“Contented Forerunners?” My ancilla took on a dubiously green cast. “The particles are spreading throughout your system and your nervous system, into your brain. We cannot let them continue. What you are in immediate need of is a purge. The danger is too great.”

“Are the particles provoking any immune response?”

“Not yet, Lifeshaper. You are calm and happy. I do not know what that implies.”

I was happy—happier than I had been in many years. But I knew it would not last.

“I think … I think it will be important that I return to the old woman and allow her to bite me again.”

The ancilla flashed through another spectrum. “Your goal is … obscure, Lifeshaper!”

“Be patient,” I suggested, closing my eyes.

It seemed likely that biting, or being bitten, was a two-way process here. What could the woman learn from retrieving a few of her tiny scouts, even now conducting a no doubt delicate but thorough survey? And without provoking my extremely vigilant immune system!

What did she need to learn?

I spoke of this to none of the others, and did not communicate with Audacity on the matter. Morning would come soon, and even I preferred to act out my theories in the light of day. Night is a difficult time for those who live close to nature; day is safer.

We had long since lost the habit of sleep. In our armor, all the needs of sleep are taken care of, and a smooth, healthy continuity of consciousness is possible. What dreams we infrequently succumb to—waking dreams—are administrative and diagnostic. Housekeeping dreams. Hardly amusing at all.

Yet in the dark, with the old woman’s “scouts” coursing through me, I was beginning to shed my calm.

I was beginning to dread the silence and the inaction.

And what tomorrow might bring.

* * *

Sunrise pushed through a thin deck of clouds, gray and sad. We passed our complete reports to Audacity, then planned our return to the town.

Again, all would wear armor except for me.

“They eat their relatives, you know,” Chant reminded me. “What if they decide you taste better?”

“I’m sure I do,” I said. “Better than those.” I looked toward the grazing livestock. “Certainly cleaner.”

My favorite teacher, from whom I had taken my maturing imprint, had stated to all her charges, “Life is deadly to all its parts. No emotion fits our challenge better than humor.”

I still showed no obvious reaction to the old woman’s bite—no swelling, no fever, no other sign of infection or distress. But something was definitely working within me.

I murmured to myself, lips moving in an unfamiliar way. The words made sense, I understood them, but they came strangely to my lips. My muscles had to grow accustomed to shaping such sounds. The new words—new to me and my muscles—demanded a great many tonguing flexures and rattling glottals.