Dara shut her eye. "It is true. But I know what happens when there is an escape. In the place where my work is, there is one from Great Bend Tree. She tells me of what happens."
Dara fell silent and Cadnan watched her nervously. But he had no chance to speak: she began again, convulsively.
"When this other escapes it is from a room of Great Bend Tree." Cadnan nodded: he and Dara were of Bent Line Tree, and hence in a different room. The segregation, simple for the masters, was handy and unimportant, and so it was used. Cadnan thought it natural: every tree had its own room.
"Do they find the one who escapes?" he asked.
"They find him. The masters come in and they punish the others from the room."
Precedent was clearly recognizable, even though it made no sense. Those who had not escaped surely had no reason to be punished, Cadnan thought. But what the masters had done to Great Bend Tree they would do to Bent Line Tree.
Everyone would be punished.
With a shock he realized that "everyone" included Dara.
He heard himself speak. "You must go."
Dara looked at him innocently. "Go?" she said.