Find a stretch of safe pa.s.sage. And then you come out and see me in my cabin, Jael.His voice touched her like ice, and she stopped pumping her wings. His anger made her tremble. She saw distant lightning among the peaks, reflecting her sudden fear.All right,she whispered, and the world suddenly seemed even colder and lonelier. She did not want to leave here to face him, of all people. But neither did she want to lose the pallisp tonight.

You should have thought of that before, she thought.

Banking left, she brought the ship into a heading that would take it parallel to the range, if there were no unexpected shifts in the wind. She thought she could probably safely leave the net here. Still, she delayed leaving - gliding in a gentle breeze, watching ominous dark peaks drift past, far off to the starboard. She wished that somehow the fear and the loneliness would subside.

Finally, when she could no longer justify staying, she set the stabilizers and the alarms. Her senses melted back into her body as she withdrew from the net, and she opened her eyes, blinking, half expecting to see Mogurn squinting in at her. But the bridge was deserted, gloomy and lonely. There was nothing here to greet her but the instruments, and for that she was grateful.

She stretched as she stood beside the rigger-station. She realized for the first time that she was hungry.

And tired; her limbs were heavy with fatigue. She wasn't sure which she wanted more, sleep or food. But Mogurn had said to come immediately. Sighing, she left the friendly gloom of the bridge and went to Mogurn's door. She pressed the signal. The door paled and she stepped inside.

Mogurn was seated, smoking his long pipe. His eyes betrayed nothing of his thoughts. He rose and silently gestured for her to sit. She slid onto the bench-seat, conscious of the crystal tapestry twinkling over her head, wishing she could spin around and disappear into that miniature world of light and refraction. Mogurn frowned, studying the end of his smoking pipe. The smoke curled toward her, stretching out like a vaporous hand. "Why did you disobey me?" he asked.

Jael shivered, certain now that she would be denied the pallisp. Perhaps that was for the better, but she could not see it that way now; all she could see was the relief and the warmth that the pallisp could bring to her. "I ... meant no disobedience," she murmured, shamefully aware that it was only half true. Yes, he had not strictly forbidden her to fly that route, but of course she had been aware of his desires and had - yes - rather relished ignoring them. Had quietly relished his fear of the mountains - his fear, she presumed, of dragons that almost certainly were not real.

Mogurn stepped closer, hovering over her, alternately blocking and exposing the light behind him. Jael squinted nervously up at him. "Did I not say that I preferred the longer route, Jael? Was there some special circ.u.mstance you haven't told me of, some need to take the more perilous course?"

Was that fear in his voice? No. He was the master. Jael bit her lip. "I ... was having trouble, the other way. But this way it was clearer. And I wasn't worried. I think, well, the stories about ... dragons ... are just stories. I don't consider them real."

"Oh?" Mogurn glared at her with his bloodshot eyes. "Tell me, Jael - what is real to a rigger? Can you tell me that? Is it what is in the Flux - or what is in the rigger's mind?" He drew a lungful of smoke and exhaled it as he spoke. "It doesn't matter, Jael - either one can destroy us."

Jael met his stare for a moment, then nodded mutely.

"And, drunken sods though most riggers may be," he added bitterly, "one should never laugh at their reports, should one?"

Her face burned at his sarcasm. "No. But still, it's just legend!"

"Is that it, Jael? Just legend? When riggers report what they haveseen andfelt, is that just legend?"Jael shrugged. How many riggers, she wondered, had actually reported dragons? Not many, she was sure. But she said nothing.

"Now, are we still close enough to our original course to turn back onto it?" He exhaled another cloud of smoke, which drifted past her face before being drawn into the ventilators. Jael opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative, but something made the words stick in her throat. Instead, she shook her head.

"We can't avoid the mountains?" he growled. She shook her head again, with greater determination.

Mogurn stared at her, drawing smoke from his pipe and exhaling it in repeated large plumes. Finally he turned away in silence.

