They’ll just hunt us down in their skimmer, I thought. Let’s try something else. "House-soul, attend," I snapped. "I’m a friend of Xe. Make a pinhole in the dome’s back wall."

It shouldn’t have worked; Oh-God hadn’t programmed the house-soul to recognize my voice. Or to obey me, even if it knew who the blazes I was. But a pimple of distortion pustuled up in the dome field like a bubble in glass, then popped to open a pinprick puncture to the outside.

"Peacock," I said. "Get us out of here."

One moment there was nothing; then the peacock tube was there, mouth flaring wide in front of me, tapering down to a thread that passed through the pinhole then widened again, wisping up over the trees and off into the twilit sky.

This time, I reacted faster than Festina — I shoved her into the tube. She had Oh-God in her arms; he hollered, "Oh shi…" as they both vanished, like cartoon figures sucked up by the hose of a vacuum cleaner.

"You’re next," I told Tic. He looked like he wanted to argue; so I hit him with a beautiful forearm sweep, knocking him clean off his feet and into the Sperm-tail, light as a rag doll.

Outside in the compound, the bazooka fired again. As the missile struck target, the dome field popped like a soap bubble, obliterated by the force of the explosion. With nothing to stop it, the blast kept coming: the fire, the thunder, a hammer of wind slamming me off my feet. The Peacock’s mouth darted forward to catch me… and then I was spilling down its gullet, spun out like yarn from a spinning wheel, thin as a hair and a universe long.

I don’t remember landing; I must have soaked up enough bazooka blast to black out for a moment. Next thing I knew, Festina was crouched beside me, shaking my shoulder. "Faye. Faye. Come on, Faye, talk to me."

"How about I say, ‘Ouch.’ "

"Better than nothing."

She sat back and gave me the once-over. As much as she could see in the half-gray light. Why was she looking so precious keen at my face? The skin felt tight and tingly, like I’d caught a wicked sunburn: scorch from the explosion. Was that what she was looking at? Or was she just looking at me, her eyes so worried-concerned, full of I don’t know what…

Let it go. Stick with simple thoughts. Like whether I had any major hurts. No, nothing serious. I could wiggle my fingers. I could wiggle my toes. I just needed to stay flat on my back for a second and catch my breath.

"Everyone else all right?" I asked.

"We came through in one piece," she answered. "Oh-God is in terrible shape, but Tic has already called for a med team."

"Then we’re out of the jamming field?"

"Well out."

Something about her voice made me sit up and give my surroundings a good hard stare. The trees overhead were monstrous huge — giants compared to the snow-stunted cactus-pines near Oh-God’s compound. Tallish even when compared to the Vigil’s office tree in Bona-venture. They seemed to stretch forever into the night sky.

Trees never grew that whopping big in Great St. Caspian; our winters were too harsh and punishing, the soil too scanty above bedrock. And I could feel a warm breeze wisping through my hair, cozy against my skin.

We’d come a rare long way.

Off to my left, a spindly row of palm trees separated us from a white-sand beach. Beyond that was water: the ocean (which ocean?) stretching calm to the horizon, where an edge of sun glistened above the sea. In Great St. Caspian, the sun had already set; after half a minute, I could tell this sun was rising.

Oof.

In the other direction sat a clump of grass-walled houses, upscale and airy, with wide-open windows, comfortable verandas, solar panels set into the red-bamboo roofs. On one porch, an ort hopped to the railing, fanned its wings, and clucked dick-smugly at the dawn.

"Where are we?" I whispered.

"Tic got a position fix from the world-soul," Festina replied. "He says it’s the village of Mummichog."

Mummichog. More than ten thousand klicks from Great St. Caspian. South to the equator and halfway around the world.

Why in Christ had the Peacock dropped us here? Because Oh-God mentioned the name? Because I’d asked the world-soul for information about the place? The Peacock had spoken straight mind-to-mind at least once. ("What are you?" Botjolo.) Maybe it could read my mind too — it saw Mummichog floating on the surface of my consciousness and decided that’s where I wanted to go.

Or maybe the Peacock had reasons of its own for wanting us here.

The door of the nearest house slapped open, startling the ort on the porch rail. The little parrot-pterodactyl gawped off a squawk and flapped to the roof, jabbering blistery with outrage. "Mushono!" snapped a voice from the doorway. Shut up. And a middle-aged Oolom man bustled onto the veranda, still fumbling with the neck straps of his tote pack. He looked around, caught sight of us, and called, "Are you the ones who need medical help?"

"Yes," Tic replied. He was kneeling over Oh-God a few paces from Festina and me, tucked under the cover of a skyscraping palm tree. Oh-God was propped with his back against the trunk, his mouth hanging wide-open. He was making sounds in his throat, but had no working muscles left to turn those sounds into words.

"What’s wrong with him?" the unknown Oolom asked. Without waiting for an answer, he launched himself off the porch and glided down to land at Oh-God’s side. "If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s got plague."

"He has," Tic answered. "We’ve given him olive oil, but it hasn’t helped. Are you a doctor?"

"Closest thing you’ll find in Mummichog," the other Oolom replied. "Biochemist and paramedic. My name’s Voostor. Let’s get this fellow up to the house."

Festina was already lifting Oh-God into her arms. "Can you help him?"

"I’ve got emergency heart-lung equipment," Voostor replied. "Not fancy, but it’ll keep him alive till a real med team arrives. They’re scrambling an ambulance down from Pistolet; should be here in three-quarters of an hour. In the meantime, I’m supposed to fill in. Come on."

He led the way across his house’s lawn… a lawn of jaw-dropping green. Eye-watering. Even mouth-watering to someone who’d just spent ten months slogging through the white/gray/black of winter. I felt guilty for noticing something as trivial as grass when Oh-God was near to dying; but how could I ignore the rising sun and the warmth and the head-dizzy smell of Demothian orchids growing somewhere close by?

As I climbed the porch steps (railings twined with fat crimson blooms of obscenely lush face-flowers), I remembered I was still wearing my Great St. Caspian parka. I took it off; and, freckle scars or not, I slid up my shirtsleeves to feel the lick of sun on my arms.

I don’t want to say where that ranked on the orgasm scale.

Inside, the house was a speckly mix of sun and shadow: dapples of light shining through gaps in the grass walls, sunbeams flat horizontal in the budding dawn. "Through here," Voostor said; and we followed him past a parlor filled with cane furniture, into a back room where dusty medical equipment lined the walls. "This was all donated by the oil company," he explained. "They have workers living in town; I’m paid a stipend to be on call if someone gets sick. Almost never happens. Apart from bandaging minor bang-ups, I’ve never had to use the equipment before." His face fell. "And now suddenly I get a case of plague."

"Plague? Plague?" A woman’s voice sounded sharply in an outer room. "What’s this about plague?"

"Nothing to worry about," Voostor called back. In a lower voice, he said, "My wife. She had a hard time during the epidemic."

"I know," I said. I only had a second to steel myself before my mother marched into the room.