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"What's wrong?" Jenni Aidan turned to her older son, hunched over his dinner plate, elbows up on the table.

Lucas mumbled a negative and continued staring at his food. Fresh hopper was a treat. His father had caught it while he was out preparing the forest cabin where their family would spend the summer. Why didn't it taste good?

"Misses his girlfriend." Sam snickered. The younger boy grinned, his face flushed from a day of spring sunshine, making his fair hair look almost white by contrast.

"Samuel," their father said, his voice heavy. He leaned back in his chair at the end of the table and cradled his mug of spyce. His weather-beaten face was a study in thoughts far away from the dinner table.

"Kay'li's never coming back, you dope," Sam continued, ignoring the warning. He leaned over his plate across the table, snatched a chunk of steam bread off the plate and waved it under his brother's nose. "Made that stupid blood vow for nothing."

Lucas slowly raised his dark head, fixing his brother with a glare that would have silenced the boy any other time. Sam didn't see the fire building in Lucas' brown eyes.

"Sam, be quiet." Jenni touched his sleeve.

"Lucas got a girlfriend!" the younger boy crowed, his grin wider. "Got a girlfriend who's never coming back!"

Lucas lunged across the table, fists flying. He landed kneeling on the edge of the table, his brother's plate between his knees. Sam fell backwards off the bench. He didn't bawl until he saw the blood stream from his nose.

Lucas scooted backwards off the table. He kept going, out the kitchen, through the mudroom door and out, heading for the woods. It was the only place where he felt any peace lately.

His knuckles stung. Lucas sucked on his sore hand, tasting blood where he had broken the skin, and kept walking. The smells of dinner clung to his clothes, masking the mix of shuttle fuel fumes from the landing field and the perfume of spring flowers coming from the forest.

He quickened to a stumbling half-run once he passed the cemetery fence. His head throbbed and his stomach churned and his feet took him to the spot by the river that had become a haven in the last three weeks.

Lucas reached the forest proper and felt his muscles give up half their wire-stiff tension. The odors of manmade things faded; the taint of civilization and synthetics and burning that stung in his nose and made his head ache. He took deep breaths, letting the clean smell of growing things flow into his body. Something was wrong. More than missing Kay'li and what his mother called spring fever. Lucas loved the burst of life when spring reached the outpost, but this year it was different. Ten times stronger than before.

He slowed, feeling something moving through the forest alongside him, three meters away on the other side of the bushes. Lucas was stunned to realize he did know exactly where and how far the animal was from him. He kept walking. The first thing Captain Fieran taught him was to keep doing whatever he was doing and never warn observers they were sensed.

The path opened out onto the riverbank. Lucas climbed up the boulder leaning out over the water. It had become his favorite perch, the place he came to settle his aching stomach and head, and just think. To clear his nose from sickening odors and stop the aching feeling in his bones.

The sense of something behind him vanished. Lucas slowly turned his back to the river. A booming, thudding cry echoed through the forest, rising to a shriek. He grinned and dropped to kneel on the rock. It was only a bannow following him, indulging its inborn curiosity. If bannows didn't taste so bad, and weren't so useful for keeping down vermin and larger pests around the outposts, their curiosity and tameness around Humans would have destroyed them long ago.

Maybe it was stupid to go through the forest alone, so close to dark, but he had to listen to the compulsion or get sick. Watching the flow of the water, listening to the gurgle and splash over the rocks, soothed him. All but his loneliness and the sense that something was wrong and getting worse.

Kay'li would have listened when he tried to explain what went on in his head. She would have tried to help him figure it out. When he had felt so sick from the anti-Phase treatment he wanted to die, she gave him food the Port doctors had forbidden. She had saved his life.

Jenni waited in the doorway of the mudroom when Lucas came home. She watched him, her head tilted to the side in her thinking pose, and gave him a sad little smile. She was beautiful in the shadows like this, her hair nearly black, dark eyes sparkling, her pale skin glowing like the rising moons.

"Are you hungry?" Jenni asked, when Lucas had stepped through the door past her. He shook his head. "The whole world's turning wrong for you, isn't it?"

"Yeah." His voice broke on the single word. When Jenni wrapped her arms around him, Lucas let a few tears come, relieving the pressure in his head and chest.

* * *

For punching his brother, Lucas wasn't allowed to talk while the family packed to move to their summer research cabin forty kilometers down the river from Emers Outpost. He told himself he didn't mind, even when Sam stuck his tongue out at him, or muttered 'girlfriend' every time the boys passed each other. When Lucas stared at his brother's swollen nose, Sam ran away. No need for words, no need for threatening gestures.

Lucas wasn't allowed to sit in the front seat while his father piloted the shuttle, as he usually did. Sam wasn't allowed to ride next to Seth, either. The trip was silent. Sam tried chattering about their summer plans for a few minutes, then gave up and stared out the tiny window next to his seat.

When they landed at the cabin, Lucas felt the tense coil inside his chest relax. The first clean, green-smelling breeze blowing off the river made his head feel lighter, free, as if a tight band had been removed from around his forehead. He picked up two duffel bags next to his seat and scrambled on his knees for the hatch. Everything inside him begged to go running, exploring, taste the ripening berries and the sugar grass, climb a few trees, explore the shallows of the river. He had work to do, first.

"Excited?" his mother asked, when he nearly ran into her, sliding to the ground through the hatch. Jenni laughed and tousled his hair when Lucas only grinned at her.

