Someone was shooting at her!

Why you jeekee, slucking, devoluted . . .

Sara found an unknown apt.i.tude for cursing, as she went through a wide vocabulary of oaths from five different languages, hacking away with the hatchet more vehemently than ever. A steady drumbeat of pebbles now clattered against the hull, but she ignored them in a blur of heat and fury.

"Otszharsiya, perkiye! Syookai dreesoona!"

She ran out of obscenities in Rossic and was starting to plumb urrish GalTwo when the plank abruptly let out a loud crack.'The attached cable moaned, yanking hard at the grappling hook- and the tortured wood gave way.

The hook s.n.a.t.c.hed the ax out of her hand as it tore free, glittering in the sunlight. Thrown off balance, Sara struggled to hold on, though her hands were slippery from sweat and blood. With a gasp she felt her grip fail and she dropped, sucking in deeply, but the Roney slammed her like an icy hammer, driving air from her startled lungs.

Sara floundered, battling first to reach the surface, then to tread water and sputter a few deep breaths, and finally to keep from getting tangled in all the ropes that lay strewn across the water. A shiny hook pa.s.sed a frightening hand's width from her face. Moments later, she had to dive down to avoid a snarl of cords that might have trapped her.

The boat's turbulent wake added to her troubles, as the Hauph-woa took advantage of its chance to flee.

Her chest ached by the time she hit surface again-to come face-to-face with a lanky young man, leaning on the rim of a coracle, clutching a slingshot in one hand. Surprise rocked him back when their eyes met. Then his gaze dropped to notice her bareness.

He blushed. Hurriedly, the young man put aside his weapon and started shrugging out of his jacket. To give to her, no doubt.

"Thanks ..." Sara gasped. "But I gotta ... go now."

Her last glimpse of the young villager, as she swam away, showed a crestfallen look of disappointment. It's too soon yet for him to be a hardened pirate, Sara thought. This new, hard world hasn't yet rubbed away the last traces of gallantry.

But give it time.

Now she had the river's current behind her as she swam, and soon Sara glimpsed the Hauph-woa downstream. The crew had the boat turned and were stroking to stay in place, now that they had reached a safe distance from Bing Village. Still, it was a hard pull to reach the hull at last and start up the rope ladder. She only made it halfway before her muscles started to cramp, and the helpful sailors had to haul it in the rest of the way by hand.

I've got to get stronger, if I'm going to make a habit of having adventures, she thought as someone wrapped a blanket around her.

Yet, Sara felt strangely fine while Pzora tended her wound and the cook made her some of his special tea. Sara's hand ached, and her body throbbed, yet she felt also something akin to a glow.

I made decisions, and they were right ones. A year ago, it seemed every choice I made was wrong. Now, maybe things have changed.

Clutching her blanket, Sara watched as the Hauph-woa labored back upstream along the west bank, to a point where they could take aboard the stranded caravan, ferrying the urs and their beasts far enough to have no worries about local fanatics. The calm teamwork of pa.s.sengers and crew was such an encouraging sight, it boosted her morale about "big" issues, almost as much as the brief fight had lifted something else inside her.

My faith in my own self, she thought. / didn't think I was up to any of this. But maybe Father's right, after all.

I stayed in that d.a.m.n treehouse long enough.

Asx SHORTLY AFTER VUBBEN SPOKE, THE PORTAL reopened and there emerged from the ship several more floating machines, growling disconcertingly. Each hesitated on reaching the onlookers lining the valley rim. For several duras, the folk of the Commons held their ground, though trembling in foot, wheel, and ring. Then the robots turned and swept away, toward every point of the compa.s.s, leaving cyclones of broken gra.s.s in their wake.

"Survey probes-these shall commence their duties," the first messenger explained, buzzing and clicking primly in a formal version of Galactic Two.

"(Preliminary) a.n.a.lyses-these surrogates shall provide.

"Meanwhile, toward a goal of both profit and rescue-let us, face-to-face discussions, commence."

This caused a stir. Did we understand correctly? Our dialects have drifted since our devolution. Did the phrase "face-to-face" mean what it seemed?

Below, the ship's doorway began reopening once more.

"Bad news," Lester Cambel commented gruffly. "If they're willing to let us see them in person, it means-"

"-that they are not worried anyone will be left after they depart, to tell whose face was seen," finished Knife-Bright Insight.

Our hoon brother, Phwhoon-dau, shared the gloomy diagnosis. His aged throat sac darkened from somber thought. "Their confidence is blatant, unnerving. Hrrrhrm. As is their haste."

Vubben turned an eyestalk toward my/our sensor ring and winked the lid-an efficient, human-derived gesture conveying irony. Among the Six, we traeki and g'Keks hobble like cripples on this heavy world, while hoon stride with graceful power. Yet those dour, pale giants claim to find the rest of us equally frantic and wild.

