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The root mats swirled around his feet. They tangled and tightened until they trapped his free arm in thick
and rotting debris. Desperately she finned a message against the back of his hand: Passa nyey. Don't
fight. Don't struggle. She could barely hold his weight against the pull of his pack.
Kurvan shifted his position, probing down with the pole, and with his movements, Tsia's face slapped
water in a flare of green sparks. She jerked her face out. "Stop it. Stop!" she choked. "You're driving him
under!"
"I almost had him," Kurvan snarled.
"I do have him," she returned savagely. "Get back. Ease back let Doetzier through."
Even in the dark, she could feel the other mere by those tiny dots in his field. Lights of hope, she thought
as he shoved the configured e-wrap platform forward. Kurvan rolled away to the side. Two of the packs'
antigravs were fixed to the corner of the e-wrap, and the flexible platform rested on the water and
weeds. She could feel the whine of the power cells on the edges of the wrap. The sound cut through her
biogate like a sonic on full, and she could not stop the snarl that stretched across her face.
"Have you got an enbee?" she snapped at Doetzier.
He jerked it from his harness and held it out over the water to Tsia's stretched-out hand. But the wind
gusted, and Kurvan lost his balance. The mere fell against Doetzier and the enbee disappeared in the
brash.
"Shit!" Kurvan lunged after it, but missed.
"It's gone," snapped Doetzier, hauling at his shoulder. "Let it go. Give Feather a hand."
She glared at Doetzier as if she did not see him. "Hurry," she snarled.
"Do you have him?"
"Barely, Hurry."
"Don't let go."
"Goddam it, then, hurry!"
"Give me the pole," he directed Kurvan. The other mere shoved the metaplas length across the grass. But
the grass mat rippled. Kurvan and Doetzier both fought for footing. Kurvan started sinking, and Doetzier
fell against him. The tip of the pole caught in the water. Silently, neatly, with a line of green light to show
the path of its passage, it slid from Kurvan's hand like glass and sank beneath the surface, just out of
Doetzier's reach. Violently, Kurvan cursed.
"I'm slipping." Tsia's voice was matter-of-fact now. The hand clenching hers seemed to tighten. Just
before he died. The sense of Wren was no longer sharp in her gate. The chill tang, cold, like old metal,
was not as strong on her tongue. She tried to reach his biofield, but she could feel only a cold
delib-eration not to move. A steady determination that faded with every breath she let out of her lungs.
"Do something," she cried out. "I'm losing him!"
Doetzier looked up, met her eyes, saw the bared teeth and the wildness that stretched taut across her
face. "The antigrav isn't strong enough. He has to get rid of the pack."
"He's carrying the scame the med gear, not just the breaker gear."
"It's too heavy. He's got to drop it."
"I told him not to move." And he could not hear her anyway, said some back, callous part of her brain.
He was already almost unconscious. The filmed messages she pressed against his skin created no
response. The only thing left in his brain was a fro-zen certainty that if he moved, he would make it
worse.
"If he stays as he is," Doetzier snapped, "if he keeps the pack, we can't bring him up through the grass.
We have no way to cut the growth. My flexor doesn't work against it. Does yours?"
"Of course not."
"We can't tear it or we fall in ourselves "
"For Daya's sake, don't tear it," she snapped back. "Those roots are the only thing other than my fingers
holding him near the surface. If he sinks beneath the mat, he won't come up again. There are eels down
there. And sucker fish. He's out of air. He has to come up nowl"
Doetzier clenched one hand in a half fist as if he could strike some sense into her across the short
expanse. "He has" his voice was cold and clear "to get rid of the pack. Signal him with your hands."
"Goddam you," she screamed. "He's unconscious."
"You're a guide," he snarled in return. "Reach him through your gate. Force him to think again. To fight."
Tsia glared at him, at Bowdie, at Kurvan. At Nitpicker, who eased up from behind the other three. Her
eyes were wild. "Where's the line?"
"Striker's digging it out. We configured the e-wrap first."
"Then give me the sleeve of your blunter."
He did not hesitate. He shrugged out of the jacket and twisted one sleeve around his hand. He threw the
other across to her. She barely had time to wrap it once around her hand before she started to sink
forward. She twisted her head to stare down into the water. Gray water. Green sparks. The stench of
rotting weeds and roots. Her eyes turned to Doetzier's. Her voice, when she spoke, had a curious,
pleading sound. "Don't let me go."
He nodded. She hesitated, then lunged forward and down, and into the depths of the swamp.
Swirling, circling sparks& Her right arm caught with a wrench as the blunter jerked taut between them.
Then she sank down by Wren's body. As her feet hit his chest, she hauled up on his weight and kicked
her legs around him. Roots caught on her neck and she flinched at their touch. She could see nothing but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]