Maggie tried to sleep, but after Avik left her, her lust kept her awake. Near dawn, her Guide quit stimulating her sexual appetites, and Maggie was free to dream: she dreamed of Tlitkani, of the dronon, and in her dream Maggie's heart stirred with passion. The queen walked across a plaza of white stone, and her chitin flashed gold in the sunlight. She was perfect in every respect—without a flaw or blemish, not so much as a nick in her exoskeleton, and all around her was a great celebration. Dronon warriors with their heavy front battle arms knelt at her feet, battle arms crossed and extended in a sign of reverence. Tan dronon technicians with thin little segmented hands stood by to adore her, too, along with the small white workers. But among the insect hordes were many humans in all manner of clothing and attire, worlds of them, dancing and capering about, gazing at with adoration shining from their eyes. Little human children had made garlands of flowers and strewn them at her feet, and a song rose up from humans and dronons alike, their voices raspy with fervor, praising the Golden Queen.

In her dream, Maggie felt such a profound respect for the golden one that tears streamed from her eyes. To simply gaze upon her caused a height of religious feeling unparalleled in all Maggie's life.

Maggie woke, eyes still streaming with tears, and her Guide whispered to her, "This is a vision I have given you of the future you shall help bring to pass. When a dronon looks upon its Golden Queen, it feels the ineffable sense of awe and wonder I have shared with you. We shall insert the genes that cause this condition into the fetuses of your children, so that they will no longer view the dronon as aliens, but will see them as brothers. Today you begin laboring within the inner sanctum of our compound, and you will help in the great work of bringing to pass the Adoration."

Having said this, the Guide had Maggie rise from bed, shower, and go down to eat. She was dead on her feet with fatigue, and after breakfast, the Guide had her walk into a part of the aberlains' working compound that she had not visited before. On her previous days, Maggie had worked only at the reproduction labs, but far more of the aberlains' labors were spent here in the research department, the inner sanctum of the aberlains' lair.

Here, she joined Avik's research team, which was supervised directly by Lord Karthenor. Here, Karthenor engaged in decoding dronon DNA so that the genes that carried Adoration might be discovered. To work here was a great honor, and the Guide stimulated Maggie's emotions so that she approached her task with a proper sense of reverence.

The research department was dark and warm, with dim red lights to simulate conditions on the planet Dronon itself. Black-carapaced dronon vanquishers patrolled the corridors while dronon technicians worked side by side with humans in their sterile white coats.

Maggie was put to work on a gene scanner, dyeing and scrutinizing dronon DNA. Thousands of healthy dronon specimens had given tissue samples over the past six years, and all of these were well catalogued. Now, Maggie and the aberlains studied samples from unhealthy dronon.

So it was that Maggie spent her day encoding the DNA of dronons who were born with lung defects. Genetic aberrations that led to weaknesses were never tolerated in dronon society. The congenitally insane, retarded, and deformed were always killed when their abnormalities were discovered. So Maggie found herself working with tissue from dronon infants. The workers who had shipped the specimens from Dronon had not taken great care to clean and prepare the tissues. Instead, they had shipped crates filled with pieces of the dead. The whiplike sensors had been ripped off the young dronon mouths. The feelers were then placed in refrigerated boxes and labeled according to deformity.

Maggie's job was to carefully unwrap the feelers, remove small samples from each and label them according to specimen, then place each in a gene decoder. Computers would then store information on the mutant DNA, match identical genetic structures from different samples of mutants, and thus by defining the areas of aberration, learn which genes controlled which functions.

Maggie worked at her grisly task all morning. For days she had been fighting her Guide as it attempted to stimulate her emotions. When she was angry or frightened, the Guide continually sought to calm her, send feelings of bliss. Maggie had found herself nursing her anger, trying to overwhelm the Guide. But now she was so weary that she could not fight it any longer. If not for the Guide, she would have collapsed from exhaustion. But the Guide kept her awake.

