With the blouse she had teamed umber pantaloons of the same fabric, tight around the waist and bottom, loose in the legs then gathered to show her slender ankles. Did the blouse clash with the pantaloons? She could not tell. Black sandals completed the outfit, though she worried that brown might have gone better. She wished her feet were smaller.

‘You look nice,’ said Haani, sitting up in the sleeping pouch.

‘Thank you. I need to cut my hair. I don’t suppose you’ve seen a pair of scissors anywhere?’

‘What are scissors?’

Pulling out her sleeve, Tiaan made snipping motions with her fingers.

‘Oh, brawnies? I saw some in a room on the next floor. I’ll show you.’

She leapt out of bed. Tiaan followed more sedately, practising her walk, something between a sway and a glide. She thought it looked rather silly, but hoped Minis would find it alluring. ‘And a mirror?’

Haani knew that word. There had been several on board ship. ‘There’s lots of mirrors. All the rooms up there have them.’

The room turned out to be a suite of chambers, someone’s living quarters. The mirror was a large one of polished metal with a design etched around the edges. Tiaan wiped the dust off with a bedcover.

Her hair was dull, ragged and long, not having been cut since the stay in the breeding factory. Tiaan gave it a few hundred strokes with her brush, took up the offered scissors and laid them down in despair. She examined her face, which was wide, with fine, high cheekbones. How did one cut hair to suit?

Tiaan trimmed her fringe straight across, three fingers’ width above her eyebrows. That was better. She managed to cut the sides straight, just below her ears, but eyed the ragged ends at the back in some alarm.

‘Haani …’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think you could cut my hair at the back? It would have to be very straight.’

‘Of course,’ Haani said with the confidence of the eight-year-old. She set to work. Tiaan’s alarm grew as the thick swatches fell to the floor.

‘Perhaps a little higher here, and here,’ Tiaan said shortly.

‘That’s much better,’ Haani said brightly as Tiaan stood up, brushing the loose hair away. ‘You look beautiful, Tiaan.’

It was not much better, but it was better, though it looked more like a little girl’s cut than a young woman meeting her lover for the first time. Well, nothing could be done about it.

‘Ah, but will Minis think so?’ she said to herself, not meaning Haani to overhear.

‘Of course he will. If he doesn’t he’s a rude, nasty man and I won’t like him at all.’

Tiaan had not considered that problem. What would Haani think of Minis? And how would he react to her? Tiaan fretted as she trimmed her nails and gave everything a last check. She did not look anything special. Tiaan felt panicky, then recalled a gift Marnie had once given in a futile attempt to make her daughter look feminine. A necklace of silver and amethyst, it seemed to suit.

Tiaan checked that her own gift, the woven gold and silver ring she had crafted so lovingly, was secure in her scrip. It was. She took a deep breath.

‘Are you ready, Haani?’

‘Of course.’

‘What about your clean clothes?’

‘They’re by the bed. I’ll get dressed in a minute.’

‘Let’s go down to breakfast. Then we’ll brush our teeth. Make sure you do your hair, then we’ll begin.’

Tiaan had another go at contacting Minis. Again she failed. Better get to work. Her worries about the machine had not gone away but it was too late now to do anything about them. She examined the amplimet carefully. It was dusty, with bits of fluff here and there, and a silver mark on one side where it had been pressed hard against the helm. She wiped it down with a clean pair of knickers, scrubbing at the mark until it came off.

‘Well,’ she said with a gulp and a fluttery feeling in her stomach, ‘this is it! Come on, Haani. Let’s see what we can do.’

She marched into the room where the port-all stood, the amplimet held out in front of her. Tiaan looked like a maiden carrying tribute to one of the high temples of old. Haani skipped along behind, singing a child’s rhyme. It was just another day to her.

Tiaan was pleased about that. She did not want to think what would happen if the machine went wrong: if it burnt her to a cinder, or left her body intact but her mind gone. She imagined Haani crouched over the body, bewildered …

Stop it! Probably nothing would happen anyway, since they had not taught her how to use it. Wrenching away from the morbid thoughts, she strode up to the port-all. The glass structures glowed as before. The hum was still there. When she approached, the glow intensified and a faint whine began. It rose in pitch. She stopped. The pitch stayed the same. She took another step. It rose again. The drifting spark inside the amplimet had brightened.

In the centre of the smallest glass doughnut, which enclosed the twisticon and was surrounded by the larger vertical one, hung a suspended basket made of the same amber soapstone that comprised the legs of the port-all. It mimicked the shape of the amplimet, with hinges that allowed it to be opened into two parts.

Tiaan stretched out and flicked the basket open. The doughnuts burst with light. The whine became a wail that tickled the insides of her ears. She felt pressure against her front, as if she was trying to push through a rubber sheet. The closer she came the more resistance she felt.

The light was now so bright that she had to squint. Her vision narrowed to a horizontal slit that showed only the central section of the port-all. Tiaan forced, and something pushed back just as hard. The amplimet did not budge. Minis had not told her about this.

She could not fail this close to her goal. There must be a way through. Tiaan turned the crystal so one of its pyramidal ends pointed to the basket, and heaved. The amplimet went a little way and stopped as if she was pushing against a solid wall. The other end did not work either.

There was only one thing left to do and she did it most reluctantly, remembering Minis’s warning about using the amplimet here. Getting the wire globe from her pack, she placed the amplimet inside. The glow from the port-all disappeared. The whine was gone too. As soon as she put the helm on, the field sprang into view. It was different from other fields she had seen, consisting of multi-coloured billows and eddies radiating in all directions from the port-all. She felt she saw more than ever before, as if the swirls and whirlpools opened on a dimension she had previously been incapable of imagining.

The resistance proved as strong as ever. Tiaan went forward as far as she could go. Holding the globe straight out in one hand, she closed her eyes while manipulating the beads with the other. No matter how hard she tried, Tiaan could draw nothing from the field. She had no time to wonder why. She would have to try her fledgling geomancy again.

She sensed several sources of that kind of power. Great thrust faults lay below, where half a continent had been forced over another, pushing up these giant mountains. Such power was beyond the most powerful mancer’s ability to tap or even survive.

But there was one source she might be able to use. Tiaan had seen them on the way here – the glaciers all around. They ended in icefalls, and the energy released by one tiny crack opening should be enough to force her way in.

She sought out and discarded many before finding a glacier that seemed just right. It was a little one, moving down a truncated valley on the other side of the mountain. She’d seen it as she was climbing up. But even a little glacier had awesome power to grind and crack and crush. She sensed out its structure, just above the icefall, and located a weakness along which coloured haloes danced in her mental image. It was ready to crack open. Tiaan waited.