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and spoke to herself as much as to me. “Green is your directional color. Follow it to your site.”
    “How?” I asked.
    “In an individual transport vehicle, of course. The research center will provide one.”
    “No, I meant, how will I follow the color? Does it run like a path or a river? Will it be on the ground or in the air?”
    The helphand’s mouth pinched tight. “Didn’t they explain this to you? You need only to follow your directional color. Green, is it? Follow the green to your nesting site.” She kept talking but her words were nothing but an annoying buzz. A tremendous energy rushed through my every cell and fiber. Joy filled me. And a desperate need to move. I jumped halfway off the cot, only to be pushed back down by the helphand.
    She waved her hand over a depression in the wall. “The orindle will decide if you’re ready or not.”
    Ready ? My pulse pounded against my temple like a fist. Hot blood roared in my veins. I drummed the fingers of both hands against the soft white sheets. It seemed to take days and days before anyone came.
    My feet tapped together nervously as the orindle Pradat poked me with her instruments and fiddled with her machinery. I made myself focus on the orindle, noting how the pale-red shade of her skin made her dark-brown eyes look almost too big for her small face. I watched her jaw flex and relax as she performed the tests. The discomfort of the examination was nothing compared to the horrible confinement.
    At last Pradat pronounced me fit and walked me to the vehicle lot. She seemed distracted, unable to concentrate. She couldn’t find the start switch to make my vehicle run. I had to point it out, and for me, it was just a guess.
    Resonance had her in thrall, too, I realized. The helphand as well. Amazing that they could work at all.
    Green. Beautiful green. Emeralds scattered in the air for me to follow.
    I’d forgotten to thank the orindle and had to guide my vehicle back to where she stood.
    “Be fruitful,” Pradat said. “That’s thanks enough.”
    ***
    The emerald band shimmered, growing wider as I plowed over hills, past klers, and across fields, hardly noticing my surroundings. The day grew old, became night, became day again and still I drove on. I had no hunger, thirst, or need for sleep. Steering the vehicle with the guidance stick, I never doubted the rightness of my direction. I followed the emerald light until it led me to a small valley filled with hundreds of doumanas and males. When the light winked out, I knew I was where I had longed to be.
    Wild plants dotted the brown soil, a stand of tall thin trees with flat blue-green leaves here, a sudden burst of sun-yellow from bushes there. Off to the side, a wave of dark red-purple flowers rippled and bent as anxious doumanas and males pushed through them to reach each other.
    I joined a group of doumanas watching thirty or so males dancing. They’d woven large, grass hoops that they jumped in and out of as they danced, to show us how strong and lithe they were.
    I’d expected the males to look different from us, but not as different as they did. They had the same hairless, furless, featherless skin as we, in the same various shades of red. The same dark eyes, thin or broad noses, and small or wide mouths, but their arms, shoulders, and chests were slimmer and their hands more delicate, like two tiny birds—one bird with hard talons, the digger claws, for routing out the nest, the other as soft as hatchling’s down.
    Most of the males wore hip wraps—some brightly colored, probably from the klers, and some plain, like the sort commune doumanas wore—but some wore nothing. I couldn’t help but stare at those. They didn’t have the protective skin flap covering the egg channel like we did. Well, why would they?
    The males were beautiful. Exotic. Exciting. My neck was nearly humming with all the colors playing there—joyous crimson, the bright blue of excitement, the dark lavender of curiosity