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Witherspin

Alexis Glynn Latner

Analog

July-August, 2006

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Human beings excel at creating complications—both in their surroundings and in themselves.

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Wendis was a realm of wind, always, and frequent fog, and at aphelion, the wind and fog were cold. Nia Courant was glad to be wearing a supple but warm field jacket today. Martan seemed content with only a thin windjacket, wrapped in grim memory and oblivious to the chilly weather.

The cool air smelled of wet rock and pine needles. Their breath condensed into visible wisps. The trail twisted around a flat boulder where a gorge dropped below the path. On the far side of the gorge a waterfall leaped from a rocky rim high above the overlook to a foamy pool far below.

The water's path slanted. It looked like a vast crystalline scarf trailing behind the incessant rotation of Wendis. "Canting Fall—the highest waterfall in the Wend Range," said Nia.

Martan didn't quite smile, but the lines of his face relaxed. "You were right. This is beautiful."

"And peaceful, and private, and you promised to tell me about your enhanced abilities." Nia seated herself on the flat boulder. "Start with just one?"

"If you insist." Martan sat beside her, depositing the knapsack that contained their lunch. "The university is there." He pointed up into the fog. "Seventy degrees spinwise."

"How do you know?"

"I excel at situational geometry—the relative geometry of everything around me—including closing distances."

"That would have been useful in your previous life."

"With you, I'd like to forget my past," he said quietly.

Damn. She'd invited him to the Canting Fall Overlook to demonstrate trust in him, in the hope that he would open up to her. Instead she was feeling trust. And a great deal of attraction. He sensed it. He reached toward her face.

"No!" She drew back. "I know about that one!"

He looked stung. "You don't understand it. Yes, I am wired for artificial telepathy through the neo-nerves in my fingers. But I never use it except when I need it."

"Like three weeks ago?"

"That was an accident. I didn't mean to—" he faltered.

Invade my mind. Find out the most painful secret of my life. Derail our romance. Shocked indignation washed over her again, and it still had an undertow of fright.

"I didn't think. It was a—a kind of reflex. " He made an odd, one-shouldered shrug.

"Don't touch me," said Nia.

"It's not like hearing, always sensitive." He jammed his hands into the pockets of his windjacket. "It's not a sixth sense at all. My telepathy stays off until I turn it on."

"Does it work only through your fingers?"

"Just through the tips of my fingers, I swear."

"All right. Don't put your fingertips on my skin."

Martan's shoulders drooped, but he nodded. His acceptance of Nia's resolve encouraged her. She put her hand on his upper arm, feeling the contours of supple muscles under the thin jacket. "See, I'm not asking for a total embargo on touch."

His lips quirked.

Come on, smile. She had seen him truly smile only once before, but it had been as dazzling as the end of an eclipse.

A grating warble broke the silence. Martan tensed. A dark winged shape flitted in the fog above them.

"Condor," Nia said.

"No. It has a crested red head. That's a Faxen bird." He snatched up the knapsack. "It's a carrion eater, but in the early colony days on Faxe they called it the deathbird. The species is intelligent enough to create carrion. We better get away from these trail drop-offs."

Martan moved with the fluid coordination of an athlete, or a predator, on the steep trail as it zigzagged down from the edge of the gorge. With much less grace than Martan, the Faxen scavenger loosely flopped in the air above them. Martan scowled. "Unpleasant species, and in no danger of extinction on Faxe. Why in God's name would they have it in a park?"

"For one thing, this is not really a park, except for the part of it called Haven. For another thing, it's not really under anyone's control. You don't believe me," Nia observed.

"Hah! Everyone on a dozen worlds has heard the hype about finding danger, adventure, and romance here. Pick a theme, pick a dream, wend your way, play a game, win or lose the prize of your life, in the Magic Mountains!"

"Saying Magic Mountains makes you sound like a tourist. To insiders, it's the Wend Range, or the Wends, or the Strange Range."

He frowned. "In my travels I saw the Rings of Ruin, the blue star of Goya's Sea, and the Lights of Vere—and other beautiful and terrible things. I'm not very interested in an amusing park for tourists. Or what to call it."

"It's not always amusing. Since portable communications devices are forbidden, visitors have to handle anything that goes wrong on their own, unless they can find a park ranger," Nia said. "Haven is the lowest sector, not really a zone, because access is uncontrolled and the park rangers are easy to find. All of the zones have some degree of real danger, and more danger the higher you go in the zone numbers. This is Zone Four, and we could slip and break a leg. Or the Faxen bird could dive at us and try to knock us off the edge of a cliff, if that's what its instincts are."

"Hah. They just allow a little risk to pique the interest of jaded interstellar travelers."

Nia counted six separate misconceptions in what he was saying. Unfortunately, he wasn't the type to argue constructively. He'd stonewall. "All right, it's a park—like Zaber, Specter, and Chance are mountains." Invisible in fog, Specter's unnatural peak loomed above them.

Point taken, he clamped his mouth shut.

When they came to a log serving as a footbridge over a cold, turbulent stream, he extended his arm to her. As soon as she stepped onto the log, she felt perilously off-balance. Slipping off!—her planet-born reflexes shrieked. She clutched Martan's arm. For people who hadn't been born in spingravity, Coriolis effect was the poltergeist of Wendis—invisible, unpredictable, and sometimes destructive.

Steadying Nia, Martan walked over the log slowly, precisely, and backwards.

"Superb coordination in spingravity must be another ability of yours," Nia muttered when her feet rested on level ground again and her heart stopped tripping.

"Yes," he said with a half-smile. He tended to smile and gesture in an odd, one-sided way. Not always the same side. It was as though part of his soul smiled and another part stayed secret.

With a cascade of wingbeats, a small gray bird fluttered out of the fog, alighting on a rock by the stream. It bobbed its whole body up and down several times. Then it strolled out into the swift stream, submerging itself further with each unruffled step until the crown of its head disappeared under the icewater.

"What was that?" Martan asked.

Nia checked the Magic Mountains Guidebook. "It's called an ouzel. That's a species from Old Earth."

"Some of the amusing oddities here are authentic?"

"Most of them are." Nia touched the guidebook's access button. Its floppy pages reconfigured into a pocketable square the size and texture of a folded handkerchief. She put it back in her jacket's breast pocket.

The trail led to a lawnlike meadow that cradled a frosty pool. Canting Fall's waters slanted into the pool with far less commotion than an equally high waterfall planetside. That was just as well, since cold spray would not have been pleasant in weather this chilly.

"Good place for a picnic." Martan raised an eyebrow. "Can we just enjoy it while we eat—no questions asked?"

The Engineers' Guild maintained the world and gave it Earthlike seasons by varying the flux of heat and light. When Wendis neared aphelion in orbit around its star, the engineers caused it to have winter, and the weather was more stable than in any other season, clear and bright, reminding Nia of her home planet, Azure. She had packed an Azure-type lunch of synthmeat sandwiches and hot kawa. She let herself fantasize that she had a less complicated life, on a terraformed world with normal gravity, with an uncomplicated male companion. After lunch, Martan stretched out on his back on the dry, cool grass, near the empty knapsack. Nia sat cross-legged beside him.

The Canting Fall fell slower than the eye insisted it should, and twisted as it went. From this close, it looked like sculpted crystal. It reminded Nia how perplexing her existence really was. Martan attracted her very much, but he had been a killer—not born, but made. But he had repented of it. But he could read her mind with a touch, if he wanted to. But he needed her.

But he was what he had been.

She kept her consternation to herself.

Through a rift in the clouds, light from the sunspar flooded the meadow. The traveling sunball was just west of midspar. A bank of rhododendrons shielded the meadow from the cold spinwinds. Nia felt warm enough to unfasten her jacket. Deliberately keeping her tone light, she said, "Wildway is the part of the Wends most like wilderness on Earth."

He gave her his one-sided smile. "Until you look up and see the foothills on the far side, with the university's towers and the hospital dome."

She'd seen those sights from Wildway on clearer days, but she'd never seen anything like him. He had medium brown skin and dark brown hair, and eyes so dark that the irises looked black, even in sunsparlight. Could that be evidence of his visual enhancement?

Martan's gaze met hers. "When I was little, I never imagined a woman like you."

At some point, soon, she'd ask him where he had been a little boy—presumably in the Faxen Union, on one of the five partly terraformed, incompletely civilized worlds under the dominion of imperious Faxe. "What do you mean?"

"Your blue eyes and silver hair. I didn't meet any Azureans until after I left home."

Azure was a half-terraformed but quite civilized world, not a part of the Faxen Union, but in close enough proximity to the Union to be acutely aware of Faxe's power and politics. "Even here in Wendis, lode-silver hair is far from rare," Nia pointed out.

"Huh. Next year the trend-following young people of Wendis will change their hair to a different color. But yours is real." Reaching up, he touched a long stray curl. "I can tell by the way the strands catch the light." He twined her hair around his finger.

The slyly possessive gesture shot a thrill through Nia. Damn! Aside from (surely not because of…?) his scary past and special abilities that included telepathy, he fascinated her. She should remain aloof until she better understood him. But she would be warmer in his arms. She let his arm slide under her jacket. He obediently kept his hands on the fabric of her shirt as he pulled her into a close embrace.

Then he jerked away. "Something in your pocket moved!"

A green tendril dangled out from under the flap of one of the main pockets of her field jacket. Unfastening the pocket, Nia lifted out an untidy little bundle of leaves and tendrils. "What are you doing in there?" she asked it sternly.

