The cafeteria was an enormous round room, as big as the space under the roots of a mature hometree, with windows in the domed ceiling so the sun could shine in. Unfortunately, there was no sun today – the sky was grey and stormy, and rain was running down the curved windowpanes. There were no trees or mountains visible that might have given Neteyam a clue to where they actually were. Maybe he could get a chance to come back here at night, and could try to figure it out by the stars.

The far side of this space was a long, curved counter where people could go to choose their food. Dr. Nguyen handed Neteyam a tray and led him there, then stood back to see what he would select. A lot of it was only barely familiar, things he'd seen humans eating at Hell's Gate but had never paid much attention to. There was, however, identifiable fruit, several species cut up into cubes and mixed together. He took a bowl of that.

That seemed to satisfy Dr. Nguyen. She stepped up and pointed out something else. "I think your people make flatbreads out of some kind of ground-up nuts, am I right? Try the pancakes. They'll be similar, but sweeter."

He took one. The man behind the counter offered a dark brown goo to pour over it, but Neteyam declined. Nguyen chose her own breakfast, as did the guard who had accompanied them, and then she found them a table to sit at.

"So, Neteyam," she said, sprinkling a white powder onto her food. "Would you like to tell me about your family?"

He felt his heart beat a little faster. Did she know if they were okay? Or did she want to hear about them in order to confirm that the people they had captive were his family? After a brief moment of indecision Neteyam decided to simply say, "no."

She appeared startled, then said, "oh! No, I didn't mean it that way. I'm not interrogating you. I just thought it would be a good place for us to start getting to know each other. I don't have any children, but my sister has two little boys. I'm told you have a brother and two sisters."

Neteyam put a handful of fruit salad in his mouth and chewed it rather than answer her. He wasn't going to give her anything, he decided. Even if she really did just want to chat, which he doubted, other people listening might not have such innocent intentions.

Nguyen picked up her fork and speared a couple of pieces of her own fruit, showing him how it was done. "All right. We can skip small talk for now. As I mentioned yesterday when the soldier boys started getting ahead of themselves, my job is to help people like you make the transition to a new life that's going to be very different from your old one."

He looked at his cutlery. Lo'ak would have kept eating his his hands, just to spite this woman. Depending on how ornery she was feeling, Kiri might have done the same. But Neteyam was the good one, the obedient son. He picked up his fork and tried it. It felt awkward and unnecessary, and Neteyam, not yet used to his altered proportions, almost missed his mouth. Was it really worth the effort for humans to do this, just to not get their fingers sticky?

Nguyen was still talking. "I told you yesterday that you had a strong sense of identity and purpose. That's good. It's easier to cope with changes if you know your values and goals. What do you think you'd like to achieve in your life, Neteyam? What are your ambitions?"

He thought of a couple of possible ways to answer that, and settled on the truth. He swallowed his mouthful and said, "I want to fight at my father's side as a warrior of the Omatikaya. I want to help defeat the Sky People, so they leave our world and never return."

Neteyam had wanted to see how she would react to that. He was a bit disappointed: Nguyen's eyebrows quirked, but she nodded. "You have great admiration for your father," she noted. "I understand he's a quasi-legendary figure to your people."

"Toruk Makto appears only once in many generations," Neteyam told her.

"I assume you know your father was born human," said Nguyen. "Maybe you can consider this a way of understanding him better. Walking in his shoes for a while, so to speak."

Neteyam picked up the pancake and bit into it. It was very sweet and spongey, almost rubbery.

"It was actually your father's choice to permanently imprint his mind on his Avatar that inspired the research behind the recombinants," she went on, "so he's had a great effect on both our peoples."

He didn't answer her, because it was at that moment that Neteyam realized he was sitting on his tail. He shuffled in his seat to free it, but the sensation of pressure remained. Without thinking, he reached to pull it free – but his fingers found nothing. Humans didn't have tails, any more than they had queues. He'd been imagining it.

"Are you all right?" Nguyen asked him.

"Yes," he said. "I don't know where Dad is." He was probably at High Camp, but technically Neteyam had no idea, which was good – if he didn't know, nobody could force it out of him.

"I wasn't asking," Nguyen assured him.

Neteyam took another bite of pancake. If his mouth was full, he wouldn't have to talk. Lo'ak did that all the time. Their parents saw right through it... but Nguyen didn't know Neteyam the way Mother and Dad did.

"One of the hardest things for a lot of recoms is losing family connections," Nguyen went on. "Those relationships often just don't survive. To start a new life you unfortunately have to leave the old one behind, but it's not good for people to sever themselves from it entirely. You just have to forge new kinds of links to your past, and you have an opportunity to do that in ways others don't."

He studied her face. She was doing her best to look compassionate, but she was saying basically the same thing Quaritch had last night – you think your folks will want you back like this? At the time, the idea hadn't seemed any more real or relevant than anything else that was happening. Now he glanced down at the hands holding the pancake, the hands that were the wrong colour with too many fingers, and he wondered... assuming they were all okay, what would they think of this?

Would Lo'ak laugh at him, saying who's the little brother now? Would Tuk think it was funny that he was her size? Would Kiri tease him about being too small and slow to keep up, like she did Spider?

Would Mother look at him like she looked at Spider, as some alien thing that didn't belong with her family? Would Dad see him as part of something he'd turned his back on? Dad had become Na'vi and was now entirely loyal to the People. Would he assume Neteyam had switched sides?

"You look thoughtful," Nguyen observed.

Neteyam put more food in his mouth, and did not answer her.

After breakfast, Dr. Nguyen took Neteyam to an observation room, overlooking a space set aside for the recombinants. On the other side of a large window, half a dozen of them were engaged in a variety of tasks, under the supervision of humans in breathing apparatus. Two were throwing a ball back and forth, another was arranging objects by colour, a fourth covering one eye and reading symbols off a chart. They didn't appear to notice the scientists looking down at them, or if they did, they ignored them.

The man called Quaritch was pacing up and down the middle of this room, as if supervising. At first Neteyam saw only his back as he walked away. Then he turned around to come back, standing up straight with his hands behind him, walking with both nonchalance and authority. He looked from one side to the other as he slowly made his way back towards the observation window, but it wasn't until he was nearly there that he happened to look up and saw Neteyam.

The infuriating smirk appeared on his face again, and he gave a mocking little wave.

Lo'ak would have replied with the rude gesture only he, Kiri, and Dad could do properly... which Neteyam supposed he could also do now. But that would have been childish, unbecoming of the oldest son, so he just turned away.

Nguyen escorted him to a table that had been set up in the middle of the observation room. It obviously didn't belong there, as the room was really too narrow for anything but people watching the recoms in the bigger space beyond. Maybe it was the only place available. She pulled up a chair, put a box in front of Neteyam, and lifted the lid off.

"First, let's see if you can put this together," she said. "We try to make the tests a little fun."

Inside the box were a collection of colourful interlocking pieces which, according to the picture on the lid, could be assembled into a scene of a beach with strange-looking trees.

"Start with the edges," Nguyen suggested.

It looked like an easy enough task, but when he tried to carrying it out, Neteyam found that human fingers were short, thick, and clumsy, and the extra one at the end was distracting. At one point, he stopped working on the puzzle and deliberately flexed each finger in turn, to assert control over them. He discovered that the first two could each curl on their own, but if he tried to move the third the fourth would curl with it unless he made a special effort, and vise-versa.

Nguyen watched him do this and made notes, but did not offer information. She seemed to be waiting for him to ask questions. He refused to do so.

Once he had his fingers cooperating, the task of putting the pieces together was simple enough that Neteyam's mind could wander a little. In particular, his eyes kept darting over to what the recoms were doing behind the big window. He felt like there was something important there... and after a few minutes, he realized what it was.

Recoms were like avatars, or like the Na'vi themselves: they would need to breathe the air of Pandora to be comfortable for more than a few minutes at a time. Quaritch had been wearing a breathing mask, occasionally taking sniffs from it, when Neteyam woke up in this body. For strenuous tasks like they were doing now, proper air would be absolutely necessary. The exercise room must have some kind of passage to the outside in order to bring it in.

It took some effort not to get to his feet and go search right away. He couldn't do that now, not with so many humans in this room and so many recoms in the exercise area. Not to mention, he would probably need one of the breathing devices humans used when they needed to go outside on Pandora. If he wanted to escape that way, he would have to plan, and for that he would need information he didn't yet know how to get. It was at least an idea, though. That was a start.

All this time, Neteyam still felt like something was pinching his tail. He knew it wasn't real and yet the sensation was so convincing that he repeatedly moved in his seat, or reached back, without thinking, to try to move it. Neither did any good. It was annoying, uncomfortable, and rather worrying. Why did he feel that so strongly when he knew it couldn't be happening? Was he going mad?

"Look who's here!" a new voice said.

Neteyam looked up to see General Bush pull up a chair and sit next to Dr. Nguyen. Today he seemed to be in a friendlier mood, or at least he was pretending to be.

"How's he doing?" Bush asked.

"Very well," Nguyen replied. "We've got some difficulty with manual dexterity but it's well within parameters, and he was a bit surprised by the function of the ulnar nerve, but he's overcoming it quickly. Other than that, he's a little fidgety but all things considered he's adapting well to the physicality."

"Good news," said Bush with a nod.

"I am not deaf," said Neteyam. "I'm right here and I can hear you."

Bush put a hand on his shoulder, which Neteyam quickly shrugged off. The General seemed momentarily surprised, but did not appear to take offence. "Of course you are," he said. "You're not a soldier. You haven't been trained to sit quietly while people talk about you."

"I am a warrior like my father," Neteyam informed him.

"That's not the same as a soldier, though," said Bush. "Soldiers are cogs in a bigger machine. Your people don't look at war that way."

Neteyam had some idea what that metaphor meant, but he was losing patience fast. One human patronizing him he could put up with. Two was pushing it. He could have sworn he felt his tail twitching and his ears folding back, although when he touched the latter he found the rubbery disks fixed low down to the sides of his head had not moved. How did humans manage to communicate when essential body parts were missing or just didn't work?

"As long as we're talking," Bush said, "I think somebody ought to apologize to you for Quaritch yesterday, and it's not gonna be him, so I'd better do it. I'm sorry you had to hear that. He's got a chip on his shoulder. He never forgave your father for going native, and wasn't thrilled to find out your mom had killed his old body, either. We kind of suspected he consider this an opportunity for some kind of revenge but we didn't think he'd cut right to the chase the way he did. Ardmore had a word with him, and we'll keep him out of your way."

"Isn't it?" Neteyam asked.

Bush frowned. "Isn't it what?"

"Revenge," said Neteyam. "Turning me into something my family hates."

"Of course not!" said Nguyen, feigning shock.

"You're here because we need somebody to tell us how your people think," said Bush, "and it's just easier to talk to you if we're eye-to-eye and breathing the same air."

"Why would I tell you anything, if not because of what Quaritch said?" Neteyam asked. "That I have to be one of you now?"

"We're hoping we can show you that we're not as terrible as you've always been told," said Bush.

"We aren't here to destroy everything," said Nguyen. "There'd be nothing to gain from that. We're here because we need a place to live. Somewhere we can start over and not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors."

"With your help, maybe our two worlds can come to some kind of agreement," Bush suggested. "It's a big planet, you know. Lots of room for everybody."

"My father says there can be no agreement with the Sky People. He says you will consume everything in your path until you have burned our world like you burned your own," Neteyam replied coldly.

"Your father was sent to meet the Na'vi in order to help us make peace with them," said Nguyen. "The problem was that nobody here listened to what he had to say. We've learned from that. We want to try again. In a way, you'll be finishing his work."

"I'm a father, too, Neteyam," Bush said. "I've got a daughter about your age. She and her mother are still in cryo. She loves this place. She's been reading about it ever since she was old enough. Watched all the documentaries, read all the books. Even talked about getting her degree in astrobiology so she'd be able to come here someday. She was thrilled to think she'll be spending the rest of her life here. I want her to have a world."

"Not ours," Neteyam told him. "Find another."

Bush frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but Nguyen cut him off.

"I think that's enough for now," she said. "Remember, Neteyam has just had a big shock. We can't be surprised if he thinks he's a prisoner."

