20
I picked my way up the forbidding cliff-side on all fours, the incline about sixty degrees, the rough rock scraping my hands, the sea bashing the shore below me. Under the thunder, I heard the call of birds, the whip of wind, the shush of moss.
No bustle of city, no whine of gravcart, no hum of gravrail. I glanced behind me.
The dinghy pulled away from the rocks and rode over the waves toward the freighter.
Below me, finding handholds one by one, climbed Dia, her blue coveralls in high relief against the rock, a pack slung across her back.
I adjusted mine and turned my attention back to the rock. A few meters more up to the headland, where a ledge perched between the cliff and the moss, a wall atop a wall. The stench of rotting strawberries made me dizzy as I pulled myself onto the
