She Waved away from the little encampment and perched in the thin outer branches of the forest. She snuggled against a branch, feeling the cold wood smooth against her skin, and nibbled at the young leaves which grew behind the wide, mature outer cups.

Then she curled into a ball against the branch, pushed more soft leaves into her mouth and tried to sleep.

A soft moan awoke her.

The smell of growing leaves was cloying in her nostrils. Blearily, she pushed her head out of the branches and into the Air.

There was motion far below her, silhouetted against the deep purple of the Quantum Sea. It was the Hero and her sister, Lur; they spiraled languidly around the vortex lines. The Hero wore his shining suit, but it was open to the waist. Lur had wrapped her legs around his hips. She arched away from him, her eyes closed. The Hero’s skin looked old, corrupted, against Lur’s flesh.

Payment for the hunter…

Thea ducked back into the forest and crammed her fists to her eyecups.

When she woke again, she felt depressed, listless.

She dropped out of the forest. She hovered in the Air, her knees tucked against her chest. With four or five brisk pushes she emptied her bowels. She watched the pale, odorless pellets of shit sail sparkling into the Air. Dense with neutrons, the waste would merge with the unbreathable underMantle and, perhaps, sink at last into the Quantum Sea.

The Hero was sleeping, tucked into a cocoon — her father’s cocoon, she realized with disgust. The empty suit was suspended from its branch. There seemed to be nobody about; most of the tribe were at the Air-pigs’ net, evidently preparing one of the animals for slaughter.

Suddenly she felt awake — alive, excited; capillaries opened across her face, tingling with superfluid Air. Silently, trying to hold her breath, she pushed herself away from her eyrie and Waved to the suit.

Its empty fingers and legs dangled before her, grisly but fascinating. She reached out a trembling hand. The fabric was finely worked, and the inlaid silver threads were smooth and cold.

The front of the suit gaped open. She pushed her hand inside; she found a soft, downy material that felt cool and comfortable…

It would be the work of a moment to slip her own legs into these black-silver leggings.

The Hero groaned, his lips parting softly; he turned slightly in her father’s cocoon.

He was still asleep. Perhaps, Thea thought with disgust, he was dreaming of her sister.

She had to do this now.

Briskly, but with trembling fingers, she untied the suit from its branch. She twisted in the Air, tucked her knees to her chest and dropped her legs into the opened-up suit.

The lining sighed over her skin, embracing her flesh. She wriggled her arms into the sleeves. The feeling of the gloves around each finger was extraordinary; she stared at her hands, seeing how the tubes of fabric — too long for her own fingers — drooped slightly over her fingertips.

She pulled closed the chest panel and, as she’d seen the Hero do, ran her gloved thumb along the seam. It sealed smoothly. She reached back over her shoulders and pulled the helmet forward, letting it drop over her head. Again a simple swipe of the thumb was sufficient to seal the helmet against the rest of the suit.

The suit was too big for her; the lower rim of the faceplate was a dark line across her vision, cutting off half the world, and she could feel folds of loose material against her back and chest. But it encased her, just as it had the Hero, and — when she raised her arms — it moved as she moved.

Cautiously, experimentally, she tried to Wave. She arched her back and flexed her legs.

Electron gas crackled explosively around her limbs. She squirted clumsily across the tree-scape, branches and leaves battering at her skin.

She grabbed at the trees with her gloved hands, dragging herself to a halt.

She looked down at the suit, trembling afresh. It was as if the Magfield had picked her up and hurled her through the Air.

Such power.

She pushed down from the trees and out into the clear Air. She tried again — but much more cautiously this time, with barely a flex of her legs. She jolted upwards through a few mansheights: still jarringly quickly, but this time under reasonable control.

She Waved again, moving in an awkward circle.

It ought to be simple enough to master, she told herself. After all, she was just Waving, as she had done from the moment she’d popped from her mother’s womb. Waving meant dragging limbs — which were electrically charged — across the Magfield. The Star’s powerful magnetic field induced electric currents in the limbs, which in turn pushed back at the Magfield.

Some part of this suit — perhaps the silver-gleaming inlays — must be a much better conductor than human flesh and bone. And so the Magfield’s push was so much greater. It was just a question of getting the feel of it.

She leaned back against the Magfield and thrust gently with her legs. Gradually she learned to build up the tempo of this assisted Waving, and wisps of electron gas curled about her thighs. The secret was not strength, really, but gentleness, suppleness, a sensitivity to the soft resistance of the Magfield.

The suit carried her gracefully, effortlessly, across the flux lines.

She sailed across the sky. The suit felt natural about her body, as if it had always been there — and she suspected that a small, inner part of her would always cling to the memory of this experience, utterly addicted…

The Hero’s face ballooned up before her. She cried out. He grinned through the faceplate at her, the age-lines around his eyecups deep and shadowed. He grabbed her shoulders; she could feel his bony fingers dig into her flesh through the suit fabric.

“I came up under you,” he said, his voice harsh. “I knew you couldn’t see me. That damn helmet must be cutting off half your field of view.”

Fright passed, and anger came to her. She raised her gloved hands and knocked his forearms away.

…Easily. He suppressed a cry and clutched his arms to his chest; rapidly he straightened up to face her, but not before she had seen the pain in his eyecups.

She reached out and grabbed the Hero’s shoulders, as he’d held hers. In this suit, not only could she Wave like a god — she was strong, stronger than she had ever imagined. She let her fingers dig into his bone. Laughing, she raised him above her head. He seemed to be trying to keep his face empty of expression; she saw little fear there, but there was something else: a disquiet.

“Who’s the Hero now?” she spat.

“A suit of Corestuff doesn’t make a hero.”

“No,” she said, thinking of Lur. “And heroes don’t need to be paid…”

He grinned, mocking her.

She thought over what he’d said. “What’s Corestuff?”

“Let me go and I’ll tell you.”

She hesitated.

He snapped, “Let me go, damn you. What do you think I can do to you?”

Cautiously she let go of his shoulders and pushed him away from her.

He rubbed at the bulging bones of his shoulders. “You may as well understand what you’re stealing. Corestuff. The inlay in the fabric; a superconducting thread mined from within the Quantum Sea.” He sniffed. “From the old days, before the Core Wars, of course.”

“Did the suit belong to an Ur-human?”

He laughed sourly. “Ur-humans couldn’t survive here inside the Mantle. Even a savage child should know that.”

She looked carefully at his yellowed hair-tubes, unwilling to betray more ignorance. How old was he? “Do you remember the old days — before the Core Wars? Is that how you got the suit?”

He looked at her with contempt — but, he saw, a contempt softened with pity. Am I really such a savage? she wondered.