She nodded as if she'd expected that. "An eccentric way to travel. Who are you? How many are you?"

Should he be hiding that? But Quinn Tribe must find Mends somewhere. Go for Gold-"Eight of us. All of Quinn Tribe, now, plus Minya, from the opposite tuft. Our tree came apart and left us marooned."

She frowned. "Tree dwellers? The copsik runners are tree dwellers."

"Why not? You don't get a tide anywhere else. Who're you?"

She studied him dispassionately. "For a captured invader, you are most impertinent."

"I've got nothing to lose." A moment after he said it, the Grad realized how true it was. Eight survivors had done their best to reach safety, and this was the end of it. Nothing left.

She had spoken. He said, "What?"

"We are Carther States," the black-haired woman repeated impatiently. "I am Kara, the Sherman." She pointed. "Lizeth. Hild." They looked like twins to the Grad's untrained eye: spectrally tall, pale of skin, red hair cropped two centimeters from the skull. "lisa." Usa's pants were as loose as her vest. That discrete abdomingi bulge: Usa was pregnant. Her hair was blond ftizz her scalp showed through. Long hair must be a problem among the branchiets. "Debby." Debby's hair was clean and straight and soft brown, and half a meter long, tied in back. How did she keep it that neat?

Sharman mean Shaman, an old word for Scientiri~ Could mean Chairman, except that she was a woman . . . but strangers wouldn't do everything the way Quinn Tribe did. Since when did the Chairman take a name?

"You haven't given us your name," Kara said pointedly.

There was something left to him after all. He said it with some pride:

"I'm the Quinn Tribe Scientist."

"Name?"

"The Scientist doesn't take one. Once I was called Jeffer."

"What are you doing in Carther States?"

"You'd have to ask a moby."

Lizeth snapped her knuckles across the back of his skull, hard enough to sting. He snarled, "I meant it! We were dying of thirst. We hooked a moby. Clave was hoping he'd try to lose us in a pond. He brought us here instead."

The Sharman's face didn't reveal what she thought of that. She said, "Well, it all seems innocent enough. We should discuss your situation after we eat."

The Grad's humiliation kept him silent . . . until he saw their meal and recognized the harpoon. "That's Alfin's bird."

"It belongs to Carther States," Lizeth informed hini.

He found he didn't care. His belly was stridently empty. "That wood looks too green to make a cookflre-"

"Salmon bird is eaten raw, with falling onion when we can get it."

Raw. Yuk. "Falling onion?"