Outcasts by Vonda N. McIntyre Read Free Book Online

insect, paralyzed it, wrapped
it in silk to store it, and dragged it away. Kylis wondered if their spider
ever slept, or if spiders even needed sleep. Then she stole the web.
    She grew worried. She knew Gryf could take care of himself.
He always did. He had probably never really reached his limits, but Gryf might
overestimate even his strength and endurance. He had rested barely an hour.
    Kylis fidgeted for a little while longer. Finally she slid
down into the mud again.
    Water seeped quickly into new footprints in the battered
earth around the shelters; Gryf had left no trail that she could distinguish
from the other marks in the clay. She went into the forest, with some knowledge
and some intuition of where he might be. Above her, huge insects flitted past,
barely brushing clawed wingtips against the ferns. It was dark, and the star
path, streaked across the sky like the half-circular support of a globe, gave a
dim yellow light through broken clouds.
    Kylis was startled and frightened by a tickling of the short
hair at the back of her neck. She flinched and turned. Gryf looked down at her,
smiling, amused.
    “Kylis, my friend, you really needn’t worry
about me all the time.” She was always surprised, when he spoke, to
remember how pleasant and calming his voice was.
    His eyes were dilated so the iris was only a narrow circle
of light and dark striations.
    Every few sets, someone died from sucking slime. It grew in the
forest, in small patches like purple jellyfish. It was hallucinogenic, and it
was poisonous. Kylis had argued with Gryf about his using it, before her
sentence in the sensory deprivation chamber showed her what Screwtop was like
for Gryf all the time.
    “Gryf — “
    “Don’t reproach me!”
    “I won’t,” Kylis said. “Not anymore.”
    Her response startled him only for a moment; that it
startled him at all revealed how completely drained he really was. He nodded
and put his arms around her.
    “Now you know,” he said, with sympathy and
understanding. “How long did they make you stay in the box?”
    “Eight days. That’s what they said, anyway.”
    He passed his hand across her hair, just touching it. “My
poor friend. It seems so much longer.”
    “It doesn’t matter. It’s over for me.”
She almost believed the hallucinations had stopped, but she wondered if she
would ever be certain they would never return.
    “Do you think the Lizard sentenced you because of me?”
    “I don’t know. I guess he’d use anything
he could if he thought it’d work. Never mind. I’m all right.”
    “I would have done what they want, but I could not.
Can you believe I tried?”
    “Do you think I wanted you to?” She touched his
face, tracing bone structure with her fingers like someone blind. She could
feel the difference between the blond and black hair in his striped eyebrows,
but the texture of his skin was smooth. She drew her fingers from his temples
to the corners of his jaw, to the tendons of his neck and the tension-knotted
muscles of his shoulders. “No one should make friends here,” she
said.
    He smiled, closing his eyes, understanding her irony. “We
would lose our souls if we did not.”
    He turned away abruptly and sat down on a large rock with
his head between his knees, struggling against nausea. The new scars did not
seem to hurt him. He breathed deeply for some time, then sat up slowly.
    “How is Jason?”
    “Fine. Recovered. You didn’t have to take his
shift. Lizard couldn’t let him die like that.”
    “I think the Lizard collects methods of death.”
    Kylis remembered Miria with a quick shock of returning fear.
“Oh, gods, Gryf, what’s the use of fighting them?”
    Gryf drew her closer. “The use is that you and Jason
will not let them destroy you and I believe I am stronger than those who wish
to keep me here, and justified in wishing to make my own mistakes rather than
theirs.” He held out his hand, pale-swirled in the darkness. It was long
and fine. Kylis