Shadowplay

Chapter 5. Crazy in a can 2

Day slid into day and no one came to the cell.

Every eight hours a red light blinked; a pleasant run of chimes broke the humming, stifling silence, and a tray arrived in the slot above the extensitable. The meals were ample but bland. Dull. Monotonous. The same four meals in the same order, over and over and over.

She still couldn't read. The lighting seemed designed to prevent it. When she tried, nose an inch from the page, the strain brought on a roaring headache.

She couldn't write. She tried scribbling words and phrases she couldn't read, but seeing what she wrote was so much a part of her way of working she couldn't make anything come out right and that built up so much rage and frustration in her that she screamed and threw the notebook and stylus at the wall, flung herself on the cot, and beat her fists on the pillow. And felt like a fool once she calmed down. -

The cell was gray. Everything in it was gray. Even the light was gray. She looked at gray until it seeped so deep in her she felt her bone marrow turning gray. It was like living in a fog. A small fog. When everything was folded away, the cell was barely six paces wide and seven long.

At times she plunged round and round for hours, driven by the clamor of her body for exercise, for some way to vent the restless energy that built up in her.

Day slid into day. The ship plowed on through the insplit. There was nothing to break the slow passage of the hours; transit time was time out from life. Nothing to do but wait.

One week slipped away. Two.

Shadith paced and raged and slept, glared at the food with loathing when the trays arrived on their unvarying schedule with their unvarying menus.

"I want someone to talk to," she yelled into the slot, knowing it was futile. "I want something to do." She kicked at the wall where the door had been, hammered at it with the heel of her boot. "Talk to me, you turds. Say something. Anything!" The only response she got was the dull thud of leather against unyielding steel. And the equally adamantine silence from her captors.

Even mindriding lost its charm; there was nothing new to look at, no matter how diligently she searched-and, more than that, not a single crack in Bossman's security, no hope she could dig her way out of this mess.

Most days Bossman Ginny was busy at a workstation, but the Pet was never close enough to let her read the screen and there wasn't a lot of interest in watching a man play with a sensorpad when she couldn't inspect the result. When he wasn't at the workstation, he sat in the Blackroom, meditating, which was even less interesting.

She avoided that room during shipnight or any other time when Puk or Ajeri were in there with Ginny. She was afraid of it. She had enough strains on her sanity without dredging up more of her own darkside.

After Ajeri the Pilot went meticulously through her daily check on the ship's position and condition, she ate a substantial breakfast, read her magazines until she con 56 Jo Clayton sidered the meal sufficiently digested, then she shifted to the gym where she ran a series of tests on her body; she marked the results on a pressboard, pulled up a chart and inspected that, then worked her way through interminable exercise programs, doing the stretches, kicks, and the rest with obsessive concentration. After the first week Shadith got so bored seeing the same thing over and over and over again that she didn't bother tuning in on the Pilot and her solitary cavortings.

Except for his daily visits to the hold where he pumped high-energy concentrates into the prisoners and renewed the drugs that kept them unaware of where they were and what was happening to them, Puk the Lute stayed in his quarters, wandering through the labyrinths of his mind with the help of a small pharmacopoeia of pidramins. After watching him sweat and make faces for a while, Shadith sighed and left hint to it. Because his drug-fantasies were probably the most interesting things happening on the ship, she wished for a moment or two that she could take a walk through them, wished that she were one of those rare full range telepathy the universe threw up to make life a bitch for students of psi who swore that true telepathy was a phantasm created from the yearning of the powerless for an ultimate kind of power. But she wasn't and she couldn't, so she went on searching for some other distraction to boot her out of her growing lethargy.

The three mercs knew each other too well, they'd exhausted the entertainment in old exploits; whenever one started up a story the others had heard too many times before, they stopped him with howls and thumps. The little bit they did talk, it was about women. She listened now and then, but generally tuned out after a short sample, either bored to the point of ossification or furious to the point of indigestion. She went back a number of times, hoping to catch them speculating on the purpose of this expedition, but even among themselves they didn't discuss the affairs of their employer. Their reticence was either principle or prudence or both (knowing old double-knotter Ginny like they must, they had to suspect their quarters were EYEd). So they spent their time bragging about their women, going over their equipment, exercising almost as fanatically as Ajeri, reading or sleeping. She got some amusement out of inspecting their equipment, what the well-dressed merc was wearing these days, but somewhere around the twentieth time she watched a merc break down and polish his needier, the last motes of interest were wiped away with the last infinitesimal motes of dust.

