61: GRASPER

It was Grasper who first noticed the change in the Eye.

She woke up slowly, as always clinging to her ragged dreams of trees. Suspended between animal and human, she had only a dim grasp of future and past. Her memory was like a gallery hung with vivid images—her mother’s face, the warmth of the nest where she had been born. And the cages. Many, many cages.

She yawned hugely, and stretched her long arms, and looked around. The tall woman who shared this cave still slept. There was light on her peaceful face.

Light?

Grasper looked up. The Eye was shining. It was like a miniature sun, caught in the stone chamber.

Grasper raised a hand toward the Eye. It gave off no heat, only light. She stood and gazed at the Eye, eyes wide, one arm raised.

Now there was something new again. The glow of the Eye was no longer uniform: a series of brighter horizontal bands straddled an underlying grayness, a pattern that might have reminded a human of lines of latitude on a globe of the Earth. These lines swept up past the Eye’s “equator,” dwindling until they vanished at the north pole. Meanwhile another set, vertical this time, began the same pattern of emergence, sweeping from a pole on one side of the equator, disappearing on the other side. Now a third set of lines, sweeping to poles set at right angles to the first two pairs, came shining into existence. The shifting, silent display of gray rectangles was entrancing, beautiful.

And then a fourth set of lines appeared—Grasper tried to follow where they went—but suddenly something inside her head hurt badly.

She cried out. She rubbed the heels of her palms into her watering eyes. She felt warmth along her inner thighs. She had urinated where she stood.

The sleeping woman stirred.