Revenant Rumble turned out to be a game in which each player had to amass an army of creatures described as 'undead minions'. These came in many types, each of which had different strengths and weaknesses. Once their armies were ready, players could do battle with each other.
"On Earth we'd just connect to the internet and be able to play with anybody," Viraj explained cheerfully, "but on Pandora it's just us. You gotta either play with somebody in the room, or with the computer, and playing the computer isn't any fun. Oh, get that lich," he pointed.
Neteyam wasn't doing well at the game. Pressing buttons on a controller wasn't how he was used to going about things, but he probably could have done it if not for the fact that both his hands were bandaged. Viraj was getting ahead of him very quickly.
He also didn't like the premise of the game. The creatures used as warriors had names like lich , zombie , and vampire , all of which had supposedly been raised from the dead – and all required something from the living to keep them going, whether souls, brains, or blood. It would have been an unpleasant concept anyway, but at the moment it also felt very... personal.
"Is this why Prisha's afraid of me?" he asked Viraj.
"What?" Viraj frowned.
Neteyam gestured to the screen. "Does she think I'm like these creatures, raised from the dead, and I'll need to feed on people to stay alive?" It was a wonder humans dared to create things like himself or the recoms, when they told stories like this.
Viraj laughed. "No, no, no," he said. "She knows you're not a zombie. She's just freaking out because she's had a huge crush on you forever."
This was news to Neteyam. "She has?"
" Oh , yeah. You didn't notice? You're the only one," said Viraj. "There's never been any boys around here except me and Spider, you know, and he's not interested in anybody who isn't seven feet tall and blue and named Kiri."
Neteyam had noticed that, and knew his parents had as well, but nobody had ever worried too much about it because Spider and Kiri were both very young and would presumably grow out of it. Maybe Neteyam hadn't noticed Prisha because he didn't spend as much time with her as the family did with Spider?
"Then you showed up the other day," Viraj continued, "and Prisha was all excited because this was the first new boy she was ever gonna meet. She was asking a million questions and it was so obvious she was going to hit on you the moment you woke up... and then it was just you. I honestly thought she was gonna die, she was so red!" He laughed.
"Because I'm not really human?" Neteyam said.
"No, because now you know ," said Viraj. "She didn't want you to ever find out she had a thing for you. She said there was no point because you two couldn't get together any more than Spider and Kiri can, and you probably had like six Omatikaya girlfriends anyway. Then she was sitting there trying to flirt with you and she didn't even know it was you!" He grinned.
Neteyam didn't know how to react to that. He understood how it was embarrassing for Prisha, but that also brought up the idea of him someday taking a human mate. Neteyam had never quite understood how that worked for them. How could they have a mate when they couldn't make tsaheylu with each other? It must happen somehow, clearly, because they had no trouble reproducing themselves, but if they couldn't get their minds in accord, what was the point ?
"Do you like her ?" Viraj insisted.
"Prisha?" Neteyam shrugged. "Not... I never thought of her that way." When he thought back to how she'd acted when he spoke to her in the past... how she'd smiled shyly and played with her hair, and looked away every time he met her eyes. Yes, the signals had been there, but he'd completely missed them. It just hadn't occurred to him to consider Prisha Patel a potential mate... and he still didn't want to.
"You want me to tell her that?"
"No!" said Neteyam.
"Look out! Here comes the dragon lich!" Viraj exclaimed, directing Neteyam's attention back to the video game. He'd totally forgotten about it during their conversation, but it seemed like Viraj could pay attention to both. "Quick, get it! Get it!"
Neteyam tried to do so, but Viraj had a head start and fingers unencumbered by bandages. It was impossible to hit the buttons fast enough. He hissed in frustration as Viraj claimed the prize.
"Man, you suck at this," Viraj declared, but with a smile on his face.
It was a relief when, a few minutes later, Reet came in to remind Viraj that he had chores to do. The boy grumbled, but thanked Neteyam for the game.
"Maybe I can cream you at it again later," he suggested cheerfully.
"You only want to play with me because you know I'll lose," Neteyam accused him. "You said you didn't want to play with Prisha because she always wins."
"And 'Dora never wants to play because I always beat her ," Viraj nodded, and left the room with a smile on his face.
Reet shook her head. "As long as we're both here, I might as well give you another checkup," she told Neteyam. "Sit down."