The general didn't get a chance to reply to that, either – at that moment there was a sudden dull thud as something hit the observation window, shaking the whole room. Everybody turned to look as the scientists who'd been watching staggered back in surprise, and found some kind of argument going on between two of the recoms. One, a female, had her male adversary in a headlock and was trying to wrestle him to the floor, while three humans and Quaritch moved to intervene.

"It's Bohan again," groaned Nguyen. "I'd better go talk to her. Demarco," she said to the warrior, who had remained standing over the table while Neteyam put the jigsaw puzzle together, "can you take Neteyam to... take him to requisitions. He can pick out something to decorate his room so it won't look so much like a hospital in there."

"Yes, Ma'am," said Demarco with a nod.

"Neteyam, I'm sorry." Nguyen gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "This is the sort of thing I'm here to try to prevent. Just go with Demarco, and I'll see you later, okay? I promise."

There wasn't much else Neteyam could do. Nguyen put on a breathing unit and went downstairs to the airlock, and the man called Demarco led Neteyam back the way they'd come in. The puzzle remained on the table, unfinished.

"Does that happen often?" Neteyam asked, meaning the violent outburst among the recoms. Maybe they hated this whole thing as much as he did.

"Bohan's the troublemaker," Demarco replied, "but it's her husband's fault. He won't let her see the kids. He says a big blue monster isn't his wife or their mother, even if it has her memories."

Was that how humans saw the People? Big blue monsters? Did they think they'd done Neteyam some kind of favour by this transformation?

The requisitions desk had a few things on offer: colourful blankets, posters for the wall, curtains so that people could pretend there were windows, and soft toys of strange animals that must have come from Earth. Neteyam did not ask for anything. There was nothing there that would have made that little room feel anything like home. Home was a platform in the trees with the living, breathing forest all around them. This was so entirely artificial and sterile that for all Neteyam could tell they might be in space, or underground, or at the bottom of the ocean. The only windows he'd seen were the ones in the ceiling of the cafeteria, and even those had showed only sky.

Back in the room that was apparently his, Neteyam sat on the floor, which felt more natural than a chair, and stared at the blank wall. Was this really how humans lived? In these empty little rooms, where they never saw the sun or the moons or the great eclipse, never felt the wind in their hair or the earth between their toes? How did they stand it? Was that why they seemed so determined to destroy everything they saw, because they were angry they could not be part of it? No wonder Prisha Patel wished she had an avatar.

What would she have thought of this? Would she have pitied him?

That night, curled on the bed with no blankets or pillows so as to better approximate sleeping in the family's hammock in the trees, Neteyam noticed something else: the silence.

At home they would have been surrounded by the nighttime songs of the forest. There was the wind in the trees, the bubbling of water, sometimes the patter of rain or the distant shudder of thunder. The chirping and whirring of insects, and the hoots and cries of nocturnal animals. It had always been a comfort, being cradled in the arms of Eywa while her creatures sang them off to sleep.

In here, there was the low, constant hum of the red nightlight, and occasional sounds of somebody moving or talking in the hallway. That was all. It felt deeply unnatural. Dr. Nguyen had said she didn't want him to feel like he was in a cage, but how could he not, when he was shut away from everything that had always brought peace and comfort?

The quiet seemed particularly deafening when he woke to it after another nightmare. This time he managed to cling to a few scraps of it: he'd seen that blue light, and then some monstrous creature, like an amalgam of all the bizarre Earth animals in the requisition toys, had come roaring out of it to devour him. He woke up shaking and sweaty, with his ears ringing in the silence, and then promptly forgot everything but the fact that he was in agony.

The last time Neteyam had been seriously hurt was when he'd been grazed by a bullet while rescuing Lo'ak. That had been painful, but he'd gritted his teeth and gone on, because his brother needed him and because his parents would have a fit if he got hurt. Which sure enough, they had done, when Kiri eventually noticed the injury.

If it had hurt like this, he wouldn't even have been able to stand. It felt like every bone in his tail was broken, like somebody had forcibly tied the appendage in a knot, like it was on fire.

He tried to grab it and lessen the pain through pressure, but there was nothing to grab. The Sky People had trapped him in a human body which had no tail at all – how could something hurt when it didn't exist? How could it feel so real when he knew he was imagining it? Neteyam rolled over in the hope that pressing his backside into the mattress would bring some relief, but it didn't.