Jael watched as he laid his pipe on the reading table and returned to her, pallisp in his hand. "All right. It is time." His voice held no kindness, nor did his eyes. But the sight of the pallisp sent a thrill down Jael's spine. Unhappiness and loneliness welled up in her; she hated the realization, but she was shivering in antic.i.p.ation of the joy that would come from the thing.

At Mogurn's gesture, she bent her head forward and pushed her hair aside. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mogurn's arm reach, saw the pallisp gleam ... and felt the cool touch of the probe. She felt the pallisp's warmth reaching into her with shimmering energy; felt that warmth encircling the ugly, waiting feelings of alienation, fear, anger; felt it closing around those feelings like flowing blood, healing and soothing and transforming the emotions, softening her inner defenses and filling her with the warmth of joy and love ...

The wave turned icy cold. Jael swayed dizzily as a tide of fear and dread welled up inside her, sweeping away all other feelings. For a moment, she was disoriented as well as frightened. Her thoughts were flooded with pain and confusion. Then she realized - the pallisp was gone. She sat back, blinking wildly, struggling to hold back a rush of tears. As Mogurn spoke, she could hardly see him through blurred eyes; but he had stepped away from her, and she could see the glint of the pallisp in his hand. "That's all for tonight, Jael. You must understand what obedience means, even for a rigger." Jael tried not to tremble under his gaze, but she was desperate with frustration and need, and helplessness. Slowly, and with great effort, she steadied herself, drew herself upright into a semblance of dignity. Mogurn nodded. "Now, Jael, help me with my augmentor. Then you may retire."

Though dying to scream, she obeyed. Mogurn reclined and she fitted the synaptic augmentor to his head and adjusted the controls, and when Mogurn was reduced to a silent figure fluttering his hands and pawing himself with a blind-eyed grin, she backed away and fled to her cabin.

Her thoughts seemed to roam about the cabin like birds on wing against a distant sky. Her cabin was at once a boundless s.p.a.ce in which she felt tiny and insignificant, and a grim claustrophobic cell, threatening to crush her. She stalked the little room like a caged animal, brooding.

The question kept coming back at her: why had Mogurn done this to her? Why use a device that would make her addicted? Was there any doubt that he had known what would happen? What had he wanted, a rigger who was so dependent upon him that she would never leave unless dismissed? It seemed likely.

She thought of the pictures she had seen in his cabin, the haunting despair in the eyes of those riggers. Am I that far gone? she wondered. Could she leave him now? Would she have the courage, if given the opportunity?

And what about his promise of heightened sensitivity in the net? Was that a lie, too? She had felt something, to be sure; but was it truly an improvement in sensitivity, or was it just an altered coloration of perception? It might well have been real; indeed perhaps that was another of his goals - to have, not just a rigger-servant, but one who could sense the realm more keenly, and perhaps fly faster and more stealthily in the service of his smuggling activities. But at what cost to her mind, to her soul?She peered at her reflection in the mirror and tried to decide if there was anything different in her own face. Did she look thinner, more worn? More experienced, more capable? She pushed her fingers back through her hair, and exhaled deeply. Lord, how she wanted ... how sheneeded the pallisp! How she wanted it to take this lonely bitterness from her soul and turn it into something warm. She would almost kill for that. But only Mogurn knew precisely how to use the thing, and so she needed Mogurn, too.

Maybe, she thought, a mist-bath would make her feel better. Checking that her door was locked, she shrugged out of her clothes and stepped into the tiny mist cubicle. She elbowed the start b.u.t.ton, and closed her eyes as the mist issued from the walls and surrounded her with a warm swirling dampness.

Sighing, she allowed the mist to gently scrub her clean, and she blinked as the droplets dispersed, leaving her skin tingling. She tentatively ran her hands down her body. She inhaled the moist ionized air, savoring the physical refreshment. As she stepped out, she grabbed a towel and rubbed herself down. Then she pulled some loose-fitting clothes out of a drawer and slipped into them. Though she intended to sleep, she felt safer dressed.

