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floating mats tear with every thrust of the wind.
His eyes rose slowly to hers. "I think," he said, "I'm going down."
"Your antigrav "
"Just cut out. This is dead weight, all the way." He sank an-other handspan, and his blunt fingers
tightened on the grass. "I thought you just checked the settings."
"I did."
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
"There's something moving around my legs."
"Eels. Sucker fish. I don't know."
"Can't you feel them?"
"A shadow. Nothing more. Don't straggle. Do you have an enbee?"
" 'Picker's still got it. You?"
"Lost it on the bridge." Her stomach tightened. She judged the distance between them and eased forward
another half meter. Bowdie appeared through the grass, and the brash mat shivered; Wren sank another
handspan. "Bowdie!" she shouted. "Stay back!"
The other mere froze. "What- "
"Stand still," she shouted. "Your enbee quickly. Throw it here."
"What?"
"Your enbee!"
Wren jerked and sank abruptly up to his neck in a new swirl of greenish light. "Don't move," she
snapped at him harshly. "You'll tear the brash and tangle like a stick in a pile of yarn."
He didn't nod, but his eyes, black and unreadable, stared back into her own. Behind him, Bowdie mpved
quickly back to a more solid clump, and his long fingers searched his har-ness as his own heart began to
pound. Tsia could feel the strength of it like the points of light in his field.
"Get the line," she directed.
Bowdie nodded and shouted behind him to Striker. "Get the line up here!"
"Goddam worm-spawned reavers," Tsia cursed under her breath. Kurvan eased up beside Bowdie to a
precarious perch on a thick mat of mallow. He dumped his own pack in an awk-ward tangle, then tore
open the flap and yanked out a metaplas form.
"Stay back," Tsia snapped as he tried to approach. The grass mat shimmied. Her knees sank in. The wind
roared through, and, with a silent ripple and a cold, steady gaze, Wren disap-peared in the lake.
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
Tsia lunged forward, heedless of the thin, tearing brash. Her arms plunged into the blackness; her face
hit the water. She groped wildly. There were swirls of green sparks of light, but they did not lighten the
blackness. She grabbed hair, pulled and tore at nothing and realized it was only roots in her hands.
Kurvan scrambled across with a rod pieced together from the config gear and spread himself out on the
other side of the sinkhole.
"Hurry," she snapped, her arms deep in the water.
Kurvan gave her a cold look. "For Daya's sake, he's got an enbee. He can breathe as well as you."
"He gave his to me on the platform, and I lost it in the sea "
"Shit."
"Give me yours here; I'll give it to him when I reach him."
"Haven't got it," he returned, stabbing down with the rod. "Lost it in the lake."
"Where's Bowdie's?"
"Said he lost it back at the bridge." He stared down as if he could see through the water. "Can you feel
him?"
"No, but he's right below us."
"Daya," she cursed under her breath. How long had Wren been down? The water swirled and sparked
and fought beneath her hands.
"Get an e-wrap," she shouted at Bowdie. "Spread it out and get an enbee from Nitpicker or Striker."
Striker started searching her harness, while Doetzier and Bowdie yanked the config gear from the packs.
The first e-wrap they unfolded ripped itself from their hands and blew away across the meadow like
tissue paper. The second one they con-figured as they sat on it, letting it mold itself to the contours of
the grass. In the dark, as it shifted its colors to the meadow, it was invisible to Tsia. Quickly, Doetzier
caught the connected lengths of metaplas that Striker slapped into his hands.
Tsia hooked her feet in a tangle and deliberately thrust her head and shoulders beneath the black surface
again. The slimy grass clung to her face like seaweed. Her hands stretched down. She could almost feel
Wren beneath her. His heartbeat, his cold, steady thoughts. He was there. She knew it. She caught cloth
in her hand. A sleeve the fingers that followed to clamp down on her arm could not be mistaken for
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Tara K Harper - Cataract
roots.
Tsia lifted her head from the water. The grass wallowed be-neath her weight. Her lungs ached with
tension. How long had
Wren been down? Two minutes? Three? She could feel the time in his lungs.
She writhed and twisted, and her body rolled back a bit on the mat. Her face came free. Wren, feeling
her pull, began to kick against the water. Instantly, curls of phosphor sparks whipped around his body.
The root mats swirled around his feet. They tangled and tightened until they trapped his free arm in thick
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