Engine crew were a pair of Sikkul Paem doublets; they were passing the insplit rooted out and contemplating whatever they used for a navel, so motionless in their dirt beds they might have been still-life holos.

Nothing. Nothing. NOTHING.

Gray.

Gray entered her mind and soul; gray sucked the life out of her. It wasn't something new or wholly unex-pected; it'd happened to her once before-last year when she was rattling about Wolff wondering what she was going to do with her life. Aleytys recognized her state near its onset and acted immediately; without bothering to ask her consent, she kicked Shadith's feet from under her, knelt on her and set her healer's hands to work, readjusting Shadith's metabolism, then she shoved her into a flitter and dropped her in the middle of the Wildlands to live or die as she chose. Shadith discovered she wasn't ready to die yet; besides, she was too irritated with Aleytys to give her the satisfaction. That irritation and the struggle to survive jolted her loose from the gray doldrums; it was heart massage in every sense of the word.

There was no one to jolt her now.

On the forty-ninth day out from the Spotchals Transfer Station she stopped eating. There was no purpose behind it. She simply lacked the energy and the will to leave the cot. She turned her face to the wall and began shutting down.

She woke in the sickbay with Bossman standing over her, looking annoyed.

"What did you think you were doing, child?"

Weak tears gathered in her eyes and spilled over. She stared at him without trying to answer. Dimly she remembered that she wasn't supposed to know this face. "Who're you?" she said finally, her voice a dry-leaf whisper.

"That is not important. Answer the question, please."

"Your voice…" She closed her eyes. "Nothing."

"That is not an adequate response. What do, you mean?" She turned her head away. How could she explain when she didn't understand it herself?

"You had food, a comfortable bed, facilities for washing and elimination. Everything necessary."

Resentment giving her a spurious energy, Shadith kept her eyes closed and jeered silently at him. Stupid old Wahw! Don't know ass from eathole.

"What is wrong with you, child?"

Shadith kept a tight hold on her pride and said nothing. Her mind told her it was stupid, but her body got satisfaction out of silence. She went with, her body.

Ajeri snorted. She came swiftly around the couch, caught Shadith by the shoulders and shook the breath out of her; all that exercising had given the Pilot a tigerish strength which she didn't bother trying to con trol. "Stop sulking, brat. Act like a baby and you be treated like one." She threw Shadith away from her. "Get your little mouth in gear, or I give you a spanking you won't forget."

Rage exploding through her, struggling to retrieve her self-control, Shadith lay sprawled and panting where Ajeri had flung her. Careful, Shadow. That miserable ooj, that creeping bakbook. Wait, you remember wait? That braindead pervert, that… she… they… You can't do anything now. Not in the insplit. And not tied to this stupid cot. Can't do shit till we get where we're going. Fool them, pull their rotten strings and make the bastards dance.

She crammed herself back into the role of child and let the child's words pour out: "I'm going crazy in that coffin. I need something to do. Give me my harp. Give me something bright to look at, red or blue or green or yellow, all that gray turns me moldy. Mold growing on my bones, mold growing over my eyes and on my tongue. I'll rot if I have to look at all that gray much longer. And fix the light so I can read. Give me books, magazines. Something to pass the time. Talk to me. What harm would that do you? You promised to protect me. You're killing me. Why can't you understand that?"

He rubbed his stick thumb up and down his bony chin as he chewed over what she'd said; the harsh toplight shadowed his eyes and deepened the lines in his face, put a shine on the end of his long nose. There was less expression on his naked face than there'd been on the flesh mask he'd worn before.

Ajeri stood behind him, watching skeptically, not wholly buying the innocent bit. She had more… call it connection… with others than he did, which meant that right now she was more dangerous than he was. Unless he got one of his insight flashes which the gods forbid.

He cleared his throat, said mildly, "I put you there for your protection, child, for your purity. You were distressed by the, advances of that guard, I did not wish you to fear similar treatment here."

Shadith told herself she was too tired to keep gnawing at her resentments. She pushed the hair off her face, looked vaguely around, then sat up. "I'm not afraid of men, I just don't want to be raped." She shrugged. "Who does? I mean, it's not the sort of thing a girl dreams about when she becomes marriageable."

He nodded. "I see. You will go back to where you were, no, be quiet and listen. I have heard you. Some of what you have said will be done. Not all, you must not expect that." He produced a smile like a wince. "Come," he held out his hand, waited for her to take it. "Be patient with us. We are not very experienced with children."