He sat on a stool, and she scanned him again with the holopad. Images and text scrolled by too fast for Neteyam to follow – much like the video game. It shouldn't have bothered him when he'd never played before and had two bandaged hands, but Neteyam was not used to losing. It was a good thing Kiri and Lo'ak hadn't been there to see it – they never would have stopped reminding him of it.
"Hold up one hand," said Reet. Neteyam raised the right one, and she scanned it. "We've been discussing the situation with the new recoms," she added. "Are they... are they bringing people back who aren't in avatar bodies?"
Neteyam appreciated having something else to think about it. "Nguyen said no," he replied. "She said they don't want to bring anybody back from the dead like that because... I'm not sure what the difference is." That was a lie, though. Nguyen had talked like it was a moral issue, but Neteyam was pretty sure it was just that people like the recoms, or like himself, were stuck . They couldn't decide they wanted to do something else with their second chance at life. They had to do what they were made to do.
"I'm not sure that's a relief or not," Reet remarked. "I imagine it's not every single person KIA, either, just the ones who have particular skills or knowledge that they want to keep. Other hand, please."
He offered the hand the eel had bitten. Reet held the holopad over it, watching images of the bones coming up, and nodded.
"Looks like we've nipped that infection in the bud, at least. I'll keep you on the antibiotics a couple more days just to be sure, and when you're done those, I'll try you on something for the phantom pain you mentioned," Reet promised. "Your wrist is also healing nicely. It's too bad we can't just print you a new bone, but we'll make do." She turned serious again. "I want you to keep that cast on for a couple more days at least – no cutting it off yourself, like Spider tried to do when he broke his toe. And after that, it'll still take a few weeks to get back to full function. I'll give you some exercises to do."
"Yes, Dr. Singh," said Neteyam obediently.
"Good. Oh, and I found your necklaces and bracelets. Here." She dug into her pocket and pulled them out to hand to him. As she did, something made a noise, and an icon popped up in the corner of her holopad. Reet paused with her hand still held out, and frowned at the alert.
"What happened to radio silence?" she asked, and gave Neteyam his jewellery before tapping the icon. An image of Max Patel's face filled the screen.
"Reet!" said Max. "Oh, good, there you are."
"Why are you calling?" she asked. "You know they can listen!"
"Then we'd better not tell them anything they don't already know," Max replied. "Listen: we're being followed. We've got recoms on banshees, and they're not anybody we know. That's bad news. It means they're making new ones."
"Yeah, the..." Reet began, then cut herself off. She glanced at Neteyam, and then changed what she was going to say. "We'll make a note."
"We're going to lead them away from the camp and try to lose them in the jungle," Max said.
"Got it," Reet nodded. "We'll let Tarsem and Mo'at know, and wait for more news."
"Great. I love you."
"Love you too. The kids are looking forward to you getting home." Reet puckered her lips and mimed a kiss, then shut down the connection. "You heard that," she said to Neteyam. "We've got a problem."
Neteyam stood up. Under normal circumstances he would have grabbed his bow and called Pawk, but Reet probably wouldn't have let him do that right now even if he could have. "How can I help?" he asked.
"You can stay right where you are," she replied, turning to another screen to spread the word.
He'd had a feeling she would say that, and he intended to argue. "There's going to be a fight," he pointed out. "Even the injured can be some use in battle. I can help treat wounded, or act as a lookout."
"There is not going to be a fight, because they're not coming here if we can possibly help it," Reet told him. "If they get close, Tarsem will figure out what needs doing, but right now it's not an issue. If you must do something, you can go tell Prisha to tickle the avatars. We've got three out." And with this bizarre statement, she left the room.
Neteyam didn't want to see Prisha if she didn't want to see him, but if he did as he was told now, perhaps he'd be allowed to do something more important later. He watched through a window as the outer airlock opened and Reet, in her breathing mask, went in search of the Omatikaya leaders. Then he headed back through the maze of trailers and passages to the Patel family's living space.
This time, he knocked, so Prisha would have nothing to complain about.
"Who is it?" she called out. She sounded calm now.
"It's me," he replied. "Neteyam. Your mother wants you to, uh, tickle the avatars."
The door opened and Prisha looked up at him, worried. "Is something happening?"
"She got a message from your father," Neteyam explained. "They're being followed, and your mother has gone to let the People know." Where was Dad right now? Down in the forest somewhere... so close, and yet not close enough to help. If only Neteyam could ride a banshee, he'd already be on his way down to look for them.