Martan sat back. "What is a plant doing in your pocket?"

"It's a hugwort—an alien species they recently discovered at the xenobiology field station on Jumala." She placed the hugwort on her knee. It balanced there like a small, potless and badly misplaced houseplant.

Martan leaned closer. "No roots?"

"It has a single root, of a sort. See? In the middle of the leaves, here, what looks like a tuber but it feels like a mouse, fuzzy and warm."

The hugwort wriggled out of Nia's grasp to scramble down her leg and onto the grass. Both of Martan's eyebrows went up.

"They're mobile. And incredibly cute. Even Professor Zeng's official write-up lapsed into phrases like 'enchanted morning glory.' He gave me one because I'll need to design some legal protection for them, to save the species from poachers and the illegal pet trade."

"Can you design legal protection for me?" Martan said suddenly.

Nia was surprised and pleased, and careful not to let it show. She said levelly, "Yes, though you're a stranger legal case than it is."

"I am not stranger than an enchanted morning glory!" Martan said with offended dignity.

"But it never killed anyone," Nia said.

A shadow flopped in front of the sunspar. Martan cursed it under his breath.

"There are plenty of Faxen flora and fauna in the Wend Range," said Nia. "They thrive in the same conditions as Earth creatures. Faxe was the new Earth—the Promised Land on the other side of the stars—when it was first colonized. Too bad it's become a police state."

"I of all people know that. I was the sharpest tool of the state against its enemies. In the end, I defected." Nia knew that part of his story, though only from a dry medical report. He had defected to Wendis under the cover of a fiery explosion. It had taken the Wendisan doctors months to heal him, while they catalogued all the physiological features that made him what he was. "The price I paid to defect was that I almost died. Does that count for something?"

"Yes, it does." To define exactly how much it counted for would take the best work of her whole career in interstellar law. To win Martan the legal freedom to leave Wendis without fear of arrest and deportation to Faxe would take better work than she had ever done before. It would vault her into the elite circle of those who shaped interstellar law. She was unsure how she felt about Martan— her feelings were a highly charged muddle—but she was crystal clear about what she wanted from him right now: information about himself. "Was there a formal word for the kind of operative you were?"

He laughed humorlessly. "Not among insiders. A hellhound is a hellhound."

Well! That was the first time he'd voluntarily uttered the word to her.

The hugwort ambled toward the bank of rhododendrons. It wouldn't get lost; it had a talent for exploring new places and finding its way back. Smuggling itself in its owner's pocket for an outing was a new trick, but Nia was glad it had done so. The hugwort had somehow cracked Martan's reticence to talk about himself.

Hellhound. People across a dozen worlds and particularly those in the lonely way stations between the worlds had heard of Faxes hellhounds. Very few people had knowingly looked a hellhound in the eye and lived, and she was one of them…A shiver went down Nia's back. She made sure not to let it chill her voice. "Please tell me what hellhounds can do. It doesn't have to be personal, you. Just say what your kind can do, if it's easier for you."

"It's not. We were brain-trained to give nothing away."

"Brain-trained?"

"Juvenated and then retrained in thinking—and feeling. The doctors in the University Hospital believe they undid the dehumanizing parts of the brain-training, while they were putting me back together. They couldn't give me back the memories that were stripped away in the juvenation, but they think I can learn to be human again. Is it really unthinkable for us to start again where we stopped three weeks ago?"

Caught off guard—still processing the implications of what he'd told her about brain-training—she said, "I'm a university lawyer, advising the university on what to do with you, since you're in its employ. The ethical aspect of having a relationship with you is not a problem."

"Ethical aspects don't matter to me."

"That is a problem!" she retorted.

"Then help me understand ethics—or law—the way you see it. Give me a second chance with you. I—"

A green streak darted out of the bushes. It scurried toward Nia. Climbing up her jacket to its pocket, it stuffed itself in, and managed to fasten the button with a tendril, which it then retracted within the pocket.

"What kind of intelligence do they have?" Martan asked.

"No one knows. I've never seen it do anything like that."

He looked at the rhododendrons from which the hugwort had emerged so suddenly. His spine went stiff. "Get up. Are there real predators here?"

Nia pulled out the guidebook, which unfolded itself back to the natural history pages. She scanned the list under Animals, Biological.

"There's a big animal behind those bushes. Is it a trick?"

"This says Wildway harbors a few mountain lions. Young male lions may become aggressive. If you encounter one, just move away slowly."

He shoved her toward the open end of the meadow, away from the bushes. She was still reading the guidebook. "But that's only in spring, not winter. I don't see where—"

"The deathbird is circling overhead."

"You hate it because it reminds you of Faxe?"

"It's too focused!" he hissed.

"Things in the Wends can go wrong," Nia said slowly, "what the insiders call witherspin. It's never happened around me, but I know what to do." She flipped to the orange section of the guidebook. When she touched the schematic map for their location, a bright series of arrows appeared on the map. "We're in Zone Four right now. From any zone, you can always reach Haven. The door to Haven is that way."

He herded her along, looking back over his shoulder.

"Around these little trees—there—it's in that cave."

Martan stopped short. "Not good. No way out."

"Look at the back of the cave. Those numbers mark two gates to higher zones, but the bright orange door leads to Haven, and it'll open as soon as we touch the doorplate. Come on." She went to the orange door and demonstrated.

Nothing happened.

"It's not working right?" she said unbelievingly.

Martan cocked his head. "Something heavy is moving. I hear dead leaves crackling."

"I don't hear anyth—"

"I do! Can we use the gates?" he demanded.

"The zone gates don't let visitors change zones without permits, but I have a university authority key." Nia whipped the small cylinder out and inserted it into the Haven door's keyhole. Again nothing happened.

"It is stalking nearer."

She wasn't sure she believed him. But something had given the hugwort the scare of its little life. Something was wrong with Haven's failsafe door.

A concave part of the cave's rocky back wall displayed 5. A convex part of the wall said 9. Nia inserted the key in the unobtrusive slot under 5.

The concave wall rotated, taking them with it.

Harsh daylight flooded their eyes.

"Desert—cliffs?" Martan sounded incredulous. "The other place was—"

"Valleys full of fog and mist and soft green plants." Nia crossed her arms. "This one is sand and glare and spiny plants that bleed when you break them. Some things here shock you if you touch them. We're in the Wendway called Inferno. The fauna and flora are from the most hostile alien world ever colonized by humanity."

To one side, the land fell away. They were on the knees of Mount Zaber, close—too close for comfort—to the precipitous canyon between Zaber and Specter.

"Valles Avendis," said Nia.

Martan's gaze jerked up. Deeply scored, reddish rocks climbed the steep flank of Zaber. Far above and east of their zenith, Specter's summit was swathed in clouds. The sunspar ran straight through the clouds, but the brilliant sunball had traveled well west of Specter. It was mid-afternoon in Wendis.

Behind the sunspar, the foothills of the Wend Range were swaddled in fog and hung overhead like a barrel-vault. From here they couldn't see the university, much less the rest of Wendis, not the city to the west, or the farms to the east, or the shallow green bowl of the Celadon Sea.'It was as though they had stepped out onto a hostile alien world.

"Incredible," said Martan.

"Welcome to the Wend Range. The way the gate system is designed, most animals and plants can't move from zone to zone. People shouldn't. It's disorienting in the extreme," said Nia. Then she heard a coarse rasping sound. The zone gate was revolving back around.

"Come with me," said Martan. He took her wrist in an unbreakable grip and scrambled, pulling her along, up the precipitous slope.

"Stop! What are you doing?"

"Finding cover and a vantage point to watch the gate."

His strength startled her. She had to climb with him or be dragged along. Fright flared in the back of Nia's mind. If she struggled and broke free of him she might fall—and it was a long way down to the bottom of Valles Avendis. "Don't believe the hype," she pleaded. "Bad things seldom happen to ordinary tourists. Not unprovoked predator attacks!"

He hauled her up alongside himself on a shelf of rock and said vehemently into her ear, "I was predator and prey for seven years. I know unhealthy attention when I feel it." Finding a niche in the cliffs screened by a spiny plant with shiny purple leaves, he slithered in and pulled her in after him.

"Don't touch the leaves!"

"I won't. You needn't. Look." He pointed below them, where a black bird raggedly circled in midair. "That is the same deathbird, and now it's here."

Nia had often seen gulls ride the winds beside the chilly new seas of Azure. Here in Wendis, with nothing but spingravity—a counterfeit of planetary gravity—some birds managed a counterfeit of flight that typically looked comical. But now she found the deathbird's flight disturbing to watch. Its head turned from side to side as if scanning the harsh landscape. For the first time, she felt afraid of it. "Birds sometimes flutter-fly over the barriers," she murmured. "Of all things in here, the birds are the most free—they fend for themselves although their nests are protected."

"Their young are poisonous."

"You're being paranoid," she whispered. "There's no reason for things to go witherspin because we're here. As far as anyone in Wendis knows, you're just an academic."

"Faxe sends revenge a long way," he said under his breath.

"Here?"

"Our handlers never sent us in here."

"Of course not. The insiders in the Wends don't want anybody else's games going on." She rubbed a bruised knee. "And the price of sabotaging normal operations in the Wends, to make an outsider have an accident, is so steep that it's almost hypothetical."

His glance flickered to her. "Hypothetically, how would it work?"

