Without slowing, his mat slipped over the edge and began to descend.

He could get some idea of his speed by watching the scummy streaks of white that streamed toward him and then slid under the mat. He turned and watched the far edge of his mat come over the crest of the hill. The long white streamers reappeared from beneath the brown carpet and fled over the mound.

Automatically he got down on his knees and pushed his face into the translucent water. He drank. The salt did not bother him. He had long gotten used to drinking water of all flavors and purity. You stored it up when you could. He drank steadily, working at it until he felt his belly fill. Then he sat back—and saw the water looming over him like a wall, about to topple.

But it did not. He felt a tremor through his knees as the green water hill rose still higher, towering against a soft ivory sky. But it did not fall.

He felt a downward surge and then his mat began to climb the green rise. Only then did he glimpse what must be happening. He was in the grip of water so huge and momentous that it made waves. His brown carpet was riding the waves in this immense water. He was on a…

An island. Yes. Or perhaps a raft. Yes, a raft.

This came from Arthur. Killeen eagerly asked more but the Aspect would not answer.

He stood, marveling. The hilltops were an emerald green, while the valleys shimmered with a deeper, glassy color. As he passed over the crest he saw a few spots break into white foam, then fade.

Except for the slow surge that came up through his feet, Killeen could not tell he was moving. He seemed to glide up one hillside and then down it to another, identical, hill.

So much water. A world of water, where even the spongy solidness of his mat was unusual. At the next hilltop he peered carefully all around and could see no other brown stain upon the endless rolling green mounds. The giant waves marched on to the far, misty horizon. A whole seething world of water.

The Mantis. The thought came to him suddenly with a sense of absolute conviction.

This was a fraction of the Mantis sensorium. Or the way it saw the world.

There was no place on Snowglade where so much water lay open. So the mat beneath him could not be there. It was an illusion, just like the false images he had seen before from the Mantis. Far more convincing, enveloping, real.

But what was this illusion for?

He remembered running from the Mantis, fevered and hopeless, Toby beside him.

Now he was alone on a brown raft. Adrift.

Wearing nothing, his suit and leggings and helmet gone.

He called up each of his Aspects and Faces, even those he had not used for years. None answered.

His sensorium gave back only a hollow, droning grayness.

He walked all the way around the outer edge. There was nothing more to see, simply the same layered mesh everywhere. He stopped for a moment to drink again, enjoying the sensation of burying his face in water which sloped up and was higher than the land. The slap and gurgle of the small waves his hands made was to him a sound of uncountable wealth, a fluid richness without end.

When he got up there was a speck on the horizon. He watched it grow, banking up and down the gravid waves, approaching on a zigzag path.

It was another island. Larger, ridged.

Instead of a featureless plain, bristly vegetation covered most of it.

Something moved there.

Killeen squinted as the long green undulations brought it closer. There were dense, knotted bushes growing atop a white ground cover. The other island had knobby small rises and hollows, unlike his. As it grew, his eyes searched for some human figure among the gnarled growth but saw nothing.

Branches swayed with the swell of the huge waves. Was that the movement he had seen?

The larger island seemed to slide effortlessly over the crests of the green hills and Killeen had to remind himseff that the islands were not moving themselves, but followed the contours of the waves. All his experience was no guide here.

As the island neared he suddenly saw that it was not heading directly for his. Instead it would pass some distance away and even seemed to be gaining speed. He tried to remind himself that this place was a sensorium, and his instincts didn’t apply. But he somehow knew the other island was important.

He stepped into the warm water at the mat’s edge. He had no idea how to move through water, or even if there was a way to do it. Then he saw something moving in the brambles of the approaching island. A human figure. It took no notice of him but kept walking into the vegetation. He could not tell who it was.

He stroked tentatively at the water and took a step. Abruptly he sank to his waist. This sent a shrill alarm through him, a sensation he could not have imagined: fear of water, the provider of life.

Lie down in it. Then pull water toward you with your hands and kick with your legs. Hold your breath when your head is under water.

The quick darting information from Arthur broke his hesitation. He pushed away from his island and thrashed at the warm currents that brushed him. His legs churned. Water rushed up his nose. Briny pricklings invaded his sinuses and he sputtered.

But he moved. He got a dog-paddle rhythm going and managed to keep his head fixed toward where the other island would pass. He gave himself over to the rhythmic surgings, swooping water behind him like a kind of thick, warm air. Coughing, rolling in the swell, he made progress.

The other island-raft came at him achingly slowly. He felt no fatigue but his arms began to sing with the strain. Then a chance wave caught him and plunged him down-slope at the island. Foam curled around him. He banked into the wave and felt it seem to bunch and thrust behind him. Startled, he cut a swath down the shimmering wall of green. And tumbled onto the mat below, gasping.

His head rang from banging into the ground. He got up and walked unsteadily toward the dense, clotted growth nearby. It looked impenetrable. He skirted around it toward one of the white open spaces. There was no sign of the human figure. This island was much bigger than his. Stubby trees dotted the high ground. There were other things farther back in the vegetation which he could not make out so he started up the incline of white—

And backed away, trembling.

The white ground cover was a jumble of bones.

The edge of it was made of small, slender fragments. Fingers. Hands. Toes.

Farther in were broken ribs. Forearms. A garden of smashed pelvises.

At the top of the small knoll were thighs. Intact barrel rib cages. Thick arms. Bleached skulls with their perpetual grins and gaping eyesockets.

The boneyard spread over hummocks and rises. It stopped at the undergrowth but reappeared halfway up a nearby knoll.

Killeen blinked, his fear pressing up into his throat. He tentatively angled toward an opening in the bushes. Their slender branches whispered as the sea swell deepened. Then he heard the other sound.

Steps. Slow, crunching steps. Dull thuds punctuated by sharp cracks and pops.

Something coming. He backed away, not knowing where the sounds came from. His eyes swept the horizon but he could not find his own island anymore in the green vastness.

He looked back at the low sloping hillside just as a chromed sphere appeared over the crest. It came into view on a lattice of working rods and cables, legs clambering and jerking, many-toed feet coming down with a curious delicacy. Where it stepped bones broke.

In a last despairing release Killeen stooped, found a knobby, bleached joint. He threw it straight at the topmost sphere of the Mantis. It bounced off with a sharp clang.

Killeen felt his Aspects buzz to fresh life.

Wants to talk.