She shook her head. "They might have killed me, without you. Gayving, let me tell you about the Triune Squad."

"You told me. You're fighters, and you're all women, even the men."

"That's right. If a man wants to be a woman, or a woman doesn't ever want to be pregnant, she joins the Triune Squad. She can serve the tribe without making babies."

Gavving digested that. "If you don't want to make babies, they make you fight?"

"That's right. And it isn't just fighting. It's anything dangerous. This

-" She pulled the rim of her pants down, and he shied, perhaps flinching at the scar. It ran half a meter from her short ribs past her hip. "Tip of a swordbird's tail. If my jet pod hadn't fired I would have been all over the sky."

She suddenly wondered if he might see it as a flaw, rather than a matter of pride. Too late . . . and better that he see it now than later.

He said, "Three of us fought a swordbird a few waketimes ago. Two came back."

"They're dangerous."

"So. You don't like men?"

"I didn't. Gavving, I was only fourteen."

He stared. "Why would a man bother a fourteen-year-old girl?"

She hadn't thought she could still laugh, but she did. "Maybe it was the way I looked. But they all . . . bothered me, and the only way out was the Triunes."

He waited.

"And now I'm twenty-two and I want to change my mind and I can 't. Nobody changes her mind once she's in the Triune Squad. I could be killed for even asking, and I did ask-" She caught her voice rising. This wasn't going as planned. She whispered, "He told me I should be ashamed of myself. Maybe he'll tell. I don't care. I'm not going back."

He reached as if to pat her shoulder and changed his mind. "Don't

worry about it. We can't move anyway. If we could, well, an empty tree would still be a better bet."

"And I want to make babies," she said and waited.

He must have understood. He didn't move. "With me? Why me?"

"Oh, treefodder, why can't you just . . . all right, who else? The Grad lives all in his head. Alfin's afraid of falling. Clave? I'm glad he's here, he's a good leader. But Clave's . . . type pushed me into the Triunes in the first place! He scares me, Gavving. I saw you kill Sal and Smitta, but you still don't scare me. I think you had to do that." She knew instantly that she'd said the wrong thing.

He started to tremble. "I didn't hate them. Minya, they were killing us! Without a word. They were your friends, weren't they?"

She nodded. "It's been a bad, bad waketime. But I'm not going back."

"All for a fan fungus."

"Gavving, don't turn me down. I . . . couldn't stand it."

"I'm not turning you down. I've just never done this before."