Colvin Stark stood alone by his overlander trike on the rough road to Chorale. He had only ventured out because Joanie had left him.

Vishwan Dome was behind him, its monocarbon shell covered with tangles of native vegetation and non-motive fauna. All around him, the giant, bifurcating structures of the local tree analogues loomed, fronds crackling and hissing in the wind. Their multiple trunks were coated in the slimy fibroid growths of the larval phases of the myriad fliers which circled around his head as he stood, indecisively, on the fringe of the jungle. He hadn't left the dome since coming down to Rhapsody two years before.

He could turn back, even now. Let her go this time. Start all over again.

A sudden wet sensation spread across his right cheek, just below the moulded rim of his goggles. He reached up, felt the bulbous form of a polyp which must have jumped at him from a nearby crag. Already, its exploratory microhyphae were probing the flesh of his face, tasting what he was ... who he was.

He pulled the thing off before its sensory juices could penetrate too far--before they could get into his bloodstream--and hurled it into the undergrowth.

'She's gone to Chorale.' 3Petra had been certain, and 3Petra should know. Whenever Joanie was upset she went to 3Petra to sell the wired-up phreak her anxieties. 3Petra was a mood therapist turned angst phreak, getting her highs from the biochemical residues of other people's lows. A dread head. 'And hey, Colvin,' 3Petra had added. 'You should share your stresses. Feed your phreak to me. It'd free you, but you never do. You guard your head too well, Colvin Stark. You need to let people in, let yourself out.'

Colvin had no intention of sharing his head with anybody, but particularly not a delisted mood therapist like 3Petra. And then her words sank in: Chorale wasn't just another domed city like Vishwan, it was an open settlement, houses built in the jungle, food grown in the open where anything could get to it.

He should have guessed Joanie would go native.

It was her difference that had attracted him in the first place, her difference that had dragged them apart ever since.

Colvin had grown up on Capital, the largest of Rhapsody's orbiting habitats. By the time he was twenty-eight he had never been more than fifty klicks from Capital, and he would have been content to spend the rest of his days in the orbiting cylinder. He had found his niche as a design surgeon, meeting the unceasing demand for change, for novelty--public service suited him.

Joanie had visited him to have her skin pigments reprogrammed. She came to him purple and he made her speckled cappuccino, which went well with her straight black hair and her amber eyes. She had come on an interstitial liner from Madrigalle with her parents; in her twenty-three years she had been to more than a dozen colony planets. 'I love change,' she told him. 'I need stimuli.'

When she kissed him, he had thought about it for several seconds before placing his hands on her shoulders and kissing her in return. Joanie was impetuous, a free spirit, a butterfly desperate to break free. Colvin was a rock, a continent, an anchor she dragged in her wake. They came to rely on each other's sheer oppositeness.

Joanie was the sensitive one: she would sense things that Colvin would take a week to work out for himself. Communication for her was a wave of empathic understanding, of reading between Colvin's carefully constructed lines. Which made her disregard for his feelings all the more painful. Joanie had never seemed to care about the consequences her endless quest for the different had for those around her. Any damage done along the way could easily be fixed. And perhaps the thing most difficult for Colvin to accept was that she was right: he would forgive her anything, the damage she did him could always be fixed, or at least patched over.

She had left him once before, taking a ferry down to Port August and thence to Vishwan. When, at last, he had found her, burning her brain on the native psychotropics and selling her pain to 3Petra, he saw that she had been expecting him--she had always known he would follow her, pick up the pieces of her life.

Now, he knew she would be waiting for him in Chorale, or wherever her wanderlust had taken her from there. Wherever she was, she would be certain Doc Colvin would come and patch her together. Again, he considered turning his back on her, selling his grief to 3Petra and making a new start.

He kicked the overlander into life and set off, heading into the jungle along the track the boosted policeman had assured him led to Chorale.

