lived when I was young. People were prouder and steadier then.'
'I think you're badly needed now,' Kiri said. 'Will you come with me?'
The old woman shook her head very slowly, so for a moment Kiri thought she was observing the tremors of old age; then she realized her request was being denied. 'Don't punish me through them!' Kiri cried. 'You'll destroy Chris, and Mischa with him. They've done nothing to deserve it.'
'I'm hardly that petty,' the healer said archly.
'Then come!'
'No.'
'But he may be dying.'
'The boy has been dying for a long time. I would be helpless.'
'How can you be sure?'
'My dear,' the healer said, 'my dear, do you really suppose my sources of information are no better than yours?'
Kiri glared sullenly at the path, and shifted her weight painfully. 'Then you won't help them.'
'I will not come with you.'
'That's your final decision?'
'That is my only decision.'
Kiri thought of things to say, and knew they would change nothing. She turned, head down, shoulder sagging, to make her way to the Circle again.
'Come back, you foolish child.'
Kiri swung around like a challenged animal. 'Don't play with me.'
The healer stood on the ledge overhead, her dark robe shimmering about her. 'Children never listen. Did you listen? I said I would not come, but I did not say I would not help.' She flung a glittering bauble; Kiri snatched and caught it clumsily. 'Take that and go.'
The sphere was so black it appeared empty, a hole. It warmed Kiri's palm. 'This is all you can offer them?'
'That is a life,' the old woman said. 'And a painless death.'
'I know,' Kiri said softly. 'One life. I had hoped for two.' She looked up, but the healer was gone.
Chris had no middle ground of drowsiness or sleep; Mischa felt him awaken abruptly from complete unconsciousness. His eyelids flickered; he peered out as from a tunnel, frightened. Mischa felt his confusion, his disorientation, and touched his uninjured shoulder to give him some contact with reality. 'You're in my niche, Chris.'
He opened his mouth to speak, but began to cough, and then could not stop. The foam on his lips turned pink, and pain shot through him in uncontrollable spasms. Mischa hunched her shoulders against it, and felt Jan's hands on her shoulders, steady. The coughing eased, slowed, stopped. Chris lay exhausted, his green eyes wide open. 'I might have known,' he said. His voice had become harsh and ugly. He began to laugh, but cut himself off abruptly. 'Your niche. I might have known.'
'Chris—'
'Do you think you're my owner?' He shoved himself up on his elbow, and fell back with a shriek of agony. Mischa caught her breath at his reflections. 'Let me help,' she said. 'Please. let me help.' Her voice shook.
'Leave me alone.' He turned away, moving only his head, very slowly.
'Mischa—'
She shook her head, breathing hard, not looking at Jan.
'This is going to tear you to pieces.' He touched the sweat already filming her forehead.
'I can't leave him. I owe him too much.'
Jan gripped her arm, as though to convey to her some of his own
strength.
'Mischa. ?' Chris flickered back to awareness, clear and innocent and forgetful, and Mischa's hurt dissolved.
'I'm here.'
'Have you got any sleep?'
She brought it out of her pocket. His anxiety and his need increased, and Mischa could feel his disappointment that she had only one capsule. 'It was all I could get,' she said, 'They didn't want to give it to me.' She put it in his mouth. He sucked it greedily, and as the capsule dissolved the feel of writhing filaments against Chris's tongue nauseated her. As they dissolved, he changed again. Becoming more aware, he looked at Mischa with her own eyes. 'Thanks.'
'Yeah.'
He retreated. So little of the drug could not let him sleep; it pushed him slowly back through stages of exhaustion. The pain crept toward him from another direction.
'When are we leaving, Mischa?'
For a moment, she could not even think what he meant. She clamped her hands against her temples. The pulse throbbed beneath her palms. She concentrated on the patterns of scratches on the stone floor. 'Soon,' she said, and hoped he would not hear the lie.
'When?'
'In the spring. As soon as the storms are over. Maybe even before.'
'That's good,' he said. 'That's good .
The silence stretched out like a taut wire. Once they had talked, when the balance between their giving and taking was almost even, after Mischa was old enough to take care of herself and steal for both of them, before Chris had forced himself, or felt himself forced, down this endless path.
Mischa heard him move, and braced herself, but that did not help. She looked up, and he was lying with his head thrown back, the tendons in his neck quivering. Beneath the blanket that covered him, his hand clutched the bedding; he seemed to be searching for any sensation but the pain. 'Oh, gods, Mischa, it hurts.' A tear squeezed out, beneath his long, fine eyelashes, slid down, back, into his hair.
Mischa choked on a sob but could not stop it.
'Mischa.'
When she realized Jan had spoken to her, she turned. He sat against the wall, looking down at his hands, flexing his strong fingers very carefully. Watching him, she shuddered.
'It wasn't enough,' he said.
'. No. I couldn't get any more.'
'What do you want to do?'
'I don't know.' Her mind felt dulled and slow, distracted by Chris's visions, and though she realized she must begin thinking again in terms of Center rather than in terms of escaping it, the backward transition was very difficult.
'I'm offering my help, Mischa, for gods' sake, will you accept it? There must be someone or something in this city that will ease him.'
'Will you go?'
He hesitated. Mischa hunched in on herself, preparing for an argument.
'All right,' Jan said sadly. 'I'll go.'
Jan left the cave, disturbed that Mischa would be linked to Chris, yet alone. But she was so little afraid of what might happen to her that he could do nothing more than she asked. He could have argued, but he would have lost.
The lights had not yet begun to brighten. Jan had no idea what time it was, but he thought at least half the darkness must remain. He had never seen anyone claiming medical knowledge in Center, and he wondered if Mischa, in her remaining unsophistication, had sent him hunting a faith healer, a fraud, a charlatan.
He stopped at the junction of radius and helix where the main cave opened out before him. The dim canyon of the Circle below held no movement, but in front of Stone Palace, along the arc, a crowd of people was gathered.
Jan started down the helix, running, letting gravity pull him along, beside the precipice. Below and before him, a figure toiled up the slope, head down with the effort of movement. In the dark, Jan could tell nothing about
