Like all the avatars and recoms, Bohan was a little odd looking. She had smaller eyes and a more human-like, pointed nose than a normal Na'vi – Neteyam was used to seeing such features on the avatars at Hell's Gate, and on his father and siblings. People from other clans sometimes found their features uncanny, but seeing it on Bohan didn't bother Neteyam at all. Like most of the recoms her hair was tightly pulled back into the single braid around her queue, with no effort to style it, and he could see a couple of small tattoos on her arms, peeking out below her rolled-up shirtsleeves.

She offered a hand. Neteyam knew about this custom, and reached out to shake it. Her hands were twice the size of his and once again, it made him feel very small.

"I've been hearing about you," she said.

"We're going to have a sharp word with whoever told her," Nguyen added.

"We're ten thousand people living in a tin can, Faye," said Bohan. "Gossip is the only thing keeping us sane." She turned back to Neteyam. "You're Sully's kid, then. You should hear the way they talk about your Dad." Her eyes flicked over to Quaritch.

"I don't know if that's appropriate..." Nguyen began.

"I can guess," said Neteyam. "I know they think he's a traitor."

"Hear that?" Bohan asked the psychologist. "He's not a child." She leaned forward to focus on Neteyam, and gestured with her right hand, indicating his body from toes to head. "So what do you think about all this, kiddo? From what I've heard I doubt they asked your permission."

"They didn't," Neteyam confirmed. What if they had? If he'd found himself dying somewhere and the Sky People had told him that he could come back, but it would be in this alien body, what would he have said? Wasn't it better to simply return to Eywa as everybody did, rather than be forcibly dragged back into the world as something else?

He knew that made sense, but there was another way to look at it, too – the one that had been on his mind since this had first begun to seem real. "I'm not enjoying it. I..." would she understand how cut off he felt? She had probably never connected with Eywa or with any of her creatures. He settled for the general, "I can't do the things I used to do."

"He's having trouble with the physicality," Nguyen said, apparently thinking Neteyam was having trouble finding words.

"And none of these people are as nice as they're pretending to be," Neteyam added, with a brief glance in Nguyen's direction. "But I'm glad I'm alive," he decided. "If I'm alive, I can help my family," he said.

In his corner, Quaritch snorted.

"What about you?" Neteyam asked. "You did give permission for this?"

"Yeah. It sounded like a good idea," Bohan explained. "Make a backup in case something happens to you. You and I died in the same fight, you know, off in the islands. You got shot by Uchida. He was still mad you'd put an arrow in him last year. I got crushed when one of those whale things breached onto the ship and trapped me between the bent bulkheads – or so they say, I don't actually remember that."

"What happened when you came back, then?" asked Neteyam. If she'd wanted this...

"I changed my mind," Bohan said. "I can't get used to being way up here. I can't get used to my face in the mirror. Then there's how Randy reacted. He said he just couldn't take it. We've got two kids and he said he didn't want them to see this. Nobody does." She shrugged one shoulder. "We're useful monsters, but we're still monsters. That's why they moved the whole program out to this hole in the ground. Because the normal people don't want us around.

"Faye says," she pointed a thumb at Nguyen, "that I have to stop thinking of myself as the same person as Emily Bohan. I've got her memories, but I don't need to live her life. But then why do they expect me to use this person's name, if I'm only a memory of her? They want to keep everything of her that was useful to them, but they don't actually want to keep me. I knew that going into this, but it didn't feel personal then. I guess it wouldn't, when it was something that would happen to somebody else once I was dead."

Nguyen was nodding. "Why do you feel you can trust Neteyam with this, Emily?" she asked. "You just met him. It took you weeks to open up to me."

"Because I get the feeling he knows what the hell I'm talking about," said Bohan. "You can get back to me when you've tried this for yourself."

"I'm not eligible to apply," said Nguyen. "I did check."

"Should I do that?" Neteyam looked at Nguyen. "Should I be thinking of myself as a new person?" In a way, he could see the point of it, but the question was asked out of suspicion. It would be a useful idea to his keepers. If he wasn't actually Neteyam, then it wouldn't be a betrayal when he turned against the People. Why had Nguyen not brought the idea up?

"I'm not sure that would be helpful to you," Nguyen replied. "You have a strong sense of identity and deconstructing it would be a painful process. You're also not in a position to interact with people you knew before and you don't have to deal with the dissonance of that."

Quaritch was getting impatient. "Is this little pity party really going to accomplish anything?"

"You can leave any time," said Bohan, without looking at him.

"No, I can't," said Quaritch. "Because the folks in charge are afraid you'll go apeshit on the humans if you're not supervised."

"He's talking about Ježek," Bohan said to Neteyam. "I threw him off the mezzanine. He deserved it."

"Are you really pulling out the that was one time defence?" Quaritch asked.

"No. I'm not even talking to you," said Bohan.

"Actually, Colonel," said Nguyen rather sharply, "I don't think you're contributing much to this conversation. I think we might make more progress if you stepped out for a moment." She considered what had been said so far. "You'll notice who's been doing most of the talking? I think that may be on your account."

Quaritch rolled his eyes, but then he put his water bottle down, and walked out of the room. Nguyen hesitated a moment, then got up to follow him. "I'll be right back," she promised.

Neteyam couldn't help snickering a little as she hurried out. The mental image of her telling Quaritch off while he scowled down at her from twice her height was amusing.

Bohan was not laughing. She crooked a finger at him, telling him to come closer.

"If there was something you wanted to tell me earlier, better say it now while there's nobody listening," she said softly.

Neteyam looked around to make sure there was nobody lurking in the doorway. "Where does the air get in?" he asked her in a whisper.

Her brows rose in surprise, but after a moment she seemed to realize why he'd asked. "Vents in the ceiling. I don't know if you could climb the ducts... they're straight up and there are fans and filters on the way. You want to get out of here? Where do you think you're gonna go?"

"I have to find my family," said Neteyam.

"You're just gonna go run off into the jungle and look for them?" Bohan sounded skeptical, but then she shrugged. "I guess you'd know how, wouldn't you?"

Neteyam himself honestly wasn't sure about that. The last few days had left him questioning whether he was capable of anything in this body. He knew he had to try, though, so he nodded.

"If you want my advice," said Bohan, "you have to make them trust you. The more they think they can trust you, the less they'll watch you. I threw one guy over a balcony and now I need a twenty-four-seven babysitter. It works the other way, too."

"Why did you do that, if now they won't leave you alone?" Neteyam asked.

"Because he was being a dick," she said bluntly. "And because I don't give a shit anymore. Where would I go?" She spread her arms to encompass the entire complex. "My people don't want me and yours won't take me. I can't even die because they'll just grow another one of me in the basement and pump my memories back into it. Have you been down there yet?"

"No," said Neteyam warily.

"It's a hell of a sight, all those empty bodies floating in tubes."

Neteyam thought of Grace Augustine's empty avatar, still in stasis at Hell's Gate because it didn't seem right to get rid of it. He imagined that, times... how many? Dozens? Hundreds? How many recoms were there? How many were they planning to make?

More importantly, was she right about trust? If Neteyam pretended to be more friendly to them, made it seem like he could be persuaded to turn on the People, would he be able to get out? Or was this just another trick, a way to manipulate him into cooperating?

"Just don't count too much on your family, kiddo," Bohan added. "They probably say they'll always love you no matter what, but there's some things that are too much. Believe me, I would know."

Nguyen walked back into the room then. Bohan glanced at her, then sat up straight again. "I think you need to get more exercise," she said, as if this were what they'd been talking about the whole time. "You're twitchy. Run some laps."

"I tried climbing the wall," said Neteyam, playing along. "I fell."

"I heard about that," Bohan nodded. "We've have some of the same problems. Your arms and legs aren't always where you think they are. It takes a while. First time I tried to punch Hutchinson I missed entirely."

Nguyen came and sat down again. "How are we doing in here? You two seem to be getting along."

"He's a bright kid," said Bohan, reaching down to ruffle Neteyam's hair. Her huge hand twisted his braids around, and he was glad he'd pulled them out from under the strap of his mask, or she might have dislodged it. "Not much of a talker, but I know I tend to monopolize conversations." She looked down at him. "What do you think, Neteyam, do I talk too much?"

"No. You have a lot to say," he said.

"Like I said," Bohan grinned. "Bright kid."

"That went very well," said Nguyen, as she took Neteyam back upstairs for supper that night. "I haven't seen her smile in ages, and I'm astonished some of the things she told you. Would you like to speak to her again sometime? I think the two of you might do each other some good. Sometimes the best medicine is just talking to somebody who understands."

Neteyam wondered if that meant he'd be seeing her regularly. He wasn't about to entirely trust Bohan, but he felt like she was more trustworthy than people like Nguyen and Bush. If nothing else, she wasn't overtly trying to get anything from him. When she said things like how it would take time to learn again how to do the things he used to do, he believed her more than he did Nguyen.

"If she's so unhappy, why don't you change her back?" he asked. "You made one body for her, why not another?" It seemed such an obvious solution to her problem, and to the Sky People's problems with her.

"There are policies about that," Nguyen replied. "The politicians don't want this done with any living person, because it's not right to have two of somebody, and they don't want anyone brought back from the dead in the same form. The idea is," she explained, "that if you do that for some people, you have to do it for everybody, and then where do you draw the line? What about people who die of old age? We're supposed to be building a world for our children and grandchildren, not for future incarnations of ourselves."

"No exceptions?"

"No exceptions," she agreed. "Not for Bohan, and not for you, either, if that's what you're asking."

He had thought of that. "What if I give you the information you need?" So far nobody had really tried to interrogate him, but he was sure it was only a matter of time. They'd wait until they felt like they'd worn him down a little... like they had made him trust them.

Nguyen sighed. "It's not a transaction, Neteyam," she said. "We want to come to an understanding with your people. We're hoping you can help us with that. Tomorrow I think I'm going to start showing you around a little more. You need to meet people, to see what we're doing here, maybe learn a little about the world we left behind. We need to understand you, but you need to understand us, too.

"In the mean time," she added, "I think I've got something you'll like. Today is actually a special occasion."

There were several things that a 'special occasion' might be, but it turned out to be a feast, like the ones the Omatikaya used to hold every year in remembrance of their victory over the Sky People. The festival had been on hold since their enemies had returned, but people promised their children it would be an even bigger celebration once they'd driven them off again.

Dad had never said that, and looked troubled whenever somebody mentioned it, so Neteyam himself had stepped up to reassure his younger siblings. He couldn't allow them to see Dad having doubts. He was the eldest – he had to take care of his sisters and brother.

There was a huge amount of food waiting in the cafeteria, some of it things Neteyam had seen before while others were strange. As well as slices of meat, there were mounds of pulped tubers in both white and orange varieties, green legumes, some concoction of jellied fruit, and a mash of bread and dried berries that was called 'stuffing', with brown meat juices to drench it all in. Nguyen usually let Neteyam choose his own food, but now she loaded up his plate for him with far more than he thought he could eat, and took him to table to sit down.

"It's called Thanksgiving," she told him. "It's in memory of the first colonists in a New World, so you can imagine how relevant it is to our little operation here... but mostly it's just an excuse to get together and eat a lot of food. People on any planet enjoy that."

She cut herself a piece of meat and dipped it in the juices before putting it in her mouth, and Neteyam picked up his own cutlery. He still found the tools awkward, though he was getting better with them, but with food as messy as this he could see how they were absolutely necessary. He started with something simple, and scooped up some of the orange tubers.

"Those are called sweet potatoes, or yams," Nguyen told him after swallowing her mouthful. "And the meat is from a bird called a trr-ki. Let me find you a picture of one." She pulled out her mini-tablet. "They make a very funny noise. I was absolutely terrified of them as a child."

