The Grad jumped in. "Don't you see, we can't fight and we can't negotiate! We've got one good fighter, and two cripples and a boy and four women and a treemouth tender, and all of us thrown out of Quinn Tuft, we can't even make promises-"

Clave broke in. "Alfin, you're for leaving too?"

"Jiovan?"

"What are we running from?"

"Maybe nothing. That mark wasn't tended for a long time. Treefodder, the drought could have killed them off! We could settle the far tuft-"

Merril broke in, though she was puffing from the climb. "Oh no. if everyone died there . . - we won't want to . . . go anywhere near it.

Sickness."

"Are you for going back or going on?"

"I don't . . . back, I guess, but . . . let's get that . . . big fan fungus first. Wouldn't that impress the citizens! And smoke another nosearm . . . if we can. Far as that goes . . . we know there's meat to be hunted on the trunk. We should tell the Chairman that."

"Jayan? Jinny?"

"She makes sense," Jinny said, and Jayan nodded.

"Gavving?"

"No opinion."

"Treefodder. Glory?"

"Go back," Glory said. "I haven't tasted foliage in days and days."

Clave sighed. "ff1 was sure I was right, we'd go on. Aaall right." His voice became fuller, more resonant. "We'll have enough to carry anyway, what with the giant fan and whatever meat we find. Citizens, we've done very well for ourselves and Quinn Tuft. We go home as heroes. Now, I don't want to lose anyone on the way down, so don't take the tide for granted! It'll get stronger with every klomter. Most of the way down we'll need lines for the meat and the fan fungus-"

Their goals had become Clave's own. Gavving noticed, and remembered.

The flashers had come back. Minya watched them at their mating dance. Two males strutted before. the same femhle with their wingcloaks spread wide, and the female's head snapped back and forth almost too fast to see. Decisions decisions- "Something's been worrying you, woman."

-Decisions. Was it any of Smitta's business? Minya made a swift

decision: she had to talk to someone, or burst. "I've started wondering if-if I'm right for the Triune Squad."

Smitta showed shock. "Really? You were eager enough to join eight years ago. What's changed?"

"I don't know."

But she did, and suddenly Smitta did too. "Don't talk to Sal about this. She wouldn't understand."

"I was only fourteen."

"You looked older . . . more mature. And maybe the loveliest recruit we ever got."

Minya grimaced. "Every man in the tuft wanted to make babies with me. I must have heard every possible way of saying that. I just didn't want to do that with anyone. Smitta, that's what the Triune Squad is for!"

"I know. What would I be without the Triune Squad? A woman born as a man, a man who wants to be a woman . .

"Do you ever want-" What was the right word? Not make babie.s~, not for Smitta.