When he walked across to the gap in the trees, his hopes lifted. The breeze had driven the pollen into heaps, like drifting sand and, on these, beads of dew had formed in glistening droplets. It was just possible that the dew might have the effect of emulsifying the dust and preventing it from rising in clouds. Niall bent forward, and cautiously touched the nearest heap with the tip of his index finger, then massaged the fine yellow dust between his finger and thumb. It felt oddly slippery, but he was delighted to observe that there was no stinging sensation. Cautiously stooping down, he took a pinch of the dust between his finger and thumb, and rubbed some of it on the back of his hand. Although he massaged it into the skin, he still felt no discomfort. He waited patiently for several minutes until he was convinced that there was no delayed-action effect, then, as a final test, took another pinch of the dust and cautiously breathed it into one nostril. It made him sneeze, but there was no burning sensation, and no after-effect. As he stood up again, he laughed with exhilaration. He went and shook Doggins by the shoulder. “Hey, Bildo, wake up!”
Doggins grunted, sighed, and slowly opened his eyes. For a moment he stared at Niall without recognition; then he remembered where he was, and sat up suddenly.
Niall asked: “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” He looked down at his arms, which were still covered with red spots. “Bloody sore, though. Hand me a drink, would you?” He took a long swallow from his water bottle, then pushed back the metallic garment and struggled to his feet. He tilted back his head and looked up at the empress plant. As he stared at it, his lips twisted into a thin smile that had more than a touch of malice. He pointed.
“That’s what we’re after.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I don’t know. I just feel it.” He looked down at the ground. “Where are the Reapers?”
Niall, who was refolding the metallic garment, said: “I threw them in the river.”
“Come on. Where are they?” He assumed Niall was joking.
“I told you. I threw them in the river.”
Doggins looked at Niall’s face and saw that he was serious. He stared incredulously. “But why, for God’s sake?”
Niall said patiently: “Because it’s the only way of making sure we get out of this place alive.”
“Alive!” It was a cry of anguish. Doggins rushed to the edge of the river, and for a moment Niall was afraid he meant to jump in. There was a swirl in the water, and the snout of the cayman appeared above the surface. Doggins recoiled, and stood staring, preparing to retreat, until it sank back again. He turned to Niall with a gesture of despair. “And how do you think we’re going to get out of this bloody place without weapons?”
“It may be easier than you think.”
Doggins was struck by the confidence in his tone.
“Why?”
“It may want to get rid of us.” He pointed at the line of trees. “What purpose do you think they serve?”
Doggins gave a snort of unamused laughter. “To stop us from getting away!”
Niall said quietly: “No. To stop us from getting in. They want us to go. Look.” He went to the gap in the trees and took a handful of pollen, allowing it to run through his fingers to the ground. “It’s harmless now.” He came back and rubbed some of the pollen on Doggins’ arm. “See, it doesn’t burn any more.”
Doggins jerked his arm away and stared at it nervously. Slowly, his face relaxed into a smile of relief. He said with grim exultancy: “Come on — let’s get out of this place before it changes its mind.”
They gathered their possessions together quickly; a few minutes later they were picking their way slowly between the trees. Caution proved unnecessary. The pollen now seemed to be inert, and even where it lay thick on the ground, no longer rose in choking clouds as their feet sank into it. But Niall was relieved when they reached the far side; with his sharpened perceptions, he could sense the hostility of the trees towards these violent interlopers.
Ahead of them lay the steep grey slope, scored with thousands of water channels. These made walking difficult; it would have been easy to slip and twist an ankle. By the time they were half-way up the slope, Doggins was breathing heavily, and his face had become very pale. He gave a gasp and pressed his hand against his side.
“I’ll have to stop. I’ve got a stitch.”
They sat down together on the hard ground, but it was difficult to find a comfortable position, and they had to dig in their heels to prevent themselves from slipping. Doggins looked exhausted; his cheeks were hollow, and his cheekbones seemed more prominent than they had been on the previous day. Niall said:
“Do you want to know how to recover your energy?”