The Guide carried her about the room, fed her comfort and information. She knew that her work was important, and Maggie found herself wishing that she could do more, hoping she would discover the actual genes that led to Adoration.

But the most important work was left to others, to aberlains with greater skill. They worked with tissues from the criminally insane, decoding genes from those few dronons who did not adore the Golden Queen.

Few such specimens had ever been born in dronon history, and they had been completely eradicated. Since the dronon used their own dead to fertilize their fields, the tissue samples of these insane individuals were rarely available. Still, a great search of the dronon worlds would eventually turn up a few new individuals. Maggie could only hope that when such samples became available, they would be sent here to the laboratories on Fale, so that she might have the honor of decoding them.

The tissue samples that Maggie used came from dronons who were born with a disorder that caused the chitin around their breathing orifices to form scarred nodules that could block the air passages. The breathing orifices on a dronon consisted of a row of nine holes located on the back upper hips of the dronon's hind legs. The orifices led to small lung sacks between the inner wall of the exoskeleton on the hip, and the hip muscles themselves. The dronon could not properly be said to have hearts. Instead, a rhythmic movement of the back legs caused the hip muscles to pump oxygen through the lungs and oxygenated blood through the rest of the body. For this reason, a dronon actually pumped blood more efficiently when it walked or ran. When it stopped walking, it would be forced to crouch and rhythmically bob up and down to keep its circulation going.

By evening, Maggie's work allowed her to isolate a defective gene and thus learn the gene's purpose in the great act of controlling the development of dronons.

The dronon technicians congratulated her and rewarded her by letting her work late. Her Guide fed her a sense of rapture, and she felt thrilled to be engaged in such a great and noble cause. Thus it was that she finally stumbled to her cubicle.

She opened the window, smelled the fresh night air, listened to the sound of the river lapping against the living walls of the city. A hundred thousand stars filled the night sky like white sand, and she looked up at a great swirling galaxy, wondering at its beauty.

She set the temperature of her bed higher, took a quick shower, then put on a thin robe and lay down to sleep. Out in the hall, she could hear the comforting sound of a dronon vanquisher's feet clicking as it patrolled the hallways of her sleeping quarters.

In the middle of the night, Maggie woke to a consuming lust that rolled over her in waves. She knew Avik was coming, and she did not think she could fight the Guide's commands anymore.

She was lying on her stomach, and the air stirred behind her. She realized that Avik must already have entered the room; the light did not go on, but she felt the weight of his body as he climbed on the bed. He moved quickly. She could hear his heavy breathing, and feel his weight as he straddled her back.

She whimpered softly. He pulled at the Guide on her head, thrust what felt like a chisel against the base of her neck. There was a searing pain, and hot blood spurted down her neck, and suddenly she was free from the Guide.

Maggie's only thought was that Avik had decided to kill her. She screamed, twisted to her side so that she could wrestle the knife away.

Gallen sat atop her, knife in hand, lit only by the starlight shining from the window. He thrust the Guide in a sack, then hit the sack sharply against the wall so that it made a sickly crunching sound, like breaking bones.

Maggie's head was reeling from fatigue, from a sudden overwhelming sadness. She couldn't think what was happening. "Get out," she whispered. "Avik is coming."

"Who is Avik?" Gallen whispered.

"A rapist," Maggie said, and behind Gallen the door whisp-ered open. Light from the corridor shone in. Gallen surged from the bed so quickly that Maggie hardly saw him move. He seemed almost to fly across the room, a black shadow in his robes, a gleaming silver knife in his hand.

Gallen's knife fell just as Avik began to cry out. Gallen tossed the body to the floor with a thud.

In the corridor outside her door, the dronon guard shouted and scrabbled to come to Maggie's rescue.

Gallen slammed the door and locked it, saying, "Quick! Out the window! Jump in the water!"

Maggie staggered off the bed; horror overwhelmed her—not just horror at the thought of the dronon guard racing to the door, but a horror at all that had happened here.

