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  “What did you do to your arm? Those scars?”

  He looked at her and at his wrist, and then at her face again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” The shadows shifted and the wind moaned faintly in the fronds.

  “We’ve both remembered something,” Elinda said with determination. “That’s good. We have to hold on to that fact.”

  “Something feels—wrong.”

  They were walking back along the path. The rising wind roared in the woods around them.

  “I don’t even know why I came to this world,” Grebbel said. “An enormous decision—was I running away, trying to find something—what? I can’t even guess. Do you know why you came?”

  “Not really. Sometimes—when I have spare pieces of paper—I draw. Just charcoal sketches—letting my fingers take over and see what they tell me. Sometimes it seems about to make sense, and I think I’m about to remember. Then my fingers won’t work anymore. It’s like a wall, or a mirror in my head, and I can’t get at what’s on the other side.”

  The wind roared again. They passed from moonlight to shade and back.

  “Is it colder now, or am I imagining it? If it’s the dawn gales starting already, we’re in for a bad few hours.”

  “It’s a bit colder,” he said, and reached to put his arm around her.

  She stiffened away from him. “No. Not now. I need to hold on now. I’ve got to hold myself together , or I’ll spatter.”

  “Later, then—can we meet again, later?”

  Around them, the trees creaked and rustled as they began to close up their fronds.

  She looked at him in the moonlight, the wind starting to cut her to the bone. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we’ll meet.”

  THREE

  Elinda woke with the dawn wind roaring about the house, and a sense that she had wakened often during the night, and had dreamed continuously when she slept. The floor quivered under her feet when she went to the bathroom. The window rattled, walls creaked, and the sounds grated on her nerves because she was alone with them. Last night’s notion of parading her own absence in front of Barbara had turned sour in the face of the empty place in bed beside her.

  She washed and dressed hurriedly and grabbed her flashlight. Without looking at the clock, she knew she was later than she should be, and she wanted to check at the clinic before she started work.

  The wind seized her at the door and shoved her onto the path. Lightning forked, flashing off a vast chaos of cloud. The thunder came as a deep hollow grating, and the dry air crackled over her skin as the beam from her lamp wavered before her. The wind tore the breath from her mouth as though she were drowning in a rushing river of air. She bent her knees, lowered her head and plunged into it.

  After the first minute the storm seemed less overpowering, and then the woods gave some shelter. She lifted her head and walked more easily.

  She did not turn her light onto the track leading to the stream. This morning she did not want to think about wooded slopes ending in fences, or the scars on Jon Grebbel’s wrist as the moonlight shivered about them, or the footprints she had not been able to follow in the dark. She remembered four others who gone exploring alone and later been discovered dead of exposure, apparently having made no effort to find shelter.

  In the woods, the darkness roared about her. Furled trees bent over, shaking. A windsower, jewelled with golden seed darts, sailed over her head and was snared by a branchnet.

  When she came to the bottom of the path, in the east, over the mountains, a sullen crimson glow was the first sign of the rising sun.

  Two people were working in the back room of the clinic that doubled as the stores and histology lab. Rena Schneider, the exobiologist, was there with Raul Osmon, a technician whom Elinda vaguely remembered seeing in one of the maintenance huts. Schneider looked up and said, “Good morning. I was just thinking of trying to call you at the Greenhouse. Can you tell me how long Barbara will be off? We’re having to take people from the emergency room to keep up with the sample analyses and classification. If she’s not too sick, we’d appreciate any help she could give us—an hour or two a day would make a difference.”

  Elinda bit her lip. “No, I’m afraid I don’t know how long she’ll be away. I was going to ask you . . . I haven’t seen her since the night before last.”

  “Isn’t that rather strange? She borrowed one of our pocket recorders three days ago, too. We’re not really supposed to let them out of the building. So . . .”

  “I should have checked here yesterday, or called in last night. I just thought she’d—decided to go off for a while, again. If you haven’t seen her, I’m going to talk to Security.”

  Under a purple-black sky, the low orange sunlight gleamed on the curved roof of the Security station. It was a squat prefabricated structure that had originally been used for fuel storage. Now it housed the on-duty constabulary, a couple of offices converted to cells, and a lot of unused space. The duty officer was sitting at a desk behind a trestle table smoking a tobacco pipe while he pecked at the inevitable computer keyboard. He put the pipe down carefully away from the computer while he listened to Elinda, and the wind moaned outside.

  “You know,” he said, when she had finished, “the whole trouble with this here township—no one’s got any healthy fear of their fellow humankind anymore. If this was a real city, like we were meant to live in, not you nor your friend would even be thinking of wandering around by yourselves at night. She’s done this before?”

  “Yes, twice. But only for a night.”

  “Well, it’s not the safest way of handling problems. Remember Billy Wu, last year, fell over a cliff in the dark. And we’ve got one missing right now. These woods are too big to search unless you know where to start. Tell you what we’ll do, though. I’ll type in what you told me, and we’ll make up a bulletin, with a description from the files, and put it out for people to read.”

