“Weird. The backs of my eyes hurt. It’s screwing with my vision. Like rainbow shimmers. Uh, as if I was looking through an oil sheen on water. Lots of colors that break into stars. And I’m hearing things. Leg’s a hell of a lot better, though. Hurts about half as bad as it did yesterday, which I’m taking for a major win.”

Talina flipped on the autopilot, stepped back to crouch beside him. She pointed to the barely healed wound on his arm. “How long since you and Flute exchanged blood? A couple of weeks?”

“Yeah. About.”

“And why the hell did you do that?”

“To understand.”

“Understand what, Dek? We have no clap-trapping clue what TriNA’s long-term effects are on the human body. For all you know, you’ll end up a freak like Kylee and me.”

“And there’s that professor on Vixen.”

“Weisbacher. Last time I talked with anyone on Vixen, he was a mumbling, half-psychotic wreck. He hallucinates that TriNA is eating his brain. Never leaves his cabin. I think if Torgussen had his way, he’d ship the moron dirtside and be well rid of the albatross. But let’s get back to you. What the clap-trapping hell do you hope to get out of quetzal TriNA?”

He tried to think, wished to hell his brain was clear. That the blue nasty wasn’t messing with his mental clarity. “You, Kylee, Kip, maybe Chaco and Madison, you’re the future of humanity on Donovan. I don’t know if we’re going to win here, even whether or not we’ll survive. But meeting the planet halfway is the best hope.”

A hardness lay behind her dark and alien eyes. “It comes at a price, Dek. Kylee, Kip, and me? We’re no longer wholly human. You exchanging blood with Flute? I’d say you’d better hope it doesn’t take. If it does, you’re never going back to Solar System to enjoy all those perks of being a high mucky muck.”

“Thought you knew I wasn’t going back.” He gave her a wry wink, gestured toward the forest passing below. “My future’s here. Like Kalico, I’m betting everything on it.”

“Hope it doesn’t destroy you,” she told him as she rose and headed back to the wheel. Over her shoulder, she added, “More than once it’s come within a hair’s width of killing me.”

“But you made it.” He blinked against the growing ache behind his eyes. What was that about? Migraine coming on? On top of the pain-sucking leg? What kind of justice was that?

“Yeah,” Talina called over her shoulder. “First time you experience that peppermint taste, you’ll know you’re fucked.”

“How’s that?”

“Because it means the changes have started, and there’s no going back.”

15