As night fell, he broke out the survival pack he had bought from the cop. He pulled the sleep sac over his head, rolled it down and sealed it at his feet. It was several sizes too big--built for the jacked up body of a professional enforcer--but that made it less claustrophobic.

He lay down, let the sac inflate. In the dim glow of its interior he set about disinfecting himself. The exposed parts of his face were covered with stiff, crystalline scales and the bulbous growths of three flier polyps; one hand was engulfed in a jellied pulp which had somehow penetrated the join between glove and cuff. Most of Rhapsody's lifeforms were not life-threatening, as such--due to incompatibilities between the major amino acids, Terran and Rhapsodian lifeforms were unable to digest much of each other's bodies. Colvin was only so much roughage to a Rhapsodian predator.

The real dangers were more subtle.

The dominant senses in Rhapsody's lifeforms were smell and taste--a biochemical wonderland. A Rhapsodian flier lived in a world of rich sensory experience: it sensed its world as a multidimensional biochemical map, where the flavours of every animal, every plant and bug and spore that had passed through left a distinctive trace. And of course, the evolutionary answer to such pinpoint perception was disguise and mimicry: creatures continually sampled their surroundings and tailored their body chemistry to imitate what had gone before. The most foolproof way of deceiving a potential predator was to trick its brain chemistry, leave biochemical vectors which would convince the predator that its prey was not there: in a world where taste and scent is king, the most successful deceivers will taste and smell invisible.

But in a world where native and Terran biochemistries did little more than overlap, signals could get confused. The exposed human was continually tasted and sampled, his or her body chemistry copied and transformed. Most Rhapsodian lifeforms were harmless, tasting and then departing, but a few were more intrusive, capable of producing neurochemical analogues that could shut down the brain, send the heart into fatal arrhythmia, block the processes of cell respiration. Many more were merely psychotropic, mimicking various neurotransmitters to induce hallucinations, euphoria or sheer, irreversible insanity--these substances kept phreaks like 3Petra in business and might, in time, become one of Rhapsody's major industries.

Colvin carried a sense pad to warn him of such an attack, but it had remained reassuringly green all day. Now, as he peeled off the last of the vegetal scales from his neck, he programmed his dreamer to reassure him in the night.

Most of the life on Rhapsody was harmless. It was the people you had to watch.

He set out in the morning, the overlander's digester cells recharged overnight. It was going to be a long ride but, he realised, he was beginning to enjoy himself. In their relationship he had brought stability to Joanie but in return she had forced change and novelty upon him. If it wasn't for Joanie he'd still be up in Capital, guiding the vain in the futile quest of changing their lives by changing their bodies. Joanie had tapped him on the skull on more than one occasion, saying, 'It's what's in here that matters, Colvin.' This from the woman who had come to Capital with purple skin and amber eyes, and left it speckled cappuccino, dark-eyed. As if she knew what he was thinking, she would spread her hands modestly and add, 'Of course, the outer layers help.'

He met a fellow traveller late in the day. 'How far to Chorale?' Colvin asked, feeling vulnerable and exposed.

The traveller was a man in a middle-aged body, although Colvin knew that need not necessarily indicate his years. He had straw-coloured hair and pink skin dappled with white scar tissue--from continued exposure to Rhapsodian life, Colvin supposed. The man had made little attempt to cover himself up.

The man smiled amicably. 'Chorale?' he said. 'Far? How? To?' He laughed, then tried again. 'Chorafar? Howchoralto?' He stepped towards Colvin, dark eyes suddenly intense.

Now Colvin saw that what he had taken for scar tissue was, in fact, a series of fleshy white whorls of some native lifeform. It looked as if the man's flesh was growing over them, sealing them into his soma.

Colvin fingered the stun gun in his jacket pocket, then pumped the overlander and tore away along the track with a high-pitched whine of bioturbo.

After a few minutes he slowed to a more cautious pace, fearful of the consequences of having an accident out here.

He glanced down at his sense pad. To his horror, it pulsed a vivid orange.

