A Bone From a Dry Sea (p.16-23)

"Then" ( p. 16-17)

"...We are looking into our furthest possible past, which is like looking at a group of people far off across a flat, hot plain. The rising air wavers and changes. Light bends as if it were passing through invisible lenses. The people seem to dwindle, stretch, vanish, stand clear for a moment, and distort again. We are looking through lenses of time, right at the edge of imagination's eyesight. To give the tribe names distorts them, but it's the best I can do from where we're standing..."