Somewhere on the island was a tree that bore fruit that was oval and indigo-blue and edible. I put the fruit into my bag, added a few samples of plant life, and went back to the shore.

My clothes were almost dry. I washed again—myself and the underpants. Then I constructed a pad out of bark. The result was not lovely, and I had no way to attach it to my pants. One of the senior members of my family had told me over and over, “Never go anywherewithout at least two safety pins.”

Here I was, years and light-years from home on a planet in another star system, proving that Perdita had been right.

I put on my jeans and tucked the pad into them. With luck, it would stay in place.

I got out the indigo fruit—the grubs were still lively—and cut away the part that had been chewed by the arboreal animal. I ate the rest. It was mushy and sweet. Not bad, though I preferred fruit that was a little less ripe.

What next? I was getting hungry, but not hungry enough to eat the grubs. I ought to find a use for them. It would be wasteful to let them die. If they weren’t going to be dinner, then they’d have to be bait.

I glanced at the sky. It was still full of light. I ought to have time to make a fish trap. I had seen a plant in the middle of the island that I might be able to use.

I carried my bag full of maggots into the shade, left it there, and went back into the forest.

There was a slight depression in the middle of the island. The ground was boggy, and the chief form of vegetation was something that looked like a reed. Each plant consisted of a single purple stalk a little over two meters tall. At the top of each stalk was a crest made of magenta fibers—like gossamer, they were so fine and light.

I cut a dozen of the stalks. As I sawed, the plants shook, and the magenta fibers broke free.

When I was half done, I noticed that all the plants were losing their fibers—even the ones I had not touched and hadn’t gone near. Some of the fibers drifted down and lay in the mud. Most floated off, twisting and coiling in currents I could not feel. A few landed on me. They were quite ordinary—like thread. I brushed them off and finished cutting. By the time I was done the entire grove was bare.

No way of telling what my recorder had seen, dangling and swaying at the end of its chain. I described what had happened out loud. “My bet is—the fibers are flowers or maybe runners that travel through the air. The plants release them when they are injured. Somehow the plants are connected. An injury to one is an injury to all. If I’m wrong and the fibers are a method of protection—maybe this message will serve as a warning.” I carried my stalks back to the beach.

Now. String. I decided to use my sock. It was made of a really remarkable yarn, a cotton-and-synthetic combination—not as absorbent as cotton, but far more durable. The sock had no holes, even after all the traveling I had done.

I made my trap, stopping now and then to close my eyes and visualize Nia at work, bending and fastening branches. She had deft fingers, the backs covered with brown fur. Dark bare palms. Muscular forearms. Her voice—deep and slow—explained what she was doing.

How I missed those people!

I added a stone for weight, as she had told me, then the grubs. They were getting less lively. I waded into the river. In that area—in front of my beach—it was shallow. There was an inlet protected by the tangle of driftwood. Where the driftwood stopped, the river bottom went down. The water changed from transparent to a dark opaque greenish brown. A drop-off. I set my trap there, next to the drop-off and close to the tangle of driftwood.

I waded back, looking down through the water. There were trails in the sand. I followed one. Where it ended, I dug. Aiya! Something hard! I pulled it out. A gray cone, full of pink tentacles. The tentacles waved in an agitated fashion.

I tossed the creature on the shore and went on hunting. I found half a dozen of the animals. Hermit squid, I called them. The shells ranged in size from five to ten centimeters. The animals looked edible to me. More edible than the grubs or the various plants I had gathered.

The sun was low by now. My beach was in shadow. I gathered driftwood and built a fire. The stars came out. I wrapped a hermit squid in leaves and baked it in the coals. It sizzled but did not scream, for which I was grateful. I was willing to kill animals and eat them. I accepted that addition to my karmic burden. But I didn’t like my victims to be noisy.

I pulled the bundle of leaves out of the fire and unwrapped it. The shell was still gray. The tentacles had turned a lovely cherry-red. I opened my knife and dug the animal out of its shell. The body was cone-shaped and mottled red and orange. I sniffed. It smelled of nothing in particular. I cut it open. There was nothing repulsive inside. No gut full of black gunk. No sack of ink or venom. No bones and no spines.

“Here goes.” I ate the thing. It was rubbery and had a peppery flavor. I liked it.

I thought of cooking another animal, but decided to wait and see if the first one killed me.

A hard decision. My stomach rumbled. I could eat some berries. No. One food at a time. If I got sick, I wanted to be able to tell what to avoid in the future.

Bugs appeared out of the darkness. I put more wood on the fire and shifted position. I was in the smoke now. The bugs left me alone.

After an hour or so I looked at the rest of the animals. Their tentacles waved feebly. They were dying. If they were like shellfish on Earth, they would go bad fast. And I was getting really hungry. I decided to take the risk. I wrapped them up and stuck them in the coals. They sizzled.

How could I ask the bodhisattva for compassion when I felt nothing for these little beings except an ineffectual guilt? And what in hell was wrong with me? Was I reverting? I was a modern person, a native of Hawaii. I knew nothing about the religious beliefs of the ancient Chinese, except what I had read in books or heard when I did a study of the Chinese community in Melbourne. So why was I praying to the bodhisattva? And why did I care what happened to these wretched little animals? I added more wood to the fire.

I ate the rest of the hermit squid, then told the recorder what I had done and went to sleep. I woke in the morning, feeling perfectly okay.

Another bright day. I paid a visit to a log in the wood and—as I did so—thought longingly of the bathrooms on the ship. Washed at the edge of the river. Ate berries. Got bark and made a new menstrual pad. I put the damn thing on and buried the previous one. Then I waded out to my fish trap. I pulled it up.

I had something. It was not a fish.

It sat hunched in the middle of the trap, legs folded up. There were—I counted—ten legs. Each was long and narrow, folded three times. The body was round and hard, striped and spotted brown and tan. There was a head at one end. The head consisted of mandibles and eyes. The mandibles clicked. The eyes glared up at me. I counted. The animal had six eyes, four large and two small. All were faceted. What I had was a large spider in a hard shell. A spider with too many legs.

Click. Click.

I had wanted a tasty little fish.

“Okay,” I said. “Are you edible? How do I cook you?”

Click.

It might be delicious, as good as the hermit squid. The folded legs moved slightly. The eyes glared. I was—of course—reading expression into the eyes, which looked like black beads and did not, in reality, express anything. The mandibles clicked. I opened the trap and shook.

The animal fell into the water and was gone. I carried the trap back to shore and set it down. Then I returned to the inlet. I waded around, looking for trails in the sand, and found three hermit squid. They were breakfast.