I’d like to concentrate on this bit of the war for a while; all the information we’ve

got on the Sullen Gulf… all I can handle, anyway. OK."

“OK," Jase said.

“Hmm," Fal murmured, nodding vaguely, her eyes unfocused. “Yes… all we’ve got on that general area… I mean volume…" She waved

her

hand round in a circle, in her imagination encompassing several million cubic light-years.

“Very well," Jase said, and retreated slowly from the girl’s gaze. It floated back down the terrace in the shafts of sunlight

and shade, toward

the lodge, under the flowers.

The girl sat by herself, rocking backward and forward on her haunches and humming quietly, her hands at her mouth again and

her elbows

on her knees, one of which was bent, and one of which was straight.

Here we are,

she thought,

killing the immortal, only just stopping short of tangling with something most people would think of as a god,

and here am

I, eighty thousand light-years away if I’m a meter, supposed to think of a way out of this ridiculous situation. What a joke…

Damn. I wish they’ d let me be a Field Referrer, out there where the action is, instead of sitting it out back here, so far

away it takes two years

just to get there. Oh well.

She shifted her weight and sat sideways on the seat so that her broken leg lay along the bench, then turned her face to the

mountains

glittering on the far side of the plain. She rested her elbow on the stone parapet, her hand supporting her head

as her eyes drank in the view.

She wondered whether they really had kept their word about not watching her when she went climbing. She wouldn’t put it past

them to have

kept a small drone or micromissile or something nearby, just in case anything did happen, and then—after the

accident, after she’d fallen—left

her lying there, frightened, cold and in pain, just to convince her they were doing no such

thing, and to see the effect it had on her, as long as

she wasn’t in any real danger of dying. She knew, after all, the way

their Minds worked. It was the sort of thing she would consider doing, if she

was in charge.

Maybe I should just pack it in; leave. Tell them to shove their war. Trouble is… I like all this….

She looked at one of her hands, golden brown in a beam of sunlight. She opened and closed it, looking at the fingers.

Three

…

to seven

…

She thought of an Idiran hand.

Depending

…

She looked back, over the shadow-strewn plain toward the distant mountains, and sighed.