There was activity at one of the fractured loading bays. But as Lise had begun to suspect, it was Hypothetical activity. A dense hedge of the growths Dvali called "ocular roses" had grown here, their petaled eyes all focused on the debris. Around them the trees had expressed a thick and writhing mat of motile roots, some sharply pointed and some flattened into spatulate blades. It was this mass of roots that was doing the digging. Surreal, Lise thought giddily, especially since the debris included not just concrete and steel and plastic but crumpled cereal boxes, milk jugs, canned food. She watched an inky blue tendril wrap itself around an industrial-sized soup can, puckering the red and white paper label, lift it so the nearest eye-flower could examine it, then relay it to another tentacle that passed it on seriatim until it was deposited on a rubbish tip of previously cleared debris.

The process was so perversely methodical that she found herself wanting to laugh. Instead she stared, for what seemed like an immensely long time. If the ocular roses were aware of their presence they displayed no reaction. The patient digging went on and on. Scratching, probing, tapping, sifting…

She stifled a scream when Turk suddenly put his hand on her shoulder. "We ought to back off a ways,"

he whispered. Which struck her as an excellent idea.

* * * * *

Was the sun already setting? Lise had lost her watch somewhere along the trail or back in the riggers'

dorm. She hated the idea of the coming night.

As soon as they felt free to speak (but still whispering, as if the ocular roses could overhear them, and for all she knew they could) Turk said to Dvali, "I'm sorry it wasn't the women we heard—"

But Dvali was still bright-eyed with hope. "Don't you see what this means? They must be alive under there—Isaac, at least, must be alive!"

Because it was Isaac the Hypotheticals wanted. These growths might not be sentient, singly or collectively, but they knew something of their own had been separated from them by rock and ruin.

They wanted Isaac. But what would they do with him when they found him?

"We can only watch," Dr. Dvali said. "Camp here and watch until the boy comes out alive."

Comes out to meet his fate, Lise thought.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE