The shuttle had emptied of all the human passengers before Sara stepped on to Pandoran soil – or more to the point Pandoran concrete. It was pleasant not havig to duck her head to avoid the lintel of the rear cargo door. At least the shuttle was scaled for people of her height.

A voice screamed out, "Fuck! A loose smurf!"

Sara's head snapped around to the left to see a uniformed soldier raising his weapon at her. The lessons the Major had pounded into her brain came into play. She twisted towards the man and thrust her quarterstaff, the metal-clad butt slamming into his solar plexus. With a strangled wheeze the soldier collapsed to the ground, dropping his assault rifle as he struggled to breathe. Fortunately the weapon did not discharge. Sara snarled, "Don't point a gun at me."

There was an ominous sound of clicks behind her, as another voice exclaimed, "Shit! It speaks English!"

Slowly turning around, Sara said coldly, "I don't need to swear to make myself understood, and I'm not an 'it'." There was a group of four soldiers, all with their weapons pointing at her. She added, "If you don't want to join your friend on the ground, I suggest you lower your weapons."

The soldier who had spoken bared his teeth, growling, "I'd like to see you try, smurf." He shifted his grip on his CARB assault rifle.

Sara grinned, replying, "You can't shoot me."

"Why not?" queried the soldier, flicking an eyebrow up.

"The rounds would go straight through me and into the hypergolic fuel tank for the shuttle thrusters," she said reasonably, having already calculated their most probable trajectory. "The shuttle will explode, and we will all die."

The soldier laughed and lowered his weapon. "She's right, guys. Lower your weapons." He shook his head admiringly, saying, "You've got balls, smurf – big round brass cojones. What's your name?"

"Sara," she replied, a little puzzled. She was female, and didn't have testicles. How could she have big round brass balls?

"Sara the Smurf," said the soldier, "You can call me Lewis."

"Pleased to meet you," Sara said politely, bent down and offered him her right hand – her preferred left was still occupied with her quarterstaff. Lewis looked a little surprised at her action, but she had read that shaking hands was the most appropriate form of greeting upon an introduction. After all, she did like following the rules. It made life so much simpler when the rules were well-defined and simple.

"Ditto," said Lewis, gingerly shaking her hand. "Nice moves with the staff, by the way. Taekkyon?"

"Yes," she agreed. "Major Gennady Khudoshin was my sensei."

Lewis whistled admiringly. "Wilson," he said to the winded man getting to his feet. "You were lucky Sara the Smurf here didn't take your stupid fucking head off. Killer Khudoshin was her sensei."

Wilson scowled back at his section leader, growling, "She was lucky."

"You knew the Major?" asked Sara curiously, ignoring the unhappy soldier.

"Yep," agreed Lewis. "I fought him in a couple of tournaments. Neither of the bouts lasted more than about thirty seconds, before he handed me my ass." He grinned ruefully up at her. "How is the slippery bastard?"

"He died," said Nadia simply. "Kiev."

"Fuck," swore Lewis softly. "I liked him." A glint appeared in his eye. "Would you like to try a practice bout sometime? In honour of your sensei?"

"I'd like that," she admitted, "But I should warn you that the Major only sparred with me when he was wearing an exoskeleton."

"Oh," said Lewis, wondering if he had just bitten off more than he could chew. He grinned ruefully, "Try not to hurt me too much."

Administrator Zhong gazed impassively at the two scientists, hiding his towering anger from them – he refused to lose face to these gweilo. Their presence was going to be a major inconvenience and create delays to bringing the mine on-line. He wanted nothing to do with them, but the orders they carried could not be ignored. Any further delays and he would not receive his end of contract bonus, so the diversion of resources they required would be problematic.

"I will give you my full cooperation," said Zhong smoothly. "It is clear from your orders that RDA headquarters regards your mission as high priority. I will allocate a construction crew to start work on the planned facilities immediately."

Lissa managed to hide her dismay over the stuffed shirt running Hell's Gate. It was clear to her that he had little intention of helping them. "Thank you, Administator Zhong," she replied. "We appreciate your efforts sincerely."

The bureaucrat smiled at the woman. Perhaps the scientists wouldn't be too troublesome – at least she was paying him proper respect, unlike many women of her barbarian race. "In the meantime, I would request that you restrain your...experiment from any more violence against my workforce. She cracked the sternum of one of the security force after spending less than ten seconds on the ground."

