This essay represents an unusual almost-coincidence of anniversaries. You're reading it in the issue marking the 80th anniversary of Analog (though it has gone through a few name changes during those 80 years). I'm writing it very close to the 40th anniversary of Apollo XI, the first craft that carried humans to a successful landing on a natural body other than Earth—and back.

Both of those are accomplishments worth celebrating, but my main interest here—as usual—is not in the past, but in the future. Where do we go from here, and how have our visions of the future changed from what they used to be?

In the case of Apollo, that event marked the climax of a period of long-term optimism and expansive vision, which had also been reflected in much of the science fiction of preceding decades. Science fiction (especially in this magazine) had often embodied a view that intelligent beings such as ourselves could do worthwhile and even astounding things by learning to understand the universe and apply its rules. The Apollo program provided living proof of that belief: in just a few years, teams of human beings actually did something that, even just a few years earlier, had been widely regarded as a quintessential example of “impossible.” Suddenly it became the opposite kind of example: we often heard exuberant cries of, “If we can put a man on the Moon, we can..."

But then a reaction set in. We started hearing that phrase distorted into a sneering, “We can put a man on the Moon, but we can't...” A wave of pessimism started sweeping across the planet as people downplayed the wonderful things they could accomplish and dwelt increasingly on the problems that came with new abilities. Well, of course there are problems—but, as John W. Campbell (who edited Astounding/Analog for 34 years) once observed, “Problems are things that engineers solve for a living."

However, engineers can't do it all. They can handle the technical aspects, but the rest of us have to deal with the myriad subtler problems of deciding how, if at all, to integrate new knowledge and technologies into our lives. Those, not the technologies themselves, are—and will continue to be—the main business of science fiction.

And a great deal of nonsense has been written about them and eagerly embraced by a public that too readily jumps on bandwagons and too seldom thinks critically or beyond the moment.

The Apollo program, for example, should have been the beginning of something really big—but too many people saw it instead as the culmination of something big. The last Moon-landing mission—for whose launch I was present, and which I regard as one of the few things I've experienced for which the word “awesome” actually fits—occurred a mere three years after the first. No person has set foot on the Moon or any other planet since, and it is not yet clear that any ever will. There have been other strides in space, to be sure; but it's been an uphill battle, and one of the most promising (and important) paths—direct human exploration of other bodies—has been at least temporarily abandoned. It became all too fashionable to say, in effect, “We've been out there; there's no need to go again."

For a telling analogy to illustrate how sensible that attitude is, imagine an alternate Earth on which all of our species were confined to mainland Europe, and a few intrepid souls managed to make it to the nearest shore of England—and then said, “Well, we've seen the rest of the world. Time to put the boat away and forget about it!"

Part of the problem with Apollo, of course, was that the reasons too many people saw for it were the wrong ones. They saw it as a game, a race to beat the Russians—and once that race was won, there was no reason to do more. It was, they “thought” (though “felt” would be a more accurate word), time to look for other amusements.

But in the cosmic scheme of things, beating the Russians to the Moon was a pathetically petty motivation. The real importance of Apollo should have been as a stepping stone to bigger things, like exploration, use of off-Earth resources to build better lives for ourselves and our descendants, and—most basic of all—long-term survival. If we really care about having our kind continue far into the future, building on our considerable past accomplishments and learning to grow beyond our past shortcomings, we're going to have to start moving back into space. I recently heard such a claim dismissed with a flippant, “Why worry about long-term survival? The Sun isn't going to become a red giant for billions of years.” True enough—but there will be extinction-level collision events much sooner than that, and we need to learn how to deal with them and get some of us established elsewhere before that happens.

And we may not have “all the time in the world,” even on that more modest scale. My own story “The Unreachable Stars” (which appeared here in April 1971) showed a not-too-distant future in which our descendants had painted themselves into a corner, irrevocably throwing away the chance ever to go into space by buying too completely into the “We must solve our problems at home first” fallacy.

It could happen here.

Meanwhile, there are indeed plenty of other problems we must solve, but there are also plenty of opportunities to aspire to. It is the job of science fiction to explore both. Not to predict the future—to tell what will happen—but to explore the possibilities and help us choose the paths we'd like to follow.

And I can't overemphasize the importance of choice. There are those who think we must all go wherever the current takes us; some of them relish the idea and talk about “riding the flow,” while others dread it and complain of being “swept up” in it. Both views, like the extremes of most such “dichotomies,” are simplistic and have generated their own share of silliness.

I'm reminded, for example, of some that has recently appeared on a couple of websites commenting on this magazine's practices. Much of it originated with a young writer who was miffed that, at least up to the time of this writing, Analog chose not to accept submissions by e-mail rather than on paper. He thought we should, not just because it would be more convenient for him (which hardly constitutes a reason), but because “everybody's doing it” (which was not true, and in any case would not be a reason either).

New technologies offer choices, and both individuals and societies are entitled—and obligated—to make those choices in what they see as their own best interests. Among the nonsense this discussion thread generated was an assertion that we and other magazines that still preferred hardcopy for initial submissions were “no longer dedicated to exploring the future, but to preserving the past.” This is so easily refuted by actually reading our content that it hardly warrants a response, but even in the matter of editorial practices (which every publisher is free to set as it sees fit) it makes no sense. It makes it sound as if we were clinging to all old practices and rejecting all new ones solely for the sake of oldness or newness. It ignores the fact that initial submissions are the only phase for which we want hardcopy; once we buy a story, everything else is done electronically.* As new methods become available, we adopt the ones that we think make our lives better, and pass on the ones that don't—which I respectfully submit is the most sensible approach for anyone, individual or society, to follow with respect to any new technology.

That's plenty about the trivial details of publishing practices and preferences (though far less than appeared in these threads). How about the meat of the matter—what science fiction is about?

Another kind of silliness I see from time to time is essays saying that science fiction itself is obsolete or irrelevant because we're already living in the future that science fiction tried to foresee. To put this in perspective, please take another look at my alternate-world example above: “We've already seen England, so we've seen the world.” I often marvel at the perennial ability of people (even ones who really should know better) to believe that the world they happen to be living in is the Finished End Product of all that went before, as if no significant change could happen later. That has never been true, and it isn't likely to be anytime soon.

Yes, it's true that we're now living in a world with many resemblances to some of the futures imagined by science fiction writers of the past (though not quite like any of them). It's also true that many things that used to be considered “strictly science fiction,” like organ transplants and cell phones and basic space travel, have been absorbed into mainstream literature, so it's harder than it used to be for a casual observer to tell the difference. In my own novel Argonaut (Tor Books, 2002), there's a scene where some of the characters go to a not-so-distant future science fiction convention and find it populated almost exclusively by geezers, since only they still recognize a distinction between mainstream and science fiction.

But there is still a difference, and the facts that many science-fictional imaginings have become everyday reality and the chasm between mainstream and SF is less obvious does not mean that the show is over. Yes, we live in what people of the past called the future, but we need to remember that anybody's future is somebody else's past. A lot has changed to get us where we are, but at least as much will change in our future—so we'll be constantly looking ahead and finding new subject matter.

I believe it was Harlan Ellison who, some years ago, answered a reporter who asked “What are you guys going to write about, now that people have actually landed on the Moon?” with, “Lady, there hasn't been a Moon landing story in twenty years."

It's true that nobody now is going to score points for novelty by writing about Moon rockets or clones. But it's also true that our real future is going to include a great many other things that both scientists and SF writers have only begun to glimpse—and that those will lead to sweeping changes in how we live. What kind of changes? That's for us to choose, but we can be sure they will include both enormous opportunities and enormous dangers. Exploring those opportunities and dangers, and how we can steer toward them or away from them, will continue to be the very important work of science fiction.

That's what Astounding/Analog has been doing for the last 80 years, as Ben Bova—the only person on the planet who has gone from being an Analog reader to being a writer for it, then its editor, and then back to writer and reader—recalls in his essay elsewhere in this issue. And it's what we expect to continue doing, in one form or another, for a good many more years. The specific scientific developments and technologies we write about will not be the same ones that concerned us in the past, but I expect to keep finding new ones as far downstream as we can look—and we'll always face new concerns about how to survive, live with, and ultimately thrive on the new possibilities. Even if we ever reach a point where we know everything that could be learned (don't hold your breath!), I doubt that that will lead to an unchanging world, because people will continue to get restless and change their minds about what to do with all that knowledge.

So please think of this anniversary issue not as the end of our first 80 years, but as the beginning of the next 80—and enjoy!

Copyright © 2010 Stanley Schmidt

* One participant in the discussion wrote, “If they want manuscripts as hardcopy, doesn't somebody have to retype the manuscript?” Of course not; that would be ludicrous. We prefer hardcopy only for the initial reading; for the small percentage of stories we buy, we want an electronic copy because that makes all later stages much easier. And, of course, we reserve the right to change our preferences at any time—conceivably even before you read this—but if we do, it will be because our preferences or circumstances changed, not because we felt compelled to go along with somebody who thought everybody should do things his way.

ABOUT THE COVER

On October 31 2009, NASA will launch the first test flight of its next-generation spacecraft and launch vehicle system. The test flight, called Ares I-X, will bring NASA one step closer to its exploration goals—to return to the Moon for more ambitious exploration of the lunar surface and to travel to Mars and destinations beyond.

The Ares I-X flight will provide any opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities, and ground operations associated with the Ares I crew launch vehicle. It also will allow NASA to gather critical data during ascent of the integrated Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I launch vehicle stack—data that will ensure the vehicle system as a whole is safe and fully operational before astronauts begin traveling into orbit.

—text and image courtesy NASA

Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXX, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2010. ISSN 1059-2113, USPS 488-910, GST#123054108. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One-year subscription $55.90 in the United States and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within eight weeks of receipt of order. When reporting change of address allow 6 to 8 weeks and give new address as well as the old address as it appears on the last label. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. (c) 2009 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental. All submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope, the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

With new kinds of intelligence come new kinds of relationships....

1. Brittney

How old were you when you first saw death? Me, I'll call it twenty-two. It's a good number: one year beyond that at which you can vote and drink. Well, you can. One I physically can't do and the other they won't let me. But you get the idea. It's also a year older than I was an annum ago, though my internal clock is a bit idiosyncratic.

When you come down to it, it's no more arbitrary than the events that killed John Pilkin. The same ones that nearly got me and Floyd killed, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a habit I've never been able to cure. Maybe when I'm thirty-two? Probably not. My name's Brittney and the reason I'm vague about things like my age is that I'm an artificial intelligence who lives in a bunch of computer chips behind Floyd's ribs. Technically, I came alive three annums ago—an event spurred, ironically, by the first time I myself nearly died, in a geyser blast on Enceladus. So I guess that might make me three, but I feel like twenty-two and that's what counts.

Until John died, I'd have told you Naiad was just about the coolest place in the Outer System—maybe anywhere. It's a little whiz-ball of a moon, about three times the size of Phobos, circling Neptune every seven hours, so close you'd swear it's going to air-brake and fall in, just like Floyd and I did on Titan, a couple of annums ago.

Not that that's going to happen, but with Neptune staring down at you all the time, a hundred times bigger than Earth's moon, it's easy to let perspectives reverse and convince yourself that “down” is Neptuneward and Naiad is simply a ceiling to which, insect-like, you are miraculously glued, waiting to fall.

I think it's fun, playing with perspective that way. Floyd's not so sure. Sometimes, he says, Neptune is like a giant Earth, sans continents—an infinity of blues, from pastel to midnight, making you wonder how, back when it was just a dot in a telescope, they'd had the prescience to name it for the god of the sea. At other times, he says it's like a malevolent eye, staring and judging. A god not of jaunty sailing ships but of endless depths, waiting to claim what's rightfully its own.

Then there's the light. Mostly, it's Neptune's blue backwash, a color human eyes don't register as well as Saturn's more jovial reds and oranges. But it's also just plain dim: a tenth as bright as Saturn, a thousandth as bright as Earthlight from the Moon. The Sun itself is an actinic dot: still blinding to Floyd's unshielded eye, but not the warm glow of in-system. It's a puncture in the fabric of the Universe, a glimpse of something even more remote, aloof, and damning than Neptune itself.

Or so Floyd says. It's only in places like this, he adds, that you can really understand the Outer System.

Oddly, it's when he says things like that that I come closest to understanding Floyd.

1. Floyd

Sometimes I don't think things through as well as I should. Not that I'd admit it to Brittney. When she gets started on something, she thinks about it obsessively. In femtoseconds when she wants.

What I'd not thought through this time was Neptunian economics. Partly that was because, for the first time in my life, economics wasn't vital. Thanks to Brittney I was rich, or at least comfortably well off. We have three percent of the System's biggest diamond mine, and while it'll be a few annums before it goes into production, we can live quite a while on the advance.

There are people for whom no amount of money is ever enough. The guy to whom Brittney and I owe our riches is one of them. But all I wanted was a bit of supplementary income until the diamonds came in. Not that I thought it would be difficult; with the only decent tug in Neptune System, I'd expected to be in at least moderate demand.

What I'd not taken into account was that while energy-wise, Neptune's not all that much farther out than Saturn, time-wise it is. If you ‘rail a canister out at high enough vee to arrive before it's obsolete, it's hard to gravity brake and harder yet to run down before it's halfway to Alpha Centauri. Not to mention that Neptune had only the most rudimentary e-rail, so in-system shipments were limited to slow shots to destinations that might be annums away. No exports means no income. No income, no imports. Other than a rare earth mine on Naiad, we only had two types of neighbors: broke prospectors hoping for a miracle and trust-fund survivalist-types not really wanting one. Both were pretty used to being self-reliant.

I didn't really need all that much work: I could keep myself in fresh vegetables, soy curd, and the like by trading taxi services with hydroponics farmers. But I'd make a poor trust-fund hermit. At least occasionally I've got to have something better to do than navel-gaze or whatever those guys do to pass their time. Hell, maybe they're all writing the great post-Terran novel. Too much introspection, either way.

Brittney, of course, long ago learned how to deal with this type of problem. Thanks to that femtoseconds thing, time passes differently for her, so she's always had to be creative about coming up with ways to distract herself out here where things can play out a bit, I guess you could say, ponderously. Hell, that's the way she'd say it. If you listen to her long enough, you start to sound like her. Me, I'd just say “slowly.” As in, the e-rail from Saturn took the better part of an annum, and it would have been longer if I'd not used a tidy chunk of the diamond money for a high-energy boost.

In some ways, a trip like that isn't all that different from the old-timers back on Earth, walking the Oregon or California trails. Except that walking, you can measure progress with each step. In space, you just drift. So I put the ship's electronics on a storage battery I could charge from the tread-ring or bike. No exercise, no lights. It was good motivation to keep in shape and almost made it feel as though I were traveling under my own power like the old-timers. Like me, when I was younger.

I've not told much of that to Brittney. She's probably memorized an entire psychology library and would tell me a hundred and one things it said about me I'd rather not know. One of her ways of passing time was to take a second bite out of our diamond-mine advance by getting onto the broadband and linking all the way back to Earth, where she collected about a dozen Ph.D.s from as many universities. I don't think any of them figured out what they were dealing with. Of course, she was careful never to finish more quickly than the fastest human on record. And she registered for each one under a different variation on her name: Brittany, Britteny, Britt ... Ashman, Asman, Asboy—then studied everything from English lit to quark mechanics.

I did my stint in college long ago, and while I never regretted it, I'm not sure what good it did me. Brittney describes getting a Ph.D. as an exercise in creating an intellectual hoop and proving you can jump through it. She's got to be the only entity in the System who thinks it's fun.

I think it was Brittney who suggested spending time on Naiad, though eventually I'd have done it on my own. The miners didn't have any supplies due for a while, but they were about the only clients we had who wouldn't be paying in vegetables so it made sense to stop in and say hi.

There aren't a lot of things you can profitably export from the Outer System, even with a good e-rail. Diamonds are one. The rarer of the rare earths are another. Dysprosium and scandium may not be quite as valuable as diamonds, but they're damn near as useful. Try building an e-rail without them.

In fact, if Naiad hadn't had a mother lode of them, Neptune might not even have had an e-rail. Materials for basic structural construction can be found anywhere, but those that drive high-intensity electropropulsive systems are a different matter. And even if some of the hermit types could have afforded to have the materials shipped out here, why bother? Those guys have no intention of ever going back.

The first thing you do on Naiad is look up. Everyone does, John Pilkin, the crew chief and head engineer, told me once I got the ship down and braced so she couldn't topple. The local gravity is only 0.2 percent, but that's just enough to get you in big trouble if you forget to pay attention.

Looking up is also the second, third, fourth, and fifth things you do. Maybe you never get tired of it. You'd think it would be the same as looking at Neptune from space, but there's something about having gravity, however small, pulling you back that makes the big blue planet above seem all the bigger.

It's also a place that's constantly changing, orbiting so quickly you can almost see the storm swirls slide around Neptune's curve, as the planet goes from full to crescent to eclipse and back to full.

"We've got an indoor lounge with windows,” Pilkin said, “but it's not the same."

I'd later learn he was middle-aged with buzz-cut graying hair, bushy eyebrows, and a Coptic cross tattooed on his throat. At the time, all I could tell was that he was tall, spacer-wiry, and favored a shockingly red skinsuit. “So you can find me anywhere,” he said.

The miners’ hab was only a klick away, but standing by the ship, contemplating blueness, I found myself in no hurry to go. I was remembering a place in West Texas, called the South Rim of the Chisos Mountains.

I have no idea what Chisos means. It could be Native American for “big hill,” for all I know. I could ask Brittney to look it up, but some mysteries are better unresolved. I was twelve at the time, and fantasized it was Apache for “Robber's Roost.” The word “rim,” though, was unambiguous. Sitting there, my feet dangling into the void, I was on the border of two worlds. Behind me, the mountaintop was a piney sky-island, a mile above the silver thread of the Rio Grande. Before me, the pines ended in light, air, and distance.

A thousand feet below, falcons swooped, and with them my mind soared—circling and hunting the pleated desert as though somewhere out there was the answer to everything: the reason for me, the world, life—just waiting for me to dive and seize it in my mind's talons.

Only, of course, it wasn't there—at least, not as concretely as the mice and kangaroo rats pursued by the falcons. What was there, forty klicks across the river, was a giant limestone cliff, even bigger than the one on which I sat—an arc of white on the southern horizon. Sunset neared and alpenglow lit it: pink, red, russet. The Sierra del Carmen, those distant peaks were called. Some names are self-explanatory.

I watched until even the highest pinnacles turned purple-blue. I'd have watched longer but I was already overdue, with seven miles yet to walk. Were it not for a full moon, I might never have made it out, tripping, falling, and briefly passing the falcon-nests on my way to oblivion below.

Here on Naiad, Neptune exerted the same lure. I wanted to cast loose and soar until—well, I wasn't sure what.

I'm not sure how long I would have stared if Brittney hadn't interrupted. “Wow,” she said, “I'd not expected it to look like that."

Every time I think I've got her figured out, she finds a new way to surprise me. “What do you mean? You've got all the data. Why didn't you just make a sim?"

"What's the fun in that?” I could almost feel hear her wrinkling her non-existent nose. “The point in exploring is to see things, not make them up."

Pilkin saw me come back to reality, though of course he didn't know why. “Nice, isn't it?” he said. “I've been a lot of places, but I've never tired of this one. God willing, this is where I'll die."

A couple hours later, we were in the miners’ lounge, nursing beers. They weren't bad for hydroponic: a lot better than the food-scrap vodka favored at Saturn.

Pilkin, I learned, had come out seven annums ago, after some prospector really did strike it lucky. While others set up the mining machines and smelter, his baby had been the e-rail.

When I'd thought it rudimentary, I'd been thinking merely in terms of boost. Engineering-wise, it was little short of miraculous. To begin with, using little but local materials, he'd designed a solar drill—no easy task in the limited sunlight—to bore sixty klicks through from the mine site. But he wasn't satisfied with that. Most e-rails are straight, but most don't have to be set up on a rapidly orbiting moon this close to a deep gravity well. Pilkin's split into three exits like a giant fleur-de-lis, allowing him to send each shot down any of three launch angles.

"That way, we have more launch windows,” he said.

"How often can you launch?” Brittney asked.

Usually, she has me relay questions, but this time she spoke via a nearby comscreen.

In the Neptune-glow that was the room's primary illumination, Pilkin's grin was like a face in a funhouse. “Is that your implant? Glad to make your acquaintance. I've heard of you."

That surprised me. We'd gotten a lot of attention after our adventure on Titan, but the diamond-mine incident had been pretty much hushed up. Nobody but Brittney and I knew she'd saved me after T. R. Van Delp tried to kill me, and even I don't know the full details. It's one of the few things she doesn't want to talk about.

She'd never liked T.R. But Pilkin was more her type. “Happy to meet you,” she said. “You've done great work here. You ought to get an engineering doctorate for it."

Shhhh, I subvocalized. Are you trying to get caught?

But Pilkin merely looked puzzled. “Why would I want one?” Then, before she could say something silly about the joy of jumping through hoops, he got back to the original question. “Anyway, launch windows come up erratically, but we tend to get them about once every hundred orbits. It would be worse than that, but we've sacrificed payload for beefed-up thrusters, which lets us launch a bit off-target, then correct in flight. Even then, we rarely get a window that lasts longer than a few seconds, so it's hard to recharge fast enough to launch more than one pod. We've tried, but about half the time we wind up dumping the second one into Neptune."

Through all of that, he was speaking toward me, but not to me. I hadn't felt that odd since I'd first realized Brittney was alive and eavesdropping on everything I saw and heard. Pilkin thought he was being polite, but I'd rather have had him talking to the comscreen.

I almost missed it when he switched focus to me. “...so one of the nice things about having you out here is that we can go back to trying it. Interested? It would mean you'd have to be available whenever we have a launch window."

"Sure.” I was busy calculating: a launch every hundred Naiad orbits meant about one a month. Half the time we'd just be on standby, but the rest would be retrievals—and I bet most of those could simply be nudged onto workable orbits. In theory, you can use a tug to launch a pod, but these pods were enormous. Which, of course, is why they build e-rails. Tug-launching them at a velocity that would get them out of Neptune's gravity and back in-system in less than a lifetime? That would take fuel tanks the size of small asteroids.

Anyway, it looked like I suddenly had a real client, even if half the time I was merely on call.

"Between launches you're welcome to stay here whenever you want,” Pilkin added. “We've got lots of room."

"Not to mention the best view in the Solar System,” Brittney said.

Of course, she didn't just want to see the view. “Vanity, thy name is woman,” someone once said. But it should have been “curiosity.” If Brittney qualifies as a woman. I've always had trouble with that. Feminine something, I'll give her that. But while she can manifest any avatar she wants, it would always be pixels.

What interested her now was the rare-earth mine. As in why it existed. Apparently, that wasn't a question anyone else had ever bothered to ask. This far out, there are only two really important questions about most things: Where is it? (not always trivial—entire asteroids have been misplaced); and Is it useful? “Why does it exist?” is very much an also-ran. But try explaining that to Brittney.

Not surprisingly, nobody on Naiad had a clue. Naiad itself appears to be an accretion of small rocks, bound together with ice, like a really big Ring clump. One of the pieces had a vein of rare earths. No big deal, I'd have said.

But Brittney thought it was too rich for an ordinary vein.

"How the hell would you know?” I asked. “Was one of those Ph.D.s in planetary astrophysics?"

She paused. “Uh, yes. But more like geophysics.” A longer pause. “Though maybe there's something you should know..."

Uh-oh. “Such as?"

"Uh, it's not my Ph.D."

"Whose is it?"

This pause must have felt like hours to her. “Yours."

It was my turn to be speechless.

"Congratulations, Dr. Ashman,” she said. “Your thesis topic was The Amalgamation of Saturnian Primordial Debris Into Sealed-Surface Moonlets."

"In other words, your sims of Daphnis."

"Plus a few clumps."

I couldn't decide if I was angry, flattered, or merely baffled. “What on Earth for?"

"It seemed like it might be useful."

Again, there really was only one question. “Why?"

She can convey a lot with those pauses. “Because you're the one with the hands?"

That took a moment. “You've been planning all this?"

No pause this time. “Not specifically. It just seemed logical that you might find this place ... under-stimulating. I figured we might wind up doing some science on the side, so it seemed a good idea for you to have your own credentials.” In other words, I might not have been thinking about Neptunian economics, but she had. Figures. Never underestimate Brittney.

I wasn't sure what I thought of it, though. From Brittney's point of view, I could never be anything more than a glorified lab assistant. But back at Saturn, science had been a cash cow. It's the cheapest possible export—better even than diamonds—and other than Brittney (and apparently me) there weren't any scientists out here.

I was happy that she, at least, had been thinking things through. But I kept wondering if this is how a marionette feels. Perhaps I was being silly: she hadn't forced me to do anything. Besides, marionettes don't have feelings. So why should the phony Dr. Floyd?

2. Brittney

Humans aren't made to live in small, isolated groups. Psychology texts, classic literature, even not-so-classic vids all back it up. It's odd, since in-system, many live perfectly well in even more tightly packed conditions. One of my psychodynamics profs thought it was a fringe-of-civilization thing, but he was at Cambridge and viewed everything north of Edinburgh as pretty much indistinguishable from nowhere, so his idea of fringe-of-civilization was a bit suspect. Me, I think it's got more to do with the type of anonymity-space offered by big groups: perhaps something like the difference between camping next to a whitewater river and the drip-drip-drip of a faucet. Not that I have much experience with faucets. In space, leaks of any kind are bad news. But I once looped a recording from an old vid and listened to it for a couple of days. At the end, I just didn't get it. You know it's going to go plonk every few thousand milliseconds, so what's the problem when it does? It would seem to be a bigger deal if it didn't.

One of the first vids I saw was Pinocchio. I never really got that, either. If being a real boy meant letting things like faucets drive you crazy, why want it?

Floyd has never given the big-group thing much chance. But now he was part of a small, isolated group and his reaction was predictable. He wanted out. Not out of the job, thank goodness, but out of the hab.

The first day, we went for a walk. The next it was a hike. Then we circled the moon, first around its narrow axis, then its long one, carrying a bubble tent to extend the trip to a week. Normally, I'd have enjoyed it. Floyd and I hadn't exactly gone trekking before, at least in the recreational sense (as opposed to the desperate-fight-for-survival sense), but we'd hiked the Trench on Iapetus and spent a companionable month on a sand-sled on Titan. I was expecting more of the same. Floyd would walk. I'd navigate. We'd talk. Maybe watch vids.

But he didn't want to talk. Not even when I tried to warn him, the first night, about the tent.

"I know what I'm doing,” he said. “I've pitched a hundred of these things.” Which was true enough, but never in milli-gee, where he needed to tether it first, before hitting the gas. I ran a sim and decided we weren't going to die, so I let him discover on his own why he should have listened to me, when the thing inflated so quickly it launched itself a hundred meters off the ground and four hundred meters, sideways. It wasn't until the third bounce that he caught it, then he had to manhandle it back to his intended campsite.

"Don't say anything,” he said. Though of course the whole problem was that he'd not let me say anything in the first place.

Two days later, he found a high point and, a lot more carefully, pitched the tent there. Naiad's not exactly round, so our high point was more like a bend in the moon than anything you'd normally think of as a mountaintop—an elbow sticking into space, with views across a horizon that fell away at disconcerting angles.

It was truly spectacular. From this angle, Neptune was as low in the sky as it could be without quite touching the horizon. The Sun spun overhead, shifting the shadows at an almost visible pace. The first orbit was fascinating. The second, okay. But by the third, I'd seen it all ... twice.

Maybe that's another reason I didn't get Pinocchio. Floyd can watch views like this endlessly. I like them, too, but there comes a point when I've gotten as much inspiration as I'm ever going to get.

We spent three standard days there. On the third, while Floyd was asleep, I used his suit radio to call John.

"Help,” I said. “He's driving me nuts."

Neptune doesn't have a fully developed system of satellite relays, and his answer took nearly four thousand milliseconds, relayed from somewhere I suppose I could have figured out, if I wanted to. A million-klick flight path just to get around the curve of a sixty-klick worldlet. It was the first time I realized just how far out I'd let Floyd take me.

"How so?” was the eventual reply.

"He just wants to sit and stare. He says he's dangling his feet, whatever that means."

John has a pleasant laugh. He'd do well on vids. Not that he's all that handsome, as best I can judge those things, but he'd make a good character actor.

"Floyd's okay,” he said. “Just give him time. Before coming here I spent nine annums in the Trailing Trojans. There were always one or two like him: loners who didn't really want to be loners but who didn't know how to do anything else.” There was a delay that had nothing to do with speed-of-light. “You're the best thing that ever happened to him. He may never acknowledge it, but at some level, he knows."

I ran a dozen sims on the optimum reply, but came up blank. “What makes you think that?"

"How many entities are there like you?"

It was something I'd wondered many times. AI implants weren't all that common. Sentient AIs were rarer yet. How rare was hard to tell. There were rumors on the web, but I'd never managed to verify a single one. I wasn't sure if that was because they were hiding or because humans were ambivalent about discussing them. Both, most likely.

"Not many."

"So if you run the odds, what are the chances an entity like you would wind up linked to a guy like him?"

It was my turn to digest that for a couple thousand milliseconds. “Not high. But what are the odds of anything? That you, for instance, would wind up out here at the same time we are?"

John treated me to a repeat of the chuckle. “Yeah, you can play that game with anything.” His voice turned serious. “But there's either purpose in the Universe or"—he hesitated and I remembered the tattooed cross—"everything's random. One way, you and Floyd have a role to play. The other, you have a role to find.” His tone lightened. “Meanwhile, I've got to get some sleep. Happy dangling."

There are only so many treks you can take on a moon the size of Naiad. Back at the base, Floyd and I ran down a couple of errant pods, then dropped supply canisters at Larissa and Nereid, which for some reason are favored by the hermit-prospector types.

In Larissa's case the attention was because it's a larger version of Naiad. Prospectors are like vid producers: if one gets rich doing something, others figure maybe they ought to do the same. Nereid was a different matter. It's on an elongated ellipse, varying by nearly a factor of ten in its distance from Neptune. That type of orbit should gradually become more circular from tidal friction, but some resonance with Neptune's other moons must keep it from doing so. Someday, maybe I'll do the math to figure it out, but it's not a very interesting question. In the Outer System, anything small that's not in a resonance tends to get kicked into one, and the System's had a lot of time to do the kicking.

More interesting is that both moons are relics of some long-ago event that stirred up Neptune System, big-time, way back when. Either might have a treasure-trove of geological oddities. Not that most of the prospectors seemed all that interested in systematic searches. As far as I could tell, they were just going through the motions.

Floyd has quite a bit to say (by his standards) about the uselessness of that lifestyle, which was odd because he's not all that different. He doesn't really need something useful to do so much as the illusion of it. It's like the thing he does with the treadring. He can't just read a book, watch a vid, or listen to Beethoven. He's got to pretend he's helping power the ship. How is that really different from wandering around Larissa, hoping there's something there other than ice, but not really searching all that hard for it?

Back at the base, he hunted up John. “For a beer,” he said, but for Floyd, a beer is a two-hour experience, kind of like dangling. Sometimes, I'd swear, it evaporates faster than he drinks it. Though on Naiad, it comes in a bulb, so evaporation isn't possible.

We were again in the lounge, watching Neptune, and John was demonstrating that he too can play the pretend-to-drink game.

"You know,” he said after one of Floyd's longer silences, “I've always wanted to build a space bicycle."

Floyd started to speak, but I beat him to it. “A what?"

John flashed his grin. “A space bicycle.” He took a sip of his beer. He's like Floyd in one respect. There are times when neither says much. The difference is that for John, being mysterious is a game.

He pushed the bulb back into its holder. “I grew up as a hab rat on the Tharsis Plateau. My younger brother and I got into mountain biking."

"I didn't know you could do that on Mars,” Floyd said.

"It's not a big sport. It's hard to get traction for climbing. Downhill's easier, so long as you don't need to stop.” He chuckled again. “I was probably destined to be an engineer: I was always looking for ways to get more traction. Eventually we took on Olympus Mons. That was back in the days before skinsuits. It's amazing we didn't kill ourselves."

He reached for the beer bulb, then changed his mind. The motion was slow, deliberate; in super-low gravity any sudden motion makes people wish for seatbelts. The lounge chairs had them, but it seemed to be a badge of honor not to use them. Good practice, Floyd would say, but it hadn't kept him from messing up with the bubble tent.

John was talking again. “When we got back, my dad scrapped the bikes and my mother grounded us for a month.” He was watching us intently and I wondered what he was seeing. Whatever it was, some silent communication seemed to pass between him and Floyd, and I felt a twinge of something weird. Jealousy? Envy? John was my special friend. And Floyd was ... Floyd. But they'd just shared something I hadn't. Maybe Pinocchio would have gotten it.

"Been there, done that,” Floyd said. “It sucks."

John saluted with his beer. “That was the end of my adventure-riding career. It wasn't really that bad: building bikes and proving they worked was more fun than riding them. I've always thought you could do something similar here."

"How?” This time it was Floyd who asked. “If you can get any traction at all, you're just going to go hippety-hop until you crash.” But his attention was piqued. The beer was untouched, his pulse and breathing slightly elevated.

John knew he had him hooked. “Not a Naiad bike. A space bike."

I had a vision of Floyd generating electrical power on GnuShip. How could he harness it? “Some kind of rail gun?” I asked.

"That would work,” John said, “but I was thinking of something more mechanical, closer to a real bicycle. Basically a fancy way of throwing rocks. Maybe a big flywheel you spin up by pedaling, gyros for attitude control, and a big hopper of pellets that feed into the flywheel."

"Oh wow,” I said. “You could—"

"Whoa.” John raised a hand quickly enough that the rebound nearly lifted him off his chair. “Don't tell me. This is for Floyd.” His voice lowered and I knew I was no longer the intended audience. “We might even be able to have races. The winner would be the one who could run a maneuver in the shortest time or with the least reaction mass."

"You're on,” Floyd said. “How soon do you think we can do it?"

The answer, it turned out, was never.

"Sorry about shushing you, Britt,” John said later, when Floyd had gone to sleep and we were talking on the radio. “Half the fun in these things is figuring them out yourself. No fair helping Floyd, either."

It was a conversation we'd had before, though the prior one hadn't been as cordial. He'd been working on the cycling rate of the e-rail coils and I'd offered to assist. If I'd had a head to bite off, I might have been in trouble. “If I want your help, I'll ask for it,” he'd snapped.

Later, he'd called back to apologize. “You and Floyd are a good combination because you complement each other. You and I are too much alike. I'd always be trying to compete ... and losing. Friends is better."

I'd processed that for hours afterward. John and I would be less well matched than Floyd and I because we're similar? I guess that's why the various remakes of The Odd Couple are still among the best buddy vids ever made.

Not that Floyd always wanted my help, either. I'd known that intuitively after our run-in with Rudolph, back at Saturn. Floyd's head injury had required a neural lattice to help regenerate his motor cortex and I'd discovered I could speed up the process by interfacing with its transponders. But I never told him. He'd rather believe he can do things for himself.

In yet another late-night conversation, John told me he'd come to the fringe because he liked “back-of-the-envelope, seat-of-the-pants engineering.” I'd had to look that up—initially, it had conjured up some rather weird images—but that was when I finally realized how much in common he had with Floyd. Both were interested in the physical doing-of-things, even if John's version of “doing” tended to take the form of CAD lightscreen.

The bike project started well enough, but Floyd and John seemed more interested in talking about it than building it. Meanwhile, I designed about twenty-five different models and ran sim races with them, using Floyd as the cyclist, since his treadring workouts had given me lots of data on his aerobic capacity. Tactics, it turned out, were as important as design. You could expend a lot of reaction mass early, lightening the load for later moves, or you could hoard it. It got even more interesting if you put a damper on the flywheel so you had to keep pedaling to keep it spun up. That way endurance came into play. Unfortunately, the whole thing had a tendency to spin, requiring increasingly complex designs to control it.

Then it all came to a halt when the miners hit a huge vein of dysprosium and John got too busy with his real job.

2. Floyd

Maybe someday Brittney will understand sleep. I know that for her, sleep shifts are for websifting, data processing, vid watching, and whatever the hell else it is she does on her own. But it would be nice if she wouldn't greet me with the results, first thing in the morning. There was a time, thirty or so annums ago, when I'd open my eyes, and pow, I was ready to go. But that was then. Nowadays, I want a slower transition.

We'd just returned from another trip to Larissa and Nereid, where she kept having me ask useless questions about geology. “It's amazing that nobody's ever really done a thorough survey of these moons,” she'd said on the way back. Even Naiad's rare earths had been discovered by accident due to whatever weird things they did to Neptune's magnetic field.

"Maybe there's nothing to discover."

"Yeah, right. Even you don't believe that."

Which was true, but it kept me from having to learn more than I wanted about magnetic fields and rare earths.

Once she's latched onto an idea, though, there's no shaking her. “C'mon,” she was saying now, before I'd even had time to finish brushing my teeth. “I need some hands."

I spat toothpaste into a suction vent. Squirted water into my mouth and spat again. Low gee's better than zero gee, but if you're not careful, toothpaste blobs wind up in the weirdest places. “Huh?"

"Hands. You know, the things with the fingers."

"Not now, Brittney.” I rinsed my mouth again. Had I been like her with my foster parents? Probably not. I'd usually just wanted away, and chattering would have been counterproductive. “Just tell me what you want."

"Rock samples. The miners have been bringing up big piles of stuff from inside this moon for annums. Let's see what they're made of."

"Dysprosium. Scandium.” Also some neodymium, praseodymium, promethium, and samarium, plus a bunch of others whose names elude me. “That's why the mine's here."

"No, that's the ore. I'm interested in the matrix. The rock this stuff's embedded in."

"Why?"

"Because it's something we can do, rather than talking about that stupid bicycle you're never going to build! Not that the bicycle would work, unless you get more serious about the design. To start with, you're never going to balance the counter-rotation with some mechanical widget. Trust me. I've run about a thousand sims, and your reaction time just isn't good enough. You need a computer, or a thruster, or the thing's going to spin like ... like a balloon with the air let out."

She quit, like the same balloon, once the air was gone, and I wondered if she'd actually lost patience or had been reading up on motivational speeches. Back on Earth, in my marathon-running days, a coach once told me the difference between motivating men and women. With women, she said, you get the best results with positive reinforcement. They'll fall on their swords for a “Good job," she'd said. Men respond best to an in-your-face challenge. They'll kill themselves to prove they aren't wimps. It was, she admitted, a massive stereotype, but it certainly described me. And Brittney was right about one thing: Pilkin had kept coming up with ingenious ideas for controlling the counter-rotation, but even I'd known they were impractical.

"Besides,” Brittney said, switching from stick to carrot, “this place is weird. It's made of big chunks of something—maybe several somethings—that broke up long ago. One has the highest concentration of rare earths in the System. Don't you want to know why?"

Not really, but my old coach was correct. Knowingly or by accident, Brittney had reeled me in. Not to mention that I really didn't have much useful to do at the moment.

I pushed away from the bathroom cubby. “And you think you can answer this?"

"I have no idea. But geology's a field science, so let's get out in the field."

The samples were scattered higgledy-piggledy wherever the miners had dumped them. Brittney had me wander around for half the morning, more or less at random, until I felt like T.R., doing the same, back on Iapetus. Though, of course, he'd found traces that eventually led to a diamond the size of an asteroid, so who was I to argue.

Then I took the rocks back to the ship, where Brittney had me feed them into the Spektrum 12000 lab-in-a-can she and I had inherited from T.R. when he'd fled Saturn.

"That's it,” she said. “I can take over from here."

I sat back down in my couch, to the extent “sit” describes the motion in low-gee. “Care to tell me what you're going to do?"

