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  “Your friends are already dead. You told me it is a custom, that dying here in the desert. That is how you live with the earth. You make it a grave.”

  “You have no right to judge us.”

  He drew back. His face was masked by darkness. “You have judged me. You wanted me to die, and called on that God you believe in to strike me. Do not tell me what to think. You would not even allow me to help your companions, so you have made me a part of all this.”

  Daiya hid her face in her hands. She thought of Sude, who might have been helped, and of Mausi, hoping to join God. “I can't go back,” she said softly. She did not want to die. She was as much of a coward as Sude had been. “I can't go back.”

  Reiho was pulling her hands from her face. “I am sorry, Daiya.” She let him hold her hands for a while, then pulled them away. He leaned back against the craft. “Tell me what I should do. I cannot leave you here, if what you say is true. I would worry, and I would return, and then I would create more difficulties.” He paused. “Do you want to come to my world with me?”

  She gasped, shocked at the idea. “Up there? I would die, I am not like you.”

  “No, you would not. It is not what you think.”

  “Your people would not want me there.”

  “If I explained things to them, they would understand. They would be interested in you and your ways. It is my fault you cannot return to your town safely.”

  “No,” she said. “It is my fault. I had set my feet on this path long before you came here. I wouldn't have lived through my ordeal if you hadn't been here.”

  “You are telling me that to ease my mind.”

  “I'm telling you that because it's true. I have no desire to ease your mind.” She waved a hand, not wanting to pursue those thoughts. “Look at you, your skin is not skin, your heart is not a heart, your body is more like your craft's there than like mine, and you want me to go to a world with such people. And they will find me as strange as I find them, I am sure.”

  “They will be interested in you,” he said. “After they see you, they may want to visit with you. At least we can try. I must make things up to you.”

  “You can't do that, ever,” she said, making sure she spoke clearly. She drew up her legs, wrapping her arms around them. She realized she had no real alternative. The worst that could happen was that his people would not want her, and then she would be brought back here; Reiho would have to do at least that much. Perhaps the comet people would kill her, but if she stayed here her own village would do the same. The Merging Ones would seek her out, searching the area with their minds, and even if she went far from here, another village would find her. At best, she would die slowly while foraging for food and water. Or she would go mad, and kill herself. All of that could happen anyway.

  She touched Reiho's thoughts. His concern for her was mixed with guilt, guilt that muddied the cool stream of his sympathy. There was something else beneath the stream's surface. She probed it and felt warm waters; she withdrew quickly. She gazed up at the bright comet with dread, surprised to find that it and everything it held could be less of a threat to her than her own world.

  “Will you bring me back,” she said hastily, “if your people do not want me?”

  “Of course, but I am sure they will let you stay. I know it will be hard for you at first, but...”

  “Will you bring me back if they wish to kill me?” If she was going to die, she thought, she would die in her own place, not on a world in the sky.

  She felt Reiho's shock. “No one will kill you. Why should anyone wish to do that?” His voice trembled slightly.

  She could not see his face. She huddled in the darkness, realizing that he had not threatened her, had never threatened her. The light he had used inside the mountain had burned through rock. It could have pierced her body in an instant, had he turned it on her before she could grasp his intention, yet he had not tried to use it against her, not even when she had attacked him. Violence seemed far from his mind, at least far from what she could read in him, which was little enough. It was as if he lacked some of the humors that made people rage and wish to strike out.

  He rested a hand on her sleeve, as if to reassure her. “They will only want to understand you and learn about you,” he went on. “They will want to know what life is like here.”

  “It is very strange,” she murmured. “There is one thing my people believe very strongly, and that is that we should not divide ourselves from one another, that we must look into the minds of others and see as they see. In that way, we become more like God, who sees and understands everything. I know that you are another mind, however different you are, even though you are deficient.” She paused, wondering if he would object to that way of putting it. “Now you tell me that others of your kind would try to understand me. And yet I know that my own people would kill you in an instant, there would be no understanding. They would see you as I first did, as a mindless thing.” She turned away from him slightly, glad that the darkness hid her face. “We are divided from you and your people, we are divided from other minds. Sharing is only for our own people. It is a great evil, and it seems my world is trapped in it.” She rested her forehead on her knees. “I can't believe it,” she said to the ground.

  Reiho said. “Do you want to go with me?”

  She lifted her head. “I have no choice.”

  Daiya sat in the shuttle. She had rested under Reiho's strange light, sure such a thing could not clean her, yet it had. She felt as though she had bathed in the river with soap, though the light, unlike brown soap, made her skin feel smooth rather than dry and chapped. She had put her clothes under the light as well. She no longer itched, and her garments were clean.

  She glanced at Reiho lazily as he spoke to the craft in his own language. He had passed one of his peculiar instruments over her moments before, then given her a cup of liquid to swallow, saying it would calm her. She had again been suspicious until she read his thoughts; he wanted only to ease the fear and shock she might feel upon entering a new world. Her mind had grown placid after swallowing the potion. She was adrift, between waking and sleeping. All that had happened to her now seemed far away, distant in time; she might have dreamt it. She thought of her dead friends. The pain of the memory was dulled.

