Chapter Eight

Hansen fled through the paths of the Matrix. All times, all knowledge, all possibility; expanding before him as a wilderness of needles hiding one needle.

In a forest valley, three women lay on a flowered hillside and waited for their men to return from hunting. Above them, clouds scudded in a blue summer sky. . . .

One cloud was a bear, Krita thought; and one cloud was a horse.

And one cloud was an electronic dragonfly, sailing through the universe in perfect freedom.

"Forever," Race muttered, and Krita knew that her companions were thinking the same thing that she was.

"We should have gone with them," said Julia.

Krita closed her eyes and let the back of a finger rub the leaf of a violet. The contact was almost too subtle to notice. Her mirror lay flat on her chest, below her breasts, where its metal cord hung when she was upright.

Race snorted. "How many times can you walk a trapline?" she demanded.

"The men like it," said Julia in half protest.

"The men," said Krita, "have their craft. We have—"

She rose to a sitting position and plucked the violet up by its roots. "This is what we have," she concluded.

She tossed the flower contemptuously behind her, toward the knoll on which the Searchers had left their vehicles for the last time.

"I miss being able to move," Julia said. "Of course, we could leave here on foot. . . ."

"Oh, aye, that's a fine idea," Race said. "Three women with no protector and nothing but what we could carry on our backs—what do you suppose we'd find for a fate then?"

She looked to Krita for support, but the black-haired woman was playing morosely with images in the mirror Sparrow had given her.

"I miss the fighting," Race continued. "Where North sent us, we were warriors as good as any man . . . but not on our own, not in any kingdom in the Open Lands."

"What I miss . . . ," Krita said, but she spoke so quietly that the others heard the words as only a sighing breath.

"They love us in their way," Julia said. "They're good to us."

The mirror showed Hansen, looking much as he had when Krita first saw him two years or two lifetimes before. He was seated with a lord and his warriors, as much at rest as a lounging cat—

And, unless Hansen had changed, as willing to leap with his claws out.

"Well what of that?" Race protested. "Sledd gives me as much pleasure as any man I've met . . . but not forever! Not with him, not with anybody."

Hansen got up from the bench and walked toward the door of the hall. A chestnut-haired servant, fat and nearly forty, watched him leave with an expression that Krita had seen before.

Krita's lips tightened minutely. The image focused down on the face of the man she had known first as an outcast, then as a warrior. Now as a god.

"There's more to their lives than to ours," Julia said sadly. "There always will be unless they give us back our dragonflies . . . and they won't do that, because they're afraid we'd leave."

"They're right about that," Race snorted.

Hansen's face grew as though he were walking toward the back of the mirror. He smiled, a little crooked but warm, not something that a carnivore would offer as it sprang. Krita had seen both expressions on Hansen's face, and both expressions were real.

"Fagh!" Race continued. "If I have to endure this for another year—"

Krita bent forward to kiss the surface of the mirror. Her lips met warm lips which returned the kiss.

She jumped up with a cry of blurring emotions. The mirror jounced at the end of its looped cord. Had the mirror not been attached, Krita's convulsive motion would have flung it as far as the spring below.

Race and Julia, warriors both in all but sex, were on their feet. Their senses scanned the placid hillside for the source of Krita's surprise.

"The—it's all right," Krita said. She slipped the cord from around her neck and held the mirror where all three Searchers could view it with ease. Its face quivered with glimpses of clouds, trees, and the women staring at a polished metal surface.

Race and Julia were still and watchful. Krita's visage was transfigured.

"Show us . . . ," Krita said; paused, and continued, "Show us the lodge."

The mirror obediently filled with the image of the rough-hewn building that had been the Searchers' home for the past year. It was roofed with fir shakes, not thatch, because grassy glades were rare this deep in the forest.

"Closer," Krita said.

The image shifted and swelled, centering on a corner where the eaves swept down to knee height above the ground.

"There . . . ," said Krita. The mirror trembled in her left hand, but she controlled the spasm of hope and fear.

Krita reached through the mirror with her right thumb and forefinger. She plucked a weathered, gray splinter from the lowest shake and brought the bits of wood out into sunlight and flowers.

"Show me my dragonfly," Krita said softly.

The mirror focused on a life-sized portion of a dragonfly's manual controls. The image was as sharp as if it were real.

"Oh North . . . ," Julia whispered. "Oh gods."

"We're saved," murmured Race. Her eyes held the soft incandescence of a perfect sexual climax.

Krita reached into the image. Her dragonfly popped into present existence in the brush where she had left it.

"Not North," she said. "But yes, we're saved."

Her companions sprinted up the hillside. Their vehicles appeared on the knoll before the Searchers reached it. . . .

The three women paused for a moment with their dragonflies quivering in the interior of the lodge they had entered through the Matrix. Their battlesuits stood in front of the bed closets the Searchers had shared for a year with the three brothers.

Race and Julia moved quickly to don their armor. Krita hesitated for a moment. She took off the mirror; held it; and then set it on the wooded floor between the armored feet of Sparrow's battlesuit.

Before she put it down for the last time, Krita kissed the rim of the mirror which the greatest smith on Northworld had crafted with consummate skill.