He slung the bag straps across his shoulders and hurried across the open space to their cabin. The ground was a haphazard patchwork of vibrant green and olive-shaded brown; meters of mossy growth broken by spears of sugar grass and spikes of razor grass. The clearing was a tiny cove, a blister of open space off the river, intruding into the dense cover of the forest.

Lucas felt eyes watching from the shadows, heard the soft whispering of birds waiting for the intruders to leave. He liked this new awareness of the forest and felt a moment of resentment for the cabin. It didn't belong there.

The cabin was simple, long and one-story, like all their summer cabins, made from the trees felled for the clearing, roofed with plastic sheeting, floored with thicker plastic for insulation. The windows, door and partitions inside were all particleboard, from recycled containers. Lucas smelled the biting tang of the plastic before he got within five steps of the door. He hesitated. His skin crawled at the thought of touching the door. It would feel greasy-gritty and his hand would smell of plastic for hours.

"Outsmarted yourself," his father said, coming up behind him. He reached past the boy and hit the latch, nudging the door open with his hip as he carried his crate of dishes inside. "Next time, don't fill both hands until you know the door is open." Seth smiled at Lucas as he spoke.

Lucas grinned and hurried after him. He set the duffel bags down under the table in the main room and hurried out again. Unpacking was always easier and took less time than the packing. Maybe if he hurried, he could do some exploring before sunset.

The cabin was divided into three main parts. The first ran the length of the cabin because it required as much wall space as possible. Seth's workroom was narrow, crowded with his computer, germination trays, analysis equipment, chemicals, boxes of seeds and fertilizers, and the power generator.

The second was the main room where his family would live, work and eat for the summer. The table, benches, cooking and refrigeration units and the generator had been installed when the Agriculture Authority built the cabin. The third part was a series of cubicles, each with a bed and storage drawers. Lucas took one look at his room and decided to spend as little time indoors as possible. His room was little more than a closet with a light strip in the ceiling. He felt the hum of the generator in the flooring, through his boots.

He would spend as much time outdoors as he could. Indoor air pressed on his skin, rubbed his temples and eyelids, dried out his mouth and felt as if it came from a pressure bottle. The sensation crawled under his clothes.

Stupid. He swallowed hard, turned on one heel and hurried back outside for another load of bags and crates. It was only his imagination.

* * *

"They must certainly be pleased with your work over the winter," Jenni said to her husband, as the family settled around the table for their first dinner at the cabin.

"How's that?" Seth lifted his gaze from the five-page list of goals for this summer's research.

"It's certainly more luxurious than last year's cabin," she said, gesturing around. "More storage, better cooking and lighting, better supplies."

"My own room," Sam said, his mouth full of bread. He grinned and kept chewing when his parents chuckled.

"What do you think, Lucas?" Seth asked. "Is this going to be a good summer?"

"The river's good and clean," Lucas mumbled, his voice scratchy. "Lots of berry patches all over the place."

"How do you know?" Sam asked. "You went exploring without me!"

"You can smell them, stupid. I bet we can eat berries half the summer and not get them all."

"Oh, I don't know," his mother said with a smile. "Want to see how many berry pies and jars of jam I can make with what you pick?"

Both boys grinned at her. Lucas wouldn't mind hours spent bent over picking berries, avoiding brambles and tangle-vines. It would keep him outdoors, away from the thick air and oily, dirty smells coming from the walls and floor. Lucas knew better than to complain about the smells when his father had his head full of work. Maybe they could do something about the smells and the sick, pounding feeling they created in Lucas' head when Seth had organized his summer work and could relax.

Lucas just hoped that wouldn't take too long. He hadn't felt this bad since the anti-Phase treatment.

Dibbleroot tasted better cooked, with a little salt, but Lucas was too hungry to care. He yanked hard, throwing his entire weight into pulling the finger-thick root up through the dry, rock-hard crust of ground.

Something snapped deep under the surface, vibrating up through the purple leaves clustered around the knobby top of the plant. Lucas toppled backwards, with a half-meter strand of golden, green-speckled root clutched in his hands.

For ten seconds he lay on his back, eyes closed against the brilliance of the early morning sun, feeling the impact echo through him. Lucas grinned. Sitting up, he rubbed the root clean on his pants and rubbed the back of his head with his free hand.

Being hungry all the time taught him to find food in places where he had never thought it could be. Captain Fieran would be proud of his ability to forage and figure out what was good, what would make him sick, what was ripe and what needed cooking.

Dibbleroot, his mother said, tasted like pepper and honey. Lucas knew honey came from bees, but bees were imported and closely controlled by the Agriculture Authority. Their honey and wax stayed in Port to be used by the upper classes, members of Council and the fancy restaurants that could afford the prices. Lucas vowed someday he would save enough debits to buy a whole jar of honey for his mother.

Lucas' first bite of the semi-clean root crunched loudly inside his head. The whole forest seemed to hold its breath for two seconds. He scooted back against the nearest tree and waited for the birds to start singing, the cheepers in the river to resume their cries and the insects to come back and dive-bomb him with shrill whines and buzzes.

"Lucas!" Sam yelled a few meters away down the riverbank.

He took bigger bites of the root and didn't even try to chew before swallowing. What mattered was filling his stomach and driving away his ghostly sick headache. After five mornings of this, Lucas knew the biggest chunks of root would dissolve like air in his stomach by lunchtime.