Zhong saw the woman draw in a sharp breath, and to forestall any unpleasantness he held up his hand and said, "Please – I know that all fault was not on her side. I have already reprimanded the military commander for his failure to brief his troops properly. I would request that you discuss this matter with your charge."

"Of course," agreed Lissa.

Sara's stomach rumbled discordantly. She had eaten nothing since she had left Earth, at least two days – or rather five years – ago. "I need to go into the forest," she told Lewis, who seemed to have been appointed her primary point of contact with the security force, more by popular acclaim than by any other decision making process that she could ascertain. "I'm starving."

Lewis shook his head. "We can't let you out – it's too late." He made a gesture towards the setting sun, adding, "You wouldn't be back until after dark, and we don't open the gates for anyone at night. It's too fucking dangerous."

"But..." she started to object.

"Don't worry, Sara the Smurf," he said kindly. "The biologists have a garden inside the fence. You should be able to find some fruit there. I'll show you where it is, but first put this on." He handed her something that looked like a watchband.

The strap was easy to fasten around her wrist. "What is it?" she asked curiously.

"It's an IFF bracelet," he answered. "Theoretically, the Sea-Wizz guns on the fence won't target warm bodies wearing one of them. The batteries are good for at least a year, more if they get plenty of sunlight." He started moving away from the administration building at a steady jog, forcing her to stride out at more than the gentle amble she had been used to using when accompanying humans. "You don't want to be anywhere near the damn things without a working bracelet."

"Ok," she agreed. A few steps later she asked cautiously, "I won't get into trouble for taking fruit from the garden?"

Lewis made a gesture in the vague direction of the the fence. "There are plenty of plants outside the wire," he said. "The boffins can always go and get some more."

Sara felt...actually, Sara wasn't quite sure how she felt. All that she knew on seeing the neat rows of plants growing in tidy rows, correctly sorted by family, genus and species, was that it was not right. It was very wrong. It was like trying to impose a simple law on the prime numbers, instead of letting them rejoice in all their diversity and strangeness.

"They don't like it," she said to Lewis.

"What?" he asked.

"The plants," she said. "They don't like straight lines. The forest doesn't have straight lines." It was more than that, thought Sara, but the words weren't there. She could describe it in symbols and numbers, but not in words. It was then that a great light went off in her head – the information flows of her forest in the dome, the equations she had tried to model them – they were all wrong. She should have been modelling them as surfaces in Riemannian space, rather than as flows, each exchange of information like a transfer of zeta functions between convergent manifolds. Sara could see the immensity of the forest inside her head, each plant – no, each lifeform connected to every other lifeform through twisting N-dimensional channels of...no, not consciousness. The only word she had for the connections was spirit, the surface of each connection describing a soul.

The vision that unfolded in her mind's eye was so beautiful it tore at her heart.

"Oel ngati kameie, sa'nok," she said, awestruck at the immensity of the living being that was this world. Sara was not afraid any longer – she knew that she would never be lost again.

The consciousness that was Eywa felt the blazing of one of the souls she cared for, and whispered back, "I See you, Sara te Pesuholpxaype Lissa'ite."

That is who I am, thought Sara, daughter of Lissa – the One Who Numbers.

"Sara!" yelled Lewis, punching her on the thigh. "Sara! Are you ok?"

The Avatar had been standing on her feet, swaying slowly from one foot to the other, for almost two minutes, her golden eyes unfocused, totally oblivious to the world. A shiver ran down her body, and she shook her head as though she was waking from a dream.

"Ow!" she said, gazing down at the concerned soldier. "You didn't have to hit quite so hard."

Lewis looked relieved. "What happened? You just sort of faded out. I thought you were having a seizure."

"I saw the answer to a problem," she replied. "A maths problem I have been thinking about since before I left Earth."

Sara started to explain, talking about zeta functions, the complex plane and Riemannian space, making elaborate gestures with her hands to describe the shape of the connections she had seen when Lewis held up a hand to stop her. "Hey, you're going right over my head," he objected. "I only know enough algebra to lay down accurate mortar fire. Nothing like what you're talking about."

The expression on her face must have matched her disappointment. She desperately wanted to tell someone what she had seen, when her stomach rumbled again, reminding her that it had been several years since it had been fed. "Lewis," she asked. "Could you get me something to write on, and bring it outside? Like a big whiteboard? I really have to get something to eat."

"Consider it done," he replied. Lewis knew exactly what she needed. "Meet me outside the maintenance hangar in fifteen mikes."

In the maintenance hangar, one of the crew chiefs asked, "What do you want all that spray paint for, Lewis?"

He chuckled. "Sara the Smurf had a brainstorm, and wants to write down her maths homework on something."

The crew chief shook his head disbelievingly. It wasn't the craziest thing he had heard since he got to Pandora, not by a long shot. Still, it was up there, along with the time that Paklowski...no, he wouldn't even think about that, otherwise he would be rolling around on the ground laughing. "Fair enough," he commented. "I've got some more out back."

Now her stomach was full of fruit Sara had only one want. Well, actually she had two. She could do with a wash - her hands and face were very sticky. More importantly, Sara desperately wanted to write down what she had Seen – it was far too complex to retain in her head for long.

Rather than walking to the hangar, Sara loped like some kind of loup-garou, opening up her stride. As she approached, an airlock door opened, to show Lewis come out, carrying a large box with his CARB assault rifle slung over his shoulder. "Hey!" he cried out. "Over here."

Sara changed her direction vector slightly so that her path would intersect with that of Lewis. "I thought you were going to get a whiteboard," she said doubtfully, looking at the large box in his arms. "What are those?"

"The most essential tool for any street artist," replied Lewis. He saw her lack of understanding and expanded on his explanation. "Spray paint cans. The lid colour is the colour of the paint. Pick one up, give it a good hard shake to make sure the paint is well mixed, and then spray." He demonstrated on the wall of the hangar with a single pleasing curve, and tossed the can to Sara.

The can was small in her hand, but nonetheless she began to shake it. The movement of the paint and the ball bearing used to mix it felt pleasing, in a somewhat atavistic manner. She commented that this was the case, and drew a curve that precisely matched his. It was interesting, thought Sara, that you could derive some equations from that single curve, and use them to describe the biomechanical properties of the human arm and shoulder that had drawn the curve.

"Yeah," agreed Lewis, remembering pleasant evenings he spent as a teenager tagging empty walls in the streets and alleys of Baltimore, at least until he got caught. He shivered – that was how he had ended up in juvie. "Don't it just."

It was well after midnight, and spidery equations crawled down half the length of the maintenance hangar. Sara had been carefully working on them since before dusk, but she had finished them a couple of hours ago, and now she was working on a two dimensional representation of Riemannian space, showing a small segment of her vision. She had used every paint colour in her possession, but even then it was only a dim representation of the solution.

A pair of the ever-present sentries on patrol stopped to watch her work for about five minutes. One of them said, "It kind of sucks you in, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does," commented his mate. "I don't hold with abstract art much, but I like it." He gazed at the work of the Avatar, adding, "It makes me feel calm inside."

"Done," announced Sara, and lowered the spray can in her grasp. She yawned, her jaw emitting a couple of alarming pops and cracks as it attempted to dislocate itself.

"No, it isn't," advised the first sentry. "You haven't tagged it. You know – your name."

"Oh," said Sara. The sentry was right. All good mathematicians signed their work. She hesitated for a moment, and quickly scrawled out a spiky signature.

"Sara the Smurf," read the second sentry. He grinned up at the tall Avatar. "I suppose you call a spade a fucking shovel, Sara the Smurf."

Her brain was unusually sharp at the moment, despite her tiredness. Rather than asking a question about a digging device for use in sexual intercourse, she had correctly interpreted the metaphor and replied, "My real name would be difficult for most of the personnel to say, so I thought I would use my new nickname."

"Good for you," he said approvingly. In his book, real tough guys – and girls – took a derogatory badge and wore it with honour, daring anyone to spit them in the eye. It seemed that Sara the Smurf was made out of the right stuff. It was a shame that she hadn't joined the Corps, instead of joining up with the science pukes. It must have taken some serious balls to be the first to wear a blue suit, and the poor bitch was stuck in it, he had heard.

She yawned again, and massaged her jaw. Sara was tired. It seemed that cryo hibernation did nothing to relieve tiredness.

"There is an open bay around the corner you can grab some shut-eye in," said the first sentry kindly. "It's under cover, so when it starts raining in about a quarter of an hour you won't get wet."

"Thanks," she said. "I'll do that."

The sentry had been correct. Fifteen minutes after she had curled up in a pile of old ropes, the rain came pelting down. She smiled to herself, and fell asleep.