He was unable to identify which of the many possible diseases it was. This was because he did not try very hard. Once a man is dead, he considered the means an academic point. In addition, his desire for urgency was such that he begrudged the others even the brief funeral ceremony and burial in which they indulged. He felt this doubly on the following morning, when two of the remaining seven did not awaken and he was compelled to witness the same rite repeated. He cursed in other languages as he helped prepare the graves.

The faceless, laughing ones--for so he had come to consider them--now possessed expressions and lacked laughter. Their ruby eyes were wide and darted at every sound. The six digits of their hands shook, writhed, snapped. Now they were beginning to understand. Now it was too late.

But two or three days ... This was the third day, and the mountains were nowhere in sight.

"Clay, where are the mountains?" he asked the coughing one. "Where is Italbar?"

Glay shrugged and pointed ahead.

The sun, a giant yellow ball, was all but invisible from their trail. Its light leaked through the starfish leaves, but in every place that it missed there was moisture or fungus. Small animals or large insects--he did not know which--darted from their path, scurried behind them, rattled the bushes and moved along the branches. The larger creatures of which he had been warned never appeared, though he heard their hisses, their whistles, their barks often in the distance; and occasionally there was the sound of something huge crashing through the forest near at hand.

He was taken by the irony of it. He had come to save a life and the effort had already cost four. "Lady, you were right," he muttered, thinking of his dream.

It was perhaps an hour later that Clay collapsed, racked with coughing, his normally olive complexion the color of the leaves about them. Heidel moved to his side, recognizing the condition. Given several days' preparation, he might have been able to save the man.