A short time later it had returned to a passive green. The man must have been infested with one of the dangerous psychotropics. Colvin chastised himself: he should be more careful. What was the point of taking precautions if you forgot to use them?

He reached Chorale after two and a half days' travel. It had taken longer than he had anticipated, but then he had never travelled in the open before, never had to travel on roads frequently overgrown with writhing, fluid lianas or flooded with shallow pools of living jelly that, on sensing a strange lifeform, flowed upwards--over the wheels and forks of the overlander, across the biocells and boosters, up his boots and legs until, at last he was clear of the pool, able to scrape the fecund muck off with his heavily gloved hands.

Chorale was a town which, under most circumstances, might be regarded as pretty: a cluster of no more than a hundred buildings spread across the slopes of a valley, either side of a winding river. But to Colvin the place looked the very reverse of the image he had grown up with of a typical colony settlement: instead of sturdy A-frames and cabins, tidy farmsteads, communities based around the local trading post with everything in its place, Chorale was haphazard, shabby, every surface covered with alien growths. Four bridges crossed the river, their elegant spans festooned with creepers and glistening, native growths; two were so submerged by growths that they looked impassable.

No wonder the official colony cities on Rhapsody were protected with monocarbon domes, their inhabitants and croplands carefully shielded from the native biotic chaos.

It is I who am the alien, Colvin reminded himself. This is the natural.

He rode down into the town.

Forget all the quaint, official imagery of colony planets, this was what real colonisation must be like. Where the people of Vishwan Dome were little different from those up in the habitats--and probably from those almost anywhere else in the colonised systems--the people of Chorale had become a part of the landscape. They had reached a settlement with the world. They belonged.

Many wore growths on their faces and arms, but equally many did not. The polyps and scales would drop off in time, after all, when their biochemical inquisitiveness had been satisfied. It was not so much a badge of citizenship, as an everyday fact of life.

Colvin was the only one who stared. In his goggles and protective clothing he felt more alien than ever.

He glanced at his sense pad. He couldn't see what colour it was--the thing was coated with grey scales, tasting its alien biochemical circuitry.

Some children were pointing at him now, making rings with thumb and forefinger and holding them to their eyes. Colvin considered for long seconds, then reached up to remove his goggles and roll his protective hood back down around his neck. He could not believe that Joanie would wear such paraphernalia--if she could survive out here then so too could Colvin.

A man was lolling nearby, watching Colvin with a wry smile on that part of his face not obscured by an inflated purple polyp. Inside the glutinous sac, Colvin could see the writhing forms of several fliers: soon the thing would burst and the creatures would be free of their pupal phase. The man was chewing something, but Colvin chose not to look too closely.

'Excuse me,' said Colvin. 'I'm looking for someone. I was told she had come to Chorale.' It wasn't a big settlement: if she was here, then he must find her soon.

'Everyone comes looking for something,' said the man. 'To get stoned, to meld, to "live the rustic ideal". Ain't always that they find it.'

For a moment, Colvin recalled the madman he had encountered on the road from Vishwan. But no, this man looked sane enough.

'My partner came this way,' Colvin persisted. 'She's so high--' he held a hand flat at the level of his eyebrows '--with straight black hair, speckled cappuccino skin, dark eyes. Hyper, like a hummingbird. Her name's Joanie Stark, although she might call herself Joanie Melvern again, I don't know.'

'You love her.'

Colvin was taken aback by the man's directness. 'I ... I don't know,' he said, startled by his own answer. 'I want her back.'

The man nodded, as if considering his answer. 'A whole lot of people come through here,' he said, finally. 'But most are only passing. Reckon I'd have remembered your Joanie if I'd seen her though. There's all kinds of phreak communities in these parts--that's where they usually end up. Melding and juicing up and skin surfing. She's too phreaked up, she might not want to come home, you understand?'

'I know the risks,' said Colvin. He always did: it was Joanie who never worked out the risks before trying something new. 'Is there somewhere I can find out?'

