Challis didn't move. Drunnel’s stance was unmistakable, blind as she was to the gun. He had both hands cupped together and held almost at arm’s length in front of him, his feet planted at a slight angle. His efflux radiated an intense focus, but also confusion, which only softened a tiny bit when she spoke.

"Director?" she said in a low, careful tone. She was still panting, and quivering from her narrow escape.

He put the gun away. "Are you alright?"

Challis sat up then, closing her hands around her knee just above her throbbing lower leg. She felt that it should have been hurting more than it did, and wondered about post-traumatic shock. Even so, the boot felt two sizes too small. Shooting pains were bouncing back and forth between knee and toes, and Challis knew she wouldn’t be able to put weight on it.

"My leg," she gritted. "Chomped up. Do you have anything to wrap it?"

Drunnel was already digging into his saddlebag and brought over a small package.

"Broken?"

"I don't know. Afraid to wiggle my toes though."

"Can't even tell if you’re bleeding," he said quietly. But he unrolled a length of medical tape, or gauze, and set about winding Challis' leg, boot and all. When it was done, Challis leaned back on her hands, forcing deep breaths. Nuggets, she was sick and tired of being wet, with her hair stringing onto her face. And she was starving.

"I wonder –" she began, and stopped. A sudden inspiration floated by, then vanished. Even if the tripwire's flux had emptied into the water, the activated particles would be long washed away now, or too dispersed, to do any good for her injury. And either way, she wasn't about to dangle her edible limbs into that water with a monster nearby. "What happened?" she asked instead.

Drunnel sniffed.

"On the horse," he said curtly. "We need to be gone. Tell you on the way."

* * *

An eye-watering, peppery odor woke up Thax and Flantain at the same time, though it was Groffoco who said what they were all thinking.

"That is disgusting."

"Isn't it?" Challis smiled. "That's not the half of it. Didn't you ever take a season shift in the cooking galleries?"

"I never did this side of it!" he snorted, and shut the lid of the little tank with a snap. "Agh, I've got it on my hands now."

Challis gave a dirty chuckle and felt around in her bag for a washrag. "Relax. You get used to it."

Half-light outside tingled with chirruping animal noises and wisps of fresh scents from the wakening forest. Any human who wakes to those sensations, having slept in the huge tent of the outdoors, cannot help feeling fully roused as if coming back to life in the middle of a festival. You feel as though you've missed something by sleeping, and that the jungle is pushing and pulling you to join it in its activity. There are leaves to pluck, running water to interrupt, mud to squeeze, roots to unearth and berry branches to shake, and imagined pathways waiting for discovery and dominion.

Unless you wake up piled into a tiny cave the approximate size of a sardine can, surrounded by other humans that sweat and snore and breathe too loudly. Even with one of them on watch, the remaining four had squashed onto the cave floor and spent a restless night trying not to move too much. The cloaks had been shared to some degree, though one ended up crumpled under someone's head with one corner tugged over another's knees. Groffoco had elbowed Tofflar awake twice, forgetting about his broken ribs, for mumbling in his sleep. Flantain couldn't shift without help, and Challis' leg ached. She thought longingly of her spacious rooftop and the refreshing canyon breezes.

Of course, that made her think of Rasalas. That rooftop would be miserable without him, as would anything else from her normal life in Oedolon if she ever went back to it. Emptiness ached in her throat. Maccotons, she made herself think. Maccotons first. Life afterwards.

Morning brought a wash of hunger that overpowered the frustrations of the night before. Groffoco had shown Challis the stumpy little camp stove from the cave's supplies, and now he was screwing the airtight tank into the base and muttering. The smell still lingered, and he consulted his slot screen again and turned one knob after another on the control panel.

"Deoxygenation first," he said. "Challis, can you hold onto this?" While she held the tank in place, he shoved a crate under it until a hissing noise erupted from the back corner of the cave.

"What are you two doing?" Thax demanded, letting go of his sides just long enough to rub the sleep out of his eyes. "Please tell me that's not running on thrike crap."

