Farfetch

For long-drawn moments her image was the palest ghost of the reality she sensed, and time after time, a rush of despair weakened her. But each time, she caught herself up and redoubled the effort, her whole will behind it. They couldn't afford to lose Jindigar—they'd all die here. She was not going to let Desdinda's ghost rob her of Jindigar, or Jindigar of the good life he'd earned.

Suddenly resistance weakened, and she commanded the triad, forcing Frey to cha

In a fit of unthinking panic she flung all her strength against the menace. To no avail. Frey, nerves afire, screaming pain, squirmed and fought the grip on him, reflexes slamming against her invasion. Krinata, determined, reached for Jindigar. Abruptly, something flipped inside out.

She tumbled into a black abyss, bright points streaming past, out of control, terror vanishing into numbness, just like the time she'd spun away from her tether in deep space. Phobic paralysis gripped her.

THREE

Scars

There was a warm weight on her chest, and a rough tongue licked her face. She smelled the odor of piol fur and felt the sharp prick of claws kneading her chest.

She was in a cool enclosure, a cave, lit only by the dancing orange flame of a camp fire. The air was pungently moist with the aroma of soup. The roof was low. There was barely room for all the people curled, huddled, or sprawled on the sandy floor amid piles of cargo. Dim beige light filtered through cracks around the cargo piled at the entrance, but fingers of dry wind pried into the cave. Gusts produced an eerie, whining howl, above the constant dull roar.

Krinata's head hurt. The rest of her body seemed to have been chewed on by something with sharp teeth.

At last she gathered the strength to shove Imp aside. He promptly curled up by her left ear and began grooming her hair. She discovered she was lying on a sleeping bag. Then it all came back to her, and she levered herself up on one elbow, trying to sift reality from nightmare.

Jindigar was propped against the wall beside her right shoulder, a white bandage wrapped around his forehead like the turban he often wore, and his napped skin was mottled with darker indigo patches, bruises and abrasions. He assured her, "Yes, you're alive."

Relief was followed by awareness of a lonely, single feeling she'd suffered after the triad had been dissolved the first time, not the walled-away feeling that had come when Jindigar and Prey had joined to read this planet. So even the duad was gone. "Where's Frey? What happened?"

"He's finally asleep." He gestured to the other side of the fire. "I think he'll live."

His tone bespoke an ordeal she didn't dare ask about. Raising her head a bit, she could just see Prey's indigo head outlined against a bright sleeping-bag liner. He was curled in a near-fetal position, shuddering with each breath.

She looked back at Jindigar. "You're all right?"

"Banged my head when they finally fished the sled down."

"The triad—I shouldn't have—I nearly killed us. Or– Desdinda did. I only meant—"

"To help? I thought you understood that every time you balance triad, you evoke the Loop, and Desdinda died wanting nothing but to kill us all." He hugged his knees and looked over them. "What do you remember after Desdinda hurled you into the Archive?"

"Is mat what happened?" How could a ghost do that? She remembered the sled capsizing, a surge of heightened awareness as the triad bonded them, and a chance to right the sled—pain, Prey's pain, then horror. "I dreamed I was out in space again, falling away from Truth into the galaxy." There was a stray image, a pond and a huge, improbable figure.

"The ephemeral mind is amazing." There was a thread of his normal delight in that, but a pall hung over his spirit.

She tried to raise herself, but her vision blurred and pain seized her. Against the noise of the storm, and in the semi-privacy of the heaps of goods, their voices had gone u

There was a stirring on the other side of the fire, and

Storm came around, saying reproachfully, "Jindigar, you promised to call me when she woke."

"How's Terab?" asked Jindigar, starting to get up.

"She's fine. Sleeping," answered Storm, pushing him back down. "Sometimes I envy the Holot constitution more than the Dushau! Arlai would have you under sedation, you know." He turned to inspect Krinata's head.

She realized her skull was swathed in bandages and explored them with a finger. "What happened to my head?"

"You hit it when you fell."

Storm sported no bandages, and Krinata asked, "How did you get the sled down?"

"When Terab grabbed the tether rope and Jindigar got his weight shifted to the side, we flipped it back over easily enough, but it barely missed crushing Jindigar, hit the ground, and dragged all of us a good way before we could stop it. I'm afraid that sled is done for."

"I suggest," said Jindigar thoughtfully, "we leave it in the cave here. We might come back for spare parts one day."

Storm agreed, adding, "We won't be traveling today, and you should be better tomorrow. Now, we've got some soup over here that the humans said wasn't bad, and I've dug out some medication that should help you. Willing, Krinata?"

"Yeah, sure," she answered. As Storm rose to get it she asked, "What about Trassle?"

"Trassle... died," said Jindigar.

Her breath caught. The children! Trassle's spacemanship had saved their lives more than once. "Allel and her children?"

The Lehiroh wilted. "She seems to be in shock, and the rest of us are helping the children. They're trying to be brave, but... Trassle was a survivor. They'll make it."

When he'd gone, Jindigar said, "That's the highest compliment I've ever heard Storm pay to anyone not a licensed Outrider. And I agree. I'm going to miss Trassle, but– Allel—She married an officer with unlimited potential who was cashiered for an injury, then started a lucrative business, only to have it confiscated and their eldest son murdered by Imperials because they had a Dushau investor. She's been snatched from a safe life, dumped on a wild planet, and widowed. Cassrians mate for life, you know. They live for their children." He buried his face in his hands. They were bandaged. "I've got to convince her she's not alone here. She'll come out of it for the sake of her children." He rolled to his feet, one hand against the wall, and moved carefully around to the Cassrian family as Storm brought Krinata the soup.

The food was good, and the medicine put her to sleep before Jindigar returned, so she couldn't ask how such a small group could survive alone on a marginal world. Certainly Jindigar knew it took more than seventeen to form a colony. Had he ever really used that word? Or was that only her impression of what he'd meant? She'd have to ask.

She slept away a day, and the following morning, she woke to find bright sunlight spearing through the chinks in the wall of cargo at the mouth of the cave. They dug themselves out. The fresh air smelled marvelous, for the searing heat of the desert had not yet developed. In the long shadows of early morning the arroyo below them was decorated with clean new sand drifts and freshly sandblasted rocks, some of which gleamed as if they had precious gems embedded in them.

The higher ground on which they stood was dotted with reddish-brown bushes covered with tiny russet-and-gold leaves. Her eyes seemed to be adjusting to the odd-colored sunlight, making things seem normal.