I was hyperventilating. Dizzy. I sat down next to the skeleton so that I wouldn't fall.

These long bones looked more than four months dead. Years, decades … wait, now. We'd scorched the nest, but there would be lamplighter soldiers left outside. They would have swarmed down and stripped the bones.

I found I was trying to push my back through a wall of fused coral. My empty stomach heaved. This was much worse than anything I'd imagined. I knew who this was.

Sunlight burned my back. My eyes were going wonky in the glare. Time was not on my side: I was going to be much sicker much quicker than I liked.

I made myself pull the boots loose, shook the bones out, and put them on. They were too big.

The jacket was a sailor's survival jacket, local style. The shoulders looked padded: shoulder floats. The front and sides had been all pockets, well stuffed, but front and back had been torn to confetti.

I stripped it off him and began searching pockets.

No wallet, no ID. Tissue pack. The shrapnel remains of a hand computer. Several pockets were sealed: emergency gear, stuff you wouldn't want to open by accident; and some of those had survived.

A knife of exquisite sharpness in a built-in holster. Pocket torch. A ration brick. I bit into the brick and chewed while I searched. Mag specs, one lens shattered, but I put them on anyway. Without dark glasses my pink albino eyes would go blind.

Sun block spray, unharmed: good. A pill dispenser, broken, but in a pocket still airtight. Better! Tannin secretion pills!

The boots were shrinking, adapting to my feet. It felt friendly, reassuring. My most intimate friends on this island.

I was still dizzy. Better let the 'doc take care of me now; take the pills afterward. I shook broken ribs out of the jacket. Shook the pants empty. Balled the clothing and tossed it out of the hole. Tried to follow it.

My fingers wouldn't reach the rim.

«After all this, what a stupid way to die,» I said to the memory of Sharrol Janss. «What do I do now? Build a ladder out of bones?» If I got out of this hole, I'd think it through before I ever did anything.

I knelt; I yelled and jumped. My fingers, palms, forearms gripped rough coral. I pulled myself out and lay panting, sweating, bleeding, crying.

I limped back to the 'doc, wearing boots now, holding the suit spread above me for a parasol. I was feverish with sunburn.

I couldn't take boots into the ICC. Wait. Think. Wind? Waves? I tied the clothes in a bundle around the boots, and set it on the 'doc next to the faceplate. I climbed into the intensive care cavity and pulled the lid down.

Sharrol would wait an hour longer, if she was still alive. And the kids. And Carlos.

I did not expect to fall asleep.

Asleep, feverish with sunburn. The Surgery program tickles blocks of nerves, plays me like a complex toy. In my sleep I feel raging thirst, hear a thunderclap, taste cinnamon or coffee, clench a phantom fist.

My skin wakes. Piloerection runs in ripples along my body, then a universal tickle, then pressure … like that feather-crested snakeskin Sharrol put me into for Carlos's party …

Sharrol, sliding into her own rainbow-scaled bodysuit, stopped halfway. «You don't really want to do this, do you?»

«I'll tough it out. How do I look?» I'd never developed the least sense of flatlander style. Sharrol picked my clothes.

«Half man, half snake,» she said. «Me?»

«Like this snake's fitting mate.» She didn't really. No flatlander is as supple as a crashlander. Raised in Earth's gravity, Sharrol was a foot shorter than I, and weighed the same as I did. Stocky.

The apartment was already in child mode: rounded surfaces everywhere, and all storage was locked or raised to eyeball height (mine). Tanya was five and Louis was four and both were agile as monkeys. I scanned for anything that might be dangerous within their reach. Louis stared at us, solemn, awed. Tanya giggled. We must have looked odder than usual, though given flatlander styles it's a wonder that any kid can recognize its parents. Why do they change their hair and skin color so often? When we hugged them goodbye, Tanya made a game of tugging my hair out of shape and watching it flow back into a feathery crest. We set them down and turned on the Playmate program.

The lobby transfer booth jumped us three time zones east. We stepped out into a vestibule, facing an arc of picture window. A flock of rainbow-hued fish panicked at the awful sight and flicked away. A huge fish passed in some internal dream.

For an instant I felt the weight of all those tons of water.

I looked to see how Sharrol was taking it. She was smiling, admiring.

«Carlos lives near the Great Barrier Reef, you said. You didn't say he lived in it.»

«It's a great privilege,» Sharrol told me. «I spent my first thirty years under water, but not on the Reef. The Reef's too fragile. The UN protects it.»

«You never told me that!»

She grinned at my surprise. «My dad had a lobster ranch near Boston. Later I worked for the Epcot-Atlantis police. The ecology isn't so fragile there, but — Bey, I should take you there.»

I said, «Maybe it's why we think alike. I grew up underground. You can't build aboveground on We Made It.»

«You told me. The winds.»

«Sharrol, this isn't like Carlos.»

She'd known Carlos Wu years longer than I had. «Carlos gets an idea and he follows it as far as it'll go. I don't know what he's onto now. Maybe he's always wanted to share me with you. And he brought a date for, um —»

«Ever met her?»

«— balance. No, Carlos won't even talk about Feather Filip. He just smiles mysteriously. Maybe it's love.»

The children! Protect the children! Where are the children? The Surgeon must be tickling my adrenal glands. I'm not awake, but I'm frantic, and a bit randy too. Then the sensations ease off. The Playmate program. It guards them and teaches them and plays with them. They'll be fine. Can't take them to Carlos's place … not tonight.

Sharrol was their mother and Carlos Wu had been their father. Earth's Fertility Board won't let an albino have children. Carlos's gene pattern they judge perfect; he's one of a hundred and twenty flatlanders who carry an unlimited birthright.

A man can love any child. That's hard-wired into the brain. A man can raise another man's children. And accept their father as a friend … but there's a barrier. That's wired in, too.

Sharrol knows. She's afraid I'll turn prickly and uncivilized. And Carlos knows. So why …?

Tonight was billed as a foursome, sex and tapas. That was a developing custom: dinner strung out as a sequence of small dishes between bouts of recreational sex. Something inherited from the ancient Greeks or Italians, maybe. There's something lovers gain from feeding each other.

Feather –

The memory blurs. I wasn't afraid of her then, but I am now. When I remember Feather, the Surgeon puts me to sleep.

But the children! I've got to remember. We were down. Sharrol was out of the 'doc, but we left Louis and Tanya frozen. We floated their box into the boat. Feather and I disengaged the lift plate and slid it under the 'doc. Beneath that lumpy jacket she moved like a tigress. She spoke my name; I turned …

Feather.

Carlos's sleepfield enclosed most of the bedroom. He'd hosted bigger parties than this in here. Tonight we were down to four, and a floating chaos of dishes Carlos said were Mexican.