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‘I cannot,’ said Mira. ‘My body. . . cannot.’

But as she spoke the words she felt a light cooling spray of moisture on her face. She licked her lips. Water.

The spray grew steadily stronger.

‘Mira-fedor!’ Wanton’s tone had changed from command to plea.

She glanced around. In an odd trick of perspective, the spray seemed to be emanating from the featureless Hue almost as though the nutrient wall had begun to leak; like rain falling from a cloudless sky - sideways. Within seconds the spray had increased into a steady side flow and then a gush. Water began to pound into the channel of sand from both sides.

Mira’s exhaustion evaporated in a rush of adrenalin and she bundled her shift above her knees so she could lift them.

She ran for three lives. Hers, and her baby’s, and that of the Post-Species creature that clung to her neck making concerned noises. The detention skins she wore on her feet had almost entirely disintegrated as she veered into the tributary that contained the mamelon, but she barely felt their raw tenderness.

She saw it almost straight away - a welcome mound of grey and brown boulders, rolled atop each other, towering high above the sandy floor.

Water from the sprays was beginning to puddle around her feet, turning the sand to mud and slowing her progress. Her breath rasped so hard in her chest that she could barely feel any intake of air - only the constant burning.

Several times she slid and fell.

A sound built in around her; a dull roar. She thought it to be the sound of her heart pounding to meet its body’s demands until Wanton exclaimed, ‘Mira-fedor. The flood! The flood!’

She looked over her shoulder. At the mouth of the tributary she was in, the sand had assumed a bubbling, golden sheen twirled with black as sheets of water slid towards her.

She ran in complete earnestness now, fearing that the water would rise quickly and she would be swept along in it. But the air had become thick with moisture, making it even harder to breathe.

Wanton stayed silent. Inside her, the baby lay still as well. Dimly, she sensed it curling and bunching as if running with her.

She reached the lower boulders of the mamelon as the water swirled at her ankles. As she tried to climb one of the smaller boulders, she grazed her knees and forearms and fell back. Blood dripped into the circling water. Survival instinct got her clambering around to the far side of the rocks where they rested against each other in a more staggered arrangement. She managed to wedge herself between two of them and force her way off the ground.

It took intolerable effort, and too much time. The water had already caught up and was lapping at her feet again. Soon it would cover the lower boulders.

How much higher will it rise then?

She continued to climb, careless of the dreadful stinging from the layer of tiny barnacle shells that still clung stubbornly to the rock from previous floods. But her muscles struggled to sustain the demands on them and a sudden weakness assailed her limbs.

Climb, she told herself. Climb or drown.

She was sobbing, and couldn’t stop, wasting precious energy.

Innate.

Insignia! Mira’s heart thumped.

Your distress is strong.

Mira wanted to cry out for the sheer joy of hearing the biozoon in her mind again but the water surged up over her knees now, buffeting her. Help me, Insignia. Find me. Please.

I have located your whereabouts. Insignia sounded perturbed, angry even. You have a rider.

For a second Mira could not think what the biozoon meant.

A parasite taps your energies, Insignia explained.

You mean the baby.

No. Another.

W-Wanton. A-a Post-Species. I’m carrying it at my neck.

Remove it.

I c-cannot.

You must, or you will die before I reach you.

The link between them began to diminish. Insignia! No!

She reached to her neck. Wanton’s outer casing was slick with moisture and prickly as it resisted her touch.

Mira withdrew her fingers from it. Insignia had never lied to her. At worst it had chosen not to answer her, but never, never, had