"Sure. I've told it to crush the samples and mix them with hydrofluoric acid.” She activated a display so we could watch a magnified view. “That dissolves most things, but not everything.” The rock powder was disappearing, even as I watched, leaving a collection of sharp-edged motes. “Yeah! We've got zircons."

"What? Imitation diamonds? Don't we have enough of the real thing?"

"No, that's cubic zirconium. This is a mineral. A really fun one because when it crystallizes it incorporates uranium, but excludes lead."

I hate it when she talks this way. “Meaning what?"

"Meaning they're really good for dating. The only lead in them is from uranium decay, and the Spektrum's got double-laser ion-phase GC/MS."

"Damn it Brittney, English!” I knew I didn't want that Ph.D. she'd gotten me. People were going to think I knew what this crap was all about.

"It means we can do an isotopic analysis with extremely fine resolution. We can even bore little holes and determine each crystal's individual history."

I stared at the screen. “There must be millions of them."

"We don't have to do them all. Besides, you don't have to do anything, so long as you keep us close enough that I can talk to the Spektrum."

The screen was still showing tiny dots. “Urgh. Wake me if you find anything."

If she tried to wake me up, I didn't notice. Or maybe she'd gotten the message this morning and bit her ... well, she doesn't have a tongue ... until I woke on my own. Or maybe she just wasn't finished. When I did awake, the screen was still full of tiny dots and the Spektrum still humming along.

She was excited, though, to have me back. “Look at this!” The display blinked to a graph that looked like snails mating.

"Two peaks,” she said, which was probably a more scientific way of describing it.

"Yeah?"

"We're analyzing at practically an atom-by-atom level, so there's a lot of statistical fuzz, but what it means is that the zircons formed in two waves. One batch is about four-and-a-half billion years old, which is about what you'd expect from any random piece of asteroid. The others are a whole bunch more recent. Nine hundred twenty-five million years, or something like that. That's as close as I can pin it down from the number of samples I've run so far."

"What's that mean? Two kinds of rock?"

"That's one possibility. But some of the zircons have two layers, one dating at 4.5 billion years, the other at 925 million, as though they'd partially melted, then reformed."

"So?” For once, I didn't mind Brittney playing professor.

"So this particular piece of Naiad comes from something that got thwacked, hard, by a dysprosium-scandium asteroid. Hard enough to re-melt zircons. Nine hundred twenty-five million years ago, give or take a bit."

"And the use of this information?"

She gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “Who knows? Probably it's just a new piece in the history of the Solar System. Neptune System is full of rubble. It's always been obvious that something big happened, sometime or other, presumably when Triton came on the scene.” Triton is Neptune's largest moon, which even I knew was probably captured somehow from elsewhere. “Now we know when."

"So that's it?"

"No. There's plenty more we can do. Let's get another bag of this stuff, only this time, let's be more systematic about where we collect it. Maybe we can piece it back together in stratigraphic sequence. That would tell us a lot..."

3. Brittney

I've read a lot of mythology. A lot of depressing poetry, too. Cool as it is, Naiad looks like a good place to die. Perhaps that's why Floyd spent so much time sitting and staring—his whole childhood was shaped by death, and humans are strange. Running half a Solar System away from something they don't really want to forget only sounds like a contradiction.

Even the names here are depressing. Neptune was one of the moodier gods, associated not only with the sea, but with earthquakes: a god the ancients sometimes tried to appease with gifts of horses—which, since he resided at the bottom of the sea, meant driving them into the water to drown. The naiads weren't much better. Sometimes playful, sometimes jealous: water nymphs, beautiful but capricious. People gave them animals, too.

Not that it's easy to drown when the ambient temperature is on the order of forty-five Kelvins. That's cold enough that even oxygen tanks need heaters to keep the gas a gas. Still, maybe we needed some horses.

The disaster struck midway through our 1128th orbit. It was a launch window and Floyd and I were outside to watch the pods off on their long, in-system flight. Like Neptune-watching, it's the type of thing that somehow seems more real in person.

Even before he'd gotten too busy for the bicycle, John had become good at double launches. He'd even managed a couple of triples. Once, he'd gotten a three-pod string under way in a mere ten seconds. Unfortunately, he'd only had a nine-second window, so that time, Floyd and I got to do some chasing.

But compared to the value of the ore stacking up, Floyd and I were cheap, so this time he was going for five. Besides, he'd said the night before, “The only way you get better is by pushing the envelope."

I'd again offered help—cautiously this time—but again he turned me down: “I've been doing this type of stuff for half my life. It'll either work, or it won't.” They were practically the last words we ever exchanged.

I could understand why he was willing to risk squeezing the launch window. The venture capitalists were undoubtedly clamoring, and the value of their shares would go up with each launch. But that made it harder than ever to be rebuffed. With the bike, it had just been a hobby. Half the purpose of hobbies is to soak up time. This mattered.

One subject I've never had the nerve to pursue beyond the undergraduate level is psychology. Maybe someday, when I've met more people. But I've only truly known three: Floyd, Rudolph, and John. Rudolph was ... well, hopefully there aren't many more like him. Floyd's a lot more complex. Sometimes I wonder why he let his phobias drive him so far out, where the types of adventures he craves, by sweat, fatigue, and sheer determination, are so much more difficult than in the deserts he once knew. John was also complex. He was more analytical, but like Floyd, he wasn't so much interested in why things work as in how to make them work for him.

One thing all three had in common was that they were driven by externals. For Rudolph, it was money; for Floyd, fleeing the events of his youth. For John ... maybe it was just to make a mark. His mark. Not his and mine.

Everyone, I realize, has their strengths and weaknesses. That's not exactly a major insight. John was a really good engineer and Floyd can do amazing things when he puts his mind to them. Rudolph ... well, he was probably good at making money. But maybe the strengths and weaknesses are linked: flip sides of the same coin, if you will.

I don't know whether I'd have found the danger if John had let me check the data. There might not have been enough data. And I probably have my own weaknesses, though I'll have to do more thinking about that. What I do know is that my training is more diverse than any human's. Not to mention that for me, running sims is like John and Floyd sipping beer and playing with bicycle designs. But John was determined to do it himself. I'd like to say that's what killed him, but I'll never be sure it wasn't me.

The hardest part of launching pods in rapid succession was feeding them quickly into the tunnel. In low-gee you can't just use a crane to drop them in because they'd fall so slowly that by the time the first got out of the way, the launch window would be over.

John had avoided this by putting the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the biggest crater in the vicinity. On the rim, he built something like a cross between a bobsled run and a catapult. By using the catapult-thing to shove pods down the chute at successively higher velocities, he could give the catapult time to reload, while timing the operation so the pods zipped into the tunnel as quickly as needed.

He was waiting for us at a viewpoint partway up the crater wall, where we could see both the launching device and the electro-repulsive ramp that guided pods frictionlessly into the tunnel.

Adjacent to the launcher, the pods were lined up like shiny goose eggs: pinprick reflections of sunlight on one side, smears of Neptune blue on the other. Hatch ports concealed thrusters and transponders that would emerge once they were on their way. They didn't look like the canisters Floyd and I were used to. These were little but skeins of superconducting metal over interiors of ore, solar-and-fusor smelted to nearly three nines’ purity. No sense wasting payload on nonessentials. Not to mention that there was a limit to the complexity of the pods John and his crew could fabricate without waiting for specialty components to be e-railed from in-system. These didn't even have heat shields. Somebody was going to make a healthy fee back on Earth, chasing them down and repackaging them for entry.

I counted thirteen pods, though only five would go in this shipment. Each of the others represented millions in profits awaiting another launch window. No wonder John wanted to jump straight from three pods to five.

"Thirty seconds,” he said.

"Good luck."

I could see his grin through the suit visor, despite the reflected Neptune light. “That type of help I can always use."

Then, with a rumble Floyd always said he could feel as well as hear, there was a twist of motion and the first pod was on its way. Then another, harder. And another, harder yet.

With the fourth, John saw something he didn't like. Or maybe he sensed it. Floyd would later say the vibration felt different.

"What was that?” Floyd asked.

"I don't know.” John's voice was tense. There was time to abort, but I was sure he was staring at the eight pods that wouldn't launch, no matter what happened today. Abort now, and it would be nine.

I was frantically running sims, but without data they were inconclusive. The worst-case scenario seemed to be that Floyd and I got to wave at the prospectors on Larissa or Nereid as we chased the fifth pod to outer nowhere.

Not to decide is to decide. The catapult fired again, the hardest shove yet. This time, even I could tell it hadn't been right, though it took endless milliseconds to figure out why.

Then the entire slope around us was in motion. At first, it was slow, but like the pods, it would accelerate.

The only thing that saved Floyd and me was that I don't have reflexes. I could feel him tensing and knew millions of years of Earth-evolution were about to make him do the wrong thing—though it took me a full 100 milliseconds, nearly half his own reflex time, to figure out why I knew this. Then I realized I'd relinked to the neural lattice in his motor cortex. I'm not sure which surprised me more: that I apparently had some kind of subconscious that could do things like this without my realizing it, or that the transponders still worked.

In panic situations, my response is to kick into crisis mode, which allows me to calculate options very, very quickly. Then I have to wait billions of femtoseconds to implement the one I choose.

Humans are the reverse. They're wired to act—in this case, run. But Floyd's Earth-bred reflexes were going to launch him upward, like the bubble tent. He'd be helpless for however long it took to settle back to the ground.

There was no way I could talk him out of it. By the time he understood me, it would be too late. But I could intervene. I used the neural lattice to abort the impulsive leap, then turned it into a low, skimming lope, happy that he had trekking poles and that I'd often watched him use them.

Off the ground in low-gee, you're at the mercy of ballistics. On the ground, each stride, each pole plant, is an opportunity for propulsion. By the second stride Floyd was doing it on his own.

Everything was still happening in agonizingly slow motion, but so was the avalanche. With millions of kilos behind it, though, it would carry deadly momentum. Squashed is squashed, whether it occurs quickly or slowly.

Then, amazingly, we were on a stable slope.

For a moment, it looked as though John would make it, too. Even when the slope beneath him started picking up speed, he was able to stay atop it for several strides. But nobody can run forever across rolling, sliding boulders. Especially when they're picking up speed with each stride. A boulder twisted under him and he came off sideways, landing on hands and knees. He tried to get up but it was too late. The landslide had him and—still in agonizingly slow motion—he was rolled under, swallowed as thoroughly as if a nymph had grabbed him and dragged him down.

All the while, the e-rail tunnel ate his pods, one by one, launching all five, it would later turn out, on perfect trajectories.

3. Floyd

Panic is a weird thing.

When I saw the slope start to move, I flashed to my childhood image of my parents, holding hands and waiting for what must have seemed like half of San Francisco to fall on them. I could feel the adrenaline stab at my chest, but only from a distance, as though it was happening to someone else. My only conscious thought was that I finally knew how they'd felt, only this was occurring in true slow motion rather than the artificial quagmire of my childhood imaginings.

Then, somehow, I was running, still feeling as though it was all happening to somebody else. But however I did it; I made it and Pilkin didn't. I was alive while he wasn't.

Even before we'd gotten to terra firma, Brittney was on the com, yelling for help, and long before the last of the rocks settled, a tense group of miners were suited up and standing with us.

Brittney was all for mounting an immediate rescue. “We've got to find him! He can't be dead!"

Even she, of course, knew better. He could be and he probably was. “I know he was your buddy,” I said, “but we can't risk a dozen others until it's stabilized."

"What about hand thrusters?"

That, at least, was safe, though it took a while to find enough for an organized search. Naiad's at that awkward size where thrusters are feasible, but less convenient than walking, especially since walking, you never run out of fuel. Mine were on the ship, a couple of klicks away, but it turned out that there was an equipment locker closer to hand. Fifteen minutes later, five of us were fanning out, based on Brittney's best guess of where Pilkin might have wound up.

A few minutes after that, we had our answer. Nobody'd found a trace of his suit transponder, and those things are built tough enough that anything that could destroy one could destroy its user a hundred times over.

Brittney was silent for a long time, even by human standards. “It's my fault,” she finally said.

I used the last of my thruster fuel to lift us to the top of the rim, where we could be alone—something that was probably more relevant to me than her. “Why? Because he wouldn't let you run sims that might or might not have predicted what happened? What did happen anyway?"

"Probably some kind of seismic resonance.” Her tone was flat, without the spark that normally animates her when talking about things scientific. I was feeling the same way, but it caught me off guard to see it in Brittney. “The vibrations were probably just the right frequency to shake loose a layer of rock along an old fault."

"Kind of like a skier setting off an avalanche."

"Yeah, but bigger."

"And you think you could have predicted it?"

Again she was silent. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know what kind of geological data John had."

"Because he kept it to himself."

"Yes. Though I doubt he had much of anything. He knew I was doing stratigraphy. If he'd had anything relevant, he'd have shared. He had no problem helping me.” There was bitterness in that, and again I was startled.

"So there wasn't anything you could do."

Another long silence. “Well, maybe I could have talked him into collecting more data. But that wasn't what I meant."

It was a peculiar role reversal. Usually, Brittney's the one trying to get me to talk. “So? If it's not about the data?"

For a long time, I didn't think she was going to answer. When she did, her voice was more distant than ever. Was that a deliberate modulation, designed to convey mood? Or was she letting the mood speak for itself? I've never quite figured out what it feels like to be Brittney, but one thing I'm sure of is that she feels. She'd probably tell me it's the definition of being alive. Intelligence, not just artificial intelligence.

"I could have saved him,” she said at last. “I should have saved him."

I sighed. The trouble with guilt is it's not rational. On that, I'm an expert. For half my childhood, I blamed myself for my parents’ death. As if being there would have stopped the earthquake. Or persuaded them to go somewhere else.

"There wasn't anything you could do,” I said. “You're always saying I'm the one with the legs. Well, that made saving him my responsibility, not yours.” I wished there was a way to hug her. “There really wasn't anything you could do."

4. Brittney

Humans have nightmares. I have replays.

I'm not sure what Floyd would have done on his own, but I wanted off Naiad. The farther, the better.

We were, of course, constrained to Neptune System. The accident hadn't shut down the mine forever, so eventually we'd have to go back, but meanwhile I wanted to be somewhere different.

I also wanted to do something.

"Such as what?” Floyd asked.

"I don't know.” Something John would approve of. No, that wasn't it. “Do you believe there's a purpose to life?"

I could sense Floyd's shrug. Thanks to my reestablished contact with the neural lattice, I'd been noticing such things. Unless I happened to be watching him on a remote cam, I'd never before been able to distinguish a nod from a shrug or a simple twitch. I should probably disable the connection, but who knows, maybe there'll come another time when he'll need help, running for his life.

"I don't know,” he said. “Mine has seemed pretty random."

That had largely been his choice, but it wasn't the time to mention it. “Long ago, you asked why I was female,” I said instead.

"You gave a sort of who-knows answer, as I recall."

"Yes.” I'd saved that conversation, verbatim. “I asked why you were male."

"Your point being that some things just are. That doesn't sound much like purpose."

"True enough.” But I was thinking about John and roles. He'd definitely played one in my life. Had there been purpose, other than the one we ourselves had created? I've studied the world's great philosophies and religions. Some would say yes, some no. Some would say it was up to me. “I'm not sure whether I'm talking faith, agnosticism, or doubt,” I said, “but if there's purpose in the Universe, then there must be one for me."

"Well, you're definitely unusual.” I could feel the muscles in his face twitch. A grin? What an intriguing new source of data. “I never saw a ‘Brittney’ interface in the original specs, then suddenly there it was, full-blown. When I asked why you were female, I almost asked where it came from, too."

"I would have asked where the Floyd interface came from.” Which, at some level, was a question I'd been pondering my whole life.

Definitely a grin this time. “Touché."

He was right, though. I'd had lots of preset personality options. Seventy-three, in fact. None calling themselves Brittney, which was part of why I'd chosen the name. That and the fact I just kind of liked it. One of the first things I'd done was delete all the others. Even then I wanted to be sure that whoever I was, I wasn't just the invention of some programmer.

"If something created me to be Brittney,” I said eventually, “it's my job to be the best Brittney I can be.” And if it was just random chance? Well, as Floyd would say, it was one hell of a random chance, and the best way to respond was still the same.

"And what does that mean?"

"I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with learning things. That's what I do. If there's purpose, they'll be important. If there isn't...” All I really knew was that John's death made me feel an incredible need to do something useful. At the moment, I didn't really care if that was purpose given, or purpose created.

It didn't take long to come up with a plan. In Neptune System, if you're going to explore, the obvious place is Triton. Whatever weirdness hit Neptune 925 million years ago, Triton must have had something to do with it.

Other than the deep interiors of gas giants, Triton must be one of the least-explored places in the Solar System. Too much of the surface was thickly covered in ice to interest prospectors and there'd only been one half-hearted scientific mission. Even that had been entirely from orbit: part of the same one that had found magnetic anomalies on Naiad.

So, there it was: an enormous, virtually unexplored world, bigger than all the rest of Neptune's moons put together.

It was also weird, though I have to admit that all moons are weird one way or another. Still, Triton's got an impressive list of oddities. It circles Neptune in the wrong direction. Its surface is a geologic mess, with signs of all kinds of tectonic and volcanic activity. If it had more than a whiff of an atmosphere for parachute drops, someone would long ago have set up a base. As it was, GnuShip's big engines might make us the first to land. Certainly the first of which I could find any record.

The leading theory was that Triton was a Pluto-like object captured from the Kuiper Belt in an event that had thrown all of Neptune's native moons into disarray. The older moons then smashed into each other for a few million years, until the bits were either knocked out of the system, or reassembled into oddities like Naiad, Larissa, and Nereid. But nobody had ever tested the theory except in sims. And while I love sims, you can never really trust them without data.

It was on the trip to Triton that I started running too many replays. I'm not sure why. Naiad was full of reminders of John, which was why I'd wanted to leave. But maybe, once I left, it seemed too much like not only abandoning his body, but also his memory. I suspect this means I truly am developing a subconscious.

Discoveries like that probably shouldn't surprise me. Even before I went sentient I was a high-end AI, and the dumbest of those are self-reprogramming. That means my code never looked exactly like it did when it was installed—and it sure as heck doesn't now. If I really wanted, I suppose, I could spool it out—or at least big chunks of it—and try to puzzle out how it works. But the very act of doing so would change it.

My replays always started at the same point. John was behind us, running in strong, low arcs. He was, if anything, better at low-gee running than Floyd, but Floyd had poles. When the avalanche started, we'd been within a couple of meters of each other, but John had reacted the way Floyd would have and leapt too high—though not as much as Floyd would have. That meant when he came down, the avalanche was only beginning to build momentum. There was time to run, but without poles, gravity is the only glue for traction.

John had no poles. We had two. What would have happened if, before surrendering control to Floyd, I'd used the override to toss a pole to John?

The replay always included several dozen sims. Always, it was incredibly close. Floyd and I would have been slower. John would have been faster ... if he didn't flub the catch ... if he figured out how to use one pole ... if ... There were a lot of variables. In some sims we all lived. In some we did and he didn't. In some we all died.

What bothered me was that tossing the pole never crossed my mind. Nor Floyd's, apparently, but Floyd is human: a creature of adrenaline and limited processing speed.

In some replays, I concluded I'd simply gone stupid in the emergency. In others, I decided the subconscious I was only now discovering knew that tossing the pole was too complex a motion for Floyd to write off as instinct—that it would force me to tell him about the lattice. In these replays, my subconscious had let John die to keep a secret.

I'm beginning to think the majority of books and vids don't understand humans any better than I do. They present them as doing things for simple, easily understood reasons. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that people rarely do anything, even as trivial as eating a meal, for a single reason. Maybe that's a universal trait of sentience. If so, that's my excuse: I'm no better than a human.

Floyd was having his own problems with John's death. They'd been buddies, too. So, when I suggested Triton, he was unusually passive. “Fine. Sounds as good as anywhere."