She sat cross-legged on her bunk, thinking, feeling the weight of her worries pressing down upon her again. She began to think of her father, to wonder if he had done things like this to riggers in his employ.

She drew her knees up under her chin, thinking of Dap, whom she had trusted. Sighing, she switched off the light and stretched out, and after a moment turned on the sleep-field to lift her gently, not quite off the surface of the bunk, to help her sleep.

And then she tossed and writhed, unable to rest at all. Unable to stop thinking. To stop her anger at Mogurn. To stop remembering Gaston's Landing, where her unhappiness had been so great that it had driven her to accept this instead. To stop remembering Dap ... and that night, and the dreamlink ...

His willful insistence, his gentle but deliberate deception, promising intimacy and understanding; she remembered the offer of friendship, and his eyes dark and earnest, and his vow: "We'll be looking right into each other, and our souls will link ..."

And the golden glow of the dreamlink, and the warmth and the seduction ... and the opening up of her heart and memory ... and the devastating awareness of Dap's reaction to her need; his revulsion and his fleeing ...

And her own muted cry of pain, which she had wrapped about herself and forced back in, bottling it so it could no longer hurt her ...

And going back to the hall, determined to get an a.s.signment ... and meeting Mogurn, who had offered her the job - and the pallisp.

She started out of a brooding daze, in the near-darkness of her cabin. One small light was glowing at its lowest setting. Obviously, sleep was impossible. She could not forget the pallisp, or the cruel way in which Mogurn had torn it from her. But the pallisp was the only thing that could soothe away these anxieties and fears. It was her only release.

Except, of course, for the net.

Sitting up, she thought about that for a long time. She could go to the net now, of course. That was the one place where she could shape her feelings and play them out in images and render them harmless.

Letting dark feelings loose there could be perilous, but was it any less perilous to keep them corked inside herself until they exploded? Mogurn had already warned her once; he would be furious if she went to the net again while he was under his bliss-wire. But if she didn't do something, she would go crazy.

She sat for a very long time, weighing the consequences. The longer she thought, the faster her heartbeat, the more it cried out with need.d.a.m.n it, you have to do something! She could not have the pallisp. There was only one other way out of this.

You are the rigger. You have the power and the need.

Swallowing, she rose from her bunk. And she stood there, swaying, trying to find some resolve that would keep her from returning to the net ... that would allow her to sleep, or if not to sleep, then at least to bear the pain and the need.

She didn't find the resolve. She found only the need.

Nine.

Highwing.

She crept onto the bridge and slipped silently into the rigger-cell. The neural contacts touched her neck.

Her senses, electrified, sprang into the net.

Her imagination at once sparked a new image: the ship was a balloon-borne gondola in a nighttime sky, riding the winds downrange of a long line of mountain peaks. Jael let the breeze soothe her. After a time, she changed alt.i.tude, seeking higher crosswinds that would take her closer to the mountains. She wasn't sure why she was doing it. Revenge against Mogurn for the way he had treated her? Or was it that she was already being punished, and what more could happen to her? Or was it that she really was taking charge, and this simply felt like the right direction to fly? She didn't know. The gondola swayed as she pa.s.sed through an air stream moving the wrong way; then she found another that carried her in the direction she wanted.

She set her sights upon the approaching range. A single full, creamy moon sank slowly toward jagged black peaks, jutting like sullen teeth against the horizon. Backlit by the moon, a blunt-nosed ma.s.s of clouds was moving out of the mountains toward her. She liked the effect: the gloom of night and eerily lighted clouds that looked like moving glaciers. Or like bold angry pincers that could reach out to shred her balloon ...

The balloon disintegrated abruptly. She caught at the air with her hands. For a moment, she and the starship tumbled earthward, her arms flailing and grasping; then she overcame her panic and deliberately remade the image. The ghostly net shimmered and became a varnished wooden glider, whispering in the wind as it sliced downward through the air. She was perched astride its fuselage, and she tugged and pulled at the airfoils until it leveled out in flight. And she thought: Take care! Dangerous thoughts could smash the ship into splinters as well as any physical force, and the pieces would be left to drift forever in the currents of this strange reality, the Flux.