"Where are you?" his brother demanded. The bushes rustled at the edge of the narrow clearing, between Lucas and the riverbank.

Sam made enough noise to drive away every bird, cheeper, bannow and hopper for five kilometers. Lucas hated how his brother bludgeoned his way through the forest when they went exploring or picking berries or hunting silverleaf for tea. How could he not see the twigs he stepped on, the rocks he kicked aside, the branches he broke, the moss clumps under his feet that squished and slid aside and made him lose his balance?

Sam smelled bad. Not just sweaty-dirty. Lucas could take that without getting sick. Sam smelled like bad perfume and hot lubricant. Their parents didn't smell good, either, but they didn't smell as bad as Sam. Lucas wondered why he never noticed how people smelled before.

The last bite of dibbleroot went into his mouth. Lucas closed his eyes to concentrate on the sweet-spicy taste and ignored the bits of dirt still clinging to its skin.

"What are you doing?" Sam demanded as he crashed through the barrier of prickleleaf bush with a sound like a junk barrel overturning. The sour-green-fresh odor of the crushed leaves covered his burned-fuel stink for a few seconds.

"Thinking." Lucas opened his eyes and tried not to glare at his brother.

Captain Fieran said a Scout had to learn to control his temper and wait until the time was right to act. How could he learn to fight the enemies of the Commonwealth, if he couldn't keep from punching his bratty little brother?

"You think a lot lately." Sam dropped to his haunches and tilted his head to one side. He wore an unusually serious expression. "Mama thinks you're getting sick."

"Not."

"You skipped breakfast again."

"Didn't." Lucas had taken two squares of steam bread and a palm-sized slab of protein, still sizzling from the pan. He had thrown them to the chibbies on his way to the dibbleroot patch.

He didn't like playing tricks on his mother, but it was better than worrying her. How could he tell her that her cooking didn't taste good? Breakfast, anyway. Lunch and dinner usually had something that didn't taste like chemicals, or feel greasy and gritty and wrong in his mouth.

The first two mornings at the cabin, he had tried to eat breakfast and failed both times. His mother had felt his forehead and looked at his eyes and checked his pulse, then brought out the med diagnostic pack. Nothing was wrong with him, according to the computer.

Then why did he feel so bad?

"Pa says we gotta set up the seedling trays today. We can't go swimming until we're done."

"So?" Lucas stood and turned to leave. The seedling trays were outside. Yesterday it had rained and his mother kept them inside to work on their lessons. Lucas had felt the walls moving in on him, the air turning thick, until he caught a draft of fresh air coming through the window. He had sat in the chill breeze even after his mother warned him he would catch a cold.

He hadn't caught a cold, so he couldn't be sick. Could he?

"So...." Sam glowered at him. He always hated it when he couldn't think of something to say. Especially when their parents weren't around to keep them from fighting.

"Let's go, then." He slid through a gap in the twisted, interlaced branches of the prickleleaf. Lucas grinned when Sam got caught in the thumb-long, double-clasp brambles.

His head didn't hurt, his stomach didn't ache for food and he smelled silverleaf, sweet and fruity in the warm air. Lucas took deep breaths, following his nose. He had time to pick a pocketful of the purple and gold globular flowers and the silver-etched leaves for their mother. Sam would take at least five minutes getting loose of the brambles.

Maybe he should keep a handful of the flowers to eat later, when his head started to hurt again.

He couldn't be sick, could he? The doctor from the Agriculture Authority gave them their immunization tabs two days before they left for the cabin. He had given them all brain and blood scans and pronounced them clean and healthy and strong. He had even remarked on how alert and sensitive Lucas was.

It couldn't be Phase. Lucas had nearly died of the treatment that prevented it.

"Please, Fi'in...." Lucas swallowed hard and shook his head, trying to fight that fear. "It isn't Phase. I won't get it."

Yet even as he harvested the silverleaf flowers and leaves, Lucas couldn't help wondering. Captain Fieran and his dead wife had studied the signs, to help children prepare for the ordeal. They had taught all the children at Emers Outpost, so they could take care of themselves if they had to hide in the forest.

What were the signs?

"Got you!" Sam shrieked and leaped onto Lucas' back. The boys went tumbling, crushing flowers and juicy leaves. The aroma of the healing plant filled the air. Lucas hugged his brother and pretended to strangle him.

* * *

"You boys worked hard enough, I'd think you'd be on your third helping," Seth said. He laughed and held out his plate to his wife. "I might just take four myself. Your mother is the best cook on the entire planet."

"Somebody is in too good a mood today." Jenni's eyes sparkled and she gave her husband a little curtsey as she filled his plate with stew.

Lucas wished his mother would turn her back, just for five seconds, so he could eat a silverleaf flower. It was the only way he could eat dinner without being sick. He didn't dare get sick. He didn't want to. Plisky stew was a treat. The meat came from off-planet, from friends who worked on a freighter.

Jenni filled Seth's plate and settled another corn muffin on the edge before he could ask. Lucas looked at the corn muffin and groaned. Corn meal was nearly as rare, as special as plisky because a blight had killed almost ninety percent of the plants the year before. His father's project for the summer was to find a way to prevent the blight from infecting the imported, non-Chorillan plant again.

