Rather studied his work. "I think we're done. -It's an Empire thing, is it? You don't make babies even with relatives of relatives? Fine, but you've got a thousand people in the Empire! At least that's what your parents say. We had ten adults and twenty children when you came. I won't get much choice about who I marry."

"Who, then?"

He shrugged. "Jill's a half year older than me. All the other girls are younger. I'd have to wait." The subject made him uncomfortable. He looked up past the treadmill and along the trunk, to where a handful of citizens were trying their wings. "I wish I was up there. You've been flying all your life, haven't you?"

"I should be there, showing you people how to fly. This damn fluff," Carlot said. Long sleeves were sewn loosely to her tuftberry-scarlet tunic. She pulled one away. The green fur along her arm had turned brown; the patch had shrunk. "How's yours?" She touched his cheek. The patch felt half numb and raspy; it ran from his face down his neck and across part of his chest. "It's drying up. Ten days, it'll be cleared up."

"Too treefeeding slow."

"We just have to stay in the shade for a while. Fluff needs sunlight."

"Yeah."

From eastward, his first mother's voice called above the wind-roar. "Rather!"

Rather bounded toward Minya across the floor of braided, live-spine branches. Carlot gave him a good head start, then bounded after him. Her asymmetric legs gave her an odd run, a pleasure to watch: boundBOUND, boundBOUND, low-flying flight. Soon she'd be faster than Jill. She reached Minya a good six meters ahead of Rather, turned and flashed a grin at him. She lost it immediately.

"-Crawled too far toward the treemouth, and now he can't-" Minya stopped and began again. "Rather! It's the children. Harry and Qwen and Gorey went crawling around in the old west rooms. Gorey went too far, and Harry and Qwen can't reach him, and he can't get out."

"You can't get to him?"

"I didn't try. Rather, we don't know how long it was before Harry came to get us."

"Oh." Harry would have tried to rescue Gorey himself, then spent more time working up the nerve to tell his mother. And Gorey was only five! "I'll need some kind of knife," he said.

"What?"

"I'm no narrower than you are, First Mother. I'm just shorter. I may have to cut through some spine branches."

The wind didn't reach Mark's long hair and beard. They held the sweat like two sponges. The slab of hard branchwood strapped to his back massed as much as he did. He scrambled up the slope of the treadmill, panting, trying to stay higher than Karilly and seven children. With a weight on his back, Mark was the equal of any two adults.