"Have you been there?"

"Yes."

"Have you seen the sky?"

"Yes."

"How does it look?"

"When it is covered with clouds it looks just like ours."

"So, what are you? Are you a White half-blood?"

"Yes."

"You still look like an Unclean to me," Enriki said.

"I"ve lived among them a lifetime."

"Oh, Orel, you have a knack for making pleasant acquaintances," Lis said.

"Now we have two half-bloods," Tol said. "Lis is a Black-Red and Nikto is a Black-White."

"Rather Unclean-White," Enriki corrected him.

"The Red and the White races belong to the upper world," Lis said, "they cannot have children from the Unclean, you should know that. Only the Black race that belongs to the lower world can interbreed with the Unclean, and even then not with any Unclean."

"Nikto, can you make a baby to your Unclean girlfriend?" Tol asked.

Nikto laughed. "No, Tol. She is too alien. I think I can"t have children at all, as many half-bloods can"t."

"How old are you?"

"I don"t know exactly. Same age as you are, I think."

"I"m twenty-one and Lis is twenty-nine."

"And I"m probably somewhere between you."