The burned-plastic odor under the warm, golden aroma of the muffin throbbed through Lucas' sinuses and threatened to go down his throat, grab the stew he had eaten and bring it all back up again. It smelled rotten, poisonous blue and thick.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" Jenni said, reaching across the table to touch Lucas on the shoulder.

"He probably worked outside too long. You're not used to that much sun." Seth cocked his head, studying his elder son sitting to his right at the table. "Better wear a hat next time." He rested a hand on Lucas' shoulder, squeezing. "You did a grown man's work today. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, Pa," Lucas managed to say in a normal voice. He swallowed hard and tried not to twist his shoulder free. It wasn't his father's grip that hurt, but the feeling of the shirt's fibers grinding into his skin, searing like a branding rod in tiny thread patterns.

"Better eat up before Sam gets it all," his father added. He moved Lucas' plate a little closer to the boy.

Lucas scooped up a spoonful and shoved it into his mouth. It tasted like it should; meaty brown and thick with tuber slices and purple pepper rings. He swallowed and felt the warm, sweet, delicious mouthful slide down his throat to his stomach. Lucas scooped up another spoonful and concentrated on the wonderfully warm feeling in his mouth.

His third spoonful smelled like rotted garbage and the rancid, sickly sweet odor of a wound gone bad.

"Lucas?" Seth jerked backwards to avoid the spatter of the spoon landing in the boy's plate.

"You're white as snow," Jenni said.

"I--" Lucas fumbled for the silverleaf flower heads he had put into his pocket.

His supper came alive and fought in his stomach, reaching up tentacles through his throat. Lucas clamped both hands over his mouth and scrambled away from the table. He slammed into the hanging bookshelf with his shoulder. Books and disks and a plastic tub of lotusite avalanched to the floor. Lucas hit the door with his bruised shoulder and plummeted outside.

Jenni caught up with him in the middle of his third back-arched heave. She rested a cool hand on his back and wiped his sweaty hair out of his face with the other hand and knelt next to him until the spasm worked through him.

Twilight held its breath while Lucas heaved and whimpered and coughed when the acid dregs in his stomach tried to come out through his nose. The seedling trays on the far side of the clearing gave off a hot plastic, rancid smell that drove stakes through Lucas' head with every breath he took. He tried to get up, to move away from the smell. His mother wrapped her arms around him and held him down. She wiped his sweaty face with the tail of her shirt. The material made his forehead itch, like splinters in his skin.

"Ma--" He coughed, gagging on the acid taste in his mouth. Lucas spat.

"I'm calling the Agro supply people," Seth said from the doorway. How long he had been there, watching them, Lucas didn't know. "That med diagnostic isn't worth anything."

"He's not feverish, but he's sweating a waterfall," Jenni said. She wiped at Lucas' face again and caught his chin in her hand, making him lift his head so she could look him in the eye.

Seth took the few steps over to Jenni and Lucas and knelt next to them, putting the boy between him and his wife. "This has been coming on you for a while, hasn't it?"

Lucas nodded gingerly, afraid the slightest movement would make him sick again.

Seth sighed and ran a hand through his fair hair. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Scared." Lucas hated the croaking sound of his voice. "Pa, everything smells wrong and things hurt when I touch them and I can't breathe sometimes!"

"What do you mean, they smell wrong?" Jenni said. She shook her head. "Let's go back inside, can we?" She gave the acid-smelling puddle of Lucas' supper a disgusted look and stood. With her arm wrapped tight around Lucas' shoulders, he had to stand with her. At least his legs didn't wobble like they had when he had been feverish last year.

They went back inside their cabin. Lucas shied away from the table. Every part of their dinner smelled worse instead of better, now that he had emptied his stomach. He let his mother settle him on a wooden stool next to the door. Lucas pushed the door open as soon as his mother stepped away.

"Can't breathe?" his father asked.

Lucas nodded and wished he could just close his eyes and make everything go away. He hated feeling this way; dizzy and confused and twisted inside; embarrassed and hating the worried looks his parents gave him. Even Sam looked worried, instead of gloating at his brother's misery.

"Maybe we should take you to a doctor, just in case." He knelt next to Lucas and rested his hand on his son's shoulder. "Can't let something dig its roots in and make you any worse. I bet you don't think you can get any more miserable, huh?" He grinned when Lucas shook his head. "We'll get you fixed--"

"Don't!" Lucas blurted, when his father's comforting squeeze dug the fibers of his shirt through his skin, the searing touch transforming into teeth. He twisted free, the movement yanking his shirt open and off his shoulder.

"Jenni." Seth wore that tight controlled expression Lucas hated because it meant something or someone was in big trouble. He held still, fighting tears and let his father unbutton his shirt and slide it off him.

"Oh sweet healer," his mother whispered when she joined them. "Lucas, what did you do to yourself?" She lightly brushed her fingertips over the red patches on his shoulders and neck.

"Didn't do nothing," he grumbled. His mother didn't correct his grammar and that was another bad sign.

"He ate dibbleroot today," Sam volunteered.

"Nobody ever had an allergic reaction like that to dibbleroot," Seth said. He wadded up Lucas' shirt in his hands. "What have you been doing different from the rest of us?"

"Doesn't eat any breakfast," Sam said. He backed up a few steps when both parents turned to frown at him. "He doesn't. He digs up dibbleroot and picks berries and eats silverleaf flowers all the time."

"Lucas?" Jenni put an arm around her son. He flinched away from the feel of her sleeve brushing itchy fire across his back. "Is what your brother says true? Why?" she said, dropping to a whisper when he nodded.

