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  The meteorite said, “We will come to a meadow with a large stream going through it in a little more than two deks. Will that be soon enough?”

  “That will be fine,” Dex said, wondering once again how it could know such a thing. “We’re ready to take off if you are.”

  As they counted off in preparation for lifting off again, Dex thought about how hie himrself knew approximately where streams were on the Yetany’s usual migration route south. But the meteorite that they were following had never left the cave area. It couldn’t have flown this eastward migration itself. Not that hie doubted the meteorites strange abilities any longer.

  Instead hie wondered whether the Yetanys would have had any chance of surviving this disaster without the meteorites and their strange knowledge of things which Dex wouldn’t have thought they could possibly know…

  Sure enough, after flying for what Dex would’ve estimated to be about two deks, the meteorite said they were about to descend to the stream. Because flying the point of the V where you weren’t riding in anyone else’s wing tip vortex was harder than the other positions, one of the other dalins had taken over the point from Dex for a while. However, the meteorite had spoken loudly enough that Dex could still hear it from the number two position. A few centideks later, Dex heard the slight decrease in pitch the meteorite made when it was descending. Moments later hie could tell that the meteorite was lower, then the glow from the ankle bracelet of the current leader began to descend. Dex began gliding down, minutely adjusting hies position to stay in the leader’s wingtip vortex.

  They came in for another successful landing in a meadow. This time Dex landed a little too hard and nearly fell. When hie checked on hies flight, everyone in it said they were okay. Hie wondered whether anyone had been injured in the following flights. Approaching the meteorite, hie asked, “Where is the stream?”

  “Up ahead about ten body lengths,” the meteorite replied. “We are worried that the water might have a lot of dust in it. This device,” Dex was close enough to see the big fin on the side of the meteorite turn fuzzy. Something fell out of it and Dex picked it up to study it. “That device,” the meteorite resumed, “is like your air intake device, but designed to clean water instead of air. If you pull it open, you can scoop dusty water up into it and clean water should come out the bottom.”

  Dex led the other dalins up to the stream. Apparently Fagan immediately tried to drink, because Dex heard himr complaining, “This water’s muddy!”

  “Don’t drink yet! Or, drink from your water bladders if you have some left. The meteorite has given me a device to clean the water with. Let me try it and see how well it works.” Dex looked at the new device the meteorite had given himr, puzzling about the instructions to “pull it open.”

  The meteorite had moved itself up beside himr. Now it said, “It’s curled up like a leaf. Unroll it and you’ll see that at the big end it has two layers. Pull them apart.”

  Dex did so and saw that it now formed a large bowl with a knob at the bottom.

  The meteorite said, “Dip it in the stream so that the bowl fills with water. Clean water will come out the bottom.”

  Dex dipped it and held it up. Sure enough, water began pouring out the bottom of it. However, in the dusty air, hie couldn’t tell whether it was actually clean. Tentatively, hie directed the stream into hies mouth. It tasted a little bitter but not dusty. Hie wondered whether hie was as sensitive to the taste of the dust as some of the others. “Fagan, come taste this water. Tell me what you think.”

  The other dalins had crowded around Dex, waiting for clean water. Dex had to keep calling hies name so Fagan would know which direction to go as hie shuffled hies way through them. Dex re-dipped the water cleaner and held it up for Fagan to sample the stream coming out of the bottom of it. “It’s good!” hie said, sounding somewhat surprised. “Just a little bit bitter.”

  Dex said, “Okay, let’s take turns filling our water bladders. Those of us who aren’t filling our bladders can eat and relax. After we’ve rested, we’ll try to fly farther yet today.”

  Fagan quietly said, “I wish Syrdian was here. Maybe hie could catch us some fish in this stream.”

  Just as quietly, Dex replied, “I’m afraid the muddy water has probably killed the fish.” Wistfully, hie said, “I hope the fish are healthy where we’re going…”

  ***

  Warren lay in bed working on the mind-numbingly boring job of selecting the location of his axons in his visual field. They had started by building a vertical line up from the axon he had chosen as the center of his field of view. He would use the trackball to search for the axon that gave him a spark of light exactly on top of the line the computer could generate for him based on the axons he had already identified.

  Once he had developed a good central vertical line, he had started just to the right of center and built another vertical line right next to that one. Eventually they had established a small area in the center of his visual field where the axons were clearly and correctly located.

  That done, he became able to see things quite well as long as he looked directly at them. Now he was simply pushing the area of his good vision outward. A line would appear in the established part of his visual field and he would roll a trackball until he lit an axon right at the tip of it. They took about five seconds each on average to identify.

  He’d had his AI run the numbers. At that rate it would take nearly 1400 hours to locate a million axons. It would take him thirty-five weeks if he put in forty hours a week! Warren had bitched about this to Dr. Keller. Two days later, Keller had sent Warren’s AI an algorithm worked up by some programming genius named Kinrais. Apparently this guy had recognized some kind of pattern in the way the axons were arranged. Now, when a spark appeared it frequently was already in the right place! If it wasn’t, it was close and it didn’t take Warren nearly as long to light up the correct one.

