Her own bank began fifty paces behind her as a narrow strip of shingle bellied out into the river and then narrowed again to nothing a hundred paces ahead. Walking to safety along the edge of the river was definitely out.
And that was a problem, because the rock-face behind Tris's back was sheer beyond climbing, even for Tris, and both sides of the gorge seemed to rise endlessly through the charcoal of cliffs to a belt of green before fading into a pale grey that rose like a watercolour wash above the tree line.
She was going to have to go back into the water, but first... Digging a thumbnail into the latex over her hip, Tris tried to rip the top half free from the bottom of her jump suit without messing everything up too much. All that happened was that the material tore and she ended up with an over-long top and a ridiculously low-slung pair of trousers.
Having done what she needed, Tris washed her hands in the river and yanked up her trousers, tying torn strips of latex together at both sides.
It was time to get wet again.
Tris wasn't sure when she first noticed the light in the sky. It might have been on her second night or the third. Whichever night it was, she'd got hungry enough not to care too much about anything but finding food. At the time Tris was trudging along a strip of shingle and expecting it to end in a return to the cold water. And at the point she realized the gravel was there for good, she was several klicks from where she'd last scrambled ashore and her cut foot was warm enough to hurt; although it would mend soon, her wounds always did.
Warmth and food, these weren't exactly thoughts, more the things that went through Tris's head as she climbed a shingle bank and found herself stumbling towards the light across rough grass.
When it moved, Tris froze.
The weapon Doc Joyce had given her was either at the bottom of the river or else broken into its constituent atoms, which seemed more likely. And the knife she usually carried was where she'd left it, on the side in Doc Joyce's surgery. He'd assured her that the blade would wake every alarm system on Chinese Rocks and he was undoubtedly right. All the same she missed its weight on her belt.
To go forward or to go back?
Tris was still debating this question when the light ambled towards her and the answer became irrelevant. Compared to transparent jets, high-sided gorges and hunger so sharp it hurt, a knee-high stag with luminous antlers counted for less than zero.
Tiny fluorescent bonsai topped its lowered head and one front hoof pawed angrily at the damp grass in open threat, but Tris found it hard to take seriously a stag no higher than her hips, antlers included. Besides, she already knew about the petit juc; they appeared regularly enough in those sickly little feeds about the Emperor.
"Shoo," said Tris.
When the stag refused to move Tris decided to walk round it, which was how she found herself at the brow of a hill, staring towards a second, far brighter light.
"Now what?"
Rapture was known to be empty except for the three overlapping, interlinked areas of the city itself. No one lived in the walled palace except Chuang Tzu, his eunuchs, guards and servitors. A child of five knew that. The two outer cities looked from the air exactly like a single cell dividing down the middle, assuming both halves of a cell could be square and one half could contain the families of the servitors, the soldiers' camp followers and the shopkeepers, tradespeople and artisans needed to feed and clothe the inhabitants of the other, which housed the 2022 ambassadors to the Celestial Throne.
Maybe guards had been sent out to see if anyone had survived the crash, except it wasn't really a crash, more a bad landing, and those jets had obliterated the physical carcass of All Tomorrow's Parties along with the very water in which it sunk.
Tris hated not knowing what was going on. In fact, Tris hated it so much that most of the time she refused to admit to herself this was even a possibility. There were good reasons for that, reasons she studiously avoided, because if you didn't avoid them then the reasons had won.
"Fuck it," said Tris. Here she was, almost hallucinating with hunger, having been threatened by some midget stag with lights for antlers and still days away from where she needed to be, and already she was too scared to investigate what would probably turn out to be marsh gas or something equally stupid.
One of the first laws of exploring new worlds proved to be that it is a lot easier to walk uphill in the dark than it is to go down. Tris discovered this at the point her heel skidded on wet moss and she lost her balance, landing with a splash at the bottom of an absurdly short slope.
The light looked no closer but the grass was firm underfoot and the ground rose gently, so Tris set one shaky foot in front of the other and tuned her brain to a place where she'd crashed All Tomorrow's Parties slap bang in the middle of the imperial pavilions and mowed down the charging bannermen with a laser pistol she discovered at the very last minute, right next to the exit hatch.
Tris had once held a laser pistol.
It was very small and incredibly old. A collector's item, the owner said. He'd arrived one morning carrying a talking doll for her, a necklace of ever-changing stones for her mother and a knife for her father, even though everyone knew he was long gone and never coming back. Tris had hidden the knife when the grown-ups were talking and neither the man nor her mother ever asked where it went.
In the months to come Tris got a silver book and a bracelet which could answer questions on any subject beginning with a letter between "F" and "L." And for a while her mother was happy and their shack contained more food than Tris could ever remember seeing.
Sweet, sour and sometimes both, there were tastes and consistencies that worked perfectly while seeming to contradict each other. Cayenne ice cream, battered snails.
Endless food. New clothes.
It ended one morning when Tris trotted through to the kitchen to get some grapes and found instead the man standing at their small table, wrapping bread in the kind of foil that heated itself on demand. You just said the words and left it for thirty seconds. All explorers used it, he said. At least all explorers like him.
"You're going home..." Tris said.
Opalescent eyes looked at her, almost puzzled.
"How old are you?"
"Five."
"And how do you know I'm going?"
"Because I do," said Tris. She was still called Tristesse then. A name he'd casually attached to the sad-eyed brat after the first few days of living with her mother.
"Why don't you take me with you?" Tristesse suggested.
The man smiled. "You know what? I'm going to miss you." Putting his hands under Tris's arms, he lifted the child with one easy motion and stood her on the table next to the bread, so she could stare into eyes which were almost white and flecked with a thousand colours. "I really am."
"Why did you come here anyway?" It seemed an obvious question. Although from the look on the man's face you'd have thought it was the last thing he expected to be asked.
"I'm an artist," he said.
"Not an explorer?"
"Both," he said with a smile.
Tris thought about that. "What's an artist?"
"Someone who..." The man hesitated, as if debating the question with himself. "I collect objects," he said, "then wrap them up in memories and knot each one into a web."
"Did you find what you wanted?"
"Oh yes," he said, "you're one knot on the spider's web. A very special knot." Lifting her down, he picked up his bag. It was really a tube, almost as tall as she was, sealed at the bottom and sticky around the top. Tris had never seen another like it.