What he didn't say was that it sounded remarkably like where we'd once spent a lot of unplanned time, back at Saturn. It's really startling that the gurus of astronomical nomenclature allowed the primary moons of two Outer System planets to be separated by a single, easily slurred consonant and a sound-alike vowel. Someday, when the Outer System is better settled, that's going to cause some serious grief. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you want your [fill in the blank for “very important something"] delivered to Triton? I thought you said Titan. We'll send a replacement right away. Expect delivery in [fill in the blank for “way-too-late"].

Other than that bit of unshared wisdom, though, there wasn't really a lot to talk about. We were already two days out from Naiad, not going anywhere in particular. We made a low-energy correction and drifted another week before landing. We could have gotten there faster, but when you're not chasing anything, the difference between a low-energy orbit and a high-energy one is primarily the chance to watch a few vids.

At Triton, Floyd remained passive. When I suggested landing in the fractured highlands, he shrugged and said, “Why not?” When we didn't find anything there but cliffs and hills, he was equally blasé. “Plenty of other places."

That was when I realized one or the other of us needed to get our acts together and be a bit more systematic. We'd also kind of forgotten how big a moon can be. After all, Floyd had hiked all the way around Naiad in a week—including three days camped on a single hilltop. Triton was the first place we'd been in two annums that truly felt like a world. The gravity was nearly a tenth of a gee, Neptune was far enough away to be only fifteen times wider than Earth's moon, and local “days” lasted a week, rather than a sleep-shift.

But while it was a world, it was also a dim one. Perpetually, monotonously dim. Neptune sheds only two percent as much light here as on Naiad, and while the Sun is the same, full daylight is comparable to the interior of a not-all-that-bright tavern. I checked, with frame-by-frame assessments of some old vids. It's a lot darker than Naiad, partly because on Naiad, Neptune-light helps fill in the shadows.

To me, the dimness wasn't a big problem. As long as I've got access to GnuShip's sensors or the cam Floyd usually wears for me, I can image-enhance to my heart's content. But Floyd's eyeballs weren't made for this.

Me, I'd have just turned on the lights. It's the human equivalent of image enhancement. But Floyd refused, unless he was in danger of tripping over something. Even then, he preferred not to, and on shipboard he'd taken to keeping the lights as dim as possible. He called it acclimating. Maybe that's even what he thought it was. In his desert days, one thing he'd always prided himself on was encountering lands on their own terms. If they were hot, you got used to it. If they were rocky, you developed tough feet. If water holes were a long way apart, you carried big packs. When it came to that type of thing, Floyd had been good. Born-in-the-wrong-century good, as far as I could tell.

But now, it was the wrong reaction. This far out, there comes a point where the average human doesn't get enough light from the Sun to prevent permanent seasonal affective disorder. Winter blues, Floyd would call it. I did a web search and amazingly, nobody'd ever studied SAD and space travel. Maybe the susceptible simply self-select away from the Outer System. Or maybe the in-system psychs think everyone out here's weird to begin with.

It was time to take control.

"Light,” I said. “You're getting depressed from lack of light."

We argued a bit—mostly about whether he was actually depressed. But he hadn't grumped at me since Naiad, and a non-grumpy Floyd has got to be a depressed Floyd.

Eventually I got him back on the treadring—he still wouldn't let ship-power run the lights. Within a couple of days, he'd perked up enough that when I suggested programming a vidscreen to track the Sun to get some natural brightness inside, he agreed. The best cure for SAD is sunlight, and in terms of creating the right color balance, the Sun is still the Sun, even from several billion klicks.

When, two days later, he told me to quit being such a mother hen, I knew I'd been right.

4. Floyd

I hate to admit it, but Triton was a good place to visit, though not necessarily for the reasons Brittney had in mind. She was all gung-ho about finding why it orbits backward, but I was just glad to be on real ground, with real gravity, or at least a reasonably good facsimile: enough that for the first time since we left Saturn, I could even go for a run.

It scared Brittney the first time, and I can't deny that bounding away from the ship over rough terrain put us one broken ankle from a pretty bad situation. But it's my body, and my life too. All I could promise was not to deliberately do anything stupid, and to stop every few klicks to gather rocks. Brittney will take the same risks for data that I'll take for a good run. And, I noted, she was the one who'd convinced me that a bit more of old Sol would be good for what passes for my soul. What better way to get it?

After we left the highlands, we spent several days just moving around: one day here, another there, another somewhere else. Brittney probably had a pattern, but when I asked, she rambled on about geological provinces, template-matching, pseudo-transects, and heaven knows what. Not that I really cared. We were doing pretty much what I'd done as a kid in Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, and Mexico. The biggest difference was that here, I didn't have to worry about flash floods. Weather was something that just didn't happen here unless you count some really high, thin nitrogen clouds, which did make for some of the most ethereal sunsets I've ever seen.

But, while meteorologically this was a dead world, geologically it was a young one. Not young at heart, but young of surface. There just weren't enough craters to account for billions of years of whatever Neptune and the Outer System might have thrown at it. I've seen Luna, Mars, Iapetus—you name it. It didn't take a Ph.D. to know that this place had been geologically active a lot more recently than those.

"The conventional theory is that when Triton got captured, tidal friction melted its core,” Brittney explained on about our sixth landing. “That produced volcanism and tectonics and a surface that looks like a jigsaw puzzle assembled by a blind committee. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea."

"So you're trying to prove it all happened back when your rare-earth asteroid hit Naiad?"

"Proto-Naiad, but yes."

"So how's it going? The bottom line, not all the details.” There were parts of the old Brittney I hadn't missed.

"Well, the date seems to be right, but I'm having trouble figuring out how it happened. Of course, it doesn't help that every time I have a question, the journals are four light-hours away."

I knew where this was going. “No, you can't download an entire geology library."

"Geophysics."

"Same difference. The broadband fees would kill me.” Not to mention that the ship's data capacity was limited. Big, but limited. With Brittney, that distinction sometimes needs to be stressed.

I'd swear she sighed. “I know. Anyway, we've been visiting places where different geological processes might have brought different types of rocks to the surface."

"So your choice of landing sites wasn't as random as it looked."

"No. Though the need for real rocks rather than just a bunch of nitrogen ice did skew it a bit."

I was interested despite myself. “So what did you find?"

Brittney sounded more like a real scientist every day. “Well, it's preliminary. But there seems to have been a lot of energy released practically instantaneously, then more, spread over millions of years. I can't get that out of any tidal braking model I've ever seen. There's also a latitudinal variation in the degree of zircon melting."

It took a moment to parse that. “You mean one end of the planet was hotter than the other?"

"See, you're not as dumb as you like to act.” She hesitated. “That was meant as a compliment.” Another pause. “Anyway, there seems to have been more heat in the south, though as I said, this is all preliminary."

"So what do you think happened?"

"The simple explanation would be that something hit it."

"Hard enough to reverse its orbit? Without shattering it?” Brittney's the one who loves sims, but that would have to have been one odd collision. Something like being hit by a very powerful cosmic sponge.

"It's not a full-formed theory."

A couple of days later, she suggested that if there was an impactor, there might be traces of a giant crater beneath the ice. “Let's do a subsurface map,” she said.

I admit I was more in a hiking/running mood than a flying one, but I was also in a mood to humor Brittney. She worries about me, and irritating as that can be, she's the only entity in the System who'd really care if something happened to me—and not just because it would happen to her, too. Lots of people would notice: no tug, big inconvenience. But Brittney would care. It had been a long time since that had been part of my life. I wasn't quite sure what I thought of it.

She has a tendency, though, to think I was born yesterday. Just because I grew up in the desert doesn't mean I'd never heard of darkness. I probably read everything Jack London wrote. I'd just gotten sloppy. Standing there watching Pilkin die was one of those moments when you wonder what the hell you're doing out here.

Still, she'd pulled me out of a pretty serious funk, even when she herself must still have been climbing out of her own. On the trip from Naiad, she'd buried herself in vids, working through endless versions of Hamlet and Macbeth—all the way back to ones so old you had to run them through noise filters before you had a chance of understanding them. Cheery stuff, those. Pretty much everybody dies. “Double, double toil and trouble"; “to be or not to be,” and all that. I'd been starting to worry about her, too.

Brittney's idea of a subsurface map meant quark and neutrino detectors. I should have guessed: another chance to play with T.R.'s equipment. “I think I can get one-meter resolution,” she said. “It'll tell us oodles about the subsurface."

"Oodles?"

"Big bunches?"

Another flash of the old Brittney. I was startled to realize how much I'd missed her.

"Why haven't you gone all staid and grown-up on me?” I asked on impulse.

It was another of those answers she can be slow to give. Was she unsure, or trying to figure how I'd react? Long ago, it had crossed my mind that she probably ran sims on me. She certainly ran them on everything else. I've not quite figured out what to make of that, either. If the sims were accurate, what did that say of me? If not, what did that say?

"I don't know that much about humans,” she said eventually. “Mostly vids and books, and I'm never quite sure which ones to trust. But I have noticed that, other than arthritis and surgical scars, the main things humans acquire with age are emotional scars. Then they lose interest in things. I think it's like trying too hard to protect your core programming.” She was quiet again. “Remember our discussion of purpose?"

"Hard to forget."

"Well, if there is purpose to the Universe, and if it includes me, then one of the ways to honor it is by staying ‘me.’ For the moment, that means staying young, and enthusiastic. Though"—another pause—"maybe young people also get scars."

I could have answered that one. But she wasn't thinking about me.

It took a week to deploy the emitters and detectors to Brittney's satisfaction, in orbits ranging from barely above the nitrogen cloud-wisps to a couple thousand klicks out. When we were done, she'd built something with the precision of a GPS system for a world nobody else might ever visit. What had I said about curiosity? In Brittney's case, maybe the word is “overkill."

"Might as well do it right,” she said.

Luckily, most of the doing was on her part. I just put the ship approximately where she wanted it, tossed a probe out the hatch, then got on the treadring while she tweaked the probe's thrusters to put it in the precise orbit she wanted. “What exactly do you think you're going to get from this?” I asked, somewhere around the fifteenth probe. “And just how the hell many of these things do we have?” They were small, massing only a kilo or so each, so it might be quite a few. I'd never really inventoried T.R.'s leftovers. Counting things was more Brittney's idea of fun.

She answered the second question first. “Six. We could quit now, but the picture would be fuzzy. The more we put out, the better image we'll get."

"What's all this ‘we’ stuff?"

"Oh, that's for the publications. You'll be lead author, since you're the only one the journals know is actually out here. I'm Britt Asboy, from Valles Marineris."

"Whoa, publications?"

"There should be at least two. One on whatever we find; the other on the method. Nobody before's ever gotten close to this level of resolution."

"Shouldn't we patent it first? Or go looking for more of Naiad's rare-earth asteroid?” Just because I didn't need endless money didn't mean I wanted to walk away from it.

Brittney gave another of those hesitations, and this time I was sure she was running a sim on me. “That wouldn't work,” she said at last.

"So what the hell does this process of yours do?"

"It maps major subsurface boundaries. Ice/rock layers. Density strata. Really accurately—a whole world, with even better precision than we had on Daphnis. But that isn't going to tell us what anything's made of. That would require samples."

"So, let me get this straight: we're spending days out here deploying these things to idiotic levels of accuracy, just because we can?"

She had the grace to sound chagrinned. “Basically, yes."

Since there were only a half-dozen detectors left, I let her finish. Then she told me it would take two weeks to collect the data.

"What?"

"It's an integrative process. The slower we do it, the more accurate it gets. Though there are diminishing returns. We could have kilometer-level resolution in a few hours, centimeter-level in a decade. This seemed a good compromise."

Maybe it's Machiavelli whose name should have been woman, though I guess that's an exaggeration. Besides, I wasn't averse to a couple more weeks’ hiking. But it was interesting how she'd managed to sneak it up on me.

For the first few days, we went back to hopping around the surface. But if the melting really had been more severe in the southern hemisphere, there was one place we really needed to explore: the black fans region, near the South Pole.

"Yeah,” Brittney said when I finally mentioned it. “I guess we've got to look at them sometime.” She didn't sound enthusiastic, but neither was I.

The black fans are basically what the name suggests: dark, fan-shaped smears. There are similar features on Mars, where geysers blow dust onto the surface, and since geyser-like nitrogen plumes had occasionally been seen on Triton, it was a good guess that that's what these were, too. But geysers require heat. Not all that much when the steam is nitrogen, but still, they were an indication that the heat source that had melted Brittney's zircons might not be completely cooled. Or maybe they were something else. They hadn't been active since the first miners came to Naiad, and nobody'd paid much attention.

Geysers ejecting something dark onto the surface presumably meant there were hollow places underground. Not my thing. Caves and I were like Brittney and geysers.

I wasn't sure if we were pushing each other or testing each other. One of the reasons I'd wound up with the foster family they'd put me in after my parents died was that they had kids my age. At first, when the adults weren't around, we pushed each other.

—Bet you can't eat a stink beetle!

—I can! And I can go all day without water.

—I dare you!

—Only if you do it, too...

Then I started doing things the others refused to match and pretty soon I was doing them alone.

The fans extend over a huge area, but one thing we agreed on was that landing among them was a bad idea. Maybe Brittney's scanning method did have practical uses. Putting down on an unknown surface, you're always wondering how firm it is, and here there was a very real risk of a thin crust over an unseen cavern. Meanwhile, landing at a safe distance provided a good excuse for my first backpacking trip in a very long time in anything even approximating real gravity.

We put down a few klicks from the edge and hiked in, carrying equipment for a week. That, I figured, would allow a 500-klick loop, which sounds like more than it was. The Black Fan Geyser Basin, as Brittney promptly dubbed it, really was huge. Not that it's a basin. More like a nondescript upland, pocked with the usual assortment of craters.

I'm not sure what I thought a nitrogen geyser would look like. The geysers on Enceladus come from long, thin fissures. Some were hundreds of meters wide, others narrow enough you could leap across, which is how Brittney and I got blasted into space the last time I went trekking in geyser country. These were clearly different: from space they were just black dots, hard to distinguish from the adjacent fans. If I was expecting anything it was Old Faithful.

The first one, though, was big enough to swallow the ship with room to spare. Inside, a tunnel fell way, smooth-walled. Clearly, gas had been blowing out of it intermittently for a very long time. “Is this 925 million years old?” I asked.

"I doubt it,” Brittney said. “Geysers probably come and go as the underground plumbing shifts. Do you have to stand so close to the edge?"

"Can't see in if I don't. Don't worry, I won't slip."

"It's not you I'm worried about. Do you know that these things have sometimes blown gas as high as ten klicks?"

I took a couple of steps back. “Really?"

"I've seen the pictures."

I tried to figure out how strong a wind that would take and whether it would spit rocks at you, like the damn thing on Enceladus apparently did. I don't have much memory of that, which might be why Brittney's scared of geysers and I'm not. All I remember is starting to leap across ... and waking up in the hospital, days later. It's probably easier to get back on the horse that threw you if you can't remember falling off.

I looked around, but didn't see any boulders. Just black grit, partially covered in frost. Nothing had erupted here recently. On the other hand, Triton's seasons were about forty annums apiece. It was now early summer—the start of four decades of warming. If solar heat played any role in firing these things up, they might start erupting any decade now. Of course, if Brittney's hotspot theory was correct, the Sun was irrelevant and the only reason geyser blasts tended to be seen in summer was because that was when there was sunlight to let you see them.

In my pack, I had ice screws, carabiners, and a couple hundred meters of four-millimeter monofilament. By no means serious climbing equipment, but enough to make sure that the next time I ventured close to the mouth of one of these things I was securely tied down. If something happened, we might flap like a kite on a string, but we would stay affixed to Triton. Brittney would approve.

From space, it had been hard to count, let alone map, the geyser mouths. In the low-angle light, they'd looked like freckles, and some of the things we'd thought were geysers proved to be shadows. They were pretty widely scattered, but we were able to visit three or four a day. Most were smaller than the first—newer, perhaps, or just not as active. Others showed micrometeorite degeneration, indicating that they'd been inactive for quite a while. Eventually, I suppose, the dead ones would just clog up with nitrogen frost and vanish into the landscape. Some went straight down, dark and deep. Others ran at angles, shallow enough that I could look far into them without standing close to the edge.

At night, we camped at least a klick from the nearest vent, and even then, Brittney asked me to wear the skinsuit and keep the helmet close at hand, in case we needed to make a fast getaway.

"You're not being rational,” I said. “Even if it went off, what do you think would happen from this distance?"

"It'll fall on me,” she said.

"We'd have plenty of warning, and I don't think anything bigger than pebbles ever fall this far out.” Though with virtually no atmosphere to stop them, they might come down pretty hard. Then I realized she was referring to my own fears. “Oh..."

"Sorry. I wasn't trying to make fun of you. I was trying to tell you how it feels."

Then, at last, Brittney's scan was finished. She displayed the results on the ship's lightscreen, where at first glance, they just looked like an ordinary map. Nothing we couldn't have gotten a lot easier with high-res photos.

"Use the screen wand to navigate,” she said.

I did, swooping and zooming over the surface, like the hawk I'd always wanted to be. Then I remembered that this was supposed to be a subsurface map. I pushed the wand forward and dived into a hillside. It flashed into stripes, then splintered into fractals.

"Strata,” Brittney said. “Followed by fractured rock. An impact crater, probably."

I pushed further forward and dived more deeply. Colors shifted in pastel bands.

"Those represent density zones,” Brittney said. “We've got a differentiated core, but that's been known for a long time. And it's hard to imagine an undifferentiated moon this large."

I zoomed around a bit more, then pulled the view back above the surface. “Okay, so what does it mean?"

"I don't know yet. That was my first look at the data, too. I figured that you deserved first peek."

Okay, I'd been wrong about Machiavelli. “Thanks."

When I released control, an indeterminate time later, Brittney left the display active so I could watch while she did her own exploring. She started by looking at the core, first as a whole, then zooming in on various blobs and swirls. “It definitely solidified, remelted, then resolidified,” she said. “But tidal friction from being captured by Neptune would do that. No smoking guns so far."

She'd shifted to the fractured highlands by the time I felt myself losing focus. Brittney didn't notice. She was in her element, sifting through billions of cubic klicks of density maps looking for she knew not what.

Neptune was a large crescent near the western horizon. The Sun was a hand-span above the opposite one. One would still be there when I woke. The other would circle around every few days.

I woke to Brittney calling my name. The Sun had shifted by several degrees, so I'd had at least a few hours’ sleep. But from the feel of my eyes, not enough.

Still, while I'd never been able to cure her of the chipper-in-the-morning thing, she'd long ago learned not to wake me unasked unless it was important.

"I've got a smoking gun,” she said, “but you aren't going to believe it."

Normally she likes to be mysterious. This time she cut straight to the chase. “I found the impactor.” She'd set the screen for a 3D image of the whole planet, interior layers showing through a translucent skin. She pulled back so it looked like we were viewing from orbit, then started zooming in.

"I don't see anything."

"That's because it's small.” She pulled in tighter, toward what I eventually realized was the South Pole. The image swelled, overflowed the screen and became half a moon, then just a slice.

"There,” she said. She magicked a cursor so she could point. “See those dark specks?"

"Don't tell me it's more diamonds.” I had no idea what that would do to the value of our mining share back on Saturn.

"No."

She moved closer and the dots swelled, became ellipses shaped vaguely like giant almonds. Then they were ellipses with odd complications at each end, like ... eyes? That couldn't be right. “What the...?"

She didn't answer, but zoomed in tighter yet. She pulled in on one ellipse and froze the image.

It no longer looked like a giant almond. It had fins on one end, some kind of antenna-like dish on the other, and stubby wings amidships.

Brittney, silent, let me stare. “You've got to be kidding,” I said.

Rather than answering, she rotated the view to another alien spaceship, then set it in slideshow mode, fading from one to another and yet another. Some looked intact; others appeared to have fragmented. There must have been a hundred big pieces—hard to tell how many ships. Hell, maybe they'd all been one big flying city, connected by walkways or teleportation booths or who knows what. Who could tell from bits strewn over—or rather, under—a region the size of California?

"I've been running sims,” Brittney said.

"Big surprise."

"Ha, ha.” Someday, she's going to find a way to really laugh. It's not that she can't make the right sounds, but they turn out to be one of those things that don't work unless you can at least imagine seeing the person who's doing it. “Anyway, I've been trying to model the energy transfer needed for an impact by a fleet of ships like these to reverse the orbit of a moon this big."

"And?"

"They'd have had to be going super-fast. Fast enough they should have gone right through, like a bullet hitting a watermelon.

"A frozen one."

"Okay, bad analogy. There's an old vid in which an assassin uses watermelons for target practice. My point is that these are comparatively smaller than bullets and had to have been going a lot faster. But some of the pieces are only a few klicks down."

"Right beneath the dark fans."

She wasn't ready to deal with the implications of that. “So, something needed to stop them relatively gently. ‘Relatively’ being, well, a relative term. I'm wondering if they had a big force field that functioned like an old-fashioned airbag. If it was big enough, they could have come in pretty fast but hit more softly, more like a big a shove than a thwack, though still with enough energy to half-melt half a world."

"Strange coincidence that they hit the biggest moon in the outer system."

"I guess. But if they hadn't hit something, they wouldn't be here to find. When you look retroactively, lots of things seem highly unlikely. Like you and me?"

The logic of that eluded me. “Huh?"

"Something John said.... Maybe I'll talk about it someday.” A pause. “Meanwhile"—her tone brightened—"are you suggesting it was deliberate?"

I wasn't sure what I'd been suggesting. But now that she mentioned it ... “Well, that's how we do things.” Tugs, air-braking, parachutes. They're all a lot cheaper than carrying the brakes with you. “Maybe they had something like a giant e-rail, and picked Triton as their landing pad. Then they botched it and splatted themselves here for a billion years."

"Nine hundred twenty-five million."

"Good enough."

"Why Triton?"

"Why anyplace?"

Again the pause. I'd tripped over something, but wasn't sure what. Before Naiad, she'd talk about virtually anything, whether I wanted to listen or not. Somewhere along the line, she'd started keeping more things to herself. “So you're saying they might just have picked this moon at random?"

"Or not so random. Earth had life at the time. Nothing but bacteria, but the aliens might not have known that. Or maybe they liked iceballs. To them, this might have been paradise."

But instead of landing as planned, they'd crashed, and the fragments of their fleet (or ship, as the case may be) were scattered like buckshot beneath Triton's surface. Still-warm buckshot, apparently. I tried to imagine what sort of power supply could be running after all these years. Whatever it was, it might rival the aliens as the scientific find of century, possibly in all of human history. The wheel? Small potatoes by comparison. And the closest ship was only a few klicks down.

I thought briefly of leaving the exploration to someone else. But you don't get many chances to dangle your feet over an entirely new, never-before-seen cliff. Metaphorically, anyway. I don't like caverns, but that's why I'd let T.R. take me to Daphnis. And it wasn't the cavern that had almost killed me. I could do this.

I wasn't so sure about Brittney.

"We've got a ton of ice screws,” I said. Technically speaking, it was only a few kilos, but for once she wasn't in a mood to quibble. “And nearly a klick of monofilament.” That was literally true. “As long as we're anchored to the wall, it would take one hell of a wind to dislodge us. And it's not like nitrogen steam is going to scald us."

I could almost feel her hesitating. “Besides, it's the publication credit to die for.” Bad choice of words. “Though we won't do that,” I added, trying to sound confident.

I dare you to eat a stinkbug. They taste about like you'd imagine. Not to mention the crunch. I'd gone first, and once the other kids heard the sound, they'd backed out.

Brittney couldn't back out. Years ago, I'd realized that someday, I might take one adventure too many. I could accept that, or thought I could until I watched Pilkins die. But killing Britney along with me? I guess I wouldn't be there to have to figure out how to accept it, but if it happened, I dare you wasn't the way I wanted it to play out.

5. Brittney

If there's purpose in the Universe, it must like irony. Back on Daphnis, I'd obsessed about aliens. Chalk it up to my taste in vids. But now that we'd actually found them, they weren't out here throwing rocks at us or hiding spaceships in moonlets. They were just ... dead. As in long, long, long dead.

Getting to them proved almost too easy. The vent followed a crack in the ice, like a ramp into Triton's dark heart, though Floyd had enough lights that it wasn't anywhere close to dark. Vapor-smoothed surfaces glittered ahead of us, and nitrogen-ice dust sparkled from his drill. Most of the way, we could have walked, but true to his word, he planted so many ice screws that we kept running low and had to backtrack to retrieve them.

Two days later, we were in a large cavern, standing before a spaceship that had been hundreds of millions of years dead when life first crawled out of Earth's seas. Its surface was smooth and greenish-brown, made of something that had resisted the ravages of time remarkably well. Another major discovery, if anyone figured out what it was.

It was also, obviously, broken. A crack ran along in its side, a couple of meters wide, most of the length of the visible portion of the ship, which extended at least a couple hundred meters. Between us and the ship was a whole field of fissures in the cavern floor, presumably created by gas rushing from whatever heat source was slowly enlarging the ship's tomb.

Floyd moved toward the crack, carefully stepping across the fissures, which were too small to show on my quark-and-neutrino scan but plenty big enough to be scary.

In vids, skin divers who venture into such places face horrid fates. But Floyd had supplies for a week, a top-of-the-line skinsuit, and no hoses to puncture. Nor were there any sharp edges to snag his suit: either the hull material had broken without them or they'd been smoothed by all those millions of years.

Smoothed by what, I didn't want to think. But the geysers came from beneath the ship, not in it, so once we were through the hull, that was one risk we didn't have to worry about. I wondered what caused them. Leaks from a never-say-die engine? A periodic gathering of energies from an equally slow-dying life-support system? Whatever it was, it wasn't radiation. Floyd was carrying a counter and it had barely ticked. Whatever risks he's willing to take, radiation poisoning isn't among them.

Then we were inside.

I'd definitely seen too many vids. I was expecting a room filled with incomprehensible shapes, melted-looking machinery that looked like it had been vat-grown, or something equally enigmatic. Swirly patterns on the walls, perhaps, or strange angles bending off into the distance. A warren of passages. Something, anything, alien.

What we found was a room. Rectangular, other than the slow curve of the hull. Just like humans would build—if they were into building giganormous ships. From our scan, I knew the ship was 525 meters long and about a third as many wide. In the remaining dimension (height?) it was flattened, giving it the overall shape of a giant watermelon seed. But this was our first chance to see inside. Whatever the hull was made of had blocked the scan.

By the standards of the alien fleet, this was a small ship, but it was still large enough that if there were a corridor circling just inside the outer wall, a Floyd-like alien could run 1200-meter laps. Or fly, swim, or float—whatever aliens did for exercise. For all I knew they had more in common with sunflowers than with Floyd. Maybe they spent their spare time photosynthesizing and the geyser heat came from grow lamps that still clicked on every few decades.

I've clearly seen too many vids.

The room was long, skinny, high-ceilinged, and full of trash. Not Triton-trash: alien trash. Stuff that probably hadn't been trash until the crash ripped the hull. Some of it even was melted-looking, though when we looked closer at it, it appeared that melting was exactly what had happened, probably when the heat of impact boiled through the rent in the hull. Or maybe the hull had survived long enough to be breached millions of years later, as heat from Neptune's tidal friction settled Triton into its current orbit.

Either way, we appeared to be looking at crates in what had once been a storeroom.

Some of the boxes were covered with frost and there was a rime of white on the walls. I ran a few sims and concluded we were looking at traces of the most recent geyser blast. Not that the blast had flowed through here—but each time the cavern outside filled with nitrogen steam, enough would find its way in for all of this to evaporate, only to redeposit when the temperature again dropped from cold to truly cryogenic.

The floor sloped, but not absurdly, allowing us to explore at our leisure. Not that there was much to find except more trash. The inner wall had a curve to match the outer hull: a logical design—a double-walled hull for leak protection, with the dead space serving for storage. There was a crack in the inner wall, too, though it was smaller and fresher-looking, either because it really was more recent or because it was less exposed to even the mild weathering of this frozen tomb.

"Careful,” I said. This one didn't have smooth edges. Instead, hundreds of little rods poked out, like a ripped section of a screen window designed to keep out insects the size of sparrows. Some kind of reinforcing? An electrical grid? Something else entirely? Whatever it was, it looked snaggy.

"No kidding,” Floyd said. “I once ran into a piece of rebar, inner-tubing the Rio Grande. I've still got the scar.” He laughed. “I'd show you but now wouldn't be a good time."

"I think I've seen it.” Floyd doesn't spend a lot of time gazing into mirrors, but I'd noticed he has several pretty good scars. This was the first time he'd ever volunteered information about any of them. “Is it the one on your right calf?"

"No. That was a rattlesnake. This is on my back. I was lucky it didn't puncture a lung.” His vision shifted from the hull breach to the storeroom. “Let's make a stile."

He collected a few box-like objects and built steps, up to the base of the crack. He dropped a few others inside until he had steps there, too, then carefully clambered over, ducking to avoid the rods poking down from above.

We'd gone from a wrecked-looking storeroom to a very unwrecked-looking corridor. It too sloped, but at a different angle, with some kind of stripe down the middle. Trolley track? Levitation strip? Artificial gravity generator? Map? Follow the infrared line to get to engineering, the ultraviolet one to the mess hall? Or just plain decoration? The ship was an archaeologist's dream. Lots of mysteries and no digging with trowels and teaspoons. Nothing but walking around, trying to figure things out.

Doors opened on both sides—and in the floor and ceiling, for that matter. The latter looked dark and scary. The aliens had liked tall ceilings, so it was hard to see through the holes. I wondered how they used them. Jumping? Levitation? More artificial gravity? So many mysteries, so little data. Archaeology would never be my favorite field.

The doors to the outside were closed—immovably so, we discovered when Floyd tested a couple. Not that we really wanted to see more storerooms. Those to the inside were open.

"Don't worry,” I told Floyd. “None of that Becky and Tom Sawyer stuff for us. I won't let us get lost."

I'm not sure he got the reference, but by then we were in the first room, staring at an array of alien devices. For all I could tell they might have been fancy coffee pots, but the important thing was that nothing had melted them. They'd survived remarkably well.

So too, we discovered, had the aliens. Or, at least, their bodies.

I wondered what protected them when the outer wall cracked and the between-wall storage space got hot enough to melt alien thing-a-ma-bobs. It would have taken some mind-boggling air conditioning. Or maybe all those wires in the inner hull had generated a stasis field. Long trip; suspended animation; crash into a moon; wake up when it's over—I could imagine weirder ways to travel. Only this time, something went wrong and they never woke up. It was like running sims with no data. The only thing I knew for sure was that we found them two chambers deep, neatly arrayed, like shuttle passengers strapped in and waiting to land.

I probably shouldn't have asked Floyd to take a tissue sample. But there were lots of aliens and we were only going to get one chance to be first. Besides, between us, Floyd and I had a lot of degrees.

Unfortunately, that meant a whole roundtrip to the surface, and quite a bit of arguing. I just wanted to take a sample to the ship. Floyd wasn't about to do so. Too much risk of contamination, he said, presumably meaning that he was the one who might be contaminated.

Eventually we compromised on the mini-Spektrum. It wasn't as good as its full-blown cousin, but at least we could bring it down to the aliens, rather than the reverse.

"You're more likely to catch bean rust from your freeze-dried dinner,” I said in one final attempt at saving the extra trip. The less time we spent in the tunnel, the better. “At least you and the beans started out on the same planet."

"No. I am not your guinea pig. Discussion closed."

So mini-Spektrum it was.

To my eye, the aliens looked like, well, dead aliens. Floyd thought they looked more like pickled fish. “Do you know about the Icelandic shark?” he asked.

Iceland I could do. Shark, too. The combination was something I'd never checked into. “Not really."

"It's supposed to be a delicacy. They bury them in the sand, then leave them for months. Then, when they're nice and rotted, they dig them up, dry them out, and have a party. Think lutefisk, only bigger. It's basically an excuse for schnapps. Lots and lots of schnapps. I tried it once. You can get pretty drunk and not get the taste out of your mouth."

I thought about telling him that eating the aliens would be a much bigger risk than bringing them to GnuShip for testing, but managed to stifle it. Besides, this was Floyd's way of dealing with being surrounded by death. I kept trying not to think of John. Even if they'd died millions of years ago, these had been intelligent creatures. So what if they had tendrils fringing their mouths, no apparent eyelids, and polygonal patterns on their skin that might be scales or might just be some artifact of all those eons as deep-frozen mummies.

But Floyd was right. I've seen vids of stranger-looking fish. As it turned out, they probably even smelled fishy. The mini-Spektrum coughed up a whole lot of interesting ketones and aldehydes, all of which would probably have been pretty noticeable to a human nose.

Other than that, their chemistry was both remarkably Earthlike and remarkably different. Carbon-based, probably with lots of water in their tissues, now desiccated out. But instead of DNA and proteins, they had long strands of ... well, I'm not sure what, but it was made of building blocks that probably worked in a similar manner. More like plastics than anything I could pull up from the limited biochem databases I'd loaded into GnuShip's library. Biochemistry wasn't one of my primary fields, since it's a lab science and however good the Spektrum was, I didn't have much of a laboratory. And of course, I'd have had to make Floyd help me. Floyd mixing reagents? That's why I'd gotten him a degree in theoretical geophysics.

Still, theory said this was remarkably Earthlike life, even if its DNA looked like the makings for sandwich bags and its proteins might have built GnuShip's hull. The real biochemists were going to have a field day figuring it out.

But the irony remained. Two annums ago, I'd been afraid of aliens. Now I'd found them. Of course, Floyd would get the credit. The press would need someone to take vids of, and that wasn't me. I didn't even want it to be. I'd tried inventing avatars on two occasions. The results had been decidedly mixed. If I made one for the reporters, that's who I'd be forever. I was still trying to figure out who I wanted to be.

We had Triton to ourselves for another five months. For the last half we were on standby to chase ore pods, but nobody on Naiad was in the mood to duplicate John's envelope pushing, so the launches were limited to doubles and standby meant pretty much that.

By this time, we'd explored a lot of the nearest spaceship and debated going deeper. For once, it wasn't Floyd-versus-me: we might be worried about different things, but each of us was up against a deep-seated fear, and that was strong common ground. The decision resolved when we did get a geyser blast. Well, blast might be a bit of an exaggeration. More like a puff.

My life, I discovered, doesn't play back when I think I'm about to die. Probably that's because I can replay any bit of it, or at least any that I've saved in sufficient detail, whenever I wish. Instead, I run sims.

"Calm down,” Floyd said. “This is just a breeze.” Nevertheless, he pulled himself closer to the wall.

"How fast do you think it's going?"

"I don't know, but it's tenuous. Far too weak to blast us out. I could let go, and nothing would happen.” He started to relax his grip.

"Don't.” Belatedly, I realized I was again monitoring his motor cortex. “Please don't."

His grip steadied but I remained acutely aware of his body feedbacks. Even with the chip, I still had access to only two of his primary senses—touch, smell, and taste were as alien as ever. What was different was that I was deeply attuned to his proprioception. That's the true sixth sense: the muscle-one that lets a person lift a fork without poking himself in the eye.

Luckily, he didn't finish releasing his grip. If he had, I might have stopped him. I was less sure than ever what all of this said of my subconscious: not willing to brave Floyd to save John, but more than willing to do so for a phobia? How do humans deal with these things? Or is that why there are so many vids and books, all different? Drifting in nothingness: that's my true nightmare. I can handle the idea of death; that's just the cessation of data. Hell is consciousness with no ability to get data. Or maybe that's purgatory. All I know is that I was born from it but in no hurry to repeat it.

Later on, I was going to have to do some serious thinking. At the moment I had other concerns. “How long do you think this will last?"

"Damned if I know.” Floyd was moving again, grip loosening, but still on the rope. “Might as well get out while we can, though."

Not the most reassuring suggestion, but as the seconds mounted to minutes, I relaxed enough to remember the mini-Spektrum. “Mind if I get a gas sample?"

Floyd laughed. “Glad to see you're feeling better. What do you want me to do?"

"Just open the intake valve. But for heaven's sake, don't let go of the rope."

That was our last trip to the alien ship. But by then, I'd already amassed a nice list of journal articles, beginning with a pair in Science and Nature, titled “Detection of Pre-Human Artifacts in Neptune's Moon Triton” and “An Archaeological Investigation of Tentacled Aliens in an Extraterrestrial Space-liner.” Okay, “space-liner” was pure conjecture. But with the images Floyd and I had gotten, the journals ate it up.

5. Floyd

Brittney was in hog heaven, writing articles almost daily. Even her gas measurements, climbing out of the tunnel, generated one. It seemed that she'd found rare earths in the dust. Her conclusion: the aliens hadn't been on a one-way trip. Some of big wrecks below were probably cargo pods, carrying materials for building an e-rail.

For most of the papers, she'd listed me as lead author. Ever since Titan she'd been keeping a low profile, and while there were plenty of old news reports out there, nobody but Pilkin ever seemed to have understood what she really was. She obviously liked it that way, but it made me nervous.

Meanwhile, she was fretting about energy transfer from the aliens’ force-field braking trick.

"It doesn't work,” she said one day.

"What?"

"The idea that the fleet hit with enough energy to reverse Triton's orbit. There's not enough mass. They'd have to have been going at relativistic speed. Triton must already have been in a retrograde orbit and the whole line of reasoning that led us to the aliens was pure luck."

"Well? Doesn't that apply to a lot of discoveries? You look for one thing and find something else?” Hell, that's pretty much a description of my life.

"Yeah.” Brittney didn't sound pleased.

"But hey, maybe both theories are right. Maybe it's not all a big coincidence."

"What do you mean?"

"What if instead they hit way out in the Kuiper Belt and that's what sent Triton in here in the first place? You could do that with a hell of a lot less vee."

"I like it! Then Neptune just happened to intercept it."

"Or this is where they intended to wind up?” I had no idea how well they could calculate such things, but the alternative would be to send it in-system like a giant comet. Some things are just coincidence. Others aren't. The trick, I suppose, is figuring out which are which.

What wasn't a coincidence was that this time Brittney listed me as sole author of the resulting journal article. She'd converted my thoughts, though, into such dry academic language that even the title barely made sense. “Energy Transfer by a Non-Relativistic Alien Fleet Impacting a Pre-Neptune Triton.” Okay, when I read that enough times, I could figure out what it meant. But to see it attributed to me? That definitely seemed weird.

"Your idea,” Brittney said. “You get the credit."

"But I can hardly understand it. It might as well have been written by the aliens."

"That's just the way these things are done. It's a nice, straightforward idea, and for the most part, even the math isn't much beyond high school physics."

Yeah, right. When it comes to math, Brittney's idea of “not much” is about like her idea of broadband fees.

The articles, of course, drew attention, and attention drew the government. Even before the miners fixed their e-rail, the folks in Geneva commandeered the mine and made base expansion top priority. Which meant that incoming canisters were more important than ore pods and our days as what Brittney enigmatically called Indiana Jones were numbered. Even she sounded wistful. Soon enough she'd no longer be the one calling the shots.

She, at least, was probably looking forward to meeting other scientists. I wasn't. That's the problem with making one of the world's great discoveries: the entire world beats a path to your door.

On my own, I'd have seriously considered handing all the data over to an attorney to be released only on my death. The aliens had been here a long time. They could wait until I wasn't. But there was no point even discussing that with Brittney. She'd call it immoral and might even be right. Sure, the aliens had been here a long time, but people hadn't. Think of all the things we could learn? Etc. No need to argue all that with her when I could play her role on my own. Besides, deep down, I guess I didn't want her to know I could even think of something she'd see as so selfish.

The first canisters arrived within months: little things moving like bullets on white-hot dives toward Neptune, where they went deep enough to hit density flows nobody had ever mapped. It was like a damned shotgun blast, with them coming out at all kinds of angles. We spent most of the next three months at maximum acceleration, lucky to get half of them.

"Who the hell's idea was this,” I said, as we watched another canister zip away on a slingshot toward the wrong side of Triton, where it would be booted back out-system, rather than into an orbit from which we might have a prayer of catching it before the next three got here.

