That irked me.

I mean, he'd been alone and celibate on Caproche for several years. In many circles, I'm considered sexy; when I sang with the Mootikki Spiders on Trash and Thrash, the reviewer from Mind Spurs Weekly singled out "the hot brunette on the bicycle" as the high point of the album. It was insulting that this desperate man didn't even try to…

He touched my shoulder.

I turned to look at him, relieved and preparing my "thanks but no thanks" speech.

He looked away. A moment later, he mumbled, "Over here. There's something you might like."

I followed him to a low wall built from fat bricks. Once upon a time those bricks might have been sandbags, but the bags had rotted and the sand left behind had hardened like concrete.

Splayed over the wall grew a mat of snarled threads, each thread porcelain-white under the stars. I could see more patches of the stuff beyond the wall, on rocks, on the grass, even streaked up the trunks of trees.

"I call it the Silk," Jerith said.

"Some sort of fungus?" I asked.

"No, it photosynthesizes," he answered. "It lives on UV light—I had it analyzed. Now watch this."

He poked at a strand with his finger. A moment later, the Silk made a sharp sound and shattered with a forceful eruption that sent a cloud of powder into the air. I'd been watching so closely, the dust sprayed all over my face. It had a grimy feel, a little moist and gluey. I rubbed at it vigorously, trying to wipe it off.

"Oh, God, Lyra, I'm sorry," Jerith said. "Let me…." He reached out to help.

I ducked back from his outstretched hand. "Is this some gag?" I asked. "Like a squirting flower? Get me all gooey?" I gave my nose another rub.

"No, I just wasn't thinking," Jerith said. "I'm sorry. It's, uhh…I wanted to show you the Silk because it's my big discovery."

"Oh, yes?" I'd got most of the gunk off my face, but now my hands were sticky. I looked around for some Silkless terrain where I could wipe them off.

"Yes, the Silk," Jerith said. "My theory is it's a biological weapon. From the war."

I looked at my hands, covered with powder. Very quickly, I wiped them on my dungarees.

"You don't have to worry," Jerith went on hurriedly. "It's harmless to humans. The best labs on New Earth have checked it out. Biological weapons are usually species-specific, especially in a war like this, between different alien races. This dust probably shriveled one side but left the other side untouched." He poked another strand, "It's funny when you think about it. This is probably lethal to some mysterious aliens, but to us little old humans…" He poked again,

It didn't seem so funny to me, and I didn't like biological weapons going off in my face even if I was the wrong species; but Jerith looked so forlorn there, going , , with his big discovery, that I didn't have the heart to stay mad at him. He smiled at me, I grudgingly smiled back, and in a few moments, we were both ing away. You could get different pitches depending how hard you struck each thread, and I started trying to out "Betray Me Not," the song we'd recorded that afternoon. Jerith was using both hands to out a background rhythm and we were having a great time until a Caprochian parrot climbed out of Jerith's pants pocket.

I didn't shriek, just made a choked "ungh" sound as I jumped back. When I'd watched Alex try to feed the same kind of animal at the recording session, I hadn't been close enough to see how ugly the little beasts were. This one was small and flat, like a mouse-size Gila monster, but with a topknot of three antennae, each undulating like weeds in water. The animal didn't scare me—it wasn't even repulsive after I'd got over my initial shock—but it definitely wasn't the sort of thing I'd keep in my pocket.

Jerith saw my reaction, looked down at the brightly colored creature crawling up his clothing, and immediately detached it from his waistband. He winced slightly when he touched it, but held it gently, caressing it. "It's only my pet," he said. "It's very tame."

"Why did you have it in your pocket?"

"They like warm, dark places. They just curl up and go to sleep. When it heard us popping the Silk, it must have woken up and felt hungry."

"Hungry?" I said, uneasy with the way Jerith fondled the little beast.

"They eat the Silk," Jerith answered, holding the animal close to a patch of strands on the wall. The parrot pushed its snout forward; gingerly it tugged loose the end of a thread and sucked up the Silk like spaghetti. "Very delicate mouths," Jerith added. "They can gobble the stuff without popping it."

For a while, I watched the tiny animal eat. I wouldn't say it was cute, but its determined slurping did have an endearing quality. I put out my hand to rub its nose, but Jerith immediately jerked the parrot out of reach.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"They don't like to be touched by strangers," he said, backing away from me.

"Do you know how suspicious you're acting?" I wasn't one for melodrama, but who hasn't seen a dozen shows where an archaeologist on some isolated planet fixates on an alien species? And nine times out of ten in those shows, someone gets her brains eaten before the closing credits.

"It's not what you're thinking," Jerith blurted out.

"How do you know what I'm thinking?"

His face blanched. Turning away from me, he hurriedly slid the parrot back into his pocket. The animal didn't put up any fight at all. When he turned back to face me, Jerith kept his hand in that pocket.

"Look," he said, "I know I've developed some quirks out here. Being alone…knowing there isn't another human being within seven light years…I'm a little obsessed about the parrots, I know that. But they've been my only company…Caproche doesn't have any other land animals, not really, you can't make friends with insects…and the parrots are these sweet-natured, gentle little animals…."

"I was only going to pet it," I said.

"I know, I just…I'm possessive, it's wrong, I know, I'll work on it. I have to get used to dealing with people again. To tell the truth, Lyra, I've never been good at dealing with people, certainly not beautiful women…damn, you're defensive again, I'm sorry." He closed his eyes in pain. "Look," he said at last, "you can find your way back to camp, right?"

"Yes…"

"I really have to be alone for a while. To think. I'm sorry." He took a few steps into the darkness, then turned back. "I know I'm odd," he said, "but I'm harmless, you said so yourself. I won't hurt you or embarrass you…oh, good-bye."

He hurried away, around the Silk-covered wall and off into the night. I watched him till he disappeared behind a charred stockade fence.

Once again, I felt like shit. Maybe it was something in the Caproche air—I hadn't done anything, I hadn't said anything, and still I felt guilty. Angrily, I punched at a thick patch of Silk on the wall beside me. It exploded with a double-bass that coated my hand with gunk. I bent to wipe off the goo on the ground and saw a small nose emerge from a hole under a stone.

"Hello," I said softly. "You just heard the dinner bell, didn't you?" I nudged a nearby thread, The nose came out a little farther. Another , and the parrot under the stone waddled into the starlight, its crimson head swaying slowly back and forth.

Hesitantly, I reached out my hand. It actually moved slightly toward me, extending its neck. "Going to bite me?" I asked. But it made no further movement, so I bent my finger and rubbed its nose.

"Going to bite me, to bite me, bite me?" I heard my own voice say.

I pulled back from the parrot and looked sharply around. Had someone recorded me, putting my voice through an echo synth? It wouldn't be the first time a smartass roadie targeted me for a practical joke. But when I thought about it, the sound wasn't my recorded voice, the one I heard on playbacks and barely recognized as my own. It was my head voice, the one I heard when I talked—fuller than my recorded voice, less shrill.