When the playback ended and her experiential body rejoined her physical form. she shuddered with the shock of the change from intolerably cold to nearly warm again.
As she rested, seeking the strength to rise and continue, she stretched out to touch everything within her reach. The range of softnesses in the forest amazed her: the green and feathery softness of the moss, the crisp softness of a liny-leafed vascular plant growing amidst the moss, the unresisting plasticity of a circle of slime mold. The top of a fungal shelf felt like damp velvet- A slug glistened out from beneath a fallen branch. It was slick as wet silk, but it left behind a sticky, insoluble secretion on her ridged fingers.
A mosquito landed on her arm. She watched it dispassionately. Unlike a fly, it wasted no time with careful grooming.
It set itself among the fine dark hairs and plunged its proboscis into her skin. She submitted to the thin, keen pain. She had read that the insect would bite, drink, and neutralize its own hemolytic enzymes before it withdrew.
The mosquito had read different texts. It filled itself with Chandra's blood and whined away; then Chandra watched the itchy lump of the mosquito bite swell and darken. She concentrated on the unpleasant sensation.
When she had added the bite to her store, she realized that the cold of the stream had brought back the ache of her mus-
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cles. She quickly disconnected the recording, grabbed up her clothes and fumbled through her pockets, took another pill, and waited for the soreness to dissipate. She reconnected and got dressed as if nothing had happened.
Chandra climbed the stream bank and entered the trees again. Ferns grew in clumps and clusters, but the ground level was surprisingly clear. She had to make her way around an occasional enormous fallen tree. Whenever a tree tell, it opened a passage for sunlight and encouraged new growth.
Saplings sprouted on the logs, then grew to full-sized trees, reaching around and to the ground with long gnarled roots. Sometimes the nurse log rotted away completely, leavmg a colonnade of six or eight trees rising on roots like bowlegs.
Disconnected from the web, Chandra passed through the forest in ignorance of the names of most of the plants. She wanted to make a record of perceptions uncolored by previous knowledge. Anyone who wanted to use her piece as a study tape could do so by hooking into the web and requesting an information hypertext link. Chandra thought that would be like using a Rembrandt as a color chart.
Ahead, the sun streamed through a break in the upper story of the forest, illuminating a cluster of large, flat leaves that glowed gold-green. Light shimmered over the thick silver hairs covering their stalks. Chandra walked toward the plant, concentrating on its color, on the way the leaves spread themselves to the light, each parallel to all the others, as if the bush were arranged and lighted by some alien attention.
The silvery covering on the stems consisted not of soft hairs, but of sharp, wicked thorns. Chandra touched one with the nerve-thick pad of her forefinger. Like the mosquito, the thorn pierced her skin. The pain of the stab burst into acid agony, and she had to exert her will to keep from snatching her hand away. Her blood welled in a glistening drop around the thorn, spilled thick and warm down her finger, and pooled in her palm.
She expected the pain to fade. Instead, it increased. Her hand burned. Angry at herself, she jerked away from the thorn: too fast. Its tip broke off beneath her skin. She snarled a curse and put her hand to her mouth, trying to suck out the point. Her blood tasted bitter, as if it were poisoned.
Pain and shock separated Chandra from terror- Though her STARFARERS 3 3
band felt hot, the rest of her body felt as cold as if she were still in the pool. Chandra stumbled away from the gold-green plant. She had no idea which direction to move to meet the trail. If she kept going she must hit it eventually, for it made a complete circle, and she was inside. Hoping to extricate herself, she kept going as long as she could.
The thornbush disappeared behind and among a thousand tall, straight tree trunks. Chandra sank to the ground. The illusion of softness disappeared when the rotting evergreen needles poked through her clothes and scratched her skin.
She cursed again and sent a Mayday to the web.
She waited.
Pain altered Chandra's perceptions. Time stretched out to such a distance that she feared she would use up all her sensory storage. Yet when she checked the remaining volume, she had filled it only halfway.
She heard the ranger approach; she raised her head slowly.
He towered above her, scowling.
'Whatever possessed you to leave the trail?' His face wavered. When it solidified again, it carried an expression mixed of pity and horror. 'Good lord! What happened to you?'
She lifted her hand. Blood obscured the swelling. He knelt down and looked carefully at the place where the thorn had penetrated.
'I got a lot of good stuff,' she said, to reassure him and herself.
'You stuck yourself with a devil's club thorn,' he said, both unimpressed and contemptuous. 'But. . .'He touched the other swellings, the ridges of nerves tracing her fingers and palm.
'That isn't pan of it,' Chandra said. Talking tired her. 'I mean, it's part of me.' She took a deep and frustrated breath and blew it out again. 'Don't you know who I am?' Exhaustion tangled her words. 'I'm supposed to be like that.'
He was staring at her eyes. The biosensors covered her eyes with a film of translucent gray.
'My eyes, too,' she said.
The ranger kept his expression neutral as he returned her to the lodge.
Chandra slept for a long time. When she woke, the medication had caused her hand nearly to finish healing. Only a
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residual swelling remained, but it was enough to squeeze the
accessory nerves and disrupt all her finer sensations. As for the pain, it had faded till the persistent ache took more of her attention.
She spun into the web. Her agent and her manager were fighting with each other, the one urging her to take care of herself, the other urging her to get back to work. Ignoring them both, she called for her schedule to look at which experiences had been arranged, which arrangements were causing problems, and what she might have to rearrange.' She resented the delay, but her results would be worth it.
She thought she would still have time for the sea-wildemess visit before catching the spaceplane to Starfarer. The starship contained no oceans, only shallow salt marshes and freshwater lakes. Chandra wanted to collect diving beneath the ocean before she left earth. Since she hated to swim, since the whole idea of diving made her claustrophobic, the coming task was a challenge. Ordinarily she preferred to go out on her own. but this once she was glad she would be accompanied by an expert-
Before her schedule appeared, the web displayed a priority message. The ranger had written her a ticket for leaving the trail. The fine was considerable. She could contest it if she wished.
She thought of staying, in order to explain about the results being worth it, but that would mean more delay. She could stay and explain and record, but lots of people made recordings of court cases. Chandra was not interested in repeats.
She signed the ticket so it could subtract the fine from her account.
It was worth it. She had a lot of good stuff.
Victoria and J.D. floated near the transparent wall of the observation room, watching the stars and the distant starship.
'I thought the sky was beautiful from the wilderness,'
J.D. said. 'But this . . .'
Victoria gazed at the region of doubled images created by the local strand of cosmic string.
'Could you see the lens effect from where you were? There it is.' She pointed, tracing out the line where the string bent light from the stars behind it.
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'I see it,' J-D. said. 'But you've been out there.'