Something, or rather two somethings, stirred within the shadowy airlock. A pair of bipedal forms stepped forward-walkers-slim, stick-jointed, and somewhat tall. Clothed in loosely draped garments that concealed all but their bare hands and heads, they emerged into the afternoon light to peer upward at us.

From the Commons there erupted a low collective sigh of shock and recognition.

Was this a hopeful sign? Out of all the myriad s.p.a.cefaring races in the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, what impossibly remote chance decreed that our discoverers might turn out to be cousins'? That the crew of this ship should ,be cogenetic with one of our Six? Was this the work of our capricious G.o.ddess, whose luck favors the anomalous and strange?

"Hyoo-mans-s-s . . ." Ur-Jah, our eldest sage, aspirated in Anglic, the native tongue of our youngest sept.

From Lester Cambel, there escaped a sound i had never heard before, which these rings could not decipher at the time. Only later did we comprehend, and learn its name.

It was despair.

Dwer RETY LED SINGLE FILE ALONG A TRACK THAT NOW ran atop a broad shelf of bedrock, too hard for great-boo to take root. The slanting, upthrust granite ledge separated two broad fingers of cane forest, which Dwer knew stretched for hundreds of arrowflights in all directions. Although the rocky trail followed a ridgetop, the boo on either side grew so tall that only the highest peaks could be seen above the swaying ocean of giant stems.

The girl kept peering, left and right, as if in search of something. As if she wanted something, rather urgently, and did not want to walk past it by mistake. But when Dwer tried to inquire, all she gave back was silence.

You'll have to watch it with this one, he thought. She's been bun all her life, till she's p.r.i.c.kly as a dartback bare. People weren't his specialty, but a forester uses empathy to grasp the simple needs and savage thoughts of wild things.

Wild things can know pain.

Well, in another day or so she won't be my problem. The sages have experts, healers. If I meddle, I may just make things worse.

The stone shelf gradually narrowed until the footpath traced a slender aisle between crowded ranks of towering adult boo, each stem now over twenty meters tall i and as thick as several men. The giant green stalks grew so close that even Mudfoot would have trouble getting far into the thicket without squeezing between mighty boles. The strip of sky above pinched gradually tighter becoming a mere ribbon of blue as the trail constricted. At some points, Dwer could spread his arms and touch mighty cylinders on both sides at the same time.

The compressed site played tricks with perspective as he pictured two vast walls, primed to press together at any instant, grinding their tiny group like sc.r.a.ps of cloth under Nelo's pulping hammer.

Funny thing. This stretch of trail hadn't felt nearly so spooky on his way uphill, two days ago. Then, the slender avenue had felt like a funnel, channeling him briskly toward his quarry. Now it was a cramped furrow, a pit. Dwer felt a growing tightness in his chest. What if something's happened up ahead. A landslide blocking the way. Or afire? What a trap this could be!

He sniffed suspiciously, picking up only a gummy reek of greenness given off by the boo. Of course, anything at all could be going on downwind, and he wouldn't know of it until- Stop this! Snap out of it. What's gotten into you?

It's her, he realized. You're feeling bad because she thinks you 're a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Dwer shook his head.

Well, ain't it so? You let Rety go on thinking she might be hanged, when it would have been easy enough to say- To say what? A lie? I can't promise it won't happen. The law is fierce because it has to be. The sages can show mercy. It's allowed. But who am I to promise in their name?

He recalled his former master describing the last time a large band of sooners was discovered, back when old Fallen had been an apprentice. The transgressors were found living on a distant archipelago, far to the north. One of the hoon boat-wanderers-whose job it was to patrol at sea the same way human hunters roamed the forests and urrish plainsmen ranged the steppes-came upon- a thronging cl.u.s.ter of her kind, dwelling amid ice floes, surviving by seeking the caves of hibernating rouol shamblers and spearing the rotund beasts as they slept. Each summer, the renegade tribe would come ash.o.r.e and set fires across the tundra plains, panicking herds of s.h.a.ggy, long-toed gallaiters, sending the frightened ungulates tumbling over cliffs by the hundreds, so that a few might be butchered.

Ghahen, the boat-wanderer, had been drawn by the smoke of one ma.s.s killing and soon began dealing with the crime in the manner of her folk. Patient beyond human fathoming, gentle in a way that gave Dwer nightmares to hear of it, she had taken an entire year to winnow the band, one by one, painlessly confiscating from each member its precious life bone, until all that remained was a solitary male elder, whom she seized and brought home to testify, ferrying the dejected captive in a boat piled high with the fifth vertebra of all his kin. After reciting his tale-a crooning lament lasting fourteen days-that final seagoing sooner was executed by the hoon themselves, expiating their shame. All the impounded vertebrae were ground to dust and scattered in a desert, far from any standing water.