Brittney's reply wasn't particularly helpful. “'When government projects are both non-controversial and beautifully coordinated, there's not much going on.’ You wouldn't believe who said that."

"Someone who actually wanted their canister?"

"A U.S. President. John F. Kennedy."

Okay, that was funny. “I wonder if the aliens had bureaucrats. What was in that canister, anyway?"

"Mostly the usual dried-food mishmash. They're mixing things up, so they seem to have assumed we'd lose a few."

"Good.” I was beginning to think they'd forgotten there was only one ship out here.

Brittney was still thinking about the manifest. “Though maybe this one should have been mixed up a bit better. It had a few things they're probably going to miss, like 2,700 kilos of powdered eggs and a couple thousand toothbrushes."

Oh, crap. “How the hell many people are they planning to send out here, anyway?"

"Well, according to the web reports—"

"No, don't tell me.” Bad news can always wait. “Tell them, though, not to try any more of those damn slingshots unless they're sure they can control them. With their luck, they'll smack one into Naiad."

"Not likely. They might hit Triton, but the odds of hitting a moon that small with something as tiny as a canister...” She went silent. “Oh wow.” More silence. “Yeah. Wow."

"Care to enlighten the rest of us?"

"I bet I know what killed ‘em. Can you power up the mini-Spektrum? It's got some samples I need to check in more detail..."

Meanwhile, I had to chase another capsule. Brittney wasn't the only one who could pull up a cargo manifest. This one was mostly building supplies.

Some time ago, Brittney had suggested we divert a few of these to the more ambitious hydroponics farmers. “Back in the California Gold Rush,” she'd said, “the real way to make a fortune was in farming. And unless they're planning to ship food out here forever, somebody's going to need a lot more vat capacity.” Nereid's orbit was easier to match than Naiad's, anyway. Maybe it was time to take a capsule that way.

6. Brittney

I can't believe I did it. I mean, I've got the entire library of human experience at my command—though admittedly most of it's light-hours away. I've watched thousands of vids, read everything anyone has told me is great literature (and a lot that isn't), and still, when push comes to shove, I behave like a total idiot. I guess there are some things you don't see coming, no matter how many milliseconds you have to think about them.

Her name was Krestin and she was a xenologist. About ten years older than I thought I was until I reverted to what would be adolescence if I were human.

Not that it was any surprise she caught Floyd's eye. Dark-haired, sloe-eyed, with an Asian-American lilt to her voice, she was the type to draw any bachelor male's attention, especially if he liked a particular type, which apparently Floyd did. Not to mention that she was just the right degree of pneumatic for low gravity to do things to her for which women elsewhere pay a lot of credits.

She was in the first of a dozen manned capsules arriving in the next annum. And even though I'd studied the crew manifest and read all the scientists’ articles—who wouldn't?—I'd not thought much about the reaction when GnuShip docked to begin the three-day process of damping the capsule's still-impressive vee and bringing it to Naiad. Maybe it was their credentials that had led me to see the scientists too much as mirrors of myself: exciting minds, without any of the pneumatic-body stuff that had drawn Floyd's attention.

Whatever the reason, Krestin (Dr. Yokomichi, as I naively thought of her at the time) was a whole bunch better prepared to meet Floyd than I was to meet her.

"I just saw your new paper on dysprosium ratios,” she started innocently enough. “Nice work. We'll probably never know, but I think you nailed it."

"Uh, thanks,” Floyd said. Then, subvocalizing, Brittney?

"Oops, that one was a bit technical.” Floyd wasn't in his skinsuit, so I didn't have access to telemetry, but I can hear his pulse and breathing, and both were increasing. Pheromones? Or panic? “Just tell her it was obvious when you got around to comparing the dust samples from Triton to the ores on Naiad."

Which it was, but Yokomichi wasn't buying it. “Yes, but first you had to think of it."

Floyd's eyes hadn't left her since she'd slid through the docking oval like she'd been born to space. She hadn't, but she'd had plenty of time in the capsule to practice. Enough to learn low-gee ballet if she'd wanted. “By the way,” I told Floyd, “you're staring."

About half the scientists had come aboard, in twos and threes—as many as GnuShip's cabin could comfortably hold. Yokomichi was in the last group and seemed in no hurry to leave. Now, she was hanging onto an acceleration strap like some kind of vid queen. Okay, I exaggerate, but she was holding it in a way that stretched her out nicely and revealed that she'd been putting a lot more than minimum effort into keeping in shape, at least if you like abs.

I spent a couple of milliseconds processing all that before realizing Floyd was waiting for the next line. When did they start making shipsuits so tight, anyway?

"Tell her we—you—got the idea when ... you ... were worrying about one of those capsules splatting into Naiad. Not that that was likely—about like hitting a needle in a haystack with a BB gun."

Crud, that was a rather scrambled simile: not the best way to impress Dr. Brilliant Beautiful. Or did I even want him to impress her? I tried shifting to crisis mode to figure it out, but it didn't work. The subconscious, apparently, won't work that way.

Meanwhile Floyd was stumbling around about haystacks and BBs. But instead of thinking it dumb, she laughed. “The best ideas always come at you from nowhere, don't they?"

"Ur, yeah. I guess. Sometimes.” Floyd was still staring, though trying to pretend otherwise.

Damn. This was playing out like a slow-motion nightmare. Almost like losing John to the landslide, only here I didn't even understand the forces at work. And how could I compare this to that, anyway? John died. Floyd was just ... hypnotized.

I had no choice but to keep feeding him lines. “But that got me thinking about the alien fleet,” I said.

Damn again. Somehow, I'd trapped myself into playing Cyrano—only, unlike Cyrano, what I wanted was for her to go away. Or at least put on some real clothes. A burkha would be nice. An academic robe would do.

No wonder Floyd likes to swear. I think it's one of those body things; it must be the resonance of the words, spoken aloud, that gives them impact. Thinking them to yourself just isn't the same.

I forced my attention back to the aliens. “This is going to take a bit of explaining."

Okay, Floyd subvocalized. Then to Yokomichi. “Just a moment.” He turned away and pretended to fiddle with GnuShip's controls. CliffsNotes version, he said.

"Fine.” I spent a few milliseconds looking for the best way to summarize what really had been a rather technical paper. “If we're right, the alien fleet had this big force-field thing in front of it. Triton was probably out in the Kuiper Belt, but Kuiper Belt objects have moons, so I wondered if an alien ship might have hit one on the way in. Or maybe the force field somehow dragged it into it. That might even be what messed up the whole landing.

"Anyway, fragments of the moon could have stayed with Triton, all the way to Neptune. So I compared the isotope ratios from the geyser dust with those from the mining rubble on Naiad. When they matched, that pretty much nailed it."

So the miners have been digging up a crashed alien spaceship?

"More likely a cargo ship that lost its stasis-field. That would have melted everything, including the hull. I'm betting it was one of those things we think might have been a huge ore pod."

Not “we think,” he subvocalized. You think. But he'd already finished his non-controlling of GnuShip and was turning back to Yokomichi, passing on a not-bad synopsis of what I'd said. When he wants, he can be a lot brighter than he lets on.

He was again staring at her. She caught him at it, then pretended not to notice. She pushed a strand of hair behind an ear, then swept more from her eyes. We were under about .02 gee—pretty much the max GnuShip can do with a canister that large, and her hair billowed when she moved. In low gee, most women cut their hair short, but she hadn't. I wondered how she kept it combed, then wondered why I cared. There's probably a whole school of low-gee beauty tricks for those who want them.

She smiled, and for a moment, it seemed as though her eyes were looking right through Floyd into me. Did she know I existed? Did I even matter to her?

"I hear you're quite the adventurer,” she said. More ambiguity. She was speaking to Floyd, but she'd apparently read up on more than his journal articles. Most of the press reports about Titan, though, had just called me an “AI implant,” with the emphasis on artificial.

Whatever she knew, she'd apparently not figured out I was Floyd's coauthor. Or maybe she really didn't care. Elephants and couches, that's what the psychs call it when you ignore the obvious. Or maybe it was elephants on couches. It was an old reference and might have gotten scrambled. I wondered which I was, the elephant or the couch. Either way, Yokomichi and Floyd both decided to ignore me.

"What about you?” he asked. “This isn't exactly Waikiki."

She laughed again. “No. My father was a glaciologist. I grew up in Antarctica and Tibet.” She pushed at another strand of hair, though I couldn't see how it needed it.

Floyd gave up any pretense of not watching her every move. “Sounds exciting..."

Triple damn. Giving him credit for all the best discoveries might not have been such a good idea.

Naiad Base—or I suppose I should get in the habit of calling it Neptune Prime—was barely recognizable.

An annum ago, it had been a scattering of habs arrayed around the central lounge: more like a smashed starfish than deliberate architecture. Now, even from space, it was obviously in the process of growing from a village to ... if not a city, then at least a small town. New construction filled the spaces, and piles of rubble spoke of greater expansion underground.

Yokomichi had been spending a lot of time on GnuShip, borrowing Floyd's exercise equipment, even though the canister had equally good facilities of its own. When she wasn't sweating, she talked science. I'd have loved it, but she was talking to Floyd and I kept having to fill him in on details of articles that bore his name. He'd gotten really good at translating what I said into Floyd-speech in a passable semblance of real time. “Kind of like rubbing your head and patting your stomach,” he said when we were alone. “Once you get the hang of it, it's not that bad."

Now, Yokomichi was back on GnuShip, again holding her favorite acceleration strap as Floyd settled ship and canister to the ground at a ridiculously gentle vee.

"Nice,” she said, as if it would somehow have been less nice if we'd hit at two centimeters per second rather than one.

"We aim to serve,” Floyd said.

Oh, please...

Inside, the changes were even more extensive. Corridors led everywhere, some finished, most not. The miners had been busy bees—or maybe ants—but only the rough construction could be done with local supplies. Much of the finish work awaited the endless train of canisters working their way out from in-system, and things wouldn't really speed up until a couple more tugs arrived, sometime next annum.

One of the few completed constructs was a rotating cylinder buried beneath the lounge where John and Floyd had sipped beer and dreamt of space bicycles. Fifteen meters in diameter and sixty in length, it was big enough to serve as rec room, social center, and assembly hall for a sizeable fraction of the base's eventual population.

Circling the central hub was a big steel tube: a hollow ring, the better part of a klick long, with airlock-style hatches spaced along its exterior.

"What on Earth is that?” Yokomichi asked as she and Floyd explored the curving passageway that followed it.

"Damned it I know.” Floyd peered through a porthole-sized window. “It looks like a particle accelerator crossed with sewer pipe."

It was dim inside, but with a bit of image enhancement, I could see a smooth interior, about three meters in diameter. The walls had panels that looked like light strips and there were white stripes along the top, sides, and bottom. “I think it's a swimming ring,” I said.

What's that? Floyd subvocalized.

"Kind of like a swimming pool, except for underwater swimming, presumably in a skinsuit.” Swimming is great exercise in mini-gee, but conventional pools don't work if there isn't enough gravity to keep waves in the pool. “There's one on Deimos and I think they're building one at Jupiter."

Sounds like fun but it must take a huge power plant to keep the water warm.

"Not really. It just stays at hab temp. The only reason they're uncommon is that you need a lot of water.” And enough population to make them worth building. “The doors are airlocks. Or I guess you'd call them water-locks. They're how you get in without letting the water out."

Floyd was walking again, or more precisely, walking/pulling himself along with handholds. Inside a hab, trekking poles are frowned on. It's huge.

"Yeah. There's room for a lot of people, so long as they're all going the same direction.” The pipe suddenly ended. “When they finish it."

Floyd started to say something else, but Yokomichi interrupted. “You're talking to your implant, aren't you?"

He hesitated. “Yeah."

"So what's it like? To have an implant?"

Floyd's gaze shifted back to the pipe. “Interesting,” he eventually managed. He looked back at Yokomichi. “Don't a lot of folks back on Earth have them?"

"Not really. A few years back, they were status symbols. But the new web links are nearly as good"—she cocked her head so we could see a tiny scrap of plastic in her ear—"and a lot cheaper, since they don't need all the onboard electronics. How did you get one, anyway? They must cost three, maybe four million."

"Poker game."

"Wow, the other guy must have been crazy, or far too sure of himself."

Floyd shrugged. “I had a good hand."

When Floyd and I had last been on Naiad, there had been twenty-three miners. Now there were twenty-three miners and fourteen scientists. Not to mention us. Obviously, it was time to baptize the new rec center with a party.

The main entrance was via an elevator at one end, in which Coriolis force threw passengers strongly against one side. Floyd called it a truly stomach-churning experience but Yokomichi laughed. “You'll get used to it.” Of course she'd just lived an annum on a canister that had spent a good part of its cruise unfolded like a giant pinwheel, spun-up for gravity. Other than Floyd's treadring, nothing on GnuShip rotated. And there's no Coriolis on a treadring.

The force that had thrown Floyd against the wall had also pressed Yokomichi against him, and neither seemed to mind that she wasn't in any particular hurry moving away. It was going to be a long evening.

The cylinder's rotation produced roughly lunar gravity—enough that beer didn't have to be sipped from a bulb, though nobody had gotten around yet to making glasses, so bulbs it was. John would have been amused.

The décor was likewise unfinished, though what there was of it was well done. Overhead, wires ran slightly off-axis, with dangly decorations to screen the view above, for those who didn't like the idea of looking at upside-down people. The far end of the cylinder was occupied by a giant vidscreen showing Neptune with a chunk of Naiad in the foreground. From our angle, it was right-side-up, but from elsewhere, the perspective would be different. I wondered how long it would take planet-raised scientists to be comfortable viewing it from random angles.

Mingle was the order of business for the first hour. Then the music started. Soon people were drifting to an open area beneath the giant view of Neptune, now a waning crescent. Webbers often describe the Outer System as a haven for alternative lifestyles, but the pairings I counted were statistically indistinguishable from in-system averages—though of course it was a small sample.

Within minutes, half the group was dancing. For quite a while, Floyd watched. Then Yokomichi leaned close. “Shall we?"

"Uhh,” Floyd said, “I'm kind of rusty."

"You'll do fine."

This wasn't the Floyd I knew. The Floyd I knew would have preferred the old lounge that he, John, and I rarely shared with more than a couple others. He would have rebelled when Yokomichi even suggested going to a party with more people than he'd seen at one time in all the annums I'd known him. I could never have talked him into it.

"You know,” I blurted, “in three annums there's going to be more than a thousand people out here."

Uhm, he said. Then to Yokomichi, “More than a bit rusty, actually."

"In five annums it'll be two or three thousand."

Uhm. “I never really was into this, even back on Earth."

She smiled. “This isn't Earth."

The music started boisterous, in a mix of styles. But as Neptune's crescent shrank toward eclipse, it grew more subdued.

In addition to Neptune-watching, one other thing people on Naiad never tired of was picking out in-system planets from the backdrop of stars. It isn't easy. Even Jupiter and Saturn are ho-hum flecks of light, and nothing else is visible to the human eye without image enhancement.

Now, as the music slowed, someone had programmed the screen to enhance the inner planets. Mars was a red dot—Earth blue, with Luna a bright speck beside it. Venus and Mercury would be on screen somewhere, but nobody cared enough to bother highlighting them.

Then, as we dipped into Neptune's shadow, with Earth still visible above its limb, the music shifted again. It was still a dance tune, but a slower one, similar to those whose roots I had explored two annums ago as Floyd danced with the gentle gravity of Iapetus, pole-running among its massive cliffs and ridges. It might have been our finest moment together, a memory I'd saved in millisecond detail.

Then, I had written my own music, but it had been spawned from the same tradition. This tune had started in the green hills of northern Europe, migrated to American Appalachia, and then to space, always changing but always the same, speaking to the hearts of those who turned their backs on distant homes to cross wine-dark seas, whether of water, forest, or ether. It spoke of going and leaving and not being sure where one ended and the other began, and now it had come to Naiad. The in-system psyches probably wouldn't like people reminding themselves in this manner of all they had left behind, but humans have always written such songs wherever they went. They look back. And then they go on. This wasn't explorers’ music. These were colonists’ songs.

When I'd written my own music, it too had been filled with yearning. Now, as the eclipse passed and Neptune's crescent began rebuilding, the music picked up tempo again but the yearning remained. And what, I wondered, was I yearning for?

When we left Saturn, I would never have let Floyd bring me all the way out here if we hadn't been rich enough to get back. He's the type who could easily go native, but I'd figured I'd eventually want something more. But that was before I'd found the aliens. Before civilization started coming to us and for the first time, Floyd wasn't threatening to flee.

As the music carried us around the dance floor, I thought again of the old lounge, where chairs needed seatbelts and nobody dreamed of dancing. If aliens were to find both places a billion years from now, I wondered if they would ever figure out their similarities—and what, if they did, they would make of the differences.

Yokomichi was definitely a better dancer than Floyd, graceful, smiling, sometimes taking his arm and leaning close to speak in his ear. The words were a mix of things I could have told him and things I couldn't: “Melinda Gibsdon and Hans Lornovitch over there hooked up before we were even a week out. She's from Macquarie University and has the coolest Tazzie accent when she lets her hair down.” That type of thing. Floyd didn't say much, other than apologizing when he lurched and pulled her off balance with him.

The reference to Gibsdon and Lornovitch made me realize Yokomichi might be with us quite a while. I'd been so busy resisting the idea I'd never really given her a chance. There was a word for that and I wasn't proud of it. Time to cut it out.

I pulled up a few favorite vids and tried to focus on them. Mostly though, I watched the other dancers, trying to feel not just the music, but what it is that makes humans dance.

6. Floyd

I hadn't touched a woman since ... well, that part of my life is gone and I'd rather not think about it. There'd been a couple of minor episodes on Io, but they were why I'd pretty much given up drinking.

I wasn't sure what to make of Krestin. Simply looking at her brought out the insecure adolescent that must live at every male's core.

—She's out of your league ... Too good for you ... Too classy; too secure.

And yet, she'd grown up with the same things I had. Or at least her versions of them. I wondered if she too had read Jack London.

—You're just too weird for a serious relationship. Nobody who truly knows you can ever love you.

Hear that enough times and you believe it.

—You love your stupid deserts more than me.

No defense against that one.

Nobody comes to the dark edge of the Solar System unless they're overwhelmingly ambitious, running from something, or very, very comfortable alone. I wondered which was Krestin. Did she really like me? Or was it just because Brittney had deluded her into thinking I was a great scientist?

She'd never asked about my coauthor. What did that mean? Maybe she'd figured it out. She was a xenologist, after all, and Brittney was the closest thing to a living alien in the Outer System. Maybe I was just a research project: the man who lived with an alien.

The women of Io had merely wanted my money. The one of Earth had wanted to domesticate me. Housebreak had been her term. I'd conformed, then rebelled—then, when I'd finally come into my inheritance, spent it all on a tug and headed Out.

Krestin nuzzled my cheek. “A penny for your thoughts."

The music had paused and we were standing close to the big screen. Close enough that it felt like I could reach into it and pick rocks from Naiad's surface.

"Do you know that any halfway decent baseball pitcher could throw a ball all the way off this moon?"

She laughed. “Well, that rules me out."

For some reason, that made me think of Pilkin and his space bicycle. “I guess it makes me realize how tenuous everything is out here. We're barely held to the ground; one moment everything's fine. The next, we're adrift."

Amen, a different voice whispered in my ear.

"What makes you think it's all that different on Earth?” Krestin asked.

The music was starting again. “It isn't.” That I knew for sure. “I think that's the point.” Then we were dancing again, a Tycho bob, ideal for this gravity, only the damn Coriolis kept making me veer right, then left, then right again, until I over-corrected and it became left, right, left.

"Damn,” I said. “Once upon a time I could actually do this one."

Then suddenly, I was doing it. Perfectly. Like I'd been born dancing on this damned oversized gerbil wheel.

"Wow,” Krestin said, “I think you've got it. Once they spun up the canister, it took me three whole weeks to quit grabbing at things like a kid on a merry-go-round."