"Oh, no," said Prisha. "Have they found the camp?"
"Not yet."
"Let me find my stuff." She turned away and started digging through a drawer.
"You're... less upset now," Neteyam observed.
Prisha winced. "Yeah. Sorry about that," she said. "Freaking out at breakfast, I mean. It was just... you know, it was a shock, and then Viraj was being a jerk about it all day, and... the whole thing is just really weird."
"Yes, it is," Neteyam agreed.
"Aha!" Prisha found what she was looking for – a small handheld device with a cord – and closed the drawer. As she stood, Neteyam noticed that the obsidian knife was still sitting on the pile of books on her desk. She followed his gaze to it, and handed it to him.
"This is yours," she said.
"I only borrowed it," Neteyam said. "I'm going to have to give it back."
He tied it around his waist again. Prisha did not seem upset or embarrassed anymore as she looked something up on a computer pad in the wall, and then headed down three doors to another living area. Neteyam followed and watched as she knocked on the door just in case – when she didn't get an answer, she opened it and headed in. This was a living space for two people, and included link beds, showing it had one been part of a remote study site. Tables and shelves were strewn with paper and with strange objects like shards of smashed pottery and broken arrowheads, things most people wouldn't consider worth keeping. Why did the humans want those?
Prisha probably knew, but she was busy. She pulled up a chair and connected her device to one of the link beds.
"What's 'tickling'?" asked Neteyam.
"It's a way to let the avatar drivers know we need to talk to them, without having to wake them up or call them on the radio," Prisha said. "I invented it myself. They say it feels like a pinch or a poke." She brought up a symbol on the object in her hand, and touched it. The brain wave readings on the wall above spiked in reaction.
A few seconds later the link bed beeped, and the lid opened. The bearded man inside sat up, blinking, and looked at her.
"What's up?" he asked. "Don't worry, Keith's watching me." He glanced at Neteyam, but said nothing to him. Neteyam tried to think of his name and finally recalled it: Robert Hathaway, an archaeologist. These objects weren't garbage, they were the remains of people who'd lived long ago.
"You need to come home," said Prisha. "Dad's in trouble."
Hathaway nodded. "We'll cover the site and head back right away. It's going to rain anyhow." He lay down again, and Prisha closed the link bed and stood up.
"That's Rob and Keith," she said, nodding at the opposite bed. "The third is Louise. She won't be able to ask why, because she's got nobody to watch her avatar, but she'll know to come back."
They went back to the main room, where the link beds from the big lab in Hell's Gate were now housed. Prisha hooked her device to number two, which was being used by entomologist Louise Dulac. 'Tickling' her produced the same spike in the reads, and Prisha, satisfied, disconnected her device and gathered her things.
"You built that?" Neteyam asked.
"No, I just programmed it," said Prisha, winding up the cord. "The software was originally for getting medical readouts on the avatars without having to actually bring them back to a scanner. If the avatar is in use, even at a remote site, we can use the biofeedback in the driver's human body to assess illness or injury. I just turned it around to use the body as a transmitter instead. We can even sort of send Morse code, though it takes ages." She smiled, proud of herself, but then that faded. "I guess you're not very interested in that."
Neteyam never had been. The humans' world, with all its glowing holograms and synthesized sounds, its walls and windows and processed air, had always seemed very artificial – and never more so than now he was trapped within it. But the idea that she understood these machines well enough to adapt them to new purposes, like re-shaping a broken spear point, was impressive. Suddenly, Neteyam wondered if he could learn to do something like that. He'd never even considered trying.
"Do you really run this place by yourself?" he asked.
Prisha turned pink and ducked her head. Neteyam held up his hands, worried he'd offended her again, but that didn't seem to be the case. "Not really," she admitted. "Everybody does bits and pieces, but Dad says I probably know the overall system better than anybody except the people who originally built it." She pushed her curls behind her ears, and looked at a point on the wall somewhere behind Neteyam's head. "Sorry."
"Why apologize?" he asked.
"Because I was bragging. You know. I wanted to sound impressive." She shrugged one shoulder. "I guess it's all pretty meaningless to you."
"It is," Neteyam agreed. "The only thing I know about it is that it's very complicated." Dad had told him that over and over when they'd visited as children. Don't touch that. It's complicated and fragile .
