but it was hard to see them. Over a hundred had trooped with me into the hall and filled the chairs and thrones, but it seemed as if there were fewer now. Some chairs stood empty. As I glanced around, chairs that had held occupants stood empty, as forms vanish in a deepening twilight. Only the Signature held light, and life, the Giants were so thin and grey and gone that they were almost transparent - yes, on a shift of pose they seemed to disappear, so that an enormous brown man in his gaudy robes would become a cloak folded over the back of a throne, and strong peering eyes searching my face for clues to memories only just out of mind would dwindle to the dull glitter of paste jewels in a broken tiara slung over the knob of a chairback. They were all dissipating and disappearing even as I sat there and watched.

I said to them, "Will you not take your chances on Shikasta? Will you not try to win through that way?" - but a hiss ran through the company, they moved their limbs and heads restlessly, they checked gestures of aggression, and would have killed me if it had not been for the Signature.

"Shikasta, Shikasta, Shikasta..." was the murmuring whisper all around me, and the sound was the hissing of a snake, was hatred, loathing - and a dreadful fear.

They were remembering a little of what they had been: the Signature induced this in them. Nothing much, but they did remember something splendid and right. And they knew what their descendants had become. That was what their faces stated: that even the word Shikasta confronted them with filth and ordure.

"I need to sit with you here," I said, "for as long as it takes me to make a visit to Shikasta."

Again the stirring rearing movement, like threatened horses.

I said, as it was my duty to do, even knowing that they would not listen (not could not, for otherwise I would not have wasted my energies, already depleting), I said, "Come with me, I'll help you, I'll do everything I can to help you win your way through and out."