"Well, now you know what happens." She slid off the couch and let him lead her from the chamber.

Twenty minutes after Shadith walked into her cell, the dim grayness changed, brightened all over, while a spot-a reading light-focused on the pillow end of the cot. She felt herself expanding like a paper flowerbud dropped in water. She laughed, clapped her hands. "Better better better," she caroled. "Oh, betttterrr."

An hour later the chimes bonged, the slot slid open. Instead of food, there were six magazine paks and a reader on the tray.

Ajeri stood in the doorway, a dark blue blanket draped over her arm, Shadith's harpcase hanging at her side. "You wanted it, you got it, brat. Hope you satisfied because you an't getting any more." She dumped the blanket on the floor, slid her arm from the strap and set the harpcase on the blanket, then she stepped back and the door slid closed.

Thirty-four days later, eighty-three days out of the Transfer Station, Shadith lay on her stomach scribbling in her notebook. She dropped the stylus and closed the book when she felt the lurch as the ship emerged from the insplit and began droning along sublight. Her hands were shaking. She rubbed them along her trousers, pressed them hard against the zippers on her thighpockets, the little pain lost in the thunder of her uncertainties. All her playacting, all her maneuvering hadn't gained a millimeter's freedom; the most she'd achieved was the illusion she had some control over her situation. Illusion, not reality. That could change now. Bossman meant to use her; to do that, he had to take her out of storage. If she couldn't manage something once she was loose, she might as well pack it in.

The vibration stopped.

Orbit.

Shadith was so familiar with the Pet now she was looking through his eyes almost as soon as the thought flitted through her head.

The huge forescreen was lit. A blue and white world turned in it, the image large enough for the Pet to make out most of the detail despite his myopia.

For the first time she saw Bossman Ginny sitting in the Captain's Chair; the Pet looked down at the skim of ash-gray ash-brown hair laid across Ginny's pale pink skull whenever he needed reassurance which he did fairly often; Ginny's mix of tension, eagerness and triumph made him nervous.

Cool man wasn't so cool any more. He drummed fingers on the chair arm, clicked his tongue as he scanned readings and peered anxiously at the image of the world they were orbiting. "Kiskai. And three months early. Ajeri tiszteh, show me Aina'iril."

"If you want a direct drop, it's over the horizon at the moment."

"How long?"

"Should be coming up round two hours twenty minutes on. I can pre-empt the Wapa-sat's recept-time, break off the collecting, or shift the ship, which means we'd have to move out of Sisipin's shadow."

"We will wait. You can use the time, Jeri tiszt, to test the functioning of the pickup/shunts for all the satellites and start recoding the EYEs onboard. Impatience is a weakness we do not need to encourage. Moving the ship could be destructive. There are too many chart readers down there with a glass on the sky. We are vulnerable in the visible spectrum and I have no means of determining what the effect of a new celestial inhabitant would be; it might even wash out the Pasepawateo Mitewastewapal. That would leave us without the centerpiece of the production."

Ajeri laughed. "What a mouthful. Only you, Ginny."

"And forty million Kiskaids. Show me the Mistiko Otcha Cicip. It should be possible to do that without disturbing anything important, the Cicip should still be deserted, just a patch of trees and some bare rock."

"One sacred playground coming up."

The POV shifted rapidly, swooping down at terrifying speed. The Pet would not look at the screen, it made him dizzy. He curled up and licked at his genitals until the scene settled down.

Even with the Pet's deficiencies of vision, Shadith could see a vast natural amphitheater, the crater of an anciently extinct volcano with grass like short green fur carpeting the interior, patches of trees scattered about, a rugged upheaval of naked stone.

A number of small figures worked diligently at the grass, mowing it, pulling weeds, planting turfs wherever the crop looked thin or there was bare ground showing. Others, wooden yokes on their shoulders, were going and coming from beneath several broad low arches at the base of the ripple-fronted cliff, carrying buckets of water and tiles and mortar in, buckets full of rubble out.

Cave under there. They're getting it ready for something.

Ginny knows what, curses on his pointed head.

Shadith yawned, blinked her surprise. Her head felt so heavy it was hard to keep focused through the Pet.