Doggins shrugged, his eyes closed. “How?”
“Use your thought mirror.”
Doggins said dully: “That would only make things worse.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Turn it inward and try to concentrate your energies inside yourself.”
Wearily, Doggins reached inside his tunic and turned the mirror over. A moment later, he gave a gasp of pain.
“That hurts!”
“I know it does. But keep on, all the same.”
Doggins clenched his teeth and screwed up his eyes; drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. Yet in spite of obvious pain, he continued to make the effort. After about a minute, he breathed in sharply, then slowly exhaled. As his face relaxed, the color returned to his cheeks. He opened his eyes and looked at Niall with a smile of astonishment.
“That’s amazing! What happened?”
“It wasn’t just tiredness you were feeling. You were getting depressed and discouraged, and that made you feel twice as tired as you really were.”
Doggins was impressed.
“Where did you learn that?”
“From experience.”
Doggins heaved himself to his feet. “Oh well, let’s get a move on.”
Half an hour later, they reached the outskirts of the wood. After the uniform greyness of the slope, its rich colours were a relief to the eyes. It was a delight to feel the thick, soft grass under their feet. Niall observed that the scents were more varied than ever. But whereas on the previous day they had seemed heavy and exotic, like some oriental garden, they now had a quality of lightness that caused a strange exhilaration, a desire to laugh aloud. Niall found it almost impossible to believe that this symphony of fragrance existed only in his own mind. Then he made an effort to see them with double vision — he was finding this more difficult to induce as the day wore on — and immediately understood. The plants were exhilarated because these strangers were unarmed, and were pouring out their relief in a flood of high spirits. As he looked at them with his second pair of eyes, their colours seemed to fade away; instead, he became aware of the roots and branches, and of the sap that flowed through them like green light. He could also see that the air was full of a sparkling shower of happiness which descended on them like the mist from a fountain, and that it was this happiness that his senses interpreted as a continually changing fragrance.
When he glanced at Doggins, he received a shock. Doggins had also become transparent, so that he could see through his flesh to the structure of his skeleton. He could clearly see the veins and arteries, and the action of the heart as it pumped blood. But he could also see that the heart was responsible for a flowing web of colour that suffused the whole body and extended slightly beyond it. This colour contained a mixture of red, orange and yellow, but was mainly blue and apple green, and it seemed to be sustained by the beating of the heart. As Doggins responded to the joy that filled the air around them, the coloured tide flowed further and further beyond the limits of his body, until it extended six inches from the surface of his skin. Niall perceived this for only a few moments; then his double vision left him, and the world once again became solid and normal. He understood that this was necessary — he was merely wasting energy by seeing two worlds at once — but it left behind a tinge of regret.
On the far side of the wood, they were faced with the slope of tough, wiry grass, at the top of which fingers of granite stood out against the skyline. As the rich, tender grass of the wood blended into this coarser grass, Niall observed a change in his own feelings. It was as if he was responding to a cold, bracing wind. Last time they had been on this slope, both had experienced a sense of oppression and suffocation, which Niall had recognised as the deliberate action of the grass upon their nervous systems. Now the grass was sending up waves of a powerful force that was at once crude and invigorating; to Niall’s mind, it contained a curious element of brutality. A brief flash of double vision made him aware that this force was being gathered from the earth itself; it was like a black wind rushing up from the granite substructure of the hill. Their own life energies were normally too subtle to respond to this brutal current but, because they were tired, their bodies were readjusting themselves to take advantage of its crude energy. It was somehow as distinctive as a smell, and it made Niall think of hard rock bathed in the spray of a high waterfall. It seemed to carry to him a scent of the earth itself — not the surface, but the rocky, burning interior, where tremendous tensions created a whirlpool of magnetic energy. For a moment, he experienced a feeling of indignation and misery; it seemed absurd that man’s senses were so limited, so that he was blind to the incredible variety of the forces that surrounded him. But this was replaced immediately by a recognition that this limitation was self-chosen and could be replaced at will by this richer and more complex form of awareness.