The man nodded. 'Ask Marcia Akinwade at the stores--anyone comes through Chorale, they stop at Marcia's. She's got a memory better'n most of us out here. Her partner Rud'll know if your Joanie left by river--he does the supply runs to Sendl and Jade. Denny Henders, the mood man, might know something, too. He sees himself as something of a spiritual shepherd, these parts. Tries to keep track of the phreaks when they come through. And if you're looking for a bed for the night, ask Marcia. Most folk round here put travellers up, but Marcia does it better'n most.'

The man straightened now, and spat out a frothy green wad into the street. He touched a finger to his purple growth and said, 'And when you're wanting to head into the hills, you won't find a better guide'n me: Dav Akinwade.'

Marcia remembered Joanie, just as Dav had said she would. She was a small woman, with stark grey hair pulled hard back from a bony face. Big grey eyes fixed on Colvin. Assessing him, he realised, working out just how much her information might be worth.

He asked if he could stay the night, offered her a price that would be astronomical even up in Capital. She nodded, said, 'Girl fitting that description was here last month. Might be her. She didn't say her name. I wouldn't say she was hyper, though: more subdued, phreaked on something, I'd say.'

He hated to ask, but he had to: 'Was she alone?'

Marcia Akinwade hesitated, then shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'She was part of a group. She seemed like an outsider. A newcomer. As if she'd only just joined up with them.' She hesitated again, then added, 'They were phreaks--come for the local psychotropics. I heard one of them say they were heading upriver to join the Melders. Your girl didn't seem to care, didn't seem to care about anything at all.'

That didn't sound like Joanie. The woman must be right: she must have taken something. He tried to shake off his unease about her being in such a state, in the care of some unknown group of phreaks.

He left his overlander in Marcia's yard and headed down to the river. A man was tending to the motor of a small dinghy, threading new digester filaments into the corroded tracks of the turbo.

'Rud Akinwade?'

Without looking up, the man shook his head, then nodded down the rickety jetty to an old barge. Crouched low in its hold was a thin, dark-skinned man with purple and grey growths covering his exposed torso, like the scales of a fish.

'Rud Akinwade?'

The man looked up, nodded, returned to his work. 'I'm looking for a young woman who passed through here last month,' said Colvin. 'Dark hair, dark eyes, speckled coffee skin, usually hyperactive but she might have been ill. She was with a group of phreaks, heading upriver. Your partner said you might have taken them on a supplies run.'

'Phreaks or Melders?' said the man. 'Don't take Melders an' I only take phreaks if their money's good and up front.'

Colvin had heard the term Melder before--just another minor sect, phreaking on native psychotropics, he had thought--but here in Chorale the term was used almost as one of abuse. 'What's a Melder?' he asked.

Rud Akinwade grunted.

From behind Colvin another voice joined in: 'Phreaks with a purpose.'

Colvin turned to see that the other man had finished with his digester filaments and had joined them. Colvin raised his eyebrows and the man introduced himself.

'Denny Henders, only mood therapist for a hundred klicks. What I mean by that is to say they're not just like ordinary phreaks--come upcountry to get smashed and laid.' He tapped the side of his head. 'They believe in this stuff,' he continued. 'They claim to have found a fibroid that synthesises a substance near-identical to beta-acetylcholine. Near enough that it gets into your blood and then into your head and phreaks you, but different enough that it only keys into a specific part of the temporal lobe. Once its there it unfolds its own pharmaceutical message.'

'And...?'

'They reckon it makes you telepathic,' said Denny Henders.

Instantly, Colvin knew Joanie was with the Melders. Whether this particular phreak worked or not, it was the idea that mattered, the possibility. Joanie would grab at something like that with all she could.

'Where can I find them?' he asked. He turned to Rud Akinwade. 'Can you take me upriver to wherever they're based?'

The boatman grunted again. 'You tell me where they're based an' if it's on my run I'll take you there.'

