“Yes.” Her answer was scarcely louder than his question.

“No need—” A fit of coughing knocked the breath and the words out of him.

“Look at this! Look at it!” Moon stiffened back and around as Blodwed burst into the chamber again, dragging a larger girl after her. “Smell it! I told you to keep them right while I was gone!”

“I did—” The older girl cried out as Blodwed caught her by the braid and yanked.

“I ought to rub your face in it, Fossa. But I won’t, if you get this place clean before—”

“All right, all right!” The older girl backed toward the gate, wiping away pain-tears. “You snotty little wart.”

“Wait. What’s wrong with him?” Blodwed pointed past Moon at the off worlder

“He’s sick. He tried to get away when we let him out to take a piss; he ran right out into the blizzard, you know? He went in circles and we found him right outside.” She made the crazy sign, and shook her head, backing up the passageway.

Blodwed came on across the chamber, crouched down beside Moon, looking at the sick man’s face. “Ugh.” She clamped his jaw roughly in her hand as he tried to turn his head away. “What did you do that for?” His eyes closed.

“I don’t think he hears you.” Moon put a hand over his, squeezed his fingers lightly before she let go. “He needs a healer, Blodwed,” tentatively.

“Is he going to die?” Blodwed sat back on her knees, the truculence unexpectedly melting out of her voice. “There’s no healer here. Ma used to do it, but she’s not right in the head. She never taught anybody else. Can’t you help him?”

Moon glanced up at her. “Maybe I can…” She began to put her hair into braids. “Do you have any off worlder medical supplies?” Blodwed shook her head. “How about herbs, anything?”

“I can steal Ma’s. They’re old—” Blodwed stood up expectantly.

“Just get them.” Moon watched her go, confused by her willingness. She lifted the off worlder hand again, feeling for the pulse in his wrist; caught her breath as she saw the inside of his arm, crisscrossed with ragged scars. She stared in silent disbelief, lowered his arm again carefully, wrist down. She kept her hold on his hand as she sat waiting, and kept her mind empty.

“Here they are.” Blodwed came back through the gate at last, carrying a skin-wrapped bundle beaded with tiny bones and bits of metal. She opened it, spread it out on the floor between them. “Neutron activation,” she said, waving her hands. “Ma always says power words. Do you say power words, sibyl?” There was no taunt in it.

“I suppose so.” Moon picked over the leafy bundles of dried plants, sniffing at clear plastic bags of seeds and flower heads. Her hope faded. “I don’t know any of these.”

“Well, that one’s—”

She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t know how to use these.” KR j Aspundh had told her about the Old Empire’s exploration service, that before they opened new worlds for human colonists they had seeded them with a panacea of medicinal plants, different series for different ecosystems. “In the islands we used a lot of sea plants for curing.” And called them the Lady’s gifts. “I’ll have to ask — you’ll have to ask for me, input me; will you?” Blodwed nodded eagerly. “Ask me their uses,” Moon gestured. “Remember what I say — exactly, or it won’t do any good. Can you?”

“Sure.” Blodwed grinned arrogantly. “I can sing all the landmarks of the trail song. Nobody else can, any more. I can sing any song I ever heard on the radio even once.”

Moon managed half a smile, stopped by the stiff bruise on her cheek. “Then prove it. Ask, and I will answer. Input…”

Blodwed cleared her throat, sat up straighter. “Oh, sibyl! Tell me . uh, how to use these magic plants?”

Moon took up a bundle of herbs in her hand, felt herself begin to fall backwards down the well of absence… Clavally. She came into the light again, to find a face she knew, Clavally’s flushed and startled face, tousled hair, bare shoulders as close to her as… Danaquil Lu. She saw Clavally pull a blanket up to cover herself hastily. She thought, uselessly, Danaquil Lu, I’m sorry… Clavally, it’s only Moon… But she could not affect their lives even while she intruded on them so profoundly, to share her apologies or her happiness at even this reunion; to ask their help, or to communicate in any way at all.

But a tentative smile formed at the corners of Clavally’s wide mouth, as though she saw a message fill the window of Danaquil Lu’s eyes. She touched his cheek tenderly, still smiling, and with knowing patience lay back on the bed to wait…

“…No further analysis!” Moon slumped forward, drained, felt Blodwed’s quick hands catch her and keep her upright.

“You did it! You’re not a fake—” Blodwed propped her against the cot and took her hands away, suddenly leery. “Wake up! Are you awake? Where did you go?”

Moon nodded, let her forehead rest on her knees. “I… visited old friends.” She wrapped her arms around her shins, holding on to the memory: the only warmth, the only happiness she could remember.

“I know all the herbs now, sibyl.” Blodwed’s voice pawed at her. “I’ll show you. Are you going to cure him?”

“No.” Moon raised her unwilling head, opened her eyes. “I’m going to bring a real healer to use the herbs. But you’ll have to help me, give me whatever I need.” A nod. Moon readied herself, knowing that if she simply had the strength to begin, the Transfer would take her through to the end. Her body rebelled, refusing to gather for another ordeal, but she knew that if she surrendered to exhaustion now, it might be too late for the off worlder by the time she could start again. And she was not going to watch another person die because of her. She focused her attention on his face.

“All right, ask me how to treat him. Input!” and she flung herself through… Into a white-walled anti-gravity chamber, where she watched a cluster of men clad in pastel and transparent suits drift weightless, tethered to a table, arguing an incomprehensible medical procedure. Beyond them, beyond the reinforced glass of a wide window, she saw thick fingers of ice deepening beneath an eave, and floodlights illuminating a field of drifted snow…

“…analysis!” She came back into herself, barely hearing the dry rattle of the end sign inside her head. She smelled the pungent reek of half a dozen strange herbs on her hands and clothing as she crumpled forward. Mind fog hal oed her view of Blodwed’s peering face and the inert blanket-bundle of the sick off worlder turning them to a holy vision. Reassured, she found her hands and knees I and crawled toward the heater in the room’s center. When the cloud of energy became so intense that her body could not endure more, she let herself down at last, and slept.

Moon came awake with the urgency of terror, stared at the unexpected walls that closed her in. Stone walls — not the endless desolation of sky above a lifeless, stony beach, where an executioner in black wore a medal as familiar as the face of her only love… She hid from the phantom behind a wall of fingers, pressing the swollen soreness of her face. No, it isn’t true!

A soft trilling intruded on her, expanding her awareness, pulling her back into the stone-walled chamber. She lowered her hands, seeing the cluster of cages across the room, and felt time’s flood sweep her into the present. Someone had moved her to a pad of blankets. The animal stench had cleared, as though someone had cleaned the cages out as well, and the air was strong with the smell of herbs. No sounds reached her from beyond the locked gate; she guessed that it must be far into the night. The animals stirred and rustled, tending to their own lives, watching her with only half an eye now. “You know I’m just another pet.” She climbed uncertainly to her feet, swayed a moment, seeing stars, before she could cross the room.

The off worlder lay under a half-tent of blanket, wrapped like a swaddled infant in more covers. A pot of pungent herb-brew steamed on a hot plate by his head. She kneeled down by the cot, put her hand against his face. Cooler, not really sure that he was. “Please come back…” Prove I have a right to be alive, and be a sibyl. She bowed her head, pressed her forehead against the hard frame of the cot.