Ginny cleared his throat. "It seems it is a good thing we are here early, Jeri tiszt. The tapwit priests are already beginning to put the place in order. Hmm. The Kihcikistilik island chain is below us now. Before you start the shunt tests, run a POV along it, I want to see…"

His voice faded, the scene faded… Shadith plunged fathoms deep into sleep. Chapter 6. Hang your harp on a whisper tree

Someone was shaking her.

She came painfully awake, looked up into the liquid copper eyes of the lacertine captive. She was lying on a floor somewhere and he was kneeling beside her. She wasn't tracking too well, whatever Ginny used to put her out seemed to have pushed the slow-button in her head. She rubbed at her eyes, groped around with numb hands.

Wood. There was wood all around her-floor, walls, ceiling, it was like being inside a crate, no, not a crate, more like being inside a jewelbox, beautifully assembled rectangles of wood, grain flowing into grain, the joins so tight they were invisible. There was a band of carving up near the ceiling, she could see shadows shifting across the low relief, her eyes blurred when she tried to make out the design. No windows. But the room was filled with light, dancing light, dappled with leafshadow. Thinking about that made her head ache, so she stopped. Door. She couldn't see the door, probably it was somewhere behind it-if there was a door. The room seemed to be rocking slowly in time with groans and creaks that crept through the walls. At first she thought it was her head playing games with her, then she felt the shifting of the floor under her back, the pressure and release. "Awawashahiken wepastan." She heard what she'd just said, blinked. "Kekwa…?"

The lacertine grinned, baring a pair of curved needle fangs and the small sharp chisel teeth between them. "Yes, the room is moving, you're not off your head. And your tongue's not gone wild on you, give it a minute or two, it'll come loose from the local langue. We been imprinted. One of the more useful things our captor did us, though I hate to think what else he might've fiddled with."

"E-heh. Ahhhh." She slapped the floor, then forgot speech for the moment and pushed up onto her feet. "Shadith," she said and held out her hand. "Of nowhere in particular." She blinked again. He was right, the twist of her tongue was gone.

Eyes slitted, face contorted with silent laughter, he looked at the hand, then took it as if it were a precious object and bowed over it with exaggerated grace. "Naiyol Hanee, late of Spotchals, born and bred of DunyaDzi which you won't have heard of." He straightened and shook her hand gravely, removed his own and watched with amiable interest as she let her arm drop. "Call me Kikun."

She raised her brows, not quite sure how to take him. "Kikun it is." Hearing a groan behind her, she turned.

The other captive was sitting up, clutching at his head. "Wa!" he roared, "Misht'co mameash! Olowashish n'ta kawinosikoo! Yaiiii."

She chuckled, met a hot yellow gaze. "I know, I know," she said. "My head was sore as a boil, too, and I was ready to bark like a dog and bite anything that moved. Yeh. Kikun said we been imprinted with the local langue. My name's Shadith. Who're you?"

"Rohant vohv Voallts, Ciocan of Family Voallts, Gazgaort of Company Voallts Korlatch of Spotch-Helspar. I don't know you." He'd got his tongue untwisted faster than she did.

"No reason you should. I've never been down on Spotchals surface. Ginny scooped me up when I came round a corner minding my own business and ran into the lot of you. According to him, his Luck brought me to his hands. What I think of my Luck is too obscene for mixed company."

Rohant the Ciocan went still as a startled yool, though only for a moment. Then his ears twitched, twitched again; a translucent inner eyelid swept across his eyes, snapped down. If he'd had a tail, it would have been switching back and forth, in short, sharp jerks. "Ginny?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to talk in here."

– Your call, csecse." He came to his feet with an impressive elasticity given eighty-three days under drugs and bloodfeed. Fists on his hips, his mane brushing the ceiling, he inspected the room.

The floor shifted under them.

"What the hell is this place? It's moving." He sounded so indignant that Shadith was surprised into a giggle.

He glanced at her, snorted, then crossed the room in two long strides, slapped his hand against the broad button on the jamb.

The door opened toward him, nearly hit him in the nose. He snorted again, ducked through the opening.

Shadith blinked as Kikun came round her and went out after the Ciocan; she'd forgotten him completely. It was as if he'd erased himself from her senses-all her senses. Which was very odd indeed. She was ALWAYS aware of people around her. She might not pay any attention to them, but she knew they were there. Slowly, thoughtfully, she followed Kikun and walked into a bare box like the room she'd just left, though about twice as large and with a few welcome additions, her harpcase, for one, and her travelpouch, along with two other, smaller pouches sewn from twill.

She toed a twill pouch. "Yours?"

