"Assistance?" Anneasked when he stopped.

"No, Anne." He looked back at her, hesitant. "Do you, Anne—ever perceive. . . any other human?"

"Negative. You are my only human."

He bit his lip, nerved himself, finally. "When I was in bed—did Sax ever come back?" The sensors blinked. "I find no record."

He found that ambiguous, tried to think a new way through the question. He looked toward the river, back again. "Has he ever come back?"

"I find no record."

Warren let go a small breath, shook his head. "He's not functioning. I'm sure of it."

"Recorded."

He hitched the pack, started walking again. "His body's out here somewhere."

"I find no record."

"I want to find him, Anne. Shouldn't have left him out here. He could have come back and needed me. And I couldn't answer. I want to find him. I owe him that."

"Recorded."

They came to the trees finally, to shade, in the straightest line from the ship, which seemed most worth searching. Trees. A small slope of eroded sand down to the river, which flowed about fifty meters wide, deep and sluggish. A stream, broad and brown.

He stopped, and Annedid. Drew a breath of the scented air, forgetful for the moment of Sax, of what had brought him. Here was beauty, unsuspected, a part of the world he had not seen from the ship— secrets underwater and growing round it, trees that relieved the sameness and made evershifting lattices that compressed distances into their back-and-forth tangle. No straight lines here. No scour of wind. Coolness. Complexity.

Life, perhaps, lurking in the river. One fish, one crawling thing, and the parameters of the world had to be revised. One fish. . . and it meant life everywhere.

"Stand where you are," he told Anne, starting down the bank. "I don't think swimming is in your program."

"Define: swimming. Ifind no record."

He laughed soundlessly, left her by the trees and walked through the pathless tangle to the shady bank. Trees with trailing, moss-hung branches arched out over the sluggish current. Flowers bloomed, white and starlike, on the far margin, where the trees grew larger still and it was twilight at midafternoon. He squatted down by the water and looked into the shallows where the current swirled mosses.

Annecame to life, motors whirring. Brush cracked. He sprang up, saw her coming down the slope, precariously balanced in the descent.

"Stop— Anne, stop."

Anneplanted her feet at the bottom, waistdeep in brush, lights flashing. "Warren, danger." Panic surged. He had brought no gun on this search. Did not trust himself. "Specify—danger."

"The river is dangerous."

The breath went out of him. He halfway laughed. "No, Verb: swim, to travel through water safely. I can swim, Anne. I'm safe. No danger."

"Please consider this carefully, Warren."

He grinned, took a vial from his sample kit and knelt, taking up a specimen of water. He had the whole of the labs to use; he had had the basics, and it was a project, something to do, something with promise, this time.

"I can't assist you in the water, Warren."

"I don't need assistance." He capped the vial and replaced it in the kit, wiped his fingers with a disinfectant towelette and stowed it. "I'll come back to you in a moment." She made small whirring sounds, cameras busy.

He stood up, turned to face her, waved a hand toward the bank. "Turn your sensors over there, far focus, will you? See if you can see anything."

"Vegetation. Trees."

"Yes." He put his hands into his pockets, stood staring into the forest a long time, watching the wind stir the leaves on the far bank.

So the world had a limit. Annedid. There. The ship had a raft, two of them; but curiosity was not worth the risk to the pseudosome. There were the other directions—flat and grassy; there was the land-crawler for crossing them.

But there was nothing in those distances but more grass and more distance. He shrugged, half a shiver, and turned his back on the river and the forest, climbed back to Anne

, pulled branches away from her silvery body and held them out of her way.

"Come on. Let's go home."

"Yes, Warren." She swiveled smartly and reoriented, cracking branches with each metal tread, followed him through the tangle until they had come out of the brush again, walking side by side toward the plain, toward the ship.

No sign of Sax. It was useless. Sax would have drowned in the river if his fever had carried him this way; drowned and been swept out to some brush heap elsewhere. Or seaward.

" Anne, would you have followed me if I'd tried to cross the river?"

"Instruction directed me to stay. Program directs me to protect you."

"I love you, too, Annie, but don't ever take the risk. I could cross the river without danger. My body floats in water. Yours sinks. The mud would bog you down."

"Program directs me to protect you."

"You can't protect me if you're at the bottom of the river. You can't float. Do you understand float?"

"Verb: be buoyant, rise. Noun—"

"Cancel. You stay away from that water, hear me?"

"I'm receiving you clearly, Warren."

"I order you to stay away from the river. If I go close, you stop and wait until I come back. You don't ever go into water. That's a permanent order."

"I perceive possible priority conflict."

"You have to preserve yourself to carry out your instruction to protect me. True?"

"Yes."

"Water can damage you. It can't damage me. If I choose to go there, I go. You stay away from the water."

A delay. "Recorded."

He frowned, hitched the pack up and looked askance at her, then cast another, longer look backward.

Build a bridge, perhaps? Make the other side accessible for Anne? The thought of going beyond her range made him uneasy—if he should run into difficulty, need her—

There were the com units. The portable sensors.

He wanted to go over there, to know what was there. And not there.

The microscope turned up a variety of bacteria in the water. He sat in the lab, staring at the cavorting shapes, shaken by that tiny movement as if it had been the sight of birds or beasts. Somethinglived here and moved.

Such things, he recalled, could work all manner of difficulties in a human gut. He called up Library, went through the information gleaned of a dozen worlds. The comparisons might have told Sikutu something, but he found it only bewildering. They might be photosynthesizing animalcules, or contractile plants.

Heat killed the specimens. He shoved the plate into the autoclave and felt like a murderer. He thought even of walking back to the river to pour the rest of the vial in. Life had become that precious. He nerved himself and boiled the rest—imagined tiny screams in the hissing of the bubbles. It left pale residue.

Two days he lay about, thinking, distracting himself from thought. He sat in Anne's observation dome at night, mapped the movements of the system's other worlds; by day, observed the sun through filters. But there were the charts they had made from space, and looking at the stars hurt too much. It was too much wishing. He stopped going there.

And then there was just the forest to think about. Only that left.

He gathered his gear, set Anneto fetching this and that. He unbolted a land-crawler from its braces, serviced it, loaded it to the bay and loaded it with gear: inflatable raft, survival kit.