The forbidding memory of that story filled Dwer's heart with leaden worry.

Spare me, please, from being asked to do as Ghahen did. I couldn't. Not if all the sages ordered it. Not if Lark said the fate of all Jijo hung in the balance. There's got to be a better way.

Just where the rocky shelf seemed about to narrow down to nothing, letting the divided tracts of boo converge and obliterate the trail, a clearing abruptly opened ahead. A bowl-shaped depression, nearly a thousand meters across, with an algae-crusted lake in its center and a narrow outlet at the far end. A fringe of great-boo lined the crater's outer rim, and spindly tufts of the tenacious plant sprouted from crevices between jagged boulders that lay tumbled across the silent mountain vale. The lake's watery sh.o.r.e was outlined by a dense hedge, appearing at a distance like rank moss, from which radiated countless twisted tendrils, many of them broken stumps. Even where Dwer stood, ropy fibers could be seen half-buried in the dust, some as thick as his leg.

The peaceful quiet was belied by an eerie sense of lifelessness. The dust lay undisturbed by footprints, only the sc.r.a.pe of wind and rain. From prior visits, Dwer knew why prudent creatures avoided this place. Still, after the strangling confinement of that tunnel-trail, it felt good to see sky again. Dwer had never much shared the prevailing dread of crossing open ground, even if it meant walking for a short time under the glaring sun.

As they picked their way past the first boulders, the glaver began to mew nervously, creeping alongside Rety to keep in her shadow. The girl's eyes roved avidly. She seemed not to notice drifting off the trail, at an angle that would skirt the fringe of the lake.

Dwer took several long strides to catch up. "Not that way," he said, shaking his head.

"Why not? We're headin' over there, right?" She pointed to the only other gap in the outer wall of boo, where a narrow, sc.u.mmy stream leaked through the valley's outlet. "Quickest way is past the lake. Looks easier, too, except right by the sh.o.r.e."

Dwer gestured toward a relic webbery of dun strands, draping the nearby jagged boulders. "Those are-" he began.

"I know what they are." She made a face. "Buyur didn't only live on the Slope, y'know, even if you wes-ties do think it's simply the best place to be. We got mule-spiders over the hill, too, eatin' up old Buyur ruins.

"Anyway, what're you so scared of? You don't think this one's still alive, do you?" She kicked one of the desiccated vines, which crumbled to dust.

Dwer controlled himself. It's that chip on her shoulder talking. Her people must have been awful to her. Taking a breath, he replied evenly.

"I don't think it's alive. I know it is. What's more-this spider's crazy."

Rety's first reaction was to raise both eyebrows in surprised fascination. She leaned toward him and asked in a hushed voice-"Really?"

Then she t.i.ttered, and Dwer saw she was being sarcastic. "What's it do? Put out sticky lures full o' berry-sugar an' sweet gar, to s.n.a.t.c.h little girls who're bad?"

Taken aback, Dwer finally grunted. "I guess you could say something like that."

Now Rety's eyes widened for real, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with curiosity. "Now this I gotta see!"

She gave the rope at her waist a sudden yank. The formidable-looking knot fell apart, and she took off, dashing past several craggy stones. The gaily squeaking noor pursued with excited bounds.

"Wait!" Dwer yelled futilely, knowing it useless to chase her through the boulder maze. Scrambling up a nearby talus slope of rocky debris, he managed to glimpse her ragged ponytail, bobbing as she ran toward where the rocky slabs converged in a tumbled labyrinth r.i.m.m.i.n.g the lake sh.o.r.e.

"Rety!" he screamed into the wind. "Don't touch the-"

He stopped wasting breath. The same breeze that pushed the lake's musty pungency against his face stole his words before they could reach her ears. Dwer slid back down to the trail, only to realize-d.a.m.n! Even the glaver was gone!

He finally found it half an arrowflight uphill, shambling back the way they had come, following whatever instinct sometimes drove its kind to wander doggedly east, away from comfort and protection and toward near-certain death. Growling under his breath, Dwer seized the mare's tether and sought something, anything, to tie her to, but the nearest stand of gangly boo lay too far away. Dropping his pack, he whipped out a length of cord. "Sorry about this," he apologized, using his hip to lever the glaver over. Ignoring her rumbling complaint, he proceeded to hobble her rear legs, where he hoped she couldn't reach the rope with her teeth.

"Pain, frustration-both quite tedious are."

"Sorry. I'll be back soon," he answered optimistically, and took off after the sooner child.