Colvin turned to Denny Henders.

'Rud's brother, Dav, will take you out to see Taylor's Head, if you ask him. Taylor was a Melder once--she might be able to help you.'

They set out on foot the following morning. 'Couple of hours,' Dav had said. 'Taylor has a place up on Mackie Hill.' Overnight, Dav's polyp had hatched, and now all that remained was a glistening, slimy wound over half of his scalp. As they walked, the wound dried up, and was soon coated with spores drifting down from the surrounding jungle growth.

Colvin was not disturbed by the sight, or smell, of Dav's growth. He had programmed his dreamer last night to help him accept what were everyday phenomena out here. Even when a polyp attached itself to his neck and refused to be pulled away, he remained calm. There were more important things to concern him.

Like what Joanie was doing with the phreaks. He had been worried ever since Marcia Akinwade said she had been subdued, phreaked on something bad. He wanted to know how she became involved with this group.

When they came to Taylor's Head, Colvin understood why it was so termed. Where polyps were often growths attached to human beings, Taylor had become little more than a human growth in a garden of polyps.

High up on what Dav called Mackie Hill there was a proliferation of cushioned growths: bulbous, fluid-filled sacs, fleshy fronds of some sort of vegetation, the crusty scales of something which looked like enormous lichen but--Colvin saw--was creeping infinitely slowly across the surface of the polyps like an invading army.

And cushioned at the heart of this exotic garden was a human head--or rather, a human face, the remainder being covered with native growths. The skin of this face was pure, flawless, thin lips kept moist by a continually flicking tongue.

Taylor smiled when she saw them, although the expression seemed forced. Colvin nodded in greeting, then without preamble said, 'I come in the hope that you can help me find my partner, she--'

'--has gone with the Melders,' finished Taylor. 'I know these things: I was, of course, a Melder once, myself.'

'You mean...?'

'We all have a latent ability,' Taylor said. 'It separates us from the animals. As with the sense of smell, modern humankind has let its telepathic talent slide. The Melders have the key to unlocking what is latent in us all. They unlocked it in me and I could not take it--the enforced oneness. I fled. I am a hermit.'

Her look took on a sudden fierce intensity. 'I hate to be with people. I hate their flaws, always naked before me.'

'I'm sorry,' said Colvin. 'I only want to find Joanie.'

'You only want to use me and then go,' snapped Taylor. 'I see through it all.' Then, more tiredly, she added, 'I wish you would just go, that you hadn't come at all.'

'We'll go,' said Colvin. 'But will you just give us a few minutes? Help me find Joanie? I think she's in trouble.'

Taylor smiled now, a cruel smile. 'Of course she's in trouble,' she hissed. 'You think she wants to be up at the Melding with those phreaks? You think it was her choice?'

'What do you mean?'

Taylor held back for a long time before replying. 'Some people are special,' she said, at last. 'Where we all have a natural empathy, in some of us it is not so dormant. These individuals are extremely rare, but they exist. You can use the analogy of a bee hive: if ordinary Melders can achieve a certain, workerly oneness--' the polyps around Taylor shuddered at the word '--then such a uniquely powerful individual is as a queen to them.'

Colvin closed his eyes. Until now he had not believed the Melders were any more than just another bunch of phreaks getting stoned on native psychotropics. But now ... he recalled Joanie's sensitivity, her ... her empathy. People could relate to her, complete strangers would spill out their troubles to her. She always understood. He remembered all the times when they had been together and it was as if their brains were working as one, each knowing what was in the other's thoughts. It was true: Joanie was special. She had a talent, an empathy. She was to be the Melders' queen bee.

'And this ... this "special individual",' he said. 'She would be drawn to the Melders? She would sense that they had found a way to fully unlock her talent?'

Taylor's smile was back again. 'Oh no,' she said. 'One so special lives in fear of their gift. They suppress it, they deny it. They want it in the end, but until they are awoken to their gift they live in fear of it. Your Joanie would not have joined the Melding voluntarily.'