"Nothing smells right anymore. Can't eat when it smells bad." Lucas swallowed hard, fighting the lump that turned into a whine. He was too big to whimper like a sick little baby. He was nine years old; almost fourteen Standards. He wanted to join the Scout Corps. At age eighteen Standard, he could apply for admission. He wouldn't get in if he cried and acted like a baby.

"Smells bad. And you can't breathe." Seth looked at the shirt balled up in his hands. "This is a new shirt, isn't it?"

"For his birthday." Jenni wiped at her eyes.

"Don't cry, Ma," Lucas whispered.

"It came from Port," Seth continued, ignoring the exchange. "All our clothes at Emers are made from pod cloth. This is synthetic. Lucas got a rash from it."

"Seth--" Something hard and cold touched Jenni's voice.

"He's the right age."

"But you took them both for the treatment." She tightened her arm around her son's shoulder. "Sam isn't sick."

"Sam didn't get sick from the treatment. Lucas did. Nothing we did made him any better until the Fieran girl gave him real food. Natural food," Seth enunciated.

"Pa--" Lucas' voice caught and broke. He swallowed hard. "I'm not--this isn't Phase. I won't be a Wildling."

"Pod clothes don't give you a rash. When you eat natural food, you don't get sick," Seth whispered. "Everything smells wrong, you don't like being indoors and you can't breathe."

"Pa, you promised."

"I know."

"Is Lucas gonna run away?" Sam demanded.

"Samuel!" Seth growled. His tone wiped the wonder and jealousy from the younger boy's face.

"No." Jenni wiped tears from her eyes, swallowed hard and sat up straight. "Lucas took the treatment and he won't be a Wildling. This is just a--a holdover from what happened last fall, when the treatment ... made him so...sick."

"We'll get through this," Seth said. He went to one knee before his wife and son and reached out for their hands. His hands were big and strong, calloused, warm and dry. They trembled slightly, but that touch of fear didn't show in his gaze or his voice. "Lucas is going to be just fine. He won't run away and he won't turn into a Wildling. I promise."

Lucas stood on one side of the seedlings tray, facing Sam. They hurried to put monitor wires and fertilizer plugs into the laboratory-designed soil in neat rows. Sam hated this part of his chores and couldn't wait to get away and play in the river. Lucas wore pod fiber gloves and his arms were wrapped in pod fiber sacking to keep his skin from touching the plastic sides of the tray. He hurried because the promise of soaking in the river gave him the strength to endure the heat and sticky discomfort and the biting stench of sun-heated plastic.

A high-pitched, buzzing whine tickled in his sinus bones, forehead, the base of his skull and his fingertips. Lucas paused and took half a step backwards. Sam didn't even look at him. He would probably go running to their father and complain that Lucas was lazy if he didn't finish his side of the last tray.

The feeling grew stronger in his bones. Lucas squeezed his hands into fists until the feeling stopped. He wasn't turning allergic to the pod fiber, was he? Or maybe the feeling was a reaction to the synthetics coming out in his sweat? He had heard something like that, when Captain Fieran told the children about what happened when Phase hit.

He went back to work. Only five more rows of seedlings; ten in each row. Lucas stole a glance at Sam, who worked with a scowl on his face and the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Despite his momentary break, Lucas thought he was ahead of his brother.

The tickle turned to an itch. Lucas gritted his teeth harder and kept working. The itching buzzed and moved out of his fingers and the back of his skull.

"What's that?" he muttered, when the feeling turned into a sound.

"What?" Sam lifted his head and looked around. He scowled at his brother and went back to work.

"Don't you hear it?" He reached for another handful of wires. The adult-sized gloves slid at the tips of his fingers. The monitor wires skidded from his grip. Lucas groaned and snatched at the precious bits of equipment. He caught five and three hit the ground.

"Hear what?" His brother grinned at his mishap and doubled his speed. He didn't seem to notice or care that he put the next four wires in crooked and only half the mandated depth.

"That." Lucas stepped beck and pressed his gloved hands to the sides of his head. The buzzing grew stronger, then leaped up the scale to become the shriek of an oncoming shuttle. He closed his eyes and held his breath, but that didn't help. Did the shuttles always sound so loud before?

"Mama!" Sam bellowed, and darted across the clearing to the cabin. "Mama! Pa! Lucas heard the shuttle before me."

Lucas swallowed a groan. After last night, he didn't want anything else happening to worry his parents. With trembling hands, he hurried to slide the last wires into the soil next to each seedling. Just twenty more and he could go to the river and soak the itch out of his skin and breathe air that didn't smell rotten and made of burned metal.

His parents emerged from the cabin with Sam at their heels just seconds before the shuttle's dirty gray bulk appeared above the trees edging the clearing. Lucas gagged when the air turned thick and hot. Grit filled his mouth from shuttle exhaust.

The last wire went into the soil. Lucas stumbled backwards from the tray and yanked at his gloves. His hands felt swollen from heat and sweat. The shuttle's shriek crackled and started to fade. He glanced over his shoulder at the craft while his feet hit the path to the river. He saw Jase Kemp was pilot on this run. The gray-haired, knotty-boned man grinned at him and waved as the door to his cockpit slid aside. Lucas waved once before breaking into a run.

