Anger stiffened her knees; anger kept her going down the road into the brushy wild below the cliffs. She walked among the mounds, guided herself by the little sun that filtered through the trees atop the mounds.

And suddenly–a moving in the brush–there was a boy. Her heart lurched, clenched tight, settled out of its panic. She stopped, facing the boy in the halflight, among the brush. His coveralls were ragged, his hair too long. But he was human at least. Weirds, they called them, like Green, who lived wild among the mounds. But he was only a boy, not even in his teens–and a better guide, she suddenly hoped, than Jin and the lot of his friends had proved.

“I belong in the camp,” she said, taking the kind of stance she used when she expected something of the azi who served. “I want to go through the maze. You understand? You take me through.”

The figure beckoned, never speaking a word. It began to move off through the brush as vague as ever it had been.

“Wait a minute,” she said; and panic was in her mind–wondering how she was going to explain all this when she got home. She was going to be late. The fugitive showed no interest in helping her and they would be turning out search parties when it got dark. It was already beyond easy explaining–I was lost, mother, father; I was fishing; I got back in the mounds–“Wait!”

Brush moved behind her. She looked about, saw a half dozen others, who held out hands toward her, silent. “Oh, no,” she told them. “No, you don’t…” Her heart was crashing against her ribs. “I’m going on my own, thank you. I’ve just changed my mind.” She saw the eyes of some, the curious intensity, like the eyes of ariels. Crazy, every one. She edged back. “I have to get home. My friends are looking for me right now.”

They came closer, a soft stirring among their ranks, some of them in coveralls and some in only the remnant of clothing, or in blankets and sheeting. And strange, and silent and without sanity.

She remembered the other one, the one behind her–turned suddenly and gave a muffled outcry, face to face with the boy, close enough to touch–“You keep your hands to yourself,” she said, trying to keep the fear from her voice, because that was her chiefest hope–that there were still the town ways instilled in them, still the habit of obeying voices that had no doubt when they gave commands. “Be definite,” her mother had taught her, special op and used to moving people, “and know what you’re going to do if they refuse,”; but her father–“Know what you’re poking your finger at,” he said, whenever she was stung. She stared at the boy, a wild frozen moment before she realized the others were closing from behind.

She whirled, one desperate effort to shock them all and find an opening; but they snatched at her, at her clothing–wrong timing, she thought in utter selfdisgust, and only half thought that she might die. She hit one of them and laid him out the way her mother had taught her, but that was only one of them: the others caught her hair and held her arms. And some of them had clubs, showing her what might happen if she yelled.

Go along with it, she thought; none of the Weirds had ever killed. They were strange, but they had never yet kept their minds at anything: they would lose interest and then she might get away.

They tugged her arms, drew her with them…and this she let happen, noticing everything, every landmark. Jin and his brothers would find her; or she might get away; or if she could not, then her father would come looking, with her mother and the specials who knew the hills and the mounds. The camp would come with guns; and then they would be sorry. The important thing now was not to startle them into violence.

The way they walked twisted and turned in the maze, among wooded ridges and through thickets, until she had only the sunset to rely on for direction. Now she began to feel lost and desperate, but something–be it common sense or despair itself–still kept her from sudden moves with them.

They came to a hill, one of the caliban domes. A boy crouched there, dark of hair, who beckoned her inside, into the dark, gaping entry.

“Oh, no, I won’t. They’ll miss me, you understand. They’ll come–”–Hunting, she had almost said, and swallowed the very thought of shooting calibans. They were the Lost, these boys, this strange band. A shiver ran over her skin.

“Come.” The boy stretched out a hand, fingers spread upward, closed his fist with a slow intimation of power, so real it seemed to narrow all the space in the region, to draw in all that was. A second time he beckoned. Hands closed about her arms, propelled her forward…in a kind of paralysis–they brought her to him, this beautiful young man.

“Green,” she murmured, knowing him. It was his brothers’ look on him, but changed. Mad. Crazed.

And others came, older than he, male and female.

“They’re looking for you,” she said. “You’d better go.”

But then one of the young men came down from atop the hillside, came close to her, that same far distance in his expression. She might have been a stone. She was not really afraid of him for that reason–until he put his hand on her breast.

“They won’t like that,” she said, “the people in the camp.” And then she wished she had not said that at all; her wish was to get out of here alive, and threatening them was not the way to assure that. The youth fingered her clothing, and began at the closing of it. She stood quite, quite still, not minded to lose her life to these creatures.

He was beautiful beneath the dirt. Most were, who came of azi lines. They were gentle in their moves–all of them curiously gentle, stroking her hair, touching her now without violence, so that it began to wander somewhere between nightmare and dream.

v

“She’s not here,” Jin Younger said, looking about the rocks and scrub of the summit–looked at his brother as if Mark could comprehend any more than he what kind of craziness had taken Jane Gutierrez off the heights. “She’s just not here.”

“She’s got to have tried it on her own,” Mark said, no less than what Jin had in his own mind. Jin pushed past his brother at the narrow passage up among the rocks and started down the trail at a run.

“We’ve got to get the rest of us,” Mark called after him. “We’ve got to get some help fast.”

“You go,” Jin called back, and kept going. His brother yelled other things after him, and he ignored them.

The sun was throwing the last orange light into the clouds, glinting like fire off the solar array down in the camp, like miniature suns; and around that brightness was the dark. She had come to them, this main Camp woman, her own choice, come to him in particular, because he had that about him, that he could impress any woman he liked–he and his brothers. She came into the wild country, against all the rules and regulations: that was her choice too; and he was not one to turn away such favors. It had been good, up on the ridge. Good all day, because Flanahan‑Gutierrez was like them, wild.

But he should have reckoned, he chided himself, that a maincamper who would have had the nerve to come up here with them would not cower atop the hill waiting; with more nerve than sense, she would not stay put.

And Flanahan‑Gutierrez was more than born‑man, she had a father on Council; and a mother in the guards. That was more than trouble.

“Jane,” he called, plunging off the trail and into the most direct course through the mounds. It was twilight this low among the hills, deep dusk, so that he pushed his way blindly among the brush, for the moment losing his way, finding the trail again. “Jane!”

But he could see her with her anger and her born‑man ways, just walking on, hearing his voice and ignoring it–determined to find her own way home. If she had started immediately after they had left the hill, she might almost have made it through the mounds by now, might be coming out among the hills just this side of town.