Now Colvin knew why Joanie was so subdued when she had passed through Chorale. The Melders had done something to her, phreaked her on something so that she would cooperate.

He stared at Taylor intently. 'One more question before we go,' he said. 'Where are they?'

He watched the Melders' settlement for a night and a day before acting.

They were based in a failed farmstead about ten klicks from the river. Rud Akinwade had ferried Colvin and Dav to the nearest point, and then the two of them had trekked through the jungle for most of a day before they reached the settlement.

Dav had left almost immediately. 'I'm not staying here,' he told Colvin. 'I wish you luck, but I'm not getting mixed up with the Melders.' His fear had been almost palpable--so much so that his mere presence had made Colvin feel uncomfortable. His spirits had lifted greatly when his guide departed: he didn't want to be contaminated by the other man's fear. It was all he could do to contain his own.

At first, the Melders looked just like any other phreak commune--just another group of dopeheads living the rustic ideal.

But Colvin was careful to keep his distance. He still did not know how much of Taylor's story to believe, but if it was true that these phreaks were now more empathically attuned he did not want them to sense his hostile presence in the jungle.

His survival pack was a tremendous aid. He used its grippers to help him climb trees, and he could stick the sleep sac to any surface and set its chameleon coating to blend with the surroundings.

As he observed the Melders he started to sense a pattern to it all--the kind of synchronicity of birds flying in a flock, or a shoal of fish. And then he noticed that the Melders rarely seemed to talk. They were all smashed, he thought--you don't talk much when you've got a headful.

At last, he saw Joanie. She was being kept in one of the smaller outbuildings--there was always at least one guard on the door.

They led her out at midday and she sat cross-legged, part of a circle of about forty Melders. They sang songs, chanted, watched children dancing around a fire. And then they led her back into her prison.

On the second night, they gathered by the fire for songs and chanting again; afterwards, they led Joanie back to her outbuilding.

Colvin waited until the settlement was quiet, the fire reduced to glowing embers. There was one man guarding the outbuilding, slumped on a chair in the doorway.

Colvin dropped from his perch in a tree and approached the settlement.

He came to the outbuilding from behind. When he reached the corner, he peered round, fearing that the guard would have sensed his approach. The figure was still slumped in his chair.

Colvin advanced and finally the guard jerked upright, eyes wide.

Colvin raised the stun gun and fired. There was a sudden scent of ozone and the man fell forward. Reacting quickly, Colvin caught the guard by his shoulders and pushed him back into his chair. He'd be out until daybreak, but if anyone looked they would just assume he was asleep. By then, Colvin and Joanie should be most of the way to the river.

He went inside, saw a human form curled up under a blanket on the floor.

For a moment he was scared. Scared of Joanie, of what Taylor had said she was. She must know him so intimately: all his weaknesses, all the things all of us hide beneath a veneer of civilisation.

He reached for her shoulder, shook her.

It was several seconds before she stirred, then her eyes opened, she saw him and she was in his arms, trembling, sobbing.

He pulled her upright. He hadn't taken her drugged condition into his plans. He hoped they would be fast enough.

He led her towards the door, then reached for his goggles and placed them on her head. 'These'll help you see in the dark,' he told her. When they were outside she seemed to perk up, as if the night air was breaking through to her. 'Come on,' he said. 'We have to hurry.'

They had reached the edge of the clearing when the alarm was raised.

Colvin heard voices coming from the farmstead. He pushed Joanie ahead, urged her on. When they had found the track to the river, he paused, glanced back. A group of Melders had covered half of the distance already.

He realised they would be caught. 'Go on,' he hissed at Joanie, willing her head to clear. 'Follow this track ten klicks to the river and if I'm not with you, hail the supply boat that passes every mid-morning.'

She carried on running and he didn't even know if she'd heard him. He sidestepped into the trees, wondering desperately how to outsmart a group of telepaths.