"Oh, yeah," Prisha nodded. "Everything here has hundreds of subroutines and mostly the programming takes care of itself, but every so often it does something weird. Like, we never had to use the heaters when we lived in the valley, but it gets cold up here so we had to turn them on and when we did the image generators on the big table got all out of sync. It turned out the AI had filed heating as a non-critical system and started using that part of the server to run video drivers because the board where they were originally stored had water damage and shut down, and it never bothered to tell us. It only takes half a day to fabricate a new circuit but it took ages to test them all and find the broken one, because we had to leave the..." she looked up at Neteyam again, and firmly shut her mouth. "Sorry," she said again.
"It's like the forest," Neteyam decided. "All the parts are connected and depend on each other, as energy flows between them." That didn't help him understand it, but it did make him feel like it could be understood.
"Yeah, kind of," said Prisha. She smiled awkwardly.
There was a beep and a clunk, and the link bed next to them opened to reveal Louise Dulac, with her short blonde hair and big hoop earrings. She sat up and looked at the two young people next to her. Prisha quickly stepped away from Neteyam, and he did the same, just because she had.
Louise's eyebrows rose. "Am I interrupting something?" she saked.
"No!" said Prisha. "You got back fast. Are you okay?"
"I didn't go far," Louise replied, in her purring French accent. "I found some interesting specimens just a few yards down the rocks, and I wanted to observe their behaviour a bit before collecting them. With my luck I'll never see them again." She scowled at the thought, but it passed quickly. "What's going on?"
"Dad and Dr. Spellman have somebody following them back," Prisha told her.
"Merde," said Louise. She stood up and stretched, and went to see if she could find out more.
Once Rob Hathaway and his partner, Keith Pacharanat, had returned, the humans held a meeting in the room where they ate, with Reet explaining the situation to everybody. Neteyam hoped somebody would suggest something they could do about the situation, rather that just sitting here and hoping it worked itself out, but nobody did. Instead, they all agreed to wait for word from Max and Norm, and then everybody got back to work.
The various humans went to their own workspaces or, like Margo, set something up in the big lab or the dining room. Rob and Keith pored of satellite photos of the area where they'd been excavating and ancient battle camp. Louise whispered to herself in a foreign language as she wrote out labels for a collection of dead insects. Reet and Viraj began taking inventory of their emergency supplies.
Through the windows, Neteyam could see that the People were also busy. They were checking weapons, repairing riding gear and armour, mixing paints... they were preparing for battle. The urge to just run outside and start something, to just choose one of the dozen tasks that must still be waiting for a pair of hands and set to work, was almost overwhelming. Neteyam had to remind himself over and over that he wouldn't be able to breathe, and even if he put one of those awful masks back on, a saddle would be as big as he was, an arrow longer than he was tall. He would be as useless out there as he was in here.
"Neteyam," said Reet. "Please sit down. You're pacing like a caged animal."
Like a caged animal was exactly how Neteyam felt. It was how he'd felt the whole time he'd been at Site Nine and now here, which ought to have been a safe place, was just the same. Since waking up in that lab with Quaritch looking down at him, the only time Neteyam had felt free was when he'd been finding his way through the forest and the mountains – and as Reet had pointed out, that had nearly killed him. He was as much a prisoner here as he'd been among the Sky People.
How long did humans live? Because Neteyam had a sudden horrific vision of the rest of his life, decades of this entrapment and boredom and uselessness stretching away before him into infinity. It made him want to be sick again.
Prisha looked into the room. "Viraj," she said, "I've got the stuff to replace that holoscreen generator... can you come help me?"
"Sure!" Viraj put down the holopad he was holding and went to join her, but his mother stood up to stop him.
"What do you need him to do?" Reet asked.
"Just hand me tools and stuff," said Prisha.
Reet nodded. "Neteyam," she said. "Do you want to..."
He didn't even let her finish the question. "Yes!" Anything to feel useful, and to stop thinking about the horrible abyss that had taken the place of his future.
Prisha looked doubtful. "Do you know the difference between a flathead and a phillips?"
"No," he said, "but you can tell me."
Reet gave her daughter a pleading look, and Prisha gave in. "Okay," she said. "In here."
