"You have to leam to think of her as a lost one."

"She was fifteen!"

("She wasn't even two!" Jill had wailed after a sister sickened and died. lisa had hugged her daughter frequently. When lisa died at thirty-one, it had been no better for Jill.

(Age didn't matter. Touching helped.) Rather worked his fingers into her hair and began a scalp massage. She didn't move. He said, "I've had brothers and sisters die. We all have. You forget."

She'd removed her sleeves after the fluff died. The skin of her arms was smooth and richly dark, and she suddenly wriggled about and had him in a deathgrip.

Rotating, they drifted in the sky. Rather still wore his wings; his instincts told him to return to the tree. He held her.

She wasn't sobbing. Presently she pulled her chin off his shoulder and kissed him.

He asked, "Better?"

"Yes. I don't want to go back."

"Will you be all right here? Shall I stay?" Half a dozen finger cacti drifted east, less than a klomter distant. A windborne finger cactus could be lethal. These were only drifting, and drifting away at that . . . but you never stopped looking for danger.

Carlot hadn't answered. He said, "Your father might get upset if we stay here too long-"

"Father's made mistakes before."

"He tells you who to make babies with, though. Mishael had to ask, and she's older than you."

"Do you want to go?"

"... No."

"I thought hard before I took my clothes off in front of you."

He remembered swimming in the waterfall, and laughed. "I noticed. But Booce was there."

She freed him, and all the muscles in his body jumped. Loose in the sky! But he had wings. Carlot drifted, rotating away from him . . . donning her wings? No: she pulled her tunic over her head, then rolled her pants off and balled them up together.

He looked. Now she was tying her wings to her ankles. Her clothes too. Nudity was not strange to him, but this was different. Carlot was long, one and a half times his own height. Her breasts were perfect cones, an abrupt break in the long smooth stretch of her torso. Rather resisted the urge to touch her. He spoke hurriedly, before he could lose that fight. "Now, what would happen if we really did make a baby? Could you still marry anyone you want to?"

She said, "It's all right. We just have to watch what time we do this."

"Yeah?" Rather had never heard anything about how not to make a baby. "When can you do it?"

"Now."

"I've never done this before." He swam toward her.

"I'll show you. Take these off."

Chapter Ten

Secrets

from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 31 SM:

FISHER PLANT is BOLL-SHAPED, 100-300 METERS IN DIAMETER. IT CAN EXTEND A LONG WATER-INFLATED ROOT INTO A PASSING POND, FOR FERTILIZER AS WELL AS WATER.