Rohant shrugged. "If they're strangers, I suppose so. Courtesy of our captor."

She opened her case, smiled as she touched the instrument inside. Swardheld had spent months on the harp, getting her shape right, polishing her wood, dark chestnut streaked with umber, until it glowed, carving her floral cartouches, laying in her ivory plates and scrolls of copper and silver wire. Shadith set her hand flat on the strings, a gentle caress meant as much for Swardheld as for the harp herself. She shut the case, clicked the catches home and began looking through her travelpoucheverything in place, even her weapon satchel. She thumbed the locks on the satchel, scowled as nothing happened.

"That bitch, she broke my locks."

She tipped back the lid, took out her stunner, checked the charge. Topped up. Busy little minkhas, aren't they. Needier? Yup, clip's full, juiced up and ready to go. Cutter. Pry-tractor. EY Es. Picklocks. Rand-read. Miniprobe. Knives, one, two… uh… hunh! All seven. With fingerprints all over them.

She didn't like people handling her things, she didn't like it almost as much as she didn't like that creep guard handling her. She found a scrap of sham and began polishing the blade of the buwie.

"You're a surprising little kit-cat, Shadith." Rohant the Ciocan wiggled his shaggy brows. "Where you taking all that?"

"University." She inspected the steel, smiled when she saw the fingerprints were gone. She slid the buwie into its slot and drew out the crystal stittoe, swore at the cloudy marks on the transparent blade and exchanged the sham for a glassrag.

"Always struck me as a peaceful sort of place. You planning to make war on the professors?"

"That's stupid. We'll get along a lot better if you forget what I look like and stop treating me like some vacant-brained nit. While I'm finishing here, why don't you.." she looked around, scowled when she saw Kikun had gone somewhere; she'd missed him again, "… that little man's a ghost! Why don't you follow him and find out what this place is?" She began working on the stittoe's blade, very careful around the edges.

He grunted, went stomping off.

Shadith smiled. Should be used to it, old lion. What I hear, a Ciocan's Toerfeles beats up on him just for the practice.

She inspected the stittoe, slotted it and took up the first of the throwing knives, then worked steadily until she had all the blades smooth and gleaming and back in their slots. She looked through the rest of her instrumentation, gave the surfaces a quick wipe with a dustcover. She tried out the latches; they snapped home with satisfying chinks. The locks were broken, but she could clamp the satchel shut and be reasonably certain it'd stay closed. She rubbed at her nose, contemplated its battered simleather sides, thinking over what had happened to her, wondering where she should go from here. I'd forgot what it's like being weak, how you have to behave, how wary you have to be. It sucks, having to walk round ready to massacre people. Words, words, Shadow, just words. Why'd you bring these toys if you didn't plan to use them? Wrong mindset, that's what. If you'd had one of those shooters back there, what would it've got you? Dumped in a lethal chamber, that's all. Can't fight the fuzz with force, you've got to use your head, not your gut. I suppose so. Right. You should have gone straight for Guard Headquarters, dropping Lee's name whenever you had a chance. You should have flattered them, got them to show you around their operation as a courtesy to Hunters Inc. You played the child well enough for Ginny, why not for that creep's boss? Tell that High Hoofta stories enough about Lee to addle his brain, if any, and tickle his gizzard, tease him into escorting you to the shuttle. What could the creep do then? But your mind wasn't right, was it? Blind and bedamned. I suppose so, but cleverness doesn't work all the time; people can be so sharp they cut themselves. I need friends, connections, backing. And in the meantime, I need the damn gun.

She opened the satchel, took out the needier, clipped it inside her shirt. Swardheld had pulled a Pa'ao Teely weaponsmith out of a bad hole last year and got the needier as a thank gift; he passed it on to her along with the harp. He was a good friend, generous, and she seriously adored him, but she was getting deathly sick of saying thank you, thank you for everything she owned. She twitched her shoulders and bent over the satchel, running her finger along the knife hilts. She chose her hideaway knife, its hilt and blade molded from the same piece of Jaje braincrystal. It was flexible as an armsdealer's morals and a bitch to use with any skill, but it was as close to indetectable as a weapon could get. She slipped it into the crystal-lined sheath in her left boot and stood.