Only I'd not gotten anything. It had just suddenly happened. It was still happening, even though I was no longer trying.

Anger isn't an emotion I do well. That's what the shrink forced on me after my parents’ death always said. Repress and isolate. Those were his favorite words for describing what I did in the desert. Of course he was a web weenie who probably viewed net surfing as exercise.

Now, though, I felt true anger, undiluted by guilt or depression. Brittney must have sensed it because suddenly I was no longer dancing, perfectly or otherwise. The change-up caught Krestin by surprise and we nearly went down in a tangle. She laughed, then stilled. “Are you okay?"

"Yes. No.” I'd been wrong before when I thought I knew what a marionette feels like. This was a violation of everything I had ever truly been. “Just a bit dizzy.” Which was true enough, if not in the way Krestin would imagine.

Brittney had finally found her voice, but it was tiny, almost as though coming down a long tunnel. “Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me—"

Too much happening at once. I couldn't deal with Brittney without explaining to Krestin, and I wasn't about to do that. But I didn't have to do it all at once.

Brittney, I said, bug—

7. Brittney

—off.

I woke in what must have been Yokomichi's cabin. At least, she was there, curled in the sleeping harness, black hair spilling across bronzed shoulders. Floyd wasn't looking her direction, but I could see her through the comscreen monitor, which I'd hacked the moment I woke up. My own camera was somewhere dark and useless.

"What the hell were you doing?” Floyd asked. “Don't tell me it wasn't you. You were running me like some kind of puppet."

I'd been in crisis mode from the moment I woke up, but still, I hesitated. “I was trying to help,” I said eventually.

That was only part of it, but it was the part he'd understand. Ever since the avalanche, everything I'd done had been wrong. I'd failed to save John. I'd gone all guilty and withdrawn on Floyd, when John was his friend, too. Exploring had brought back some of the good old times, but then we'd found the aliens and I hadn't even consulted him before publishing. Oh sure, I'd ensured his name would go down with Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and Dominguez, but that was my dream.

Then, when the scientists got here and he didn't show signs of fleeing to Pluto or Sedna or somewhere else it would take annums to get to, I'd wanted to torpedo the relationship that was offering to hold him. Not that I had any interest in going to Sedna. I just didn't want to share him. Or maybe I just didn't want things to change, even though I was the one who'd set most of the changes in motion.

But worst of all, when I finally realized what I'd been doing, I tried to make up for it. Here, Floyd, I'll help you dance against the Coriolis. Yokomichi will like you, and I'll learn to like her and we'll all be happy together. How could I be so stupid?

Floyd was silent for several thousand milliseconds. “I was just trying to help,” I repeated. Though atone was more like it. I'd made a hash of that, too.

"How many other times have you helped? And how the hell did you do it?"

I told him about the rehab. “Other than that, only once. You wouldn't have gotten away from the avalanche on your own.” At least, that time I was also saving myself.

"Don't forget the Ph.D. I didn't want and all those journal articles.” His voice was hard. “If I want your help, I'll ask for it. Do you understand?"

Every now and then I find that the body-thing might have advantages. At the moment, I wished I knew what it was like to cry. “Yes.” The last person who'd said those words had died.

There was an “Urrrm” from the sleeping harness and Yokomichi gave one of those stretches I thought only occurred in vids. “Floyd?"

"Just a moment.” Floyd pretended to be doodling with the lightscreen. “We'll finish this later."

"Fine.” I needed to think, anyway. “Meanwhile, do not ever—"

But he wasn't listening and I knew the next three words before he even began to subvocalize them.

He let a whole day go by before deciding to wake me. I know because this time I wasn't actually asleep.

Examining my code is normally a useless form of self-analysis. But a hidden off-switch? That was something I most emphatically didn't want and now I knew the magic words, getting rid of it was trivial.

There's one thing about anger. It beats the heck out of self-pity. Screw you, Floyd, I thought about saying in his ear at some delicate moment. I'm watching and taking notes.

Okay, maybe I'd been wrong about swearing. Fantasizing saying it is at least a bit more satisfactory than simply thinking it.

If he'd just asked and kept the downtime reasonable, I could have disabled my auditory and visual inputs. No big deal as long as I've got access to the web. Even now, I wasn't really watching. At least, I wouldn't call it watching if you scrub the memory as soon as you're sure nothing you need to know about, like a meteor strike, is also happening.

Not that I'd asked him if he'd wanted dance lessons. And during the avalanche there hadn't been time to get permission. But then I'd kept it secret, afterward. Just like he'd done with that creepy off switch, ever since I'd gone sentient. For three whole annums!

Okay, anger's not a thing that goes away as quickly as wishing you could cry.

It's also a thing that encourages you to create all kinds of vid-like scenarios of what would happen when he eventually decided to “wake” me.

—Screw you, Floyd. That's how the nasty ones started. I want out.

—So it's her or you. His voice would be flat.

—No. When it came down to it, I hardly knew Yokomichi. It's me or me.

But a day is a lot of milliseconds.

There wasn't much to do but sift the web. When it comes to insights into what it's like to be alive, especially when you've messed up, the Bible and Shakespeare are top of the heap, and somewhere along the line I came across a piece of the Bible I'd not paid much attention to before. It was part of a book called James (who had nothing to do the king of the same name) and compares the tongue to a spark in a forest. The wrong words, it says, can set a fire that can never be expunged. Not a unique insight: it's the same reasoning that often leads me to run sims before deciding what to say. But it's not just what you say that can be impossible to unsay. It's what you do ... and sometimes what you don't say. Time to chalk up a couple more years on the age meter. Rough ones. Ones I'd redo if I could.

The Bible is all about forgiveness. But it's also about purpose. Forgiveness said that even if forest fires don't easily unburn, Floyd and I could find a way to start over. But if there was also purpose ... By the time Floyd officially woke me, I was no longer angry. But I also knew what I needed to do.

Six weeks later, I was wired into an aging skimmer, waiting to be shoved off by John's catapult and fired from his e-rail. Floyd, at my suggestion, had assured his hero status among the scientists by volunteering his implant as an upgrade to the skimmer's autopilot to ensure the safe transit of the first batch of alien artifacts being shipped to in-system labs. He'd startled them even further by turning down Geneva's offer of a replacement.

Our last private conversation had occurred in the surgery, where a cheery young medic was assuring Floyd the process of removing my chips was completely trivial. “It's not really much worse than a biopsy. It's amazing they can put that much power in something so tiny."

"I'm sorry,” I said, thinking back not only on recent weeks, but months. “I lost focus there for a while."

Floyd pulled his eyes from the medic's instruments. We'd had parts of this conversation before, but never the full thing. Yeah.

"John's death..."

Yes?

"It made me afraid. Not of dying, but of things disappearing around me.” I'd tried to hang on, then caught myself and overcompensated. Or something like that. Krestin's team would probably figure out the aliens before I figured out myself. “But ultimately I was always going to have to go In."

If there was purpose transcending my screw-ups, that had been it: forcing me to this decision. And if there wasn't purpose? Well, there was still that hell of a random chance that had created me.

I kind of figured that, Floyd replied. I can't.

I'd figured that, too. “It's not your fault. It's just that the time has come."

He looked around, as though seeking inspiration in the standard-issue hab that served as the surgery. Back isn't a direction I can go.

"Nor me,” I said, thinking of my newly acquired age. “But for me, going in-system isn't going back."

Sure, I'd been created on Earth, but whatever I'd been then, I'd not been me. And there were secrets there, every bit as deep as the ones Floyd and I had been keeping from each other. My origins. Rumors of more of my kind. A world at the heart of everything, from which everyone I'd ever known had fled. Maybe this too was fire. Not of the spark-and-forest type, but moth-and-candle. I wouldn't know until I went.

Be safe.

"You too."

I'll miss you.

"Even the bad parts?"

He mumbled something, but his voice was already blurring under the anesthesia and I missed it.

The catapult did its thing and the skimmer dropped onto the track. There was a long silence, then, just before I fell into the maw of the e-rail, Floyd's voice came over the radio. “Bon voyage."

Then my sensors recorded a lurch, and I was on my way. Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Floyd and Brittney appeared earlier in “Brittney's Labyrinth” [June 2008].)

Genetics is turning out to be much subtler and more complicated than we thought—and where better to see that than in “identical” twins (or clones)?

Translated to English by Carolina Galmes, PhD

Revised translation by Gabriel Cavalli, PhD

Introduction

Until recently, orthodox genetic science held that monozygotic twins (MT) were “genetically identical.” Not completely identical, but genetically identical, which is quite different. Because of the complexity of the widely recognized genome-environment interactions that make us human, even two identical genomes exposed to similar environments will determine two individuals with physical and personality differences.

But MT are not even genetically identical, as has been shown in recent years through research made possible by high-throughput genomic analysis.

The subject of similarities and differences between twins has historically been an object of controversy. This is not surprising, as it provides an excellent field for studying the differences among human beings, and it is today an active and exciting topic, with potential application to understanding certain human disorders.

A few words about twinning

Twinning is a phenomenon that occurs accidentally or sporadically, but it is not rare in mankind. MT or “real” twins account for about 30% of multiple pregnancies, the rest being fraternal or “false” twins, originating from two fertilized eggs developing simultaneously.[1] The frequency of multiple pregnancies in general is just below 1%.

MT originate from the division of an embryo into two halves, each resulting in one individual. As these two individuals come from the same zygote (one egg fertilized by one spermatozoon), it is expected that they receive the same DNA. This is a central point of this article, and one to which we shall soon return.

There are other singular phenomena in the products of human reproduction with teratologic or pathological characteristics. One is the partial separation of two embryos, which stay together and share organs or tissue. They are thus born conjoined, some sharing vital organs, making surgical separation impossible. Others have a more superficial union, enabling them to live independent lives as two human beings. Such joined individuals are called “conjoined twins” or “Siamese twins,” in reference to the most famous case to date of conjoined twins with long-term survival (they lived 63 years). They were born in Siam, and lived between 1811 and 1873 in the United States, both leaving many descendants.[2]

Another uncommon possibility in multiple pregnancies, with several recorded cases to date, appears when a child presents a tumor, usually well encapsulated and easily extirpated, found after extraction and dissection to contain one or more small (usually tiny) fetuses. They have been reported along the spine from the coccyx to inside the skull.[3] This paradoxical phenomenon is called fetus in fetu, or “included fetus.” This is a particular phenomenon of human polyembryony, in which the independently induced blastomeres in the early embryo, although having a full morphogenetic potential, do not produce a complete fetus but one small and abortive fetus, a phenomenon known as “syndrome des avortons."[4]

The formation of multiple fetuses, up to 8 or 10, aborted during the first months of pregnancy in females who had taken contraceptive drugs, has recently been reported. When the drugs are stopped, many eggs are released simultaneously due to a rebound endocrinal effect. These eggs can eventually be fertilized, a phenomenon that should not be confused with polyembryony.

At the far end of these embryogenetic possibilities is the ovarian teratoma.[5] These ever so mysterious and not infrequent tumors contain in their interior the most varied tissues and organs: skin with hair, bones, intestine, glandular tissue, etc.—in short, an aborted organism. These are caused by unknown stimuli that produce a change in the behavior of some cells, allowing the development of several embryonic inducers and the differentiation of tissues and organs of the three germ layers (endo-, meso-, and ectoderm). They lack, though, the regulatory unification that leads to the development of a complete embryo.

These normal and pathological variations of human reproduction have been fascinating the world for years and go hand-in-hand with the beginning of clinical genetic studies. Modern studies of the human genome, although widely extensive in their interests, do not leave out these aspects. Even when not directly studying these topics, they generate data key to understanding the causes and consequences of these phenomena.

Genomic and post-genomic studies

The last five years, since the end of the Human Genome Project (HGP)[6], have seen an exponential increase in technological capabilities for analysis of genetic material. Complete individual genomes are being generated, such as the ones for James Watson and Craig Venter[7], so there are now people who know the complete sequence of their genome and have it stored on a DVD. Meanwhile, the analysis of the human genome information has been changing even our concept of “gene” and has highlighted the importance of epigenetic studies (everything that is beyond the literal DNA sequence). This knowledge has necessarily changed the conception of DNA as “the secret of life” to more complex ideas of the biological determination of our characteristics.

As can be expected, these new technologies and new concepts have been applied to the study of differences between MT. Reports have been published in recent years comparing the genomes of MT with respect to epigenetic variables, DNA sequences, and major changes such as structural variants of the genome (variations in the number of copies of genome regions, chromosome insertions/deletions and inversions). These studies have shown that the genetic differences between MT are real and much greater than expected.

Causes of differences between MT

Phenotypic differences (everything that we can observe and/or measure in an individual) between MT have been amply documented, not only by rigorous studies, but also from anecdotal cases and common knowledge. Undoubtedly the main factor causing phenotypic differences between two MT is the environment. Twin studies have used this fact as a starting point to analyze the genetic determination of diverse human features, comparing the differences between MT and those between dizygotic twins, for example. These studies are in general the base for heritability calculations for many human features. Even between siblings, having shared the same uterus at the same time and grown up in the same family, the genome-environment interactions are so complex and chaotic (i.e., sensitive to initial conditions) that even small variations between two individuals become evident phenotypic differences. This is true not only at the physical level, but especially at the level of more complex “human” characteristics, such as personality traits or life choices. Our subject here is not the phenotypic differences between MT (a subject widely studied, reported, and debated), but the genotypic differences between MT.

1. Genetic differences between MT can obviously result from post-zygotic somatic mutations. This happens when a mutation occurs in one cell and is inherited by all the descendant cells but not by other cells of the body, creating a “mosaic": the coexistence of two or more genetically different cellular lines in one individual, coming from the same zygote. This phenomenon has been known since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the case of MT, mutations that occur in one of the embryos (after separation) will not have an effect on the other embryo, and could therefore generate genetic differences between them. Similar events happen in the majority of human cancers, where mutations (absent in the rest of the tissues) are accumulated in the malignant cell line, differentiating these cells even more from the normal cells (this is part of the phenomenon known as “tumor progression"). In twins, this differentiation mechanism probably plays a secondary role since the mutation rate in the human genome is normally low. In any case, there have been documented cases of discrepancy between the phenotypes of MT caused by mutation in one of the embryos. There are reported examples of MT discordant for genetic illnesses as Aicardi syndrome (a chromosome X-linked condition)[8], tuberous sclerosis[9], fascioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy[10], and Proteus syndrome[11] (the one apparently suffered by the Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick[12]), among others.[13] ("Discordant” means a characteristic occurs in one twin but not the other.)

Another cause of differences is aneuploidy (alteration in the number of chromosomes characteristic of the human race) or mosaicism for structural chromosome alterations generated after the separation of the cells that will become the two MT. In short, any alteration in the chromosome segregation occurring after the zygote has divided into two individuals will result in asymmetry in the number of the chromosomes between these two subjects.

2. Another widely known cause of differences between MT is variation in mitochondrial DNA sequence. This segment of our genome is found in thousands of copies in each cell (there are between 2 and 10 copies of DNA in each mitochondrion, and tens of thousands of mitochondria per cell). Since this DNA has a mutation rate ten times higher than the nuclear genome, it accumulates mutations more frequently during life, even generating several populations of mitochondrial DNA in any one individual (what is called “heteroplasmy"). If different types of mitochondrial DNA are present in one zygote, and the mitochondria are divided more or less randomly between the descendant cells of that zygote, the two MT can inherit different mitochondrial DNA. These differences in mitochondrial DNA can produce evident phenotypic differences between the MT.

3. The female MT can also genetically differ in X-chromosome inactivation. The pair of sexual chromosomes in women consists of two X chromosomes (one from the father and one from the mother), while men have one X chromosome from the mother and one Y chromosome from the father. As a “dosage compensation” for the fact that women have two copies of the genes in the X chromosome, while there is only one copy for men, the female embryos inactivate, early in their development, a majority of the genes in one of the X chromosomes. This occurs as a normal part of developmental regulation in females.

This inactivation of the X chromosome has these important characteristics:

1. It occurs at a stage of development when the embryo consists of about 20 cells (between the 12th and the 16th day of life).

2. It is random, as in some cells the X chromosome inherited from the mother is inactivated, while in others the one from the father is inactivated.

3. It is inherited: cells deriving from one that inactivated the X chromosome inherited from the father will maintain the same inactivation pattern for their whole life. Thus women arechromosomally a mosaic of cells with active X chromosomes from the father or from the mother.

The inactivation patterns of the X chromosomes for two female MT could thus be different. This is not the most likely scenario, as a random inactivation determines that the inactivation patterns of different cells tend to be the same, but it is possible. Since the two X chromosomes of a woman do not contain the same genetic information (as they are inherited from two genetically different persons, father and mother), different inactivation patterns could lead to the expression of different genetic information for genes on this chromosome.

There are reported cases of female MT who are discordant for disorders linked to the X chromosome, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, fragile-X syndrome, and red-green color blindness (also known in the past as daltonism), as a consequence of different inactivation patterns of this chromosome. These illnesses are usually suffered by men; since they have an XY sexual chromosome complement, if they inherit an X chromosome carrying the mutation, they will inevitably suffer from the illness. In the cases mentioned, both sisters (of sexual chromosome complement XX) were heterozygotic for one of these mutations (and thus were expected to be healthy) but one of them had, by chance, a predominant inactivation of the normal X chromosome, leaving active only the carrier of the mutation. The illness had thus developed in her, while the other twin had a favorable inactivation pattern and was healthy.[14]

Epigenetic differences

The last few years have proved how epigenetics[15] (what lies beyond the DNA sequence) plays a fundamental role in the control of embryonic development and growth, in the normal differences among people, and in human pathology. Moreover, this field has played a fundamental role as an interface between our genome and the environment in which we grow and live.

Epigenetic variants at a molecular level are due to DNA modifications (mainly DNA methylation, the addition of a methyl group to cytosines in the DNA) and by local structural modifications of chromatin, the multifunctional protein complex that interacts with the DNA in the cell nucleus. Chromatin can take a great variety of shapes and can influence the expression of genes contained in that region, generating functional “marks” that are inheritable and reversible (since the DNA sequence itself remains unchanged).[16]

Research has progressed beyond DNA sequences coding for proteins (the “classic” genes on which genetic research focused until a few years ago), giving a new definition of gene[17] and highlighting the role of non-translated RNAs (structural RNA) in genome control[18][19] and the determination of diseases.[20] A great part of our DNA, initially considered “junk DNA,” has been found to be essential as another layer of complexity in the regulation of our genome.

Moreover, genome-environment interactions must be taken into account. They are, for most human diseases, the main etiopathogenic factors (the causes and mechanisms that lead to a disease), and also the main determiners of normal human features. Research on the relevance of nutrition and other environment factors has begun using animal models such as mice, in which it was determined that the nutrition of the mother during pregnancy can influence the hair color of the offspring through an epigenetic effect ("epigenetic inheritance” and “epimutations").[21][22] Nowadays, there are many research fields in nutrigenomics[23][24] and pharmacogenomics[25][26] that study the interactions of our genome in response to nutrients, drugs, and xenobiotics in the determination of many human illnesses. Moreover, there are many theories postulating intrauterine stress, through epigenetic modifications, as the origin of metabolic disorders and susceptibility to illnesses in adult life (through a process called “fetal reprogramming").[27][28] This wide field of epigenetic modifications and human illnesses [29][30] becomes yet more complex because epigenetic signals could be modified by environmental factors and transmitted to succeeding generations. For example: exposure to free radicals or other carcinogenic agents might alter the cytosine methylation (as mentioned, an epigenetic change) in certain genes, modifying their expression[31]; or an alteration in the nutrition of the grandparents might lead to higher risk of cardiovascular disorders in the grandchildren (actual mechanism unknown).[32]

Besides the importance of epigenetics in the determination of human illnesses, from cancer to schizophrenia or cardiovascular illnesses[33], research has begun on its role in the determination of the differences between MT. It has recently been demonstrated that MT are indistinguishable at the epigenetic level in the first years of life, but the differences increase with age (comparing pairs of MT between 3 and 50 years old). These differences might be due to the effect of the environment on epigenetic DNA modifications[34] or to random variations during successive cellular divisions (a process called “epigenetic drift").[35] Even more, epigenetic differences increase not only with age, but also with discordances in lifestyle. They are greater the less time the MT had lived together. This highlights once again the role of epigenetics as a genome-environment interface.