The wind soothed her face, and gradually soothed her mind and her spirit as well. She let her feelings swirl ahead of her in the sky, in the emptiness between her and the clouds far ahead. Her feelings would not hurt her out there. Let them dissipate in the cool emptiness.

Time pa.s.sed and she drew steadily closer to the mountain range.

The dragons stormed out of the clouds in random formation, like gulls out of a rain squall.

Jael stared out into the moonlit night in astonishment. Dragons! Dreadful winged shapes, they wheeled before the distant clouds. Sparks of red flame flickered about them. Jael could scarcely believe the sight before her. Dragons couldn't be real! They were something from fairy tales and primal dreams, fromracial fears and magical desires ... from lies fabricated by boastful or delirious riggers. But ...there were dragons in the sky right now. And several of them were flying toward her.

Jael searched her thoughts, wondering if she might have provoked this image from her own imagination.

She felt nothing, not even the slightest tingle of recognition. Was it possible that the dragons actually were real ... living creatures, living in the Flux? She controlled the glider with tight movements and watched them come.

The dragons grew in the moonlight. They certainly appeared real enough: rugged, fierce-looking creatures, breathing fire into the air like the dragons of folklore. Most of them banked away to soar and circle far off her wingtips. She felt a moment of relief. But three of the creatures closed to intercept her, circling into a tight orbit around her glider. They maneuvered quickly, banking and veering, their movements hard to follow.

One swooped close, startling her, but giving her a good glimpse of its features. It was solid all right, its scales like polished pewter gleaming in the moonlight, but with subtle colors rippling beneath the surface.

The creature's head was rough hewn, as though of living stone. Its nostrils flared coal red as it craned its neck toward her; its eyes shone with ghostly green light. Its wings were broad and serrated, beating the air powerfully. As it circled around behind her, another dragon swept directly across her path, alarmingly close; then all three drew off to a more comfortable distance.

She held her course, thinking frantically. What was one supposed to do when met by dragons?

Storytellers in the s.p.a.cebars spoke of dueling. Could it be that those tales were not just boastful nonsense? These dragons looked real, and fierce, and eager for battle!

This one is mine,she imagined she heard a voice say.

She shivered, wishing she had flown another way.

Are you afraid?she heard, and this time she knew she really had heard it.

She glanced around, frightened, thinking that perhaps Mogurn was on the bridge, taunting her in punishment for her disobedience. But the voice, though it murmured in her head, was not Mogurn's.

You are afraid,said the voice.Shall we be kind, and kill you quickly?

It was one of the dragons speaking! She was terrified and astounded. She glanced over her left shoulder and discovered one of them flying close alongside, just a little behind her. Its gleaming eyes and smoldering nostrils were as clear as marker lights.What do you want? she asked, her voice trembling.

The dragon exhaled a plume of flame, startling her. It edged closer, its eyes flickering like green lanterns.

She banked to the right, thinking, This can't be happening! The dragon drew even closer as she veered, following her movements with ease. Its eyes glowed brightly, emerald green. The turbulence from its wings buffeted her, and she had to fight to control the glider.What are you doing? she cried in protest.

Leave me alone?

The dragon puffed a cloud of sparks.Does that mean you don't want me to kill you straightaway? It dropped back ... and then, with a powerful series of wingstrokes, flew up in a tight loop around her, peering closely at her as it banked and dived. Moments later, it was once more flanking her left side.Do you prefer to die in battle ?

No!Jael cried.I want you to leave me alone! Who are you, and why are you doing this? What do you want from me? She hunched low on the glider, drawing the net in close around the edges.Child!called the dragon.What a strange one! Do they send child-spirits to duel with us? Such questions! You want to know who I am, and - I am not a child!

The dragon's harsh laughter filled the air.

