and less sodden, although the misty rain still fell continuously.
The ferns thinned, the ground rose steeply, and Kylis began to climb. At the top of the hill the air stirred, arid the vegetation was not so thick. Kylis found some edible shoots, picked them, and peeled them carefully. The pulp was spicy and crunchy. The juice, pungent and sour, trickled down her throat. She picked a few more stalks and tied the small bundle to her belt. Those that were sporing she was careful not to disturb. Edible plants no longer grew near camp; in fact, nothing edible grew close enough to Screwtop to reach on any but the free day.
Redsun traveled upright in its circular orbit; it had no seasons. The plants had no sun-determined clock by which to synchronize their reproduction, so a few branches of any one plant or a few plants of any one species would spore while the rest remained asexual. A few days later a different random set would begin. It was not a very efficient method of spreading traits through the gene pool, but it had sufficed until people came along and destroyed fertile plants as well as spored-out ones. Kylis, who had noticed in her wanderings that evolution ceased at the point when human beings arrived and began to make their changes, tried not to cause that kind of damage.
A flash of white, a movement, caught the edge of her vision. She froze, wishing the hallucinations away but certain they had come back. White was not a natural color in the frond forest, not even the muddy pink that passed for white under Redsun's enormous star. But no strange fantasy creatures paraded around her; she heard no furious imaginary sounds. Her feet remained firmly on the ground, the warm fine rain hung around her, the ferns drooped with their burden of droplets. Slowly Kylis turned until she faced the direction of the motion. She was not alone.
She moved quietly forward until she could look through the black foliage. What she had seen was the uniform of Screwtop, white boots, white shorts, white shirt for anyone with a reason to wear it. One of the other prisoners sat on a rock, looking out across the forest, toward the swamp. Tears rolled slowly down her face, though she made no sound. Miria.
Feeling only a little guilty about invading her privacy, Kylis watched her, as she had been watching her for some time. Kylis thought Miria was a survivor, someone who would leave Screwtop without being broken. She kept to herself; she had no partners. Kylis had admired her tremendous capacity for work. She was taller than Kylis, bigger, potentially stronger, but clearly unaccustomed to great physical labor. For a while she had worn her shirt tied up under her breasts, but like most others she had discarded it because of the heat.
Miria survived in the camp without using other people or allowing herself to be used. Except when given a direct order, she acted as if the guards simply did not exist, in effect defying them without giving them a reasonable excuse to punish her. They did not always wait for reasonable excuses. Miria received somewhat more than her share of pain, but her dignity remained intact.
Kylis retreated a couple of steps, then came noisily out of the forest, giving Miria a few seconds to wipe away her tears if she wanted to. But when Kylis stopped, pretending to be surprised at finding another person so near, Miria simply turned toward her.
'Hello, Kylis.'
Kylis went closer. 'Is anything wrong?' That was such a silly question that she added, 'I mean, is there anything I can do?'
Mina's smile erased the lines of tension in her forehead and revealed laugh lines Kylis had never noticed before. 'No,' Mina said. 'Nothing anyone can do. But thank you.'
'I guess I'd better go.'
'Please don't,' Miria said quickly. 'I'm so tired of being alone-- ' She cut herself off and turned away, as if she were sorry to have revealed so much of herself. Kylis knew how she felt. She sat down nearby.
Miria looked out again over the forest. The fronds were a soft reddish black. The marsh trees were harsher, darker, interspersed with gray patches of water. Beyond the marsh, over the horizon, lay an ocean that covered all of Redsun except the large inhabited North Continent and the tiny South Continent where the prison camp lay.
Kylis could see the ugly scar of the pits where the crews were still drilling, but Miria had her back half turned and she gazed only at unspoiled forest.
'It could all be so beautiful,' Miria said.
'Do you really think so?' Kylis thought it ugly-- the black foliage, the dim light, the day too long, the heat, no animals except insects that did not swim or crawl. Redsun was the most nearly intolerable planet she had ever been on.
'Yes. Don't you?'
'No. I don't see any way I ever could.'
'It's sometimes hard, I know,' Miria said. 'Sometimes, when I'm tiredest, I even feel the same. But the world's so rich and so strange-- don't you see the challenge?'
'I only want to leave it,' Kylis said.
Miria looked at her for a moment, then nodded. 'You're not from Redsun, are you?'
Kylis shook her head.
'No, there's no reason for you to have the same feelings as someone born here.'
This was a side of Miria that Kylis had never seen, one of quiet but intense dedication to a world whose rulers had imprisoned her. Despite her liking for Miria, Kylis was confused.
'How can you feel that way when they've sent you here? I hate them, I hate this place-- '
'Were you wrongly arrested?' Miria asked with sympathy.
'They could have just deported me. That's what usually happens.'
'Sometimes injustice is done,' Miria said sadly. 'I know that. I wish it wouldn't happen. But I deserve to be here, and I know that too. When my sentence is completed, I'll be forgiven.'
More than once Kylis had thought of staying on some world and trying to live the way other people did, even of accepting punishment, if necessary, but what had always stopped her was the doubt that forgiveness was often, or ever, fully given. Redsun seemed an unlikely place to find amnesty.
'What did you do?'
Kylis felt Miria tense and wished she had not asked. Not asking questions about the past was one of the few tacit rules among the prisoners.
'I'm sorry... it's not that I wouldn't tell you, but I just cannot talk about it.'
Kylis sat in silence for a few minutes, scuffing the toe of her boot along the rock like an anxious child and rubbing the silver tattoo on the point of her left shoulder. The pigment caused irritation and slight scarring. The intricate design had not hurt for a long time, nor even itched, but she could feel the delicate lines. Rubbing them was a habit. Even though the tattoo represented a life to which she would probably never return, it was soothing.
'What's that?' Miria asked. Abruptly she grimaced. 'I'm sorry, I'm doing just what I asked you not to do.'
'It doesn't matter,' Kylis said. 'I don't mind. It's a spaceport rat tattoo. You get it when the other rats accept you.' Despite everything, she was proud of the mark.
'What's a spaceport rat?'
That Miria was unfamiliar with the rats did not surprise Kylis. Few Redsun people had heard of them. On almost every other world Kylis ever visited, the rats were, if not exactly esteemed, at least admired. Some places she had been actively worshipped. Even where she was officially unwelcome, the popular regard was high enough to prevent the kind of entrapment Redsun had started.
'I used to be one. It's what everybody calls people who sneak on board starships and live in them and in space-ports. We travel all over.'
'That sounds... interesting,' Miria said. 'But didn't it bother you to steal like that?'
A year before, Kylis would have laughed at the question, even knowing, as she did, that Miria was quite sincere. But recently Kylis had begun to wonder: Might something be more important than outwitting spaceport security guards? While she was wondering she came to Redsun, so she never had a chance to find out.
'I started when I was ten,' Kylis said to Miria. 'So I didn't think of it like that.'
'You sneaked onto a starship when you were only ten?'
'Yes.'
'All by yourself?'
'Until the others start to recognize you, no one will help you much. It's possible. And I thought it was my only chance to get away from where I was.'