He thought he heard his mother call him. Lucas ran faster, ripping off his shirt. The river beckoned with cool shade and clean scents. He reached the riverbank five uncomfortable seconds later, leaped off the highest point into the water and hit with a belly-whopper. A gasping laugh wrenched its way out of him when he surfaced. Turning onto his back, he kicked toward the bank until he reached water shallow enough to let him sit on the riverbed. Then he peeled off his shoes and socks and pants.

His hair dribbled water into his eyes. Lucas sputtered and shook his head before wadding his wet clothes up into a ball and flinging them over his shoulder to the bank. They hit with a loud, sodden splat. A gasping chuckle escaped him. Taking a deep breath, he twisted and angled his entire body under the surface and headed for deeper water, a pale fish with allergy-reddened streaks marking his arms and neck.

* * *

An hour later, his mother came to fetch him for lunch. Jase was staying to eat with them. Lucas wondered why Sam hadn't nagged until he climbed out of the river to help unload the shuttle. Then he saw his mother's gaze travel over his arms and neck, where the rash still showed. The crates holding their supplies would have made him sick, not to mention any contents that were synthetic and not native to Chorillan.

"Doesn't itch anymore, Ma," he said. Lucas tried to smile. His mother's answering smile was thin and didn't make him feel any better. He climbed up onto the riverbank and took the ragged scrap of blanket she held out to him to dry off.

"Sam says you heard the shuttle sooner than he did." Jenni settled down on a sun-warmed rock and waited while he slid on the clean shorts she had brought for him.

"It itched." He felt a sickening drop in his stomach when his mother frowned at his words. "I felt it here." Lucas pressed his fingertips to his sinus bones.

"More sensitive to energy vibrations," Jenni murmured. She nodded. That frown wrinkle disappeared from around her eyes and mouth. "Be careful what you say at lunch. Jase knows."

"But Pa said--"

"Jase wanted to know why you ran away from him, and Sam told him." She sighed. "Your brother is going to be the weak link in this whole scheme."

"Just lock him up inside when people come by," Lucas offered. He grinned at the idea of Sam a prisoner every time they had visitors.

"That might be the best idea anyone has had yet." She stood and held out her hand. Lucas gave his hand into her clasp and they started back down the trail. He hadn't held hands with his mother in a few years, and it felt good. "As I was saying, be careful what you say. Jase is a friend and we trust him, but if your father's plan is going to work we have to convince everyone you're going through a very mild case of Phase."

Seth believed that since they were so far from Port, Lucas could get through Phase without all the irritation children in Port or the outposts suffered. He might not even go through the stage where children grew violent because of sensory overload. But, there were always some children who were so sick from Phase they ended up in the hospital and never came home. Some children ran away before they were taken to the holding-observation fields, where they could run free of manmade contamination and get through Phase with as little pain as possible.

Would someone try to take him away from his parents? Lucas had wondered about that. If he had the river to hide in, he could get through Phase without anybody knowing, couldn't he?

Then his mother's words took on new meaning. He wasn't having a mild case of Phase? Was that good or bad? Or did his parents think he would get worse?

Lucas glanced back over his shoulder toward the river and the unexplored land beyond. Would it be so hard to just vanish among the trees, so nobody could find him and nothing would make him sick? Captain Fieran had taught him how to take care of himself just in case.

"Lucas?" His mother touched his shoulder, gently tugging his thoughts back to the present. She looked back toward the river also, and he thought he saw fear flicker in her eyes.

"What's for lunch, Ma?"

"You are not one bit sick." Jenni roughed his hair and let her arm drop down around his shoulders.

Lucas noticed then that she wore a threadbare pod fiber shirt, so old the dye had faded. Would his mother have put her arm around him if she had been wearing her new shirt that he and Sam had bought for her birthday?

He wished he didn't have so many questions now. Things were simpler and nicer when summertime only meant fewer lessons and fighting with Sam over chores.

* * *

"You say it's just started?" Jase Kemp leaned back against the cabin wall, extended his legs, balancing on his tailbone on the bench and squinted at the sun.

"He's been moody every since Kay'li and her father left," Jenni said. She sat on the bench next to him before handing him a mug of spyce. "At least, we thought it was just being moody."

"Sam making a pest of himself?" he asked with a grin.

"The usual routine."

Lucas sat in the shade of an overgrown patch of scrubber bushes, playing with the Spinner set Jase had given him. The smooth wooden tops felt good to his fingertips. They didn't spin very well in the packed dirt around the cabin, but they still knocked over their targets. Lucas planned to take the tops down to the riverbank later and see how well they worked on the smooth sheets of rock. It was more important to stay near the cabin now, and wait until his mother stopped watching him with that little frown that put wrinkles at the corners of her mouth.

He could see his mother and Jase through the screen of the bushes. The abrasive, blue-green fuzz was starting to peel off the scrubber bush's long, supple branches, but the clumps and strands didn't get in his way. He didn't think they could see him. His father and Sam were inside the cabin, working on something Seth wanted to send back with Jase. Lunch sat comfortably in his stomach, the sun was warm, the air smelled good and the presence of the shuttle twenty meters away didn't put a bad taste in his mouth. The whole world was just right.

"What if this is just the beginning?" Jase asked. "He might need help real fast. Ever think of taking him to that doctor that stuck him full of needles last fall?"

"We did. Think of it," Jenni hurried to add. "They didn't know what they were doing then, so why should we trust them to know what to do for Lucas now?"