She took him to the far side of the main lab, opposite the link bed Louise had been using and near the gestation tube that still contained Grace Augustine's old avatar. As Prisha got her parts out of the fabricator, Neteyam paused to run a hand over the glass and look at the naked body floating inside, eyes shut as if it were peacefully sleeping. Mother and Dad had brought Kiri here regularly ever since she was little, wanting her to know where she'd come from even if the exact mechanism were a mystery. They'd wanted her to watch Grace's old logs and read her research, and feel like she knew this woman.
The body in the tube did not react to Neteyam's touch, any more than it had when Kiri would talk to it or even climb up on top of it. For the first time, he wondered why the humans kept it. Were they still hoping it might wake up someday?
"Okay," said Prisha, moving a chair so she could crawl under a console. "The flathead screwdriver is the one that's a straight line, and the phillips is the one that's a cross. Can I get the phillips one first please?"
Neteyam looked at the implements she'd laid out, and found the one she'd described. "Here," he handed it down to her.
"Thanks." She vanished beneath the console and began taking it apart.
While waiting for his next instruction, Neteyam looked over his shoulder at the gestation tube again, and something tickled his memory. "Do you remember... I don't know if this was the same day you pulled my tail, but didn't Tuk once ask you why you didn't just make your own avatar?"
"Yeah, she did," said Prisha. "I told her we didn't have the equipment here for that."
It was reassuring to know that some of Neteyam's memories were accurate. "But if you know how all these machines work, couldn't you build it?"
He was pretty sure the answer was no. If she could do that, surely she would have already done so – why would anybody live their life in these glass and metal cages if they had a choice about it? Still, there was just enough of a nugget of possibility there, a faint, desperate hope, that he had to at least ask. An avatar wouldn't be the same as his old body, but it would be a lot better than this.
"Not here," she replied. "Maybe I could have at Hell's Gate. The fabricators there had way bigger libraries. Not up here, though. Here." Her hand came out, offering him the screwdriver and four black metal screws. "Hang on to these for me. Do not drop them. If we lose one we only have a limited number of spares."
"Got it." Neteyam closed his left hand around the screws, tightly so he could feel their presence through the layer of bandages. "Why didn't you make yourself an avatar at Hell's Gate, then?" She'd said she wanted one.
"I need the pliers with the blue handles now," Prisha said. "Avatars take years. They used to grow them in transit, you know. They'd start the embryo before they left Earth, and by the time they got here, six years later, it would be mature and ready to use."
"I don't think that's true anymore," Neteyam said, handing her the pliers. "The last thing I remember... I'm not sure how long ago it was, but it can't be much more than a year." Less since his actual death. He didn't know when they would have started this body, but it couldn't have been before that night when they'd captured his memories – or most of them, at least – in the blue light.
Prisha removed a circuit board from the console, trailing a tangle of multicoloured wires that looked distressingly like the machine's intestines. "Small flathead," she said, giving him the pliers back. He took them and found the screwdriver she needed. "Maybe that's why they're making so many more recoms," Prisha mused. "Because they've figured out how to do it faster. If it still took years, it wouldn't be practical."
"Maybe," said Neteyam.
That was when both of them heard a commotion outside. Prisha wriggled out from under the console and got up to look, but the view from here was blocked by Grace's gestation tube. Neteyam went around it and wended his way through tables and terminals to the window, where he opened the blinds to look outside.
People were gathering around a banshee that had landed, and somebody who had just climbed down from is back. Neteyam couldn't see anything through the crowd – it was like trying to see something going on in the treetops with a thicket of bamboo in the way. What he did see was Tarsem come up at a run, and people moved aside to let him through. After a few seconds, the Olo'eyktan reappeared, leading the newcomer down deeper into the caverns of High Camp, towards the area where they held their councils of war.
Neteyam only saw the man from behind, and only for a split second, but he recognized him. He would have recognized Dad anywhere.
This time, he couldn't stop himself. He grabbed somebody's discarded mask that was lying on a desk, and dashed for the airlock. On the way, however, he ran into the corner of a console, which dug right into his injured ribs. The air rushed out of Neteyam's lungs, and he dropped to his knees, holding the bruised area.
"Oh, god, what did you do?" Prisha ran to help him. "Mom! Neteyam's hurt himself again!"
"Skxawng!" he said through his teeth, beating a fist on the edge of the console. "Skxawng, skxawng, skxawng!" How was he still so clumsy and stupid in this body? Even for a human he was an awkward mess... Prisha had said again as if hurting himself were the only thing Neteyam ever did!