In one instant, she realized what kind of work she had been engaged in, and an image flashed in her mind—a vision of the bloated sacklike mothers she had helped engineer, the remembered smell of dronon body parts stacked like cordwood in bins.

Her hands felt filthy; her entire skin felt filthy, and Maggie dropped to her knees and simultaneously cried from the core of her soul and tried to keep from retching up her dinner.

With a squeal of rending metal, the dronon guard hit the door, peeled it back with one chitinous claw, tearing it from its hinges. It held its black incendiary rod forward, pushed it through the door, and Maggie could see the wicked serrated edges on its forward battle arms. Gallen and the beast were dancing shadows in the light thrown from the corridor. As Gallen rushed to the torn door, the dronon's wings buzzed in anticipation.

Gallen grabbed the dronon's incendiary rod, twisted it away and spun, firing through the rent door. He was far too close to shoot the weapon, and Maggie hoped that the thin metal door would shield them from the heat.

The chitinous black flesh of the guard squealed as its body temperature rose above boiling, and smoke roiled from its carapace and crawled along the ceiling. It became a blazing pillar of white fire. Intense heat filled the room, and the broken door caught flame. Gallen threw up his arms and staggered back to her.

Somewhere in the building, an alarm sounded. Gallen threw his robe over Maggie's face. She struggled up, thinking that they would die any moment, but Gallen scooped her into his arms and staggered to the window.

"I can't ..." Maggie cried, weeping bitterly.

Gallen pushed her out. The building was sloped, and for a moment she slid out in the darkness through air that felt pleasantly icy, then hit the black water. It was far colder than she would have guessed. She thrashed vigorously and floundered for a moment, found herself underwater. She bobbed to the surface again and called for help. She looked up. Gallen was clinging precariously to the windowsill like a spider, and she wondered if he had somehow gotten stuck, then he splashed into the water ten feet away. Maggie thrashed her legs, went under again. A moment later, Gallen grasped her neck.

He pulled her to the surface, holding her head up from behind. She kept struggling and tried to spin, grab him. "Help! I can't swim!"

"Can't swim?" Gallen asked. "Your father and brothers all drowned. I'd think you'd learn to swim."

Maggie gasped, part from the cold, part from the fear that she would slip under again. Gallen reached around, put something in her mouth. It felt like the mouthpiece to a flute, but it was attached to two small bottles.

"Breath in and out through this," Gallen panted. "It's an oxygen exchanger. It recycles air. As long as you breathe through this, it doesn't matter if your head goes underwater. In a minute, I'll start pulling you to shore. We will have to dive underwater. Don't fight me." Maggie tried breathing through the machine. She had to exert extra force to inhale, as if she were breathing through heavy cloth.

Gallen fumbled to put on his own oxygen exchanger, then dove and began pulling her toward shore. He did not try to hurry, just made a leisurely swim of it, so that by the time they came up, they were far downstream from Toohkansay and had rounded a bend in the river. The lights from the city gleamed over the water, and a lighted barge sailed past them, heading downriver. Gallen swam to the mouth of a small creek, and they waded upstream till they reached a bridge that arched above them darkly, shutting out the powdered light of the stars.

Under the bridge, Gallen stepped from the water, pulling Maggie after him. He bent and opened a cloth sack that was lying in some tall grass, pulled out a single blanket. Maggie was shivering vigorously, shaking from more than the chill night air. Everything that had happened to her over the past few days slammed into her like a giant fist.

"I'm sorry," she cried, feeling ill to the core of her soul. "I'm so sorry." She wanted to explain why she was so sorry but did not know where to begin. She was so cold, she could not feel her fingers. Gallen wrapped the blanket around her; he was shivering violently. She wrapped her arms around him so they could share the blanket.

"You—you had this planned?" she asked between chattering teeth. His golden hair gleamed in the starlight, and she could make out little of his features. The brackish odor of the river was heavy on them both.

"Aye," Gallen said. "I've got some food in the pack, dry clothes. I found a trail along this creek. We can follow it up into the hills, then circle back north of town to where Orick and I set camp. I think we should stay off the road."