  He began stabbing at the keyboard. “Now, about going searching for her . . .” He frowned and jabbed more keys. “We’re a bit short of staff right now. I’ll have to see when I’ve got people available. Why don’t you come back when we’ve got the bulletin made up, say around lunch hour?”

  “And what then?”

  “Then she’ll turn up. Always do, pretty well. What we need is for them biologists to discover a really nasty wild beast out in the woods. Keep everyone off the streets at night and safe indoors where they belong.” He was still frowning and pecking at the keyboard.

  “What if she doesn’t turn up? You were just saying how dangerous it was—”

  “You a gambling kind of person, by any chance?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Pity,” he said to the screen. “If you were a gambling kind of person, I’d be staking a month’s pay that your friend turns up safe and sound around lunch time.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Usually am.” Now he looked up and met her gaze. “Look, you and your friend are RAMwipes, right?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s part of my job—being right. We see it every few weeks: you’re both barrelling around in the dark, don’t know where you’ve come from, where you’re heading, and one of you flips out for a while. Happens all the time. Maybe you don’t like to hear that you’re just like everyone else—”

  “You’re not going to do anything?” she asked bitterly.

  “I can’t right now. Honestly. Come back at lunch hour. But she’ll have turned up by then, and you’ll be glad you’re not a gambling person.”

  Elinda walked out of the Security office. In the past, Barbara had gone off for a night when things were tense between them, had come back the next day talking of starlight and frost, and they had reconciled over the next day or so. This was looking different, and the officer’s lack of enthusiasm made her feel she should have become worried sooner.

  She walked past work crews clearing branches and pod husks from the streets in the half-
dark. At the edge of the landing field, Jessamyn and her class of six ten-year-olds were starting to fly kites, the children in pairs, assembling a hawk and two dragons, and running with shouts and laughter into the wind, then chasing the successful flights with flashlight beams. Turned to the dawn, Jessamyn’s face was as flushed and eager as any of the children’s. She hurried from group to group, until suddenly all three kites were airborne, and she was not needed for the moment. Then Elinda saw the strain in her body and guessed she was thinking of Barbara.

  In the office, Larsen and Chris were examining computer projections for some experiments Larsen was planning to have run in the lab next to the clinic. Elinda told them their plans would probably be delayed, because the lab was short a technician.

  Larsen caught the edge in her voice and asked her to explain.

  Afterward, Larsen asked, “Is there anything you feel you should do?”

  She shrugged. “Try and get someone to look for Barbara—otherwise, try and follow those tracks myself.”

  “No. Don’t go up there alone. That would be an unnecessary risk. But if you think you can induce someone in authority to organise a search, you should do it; we mustn’t lose track of our basic values. If unqualified personnel are needed, we can help you ourselves.”

  Chris looked surprised at being volunteered, but he nodded.

  “Okay,” she said, and refastened her coat. “I’ll let you know what happens. Thanks.”

  She found she wasn’t ready to go and demand a search party. She compromised by going to the cafeteria for breakfast, as preparation for either a clash with authority or a hike into the woods. Without hope, she scanned the few latecomers still eating and the other stragglers like herself. Barbara was not there.

  Elinda took her food to an empty table, to eat quickly and be gone. Just after she sat down, Jon Grebbel came in.

  He was pale and tense, staring about him without seeming aware of what he saw. He must have come from a therapy session. She remembered the little arrowhead of wrinkles at the corner of his eye as he stared at his moonlight-dripping hand. Now he caught sight of her, and his face changed, his inward-directed tension seemed to ease. He brought his tray to her table.

  “Good morning.” He grimaced as he sat down. “I feel wrung out. Is the therapy always this tough?”

  “You do look as though you’ve had some kind of workout. I don’t remember it being that harrowing.” She looked at his hands, gripping the edge of the table. “Do you think last night had anything to do with it?”

  “I’ve no idea, it’s only my second time.” He shrugged with an apparent effort and began to eat. “I had some dreams last night, and when I woke up, I couldn’t remember what they’d been about. But I seemed to be getting near them sometimes in the clinic today.” He paused and when she waited, watching him, went on. “It’s like climbing a cliff. You get almost to the top, and then, just as you lift yourself up to look, the earth slips away from under you and you have to start again from the bottom.” He shook his head. “They finished with me half an hour ago. I needed this long to get myself back together.”

  His gaze had become focussed on her as he spoke. She had the slightly uncomfortable sensation of being memorised or evaluated. She wondered what his finding would be.

  “Something’s worrying you,” he said.

  She hesitated. “I’m looking for someone. If she hasn’t turned up by the time I’ve finished eating, I’m going higher up the ladder in Security to get a search started.”

  “A friend.”

  “We’re—we were very close. But recently . . .” She stopped in confusion, realising what she had said, and been about to say, and what she had not said. I’m looking for my lover. . . . She had dreamt of him last night, she realised suddenly. Lying alone in the bed with Barbara missing, she had dreamt of herself and Jon Grebbel cocooned in warmth, while the moonlight eddied around them like snow. She pushed her plate away. “I’d better get going.”

  “Wait—I’ve got my first shift with the trucks coming up, or I’d help you search—”

  “No, that’s all right—”

  “—but I thought we were getting somewhere last night, remembering. You said it worked better than their therapy. I’d like to try again.”