The door opened and Dr. Nguyen stumbled in, wearing pajamas and slippers. There were two other people behind her, but they stayed back as she knelt next to the bed and put a hand on his arm. "Neteyam, what's wrong?"

She'd been watching him again. Didn't this woman sleep? But all he could do in reply was hiss, "tail hurts!" through his gritted teeth. She'd said she was a dokter. That was the English word for somebody skilled in healing, right? Maybe there was something she could do for this.

"Your tail hurts?" she asked, seeming puzzled, and his hopes dropped like a stone. She knew he didn't have a tail. She just thought he was mad, and she was probably right. But then she looked over her shoulder at the others and said, "phantom pain. He needs anticonvulsants." One of them nodded and ran off, and Neguyen squeezed Neteyam's hand.

"We're going to give you some medicine," she said. "It might make you drowsy or dizzy, but it should ease the pain."

Neteyam nodded. In that moment, in exchange for that promise, he might have told her anything she wanted to know.

The other human returned with a white tablet, like a small stone, and a glass of water to help Neteyam swallow it whole. He downed it, and then started to rub his face, only to stop when the unfamiliar shape of his nose sent a shudder through him. Why did humans need pointy noses? What were they for?

"There you go," said Nguyen gently. "Is that why you were squirming today? Phantom pains?"

He nodded.

"You should have said something," she chided. "Neteyam, I promise, I am here to help you."

In this particular case at least, it seemed like she was telling the truth. It took about a quarter of an hour, but slowly the pain began to subside. That was one thing, at least, that humans were really good at: medicine. Neteyam could recall two or three times in his childhood when his father had called on the people at Hell's Gate to save a life. Once, it hadn't worked – the man who'd fallen from his direhorse and broken his neck had been beyond saving. But when Peyral's wound had festered and everybody had thought she would surely die, they had cured her, and when the second of Mimawey's twins had refused to turn, the humans had saved both her and the child.

Eventually, the fiery pain in the tail he didn't have settled down to a dull, manageable ache. Dr. Nguyen sat on the floor next to the bed throughout the whole process, telling him about how the brain had a map of what the body was supposed to be shaped like, and if it wasn't getting input from a lost part it sometimes misinterpreted that as pain. Neteyam couldn't tell if he were supposed to be remembering any of it, or if she just wanted him to know she was still there.

Finally she said, "better now?"

"Yeah," he managed, and since he didn't want to be rude, he added, "thank you."

"That's my job," she told him with a soft smile that seemed more sincere than most. "If you need something else, anything, you can call me on that." She pointed to a black square on the wall. "Sleep tight, Neteyam."

With the humans gone and the lights off again, Neteyam curled up on the bed, on his side so it would be harder to imagine his tail was stuck somewhere painful. He felt more like a frightened child than he had in years... since the night she'd seen the Sky People's ships streaking across the dark sky. Neteyam wasn't scared of the Sky People when they were an enemy. He knew how to fight, and a warrior was brave. In this situation, he didn't know what to do besides drift along, doing as he was told.

The bed seemed so empty. What did a single person need with so much sleeping space? Neteyam should have asked for more pillows from requisitions. He could have arranged them around himself and at least pretended he had his family with him. It would have been a poor substitute without Dad's occasional snores. Or Kiri's nose whistle – which she'd insisted her brothers were making up to tease her about, even when Tuktirey said she could hear it, too. Without the sounds of their breathing there was only, once again, the silence.

What were they doing right now, he wondered. Were they sleeping at High Camp? Or had they been forced to abandon that site and move on? Or were they, too, as he'd already feared, being held captive somewhere? Did they know what had happened to him? If they did... when Quaritch said they wouldn't want him back, was it because he'd heard it from Mother and Dad himself?

That thought hadn't occurred to Neteyam yet, and it made him wince. He could picture Mother's face, with that look of disgust and disapproval she'd so often turned on Spider. What would he do if she looked at him that way?

