The women looked at each other in dread. Debby whispered, "But

only a corpse is cold."

"So light little fires all through the forest. Make them check each

one."

"Very dangerous. The fire might . . ." she trailed off. "Never mind.

Fires go out unless fanned. The smoke smothers them. It might be possible after all, near the jungle surface."

The Grad nodded and reached for more foliage. Things were looking better. If some could become citizens, they could protect the rest. Perhaps Quinn Tribe had found a home...

"Three groups, and they're all going deeper. The traces are getting blurred," said the pilot's blurred voice. The carm hung behind Squad Leader Patry's shoulder, bow aimed at the jungle. "Are you going after them?"

"Groups how big?"

"Three and three and a bigger group. The big group started first. You probably won't catch them."

In the hands of Patry's men a mass of greenery rose from the rest and floated free. Patry reported, "We've found where they dug in. Okay, we're going after them." He joined the waiting men. "Mark, take the point. The rest of you follow me. Go wide of that yellow stufl it's poison fern."

Mark was a dwarf the only man in London Tree who could wear the ancient armor, and thus the only possible custodian of the spitgun. Ten years ago he had tended to shy back from an attack, until he gained confidence in his invulnerability. The men had called him Tiny until Patty himself raised hell about it. Mark was born to wear the armor.

He'd learned to wear it well.

He climbed past the severed bush and into the dark with London Tree's infantry behind him.

The agony was real, centered above Clave's knee, but spreading in flashes throughout his body. The rest faded in and out. He was being towed through a tunnel. Soon the Scientist's plant extracts would erase the pain. But hadn't the plants died in the drought? And . . . the tree was gone. There wasn't any Scientist, and the Grad had no drugs, and the Grad was gone too. Too few survivors followed the Grad through green gloom. dave's pitiful remnant of a tribe was split, and there was no medicine for an injured man.

Jinny and Minya stopped abruptly, jarring his leg. The pain shouted in his brain. Then they had plunged into the tunnel's branchlet walls, and dave tumbled in free-fall, abandoned.

His tumble turned him and the dream turned nightmare. He faced a bulky, faceless silver thing. The apparition raised something

metal? A splinter stabbed into dave's ribs. He plucked it out. His mind was muzzy . . . was it a thorn? The metal-and-glass creature forced itself through the tunnel wall, ignoring Clave. Acolytes followed it in, blue men carrying huge, unwieldy bows.

The pain had gone and reality was fading. Here was medicine after all