"An enormous sum of money would come from Outside. Things would go witherspin. Rangers distracted, busy elsewhere. No tourists around—" She gulped. Even for winter in the Wends, it was strange how few other visitors they'd seen today. She made herself finish the thought. "Whoever it is who has rich, remorseless enemies is fatally injured or simply disappears. Anyone who's arrested was an unwitting pawn, the legal system turns into a house of mirrors, and charges are never brought."

"I have enemies. All the followers and kin of every enemy of the state I executed. And the Faxen secret intelligence agency, since I defected."

She shook her head impatiently. "What lives in the Wends is extremely dangerous too, and cares nothing about the politics of colonized planets."

"That's ridicu—" His face hardened. Far below them, the gate was turning again. A huge, tawny cat with fangs as long as its head stepped out.

Nia clutched Martan's arm. "That's Old Scratch! The sabertooth tiger from The Most Dangerous Game in Zone Nine! It's a robot programmed to be a savage predator—"

"Robots can be hijacked," he grated. "Deathbirds can be trained."

Nia's heart pounded. "We've got to get to Haven."

"Give me that book." He scanned a page and frowned. "This makes no sense. It looks like we have to go uphill to find a door to Haven. But higher zones are more dangerous."

"Don't confuse uphill with upzone! Almost every zone has an incredibly irregular border that somehow runs all the way from sea to one of the summits—"

"I see. Uphill now, hurry."

Wind blew strands of her hair across Nia's face. She wasn't resisting Martan now, but the rocky slope was rough and increasingly steep. Martan caught her when she tripped. "This is enough less than full Wendis spin-gee to botch my coordination," she admitted bitterly.

"I won't let you fall," said Martan.

They came to what looked like a rock-slide, a field of rocky debris. Martan started to pick a way through. He froze as a gaunt, ugly, dog-like creature sprang out of a crevice in the rubble and confronted them, growling.

"Infernal jackal!" Nia whispered.

Stepping forward, Martan flung his arms out threateningly. He grimaced. His teeth flashed in the hard bright sunlight. The animal snarled back, but it retreated. Martan bounded on up, keeping Nia dose to him.

Uphill from the rockslide, Martan scooped up some rocks and stuffed them into the knapsack. "What is an infernal jackal?"

"One of the few terrestrial species that thrived when colonists from Earth introduced them on Inferno. Back there, you—your teeth—" Nia stammered. Martan gazed at her expressionlessly, which unnerved her further. "I thought I saw…maybe not."

He shouldered the knapsack, now slightly lumpy with a cargo of rocks. "Not like what the big cat has. But yes, I can morph, in a few small ways."

She hadn't imagined it: Martan had showed the jackal a neat sharp pair of fangs. She felt lightheaded.

"I retracted them right away," Martan said.

Snarling erupted behind them, and a scrabbling sound, and then a yelp, abruptly cut off. Had Old Scratch met the jackal? Nia felt dread ball up unto a sick, cold lump in her stomach.

"Hurry. Uphill." Martan held a large, edgy rock in one hand. But what good would rocks do against the giant cat?

Mount Zaber confronted them with cliffs of deeply folded stone with dark recesses. Nia opened the guidebook. "To keep going upward from here, we would have to zone up."

"But there's a door to Haven, where?"

"That way. The door is inside the mountain."

The deathbird slanted down from the sky to flap in a lopsided circle above them, as if announcing their location. Hardly breaking his stride, Martan hurled his rock at the bird. The rock traced a line so straight it might have been drawn in the air with a ruler. The rock connected with the bird's red head. Trailing purplish blood, the death-bird flailed its wings and tumbled away over Valles Avendis.

"So much for that." Martan sounded satisfied. Taking Nia's arm, he shepherded her into the deep fold in the red cliff. In cold shadow deep inside it, they found the mouth of a tunnel that slanted down into the mountain. Martan slowed them both to a fast walk. "And if this door doesn't work either, like the last one?" he asked conversationally.

Nia was skirting panic like a ball circling the rim of a hoop, but she forced her mind to work logically. "If it doesn't work, we're in the center of a hideous plot, and there'll be a nasty surprise in Six. No. To Seven."

"But that's an even higher zone. Isn't it even more dangerous?"

"Yes. But I've been there before. And they control their own gates."

A single orange arrow illuminated the smooth floor of the tunnel. This way to Haven. Nia drew in a deep breath of hope.

Further in and down, and the daylight faded. Finally it seemed completely dark in the tunnel to Nia, but Martan steered her around invisible obstacles, one of which rattled unpleasantly. The passageway took a dogleg turn in an alcove where 6, 7, and 10 shone in the dark. "The Haven door shouldn't be much further," Nia said eagerly, just before her foot splashed into cold water. She recoiled with a gasp.

"Subterranean lake," said Martan.

Nia's hands shook as she opened the guidebook, which helpfully self-illuminated. "It does show a lake, but in winter it's supposed to be small—it's not supposed to block the door to Haven except in spring—"

"Put that thing away and be quiet," Martan said in a sharp whisper.

"But—"

He clamped a hand over her mouth and held her still. "I hear the water rising," he said softly. "We can go back outside or we can use the upgates. With Old Scratch out there, outside sounds worse than gating up."

Nia nodded.

"You're shaking. Cold? Scared?"

She nodded. She felt butterflies in her stomach, butterflies with wings of cold lead.

"I can deal with danger," he breathed in her ear, "though I didn't expect it today. " He rubbed the back of her neck.

Eager to be calmed, defended, saved, she held on to him tightly.

"Scratch is in the tunnel," Martan said. "Give me your key. Back to the upgates. Now!"

They made a wild dash in the dark, veering toward the upgate marked 7. When Martan thrust the key into the keyhole, the gate illuminated. Nia saw the huge robot cat loping down the tunnel toward them just before the wall circled around them and sealed them off from Inferno.

Nia shook with relieved tension. The two of them had just backed away from saber-toothed death into a normal translating elevator. The translator had slick sides, grab bars, and bright green footprints glowing on the floor to indicate which side would be down for the ride.

Four of the glowing footprints on the floor were big paws with long claws, and there was a pair of cloven hooves.

Keeping a protective arm around Nia, Martan held onto a grab bar. Coriolis force pushed them both against one wall as the translator descended smoothly in the spingravity of Wendis. The translator then moved sideways-spinwise, and the pseudo-gravity increased slightly

The translator began to slow. "What next?" Martan asked. His tone sounded casual and interested, the tone of what's for dessert?

"You'll see." Nia hurriedly smoothed her hair, fastened up her jacket, and brushed the red rock dust of Inferno off them both. "I handle this one."

The door opened to reveal a high-ceilinged room with painted walls and beveled doors. A high desk loomed at the end of the room. Behind the desk sat a figure with flowing robes over a misshapen body and a flowing beard over a misshapen mouth. Martan's eyes widened. Whatever he had imagined his next challenge would be, he wasn't expecting this.

Here goes—something. Nia stepped forward. "May we enter the Fair Country?"

"Go away, Silver," the Gatekeeper answered in a disinterested tone. Behind him, the tallest door in the room, the door to the Fair Country, embellished with jewels, stood firmly shut.

Nia answered, "My Fair name is Canter."

"Do say." The Gatekeeper leafed through the tome on his desk in front of him, an electronic book designed to look like an antique codex. "Very well. Who is he?"

"This is—" she hesitated. "Night." It would be a good nickname for Martan here, a memorable name that meant nothing. Martan nodded. Following her lead.

"Bring him back in Fair time. Go away now," said the Gatekeeper.

"No. Night is not a tourist. He's a Traveler, and he has political asylum in Wendis."

The Gatekeeper stared at Martan with piercing, mismatched eyes, brown and pale blue. "Very well. Watch your step."

The jeweled door glided open onto a patio decorated with potted citrus trees with glossy leaves. They entered the patio, and the door snapped shut behind them. Nia sighed in relief.

Almost inaudibly, Martan asked, "Why did you tell him?"

"I did not use the h-word, but I did tell the truth, which is the best course of action where the Gatekeeper is concerned. He's an important personage here."

"He looks deformed. Is that a disguise?"

"No." Nia walked to the edge of the patio, overlooking a valley full of tall trees, brown and evergreen. In the heart of the valley nestled a cluster of stone, wood, and glass structures with ridged roofs and numerous weathervanes. She rifled through her memory for everything she knew about the Fair Country, its geography and its perils.

"That village is an attraction for tourists," said Martan. "They don't get killed."

Nia was tall for a woman, taller than most Wendisans, which sometimes made her more conspicuous than she wanted to be, but with Martan her height was an asset: she could look him directly in the eye. "At Fair time, tourists are off limits for the local predators. It isn't Fair time now. But I think you're a match for the locals. Let's go."

A staircase spiraled away from the edge of the patio, coiling down through a hundred feet of thin air to the ground below. Nia gritted her teeth at the sight of it. Planet-born people never completely adapted to spingravity and its Coriolis effect. You'd think you were accustomed to it and then you'd take an embarrassing pratfall, especially on stairs and ladders, and the problem was worst in the Strange Range, where the spingravity lessened or increased with higher or lower terrain. A pratfall on the Spiral Stair could be fatal. "You first."

Martan started down the stairs with effortless ease. Nia followed, grimly holding his shoulders to steady herself. Her brain registered subtle discrepancies between how the stairs looked and how they felt, and her planet-born reflexes cried imminent peril. After a few steps Nia gave up and closed her eyes, trusting Martan more than she trusted her own reflexes.

He said, "You did a good job talking us into here. You hold up to danger better than I would have expected."