  At the rate he was working now, it would only take about twelve weeks which was still horribly long. However, Keller had called yesterday to say that this Kinrais guy had noticed that as time went along Warren’s brain might be rearranging the pattern it “saw” the axons in. In other words, his brain might be learning where the axons were currently arranged in his visual field. Kinrais had suggested that Warren might want to stop after a while and just see how well his brain did rearranging the rest of his vision on its own.

  Warren had decided to finish out the current circle of axons he’d been working on recently. His central vision was already excellent. He wouldn’t mind waiting to see if his peripheral vision improved on its own given time, but the little triangle of blurred vision in his current circle of good vision bugged him. He wanted to get rid of it before he quit.

  It would be good to get back to living life again instead of track-balling axons. Actually, living a lot better life than he had in the past now that he could see!

  He wondered if he would ever meet Stell again. She was one thing he would really like to see—now that he could.

  Chapter Eight

  Nancy sat at the corner of the little playground there at the preschool. It was as far as she could get from the other kids. Her stomach hurt and she held onto it with both hands. Two mornings ago, when she’d sat down at her usual table in the classroom, Mark had scooted his chair away from hers. She and Mark had been assigned to sit next to one another since the summer session preschool started. While they hadn’t exactly been friends, they had gotten along okay. They had shared markers and paint and had helped one another like they were supposed to.

  But Jimmy and Roger had been whispering terrible things about Nancy, saying that she was unclean and had cooties. Nancy had asked Mark why he had scooted his chair so far from her and he had shrugged and said, “Jimmy says you’ve got cooties. If I touch you, the other boys won’t play with me.”

  Mark seemed to think that was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. He apparently thought that Nancy should sympathize with him for his plight in h
aving to sit at her table. When her face had crumpled and she had begun to cry, he had said, “What’s your problem?”

  The rumor of Nancy’s cooties had quickly spread and the other kids started avoiding her and trying not to touch her. At first it had only been the boys, but now even the girls were avoiding her.

  She felt so lonely. But, she was putting on a brave face and trying to smile like her mother had advised her.

  Ms. Miller had seemed to recognize what was going on. This morning she had had a talk with the class in general about how cruel it was to avoid another kid or imply they were unclean. She told them that such unkind behavior had been going on amongst children since the beginning of time. She hadn’t used Nancy’s name, but Nancy suspected that everyone knew who she was talking about.

  It hadn’t affected the way the other children treated Nancy. At first, she had hoped that Ms. Miller’s little speech would turn things around for her. The kids all seemed to like Ms. Miller, however, their love for their teacher didn’t seem to extend to Nancy.

  Nancy scuffed her shoe in the dirt, alternating between wondering what she had done to make everyone hate her and whether she could do anything to make them like her. Her mother’s advice to smile and be friendly hadn’t been getting her very far.

  Two pairs of shoes appeared in her field of view. She looked up and saw Zage and Marvin. At first she recoiled away, expecting them to say something as cruel as the other kids had been saying. Then hope blossomed, maybe they didn’t know that she was to be shunned?

  Zage said, “Have you heard that the teecees are migrating to a new place?”

  Zage sat down next to her. Not just next to her, but close enough that he was touching her. He must not know about her cooties. Marvin sat next to him. Looking over at Zage, Nancy said, “They are?”

  “Yeah, my AI’s sending yours a link so that you can watch the video. It’s kind of boring right now, they’re just flying along and the air is so full of dust that you can hardly see anything. But if you look at this next link, you can see where they landed next to a stream for a rest. The people at D5R sent them a filter that they used to clean the water in the stream so that they would be able to drink it.”

  Nancy looked up at her HUD. “Wow! That’s awful, they can hardly see anything, huh?” Distantly she thought that being shunned wasn’t quite as bad as life could get.

  “Yeah, but D5R found them a place pretty far to the east where the air’s much clearer. No other teecees live there, so hopefully they’ll be able to move into that area without too much trouble.”

  Nancy thought about this for a moment. “What about other teecees that live near where the comet hit? Is D5R helping them move to the east also?

  Zage sighed, “That’s a sad problem. D5R’s rockets have tried to visit a few of the tribes that they knew lived near the impact area. They didn’t have enough rockets on TC3 at first so they had to send more rockets out there through ports. By the time new rockets got there, the teecees in those other nearby locations were already dead, choked on the dust. They tried to visit some groups that were further away too. Those groups were still alive, but pretty sick. The rockets tried to give them air filters and goggles, but the teecees were frightened and mostly ran away. Even the ones who listened either couldn’t see or couldn’t understand the projected pictures of how to use the goggles in the dusty air.”

  “So they’re only really helping one tribe?”

  Zage nodded sadly.

  They kept talking about the teecees until Ms. Miller called them in to class from their free play time.