  The craft rose. The mountains to her right fell away quickly, though she could not feel any movement. She saw the yellow of the desert, the green and brown of the land on the other side of the mountains. She searched idly for the village and could not see it. Then the land was gone; there was only a vast blue body of water beneath them.

  The earth fell away. It seemed fragile; only a thin transparent shield protected it from the empty blackness that now enveloped them. They fled from her world, now only a round ornament against a black fabric with tiny white holes. The earth was a globe; she had always imagined something quite different, a disk perhaps. It was the center of all, the favored dream of God, guarded by Luna from the forces of isolation and illusion, yet now it seemed small and unimportant. The stars, she noticed, did not twinkle here, but shone as steadily as distant watchfires.

  She turned her head. It was an effort. She gazed straight ahead. She began to feel grateful for Reiho's potion; without it, these visions would have driven her mad. Even now, though seemingly buried under swaths of cotton, a small part of her mind was screaming, reeling in terror, though the fear seemed unable to penetrate to her consciousness. She could not sense Reiho's thoughts, even when she tried; his potion must have dulled her senses. She blinked and shook her head groggily. She saw a burning disk, Heaven's Fire, the sun; it could not be anything else.

  Before them, the long tail of the comet was growing larger. “As we get closer to the sun,” Reiho said, “some of the ices which make up our world evaporate, and create the tail you see. The solar wind forces it out, blows it away from the sun, if you will.” She did not understand exactly what he was saying, but forced herself to listen, hoping knowledge of this world would
dampen her fear. “There are millions of comets and asteroids in the Halo at the edge of this planetary system.”

  They fell toward the tail and were soon enveloped in a misty light. The light shifted and danced, sparkling. She looked ahead and gasped, sure that in spite of the calming liquid, she had lost her mind at last. She said, “Reiho.” Her voice was only a croak, the name barely more than a whispered plea. Her body was numb, her mind almost blank, but that small part of her was still screaming, threatening to break through her artificial calm.

  The circular object in front of them was growing, becoming more than a dark spot beyond the light around them. It grew larger, becoming a nimbus permeated by dark veins. Daiya stiffened. The object became a seed, a seed sprouting stems. It wasn't possible. How could such things grow away from Earth?

  The terms became branches, covered with leaves. They were soon in the midst of the foliage, an insect in a jungle. She peered out the side of the craft through the dome. Shiny flat tapered surfaces, silvery mirrors and green glassy leaves, glistened along the branches. The branches met and entwined growing larger as they passed. “Trees,” she said suddenly. But these trees were thousands of paces thick, perhaps millions of paces high. They were the trees of a giant, of a monster.

  “They are trees, or at least their ancestors were trees,” Reiho said. His voice sounded muffled, far away. “They are greatly changed and modified, not like your trees, but they too are the descendants of Earth.”

  “It cannot be,” she replied. The words rolled in her mouth, blurred and indistinct. She stared at the tree limbs. Their surface was metallic, like copper, yet bumpy and ridged like bark.

  “They are,” he answered. “I shall try to explain. Their leaves, of course, have reflective surfaces to capture light, and the oxygen that they produce is channelled down to our world through the trunks and roots, instead of being lost in space. Long ago, when we first settled this world, we could not live out in the Halo, it was too far from sunlight for the trees to flourish, and we had to move closer to the sun. But now they are capable of living far from the sun, the combined surface of the leaves is so vast, and our modifications so successful, that our needs can be met at great distances.”

  “Don't explain,” she muttered. “I can't understand.” They were surrounded by thick trunks. Ahead, a webbing of coppery limbs covered thick foliage; lights twinkled amongst the green growth. She had not known what to expect on Reiho's world, but she had not anticipated a forest.

  The coppery limbs, she saw, were roots, thousands and thousands of paces thick, high as mountains. The craft flew among them, toward a lighted space beneath one root. The space contained a tiny garden, small trees, spots of pastel color, little creatures—people. She shook her head. The craft darted into the root and settled on the green grass.

  Daiya pressed her back against her seat. Her mind was clearing. Her terror was growing sharper. She looked at Reiho. There was a wall between them. She still could not touch his thoughts. She clutched at her tunic. She knew the potion was wearing off; something was wrong. She was mindless, locked inside herself.

  “Daiya, are you all right?” He reached for her hand. She pushed him away. She focused on a small metal box resting on the panel in front of her, trying to move it with her mind. It was still, unmoving.

  A scream escaped her. Reiho held her shoulders. “My mind!” she cried in agony. “My powers are gone!” She looked around wildly. The boy had done something to her. He had poisoned her with his potion.

  She tried to strike him. He pulled away. She shook herself loose from him. He grabbed her arms. Unable to read his thoughts, she could not tell what he would do. “You've tricked me.”

  “I have not tricked you. Tell me what is wrong.”

  She pulled one hand loose and struck him. She gasped at the pain, and slumped forward. He released her other hand. She pushed against the door. It slid open, spilling her out of the vehicle. She could not lift herself, could not heal herself, could not fly, could not mindspeak. She rolled over and stumbled to her feet.