"Well, you're better tempered in real danger than in a nice park. How wonderful. Some people who enjoy danger join the Star Rangers, others find work as police officers or emergency doctors. You became a hellhound!"

"Hellhound was not a career choice. My whole family died in an anti-Union insurgency. I was in the Faxen Union army and stationed on Goya. My family lived in Delagua on Estrella."

Oh. Delagua, Estrella. An ordinary colony on a half-terraformed world, but it had been near a military base of the Faxen Union where Disunion terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb—an ancient, hideous weapon that left a radioactive scar. Ecologists from the university had established several outposts from which they were calibrating the wound to Estrella's ecology. Nia had never really thought about radioactive wounds in the hearts of Delaguans who'd been away from home at the time. "You were young and bereft, and insane with grief and anger?"

His shoulder twitched. "Something like that."

Illusions that aren't, Nia explained while they went down the Spiral Stair, finding that talking took her mind off the Stair. Word games with high stakes, predators that might take a personal dislike to you. That kind of thing made the Fair Country more dangerous than Inferno. Imagine a festival with all kinds of exciting fake dangers that can become real if they want to.

Martan conceded that the whole zoned park was dangerous. Why did it attract tourists?

Because danger tends to focus people, Nia explained. Facing danger makes people feel alive, and superior to anyone who succumbs to the danger. That was a potent brew of human motivation, and tourists paid well to partake of it, keeping the Wendisan economy afloat.

"There are that many tourists that stupid?"

"Don't tell me you never enjoyed trading in danger! You enjoyed Inferno, too."

"I like obstacle courses. The more dangerous the better."

Nia's mental list of his hellhound abilities included supersensitive sight and hearing, exceptional strength and coordination, superior coordination in spin-gee, and a knack for situational geometry. With skills like that, Nia could imagine a perilous obstacle course being exhilarating. "Whether you realize it yet or not, you're in the right place for you," she told him.

Wendis hadn't always been full of dangerous games. In the beginning, two thousand years ago, it was a magnificent stargoing research habitat with nine sealed ecological zones. Its name had been Adventus. But a lot of history happened to Adventus since then. During a thousand-year research voyage, better and faster starflight was developed and human colonists radiated across the stars ahead of Adventus. When it reached this part of the galaxy, it found a flourishing interstellar civilization of terraformed planets. The huge, worn-out old engines were removed, and it became Avendis, orbiting around a small golden sun, a city-state with a busy starport, university, and the nine-zoned ecological research park

Centuries later, a black asteroid collided with Wendis with disastrous results. It tumbled. The ecological zones were ruptured, many people and animals died, and the port was out of commission for decades, economic ruin following physical disaster. The engineers stabilized the spin, the scientists repaired the park as best they could, and, as one of very few possible ways back to economic health, the city-state remade itself as an interstellar amusement park. Wendis.

These days some people called it Dis for short. Which was a short, handy word—and an ancient synonym for Hell.

If she never descended the Spiral Stair again in three lifetimes, it would be too soon, Nia thought when they finally reached the bottom.

A narrow lane paved with stones led to a cottage set back in trees. It was a well-camouflaged university research station, and her key got them in.

They found an attendant on duty. "Hey, I know you—you're the proctor!" The voice sounded like a university person. But the body was an animated replica of an ancient suit of armor, with a metallic grill for a face under a helmet topped by a fluffy white feather.

"Do I know you?" Martan asked.

"Sure! You come through the High Street pub every night at undergraduate curfew hour. I wear my city shell then, of course."

"The blue racing shell."

The suit of armor nodded, making his feather bob.

Crossing the stars for new worlds had left the human genome rifted with radiation damage. When genetic damage surfaced in a newborn child in Wendis, it was corrected, if possible. The worst cases were implanted in mobile life-supporting mechanisms. Martan had probably seen some baby cyborgs scooting around in the hallways during his own long stay in the University Hospital. Some of the doctors were adult cyborgs themselves. "Why change shells?" Martan asked.

"It's a Fair costume." Nia leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. "An ancient knight."

The feather bobbed agreement. "I'm doing doctoral research in anthropology here."

"And you work as the university's station attendant, right? We need to contact the university," said Nia.

"I'm not supposed to—"

"We have a serious problem, and we need to contact the university!" she snapped.

"But you must be Nia Courant from the University Counsel's Office. I have orders not to send out any messages that might indicate that you're here, but give you a message."

"Then what is it?"

"I wasn't supposed to open it unless I saw you." Tiny lights flashed behind the metal grill under the plumed helmet. "Wow!"

"What?" Nia demanded.

"The University Counsel says you're both in grave danger. And I should give you the latest highway advisory. Lessee—uh-oh! The highway robbers are out today."

"Oh, no," said Nia, feeling a cold shock of fear.

"And—wow! Old Scratch has been trying to get in the Back Gate!" The tiny lights behind the grill sequenced excitedly. "The Counsel says get back to Haven as fast as you can, however you can, and whatever you do, don't get separated. What's going on?"

"It's none of your business."

"Is there going to be an abduction? Can I watch? I could use one for my thesis—"

Taller than the cyborg, Nia stepped close enough to glare down at him and she let anger heat her voice. "You will help us as much as you can, and if you don't, I will file charges of malfeasance in the conduct of university business and violation of the Honor Code, and you'll be lucky to merely be kicked out of the university!"

He stepped back with an audible clank. "You mean this isn't a simulation?"

"No, it is not!" Nia turned on her heel and said to Martan, "Up to the observation deck." That meant climbing a narrow vertical ladder. Martan climbed close behind her to steady her, guiding her shoe to the rung when her foot fumbled in thin air. Damn the spin-gee!

Martan said, "It seems pretty clear that I'm putting you at risk. You should stay here with the cyborg. I'll take care of myself."

She shook her head. "If the Counsel said we're both in danger, she meant it."

"Can't she call in help?"

"No. No one runs the Wends. We're on our own."

They emerged on an observation deck. The hillside rose behind the deck, forested with beech and oak and eucalyptus trees. Tall trees flanked the deck and even grew through holes in the surface, making the deck look like a treehouse. A compact weather station with a whirling wind gauge perched on one of the guard rails.

From here they could see the Highway curving up from the foothills and on through the nearby village. Twilight was settling into the deepest parts of the valley. Soft yellow points of light gleamed in the village. Further uphill, the Highway ran through grassy meadows toward fhe snowy summit of Zaber. The sunball was on the verge of setting behind the mountain's bulk.

Nia said, "This part of the Fair Country resembles Old Europe, and my looks fit in better here than anywhere else. You look like everybody everywhere. We better not go downhill on the Highway, as tempting as that is. Not with the highway robbers on the move. We can follow the highway up through Davos. That's the real name of the village. Then we'll take the Fair Lane to the tram station and ride the tram down to Haven. At least I hope so. If something goes wrong with that plan, there's the low road. It starts in the village and goes underground. But the low road is dangerous as hell."

"This is a very strange place," said Martan. But he had a slight smile, like somebody looking at a long-loved, much-missed place he'd just returned to. But it wasn't the village he was smiling to see again after long absence, it was the face of danger.

With his head cocked, Martan seemed to be assessing the sounds around them. Nia only heard a few birds, a rustle of wind in the trees, and just at the edge of her hearing, one of the air handlers in the hillside. Martan heard more than that. "Where the lane leaves the Highway there are big animals with metal harnesses, and voices. Men on horses, I think, coming this way."

"The highway robbers! Let's get out of here!"

Instead of going back into the university station, they scrambled down a tree to the ground, then went downhill toward the village, slanting away from the lane and the highway robbers. Fallen leaves, wet and limp, muffled their steps. "We aren't dressed like locals," Nia said. "I hope there are a lot of other visitors in Davos today. Anyway, the only way up the highway is through the village."

"Will everyone and everything in this place be against us?" Again a light, interested tone, the tone in which anybody else might ask if the dessert menu included ice cream.

"Not necessarily," Nia said curtly. "We're caught in a danger game. The zone we skipped was the one called Warway, and I've never been near the war games, and I'd be useless there. But here I know the rules. No, everything and everyone won't be against us, not if we play the game well."

Nia reviewed the guidebook's pages about Davos to make sure she hadn't left something important out of her calculations. At the edge of the village, the highway arched up over a bridge above a sparkling little river that tumbled down the heart of the valley. In the middle of the bridge was a conspicuous plastic trapdoor. The bridge itself was made of rough fauxstone. Interested, Martan stopped to examine the material on the far side of the bridge.

He abruptly looked past Nia, alertness flashing across his features like light reflecting on polished metal. She whirled. Something was climbing out of the trapdoor. Huge, humanoid, wet, and covered with matted hair, it lurched toward them.

Nia dashed to the nearest alleyway. Martan loped after her. In the mouth of the alley, Martan deftly caught and stopped her. "Just stand back and I'll deal with—"

"Don't bother." As they peered out of the alley, the matted monster shuffled back and forth near the end of the bridge, then lumbered back to disappear through the plastic trapdoor.

Martan wore a baffled expression. Nia suppressed an urge to laugh. "That was the troll. It's not supposed to go more than twenty paces from water, those are the rules."

He started to say something, but then his face reflected sharp alertness again. He wheeled around toward two men who were rushing out of depths of the alley. One of the men sprang toward Martan with a knife in his hand.