Somebody pulled out the chair next to Nguyen, and Neteyam looked up to see Bush joining them once again. "How's it going?" the General asked.

"Oh, very well," said Nguyen. "I was worried Bohan was latching on to Neteyam as a substitute for her sons, but even if she is, his presence seemed to calm her down so much I think I'd like them to meet again. There's something I want to talk to you about, though," she added. "I had to dismiss Demarco for gossiping, and I hoped you could assign us another bodyguard to replace him."

"Happy to," said Bush, "but we've got some problems of our own to deal with." He looked at Neteyam. "Tell me something, Neteyam. You probably know the land around where your people live pretty well, I imagine."

"Yes, I do." Neteyam sat up a bit straighter. This was where they were going to try to question him about something, and he would have to be careful what he told them. Or... or was this an opportunity? Was it a chance to persuade Bush that he could be trusted, maybe without a guard to replace Demarco?

"There's a network of caves behind a waterfall," Bush said. "I think your people call it the River Noro." He pronounced it with a hard r, noh-row.

"Noro," Neteyam corrected him, using the correct sound: noddo. But the description got his attention so that he could almost feel his ears prick up, even though that was impossible in this body. He did know that place. He knew it very well.

"Thanksgiving dinner is not a good time for an interrogation, General," said Nguyen.

"What about it?" Neteyam asked.

Bush appeared to spend a moment thinking about what he was going to say next. "It's a pretty good place to hide things, isn't it?"

He was trying to make it sound like an innocent question, but Neteyam wasn't that stupid. "Yes, it is. We used to play in there when we were kids." Mother and Dad had never liked it, fearing the children would get lost or hurt in there. Several times, Neteyam had to go drag Lo'ak and Kiri out to save them from another scolding. "What did they hide in there?"

To his surprise, Bush chuckled a little. "All right, you're not dumb and neither am I. Let's talk like grownups." He leaned forward, resting his folded arms on the table. "On a raid a few weeks back, your people got a hold of some heavy explosives, the kind we use in mining. You've seen the old mine pits, right? We're in one. It's the stuff we use to blast those open. Our satellites detected gases escaping from the cave system that suggest it's hidden in there, and we want to retrieve it, but we can't locate it from the surface. Our seismic sonar has given us a layout of the first few metres, but to get any further we need to send somebody in."

"I don't know where they would have put it," said Neteyam. "There are a lot of hiding places in there. How much did they take?" That would give him an idea how much space they'd need.

"I'm not asking for a pinpoint location," said Bush. "Just a map of the caves."

Neteyam's heart was beating fast, but he knew he had to stay outwardly calm. This was an opportunity to win trust, but he had to do it right. After he'd been surly and uncooperative earlier, Bush would be suspicious if he jumped in to help now. Nor could he give them any really useful information, not without potential harm to the People. He had to tread carefully. He had to make them talk him into it, and then take great care what he told them in return.

"If I show you the caves," he said carefully, "you're going to take the explosives and use them against the People."

"No, no, like I said, it's a mining explosive," Bush told him. "We were shipping it to the south pole. We're mining heavy water from the ice caps for use in our fusion reactors. It's not intended as a weapon, it's not controllable like one, and if your people tried to use it, they'd probably end up hurting themselves more than us."

Neteyam wasn't fooled. They weren't worried about the People, they just wanted their stuff back. They must know that Dad knew how to use human technology and that he'd taught other warriors to do the same. An explosive was already a weapon whether used against people or against the earth, and it surely wouldn't be hard for either side to find a use for it in the ongoing war. But he had to let Bush think he'd been reassured, because he was starting to come up with a plan. "If I make this 'map' for you," he emphasized the word as if it were something he didn't quite understand, "what do I get?"

Maybe that was too much. Bush frowned. "What do you get?" he echoed.

"Neteyam, I told you, this isn't a transaction," said Nguyen.

He backed down. "I guess Quaritch would say I get to stay alive."

