There was a knot as big as a boy's fist where the break had been on his thighbone. His fingers could feel the hard lump beneath the muscles; his body felt it when he moved. Merril had told him it couldn't be seen.

Would she lie to spare him? He was disinclined to ask anyone else.

He was disfigured. But the bone was healing; it hurt less every day. The scar was an impressive pink ridge. He exercised, and waited for war.

There had been tens of days of sleep merging into pain. He'd seen spindly, impossibly tall near-human forms flitting about him at all angles, green shapes fading like ghosts into a dark green background, quiet voices blurred in the eternal whisper of the foliage. He had thought he was still dreaming.

But Merril was real. Homely, legless Merril was entirely familiRr, entirely real, and mad as hell. The copsik runners bad taken everyone. "Everyone but us. They left us. I'll make them sorry for that!"

He had taken little notice, in the pain of a healing bone and the sharperacheofhisfailure. Ahuntleaderwhobadlost histeam, a Chairman who had lost his tribe. Quinn Tribe was dead. He told himself that depression always followed a serious wound. He stayed where he was, deep in the dark interior of the jungle, for fear that fluff might grow in the wound; and he slept. He slept a great deal. He didn't have the will to do more.

Merril tried to talk to him. Things weren't that bad. The Grad had impressed the Carthers. Merril and dave were welcome in the tribe

though as copsiks.

Once he woke to find Merril jubilant. "They'll let me fight!" she said, and dave learned that the Carthers were p1~inning war against London Tree.

Over the following days he grew to know tjie jungle people. Of around two hundred Carthers, half were copsiks. It didn't seem to carry any onus. Copsiks here lacked for nothing save a voice in the council.

He saw many children and many pregnancies and no starvation. The jungle people were healthy and happy . . . and better armed than Quinn Tribe had been.

He was questioned at a gathering of the tribe. Carther States' Commons was a mere widening in a tunnel, perhaps twelve meters across and twice that long. Surprisingly, the space held everyone. Men and women and children, copsiks and citizens, all clung to the cylinder wall, covering it with an inner layer of heads, while Comlink or the Sharman spoke from one end.

"How can you even reach London Tree?" he had asked, but only once. That information was "classified"; spies would not be tolerated. But he could watch the preparations. He was sure these fires were part of it.

He had been flapping wind at the coals for half a day now. His leg was holding up. Soon he would have to shift position.