The other man lunged toward Nia. She twisted away while Martan met his attacker halfway. An instant later, Martan's attacker was slamming into the nearest wall and sliding to the ground. Nia darted behind Martan. Martan delivered a lightning-fast kick to the second man's groin. The attacker doubled up with a yowl of pain. Martan seized the attacker by the throat and hair, yanked him upright, and glared into his eyes. Then the only sound in the sudden silence and stillness was a faint gurgling noise from the attacker semiconscious on the ground. The one Martan had by the throat mouthed inaudible words.

Nia realized that Martan was doing a hellhound interrogation, ransacking the man's mind. Shaken out of her shocked immobility, Nia pulled Martan back by the shoulders. "Don't kill him! If we kill a native, they'll all turn on us!"

Martan let go of the attacker, who collapsed like wet paper, in one fluid motion, Martan picked up a knife on the ground—Nia now remembered seeing him kick it out of the hand that held it— and shouldered their knapsack with its load of rocks again—she thought it had slammed into at least one of the two men at one point. She had never seen anybody move so fast or fight so well. In all likelihood the attackers hadn't either.

Spiders of anxiety skittered up and down Nia's spine. "Come on. Come on." Martan ran with Nia through the alley into a slightly less dank and narrow street. She said, "We are far too obvious. It's our clothes. We've got to do something about that."

Martan raised his eyebrow.

"This way." She threaded her way through the open-air market, closed for the day. The market and the houses and shops nearby were deserted, like the stage set they were. These buildings were mere facades, garish, quaint, and empty.

"Did you inflict—" Why mince words? She knew what he was. She had to find out what he'd done. "Did you wreck his mind?"

"No. He'll wake up with a hangover and a hole in his memory, that's all."

Nia started breathing again. Hellhounds interrogate to get information, she thought. "Did you find out anything?"

Martan nodded. "They're bounty hunters. Past the prospect of collecting a bounty, he was vague about the why. He was clear on who they were after, though. You and any male companion of yours. They knew exactly what you look like. They were after you."

"Me?"

"I can blend into in any crowd, anywhere, but your looks really stand out. I think whoever offered the bounty had the idea of using you as a marker."

A corner of Nia's will wanted to stop and panic, but that was not a useful idea. They had to find real help. She picked an inconspicuous hinged gate and yanked it open to enter a street behind the facades.

"You might thank me for saving you from those thugs," he said.

"But you enjoyed it," she retorted.

Located out of the line of sight from the tourists' deserted marketplace, this looked like a typical neighborhood in the city environs of Wendis. The residences were cozy glassbrick houses, the farthest uphill reached by latticeworks of stairs fringed with potted plants. Each house had a trilingual Wendisan address plate beside the door. The air smelled like any Wendisan neighborhood at suppertime: stir-fry and curry.

The few people on the sidewalks noticed Martan and Nia—visitors in expedition clothes more suitable for the wild zones of the park—but the Wendisans had business of their own and were unconcerned about a couple of purposeful visitors. Nia found the house she was looking for, with a distinctive blue door where the address plate read ELZEBET SELLER. A shiny bellbar underscored the name. Nia pressed the bar harder and longer than she meant to.

The door was opened by a heavy-set, gray-haired, dark-skinned woman with pleasant, rounded features. "Canter! Quick—in." Elzebet secured the door behind them.

Nia was so relieved to see Elzebet that she felt herself shaking. "This is Night, and—"

"Oh yes, Canter's Knight! The park is witherspin today, and you two are in trouble, but it seems you can take care of yourselves. Now you want some garb so you'll blend in better here! I told my friend Vendana (she's the Gatekeeper's Chief of Staff, she called me right after you left the gate—jumping over from Inferno with Scratch on your heels!) 'Vendana,' I said, 'she'll have sense enough to come to my house as straight as she can get here.' "

Elzebet escorted them to her showroom, which was crammed with colorful clothing arrayed on racks. "These are sorry times, that's all I'll say! Imagine an unsanctioned danger game breaking out in broad daylight with two unwitting university people! Mark my words, an investigation of this will go all the way up to City Council, but that won't help you today—you'll have to rescue yourselves, dear, and I'll do what I can to help. Well, well, you two are the same height! Let's see what I can find for you to wear." Elzebet disappeared into her showroom.

Martan asked Nia, "How well does news travel here?"

"Fast as photons. Tourists can't have communications devices, but the Denizens do and use them incessantly."

Like a wide fish flitting through the tight crevices of its home reef, Elzebet emerged from her showroom with thick clothing piled high in her arms.

"Start with him. I need to use your lavatory," Nia said.

Elzebet's lavatory was a nice little room, too small for the ubiquitous curvature of Wendisan architecture to be noticeable. There was a sweet-smelling bar soap and a real cloth hand towel. Suddenly, in that cozy and familiar place, the shock of danger came home to Nia. She put her head in her hands and sobbed.

An unsanctioned danger game, Elzebet had said. The so-called Most Dangerous Game, even with Old Scratch being a part of it, wasn't really the most dangerous game in Wendis. The most dangerous game in Wendis was this. An undesigned game with unknown players playing for high rewards—money, lust, revenge were recurring themes—and playing for keeps.

Nia's tears mixed with the dust of Inferno on her face. The mixture stung her skin. She struggled to regain her composure as she washed and dried her face. Then she opened the lavatory door and froze. She couldn't face any more of this day. She wanted time to stand still. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.

She heard Elzebet talking to Martan. "Try this one on. Now, I've heard that the new proctor of the university has a fine talent for melting into a Wendisan crowd. He slides into a nightspot in the port looking like a port worker, finds the undergraduates who shouldn't be there, and he's scanned their ED's before their lookouts utter a peep of warning. Good for you. There's too much trouble for young people to get into in that port. Well now, that color does bring out the gold undertone in your skin. A cloak is what a Wendisan man would wear up here tonight, and you've got to act the part if you're to pass for Wendisan."

"I can do that," said Martan's voice. "How did you meet her—Canter?"

"I know her real name is Inanna," Elzebet confided. "That's a fine Wendisan name for a woman and it was her great-grandmother's. Inanna Riga was a famous actress and singer, and I'm old enough to remember the sensation when she upped and married a man from Azure, but Inanna Riga bequeathed her Wendisan citizenship to her great-granddaughter, so that's all right. This cloak will be perfect for you after I adjust it. It's smart fabric, so I can split and rejoin this seam—just stand still. 'Nia' sounds just like a good proper social nickname in Wendis, so she's Nia Inanna to her friends here. A few Wendyears ago, she'd just come to work at the university, and we needed someone to play the role of a Europan queen in the Ascendance Fair. Her legal assistant was on the Fair Committee, and told us his new boss was from Azure with the classic Azurean looks; the pale skin, blue eyes, silver hair. And any good lawyer is a good actor! Everyone immediately realized that she'd be the perfect queen, and she agreed to help us out. She made such a good impression on everyone that she earned a Fair name."

"Canter," said Martan.

"I'm sure Azure is a respectable place with decent people, but really, it's one of those thin new worlds, stretched across a great big planet. She's too extraordinary for it. This is a better place for her. Wendis is nice and thick, like baklava. There! Now the fit is perfect, and it won't get in your way whether you fight or fly."

They'd already had to fight and to flee, and it wasn't over, Nia thought miserably. Was it just bad luck that had made everything go witherspin around them today?

Or was it less arbitrary and more ominous than bad luck? Still standing in the lavatory door, she suddenly recognized a chain of logic as strong as steel.

Only a few days ago, she'd made the initial inquiries for the background legal information she might need to establish Martan's human rights under Faxen law. Now an enemy knew he was here. She'd been careful not to be specific enough in her inquiries to let out the secret that he was alive in Wendis. But maybe she'd not been discreet enough. Maybe there had already been suspicions that the explosion Faxe's hellhound disappeared in hadn't been quite fatal.

If so, then she herself had unwittingly made the first move in the game, not knowing how swiftly the countermove would come. That was the critical core of what was happening today. Martan's enemies wanted him badly. Possibly they also wanted to preempt what she could do within the law to win him human rights and freedom from Faxe. So when she made the mistake of bringing Martan out of the university—one of the safest, best protected places in Wendis—into the wild Wends, a bounty was offered and the hunt was on.

Nia's tearful exhaustion crystallized into focus. The University Counsel said get back to Haven as fast as possible. That was all that mattered right now. Later, Nia wanted the end game to be on her own territory—interstellar law—and she intended to win. First, get out of the park.

She returned to Elzebet's showroom.

Wearing a dark green cloak with a geometric embroidered pattern, Martan gave Nia a slight bow. Somehow he had become a Wendisan man, poised in the spin-gee, relaxed and charmingly sly. Elzebet said, "Look at that. He can imitate the Wendisan male slouch!"

Martan was no skulking assassin. He could blend in with a Wendisan crowd, find out secrets, probably outfight almost anything in the Wends. They would make it to Haven, Nia thought, with fierce new hope.

Elzebet said, "For you, Nia Inanna, I have this nice thick shawl. Since your jacket isn't bulky, the shawl goes right over it and it's not obvious that there's a field jacket under the shawl. You'll be glad of the layers tonight with the wind chill. Doesn't midnight blue look good on her? You move like a visitor, you can't hide that—but this is what a visitor with style might wear."

Nia stroked the material. "How much do we owe you?"

"You can't pay for these things with Wendisan yen," Elzebet replied. "For Denizen garb, it has to be native currency. You must cross my palm with silver."

"We don't have any," Nia said in sudden dismay.

