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even think of a way to get herself out of Screwtop,
much less herself and Gryf and Jason. She was afraid that if she did not find
some chance of escape, Jason might really try to flee through the swamp.
    She ran her fingers through her short black hair and shook
her head, flinging out the misty rain that gathered in huge drops and slipped
down her face and neck and back. The heat and the rain — she hated both.
    In an hour or two the evening rain would fall in solid
sheets, washing the mist away. But an hour after that the faint infuriating
droplets would begin again. They seemed never to fall, but to hang in the air
and collect on skin, on hair, beneath trees, inside shelters.
    Kylis grabbed an overhanging plant and stripped off a few of
its red-black fronds, flinging them to the ground in anger.
    She stood up, but suddenly crouched down in hiding again.
Below, Miria walked up to the fence, placed her hand against the palm lock, and
waited, glancing over her shoulder as if making certain she was alone. As the
gate swung open and Miria, a prisoner, walked alone and free into the guards’
enclosure, Kylis felt her knees grow weak. Miria stopped at a dome, and the
door opened for her. Kylis thought she could see the Lizard in the dimness
beyond.
    Almost the only thing this could mean was that Miria was a
spy. Kylis began to tremble in fear and anger, fear of what Miria could tell
the Lizard that would help him increase the pressure on Gryf, anger at herself
for trusting Miria. She had made another mistake in judgment like the one that
had imprisoned her, and this time the consequences could be much worse.
    She sat in the mud and the rain trying to think, until she
realized that Gryf would be off work in only a few minutes. She did not even
have time to wake Jason.
    When Kylis turned her back on the guards’ domes, Miria
had not yet come out.
    Kylis was a few minutes late reaching the drill pit. The
third shift had already ended; all the prisoners were out and drifting away.
Gryf was nowhere around, and he was nothing if not conspicuous. She began to
worry, because Gryf was frequently first out, never last — he did not
seem to tire. Certainly he would wait for her.
    She stood indecisively, worried. Maybe he wanted something
in the shelter, she thought.
    She did not believe that for a moment. She glanced back
toward the bottom of the Pit.
    Everything happened at once. She
forgot about Miria, Lizard, the prison. She cried out for Jason, knowing her
voice would not carry that far. She ran downhill, fighting the clay that sucked
at her feet. Two people she knew slightly trudged up the hill — Troi,
skeletal, sharp-featured, sardonic, and Chuzo, squarely built and withdrawn.
Both were very young; both were aging quickly here.
    They supported Gryf between them.
    Ash and grease disguised the pattern of his paisley skin.
Kylis knew he was alive only because no one at Screwtop would spend any energy
on someone who was dead. When she was closer, she could see the ends of deep
slashes made by the whip where it had curled around his body. Blood had dried
in narrow streaks on his sides. His wrists were abraded where he had been tied
for the punishment.
    “Oh, Gryf — “
    Hearing her, Gryf raised his head. She felt great relief.
    Troi and Chuzo stopped when Kylis reached them.
    “The Lizard ordered it himself,” Troi said
bitterly. Screwtop held few amenities, but people were seldom flogged on the
last day of the shift.
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. I was too far away. Anything.
Nothing. What reason do they ever have?”
    Kylis quieted her anger for the moment. She took over for
Chuzo. “Thank you,” she said, quite formally.
    Troi stayed where he was. “Get him to the top, anyway,”
he said in his gruff manner.
    “Gryf? Can you make it?”
    He tightened his hand on her shoulder. They started up the
steep path. When they finally reached the top, the immense sun had set. The sky
was pink and scarlet in the west, and the