Boukay says:" Come in." It is the Admiral.
"Boukay, we need to talk about what we are supposed to be doing with the Pirates again."
Boukay jumps up.

"Admiral, I am concerned about Mandy. She was to have met me here an hour ago. Could you institute some sort of search for her?" The Admiral smiles and says, "Oh, I think she will be here shortly. She is sweet on one of our ice-giants. Not to worry. But just to be on the safe side...Back in a moment." He leaves, the door swooshes shut.

Boukay sits back down, frightened again. He had hoped, well, what could he hope now... He opens his fieldbook to where he left off, flips ahead a few pages, and begins to read again.

"2585:21:3
She says to me, "Try it, it'll be easy after a few seconds." I get on the seat, awkwardly, and lift my legs, and fall over. I get back on, and ride around in a diminishing circle, fall over. "What do you call this thing?" I say from the ground. She is laughing out loud, for the first time ever since we have been together. I get up, and although I think I am getting the hang of it, I deliberately shift my balance, just to fall over awkwardly, just to get her to laugh. I do. She does. "It's a bicycle," she says finally, choking out the words through her laughter. "Couldn't they have made it with a few more wheels," I call out, riding wobbly in a wider circle. She watches me, smiling, then falls serious again, rubbing her hand unconsciously as she does against the scar down her cheek.

We ride silently down the long road by the sea. No one follows us: that is one reason for going this route: it is so open. There are white islands in the distance, and high hills behind us, with iridescent sheen glinting off rocks like mica schist. We pass ruined towers and circles of what look like druid stones. We are always quiet together. She says that one reason she likes me is that I am the first man she has ever been with who is quiet, not because he is hiding anything, but because he is just quiet. I remind her than I am after all half-plant. Oh, she says, that explains it.

We certainly make a strange pair: a green man and a Cybanian escapee. After what happened on Polgar, she keeps herself to herself. But at least she has begun singing again, not Earth songs of course, but strange wild songs in her bitterhoney voice she says come from Taurusland where she was born. She will not say any more. There was only that horrifying moment later after Polgar on Holy Demershinnia when we realized that the Songdealers had wiped the minds of the remnant churchfolk, and let them live, songless, rather than kill them. She said that they had become more sophisticated, that they knew there was a problem with their previous tactics, that whoever they were they would not stop now until they had found Taurusland itself. I said, where is Taurusland? But she said no more. I think she trusts me: what she no longer trusts is the universe itself around her -- she thinks everything is now listening with evil intent. Perhaps she is right.

Tonight we sleep under a fine oaklike cluster of trees by an ancient aristocratic mansion, long since abandoned. I do not understand what these alien trees say, but they rumble deep and old, saying things just out of reach, but comforting nevertheless. She lies under one, and I lie under the next one nearby, and just before I go to sleep, she waves at me from under the shadow of her tree, smiling, like someone waving from one dark building to someone opposite, in another. I dream, again, inevitably, of that last night in Polgar, and with all my strength I wrench myself awake. I look over, and she is there, sleeping quietly. Everything is quiet, the trees hushed. I turn over, and sleep, and do not dream again.

2585: 22 - Even before we cycle into the village, even before we come over the hill, we can hear the pipes. It is this we have come for -- the secret gathering of the tribes on Margarnagarr. "

Suddenly Boukey is seized with the voice of someone, someone with a ancient voice, a woman's, like one of the trees on Margarnagarr, but also mysteriously like Mandy's, calling upon him for desperate help, directing him to the Hydroponics Section aft. He rapidly puts the book away in his jacket, and rushes out into the corridor, following the voice.