Elzebet chuckled. "Oh, but you do." At the kitchen table in her private quarters, Elzebet proceeded to cut some of Nia's hair and rearrange the rest. "There. Paid in full. You look just like a fashionable interstellar visitor, not a university officer. And five years younger, too."

Martan, who had watched the haircut with fascination, nodded agreement.

"Now," Elzebet said, "go to the entertainment quarter and blend in with the other winter visitors until morning!"

"But I was hoping—" Nia stopped. Better not to say too much about their plans. "Can you give us any other advice?"

"Think twice about going down the Highway, or up it. The highway robbers are out and about. Old Scratch has been seen prowling around the Back Gate. I won't be surprised if the Wild Hunt rides tonight. The Huntmaster would give anything to bag Old Scratch. But the Wild Hunt is no time for anyone to be on the Highway," Elzebet said darkly, "least of all a pretty girl. Some in the Hunt are neither sane nor humane, when they're wilding."

"I know." As the Wendisan authorities smilingly told tourists, as they held out forms to be signed, releasing Wendis from responsibility for injury, monetary loss, and accidental death: Welcome to the Wends. Some tourists ended up being pieced together in the hospital, or dead on arrival. More rarely, but not never, Wendisans got killed in the Strange Range. Nia slowly reached into her jacket pocket. "Would you keep something safe for me?" She took the hugwort out. But it clung to her buttons. It thinned and spread out as she pulled it, but it refused to let go.

"What in all the worlds is that?" said Elzebet.

"An enchanted morning glory," said Martan.

"It's a species the university biologists found on the planet Jumala," said Nia.

"Look at those leaves—just like the glories outside my back door!"

"It may be a created organism, a teratism," said Nia, losing her struggle with numerous wiry green tendrils. "They think there was a lost human colony on Jumala. On Jumala the ecosystem is bizarrely dominated by plants. There is some evidence that an ancient colonist mixed Terrestrial genes into a Jumalan life form, before the colony died out."

"Teratism or not, dear, it's certainly attached to you."

"It may be hurt already," said Nia, "and there aren't many like it."

Martan sniffed the hugwort. "It doesn't have any bruised leaves. It's not all that fragile. It wants to take its chances with you."

Nia reluctantly returned the hugwort to her pocket, untwining the last tendril from her index finger. She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. "We've got to go."

"Have this too." Elzebet fastened the shawl with a slim golden pin bearing two faceted stones. "It's a nice finishing touch and a token."

Nia gratefully closed her hand around the pin. "Will you be safe after we leave?"

"I live in the Fair Country. My door is better defended than it may look to you, and I'm staying behind it until this trouble blows over. Remember, now, I say wait for tomorrow before you try any more gates. You can easily pass for two of two dozen lovers romancing in the Fair Country tonight. At least, use those Wendisan yen of yours to get a good supper!"

They were two of thirty people dining on the restaurant's patio. The windows and door of the restaurant, closed against the cold night air, leaked syncopated music. From the patio around them came the murmurs of other diners and the clinks of cutlery in use. Naturally enough in the outdoor chill, Nia had her shawl's hood up, covering her telltale silver hair, and she attracted no attention at all. But her nerves stayed strung tight.

Martan pointed to her plate. "Are you going to finish that?"

"How can you eat?"

"I might need the calories later."

She shoved the plate, with a third of a trout and two thirds of the rice, toward him. "I can't feel hungry when I feel in danger."

"You may not be in much danger. They may just be using you as a marker, remember?"

"But if it were me, and I wanted to extract you from asylum in Wendis by foul means, I'd capture or kill the only lawyer in Wendis who understands interstellar law well enough to defend you against Faxe. I made the first inquiries for legal background information just five days ago. I was very careful, and I didn't expect it to precipitate something. But it might have."

He held her eyes in his own dark gaze for a long moment. "Eat. You might need calories later too."

She nibbled a curry bun from her side dish. "Are your modifications psychological and mechanical or genetic?"

"Does it matter?"

"There are legal protections for cyborgs. The gene-changed are a lot harder to protect, because they're a lot harder to deal with…and unpopular. Wendis has treaties with a few gene-changed communities. You aren't a species, are you?"

Martan shrugged.

What had he told her earlier, about brain-training to make hellhounds reluctant to spill their secrets? "If I know what you are, I can help you," Nia persisted.

It seemed to take effort for him to say, "Martan is an alias. No radiation-mutated ancestors on Old Mars. I have old Earth normal genes. The changes were mechanical and psychological. The doctors here could have undone the mechanical changes—except—I didn't want to lose all I can do."

Nia felt as though he'd opened a window into his soul and she'd seen one of the main cogs in his being. "You wanted to be a hellhound, but a redeemed one?"

"You could say that. What's so funny?"

"The university hired you as proctor," said Nia. "You can see in the dark and hear fog flow. You have a grip impossible for a normal person to break. Those undergrads sneaking to forbidden places after curfew don't stand a chance."

"Unfair advantage?"

"Doesn't matter. Your predecessor was an incompetent political appointee. The whole faculty and administration of the university is glad to have a capable proctor for a change. They just don't know how capable!"

Martan divided the last of the tea between her cup and his with a flourish, making the amber liquid slant to its destination instead of allowing porcelain to click on porcelain. Even if he'd had to struggle to say the truth about himself, he liked being admired for what he truly was, Nia thought. There was a lot to admire. "And you're polished. You're well educated. You fit in with the university culture. I thought you said you were born on Estrella."

"Estrella is backward, all right, but I had a first-rate education after my juvenation and training. Lessons in etiquette, too. If we came off like jackals, we'd never accomplish anything." He smiled.

Nia smiled back. Not just a slinking assassin, she thought, and not a monster. In fact, he was wonderful.

Martan said, "I just remembered something. The thug thought a Jeng Family was behind this—that the Jeng Family had a bounty on us. One of the enemies of Faxe I eliminated was named Jang. Could there be a connection?"

Nia sat back, suddenly uneasy. "The Jeng Family has relations Outside. Some of the Outside Jeng are very rich from interstellar trade, but not particularly political, that I've ever heard about. Jang might or might not be an Outside variant of the family name. What did your Jang victim do to get on Faxe's list of enemies of the Faxen Union?"

"He was a religious cultist. A Shandi-ist."

Nia could hardly believe her ears. "As in Shandy? Do you know about Shandy?"

"Some kind of supposed god."

"More like Satan. And Shandy has worshippers in the Wends." As if they needed an unholy new twist in this game! "The low road is out. We don't dare go that way, not if Shandy's followers might be behind all this."

Martan surreptitiously emptied her dipping sauce and his onto the remaining rice, and ate it in large spoonfuls.

"What are you doing?"

"The sauce is mostly oil. Good source of calories. Let's wander over to the edge of the terrace and admire the scenery, while I listen."

Martan's supersensitive hearing must have picked up something, and he wanted to listen away from the noisy patio, Nia thought, getting up from the table with him.

A wrought iron railing at the edge of the terrace offered a scenic view of Davos. The village lay on the slopes of its mountain like a thick rug shimmering with soft warm lights, apparently peaceful. But Martan indicated the far side of the village with an unobtrusive tilt of his chin. "I hear your Metal Man. The anthropologist. He's running on the highway into town yelling, the crusaders are coming."

Nia recoiled. "Oh no! That's worse than highway robbers! They could lay siege to the village until every visitor is handed over!"

"Maybe by warning everyone in earshot, he's trying to warn us," said Martan. "We better get out of here."

A tall fence separated the village from the forest on this end of Davos, but a silvery stream—a tributary to the small river in the center of the valley and village—raced downhill under the fence, flowing through a tall tube as a shallow clear layer of water.

They dropped down onto the stream and waded uphill, through the tube, into the forest. On the other side of the tube high banks rose on either side. The streambed was smoothly pebbly. It would wash away their scent if something came after them that could smell spoor. But the water was snowmelt, and icy when it flowed into Nia's shoes. "My feet are cold—"

At that moment, something separated itself from the dark bank ahead. It loomed up over them. It grunted gloomily.

Martan glared up at the troll. He pulled out the thug's knife, ready to use it.

From behind Martan, Nia grabbed his upper arms. "No!"

"Why not?"

"Watch." She took Elzebet's golden pin with garnet stones off the shawl. She held the out to the troll.

It stooped. A huge blunt thumb and index finger delicately closed on the pin and took it. Then the troll chuckled and shuffled back into a den in the steep bank.

Nothing but a reek like wet dog mixed with curry came out of the troll's den as they hurried by. The troll did not reemerge.

"What was that all about?"

"It's the rules," said Nia. "Give him jewelry or coins and you can pass."

Martan swore under his breath and slipped the knife back into his pocket.

Nia promptly tripped on a loose stone, going down on one knee with a chilling splash. Martan helped her up. A quarter mile further upstream, they crawled up the stream's bank. Nia was shaking with cold, and her knee hurt.

Martan sat down with her and wrapped his cloak around both of them.

"I want to be home in my own bed tomorrow morning with this a bad dream!" Nia said through chattering teeth.

Martan rubbed her knee and held her close. He felt incredibly, miraculously warm. Nia gratefully rested in his arms.

They were high on Zaber. Low-lying fog dimmed the distant city's lights to a misty gleam. But the center of the huge cylinder of Wendis was clear. The whole length of the sunspar was visible along the axis. It was night in Wendis now, and stars and nebulas streamed through the spar, images that imitated the cosmic environs of Wendis. The cylindrical city-state rotated once every five minutes, but to anyone in the sway of the centrifugal spingravity the cylinder seemed fixed in space, an immutable frame of reference, with a river of stars flowing through its long crystal heart.