"Organic waste slurried up with water, quickly converting to methane gas," Groffoco said triumphantly. "On a rapid-digestion bacterial acceleration setting. We just need to pray that it –"

"Are you insane?" The Director charged in at full speed, shoving Groffoco aside. Flantain gave a gasp of pain as Groffoco's foot caught on her cloak and he tripped over her leg. Drunnel twisted every knob until the hissing stopped. "Turning this on way back here? You'll have your face blown off!" He lifted the stove and carried it to the front of the cave, planting it next to the balustrade tree. "Ventilation, you idiots," he scolded, adjusting the hinges and tubes. "Especially with as pathetic a flame trap as this thing has. Don't you have any sense at all?"

The little tank began hissing again as Drunnel eased it back into action. He didn't stop lecturing Groffoco even after he finally stood and stepped back over to his spot next to the wall. Challis maintained an innocent air as she dug at the firm insides of a coconut with her stubnicker. Part of the husk had broken, so the result was shredded coconut meat with hairy bits of shell scattered throughout. This didn't matter for squeezing out the juice, but someone else would have to pick them out before the meat could be eaten. When both halves of the shell were empty, Challis tied up the pile into one of the pieces of cloth she had bought back in Mawsch and began squeezing it out back into the shells. They would all have to share these, as there was only a single aluminum cup between the five of them.

"You're right, sir," Groffoco finally managed to get a word edgewise in as he took over the fuel management. "I'll pay more attention this time."

"At this rate I'll have my behind blown to buttons in this stinking wormhole of a cave," Drunnel was still growling, mostly to himself now, "babywatching a bunch of pterosautic idiots with half a wit apiece. Dammit, who went and knocked over my backpack?"

When he and Challis had made it back to the cave well after midnight, Drunnel had taken over the watch from Groffoco and was still at it when Challis awoke first after birdcalls. The Director's efflux still darted with energy, as active as ever. Thinking back to Rasalas, and her own reaction to the tripwire's stimulant effects, she began to understand his lack of any need for sleep. A zap to the body's flux momentum, especially a zap as strong as the tripwire's, would act like a cricket chirrupping too close and prevent the natural relaxation into sleep. A mechanical lifestyle, then, in which sleep was a luxury rather than a necessity. Challis shivered at the thought. Maybe it was best if they never found the tripwire.

"What is that, Gannagen?" Thax tossed the stubnicker back at her boot. She picked it up and wiped coconut residue off the iron surface.

"Just a multitool. It's really for mending thrike saddles, but it's useful for almost anything that needs doing."

"Neat. Like, screwing Groff's head back on once in a while?"

Groffoco clattered a roasting pan onto the stove with a snigger. Challis pushed the mess of coconut into a heap, resting her hands after all the squeezing.

"Balappus bark, anyone?" she called out.

"Yes," both Thax and Flantain responded. After the ordeal of scooting over to sit against the wall, Thax was running his fingers through the grease in his hair and sounded as if he were short on sleep too. "Make it a double," he muttered.

Challis helped Flantain sit up and handed her a coconut half and a pinch of balappus.

"Got that meat, Challis?" Groffoco said over his shoulder. "This thing's primed for grilling."

"Challis," Drunnel called next, "did you get any sort of high-energy sensations through those cave openings beneath Hannowold?"

Thax coughed with a pained grunt. "I'll take some of that coconut water too, Gannagen. Dry leather mouthfeel is hell in the morning."

"You want me on patrol this morning?" Groffoco said to Drunnel. "I'll take Challis to double our eyes. Challis, don't forget to keep an eye out."

"Watch it, Gannagen, you're spilling it," Thax said.

"Challis, how steady was that energy feeding into the outer wall?" Drunnel turned back to her. "Was it any weaker above the promontories?"

Groffoco straightened. "Is that all the meat you've shredded, Challis?"

Flantain was the first to see what was happening.

"Everyone, stop!" The words cut through the air. A stunned silence froze them all in place, even the Director. "Do you all hear yourselves?" Flantain went on, though timidity shrunk her voice and the effect she had. "Challis this, Challis that, just stop Challising for a second."

