“Brace yourself in your seat!” he called. And he followed his own order while he watched the advancing swarm of orange.

“What’re they doing?” Waela asked.

It was a rhetorical question. They could both see the hylighters slow their advance at the last instant. In concert, they turned their great sail membranes into the wind and cupped the gondola in dangling tendrils.

Waela freed herself from her seat, but before she could move, the massed hylighters opened a way overhead and Panille was lowered through the hatch.

She tried to avoid the questing mass of tendrils which accompanied Panille, but they found her. They enfolded her face with a sensation of tingling dryness which immediately gave way to a drunken sense of abandon. She knew her body; she knew where she was: right here in the gondola which was being held steady in a cupped hammock of hylighter tendrils. But nothing mattered except a feeling of joy which insinuated itself all through her. She felt that the sensation came from Panille and not from the hylighters.

Avata? What are Avata?

That thought had seemed her own, but she could not be certain.

She was not aware of up or down. There was no spatial solidity.

I’m going crazy!

All of the horror stories about poisonous and hallucinogenic hylighters crashed through her barriers and she tried to scream but could not locate her voice.

Still, the joy persisted. Panille was right there saying things to soothe her. “It’s all right, Lini.”

Where did he get that name for me? That was my childhood name! I hate that name.

“Don’t hate any part of yourself, Lini.”

The joy would not be denied. She began to laugh but could not hear her own laughter.

Quite suddenly, an island of clarity opened around her and she knew Kerro Panille lay nude beside her. She felt his warm flesh against her.

Where did my clothing go?

It was not important.

I’m hallucinating.

This was a product of Thomas’ command that she seduce the poet. She gave herself up to the dream, to the warmth and hardness of him as he slid into her, rocking her. And she sensed all around the questing tendrils as they explored, joining her with images of flaring stars. That, too, was unimportant—more hallucination. There was only the joy, the ecstasy.