She dreamt of sunlight, and the sea, and the time before the coming of the permanent ice. She was walking along the rim of the crater-lake above her home on Dassar Island, close to the causeway that gave access to the Citadel on the central peak. From this vantage point high above sea level she could see fourteen of the fifty-two islands that made up the Southern Archipelago. To the west, Shess Island was a volcanic triangle framed by the blood-red halo of Ember, the lesser sun, as it sank below the horizon. Beacon, the greater sun, hung overhead, casting its reflection in the strait between the islands of Dair and Orm.
Wherever you were in the Archipelago, you could always find your way home. Even on the largest islands, the sea was rarely more than two days' walk away. Once you found the sea, you could navigate by the suns and the stars, or even the magnetic core of Caresh itself if you knew how.
But first you had to find the sea.
She awoke. She remembered her name: Troy Game.
Her head and shoulder still hurt. Sleep speeded recovery, but it was not enough on its own; she needed sunlight. According to her body clock both suns should be up now; even if her time sense was out of kilter, at least one sun must have risen since her arrival in the blue room.
She sat up, bemused. She was being deliberately deprived of sunlight. But by whom? Even on Fell Island such barbaric practices were outlawed.
So where on Caresh was she?
There were voices beyond the blue wall, footsteps approaching. Troy Game could hear individual words but they were not spoken in the language of Dassar or its neighbouring islands. In order to understand she had to reach out with her own mind to locate that of one of the speakers. The words took form: 'Patient confidentiality, you know I have no choice...' said one, while another, possibly in an unrelated conversation, said, '...don't you understand, without it it's not informed consent...' Then Troy Game's mind recoiled in shock and the words became incoherent once more.
She had picked up too much. She had felt the speaker's compassion and exasperation, and other emotions she had not had time to register, and which had not been apparent in the meaning of the words. It should not have happened; language-telepathy did not work like that.
More footsteps, coming closer. Troy Game climbed over the rail that ran along the side of the bed and stepped on to the tiled floor. She was light-headed, and felt as if she had lost a lot of weight although it did not show. The wall in front of her, she realised, was not a wall at all but a curtain.
And in that moment of realisation the curtain was thrust aside. Troy Game froze.
There were two of the people in front of her. One of them, fully a head taller than her, was evidently a woman. Her femaleness was exaggerated, obvious even under her clothing; Troy Game would have supposed that the woman had recently given birth, had it not been for the fact that the birthing season was half a year away. The man - again, his maleness was overemphasised - was taller still. He turned his gaze on her, his pupils and irises like tiny islands lost in the whites of his eyes, and turned up the corners of his mouth in a gesture that Troy Game supposed was meant to be reassuring.
She might have been able to cope with their alienness - the eyes, the ears, the teeth and the skin - if it had not been for their hair. It was so long. It put her in mind of crawling things, of the tangleweed that grew inside the underwater vents off Shess Island. The woman with the blonde hair that reached to her shoulders was approaching her, uttering intermittently coherent words like 'concussion' and 'need to examine'.
Troy Game fled. She vaulted across the bed, pulled another curtain aside and ran out into a corridor of curtained-off rooms. The people were everywhere. A man, barely taller than she was, his matted hair divided by a furrow of naked skin, stepped out of a doorway in front of her. She considered disabling him but he hurried out of her way as soon as he saw her. She ran on, risking a quick look behind her, but no pursuit was evident. Up ahead a glass door, and beyond it, sunlight! Handle one side, hinge the other; a moment later she had it open and was through it. She ran across a forecourt, past rank after rank of glass-and-metal structures that looked like smaller versions of the howling building. She kept on running until she was short of breath, then slowed to a walk.
Her terror began to subside. She had escaped the blue room and she had found the sunlight. Now she had only to find the sea.