Challis felt the effluxes in the cave grind to a halt of realization. She turned gratefully toward Flantain. "Thank you."

No one spoke as she handed the shredded coconut forward to the camp stove. Groffoco picked out the shreds of shell, and when he emptied the contents onto the grill, the warm, sizzling smell of seared coconut immediately took over.

They ate breakfast with their fingers out of coconut shells after emptying the milk. Challis tried to make hers last longer, taking small pinches at a time and savoring the crinkle of burnt bits on her tongue. Someone made a comment about searching for more food, but Drunnel, who didn't care for coconut, started digging into the rapidly diminishing supplies stored in the cave. He emptied an entire bag of dried green potsaaki potatoes by himself, rolling the plastic bag from the bottom as he went. When he finished, he chugged down the rest of his canteen and sat looking around at them all. Thax risked a glance. Sure enough, that damned eyebrow was up.

Before the Director could start giving orders, Thax spoke up.

"You planning to tell us what you did last night, sir? If there's a nice weak spot in Hannowold's defenses, that'd be peachy. What did you find?"

It was more about what they lost, Challis thought heavily.

"Not much, I'm afraid," Drunnel said. "Hannowold has been completely enveloped in Brumelo tech. This changes everything, the least of which is how to break into the city. To answer your question, Captain," he turned to Groffoco, "Yes, I'll need someone on patrol this morning, but not you. You're with me. Flantain, if you can manage it, you'll have to ride sit-saddle on your thrike. A stakeout would be ideal, perhaps from across the Reach where you can watch any incoming and outgoing patrol traffic from the ravine side of the city. Only take flight if necessary – there's always a risk of being shot down. I'd hate to let that happen to you twice." He turned to Thax. "As for you, I'm assigning you to provisions refill. Take an empty backpack and don't come back until it's full."

Thax choked on his coconut. "Confirmation requested," he said in a rush, "that instead of doubling the patrol to Hannowold you want me on fodder duty, sir?"

Drunnel's tone was as flat as a board. "Yes. As per your suggestion yesterday evening, if I may recall your exact words, 'survival comes first'?"

Thax simmered for a moment, but then, to his credit, didn't let the silence drag. "Yes, sir. I assume you want me on thrikeback to the nearest town that's not Hannowold."

Flantain dumped out the contents of her backpack and tossed it to him. Drunnel also passed him his holostrap. "I transferred a stack of cash units to you. Len Diggle is only six miles out, but you need to be invisible. Keep your tongue well behind your teeth and get those rations. We don't know what kind of patrolling to expect from Hannowold, but they've probably got eyes sweeping the surrounding towns for us. You can handle that, can't you?"

"Totally," Thax said. "Groff, I should take Flasher. She's got flight. Also, she's less likely to eat a wounded soul like me. I don't care for how Shoots was eyeing me yesterday."

"What?" Groffoco cut in. "Explain."

"Well, you know how a vulture –"

"No, dimwit. Flight? What's wrong with Shoots' flight?"

When Thax gestured gallantly toward her, Flantain spoke up. "He was shot in the right wing. That's why we dropped into the ravine, then his deadweight pulled out my hip. He's got a slice along the rim big enough for my spread hand to fit through."

"So he can't fly at all." Drunnel's statement of the obvious was mitigated by his tone of voice. He sounded as if he'd just learned that his potsaaki potatoes had been poisoned. Dread painted his words. "Why wasn't I informed?"

Challis had seen that sort of thrike injury before, after a training accident in Polescos when a wayward-led thrike crashed into a line of wind turbines. The rider had fallen clear, but the messy cuts in the animal's wings from the spinning blades went straight through the membrane to leave it flightless for months. Thrikes, for the most part, were left to heal on their own within their own powerful flux fields, and nobody dared stun-gun a thrike for surgery that wasn't absolutely necessary. Nobody could control one anyway, Challis realized after a long stretch of thought. But if they only could, well…

"We could patch him up," she said, interrupting Flantain without meaning to. "I'll bet queline would do the trick."

"Right," Drunnel huffed. "What is queline?"

