hair, just starting to pepper gray, tangled and whipped where the hot breath of the desert wind braided through it.

Reflections from the noon sun scattered off the surface of a metal ring encased in a glass John cradled in his cupped palms. Squinting against the glimmer, John could barely see. He wanted to close his eyes but could not afford to stumble on the way to his family's cave. Sand, dust, grit--they would wreak havoc on the ring's micron perfect finish.

"I've got it right this time, father," John said as he neared the path's end. "We are ready for the Ceremony."

We are ready.

We are ready.

We are ready.

The echo from the cave's mouth rinsed around John as he stepped out of the sun and into the shadows of the grotto. He withdrew his left hand from the ring and groped along the wall. Finding a slight depression in the rock, he pushed the heel of his hand against it. A series of glowbulbs embedded in the cavern roof pulsed alive, spreading a green radiance over the floor and into the far depths of the chasm. Continuing inward around a corner, John followed a path worn smooth in the cave floor.

"It's about time, Johnny," he said to himself, cackling with the feigned voice of an older man. "Yer no spring chicken anymore. And what would become of us then?"

"I don't know, dad," John said, reassuming his normal inflection and kneeling by the edge of an underground pool.

Again, John removed his left hand from beneath the object he held. He touched the pool's surface. The glowbulbs throbbed more brightly. Their light pierced the water's quicksilver surface and revealed two long rows of submerged bodies stationed at even intervals, feet to the center, unseeing eyes fixed open, peering at the stony ceiling. Among them there were young and old, men and women, even a few children. They were dressed like John--white tunics covered with coarse goatskin cloaks, sloping felt hats removed but laid over their breasts, wooden sandals still laced with leather thongs wrapped knee-high.

"I do this for you, father," John said. "I wish you could be here."

He opened the glass dome, extracted the metal ring from its cushioned case, lifted it above his head and slid it over the end of a willow-thin stalagmite protruding from the water in front of him. It fit perfectly.

John closed his eyes and recited, "O, Almighty Erpenbach, I--John--last scion of the House of Gearchange Spindle Bushing, present this gift to you in accordance with your Divine Last Will and Testament. May it please you in Heaven to raise Hell on your Phat Hawg once more."

He listened to the insipid buzz of the glowbulbs for a long moment, then opened an eye to look around.

"Some miracle," he said as he stepped into the pool, took off his hat and lay down in the water exactly an arm's length away from his father, last in line.

"Carbon!"

Splashing wildly and ruining the tranquility of the cave, John startled upright into a sitting position. Green wavelets of light, bouncing off the disturbed surface of the pool, whisked over the cave walls and ceiling like a flight of birds. Where they penetrated the dimness of an alcove on the far side of the cavern their faltering traceries lent a sense of motion to a sprite-like figure, a boy twelve or thirteen years old who was busy admiring the backs of his fingers as he tensed and flexed them at the end of his outstretched arms.

"Well, water mostly, but carbon based. No one ever mentioned..."

"W-w-what are you? A sand spirit?" John asked, noticing the boy's coal black hair, slender-boned features and skin as white as goat-horn powder.

"My name's Esi. I'm an Inf. What are you?" the boy replied, unsurprised to see John splashing in the pool.

John stood. Not bothering to brush his dripping hair from his eyes, he held out his hand in a tentative gesture of greeting: "I'm a human being."

Esi didn't offer to shake. He folded his arms across his chest impatiently.

"Yes, of course. So am I. But which kind are you?" he asked. Then, reconsidering, he said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you. I haven't encountered either of the other breeds yet. But, since you can speak, I should have known you're a Sapiens. This is my yearnflesh, my first incarnation. You're the only embodied lifeform I've ever met."

"I see," John lied, not at all certain what the boy was talking about.

The child strode to the water's edge, lifted the ring from its pedestal and twirled it in front of him.

"Good work. Just what we need. Let's get going, shall we? You can be my squire."

"Going? Where?"

"To the Ceremony, of course."

Esi tossed the ring to John. John bobbled it, then fell to his knees, catching it just before it hit the ground.

"The Ceremony is complete already, boy," John said, wrath in his voice. "You hold the end product of my family's labor, generations of us. We smelted the steel. We cleansed it of its impurities. We hammered it, chiseled it, buffed it and shaped it. We have perfected the Motorcycle and today I offered it to the Almighty Erpenbach in accordance with His Last Will and..."

Esi laughed.

"I don't see what's so funny," John said.

"Motorcycle?" the boy giggled.

"Yes," John replied.

"Hah! You'll see a real Motorcycle soon enough. Let's go."

Esi turned around. Quick as he had appeared he flitted out of the cave, not bothering to look behind him to determine if John followed.