Bush sat up straighter, as if a little offended by the idea. "Yeah, but I'm not Quaritch," he said. "Okay, then. You're after something. What do you want?"

Neteyam glanced at Nguyen and found her eyeing him suspiciously – she thought she knew what he was going to ask for. He intended to surprise her.

"I want to know exactly how much you know about my family, and where you think they are," he said.

Bush considered it, then nodded slowly. "You know what? That's fair," he decided. "You deserve to know that anyway, map or no map." He pointed to Neteyam's plate. "Finish your dinner, and then I'll show you something."

On top of all the other food that night there was a dessert of pumpkin pie, which Neteyam found to be quite a nice flavour, sweet, savoury, and spicy all at once. He noticed several people taking second slices and might have joined them if he hadn't already eaten much more than he was used to. Instead, he left his dishes on the cart, and followed Bush into a small meeting room.

There was a big holo projector in the middle of the table, like the one at Hell's Gate, but instead of that Bush picked up a minipad and began bringing up images on that. He didn't turn it around right away, but Neteyam could see what he was looking at right through the transparent display, and it nearly made his heart stop.

The Sky People had pictures of all of them. Not just Mother and Dad, but himself and Kiri and Lo'ak. Even Tuk who was so young, and Spider, who wasn't really part of the family even if Kiri treated him like a brother. If these had been objects, instead of just floating shapes in light, Neteyam might not have been able to stop himself ripping them out of Bush's hands.

"Your parents, two sisters, and a brother," Bush said, and proceeded to mispronounce everybody's names. "You, Loke , Kerri , and Tuck-terri. The older girl appears to be a parthenogenic clone of Dr. Grace Augustine's avatar, which wasn't something we knew your people could do."

Neteyam didn't know what that meant, although he figured it had something to do with what Max Patel had once said, about Kiri having no father. Right now it wasn't important. Certainly not as important as the cold, crawling feeling of realizing that the pictures had been made the night the younger kids had been captured by the recom soldiers. The terror on their faces made Neteyam's chest feel tight. That awful evening was the last part of his old life that he remembered, although from what Bohan said he'd lived a little while after. They'd all gotten away again... right?

"The last time we located them, they were hiding in the archipelago off the east coast of the big continent." Bush changed the view to a map. "With a people called the, uh..." he frowned at the name. "Metaky ... no, just Mitka ... Mit-ky-na."

Neteyam looked at the letters, remembering the sounds that went with each. The Sky People had a system for writing down Na'vi words that was, for some reason, much easier than the one they used to write their own. "Metkayina," he said. What were they doing there? Why would they abandon the Omatikaya, the clan Mother had been born and Dad adopted into?

"As far as we can tell, they all survived our last skirmish," said Bush. "We've lost track of them since, though. We were hoping you could give us some idea where they might go next." He glanced at Neteyam. "But not right now, obviously."

If Neteyam didn't know why they'd leave the Omatikaya in the first place, he definitely didn't know what their next step might be. "Except me," he said.

"Sorry?" asked Bush.

"They all survived," said Neteyam. "Except me."

"Well... yeah," Bush admitted.

That wasn't something Neteyam had thought about in depth yet, not since that first night when nothing had seemed real... but as Bohan had said, Neteyam was dead. The human boy standing here looking at these images was just a memory of him. Maybe it was hearing about what the rest of the family was doing without him, but the idea seemed suddenly impossible to ignore.

He'd worried what his family would think of him returning in this body. Now he wondered, assuming he could find them, what they would think of him returning at all? Would they say the real Neteyam had gone back to Eywa, and he was just some monster the Sky People had made? If they did... they'd be right, wouldn't they?

"That's what we know," Bush said, "and we should have shared it with you right away, I see that now. All you wanted was to know they're all right, and I can't fault you for that." He turned off the holopad display, and then offered the device to Neteyam. "You can have this. They're not exactly the pictures you'd put on your Christmas cards, but they're something."

"Thank you, Sir," said Neteyam, accepting it. Was Bush actually being kind? He looked sincere, but maybe this was just an effort to make Neteyam trust him. Neteyam decided he didn't care. He did want those pictures.