Challis turned to him. "Didn't you notice in that gillig thicket back home? If you cut into gilligs, queline comes out."

His voice was icy. "That gillig thicket…"

"Oh, that stuff." Thax pushed on past an odd look on the Director's face. "Everybody just calls it gobstopper."

"The nearest gilligs must be miles away," Flantain began, but stopped when Groffoco sat up quickly.

"Say. You saw that gillig thicket on your way here?"

Challis let his enthusiastic efflux ripple through her. Then, "Me?"

"I did," Thax's voice came next. "Mile, mile and a half south. I couldn't tell how big it was."

Drunnel joined back in. "Doesn't matter. It just needs to be a healthy one." He turned toward the cave's opening with a speculative air. "Challis? Don't suppose you can find it from here?"

Challis started to sweep her mind out. She jumped at the sudden presence of someone on the slope, off to one side but close enough to have heard them talking. It was a human, whirring with flux and as abrupt in appearance as if he had shouted in her face.

She froze in place for a breath.

Her mouth jerked the words from her terrified brain. "Report!" she yipped. "Right outside, Director, he's right there."

Drunnel said something unrepeatable, and the cave exploded into one oversized efflux. If an emergency hadn't been front and center, Challis would have noticed just then how different she was from the others. At the threat of danger, she went still, clamping down on every muscle before flux could crackle to life and start anything; the others, the expedition's director and three thrike patrol members, all had one thing in the forefront of their reactions: move. Weapons snapped out, and all four of them flattened against the cave as if its walls had become magnets. Challis alone sat in the middle of the floor.

As soon as she noticed this, she folded into a crouch but stopped, afraid to move any more.

She skimmed her mind forward at the glowing Cormellican vitasnaps patch on Drunnel's neck and squinted through the pressure in her head until she was blinking into his vision. A flash of anger seared into her from his consciousness, but she could see.

A wall of texture dropped in front of her like the backdrop of a stage. Sunlight and corrugated expanses of greenery pressed into view, unrecognizable as the same jungle she had been exploring with her mind for the last few days. She had gotten so accustomed to the blindness, the blind sight of the tripwire piecing together flowing motes of energy around her, that there was too much to look at. Nothing stood out, it was all just a plaster-piece of color.

Because of that, she saw it before Drunnel did: a flying dot soaring into the cave from one side.

"Down!" she screamed, from somewhere, maybe she never actually got the word out. All Challis knew for the next moments was confusion. Her body jumped forward, throwing itself toward the explosive, before her awareness completely made it back into her own head. A ripping sensation shot her blind once more. Without a thought about what could happen, Challis smacked the thing with her hand even as it changed from a visible black blob into a scalding whirl of jam-packed flux in her awareness. It was no living thing, and should have appeared to her just as any innocent projectile would have, but perhaps her own terror exploded the weapon into a fizzing black hole of energy.

Her momentum landed her crackling into the balustrade tree's outer branches. Then a terrific blast of force, with a deafening crack, threw her tumbling to the side.

She fell, the rainwashed slope extending every root, rock, and leafy shrub to claw at her as she passed. Her bandaged leg flew and smacked into something hard enough to make her seize up, a terrible idea while rolling downhill. Her hair ripped into tangles. In a desperate effort, Challis tucked her chin to her chest and grabbed behind her head with both hands, until a sudden drop launched her legs out in front of her. She landed in a jarring smack on her rear end into a slimy layer of mud that skidded her to a stop.

Her hands squashed into the bank, and what should have been a cheery gurgling of water in front of her was only an echoing drone that pulsed with the bloodrush in her head.

Mud seeped into her tunic, warm and nauseating.

Dizziness came then, so thick that she unrolled onto her back. Her brain was waddling, ten pounds too heavy. She was, she could remember, in danger. A grenade. Someone had thrown a grenade. Challis forced her breath in and out. If someone had been close enough to toss an explosive device directly into the mouth of the tiny cave, they would have seen her tumbleweed impression. She couldn't stay here.

Then, the molasses in her head spread into her limbs and pulled her into a dead faint.