Stay uphill and downwind, Dwer thought, angling to the right of her last heading. This might just be a trick to let her circle around and head for home.

A little later, he noticed he had reflexively unlimbered his bow, cranking the string tension for short range, and had loosed the clamp securing the stubby arrows in his thigh quiver.

What good will arrows do, if she makes the spider angry?

Or worse, if she catches its interest?

Toward the valley's rim, many stones retained a semblance to their ancient role, segments of whatever Buyur structure once stood proudly on this site, but as Dwer hurried inward, all likeness to masonry vanished. Ropy strands festooned the boulders. Most appeared quite dead-gray, desiccated, and flaking. However, soon his eye caught a greenish streak here . . . and over there a tendril oozing slime across a stony surface, helping nature slowly erase all vestiges of former scalpel-straight smoothness.

Finally, raising a creepy feeling down his back, Dwer glimpsed tremors of movement. A wakening of curling strands, roused from sleep by some recent disturbance.

Rety.

He dodged through the increasingly dense maze, leaping over some ropy barriers, sliding under others, and twice doubling back with an oath when he reached impa.s.sable dead ends. This Buyur site was nowhere near as vast as the one north and east of Dolo Village, where each local citizen dutifully took part in crews gleaning for items missed by the deconstructor spider. Dwer used to go there often, .along with Lark or Sara. That spider was more vigorous and alive than this crotchety old thing-yet far less dangerous.

The thicket of pale cables soon grew too crowded for an adult to pa.s.s, though the girl and noor might have gone on. In frustration, Dwer whirled and slapped a rounded k.n.o.b of rock.

"Ifni sluck!" He waved his stinging hand. "Of ail the b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.n jeekee . . ."

He slung the bow over one shoulder, freeing both hands, and started scrambling up the jagged face of a boulder three times his height. It was no climb he would have chosen, given time to work out a better route, but Dwer's racing heart urged him to hurry.

Mini-avalanches of eroded rock spilled over his hair and down his collar, stinging with a dusty redolence of decayed time. Flaky vines and dried tendrils offered tempting handholds, which he strove to ignore. Rock was stronger, though not always as reliable as it looked.

While his fingers traced one fine crack, he felt the outcrop under his left foot start to crumble and was forced to trust his weight to one of the nearby crisscrossing mule-cables.

With a crackling ratchet, the vine gave but a moment's warning before slipping. He gasped, suspending his entire weight with just his fingertips. Dwer's torso struck the stone wall, slamming air out of his lungs.

His flailing legs met another strand, thinner than the first, just seconds before his grip would have failed. With no other choice, Dwer used it as a springboard to pivot and launch himself leftward, landing on a slim ledge with his right foot. His hands swarmed along the almost sheer face-and at last found solid holds. Blinking away dust, he inhaled deeply till it felt safe to resume.

The last few meters were less steep but worn slick by countless storms since the boulder had been dragged here, then left in place by the weakening vines. Finally, he was able to get up on his knees and peer ahead, toward the nearby sh.o.r.e.

What had seemed a uniform hedge, lining the lake's perimeter, was now a thick snarl of vines, varying from man-height to several times as tall. This near the water, the cables' gray pallor gave way to streaks of green, yellow, even bloodred. Within the tangle he glimpsed specks of yet other colors, sparkling in shafts of sunlight.

Beyond the th.o.r.n.y barrier, the sc.u.mmy pond seemed to possess a geometric essence, both liquid and uncannily corrugated. Some areas seemed to pulse, as if to a cryptic rhythm-or enduring anger.

One-of-a-Kind, he thought, not really wanting to evoke the name but unable to resist. He pulled his gaze away, scanning for Rety. Don't bun her, One-of-a-Kind. She's only a child.

He didn't want to converse with the mule-spider. He hoped it might be dormant, as when the lake was a harmless cranny in the winter snowscape. Or perhaps it was dead, at last. The spider was surely long past due to die. A grisly hobby seemed to be all that kept this one alive.

He shivered as a creeping sensation climbed the nape of his neck.

(Hunter. Fellow-seeker. Lonely one. How good of you to greet me. I sensed you pa.s.s nearby some days ago, hurrying in chase. Why did you not pause to say h.e.l.lo?

(Have you found what you sought?

(Is it this "child" you speak of?

(Is she different from other humans?

(Is she special in some way?) Scanning for traces of Rety, Dwer tried to ignore the voice. He had no idea why he sometimes held conversations with a particular corrosive alpine puddle. Though psi talent wasn't unknown among the Six, the Scrolls warned darkly against it. Anyway, most psi involved links among close kin-one reason he never told anyone about this fey channel. Imagine the nicknames, if people learned of it!

I probably imagine it all, anyway. Must be some weird symptom of my solitary life.