  “I don’t know. . . .” She pushed her chair back from the table.

  “I’d like to very much,” he said. “I’m sure it’s important. I feel it.”

  She realised she was still sitting, meeting his eyes.

  “After dinner, by the stream. But it won’t be dark.”

  Had he said that, or had she spoken the words in her head?

  “. . . if you find your friend first, of course,” he said, and smiled.

  “We’ll see. I don’t know—”

  She got to her feet and hurried out.

  “You’re early,” said the man at the desk. “Back home, we’d make you wait outside till we’d all decided lunch time was over, just to teach you humility, and by then it would be getting dark. But I guess your friend hasn’t got hungry enough to come back, and you’re a mite worried. Well, we’re getting the bulletins copied and there’s a notice on the datanet. . . .”

  Elinda said, “If you don’t start getting a search party organised now, I’m going up there to find her myself.”

  “Well, now.” He glanced at his computer screen. “I’ve got my orders, my priorities. . . . But, hell, it wouldn’t do a lot of harm if someone took a look round where you thought she’d gone. I can’t leave this desk right now, so I guess we’ll see if Charley feels like taking an extended coffee break. If you and she don’t find anything, we’ll see what we can do about the priorities.”

  Through heavy clouds, the low sun lit green fans, bluish leaf blades, webs of silver that swayed overhead and flailed in slow motion as they opened to the air. Elinda and Charley, the security officer, reached the turnoff towards the stream and paused, buffeted by the winds. “I’m pretty sure she went that way,” Elinda said. “There were fresh tracks yesterday morning, and it was too early for anyone else who’d be likely to take that path.”

  “You didn’t look?”

  “Not all the way. It didn’t seem urgent at first, and then the tracks were fading. I went as far as the stream last night, but I couldn’t find anything.”

  “The tracks will be worse now,” Charley said. “The sooner we start looking, the better.”

  Between patches of glistening, grimy snow, the mud was still thick. Dead leaves from the previous autumn had begun to spume away from drifts under the trees. Walking from shade to red sunlight and back, Elinda had to squint into the shadows and the wiry scrub on either side of the path.

  A scaly grey burrower shuffled from the undergrowth, with the bright blue of a rider cresting its head like an orchid on a rock. The rider’s head twitched upward towards Elinda and Charley, and it sent its mount scuttling back out of sight.

  “Too much traffic and wind scouring,” said Charley. “I can’t make sense of these prints.”

  “Maybe it’ll be easier on the other side of the stream.”

  “Hope so, if we’re not on a wild goose chase. Be nice if we are, though. This game used to be fun.” She walked on, talking into the wind, without turning to Elinda. “I haven’t had much time for it here, but back home, we used to go out in the bush every chance we got, Rick and I . . .”

  The stream glittered in front of them, frothing around the stepping stones. A silver-blue bird-like creature on the far bank squawked and fluttered into a tree. . . .

  Elinda realised she had hardly listened to what the woman had just said. She stopped and looked at her. “You had a son? I mean—I didn’t realise. What happened?”

  “The sort of thing that happens to a cop’s kid sometimes.” They walked a few paces in silence. “Then I reckoned I’d learned enough about that world, and maybe it was time to try somewhere else.”

  Elinda was standing on the first stone, with the rush of the stream filling her ears. “I
’m sorry,” she said, too loudly. “I shouldn’t have asked you that.” The glare from the water stabbed at her eyes.

  Charley shrugged. “It’s as much a part of what I am as any of the good times.” Her voice was almost drowned by the sound of the stream. “It doesn’t do to pretend things never happened.”

  “Let’s go on,” Elinda said. “It’s colder near the water, isn’t it?”

  They crossed to the far bank. Here the ground was steeper; it sloped up ahead and to the left. Snow lay in the shaded side of every hollow. None was marked by footprints. Outcrops of grey limestone pushed through the soil, with dead leaves silted up against them. An insect whirred, another avian drifted from branch to branch across the path. Something scurried in the undergrowth.

  Charley pointed. “Looks like someone came this far, anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t have spotted those. Can you follow them?”

  “Sure. They’re really quite clear, but they’re closely spaced. Whoever made them was still following the path, but going slowly. Maybe it was too dark to see, or maybe she was looking for something.”

  She, Elinda, thought; they had both accepted that the tracks were Barbara’s. Maybe she was looking for something. And—what? Got lost? Twisted an ankle? Found what she was looking for?

  “The ground’s drier here,” Charley said. “The traces are getting hard to follow. I’m not a professional at this, you understand.”

  “What’s that? It looks like something broke through the scrub down there.”

  “Right.”

  The path was fading among bare brown undergrowth and rocky scree. To their left an outcropping of grey rock rose almost sheer; to the right the ground fell away at almost forty-five degrees. Ten metres below them, a couple of leafless birdcatcher bushes had been broken down. If there was any more indication of what had happened, it was hidden by trees and another outcrop of rock.

  They edged diagonally down the slope, the scree threatening to slide under their boots. Elinda found herself icily calm. She let Charley go first and examine the broken bushes.