bumped her. Tore at her; cut her wrist with its teeth. She struck at it, whining, and it darted away, green in the flashlit water.
Kasuk said, “Can you breathe now?” His voice was hoarse.
“Yes,” Junna whispered. “Better.”
Her teeth chattered. The fish was back, swarms of fish, nibbling at her arms, swimming into the deep sleeves of the shirt. She fought them off. Kasuk slid his arm around her.
“Should we go back?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How close are we?”
“I don’t know.”
Junna swam beside them, his lips near the surface of the water, sipping off the air where it was least poisonous. Kasuk reached for him.
“We can’t stop now.”
They swam on. When Junna began to drag at the end of the rope, Kasuk lashed him and Paula to his back. The light went out. He carried them on through the dark. His strength amazed her, his measureless endurance. She clung to him in a half-delirium. If he had dived to the bottom she would have drowned rather than leave him.
He dragged them on and on through the tunnel. She swallowed water and heaved it up again. Her head reeled. She clung to Junna with one arm. The current whirled them around in a dizzy eddy. Kasuk hit something solid and held tight. She raised her head. Her eyes were swollen almost shut. They had come to a fork in the river. The wild current, leaping across a bar of concrete, was dragging them into the left-hand channel. On the right, overhead, another stream thundered straight down twenty feet to meet them. Kasuk dragged them to the right side of the tunnel. With them hanging on his shoulders he climbed hand over hand up the weed-covered wall, through the roar and the flying spray of the waterfall, into a cold sunlit layer of sweet air. She gulped it into her aching lungs. Kasuk pulled them through a crack in the earth out to the surface. They lay on cold stones and slept.
She woke up shivering. Her mouth tasted foul. His black skin rough with gooseflesh, Junna slept curled up beside her. Kasuk was gone.
High above her the sky was brilliantly sunlit but she lay in deep shadow on the floor of a gorge. The steep slopes on either side were overgrown with brush and wiry pine trees. The air tasted fresh and delicious. They were inside a dome; the only dome it could be was New York. She sat up, looking for Kasuk. She still wore Junna’s shirt. The boy stirred in his sleep, his length doubled up on the ground, and his hair caught with leaves. There was a stream running along the foot of the far wall of the gulley. She climbed down through rocks to the inch-deep water and drank from her cupped hand.
Above her the brush rustled violently. She stood. Kasuk was climbing down the slope, a dead swan hung over his shoulder, one long wing trailing.
“Let’s eat.”
“That?” she said, uncertain.
He stepped across the trickle of water and went up through the jumbled boulders toward his brother. She followed him. When she sat down beside him, he was tearing open the swan’s belly with his claws. Its long neck stretched out over the ground, the feathers rumpled. The swan had fattened on eelgrass and popcorn and children’s lunches. The raw meat made her gag. The Styths picked out the bird’s heart and liver, packed in congealing yellow fat.
“Kak,” Junna said. He hooked his arm around his brother’s neck. “You saved our lives.”
Kasuk was using a swan feather to pick his teeth. He pushed Junna away. The younger boy turned to her. “Didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she said. “You saved both of us.”
His heavy shoulders lifted and fell. “I just kept thinking about my father. I couldn’t let him down again. So it was really my father.” He grabbed Junna by his shaggy hair and shook him. “Go keep watch. Make sure nobody sneaks up on us.”
The boy raced off. Paula’s eyes followed him in his headlong run across the gulley and in among the trees. The swan’s broad wings sprawled around her, the feathers broken. Kasuk wiped his hands on the grass.
“My father told me to protect him. I’m just dragging us deeper. Can we leave the dome?”
“You’ll need an air car,” she said. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going with you.”
“Saba told me—”
“I don’t care what he said. I’m telling you what I’ll do.”
He made a little harried gesture, avoiding her eyes. A flap of his torn shirt hung down over his stomach. His chest was massive, his shoulders like a beam. His strength was perfect. He wore no scars from fighting, no killing marks.
“I have to follow orders,” he said.
“I can only help you if you let me go.”
“Then I’ll have to get us out by myself.”
The smell of smoke reached her nose. She said, “Which way is the lake from here?”
“Out there.” He pointed behind them. “There’s fighting here, too—what’s going on?”
“Here comes your brother.”
Junna was bounding down the slope, tall as a young tree, scattering stones and dirt on ahead of him. He jumped across the stream and ran up to them. Scratches decorated his body; he was naked.
“Cover yourself up,” Kasuk said.
“Why? She doesn’t care. I’m hungry again. When will Papa come? Will we start fighting when he gets here? There are fires up there, and people shooting guns.”
“What’s going on?” Kasuk turned to Paula. “I thought the Martians were just attacking us, but there aren’t any Styths up there.”
“The Sunlight League is staging a coup against the anarchy.”
“To kill us,” Junna said.
She bobbed her head, her gaze on Kasuk. He said, “What does Gemini have to do with it?”
“Everything.”
Junna raked at the ground with his claws, his head bent. “Papa knows what he’s doing.”
Kasuk said to her, “Then I can see why you don’t want to go back. I won’t take you back.”
“Kak!” Junna cried. He grabbed his brother’s arm. “Who will protect her?”
Kasuk scrubbed his face with his hand. He crooked his fingers in the neck of his shirt and pulled at it. “I wonder what’s happening to the rest of the
“Kak!”
“Shut up. I’ve made up my mind.” He looked at Paula. “You get us an air car.”
“I’ll try,” she said.
Night came. The domelight did not shine. She made her way toward the middle of the dome. A siren raised its hound-voice ahead of her. In the dark she had trouble finding a way through the trees. She skirted the east edge of the lake. Faint moonlight gleamed on the water. The swans were all roosting in the high grass near the head of the lake. As she crossed the open ground between the beach and the wood, near the hourly stand, a shot cracked out.
She sprinted into the cover of the trees. Another bullet followed her, whining like a hornet. She stopped beside a tree. Her ears strained to hear. The wood was full of sounds. The brush crackled behind her. Leaves rustled. The wind rose in a low call that lifted the hackles of her neck. In spite of the cool, she was sweating.
She went on, trying to keep silent. Twice she saw lights moving in the trees ahead of her. An air car droned above her. The wind made the branches dance. She went around the edge of a meadow. On the far side, four little deer grazed, their tails busy. Through the trees she saw a building burning like a torch, crackling, sending up a thick roll of smoke. The bright yellow light spilled into the wood so that pebbles and ferns and bits of twig threw shadows ten feet long. She circled a great pit, still smoking, where an underground building had been blown up.
She heard more gunshots. The woods ended. She trotted across the south end of the campus. The place looked different in the dark. The air hummed with cars. Three or four searchlights swung back and forth over the