  Reiho was running around the front of the shuttle toward her. Her legs were filled with water. The silence roared inside her head. A man's face, pale and blue-eyed, was in front of her; she felt nothing behind the face, could not read the man's intentions. She threw out her arms and pushed, meeting something solid. The face disappeared. She began to run. She tripped and slammed into another shuttle.

  She got up, moaning. Her shoulder felt bruised. She turned and saw other faces, eyes wide, mouths open. She spun around and ran in another direction, darting past other shuttles. Her feet pounded silently over the soft grass. She turned to her right, away from the vehicles, toward a group of trees. Voices babbled nearby; she seemed to hear another voice, a deep penetrating one, thundering from above. She continued to run. She stumbled, narrowly missed a tree, and tumbled onto the grass.

  She looked around. Three small figures—children—were staring at her with big eyes. She could not touch their minds. She moaned. One child smiled. Another stretched out a hand; its lips moved. Daiya got up and fled.

  She was trapped in shadows. She stopped and surveyed her surroundings. She was in a forest, lost among trees. She leaned against one tree, panting for breath. She narrowed her eyes. There was something odd about the wooded region. She sniffed. Only the mingled fragrances of flowers reached her; there were no odors of dead leaves and dirt. She looked down at her feet. The weedless grass was short and tidy. For a moment, she thought she heard a bird singing in the distance.

  She was lost. She could not make her way around this world.

  She bent over for a moment, letting the blood rush to her head, then straightened. Her mind was gone; she was a solitary. She had been punished, struck down. She had sought isolation and now she had it. She had lost all her powers. Even her body was closed off from her, a prison enclosing her mind. She could not control herself. She felt her bruise. Her shoulder was hurting her badly, and she could not reach inside herself to heal it.

  Her stomach lurched. She fell to her knees, sick and weary. She vomited; her body was raging out of control. Sobbing, she tried to rise.

  “Daiya.”

  She looked up. Reiho was coming toward her. She wanted to crush his mind, squeeze it until the blood spurted from his eyes.

  “I followed you.” He reached out with one arm. She crawled away from him. “I am sorry. I should have prepared you for what you would find.”

  There were others with the boy. She saw them now. They stood among the trees. One man was almost crouching, holding his hands in front of his chest as if she were a wild creature that would pounce on him. Slowly, she got to her feet and lifted her head. They had come to judge her. “What are they going to do to me?”

  “Nothing. They are only curious.”

  “I don't believe you, you've tricked me.”

  “I shall send them away if you wish.”

  “Send them away.”

  Reiho went to the crouching man and spoke to him. The people vanished among the trees, glancing back at her as they went. She could not sense their minds. She wondered if they were real.

  Reiho returned and tried to take her hand. She pulled away. She said, “You have condemned me. I cannot feel anything, your world is dead to me.”

  “Daiya, I think I know what is wrong.”

  “You have condemned me.” Her hands and feet felt very cold. Her shoulder throbbed; her muscles were growing stiff. The trees were still and their leaves did not rustle; there was no breeze. This world was an illusion; she understood that now. If she lived, she would be crippled and alone.

  She turned her head. A thing stood several paces in front of her, a squat square thing with limbs like pincers. It lit up and beeped. It was her executioner, it would crush her with its limbs. She stared at it numbly. Her vision blurred and she staggered. She saw Reiho's feet moving toward her, and felt the coolness and softness of the grass against her cheek before she passed out.

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1

  Daiya was dimly conscious. She seemed to be floating, yet she could feel something against her back. She rested, keeping her eyes closed, trying to orient herself. She was afraid to look, wondering if her vision would be taken from her next, and then her hearing, and then touch, trapping her in a darkness as black as the creature who had enveloped her during her ordeal. That thought seemed abstract; the horror of the memory was not penetrating to her. She stirred slightly. The pressure against her back seemed to shift, molding itself to her. She drifted off again, thinking she heard voices in the distance. She could not make out the words. The voices rose and fell, soothing her with their tones.

  She opened her eyes. She felt lethargic; the fires inside her were banked and smoldering. Leafy tree branches formed a roof over her. She still felt as though she were floating. She turned on her side and faced a wall of ivy. She was on a platform of some kind. It seemed to shift with her, forming itself around her as if it were a living thing. She shuddered, wondering how a person could rest on such a platform.

  The memory of her journey with Reiho returned; someone must have given her another calming potion. She stretched her legs, wiggling her toes. She sat up slowly. Her moccasins, slacks, belt, and knife had been removed, folded, and placed at her side. She was surrounded by a green curtain of ivy; four trees grew at each corner of the platform.

  She lay down again, feeling weak. Suddenly a hand swept away the vines facing her. She blinked. She was inside a cave, or so it seemed. Two small twisted trees, surrounded by tiny red buds, grew next to the cave wall. Bright lights danced along the wall, streams of them, red and gold and white, streaking up, then down, twisting themselves into patterns. Reiho was sprawled on a light brown mass that looked like a lopsided mushroom, his feet resting on the grassy ground. A platform floated in front of him; two other people stood near him. The people flickered, then vanished. It was like the trick the Merging Ones could do, and she wondered how these people did it. They had no powers. Neither did she, any more.