Maybe they were just ordinary phreaks, after all, because they kept coming.

When they were within range he fired the stun gun and one of them cried out and fell. He fired again and another dropped, then his wrists exploded in pain as a club came down, smashing the gun from his grip.

When his head had cleared from the pain, he was lying in the open, surrounded by Melders. They seemed to have given up pursuit of Joanie, as if suddenly she didn't matter.

Then he saw the way they were looking at him: they were grinning, barely able to suppress their excitement.

They had been expecting him.

They hadn't wanted Joanie at all: she was bait in the trap they had set for him.

Even now, as he lay in his room--well guarded, in the main house--he could barely even begin to accept what had happened. He remembered his reaction to the implication that Joanie was the talented one--the queen bee. All the little incidents from their shared past, all the little understandings, coincidences of thoughts--it did not have to be Joanie who was responsible for such happenings.

Taylor's Head had told him that the special one would live in fear of their gift, they would suppress it and deny it. Joanie was the vibrant one, the risk-taker--she was not a person living in fear. It was Colvin who had always suppressed his feelings, who never dared act on impulse.

It was Colvin who was the queen bee, and they had trapped him easily.

They treated him well, binding his broken wrists with medic-packs, so they were repaired within days. The food was plain but plentiful, the room modest but comfortable.

They talked to him, explaining their ways. Gradually, Colvin found that his resentment was being overcome. He knew this was a recognised syndrome: the kidnap victim coming to identify with his captors. He did not think that was the full explanation, though. These people believed what they were saying, even though they were misguided and dangerous.

He understood them.

'We are melding tonight,' Madelin told him one day--he had lost track of how long they had held him. 'Will you join us? We can't make you take part.'

They gathered around the fire and Colvin sat slightly apart as the Melders sang and their children danced. All the time, he was aware of their looks, their eyes never meeting his own. Like a mating game, a courtship ritual, he realised.

When they started to chant, a small bowl was passed around the circle. Colvin watched curiously as they took it in turns to dab a finger in the bowl and then touch each temple.

As the substance circulated, Colvin became certain he could sense some strange upwelling, something powerful and rich. Something alien.

Last of all, the bowl was deposited at his feet. In it was a substance that was creamy, pale. Automatically, he reached out, touched it. It looked wet, but was dry on his finger. He remembered that Taylor had said the special one would eventually come to want it, this strange oneness that she had found so unbearable. He hesitated, then raised his hand and touched each temple with the alien substance.

Nothing happened for some time, then gradually it rose up, an awareness, a perception he recognised but had always suppressed. His eyes were closed but he could see the gathering quite clearly, sense the minds of those around him. Slowly, tentatively, he reached out, and the other minds responded, welcoming his bright new presence, his melding.

When Joanie came back with a heavily armed posse led by Rud and Dav Akinwade, Colvin was sitting alone in the clearing.

'They've gone,' he said, looking up at the group of six men from Chorale. They had come looking for a fight, and now they were disappointed, unnerved by this strange man sitting alone in the clearing of a deserted farmstead.

Joanie held back. She knew things had changed. She knew that this would never be the Colvin she had loved and resented and pitied for the last three years.

'You'll be coming back then,' said Rud finally. The man was confused. He didn't know whether to believe this woman from another planet, or even his brother, who he had never trusted in any case.

'No,' said Colvin. He stood, held out a hand to Joanie. 'I'm going to join them,' he said. 'I'm going to lead them. There's so much good we can do.'

'But they're kidnappers!' cried Joanie finally. Colvin had been waiting for this outburst, had sensed it building, just as he had sensed this angry group heading up from the river since early this morning.

Colvin smiled. Arguing was a waste of time. He shrugged. 'Come with me, Joanie,' he said.

Still she hesitated.

He turned and started to walk, then. Joanie would join him. If not now, then soon, when she had managed to get her thoughts together.

He knew she would join him.

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