one hand so they could be pulled along. The metach were exhausted from the day's labors, but the urge to feel something other than exhaustion pushed them on.
"Watch out!" one of the men on bicycles called when he saw Denetree approach. "Here comes that pale little speed demon again!"
The group made no effort to stop. Denetree came alongside, shifted to a lower gear, and shot with perfect aim through a gap in the bicycle riders to the platform.
"Melenda!"
The young woman cuddled in the lap of another metach. When she saw Denetree coming, she deliberately turned her head and, her eyes closed, gave the man a long, deep kiss.
"Melenda, please!"
The woman disengaged from the embrace and stared at Denetree in annoyance. "What do you want with me? Can't you see I'm busy?"
"I'm looking for Venron. Do you happen to know where he is?"
"Venron ... " Melenda rolled her eyes. Her pupils were dilated. Had she already been smoking? The jakulent stalks could be used for more than one purpose, especially ones of which the Ship didn't approve. "Oh, now I know who you mean! That lazy slacker who thinks he's too good for us! He was on his shift."
"And?"
"As usual, he did only half his quota. We had to slog away for him so he could he wander around the field and daydream."
One of the men on the bicycles came closer, making a game out of trying to force Denetree away. Without looking, Denetree took her right foot out of the pedal's magnetic stirrup and gave the man a kick.
"And after the shift?"
"Who cares about that?"
The man got back at Denetree for the kick by waving the other bicycle riders into a phalanx that pushed on Denetree from all sides. They would teach the troublemaker a lesson.
"Please, Melenda! Help me! I ... "
The men were on her. Denetree took a blow to her side. Her back wheel and the front wheel of one of the other bicycles rubbed against each other with a shrill squealing. Denetree yanked the handlebars around, then braked. Someone hit her again. The circle around her closed. Malicious faces laughed at her, like children torturing a field rodent. Denetree looked wildly around and saw a tiny opening to the right. She rose from her seat in order to step on the pedals with all her strength. There wasn't time to engage the battery.
She broke away from the crowd but she could not avoid falling. Suddenly, the unfenced irrigation channel was right in front of her, and in the next moment the ground came up to meet her with a metallic scraping. Enthusiastic catcalls accompanied her fall.
Denetree laid in the grass until the crowd moved off. The hoots and cheers gradually died away. Then Denetree heard the shrill voice of a woman say, "Just ask the Net where your brother is!" and the whinnying laughter of the rest of the Metach'ton in response.
"Just ask the Net!"
Nothing could be easier.
She stood up carefully, checking her body for injuries. On her hip was a blood-engorged spot where she had run into the handlebar. Otherwise she was unhurt. She pulled the bicycle upright; its back wheel had landed in the irrigation channel. She had been fortunate: the vulnerable rims had not been bent.
She trembled in rage and humiliation. The metach had no right to treat her like that! They ... Denetree thought of Venron. What must he endure at the hands of his Metach'ton, day in and day out? It was said that nothing escaped the Net; it was there for everyone. Why didn't the Net transfer him to a different group? If this is how they treated him, she didn't think Venron could hold out much longer.
She got back on the bicycle, thinking. Where could he be? Venron had a knack for isolating himself. Time after time, he disappeared for hours, even entire nights. He told no one where he hid, not even Denetree. But she knew he went places no one else had been, because each time Venron brought her a present: new pictures of the starry sky, recordings made by previous generations, even small manufactured objects, like nothing she had seen before.
Denetree returned to Venron's Metach'ton shed and began a systematic search. In increasingly larger circles, she scouted the area.
Could Venron have gone on one of his raiding forays?
Not likely, Denetree decided. Venron's explorations into the off-limits areas of the Ship were the high points of his existence, hours that made everything else bearable. Days of detailed planning preceded each foray, his excitement mounting until it seemed he would burst. When he was planning one of these expeditions, he smiled more often and gave her presents: small figures he made from stolen wood or metal, preludes to the great gift of new knowledge that he would soon bring her.
Venron had returned from his last foray more withdrawn than ever. He had wept a great deal and could only fall asleep if he was clinging to Denetree.
Three days ago, he had given her another gift, a small box wrapped with a fiber band. She could easily hold it in one hand. When she started to open it, he stopped her. "No," he had said. "Not yet."
"Then when?" she had asked.
"Not today. And not tomorrow, either," had been his answer. "You will know when it's time. Until then, hide it in a safe place." No matter how hard Denetree had tried to pry further information out of him, he refused to discuss it.
Denetree completed her first circle of the shed. She had not met anyone. Anyone who didn't absolutely have to remain on the Outer Deck retreated in the evening to the Middle Deck, where they were better protected from radiation and could relax.
She assumed Venron was planning something. But what? More than once Denetree had suspected that he was saying good-bye to the Ship, quietly seeking out his favorite places and spending time with his few friends.
Denetree rode in increasingly wider circles, and to the same extent that the dull pain of exhaustion increased in her thighs, her unease grew, finally crossing the invisible boundary into fear. The paths lay deserted in the last light of day. It was impossible to miss a metach on foot or riding—unless he or she was intentionally hiding. But Venron wouldn't do that: What reason could he possibly have to hide from his own sister?
Night fell. The Net turned off the light.
Venron considered whether Venron might try to hurt himself, then tried to dismiss that thought. Even though no one spoke of the unhappy ones, she knew that many metach took their own lives. The Net, which otherwise reported every last detail of life on the Ship, no matter how unimportant, said nothing about the suicides. But those who took their own lives: they were different, weak or old; they had lost their faith in the Metach'rath, the Ladder of Life; they were not people like her, not like Venron.
Denetree was panting. She rose from the seat, shifted to a higher gear and tried to drive the fear from her thoughts by pedaling harder.
"Just ask the Net!"
The mocking call echoed within her. Yes, the Net would know where Venron was. Nothing—or almost nothing, since it didn't know about the Star Seekers—escaped the attention of the Net. She could report Venron as missing. After that, nothing would ever happen to him again. The Net would take him into its caring protection, turn him over to the Magtar, the psychologists who had settled on the Inner Deck and never left it—and