The other humans had also heard something happening outside. The ones who'd been working in the lab had moved to the windows to watch, and now more were arriving. Margo announced that she would find out what was going on, and climbed into her link bed to do so. Reet went straight to Neteyam.
"He just fell down out of nowhere," said Prisha.
"No, I didn't!" said Neteyam. He wasn't that broken. "I hit my ribs on the corner. I need to get out there!" He grabbed Reet's sleeve as she knelt down to examine him. "My Dad is here!"
Reet looked up. "Margo, did you hear that?"
"Yes! I'll see if I can talk to him," Margo promised. She began to lie down, then sat back up again. "Neteyam, do you want me to tell him you're here?"
Neteyam grimaced, both from the pain in his side and at the question. Telling people about this seemed to get harder every time he had to do it, and telling Dad would mean facing whatever his reaction was going to be. So far the reactions had not been good. What if Dad were disgusted like Pa'ay and Tarsem had been?
As tempting as it was, though, Neteyam shook his head. Having Margo do it for him would be the act of a coward. Neteyam was supposed to be a warrior. "No," he said, "I'll tell him myself."
"Got it," said Margo, and shut the lid,
While Reet scanned his ribs, Neteyam watched through the window as Margo's avatar came running out to question the gathering warriors. Several people brushed her off, but then a man took pity and invited her to follow them to the council. She thanked him and fell into step with the crowd, and Neteyam's shoulders slumped. That meant he wouldn't find out what was happening until it was over, because she would not be allowed to leave until Tarsem and Dad officially adjourned.
"I'm sure you'll see him soon," said Prisha.
"Lift your shirt," Reet ordered, less sympathetic. "You haven't broken anything but I want a look at your bruises just in case."
She prodded at the area, making Neteyam hiss with pain, but eventually seemed satisfied that he hadn't done any further damage. He was allowed to resume helping Prisha with her repair, but now he kept the blinds open and one eye on the outside, looking for signs of Dad coming back. Margo had said she wouldn't tell, but what if Tarsem did? How would he phrase it, and how would that shape Dad's reaction?
"Screws," said Prisha, holding out her hand.
Neteyam frowned. What had he done with them? He must have put them down to grab the mask when he'd been about to go outside, but where? "I don't know where I put them."
"What?" She wriggled out from under the console again. "I told you to hang on to them! We're low on metal right now. We don't want to make more."
"I..." he looked around. "They've got to still be here somewhere."
Prisha groaned. "We'd better look, then."
Neteyam tried to retrace his steps. He'd gone around the tube to the window, and then he'd run over to here to get the mask, and then turned this way and banged his ribs... the screws had to be somewhere along that path. He got down on hands and knees and starting searching.
He was feeling around in the dark under a link bed when he heard the clunk of it opening. Neteyam backed up and sat up, just in time to barely avoid getting kicked in the face as Margo climbed out.
"Oh, my god!" she exclaimed, putting a hand on her chest. "You scared me! What are you doing down there?"
"Did you talk to Dad?" Neteyam asked, scrambling to his feet.
"I didn't get a chance to," said Margo, "but he and Tarsem have a plan. They're going to lead the recoms into a trap."
Neteyam breathed in sharply. So there was going to be a fight – and he wasn't going to be a part of it. Of course, Dad was always telling Neteyam to sit things out and let the adults handle it. He might be glad to know his son was trapped in this body where he couldn't do anything.
"Prisha, where's your Mom?" Margo asked.
"Mess hall," Prisha replied.
Margo nodded and went to find Reet.
Prisha looked thoughtful. "I wonder if... if they want the avatars to help, we can use the Morse code tickle to coordinate things over distance from here!" She looked at Neteyam and grinned. "The RDA can listen in on the radio, but they can't intercept that!" Her screws forgotten, she followed Margo out.
That left Neteyam standing there, feeling more powerless than ever. Even Prisha, who was younger than him and hadn't gone through any warrior's tests, had a way to help here. Neteyam himself was just going to have to sit and wait for Dad to come back. He couldn't even talk to him by radio, because as Prisha had just pointed out, the Sky People might overhear...
Then, Neteyam could almost feel his ears prick up as he suddenly knew what he could do. "Prisha!" he called out, running after her. "Wait, I have an idea!"