"I won't ask you for that map right now," Bush added. He put a hand on Neteyam's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, and Neteyam let him. "Just think about it, okay?"

Neteyam did think about it, but only after he'd lain awake very late, flipping through the pictures on the holopad. There were Mother and Dad, slipping silently through the foliage, the soft glow of their photophores merging seamlessly with the shine from the leaves and insects around them. There was Tuk, in panicked tears, and Kiri trying to stay calm to reassure her sister despite her own terror. There was Lo'ak with his chin up, defiant and rude. And Neteyam himself with an arrow on his bow, the muscles in his jaw clenched, his eyes focused, determined to do his part.

It probably wasn't a good idea to directly compare his old and new faces. It would probably just make him feel sick again. But Neteyam got up and went over to the wall panel that showed a reflection, and held up one of the pictures of himself next to it.

The first thing he noticed was that he actually looked a lot more like his old self than he'd thought. Ignoring the colour and just focusing on the shape of the features, he did look very much like Neteyam, even more so than he'd looked like those old recordings of his father in his human body. If his family saw this new face, they might well recognize him after all.

The second thing was much less reassuring. As alike as those two faces, Na'vi and alien, might be, there was still a distinct disconnect between them. One of them was animated, blinking when Neteyam did and turning as he turned. The other was just a frozen moment. Looking at both produced a powerful self-identification with the moving face – that was him, and the other was just a picture. The longer he looked at the still image, the less like him it seemed.

After a few moments Neteyam had to turn away from the reflective panel, his stomach in knots. When he saw Dad again, he would have to ask him what he felt about those old recordings.

If he saw Dad again. If Dad wanted to see him again. If he could get to them.

Getting there was going to be a challenge, Neteyam thought. He brought the map back up and lay down on the bed, staring through the display at the ceiling. Neteyam had a very general idea of his world's geography. There was a globe of Pandora back at Hell's Gate that he and his siblings had looked at and played with, but he'd never bothered trying to memorize any of the features or the names the humans had given them, because those didn't seem like something he would ever need to know. Now he looked at the hovering sphere and wondered what sort of scale it was at. What did a day's travel look like?

The world was a sphere, but it was so big that you couldn't see that from the ground. Only once you got into space was the curve obvious, and even then, it looked huge. If he had to turn the virtual globe with his fingers to get from the place marked you are here to the islands Bush had mentioned, it had to be a very long way. Days by banshee, which he didn't have. Even longer by direhorse...

... but that wasn't an option, either. He couldn't ride a beast he hadn't made tsaheylu with. He wouldn't be able to tell it what to do. It wouldn't know if he were a friend or an attacker.

He definitely couldn't go on foot, that would take weeks. What he needed was one of those flying machines the Sky People used. How could he get one of those? There were a couple of them at Hell's Gate and there must be dozens here, but everything in this placed seemed to be guarded.

Then he realized the answer was right there: Hell's Gate. That would have to be the first place he went anyway, wouldn't it? The humans who lived there were, and always had been, friends of the People. They would help him.

When Neteyam had first started coming up with his plan over dinner, it had been a very vague idea that started and ended with tricking the Sky People into letting him out of this complex. Now he had something to do after that. Now this was starting to feel like a real plan.

Getting to Hell's gate would be the easy part, though. It was getting out of here that was going to be hard. His plan was working so far. Bush had taken the way he'd said map to mean he wasn't sure what that was, and had explained, showing him an 'application' on the holopad that would help him make one. He probably didn't think Neteyam would know how to do anything else with the device – and he didn't know much but there were a few things he knew it could be good for.

In the mean time, he brought up the drawing application. Neteyam did know what a map was. He'd used ones humans had made, and he'd even scratched a couple of them in sand when explaining to somebody else how to find a place. If he wanted, he could probably draw a pretty good, clear map of the caverns above the Noro River.

But now wasn't the time to draw a good map. Right now, he needed to draw a really, really bad one.