And you haven't answered me!she added fearfully.

Nor shall I,said the dragon.But so many questions not to answer, all at once! Do you think you're the first outsider to come here, spoiling for a fight?

Jael gaped at the creature.Then it's true, about the dueling! And you dragons ... are real!

The dragon made a noise that might have been a sigh or a snarl.Of course! Now duel, rigger! With deft wingstrokes, it climbed high above her; then, dropping one wing, it dived. It bore down upon her in the moonlight, its ma.s.sive shape growing large, larger - Jael screamed.

The dragon thundered as it dropped past, raking her with fire. Jael's skin sizzled, and flames crackled along the wings of her glider. Gasping, she changed the image: a sudden flurry of snow cooled her and quenched the flood of energy in the net. She changed the glider from wood to a fireproof alloy.

The dragon approached from the side, flapping its wings slowly. It eyed her with a glowing eye.Not badly done, for a demon, it conceded. It banked away and put distance between them.

Jael stared after the dragon, dumbfounded. Before she could gather her thoughts to reply, it turned again and streaked toward her in another attack.

Jael froze, helpless. She tried to make herself small, to protect her flanks. The dragon grew with terrifying speed.STOP IT! she screamed.

The dragon broke off its attack, veering away in surprise.And you wonder what I'mdoing? it murmured. It circled back, warily.There is something different about you, rigger. What is it! In the distant moonlit clouds, the dragon's fellows looked like small dots, wheeling and maneuvering in the air.

The dragon glanced at the others, with what looked like uncertainty.If you didn't want to duel, why did you come here?

Struggling to keep her glider steady, Jael was dizzy with confusion, with fear and anxiety.Well, I ...don't know. But I wasn't expecting anyone to try to kill me!

The dragon banked closer.And just what did you expect?

I don't know,she admitted, and wondered why, indeed, she had come into this mountain range. She thought, but didn't say, that she hadn't really been expecting dragons or any other living thing to be here.

The dragon snorted, then spoke in an almost conciliatory tone.You don't know what you expected, but you didn't expect to duel. What, then? Do you want to talk? Do you want to just fly along and chat lightheartedly? We could do that, I suppose. I could promise not to kill you.

Jael drew a breath.Can I believe that?

Why not?She eyed the dragon, unable to tell whether it was mocking her or not.Can we really just talk? No dueling?

The dragon tipped its head and winked its luminous eye. Jael nodded uneasily. She didn't know what to make of this creature, but she knew she didn't want to fight it. She decided to change her image again: the glider disappeared and she became a winged pony, beating into the wind.Very nice, said the dragon, drawing in close alongside her.

She didn't answer. The night was changing, the clouds closing in. She could no longer see the other dragons. A moonbeam broke through the clouds to show a jagged mountain slope, very near, with mist swirling around it. Jael had not realized that they were so close to the mountains.Do you know where we're going? she asked.

Yes,said the dragon with a crafty chuckle. Suddenly it sideslipped over her and seized her with its great talons. Jael's breath went out with a gasp. The dragon bent its head down to peer at her between its forelegs. Its jaws gaped, and its hot breath rushed over her. Jael struggled, terrified. She squirmed and twisted and managed to roll forward in the dragon's grip just enough to kick up with her hind pony legs.

Her hooves caught the dragon squarely in the stomach and it wheezed, releasing her. Jael tumbled in midair, beating frantically with her wings but losing alt.i.tude. She was dropping headfirst through the mists.

She glimpsed terrifying sawtoothed slopes rushing upward to meet her. Frantically she transformed herself into a hawk, warped her wings sharply, and pulled herself out of the dive. She climbed again toward a safe alt.i.tude, looking around in vain for the dragon.

Well done,it said, right behind her.

Panicked, she looped up and into inverted flight and twisted back down behind the dragon.You liar! she shouted.You promised and you lied!

The dragon glanced back over its shoulder.Well, I didn't exactly promise - You as good as promised! Is that a dragon's kind of honor?