But she knew that, no matter how things seemed, the reality was that Reatur, unchanged so far as she could tell in the time she had been alive, had been about the same long before that. And she knew mates, many mates, had ended in the time since she had started paying attention to the world around her. She could die, too.

She looked at the piece of cured hide she held in one hand and at the marks written on it. Reatur knew she had this piece and did not mind. More of the marks were beginning to make sense to her. Each one she learned made the rest easier to understand. If she lived, one day she would be able to read.

The door to the mates’ chambers opened. Reatur came through. He looked fired, Lamra thought-his eyestalks, even his arms, drooped. He had not come to see the mates so often lately as before, and when he did, he was always tired.

The mates swarmed around him. He had kind words for all of them, as he usually did: praise for Peri’s scribbles-which, Lamra thought, did not look a thing like real writing-an eyestalk wiggle of glee when some other mate in the crowd-Lamra could not see who-threw a ball that actually went in his direction.

Lamra tried to wait for him to notice her. She was at the edge of the group because she could not move quickly anymore, and a lot of mates had dashed by to be with the domain master. That made her angry, and she was not very patient, anyhow. When she could not wait any longer, she shouted “Reatur!” as loud as she could.

Two of his eyestalks looked in her direction. “Your turn will come, little one,” he said, and went on with what he was doing. The promise kept her quiet a while longer. Then she shouted for him again.

“Soon,” Reatur said, more sharply this time. Lamra shifted from foot to foot to foot to foot to foot to foot. Finally, when the domain master had talked with or cuddled the rest of the mates, he turned his eyestalks toward her again. “Now, little one, come with me and we will talk.”

He led her off to one of the smaller chambers. The other mates dispersed. At first they had resented the special attention Reatur gave Lamra, but now they were used to it. They quickly got used to things that had once been strange-humans, for instance. Lamra was much like her companions in that respect.

“Well, little one,” Reatur said, “what have you been doing since I saw you last?”

She waved her piece of hide. “I’ve learned a lot more marks. Look, this says, ‘that was the year so much ice melted that the roof’-did something. I don’t know what this part means.” She pointed at the words that had defeated her.

He.turned an eyestalk toward it. “’Fell in,’ “he told her.

“That’s very good, Lamra. You’ve been working hard.”

“So have you,” she retorted, “or you’d have come around more often to see me.”

Air hissed out of his breathing pores. “You’re right-I have and I would. It’s-“ He paused, as if wondering whether to go on, but at last he did. “-it’s been difficult.”

Lamra responded more to his tone than to his words. “Why are you sad, Reatur?”

“Among other reasons, because the humans still haven’t had any luck with mates from the herds, and your budding time draws near,” he said. “I never wanted you to die, Lamra, but finding hope that you might not and then seeing it fade is hard.”

“I don’t want to die, either, Reatur. Maybe I won’t, still. But if I do, well-”

“Don’t say it,” the domain master said, and so Lamra did not repeat the old saying about old mates. After a moment, the domain master went on, “Aside from that, Dordal’s males have stolen some of our massi, the Skarmer have crossed Ervis Gorge in things the humans call ‘boats,’ and they or another, different kind of human killed one of the ones we know. And aside from that, everything is fine.”

Lamra did not always recognize sarcasm. It escaped her this time. Even had she caught it, she would have paid it no mind, not when it came along with Reatur’s other news. A human dead! She had not even been sure humans could die. “Which one is dead?” she asked anxiously; three of the strange creatures had become closer friends of hers than anybody save Reatur.

“The one called Frank,” he answered. Lamra knew relief- she had hardly even seen that one.

Still, she said, “How sad for the humans. There were so few of them even before.”

Reatur angrily jerked his arms. He started to turn yellow. “It will be sad for us if we can’t push the cursed Skarmer back down the gorge. If this domain gets a new master, a Skarmer master, your budlings will never live to grow up. And you-if you do live but we lose, what would a Skarmer chieftain make of you? Nothing good, I tell you that.”

Lamra tried to keep herself from turning blue. She hadn’t thought about any of the things Reatur had said, and they all sounded terrifying. “We have to win, then,” she said at last. “We will. We have you, and the Skarmer don’t.” Even as she said that, she saw herself greening up again. Reatur, she was convinced, could handle anything.

“I wish it were that simple.” The domain master sighed. “I came to see you to get away from my worries, and here I’ve given them to you instead. You’re brave for not fussing about them.”

He widened himself to her, then left before she could figure out how to respond. The boom of the door closing after him sounded very final.

Pat Marquard stumbled as she walked toward the latest pennedeloc mate on the point of budding. “Careful,” Irv said. He had said it several times already-wherever her eyes were focused, it was not on the ground under her feet.

“Sorry,” she answered. Her voice sounded far away. She did not look at him.

Sarah said gently, “It’s all right if you want to go back to the ship, Pat.” Irv nodded.

Thinking about how to reply brought Pat back toward the here-and-now. She shook her head. “If I don’t have anything to do, I’ll go even crazier than I am now. I’d rather try to work than just sit and brood.”

Sarah glanced toward Irv. He nodded again-he would have said the same thing. His wife shrugged. They walked on. Irv wondered how much they were going to accomplish. For one thing, they hadn’t kept a mate alive yet. For another, if the invaders from the west won, the future for which they were trying to save Lamra would prove depressingly short.

Irv also thought about Oleg Lopatin. Tolmasov sounded as anxious to be rid of him as was everyone on Athena. He must have flipped out, Irv thought for the umpty-umpth time. That was very bad, especially if some of the Russians had been worried enough about him to try to warn the American ship. And especially since he had his rifle with him.

Irv did not want to go up against a Kalashnikov, not even with six pistols-no, five now. “How are we going to fight back?” he asked Sarah, quietly, so Pat would not notice. Sarah only shook her head. Irv wondered whether that meant she didn’t know or she didn’t want to think about it now. Probably both.

The eloc mate in the pen was used enough to humans that it did not try to attack or waddle away as the three of them came up. It only turned one extra eyestalk in their direction.

“Now we wait,” Sarah said grimly. By the look of things, Irv thought, they would not have to wait long. The eloc mate bulged like a fat lady trying to explode out of a spandex suit. Irv had learned, though, that as with pregnant women, appearances could be deceiving. Once they had spent three cold days waiting for a mate to drop her budlings, only to come back the next morning to find the small eloca scampering about the pen and the mate dead.

Waiting had been easier then, before-before Frank died, Irv told himself firmly. He did not know Oleg Lopatin had killed him. It was, however, a lot likelier than anything else he could think of.

And no matter how Frank had died, he was dead now, and Pat no longer the bantering companion she had been. She kept pacing back and forth in the pen with that distant look in her eyes. Sometimes she answered when Irv or Sarah spoke to her, sometimes she didn’t. The other two couldn’t just talk with each other, either, not with her there. Time stretched endlessly.