The most distant mountain in the Wend Range, Mount Chance, had a jagged peak that gleamed in the starlight. Specter loomed higher and nearer, made of darker stuff. All of the mountains of Wendis were curved like waves—and all of them had vertiginous blank backsides—but only Specter carried the pattern to completion. The black summit of Specter curled around the spar.

Martan was looking up at the mountains too, with observant eyes that had seen other great and beautiful wonders, as he'd told her only a few hours that felt like a lifetime ago.

Some interstellar wonders were very small. Nia checked her jacket pocket under the shawl. "It's all right. It may not be so eager to smuggle itself along on an outing next time."

"Where to now, Inanna?" he said.

He'd never called her Inanna before. Maybe he liked the name. She liked hearing it in his voice. For the first time in her life, that very Wendisan woman's name felt like it belonged to her. She was in the middle of the most dangerous game in Wendis, with a companion who was as dangerous as anyone in the Wends, but willing to follow her lead when she knew the way better than he did. She said, "The last tram to Haven leaves at midnight. We're in the highlands already. If we cut cross country to the Fair Lane, we'll have time to catch the tram."

They started across a meadow carpeted with short, springy grass.

"What if something goes wrong with the tram plan, too?" asked Martan.

"At the top of Zaber is Lover's Leap."

"That sounds suicidal."

"It isn't. If you leap off, you fall down the back side of Zaber into a net in Haven. But I'd never live it down at the university."

He may have been imagining the net with as much distaste as she was. That or something else was distracting him from listening for warning sounds. Nia and Martan both registered hoofbeats racing up behind them at the same moment, too late.

A shape like a slender white horse dove between Martan and Nia, knocking Martan backward. It sidled on mincing hooves, pushing Nia away from Martan. Starlight glanced on a sharp, fluted horn.

Nia tried to duck around the unicorn. Very pretty and very assertive, the unicorn blocked her, dancing sidewise on long delicate legs, driving her further away from Martan.

"Stupid beast!" Martan exploded.

Nia called back, "He's not stupid. I've met him before. He won't hurt me, but he's herding me. Prince, stop that!"

"We don't have time for this!"

"You tell him!"

Martan seized the unicorn's horn. Prince furiously tried to shake loose, but Martan kept his grip on its horn and bared his fangs while staring Prince in the eye.

Flank muscles tensing, the unicorn jumped straight backward. Martan let go of the horn just in time not to be carried along. The unicorn whirled and bounded away with its tail flowing like a gossamer pennant behind it.

"He got the point," said Nia, rejoining Martan.

They scrambled up the rocky bank to the Fair Lane, which was paved with flat fauxstones. The Lane curved uphill, offering easy going the rest of the way to the tram station.

As they paused beside the lane, Nia wondered about the unicorn's reaction to her, and Martan's reaction to the unicorn. Had that been two males fighting over her? Prince had certainly been radiating male attitude. And now so was Martan, who had not retracted his fangs. Nia reached out to Martan's lips, exploring his fangs with her fingertips. "Oooooh. Sharp."

"Do you want me to put them away?"

"I'm beginning to think I find them strangely attractive."

He kissed her fingertips and pulled her closer.

Then an ululating sound ripped through the air, like a wail from a raw brass throat. Nia groaned. "It's the Wild Hunt. We can't go to the tram now. That's in their territory. God help us if someone told them what you are. Your pelt would be a bigger prize than Old Scratch!"

"How do we reach Lover's Leap?" Martan asked

"Up the lane, and turn at the intersection onto the High Road, and up and up and up."

The Wild Hunt horn sounded several times more, and more wildly, but not any closer. The Hunt was staying on the other side of the Fair Country, in the rough terrain near the Back Gate where Scratch had been seen earlier. Old Scratch might be a prize they could not resist.

"Better Scratch than me—or you," said Martan.

This high on Zaber, the air was thin and bitterly cold, the gravity low and hard for Nia to manage. She slipped her hand into Martan's. She'd stopped being afraid of him. She was afraid, but not of him.

"Your hair is exactly the same color and texture as the unicorn's mane and tail," said Martan.

She shrugged wearily. "Probably the same genes. The unicorn is a teratism that dates pretty far back. Some of my distant ancestors on twenty-first century Earth had silver hair, but it was early genetic engineering rather than a naturally evolved trait. Everyone else now believes the old families on Azure are pure Earth-original genetic material. But that's not exactly true. Family secret. Don't tell." Her family's secrets must seem like feathers compared to the weight of the secrets on his shoulders, she thought.

Martan stroked her wrist. "You see, it's not automatic," he said. "All of my fingers are touching your skin, and nothing bad is happening."

"I saw what you did in Davos," she answered, but she didn't pull away.

"I really had to dig," said Martan. "There wasn't much in his mind for me to work with, because he just wanted a fat bounty. My telepathy drives along the tracks laid down in someone's brain by pain, shame, and anger. The enemies of Faxe tended to have a royal road for me in their minds. That last night when we were together, as soon as I touched those scars on your back, I knew somebody had hurt you, and then you told me it was an early and very unsuccessful experiment in love. It carries pain and shame for you now. I instinctively reacted to that, and made you explain everything. But you are the last person in the universe I intended to Interrogate. I'm sorry."

It made sense. He made sense. Finally she said, "You told me you made a drastic, emotion-driven, foolish decision at a young age. Well, so did I. It's in the past now."

"If you say so."

She squeezed his hand.

Martan said, "It was an Interrogation that made me defect from Faxe. I hunted down my last enemy of Faxe, and when I interrogated him, I found that he was a principled man, not a nihilistic terrorist. Things he knew about Faxe shocked me. I broke the Interrogation off—ran away—and tried to end my life in an explosion. Except I didn't die. Wendisans rescued me. Then the doctors reconstructed me, learned all about my hellhound modifications by repairing the damages. They restored my abilities. It's more than telepathic interrogation."

"I understand that now." A hellhound was a subtle tool as well as an effective and terrible one. No wonder Wendis had been interested enough to rescue Martan, repair him, and finally offer him asylum and a useful job. It was very much the tradition of Wendis to gather up resources, human or otherwise, that added value.

"I like the things I can do. But I'm not Faxe's hellhound now."

No, she thought, he was not a Faxen hellhound anymore. He might just be a Wendisan hellhound.

They rounded the bony flank of a rocky hill. The High Road ended just ahead at a fragile-looking swinging footbridge suspended over a chasm.

A figure like a winged gargoyle crouched on the anchoring post on the near end of the bridge. Both the bridge-post and the gargoyle looked made of pale marble and were of incongruously imposing size compared to the spindly bridge.

Nia drew close to Martan. "Watch out for the guardian Angel," she whispered.

As they approached the threshold of the bridge, the guardian Angel watched them with live, shifting eyes. Martin pulled out the thug's knife. The Angel's head turned toward them as they went by and stepped onto the slender bridge.

"Suspended at forty-five degrees to the axis. That may make it a little challenging for you," Martan murmured. "Walk fast but lightly, smoothly."

With every step, it felt as though a subtle, invisible spingravity finger nudged Nia's foot toward the edge of the bridge. It made her fear falling off. Panicky, she said, "It feels—"

"Close your eyes."

With her eyes closed, Nia clung to the arm Martan put around her waist, guiding her. He glided right behind her, his footfalls so light that they didn't even seem to register on the bridge.

Music and faint laughter drifted up from the deep valley far below the swinging bridge. Colored lights swirled on the valley's floor. That was Karnivale down there. No carnival for anybody who fell off this bridge.

"We're past the middle," Martan said in a low voice. Nia heard a flapping sound behind them. "Now hurry—" Martan shoved her the rest of the way to the end of the bridge, where she felt solid rock under her feet and stumbled.

Martan whirled with the knife ready in his hand.

The guardian braked in midair with flapping wings. He dived onto the anchoring post. With long, bony hands, he grasped the knotted ends of the bridge and unfastened the ropes. Dangling from the Fair Country end, the bridge slowly fell away.

The guardian spoke. "The way is closed."

Nia shuddered. Even more than the deathbird, the way that winged parody of a human being flew in the air of Wendis looked hideous to her. But Martan didn't seem fazed. Holding her hand, he backed away from the bridgepost, trading glares with the guardian Angel all the way to the foot of a long stairway carved into the vertical face of rock at the high end of Karnivale.

"Up to the top of Zaber," Martan told her. "It's not far."

Nia shook her head, despairing. This looked even worse than the Spiral Stair. The frigid wind galed and sighed. The ends of her shawl fluttered. Her muscles fought for balance, and she forced herself to suppress motions too forceful for the low spingravity.

Martan coaxed her up a step at a time. He ceaselessly scanned the stairs and the air for danger. "What is that thing?"

"He's not a thing. He's human. There are two groups of genetically changed— or deranged—humans in Wendis. One is the Children of Bane. Like the Gatekeeper. The other is the Angels. They're Shandy's Angels."

"Do say," Martan replied, with a cold ironic note in his voice that she'd not heard before. But then she'd never heard him contemplating a sentient enemy.

Nia dared one look back. The guardian Angel glared up at them with his wings cocked.

One minute of inattention on Martan's part and the Angel would fly up to knock them off the stairs. But Martan's alertness didn't waver.

On the first landing, hidden from the bridgepost by a fold of stone and out of the wind, Nia stopped. Her leg muscles trembled with fatigue, and the knee that she had bruised in Inferno and again in the stream near Davos throbbed. Icy tears tricked down her cheeks. "I can't take much more of this."

