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you?"
    "Yes," he murmured, leaning over to
stroke the small head covered already with plentiful dark curls --
her mother's blood, there. "Yes, she does."
    *
    They traveled slowly toward Dark Camp,
for Arika's strength was low, and Kisam yet frail, though much
improved. And truthfully, the slower pace was not only to
accommodate the child and her mother. Slade walked sometimes
unsteady, his legs weak, and betimes a high, busy humming in his
ears, and flashes of color across his vision. The spells passed
shortly, and he did not speak to Arika of the matter. And every
other night, as his wife lay in the sleep of exhaustion, he would
nurse Kisam from his dwindling supply of vitamins and tried not to
think what would happen, when, finally, they were gone.
    So they arrived at Dark Camp among the
last, and pitched their tent in the fourth tier, considerably
higher than last year. There was firewood waiting, and a
fire-circle, built properly by women's hands, by those who owed
still on Findings past.
    Slade saw Arika settled by the fire,
and Kisam on the nurse before he turned to stow his weapons -- and
heard the buzzing begin, growing until it was a black well of sound
into which he toppled, head first, and swooning.
    *
    He opened his eyes to Gineah's somber
face.
    "He wakes," she said, and Arika was
there as well, her eyes wide and frightened.
    Carefully, he smiled. "Forgive me,
grandmother. A stupid faint..."
    "Not stupid, perhaps," another voice
said, speaking the Sanilithe tongue slowly and with an odd
nuance.
    Slade froze, looked to Arika, who
touched his face with fingers that trembled. "A woman of your
mother's tent has come, Slade."
    A woman of
his
--
    He pushed himself into a sitting
position, despite Arika's protesting hand on his shoulder, and
Gineah's frown. For a heartbeat, his vision was distorted by
spangles of light; when they melted, he saw her, seated like any
ordinary guest by the fire, the baby's basket at her side, a horn
cup cradled between her two hands.
    She wore leather, and a wide
Scout-issue belt, hung about with a profusion of objects. Her hair
was brown and curly, her face high-boned and subtle.
    "Do I find Slade, second named son of
Gineah's tent?" she asked, in the native tongue.
    "Hunter," he corrected, "for the tent
of Arika Finder."
    Her eyes flickered. "Of course. No
insult was intended to the mother of the tent." She raised her cup,
sipped, then looked to him, face bland. "I have come to take you
back to the tent of your mother, hunter. You have been sore
missed."
    Arika was gripping his shoulder hard
enough to bruise. He reached up and put his hand over
hers.
    "My mother's tent has many hunters,
this tent has but one."
    The Scout inclined her head. "Yet this
tent's hunter is ill, and soon will die."
    Which was certainly
true,
thought Slade. Death or
departure equally deprived the tent of its hunter. And the hunter
would rather die than depart.
    "His mother, his sisters -- they may
heal him?" Arika's voice was thin, her hand beneath his,
chill.
    The Scout inclined her head
respectfully. "Tent mother, they will."
    "And after he is healed," Gineah --
shrewd Gineah -- murmured, "he will be returned to the tent of his
wife."
    The Scout considered her.
"The grandmother knows better than that, I think," she murmured.
"Between the
erifu
of the Sanilithe and the
erifu
of we who are not the
Sanilithe, there is a ...disharmony. We are each correct, in our
way, but not in the way of the other."
    In her basket, Kisam awoke and began
to cry, and Arika rose to go to her. Slade watched them for a
moment, then looked back to the Scout.
    "It is possible," he said
to her bland and subtle eyes, "that the addition of a third
erifu
will
balance the disharmony and allow health to bloom."
    She raised an eyebrow, but said
nothing.
    Slade leaned forward.
"Take this tent to the sea. I will give you a message for my mother
and my sisters."
And for Scout
Headquarters
, he thought.
    "The sea will not aid you. It --"