"Got a point. Hey, remember the fuss that little Fieran gal made, when she broke all the rules? She sure was attached to your boy." He chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest.

"Kay'li was the only one with any sense," she snapped. "Jase, you can't tell anyone about Lucas. Not until it's all past. We think he was so deathly sick then because he was already starting Phase. I won't have any of those heartless scientists in Port treating my son like a mindless specimen."

Lucas flinched when an errant gust of wind slapped a branch against his back. Hearing the anger in his mother's tight voice, he relived that nightmarish afternoon in the lab when he had been given the Phase prevention treatment. The doctors had grabbed his arms to hold him still. The needles dug into his bones. The monitor bands they wrapped around his chest, forehead and arms were hot and stung with little teeth.

He would run away before he would let those doctors do that to him again.

"You might be smarter at that," the pilot admitted. "Heard a story the other day how a little girl hit Phase and her parents tried to keep her at home. They live on the edge of Port, lots of trees and such where she can hide when it gets bad. Neighbors called the authorities and the parents were fined for being irresponsible. Last I heard, the little girl was put in one of those new testing groups for kids who got the treatment. Don't want that happening to your boy."

"It's that bad?" Jenni whispered. Lucas still heard her. The catch in her voice sent an answering throb through his body.

"Just rumors. You know how things get blown out of proportion by the time five people hear it."

"I know."

"Promise you, Jenni." Jase leaned forward so Lucas could see him now. His iron-gray hair was tangled by the breeze and his craggy face was serious and set like rock. "You keep making dibble cake whenever I come by, and I'll make sure I'm the only pilot that ever gets out this far. Sound good to you?"

"Jase Kemp, you are the sweetest--" She rested her hand on his shoulder and leaned over to brush a kiss on his cheek.

"Yeah, I try. Just remember your part of the deal." He groaned. "Just not fair, y'know? Just when I get my baby sister talked into giving up her supercargo job and settling down with me so her boy grows up on a real planet, this happens. I'm not worried about Brad, since he wasn't born on Chorillan, but you don't know where things can go, do you?"

"Jase?"

"Might not be anything. But you hear stories and you think about all the dark things you don't hear about.... Any place that can't help its kids, you don't want to bring a boy to live there." The shuttle pilot stalked away toward his shuttle, leaving Jenni still seated, watching him and frowning.

Lucas shrugged. He had been hearing Jase Kemp talk about his nephew for years now, how he wanted the boy to come live on a real planet instead of growing up with nothing but decking under his feet and recycled air in his lungs. There was always some reason why now wasn't a good time. Lucas had stopped being curious about the unseen boy years ago.

* * *

Lucas burrowed under the blankets heaped into a nest on the floor of his room. It didn't help. His skin itched, his stomach kept twisting--he had lost his supper two hours ago--and his head throbbed like it wanted to split open like a globe flower.

His father had cut a narrow, high window in the wall to help him breathe. The sheet hung across it was soaked and dripped water down the wall. It swung and slapped, letting in icy wet gusts from the howling storm outside. Lucas liked the damp and chill, the smell of lightning and storm-bruised plants. But it didn't help. The stink of plastic oozed from the walls. It even stank through the raw wood planks Seth had put on the floor, to insulate Lucas from the synthetic flooring.

If he opened his door, the air would move better. Then he wouldn't feel like the ceiling tried to squash him to the floor.

Lucas rolled out of his blankets and crawled halfway to the door on his knees. The bare flooring gave him splinters, but the plastic coating had made his feet swell. It had taken his father and Sam the whole morning to install the boards. Sam had been so angry he had poured reconstituted milk over Lucas' muffins at lunch. For that, he had to stay indoors and organize all their father's research notes.

That was two weeks ago and Sam had given up on picking on Lucas. Maybe his brother felt sorry for him. It was no fun to miss out on chores when he couldn't eat his favorite foods or read his book disks because he was allergic to them. Hiding in the river most of the day had grown boring. Lucas wanted to explore, but his father made him promise every day not to go across the river and never wander so far he couldn't hear his parents calling him.

Right now, all that mattered was getting clean air to breathe. Lucas reached for the loop of rope that had replaced the plastic doorknob. He flinched when an especially loud, bright blast of lightning and thunder touched down only seconds away from the cabin.

He tugged on the loop to pull aside the latch and pushed on the thick pad of pod cloth nailed to the door to protect his hands. The door wouldn't open. Lucas pushed harder. The door shifted in its frame but didn't swing out. He leaned into it with his whole weight, then yanked on the rope loop. Nothing.

Sweat dribbled down his back, down his forehead, slicking his hair to his face. The shadows of his room danced, flung about by the flashes of lightning over the river. The puddle on the floor under his window glistened in the flashes, reaching out tentacles for his feet.

The walls moved. Lucas dashed for the window and hooked his fingers through the grid of soldered metal slats covering it. His fingers caught on the sharp edges. Lucas smelled blood, tasted it in the air. He braced his feet against the wall and pulled hard on the grid until his elbows and shoulders ached and he thought his muscles would crack.

His hands slipped, slicked with seeping blood. Lucas fell hard and yelped when his head slammed into the floor.

"Lucas?" His mother hurried down the narrow hall from the main room, her slippers making soft hushing noises on the plastic flooring.