The blackness still hung over Maggie, and every few moments the images of her work over the past few days would flash in her mind. The demented gleam in Avik's eye. Sorting the tagged feelers of the dead dronons, the images of the twisted people she had built.

There were no signs of pursuit, but she was sure that the dronons would come after them soon.

The cold, the fear, the darkness of it all was too much for Maggie, and she sank to her knees. Wild vetch grew in a tangled mass here in the shadow of the bridge.

Gallen knelt, hugging her to keep her warm.

"Everynne?" Maggie stammered, and it seemed to her that her thoughts were now unnaturally clear, bright and well-defined, like the chemical fire from an incendiary rifle.

"We found her this morning," Gallen said. "She was heading north for another gate. The dronons were on her trail. She plans to fight them. She asked us to come with her, but ..."

Maggie looked up, studied his face. It caught only the slightest touch of starlight, and she could not see his eyes. But one thing was clear: he could have gone with Everynne, but Gallen had chosen to stay and rescue Maggie.

She leaned her shivering body against Gallen, felt the firm muscles beneath his wet shirt. His breath warmed her neck. She realized he'd planned the escape in every detail: two sets of dry clothes, two oxygen exchangers. But only one blanket. He'd planned to share this moment with her.

The residual emotions stimulated by the Guide were still affecting her somewhat. The night before, she'd staved off Avik's advances by fantasizing about Gallen, and now she found that an edge of lust still lingered.

Maggie was painfully aware of her thin nightgown, her nipples tight, protruding against the hairs of Gallen's chest. He shivered. She wrapped both hands around his neck, kissed him

firmly on the mouth. Gallen pulled away slightly, gasped as if surprised by her action.

"What's wrong?" she asked, aware that he was shaking harder. She recognized it for what it was. He was shaking with desire. "Don't you want this?"

"You're still too young," Gallen said, his voice husky.

She grew so angry, she wanted to hit him. "We don't all age at the same rate, and some things make you old before your time," she said. "Watching your family die, that ages you! Working—working day and night just to stay alive, that ages you. Wearing a Guide—hell, Gallen, I, I can't even begin to tell you what that thing did to me. It's like a vice, crushing you. It teaches you and it rapes you all at the same time, because the things it teaches you shatter all of your deepest hopes—and if it didn't play games with you and make you feel like you were in heaven, you would gladly cut your own head off to be rid of it!"

Maggie began sobbing and trembling. She imagined that she could feel the dronons' black sensor whips on her arms, cold and rough like cornstalks, fouling her. "Gallen, you don't even begin to understand what kind of place we live in—"

"I know—" Gallen said. "I put on a teaching machine in the city. It taught me."

"Did it teach you about the dronon, about their plans?"

"No," Gallen admitted. "The teacher only showed me how the dronon conquered this world."

"In other words, this teacher taught you only what the dronon want you to know!"

Maggie was shivering and angry. Gallen put his arm around her, and she desperately wanted to be loved, to be comforted, for at that moment, it seemed that love was the only token that could be put on the scale that might balance out all the pain and despair that threatened to overwhelm her. Even then, she wasn't certain that love would be quite enough.

At that moment, something touched her back, and Maggie realized that Gallen held something long and hard in his hand. She reached around with her palm and touched the incendiary rod. Amazingly, he had managed to carry both it and her through the water.

And in that moment, she knew what else she needed to balance out her pain. Revenge.

"You said Everynne plans to overthrow the dronon," Maggie whispered. "Do you have any idea what her plans are?"

"No," Gallen admitted, "but I know where her gate is."

Maggie nodded softly and whispered, "Let's go."

But at that moment, a great circle of light shone on the bridge above them. The bridge rumbled and shook, so that bits of dirt rained down.

In horror, Galled clapped a hand over Maggie's mouth. She could think only one thing: they found us!

Overhead, a voice sounded from the sky. "You there: put up your hands!"