A Bug's Life

out of the native sand. Melting crystals stared back at her from the stems of heather and dried bracken.
    I have found my punishment. But I don't want it. I didn't know what I was asking for. I didn't know it would feel like this. Please God, I've learned my lesson. Can I go now?
    The tears stopped. She rolled over and lay on her back, wiping her face with snowy gloved fingers. She relaxed, stretched out in the cold, springy embrace of the giant planet. Long ago, at home, poems ... She shrugged and smiled in rueful acknowledgment. Yes, I'm a fool. I think too much. I talk too much. This world with all its histrionic sorrows is a drug a person like me should avoid like poison. I admit everything.
    She had left her path. She was simply lying among the trees, which looked down on her from every side: hypnotic, unvarying, uncannily still. The silence, which had been unbroken except for the crunch of her boots until her burst of sobbing, brought the quiet sound of voices. Catherine stood up, and shook the caked snow from her back. The voices had stopped. But she was curious. There should not be anybody else here. Virtual visitors did not make the forest's air vibrate. There was no reason for any of the park staff to have followed her on foot; and she hadn't heard a vehicle approaching. The jeeps were far from silent, unless you were shut up in the back. She stepped carefully in the direction from which she thought the sounds had come.
    She found a glade among the trees. Perhaps it was the trace of a fire, or of a once-inhabited clearing much smaller than L'Airial. Trees grew close and evenly around it, enclosing an oval of extreme, glittering blue-whiteness. in the centre of the oval Catherine saw two human figures. One of them was pale-skinned, with a rosy flush of blood showing clearly through the pallor. The other was a light-brown, biscuit colour. The both had indented waists, round buttocks, jutting breasts. The were naked. Catherine could see no sign of their discarded clothing. They moved together, coupling, clasped in each other's arms on the snow. They were not speaking now. THe only sound was the sound she had heard in the sous-prole brothel while she was waiting for Thérèse. The two bodies were oblivous. The faces were the faces she had seen in her dream, and on the

I would suggest she stops looking in her indecipherable.

I reckon I could carry a fair chunk of gear in a pinch...