  Francine Miller eyed the little group of three children as they walked back into the classroom. The kids shunning Nancy was breaking Francine’s heart. She’d not only spoken to the entire class, but she’d had a special little sit-down with Jimmy and Roger who she thought were leading the hateful practice. She liked teaching preschool because kids usually weren’t this mean. This particular class was not only cruel, but surprisingly resistant to her attempts to change them. It reminded her of the ugly behavior she’d encountered in the much older children she had taught during her student teaching days.

  Nancy proved to be a typical target for bullying by the other kids. Obese, with thin, poorly cut hair, her parents dressed her in odd clothing. Standing out amongst one’s peers at this age was always a bad idea unless you had a lot of charisma, something Nancy was lacking. Francine had considered talking to the child’s parents about a haircut and different clothing, but she suspected that just sending her to preschool was a financial stretch for them.

  However, this Zage Kinrais kid, odd as he was himself, seemed particularly impervious to peer pressure. Regarding Nancy, or anything else for that matter. She’d seen him sitting with Nancy on the playground, close enough to touch, as if completely oblivious to the other kids shunning her.

  For a moment she considered speaking to Zage and telling him how much she appreciated his befriending Nancy. And Marvin too for that matter, though she thought Marvin was just tagging along.

  But it might backfire. Zage was the kind of kid who might be completely oblivious to Nancy’s low social status until Francine pointed it out to him.

  She decided against saying anything.

  ***

  Dex chewed on yet another piece of dried, smoked zornit as hie walked around talking to members of the tribe where they had camped in a large meadow for the night. Some were upbeat, finding the migration so far to be easier than they had expected. Some expressed their dismay at finding that they would have to wear their air filters and see-rocks all night long. They had not thought about the fact that the fog baskets wouldn’t clear the air in an open meadow like this.

  Dex tried to bring their attention to the fact that the air already seemed to be a little clearer than it had been back at the mountain. “And the meteorites promise us that it will be much better at the place we’re going to,” hie reminded them.

  As Dex made hies way through the murk towards the area where hies own family had camped, hie heard Qes voice. “This ‘migration’ is ridiculous. Going east! Who’s ever heard of something like that? I don’t know why we couldn’t just wait till the rain cleared the dust out of the air. Sometimes I think he’s only doing this because hie knows how much it makes my arm hurt to fly!”

  Dex thought of ignoring it, but then turned and took a few steps towards Qes voice. When hie could faintly see Qes, hie said, “If you want to go back, Qes, I’m sure I could arrange for one of the meteorites to escort you back to the cave.”

  Qes jerked around, as did Fantais and the two dalins sitting with them. “No, no,” Qes said in a conciliatory tone. “We’ll continue. We don’t want to live alone. We just don’t agree that this migration is needed.”

  Dex looked at the other two young dalins. They both had embarrassed postures, though it was hard to see their expressions in the thick air. They had turned their faces away. Dex thought they’d turned so that it would make them hard to recognize. “OK,” hie said, “it’s your right to disagree. Or to leave…” Dex turned to go, then had a thought. Hie turned back, “Sorry to hear that your arm is hurting you Qes. Isn’t it getting any better?”

  Qes looked back over hies shoulder again at Dex. “Yes, yes, it’s getting better. Slowly.”

  “I’m glad…” Dex continued on hies way, hopefully leaving them to ponder the fact that hie was the one who had straightened Qes arm.

  ***

  Phil moved his crutches ahead, gently set the foot of his injured leg down between them, then brought his good leg up through and past them. He felt astonished at how difficult this was. They told him it was because he had lost blood, and become deconditioned during his period on Mars compounded by the time in bed waiting to come back to earth and have his surgery. Still, for someone who had always found physical things incredibly easy, this seemed surprisingly difficult.

  His therapist, a small slender woman named Terese had hold of a belt around his waist. He often wondered if s
he actually thought she’d be able to hold him up if he started to fall. Maybe she could slow his descent a little, but she would act more like an emergency chute than a real parachute.

  Terese kept telling him that he was doing well. Phil didn’t know whether she was blowing smoke up his skirt, or she really thought his feeble progress was good.

  A voice said, “Hey Zabrisk, you’re looking pretty puny. I thought you were supposed to be invincible, but here you are, sweat on your brow, pale in the face, weak in the knees…”

  Phil looked up. Terese was always telling him that he should be looking up rather than down at his feet anyway. Ell stood there, languidly leaning against the wall, looking astonishingly good as always. She had on black jeans and a little T-shirt, looking casual, but as usual carrying it off better than anyone else ever even hoped to. “Hah, Ms. Endurance, come around to verbally abuse the halt, the lame and the sorely injured?”

  Ell grinned at him, “You bet.” She winked, “I’ll bet I could take you in a mile run today.”

  Terese spoke up, “Dr. Donsaii! Should I take Mister Zabrisk back to his room so you can talk to him?”

  “Oh no! You just keep right on torturing him! I’m having more fun than you’d ever believe watching you do it.”

  Phil sighed, “Every good man’s nightmare. Having two evil women ganging up on him, each bent on doing him sore harm.”

  The two women laughed merrily.

  Phil said, “I’ve been thinking that my rehab would be a lot easier on Mars?”