As in the other room, there was a band of carving in low relief about three hands wide around the top of the wall, blocky, simplified, animal forms which incorporated side, front, and top views in each image, along with inside and out. A berry vine (click on the langue imprint: amtapishk) twined about them and spread its leaves between them, punctuating the spaces with its bumpy fruit. There were ventilation slots above the frieze and holes pierced through it among the twists and turns of the amtapishka vine; the light coming through those holes was diffuse and unsteady; a rustling whisper came with it along with an assortment of muted creaks and groans; if she had to guess she'd say whoever built the place had mirrors bringing in sunlight from outside.

She slung the strap of the harpcase over her shoulder and went out.

The hallway beyond the door ended in a wall on her left; to her right she could see several other doors, each with a spiral of running felinoids (click, mioweh) in a central cartouche with a white card in the paws of the ursinoid (click, maskin) at the heart of each spiral.

She turned round. There was a card on the door she'd just closed behind her with an arrow scrawled across it, pointing away down the hall. The spoor of the Ciocan. Or is it Kikun? Hmh.

She took the card, put it back blank side out. Better not leave obvious traces.

The wind noises got louder, the floor moved under her feet. All right, all right, don't have to get snarky about it. I'm going.

She went round one corner, then another, following the track of the arrows, flipping the cards as she came on them, passing several crossways as she had when she was running on a leash inside the Station, an uncomfortable comparison she put out of her head as soon as it occurred to her. She moved faster and faster in her impatience to get out of there.

The card trail ended at a wide, heavy door, every inch of it deeply carved into a single beastform, maskin male in a threat posture; it was less complex than the frieze designs, more realistic. The maskin's massive back was turned to the hallway, his snarling muzzle in side view so his teeth and tongue were visible, one little squinty eye.

She closed her hand into a fist, banged it against the stud in the center of the iron wrist-ring on the maskin's left forepaw. There was a low thunk and the door opened a crack. She gave it a shove, stepped onto a small platform and looked around. Tree. We're up a damn tree.

The house was built over the massive central trunk (to her eye it was at least fifty meters wide) with wings connected by crosshalls spreading another fifty meters along side branches supported by hundreds of secondary trunks. Slender leaf-bearing limbs rose vertically around the perimeter of the building, curved inward above the house to form a thick green dome. It was pleasantly cool with enough sun filtering through to send leaf shadows dancing. She could see motorized mirrors fixed to the rib branches, catching that light and shooting it at the roof of the house, confirming her earlier guess. Riiight, I am one smart little bint. Hah! If you so smart, Shadow, what you doing here?

The leaves brushed against each other with a finely nuanced sound that was very much like a room full of whisperers. The name drifted into her mind, click-click. "Whisper Tree," she said aloud. "Yeh." She leaned against the rail and looked around. "Where now? How does one get to the ground?"

At the left end of this front porch there was a square of a different sort of wood, dark blue almost purple with brown streaks in it, big enough to hold two of her but a squeeze for the Ciocan. There was a pillared railing around three sides, carved from more of the purplewood. A gate of purplewood was swung back against the wall, pinned there by a bar-and-magnet latch. About two meters above the square, there was a domeshaped canopy carved from the purplewood, with two long reels tucked up under it and cables running from each end of each reel to the corners of the railing. There was a green leaf caught between the end of the square base and the house platform, the sap oozing from it still wet. She scowled down through the heavy shadow around the secondary trunks, but didn't see any broken bodies on the dirt below. That's reassuring, I think. Well, if it worked for the Ciocan.

She stepped on the base, tugged the gate from the magnet and slammed it shut. Above her, something whirred; after a slight hesitation the cables began to unwind and the base went down smoothly, swaying a little as the cables lengthened, scraping against the secondary trunks that were clustered close about it, descending into the stifling green twilight around them.

It stopped a handspan from the ground.

She opened the gate and stepped down, edged past air roots like straggly white hair that wobbled around her, scraped along the harpcase she had slung over her shoulder; they brushed against her body, her face, they tickled her, seemed to reach for her eyes. Yukh. Why don't they shave the damn things off?

Behind her she heard the soft sounds of the lift retreating upward, the brush-thunk as the open gate banged against the trunks. Paranoid little minkhas, or maybe it's Ginny doing his thing. I suppose we have to climb the tree to get back in the house. I knew I should've brought everything with me.

She worked outward toward the light. The supports were wider apart and got smaller as she moved away from the main trunk, the air roots were wilder and wispier.

She emerged into the slanted sunlight of late afternoon and found herself wading through the short curly grass of a mountain meadow half a kilometer across, ringed by huge ancient conifers like a scraggly, green-black hedge.