He froze, lying on his side with one bloodied hand pressing on the floor. He heard something heavy slide across his door. He waited, his brain locked and unable to think. Then his door swung open and his mother appeared.

"What did you do?" Jenni dropped to her knees next to him and folded him into her arms. The edge of her pale green robe landed in the puddle and darkened as it soaked up the water.

He could breathe. Air rushed from his window across his room and through the open door. The walls stopped moving and the floor ceased threatening to heave him toward the ceiling.

"Lucas, look at your hands." She took his hands in hers, spreading them wide, palms up to show the thin lacerations.

"Tried to move the screen." He felt stupid now, sitting on the floor with his bloody hands and wet pants and the tangle of rumpled blankets in the corner.

Lucas wished he could sleep in a normal bed, but the mattresses were filled with synthetic fibers. He missed his pillow and hated the lump of raw pod fiber wrapped in cloth that he had to use.

"Can't breathe?" His mother's soft voice was more soothing than the lotusite she had put on his sunburned shoulders before he went to bed. Lucas knew she understood what was happening to him. It didn't matter that she couldn't do much to help. She knew the right time to put her arms around him, just a few seconds before he knew he needed a hug.

"I tried to open the door and it wouldn't move. I thought I could get some more air if I opened the door. Ma?" He tugged his hands free when she frowned and the faint, bitter-burned smell of anger came from her skin.

"Your father has decided to lock you in every night. He thinks you'll try to run away."

"I promised--"

"I know." Jenni held his face between both her hands and looked into his eyes. "Your father is afraid you'll hurt so bad you'll forget your promise and run away and we'll never see you again. We're all afraid."

"Pa is afraid?" Lucas forgot the stinging in his hands. "Why?"

"So many reasons...maybe he doesn't know which ones." She knuckled a tear from the corner of her eye and tried to smile. "Come on, strong-man. Let's get those hands cleaned up."

Lucas let her help him stand and followed her to the main room. His bare feet stung on the plastic floor, but he could ignore it because of the coating of dust on the plastic.

Seth sat at his worktable, hunched over his data pad. The smell of spyce was thick in the air, slowly overcoming the aroma of the hopper stew from supper. Lucas swallowed hard to fight the sudden lump in his throat. He hadn't eaten the stew because of the preserved vegetables and artificial seasoning. He had eaten plain, salted hopper and roasted dibbleroot. His dessert had been orangeberry cake with no frosting.

"Look at Lucas' hands," Jenni said. She tapped her husband's shoulder as she went past him to get the medic pack. Over the years, she had replaced many of the synthetic medicines with herbs and homemade lotions, pastes and powders, so she didn't have to stop and think if using it would hurt Lucas.

"How did you do that?" Seth said, when Lucas dutifully displayed his hands. The drying blood left brownish smears among the thin, straight lines.

"That grid you made." Her voice snapped like a whip, punctuated by the medic pack cracking down on the tabletop.

Father and son traded glances of warning and commiseration.

"Why did you touch it?" Seth asked.

"Touch it? He was trying to yank it out of the wall." Jenni beckoned Lucas over to the table. He hesitated, glancing at his father. Seth nodded for him to go.

"I told you it was sharp, Luc."

"He was suffocating! Do you really think he'd remember things like that when he can't breathe?"

"Tried to open the door," Lucas offered on a mumble.

"Oh." Seth settled back down on his stool.

"Yes. Oh." His wife glared at him and jerked hard on the twist lid for the kesselroot solution. The antiseptic sloshed over on her hands; a hot, clean smell. Lucas bit his lip in anticipation of the sting, followed by cool relief.

"Lucas, I locked your door to keep you inside at night."

"But I promised not to go outside." Lucas didn't feel anything when his mother swabbed his hands.

"I know. But when you're scared, you can't think clearly. Look what you did to your hands."

"That's right," Jenni muttered. "Blame your son."

"He would have gone out the window into that storm if I hadn't put the grid there." Seth picked up his mug, his hands whitening around it.

"He would have opened the door to get some air and stayed in his room if you hadn't locked him in!"

"Are you sure?" His father's voice wavered and sounded tired. Lucas didn't like that; his father knew everything and could do anything and nothing ever slowed him down for long. "Are you sure you would have stayed in your room, Lucas?"

"I don't know, Pa," he whispered. Lucas couldn't meet his father's gaze. He watched his mother smear lotusite paste on his hands and wrap silvery-white gauze around the palms.

"He hasn't been sleeping enough the last week," Jenni said. Her tone lost its sharp edge. "I want you to drink some tea with lotusite, so you'll sleep."

Lucas swallowed his protest and looked at his bandaged hands. What was the use of arguing? He would probably throw up the tea, but it would be nice to sleep the whole night through.

He curled up in the corner by the open door and watched Seth work on his report while his mother boiled water. Any other time, he would be thrilled to be allowed up this late.

"Bad?" Seth murmured. He managed a lopsided smile for his son when Lucas gave him a confused look. "Walls moving again?"

"And the ceiling."

"I'm sorry, son. I just don't want you running away."

"I won't."

"You say you won't, and I know you try not to run away, but something happens when Phase hits. It gets into your blood and brain and makes your feet take off so your head doesn't know where you are."

"How do you know, Pa?" Lucas rested his chin in his hands. The lotusite paste deadened the cuts.

"I have friends who are Wildlings. They didn't want to run away, but they did. I don't want anybody shooting tranquilizers at my boy or catching him in nets."

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