Watching the air with the knife in his hand, Martan kissed the side of her face. "I'm sorry. If I'd known, I would never have let everything today happen to you."

She said, "I knew it might be dangerous to help you. I just didn't think it would be this much, this soon, like this. But…I knew." She leaned against him. Elzebet's cloak smelled like the Fair Country, spice and smoke.

She'd known, and she'd made the first move of this perilous game herself, by sending out inquiries into areas of interstellar law that might have bearing on the human rights of hellhounds. And her motives had been a tight braid of ambition, compassion, and sexual passion. How very Wendisan. Wend your way, play a game, win or lose the prize of your life in the Magic Mountains…

Martan sounded calm. "I will get you home tonight. I promise." He pulled out the guidebook from her jacket's breast pocket. "Be our lookout for a few minutes."

Nia anxiously watched the windy air.

Martan leafed through the guidebook's pages. "Zaber's peak has very unusual properties," he said. Faint accordion and zither music drifted up from Karnivale. He turned a page. Suddenly Martan hissed, "This thing is transmitting! I feel it. Only when a page turns— and only sneaky little packets of data."

"Telling someone where we are?" Nia's mind reeled.

Martan hurled the guidebook into the valley. It fluttered away on the winds over Karnivale. "I memorized what I need," he said. She felt his back muscles tense up and his breathing change, deeper and harder. He was spring-loading for a fight.

The stairs ended on the wider crest of Zaber. Starlight shone blindingly on a thin blanket of snow. Nia located Lover's Leap, a scalloped terrace protruding from the top of Zaber.

It was roped off and posted with signs.

CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE

NO TRESPASSING

NO SAFETY NET

"Company," Martan said flatly.

Nia turned around to see four humans standing up from the snow, wearing arctic-white hunting garb and masks, with weapons in their hands. A harpoon was flying through the air toward her.

Martan shoved Nia down onto the snow. The harpoon harmlessly skimmed his shoulder. He tumbled over Nia's back, skidding over the vertical edge of Karnivale valley. She grabbed for him, missed, and watched horrified as he fell. But not far. He slid toward a tiny shelf of rock. His feet landed there. Terror for his safety choked Nia's throat. But he coiled onto the shelf like a spring, balanced on the balls of his feet, safe. But he had nowhere to go.

Nia forced herself to roll toward the hunters, to get to her feet. She must not let them know he was safe, just below the edge. She had to get their attention away from him. She took a shaky step in the low gravity. The hunters advanced. One of them shook out a huge net.

Out of the comer of her eye Nia registered rapid motion just before Martan hurtled into her. He collided hard with her and launched them both into the air. He'd jumped up from his narrow perch with all the power he had. He'd broken both of them free of the low spingravity. With his arms wrapped tightly around her, they coasted upward from the peak of Zaber.

The mountain rotated away. The hunters gestured excitedly. But they didn't shoot another harpoon. Nobody in Wendis would dare fire a weapon toward the spar at the center of the world.

The spar was a torrent of brilliant stars channeled inside a thick crystalline tube. It mesmerized Nia. The heart of the spar was filled with translucent threads, conduits for a sunlike pulse of golden light by day and a million starlike pulses of silver light by night. It was blindingly bright up this close. The air around it was warm. Nia felt numb awe as she saw the spar up close, and closer yet.

They were going to collide with it.

Martan reached out and put his hand on the spar. His arm absorbed their momentum. Electrical fields swirled around his hand on the spar's clear surface.

With a forceful shove, Martan propelled them away from the spar.

Now they fell at the same slow rate at which they'd ascended from Zaber. As dazed as if she were dreaming, Nia saw they were coasting rimward on the other side of the spar from the peak of Zaber, where the distant hunters had dwindled to angry little toys. Martan and Nia fell rimward, down, and down. But it didn't feel like falling. It was dreamlike flying, free from spingravity. The whole vast cylinder of Wendis rotated around them.

Martan shrugged off the knapsack, which still contained rocks from Inferno. He slung the whole thing away from him, changing their course so that they coasted rimward at a different angle. "Hah! We'll land safe!" he exulted.

Now Zaber rotated back around.

Zaber morphed into an immense white wave looming over them, closing in with terrifying speed. Nia screamed. Martan twisted around to cushion the impact with his own body. The steep slope of Zaber slammed into them and buried them in snow.

They rolled back out into the air. Nia coughed and spat snow. They slid downhill. Snow slithered through Nia's clothes.

Martan shouted a curse. "No rock—no roots—can't stop!"

They kept sliding downhill toward a dark flat blur on the mountainside. A fragment of Nia's mind worried what the dark blur was—it looked familiar—bad for some reason—

Nia, Martan, and the snow traveling with them spilled into an ice-rimmed lake. Frigid water shot through Nia's clothes like driven nails.

Martan hauled Nia up, getting her head out the water. She coughed. The lake came up to her collarbone, and it was shockingly cold. "Aaaah!"

"This way!" Martan gasped.

She staggered toward shore leaning on him.

"I think we're safe," said Martan.

Shaking uncontrollably, Nia looked at the shoreline. It was familiar. It was also lined with people staring excitedly at them. "Robin Lake in Haven," Nia stammered past chattering teeth. "Winter stargazing. We are safe here. Oh, cold! Oh no!" She fished the hugwort out of a pocket full of water. It clutched at her fingers with all of its tendrils.

They waded out of the water onto a smooth sand beach. Water spilled off Nia's shawl and flowed off Martan's cloak, as the fabrics rejected the water.

"Here!" Martin flung his cloak and her shawl around them both. He twined his fingers through the hugwort's tendrils and between Nia's fingers. He embraced her, and he radiated heat. Another special hellhound ability, Nia realized. Raise body temperature. Survive immersion in cold or snow or ice water. She held onto him, sharing his elevated body warmth. The hugwort relaxed its grip on Nia's fingers and twitched its tendrils, flinging water off its leaves like a wet bird shaking its plumage dry.

"A flying ambulance just landed," said Martan. "Don't forget I kept my promise to you."

Nia held his face. "You—are—wonderful!" She kissed him. He responded instantly, but he held back, implicitly asking how much kissing she wanted and how long. Her answer was more and very.

"What happened?" said an ambulance medic pushing through the cluster of people. Voices answered, "They fell down the mountain—caught in an avalanche—" A child piped, "They fell from the starspar, they did, they did!"

"Anyway, they seem to be all right," someone remarked.

Nia broke off the kiss but whispered to Martan, "More later!"

Then there it was, finally, with ice water dripping from his hair onto his face, he gave her his end-of-an-eclipse smile.

They shook off the curious star-gazers, including one who seemed to be an ambulance-chasing reporter, by ducking into the Robin Lake boathouse. Since it was winter, the boats were tied and covered. Martan led Nia along the floating dock in the darkness, unerringly reaching the far end of the long boathouse while the reporter and other curious citizens were still blundering around near the door they'd entered by.

Martan was breathing hard, and he was shaking. "Hungry," he whispered, while the boats around them creaked and muttered in their moorings. "Used up a lot of energy."

Nia cautiously cracked open a back door of the boathouse. She saw a crowd of people scattered on a slope of Zaber that faced the city. Viewing the glittering skyscrapers and shining scraps of fog that filled the far end of Wendis like a geode, these people hadn't noticed anything sliding into Robin Lake behind them. Nia put her shawl over her hair and led Martan by the hand. They merged into the crowd.

Sweet smoke led Nia to a food vendor's booth. She bought a fried cake and six winter rolls. Martan ate the rolls while the cake cooled, then wolfed down the cake. Then he smiled.

"Happy now?" Nia asked.

"You were right. It's the best obstacle course that ever existed. That was a good run. I'm very happy."

Nia liked being right. But she was aware of Zaber's bulk curling up toward the spar, looming over them like a live, imposing presence. "You know you have enemies up there."

He smiled again, with a glint in his eyes. "Dealing with enemies was what I was made for."

He had his idea of an exciting challenge. Nia had hers. If the Jeng Family tried to pursue a vendetta against Martan, they would find themselves in serious trouble with the Wendisan legal system. Nia would see to that. If the Shandiists weighed in, then things might get legally very exciting—as well as dangerous. But when you could play danger games in the Wend Mountains and win, it was only natural to have both bad enemies and good friends and allies.

"What about you? Happy?" Martan asked, stroking the side of her face.

"I'm so glad we made it down, but I'm worn out," said Nia. She was trying to ignore her scraped skin, muscles taxed into painful knots, and fatigue building to crushing proportions.

A quarter of the way around Wendis from here, the university stood on the low hills, surrounded by a decorated wall that was also very functional, designed to keep students and scholars from outside worlds safe from the dangers of Wendis. "You said you wanted to be in your own bed tomorrow morning, and it all be a bad dream, but I'd like for you to come home with me," said Martan. "The proctor's apartment is secure by design. And I made security improvements since I moved in."

To reach the university only took a short walk downhill and then a brief slidewalk ride. There was a narrow Proctor's door in the wall beside the university's main entrance. Martan's keys opened the door and then locked it with several layers of security.

"Happy," Nia murmured, falling asleep in Martan's arms in the safe darkness of the proctor's apartment. Win the prize of your life in the Magic Mountains…"Very happy."

---

2007.06.14/MNQ

15,400 words

Reads like a write-up of a D&D run. I can't imagine why Analog ever bought this but there you go/MNQ