Then he wondered... Neteyam was pretty sure he wasn't going to get any straight answers out of Nguyen or Bush, since both were trying to cozy up to him, but could he ask Quaritch? Bush had said that Quaritch wasn't supposed to talk to Neteyam again, because he'd just blurted things out. If Neteyam did talk to him, could he trick him into doing more of that?

That was the sort of thing Mother and Grandmother were good at... getting people to say things they didn't mean to say. Kiri could do it too, sometimes. All three women were, in various ways, tsahik, able to interpret the will of Eywa and to some extent see into the souls of others. Neteyam wasn't like them. He was a fighter, like his father. Just talking to people bored him. Could he possibly do this, even with somebody as volatile as Quaritch seemed to be?

"Great mother," he murmured, "help me find a way out."

But that didn't help. Here in this human place, so far from the trees and the water, he was pretty sure She couldn't hear him.

At breakfast, back in the big cafeteria with the man called Demarco still following them around, Dr. Nguyen asked him again: "Did you sleep better after the medicine? Any more nightmares?"

That made Neteyam wonder if the tablet had a purpose other than easing pain. His tail still felt pinched now, but he could ignore it. "Fine," he said.

She nodded, pleased. "I'll give you another one before you go to bed tonight."

He wasn't sure he would take them. Pain might be preferable to being drugged... but when he remembered just how much it had hurt, he reconsidered.

The weather was nicer today. Sunlight was streaming in the dome windows, and there were fluffy white clouds partially obscuring the pale crescent of the planet. As Neteyam watched, a small flock of flying creatures passed over, although he couldn't identify the species from this distance. "Where are we?" he asked.

"Site Nine. It's one of the old mining pits. The unobtainium seam turned out to be shallower than expected, so we put the area to a different use."

That was more of an answer than Neteyam had expected, but less than would have been useful. The Sky People had dug those pits all over, dozens of giant scars in the landscape that the jungle had only barely begun to heal. It would take thousands of years for the roots and grubs to break the bedrock down into good soil and recolonize it. There was one interesting piece of information there, though.

"Is that why there are no windows?" asked Netayam. If they were mostly underground, there would be no point.

"That's why."

Once again, he had to wonder how humans could live this way. The harsh glare of their artificial lights was no substitute for the sun.

"It's okay if you're a bit claustrophobic about it," Nguyen said. "That's something you and I have in common, actually. You want to know another? We're both the eldest."

Neteyam glanced up from his food and looked at her suspiciously.

She went blithely on, as if just making chit-chat. "I have two younger brothers. It was a pretty loud household, although not as loud as yours must've been with four kids."

Neteyam took a big bite out of some kind of flaky sweet bread, and didn't answer her.

"It's a lot of work having younger siblings," she said. "Sometimes you feel like you have to grow up too fast. Is there anything you wish you'd said to them or your parents, but never did?"

"Did you ask Bohan that about her children?" Neteyam wanted to know.

Nguyen straightened up, stiff with surprised. "Who told you about Bohan?"

Neteyam looked up at the man called Demarco, sitting next to him.

"Sergeant!" Nguyen said sharply. "That kind of information is confidential."

"Everybody knows about it anyway," Demarco complained.

"That doesn't mean you're allowed to gossip," said Nguyen. "How is Neteyam supposed to trust us, when you just go around babbling other people's secrets?"

Neteyam took another mouthful so nobody would see him smiling. It was petty, but it felt good to get somebody in trouble. No wonder Kiri had used to snitch on Lo'ak so often when they were little.

"I ought to speak to your superior," Nguyen went on, "but for now I'm just going to ask you to apologize to Neteyam."

"Seriously?" Demarco whined.

Nguyen nodded once, short and sharp.

Demarco looked like he would rather crawl under the table, but he turned to Neteyam and said, "sorry, kiddo."

"Go on," prompted Nguyen.

The warrior grimaced. "It was, uh... it was wrong to tell you those things. I won't do it again, and I will keep anything you tell me private."

Neteyam wondered if that meant not telling Bush, or even Nguyen herself. He doubted it. "I think I'll just not tell you anything," he decided. He hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to stick to that, but he had a bad feeling about it. The longer he was here, the more they tried to ingratiate themselves, the more they would expect him to tell them things, or try to trick him into it like he'd thought about doing to Quaritch. He couldn't let his guard down for a moment.