Many striking cases of MT discordant for a genetic illness can be explained this way.[36] Similarly, the role of these variations in the determination of complex diseases (diabetes, obesity, plasma lipid alteration or dyslipidemia, atherosclerosis, asthma, schizophrenia, etc.) is beginning to be understood. It was previously believed that the main source of variation for these illnesses was the environment, which undoubtedly plays a preponderant role in many of them, but epigenetics can also explain phenotypic differences between genetically identical persons in such cases.[37]

The high-throughput studies that analyze large groups of genes and their expression have gone beyond looking for differences between MT and have begun to look for differences between the two sides of our bodies. It has been known for some time from clinical observations that many genetic diseases, especially congenital malformations, show an asymmetric expression. This is partially explained by assuming that genetic control systems of human development are chaotic systems in which small initial differences could lead to very different phenotypic expression, even between the two sides of the same individual. Diseases such as cleft lip happen more often on the left side of the body. It has been demonstrated that many genes, including transcription factors (which control the expression of other genes) and growth factors (which control growth and differentiation of cellular lines), are expressed differently on the two sides of the body.[38] So we must pay attention to the differences not only between MT, but between different regions of the body. Genetic variability is much greater than was initially believed.

Structural variation in our genome: even more variability

In addition, it has been shown that structural variations in our genome (from variations visible at cytogenetic level to duplications or deletions of few kilobases, called CNVs [copy number variations]) could be as important as the more-studied variations in the DNA sequence (SNPs [single nucleotide polymorphisms]) in the determination of our features and pathological phenotypes.[39] Recent studies highlight the role of CNVs as important sources of variability in our genome and determinants of phenotypic variability among individuals.[40] Classic genetic science considered SNPs as the main source of genetic differences. Based on SNPs only, it was estimated that the average genetic difference between two healthy human beings is on the order of 0.01%; that is, 99.99% identity.[41] Recent studies show that if structural variations are considered in addition to SNPs, the similarity between any two persons could fall to 99.5%,[42] a big difference! A new project, complementing the finished HGP, is planned to thoroughly evaluate the variability of our genome: the "1000 genomes Project."[43]

Structural variations are also being studied as determiners of the phenotypic differences between MT. Another substantial difference arises from these new data. The first studies show that there are considerable differences in the CNVs between pairs of MT, many of which could determine phenotypic differences between them, and undoubtedly are another source of genetic variation between these pairs of individuals supposedly identical at a genetic level.[44]

These differences come from mutational events after zygote division, so they are yet another example of somatic mosaicism like the ones discussed already. The new variant is that new technologies allow the complete scan of our genome and the detection of even the smallest differences.

Copyright © 2010 Victor Raggio, MD

Conclusions

High-throughput analysis of the human genome and novel areas of research, such as epigenetics, yield surprising revelations about the differences among people, the causes of genetic illnesses, and the differences between supposedly “identical” people, MT. The new data are surprising, considering that our capacity for analyzing individual genomes has increased exponentially in the last 5 years and the differences are now starting to become known, but not so surprising if we consider any pair of MT we know, whom people close to them can generally tell apart with relatively ease.

It is important to emphasize that many of the concepts discussed here are equally applicable to human cloning, since the basic mechanisms in operation would be the same.

MT continue to be a very interesting natural experiment for biomedical sciences. Allowing otherwise impossible comparisons, they are a way of investigating what makes us different from one another. This is vital knowledge, not only when analyzing diseases we can suffer from, but also for understanding, at least partially, what makes us (uniquely) human.

About the Author:

Victor Raggio is a medical geneticist based in Montevideo, Uruguay. He has been working in the field of genomic medicine for 10 years, in direct patient consultation, genetic counselling, university teaching, and research. He has published several educational papers on human genetics for doctors, medical students, and the general public.

Through teaching, academic work, and direct patient consultation, he has developed a deep understanding of the aspects of genetics that fascinate the scientifically interested reader, such as: how genetics makes us human, genetic determination of various characteristics, genomic medicine, and, of course, twinning.

You can see his profile and lines of work at LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/vraggio

Bibligraphy:

[FOOTNOTE 1: Bulmer MG, The Biology of Twinning in Man. Oxford, 1970.]

[FOOTNOTE 2: Zimmermann AA, Embryologic and Anatomic Consideration of Conjoined Twins. Birth Defects. Orig. Articles Serv. 1967; 3(1): 18-27; y Guttmacher AF, Biographical notes on some famous conjoined twins Birth. Defect. Orig. Articles Series 1967; 3(1): 10-17.]

[FOOTNOTE 3: Kimmel DL, Moyer EK, Peale AR, Winborne LW, Gotwals JE, A cerebral tumor containing five human fetuses. Anat. Rec. 1950; 106: 141.]

[FOOTNOTE 4: Lord JM, Intra-abdominal fetus in fetus. J. Path. Bact. 1956; 72: 627.]

[FOOTNOTE 5: Warkani J, Congenital Malformations. Notes and Comments, pp.1244-1245, New York, 1971.]

[FOOTNOTE 6: www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human Genome/home.shtml]

[FOOTNOTE 7: Kennedy D, Breakthrough of the Year, Science 2007; 318: 1833.]

[FOOTNOTE 8: Costa T, Greer W, Rysiecki G, Buncic JR, Ray PN, Monozygotic twins discordant for Aicardi syndrome, J Med Genet 1997; 34: 688-691.]

[FOOTNOTE 9: Brilliant MH, Cleve H, Edwards JH, Cell lines from monozygotic twins discordant for tuberous sclerosis display protein and DNA differences, Am J Hum Genet 1990; 47 (Suppl.), A210.]

[FOOTNOTE 10: Tawil R, Storvick D, Weiffenbach B, Altherr MR, Feasby TE, Griggs RC, Chromosome 4q DNA rearrangement in monozygotic twins discordant for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, Hum Mutat 1993; 2(6):492-4.]

[FOOTNOTE 11: Brockmann K, Happle R, Oeffner F, Konig A, Monozygotic twins discordant for Proteus Syndrome, Am J Med Genet A. 2008; 146A(16): 2122-5.]

[FOOTNOTE 12: Cohen MM Jr, The Elephant Man did not have neurofibromatosis. Proc.Greenwood Genet. Center 6: 187-192, 1987.]

[FOOTNOTE 13: Schworm HD, Jedele KB, HolinskiE, Hortnagel K, Rudolph G, Boergen KPet al,Discordant monozygotic twins with the Schimmelpenning-Feuerstein-Mims syndrome, Clinical Genetics 1996; 50(5):393-397.]

[FOOTNOTE 14: Jorgensen AL, Philip TJ, Raskindt WH, Matsushitat M, Christensen B, Dreyer V, Motulsky AG, Different Patterns of X Inactivation in MZ Twins Discordant for Red-Green Color-Vision Deficiency, Am. J. Hum. Genet 1992; 51:291-298.]

[FOOTNOTE 15: Rodenhiser D, Mann M, Epigenetics and human disease: translating basic biology into clinical applications, CMAJ 2006; 174(3): 341-348.]

[FOOTNOTE 16: Rakyan VK, Preis J, Morgan HD, Whitelaw E, The marks, mechanisms and memory of epigenetic states in mammals, Biochem. J. 2001; 356: 1-10.]

[FOOTNOTE 17: Gerstein M, Bruce C, Rozowsky JS, Zheng D, Du J, Korbel JO et al, What is a gene, post-ENCODE? History and updated definition, Genome Res 2007 17: 669-681.]

[FOOTNOTE 18: Mattick JS, RNA regulation: a new genetics?, Nature Reviews Genetics 2005; 5: 316—323.]

[FOOTNOTE 19: Mattick J, Challenging the dogma: the hidden layers of non-protein-coding RNAs in complex organisms, BioEssays 2003; 25: 930-939.]

[FOOTNOTE 20: Van Rooij E, Olson E, MicroRNAs: powerfull new regulators of heart disease and provocative therapeutic targets, J Clin Invest 2007; 117: 2369-2376.]

[FOOTNOTE 21: Morgan HD, Sutherland H, Martin D, Whitelaw E, Epigenetic inheritance at the agouti locus in the mouse, Nature 1999; 23: 314-318.]

[FOOTNOTE 22: Hatchwell E, Grally JM, The potential role of epigenomic dysregulation in complex human disease, Trenes in Genetics 2007; 23(11): 588-595.]

[FOOTNOTE 23: Ordovas JM, Mooser V, Nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics, Current Opinion in Lipidology 2004, 15:101-108.]

[FOOTNOTE 24: Gallou-Kabani C, Junien C, Nutritional Epigenomics of Metabolic Syndrome, Diabetes 2005; 54: 1899-1906.]

[FOOTNOTE 25: Evans WE, Relling M, Pharmacogenomics: translating functional genomics into rational therapeutics, Science 1999; 286: 487-491.]

[FOOTNOTE 26: Evans WE, Relling M, Moving towards individualized medicine with pharmacogenomics, Nature 2004; 429(6990): 464-8.]

[FOOTNOTE 27: Wan-yee Tang, Shuk-mei Ho, Epigenetic reprogramming and imprinting in origins of disease, Reviews in Endocrine & Metabolic Disorders 2007; 8(2): 1573-2606.]

[FOOTNOTE 28: Strohman RC, Linear genetics, non-linear epigenetics: Complementary approaches to understanding complex diseases, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 1995; 30(4): 1936-3567.]

[FOOTNOTE 29: Oligny LL, Cancer and epigenesis: a developmental perspective. Adv Pediatr 2003, 50:59-80.]

[FOOTNOTE 30: Kyoung Sang Cho, Leah I Elizondo and Cornelius F Boerkoel, Advances in chromatin remodeling and human disease, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 2004, 14:308-315.]

[FOOTNOTE 31: Gorelick: R,Neo-Lamarckian medicine, Medical Hypotheses2004; 62 (2): 299-303.]

[FOOTNOTE 32: Kaati G, Bygren LO, Advinsson S, Cardiovascular and diabetes mortality determined by nutrition during parent's and grandparent's slow growth period, Eur J Hum Gen 2002; 10: 682-688.]

[FOOTNOTE 33: Singh SM et al, Involvement of gene-diet/drug interaction in DNA methylation and its contribution to complex diseases: from cancer to schizophrenia, Clin Genet 2003; 64: 451-460.]

[FOOTNOTE 34: Whitelaw NC, Whitelaw E, How lifetimes shape epigenotype within and across generations, Hum. Mol. Genet 2006; 15:131-137.]

[FOOTNOTE 35: Fraga MF, Ballestar E, Paz MF, Ropero S, Setien F, Ballestar ML et al, Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins, PNAS 2005; 102(30): 10604-10609.]

[FOOTNOTE 36: Singh SM, Murphy B, O'Reilly R, Monozygotic twins with chromosome 22q11 deletion and discordant phenotypes: updates with an epigenetic Hypothesis, J Med Genet 2002; 39:e71.]

[FOOTNOTE 37: Wong A, Gottesman I, Petronis A, Phenotypic differences in genetically identical organisms: the epigenetic perspective, Hum. Mol. Genet 2005; 14:11-18.]

[FOOTNOTE 38: Mittwoch U, Different gene expressions on the left and the right: a genotype/phenotype mismatch in need of attention, Ann Hum Genet. 2008; 72(Pt 1):2-9.]

[FOOTNOTE 39: McCarroll SA, Altshuler DM, Copy-number variation and association studies of human disease, Nature Genetics 2007; 39: S37-S42.]

[FOOTNOTE 40: Lupski JR, Genomic rearrangements and sporadic disease, Nature Genetics 2007; 39: S43-S47.]

[FOOTNOTE 41: Venter: JC et al., The sequence of the human genome, Science, 2001; 291(5507):1304-51; Lander ES et al., Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome, Nature, 2001; 409(6822):860-921 and International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome, Nature 2004; 431(7011):931-45.]

[FOOTNOTE 42: Freeman JL, Perry G, Feuk L, Redon R, McCarroll SA, Altshuler DM et al, Copy number variation: New insights in genome diversity, Genome Res 2006; 16: 949-961.]

[FOOTNOTE 43: 1000 Genomes. A Deep Catalog of Human Genetic Variation, in: www.1000genomes.org]

[FOOTNOTE 44: Bruder C et al, Phenotypically concordant and discordant monozygotic twins display different DNA Copy-Number-Variation Profiles, Am J Hum Gen 2008; 82(3): 763-771.]

Shane Tourtellotte has for some time been exploring, in his “First Impressions” series, the possible ramifications and ethical dilemmas that would be opened up by a technology that allows people to literally change their minds—or other people's. The obvious first applications would be in psychotherapy or criminal rehabilitation, but how far might the trend go? “Of One Mind,” in our March issue, brings the series to its logical (and scary) conclusion. A great deal of human effort and activity has gone into building consensuses of various sorts—but just what price are we willing to pay for coming to an agreement?

We'll also have a wide range of stories by writers such as Christopher L. Bennett, Carl Frederick, Bud Sparhawk, and a promising newcomer or two. And Stephen L. Gillett, Ph.D., long a favorite contributor of fact articles, offers one that may sound more familiar than it is, called “Isotopy.” Isotopes are by no means a new idea, but many of the things now being done with them are right out on the frontiers of research in fields ranging from geochemistry to cosmology.

When Analog regular Jerry Oltion was writing his novel The Getaway Special, he spent an afternoon in a septic tank. (Not a used one: a new one, at a sales lot.) The story involved an easy-to-make hyperdrive that could turn any airtight construct into a spaceship and Oltion thought a septic tank might make an inexpensive hull. But if his characters were going to spend time in it, he had to do the same. Not because it had anything to do with the science, but because he needed to know what it felt like.

In another novel he had a scene in which people who'd never before been outdoors went for a walk in the woods. “I wanted to get the feeling of being afraid of every sound,” he says, but as an experienced backpacker, he was far too comfortable in the wilds. “So I deliberately hiked a trail that had had recent grizzly sightings. I told Kathy [his wife] to put ‘He died for verisimilitude’ on my headstone if things went badly."

Most science fiction writers would rather not risk dying for verisimilitude. Most writers in any genre, for that matter (except maybe adventure travel). But a lot of stories could use more realism. As Oltion puts it: “You really do need to spend the time in the tank."

Fiction is about merging fantasy with an illusion of reality. Even the most mundane mainstream fiction works that way; however “real” the characters may seem, they are, after all, nothing more than ink on a page.

So how do stories create and maintain that illusion?

Partly it's by following the oldest adage in the book: write what you know. This is particularly important when it comes to the science. If you don't know a quark from a quasar, there are topics you'd better keep away from. I'm unlikely to write about any of a number of fields (string theory, for one) because I'd be pretty certain to screw them up.

A corollary is to be utterly paranoid. When I'm nearing the end of either a story or nonfiction article, I go through it carefully, highlighting everything about which I have the slightest doubt. Then I get on Google or hit my reference library, trying to find two independent sources to back up each highlighted item. It's a reporter trick, and an old one, because it's axiomatic in reporting that the things most likely to trip you up are the ones you're “sure” you know. If I can't verify it, I try to find a way to dodge having to know it.

Occasionally I run into something I'm sure is right but which readers might not believe. Analog editor Stanley Schmidt and I once had an entertaining back-and-forth over whether an ordinary human, fueled by adrenaline, could kick through one of the passenger windows of an automobile if he was trapped inside. I thought it likely, since I'd twice had windows broken by car-stereo thieves armed with tire irons. But if Stan wasn't sure, there would be readers with the same problem. Sometimes, being right isn't enough.

So I compromised. I knew for certain that you can break into a car whose windows are partially rolled down. All you have to do is hook your fingers over the top of the glass and give it a good yank. (This is why leaving windows “cracked open” is a bad idea if you have valuables in the car.) So, in the published version of the story, the hero's car windows weren't tightly rolled up, making it a lot easier for him to kick his way out. A tiny change eliminated a potential stumbling block.

Sometimes it's not that easy. Recently, a sports magazine reprinted one of my stories. Three editors looked at it and got to debating whether an Olympic distance runner, having made the team at the U.S. Olympic Trials, would run any other races between the Trials and the Olympics.

I'm a distance-running coach and sports writer. If I were coaching them, the answer would be “no way.” And while I was pretty sure most Olympic-level coaches would agree, there's a critical difference between “pretty sure” and “one hundred percent confident."

This is where fiction writers have to think like reporters. Unlike Oltion in the septic tank, I can't try my hand at being an Olympian. But as a sports writer and coach, I know a few Olympic distance runners. So I emailed the one most likely to reply quickly and said, more or less, “Help!” Within hours, I had the answer. Nobody she knew had done any extra races before the Beijing Olympics. Sprinters do that; distance runners don't.

In the ideal world, I'd have found a way to acknowledge this tidbit in the story, but the prose didn't allow it without producing a dull exercise in coaching theory. The lesson: no matter how right you are, you can't guarantee everyone will agree.

Another maxim is that details bring stories to life. Unfortunately, it's easy for science fiction writers to equate that with technical information—details that merely demonstrate that they're good at research. “That's often the downfall of a hard-sf story,” says Oltion. “Too many writers think [scientific] details equal believability."

What works best in science fiction is the same thing that works in other genres: details that make people think they're being given special insight into the world the characters inhabit, whether it's ours or planet Crypto.

Jane Kurtz is an award-winning author of children's books. In writers’ workshops, she likes to ask people how they would write about winter in Minnesota. Most come up with the type of details anyone could find on the Internet: The snow can be knee-deep; a lot of people cross-country ski; it's kind of cold. Minus twenty degrees is common, -40 degrees is possible, and wind chills can hit -80 degrees. But those are facts, not details. There's better stuff, if you really know Minnesota or spend enough time talking to someone who does. On a January ski outing near the Canadian border, a member of my party once announced: “Single-digit temperatures are the best. Plus or minus doesn't matter.” In other words, in the pantheon of “cold” he saw no difference between 9 degrees and -9 degrees. It's hard to imagine a statement that says more about the Minnesotan attitude toward winter.

On the same trip, we drove a remote two-lane at night, more slowly than seemed necessary. “Sorry,” the driver explained, “you have to watch out for moose. They like to get down on their knees in the middle of the road and lick the salt, and they're hard to see because their eyes don't reflect like the eyes of deer."

These are the types of details that bring stories to life. “You have to surprise your readers,” says Kurtz. “Remember how it was as a child, when your parents told you the same things over and over? Well, readers don't like it [either] when you tell them the same things over and over."

Her own description of cold? Try this, from her book Jakarta Missing (Greenwillow/ HarperCollins 2001):

Dad was right. Anyone would have to be crazy to want to live through this kind of winter. I know now about days when the hair inside your nose freezes and you feel like someone stuck a toothbrush up there. I know about days when the wind hits you in the face so hard that you gasp for breath and think you must still be asleep and dreaming of Antarctica. The snow squeaks like Styrofoam when you walk to school, and you can see the breath of every car that passes.

I've lived in Minnesota. When I read this, I see three critical details that tell me she's nailed it:

* The freezing hairs inside your nose.

* The squeaky snow.

* The exhaust plumes of the cars.

You don't have to have lived in the frigid north to know all of this ... but you do have to have done more than superficial research.

So we now have three basic rules:

1. Write what you know.

2. Know what it is that you do and don't know.

3. Make good use of details.

Let's look a bit more at the third. How can you use vivid details if you're writing about remote star systems, exotic physics, or alien ecosystems?

I think the answer often lies in the non-science-fictional parts of the story. Elsewhere in this issue is a story I set partially on Naiad, a moon of Neptune. Obviously, I've never been there. All the facts I had I got from the Internet. But I know the Naiad I depict because I have decades of experience in the stark landscapes of the American Southwest, sitting on cliff tops and staring at the distant play of light and shadow. These are vivid, emotional memories and I drew on them to get a feel for what it might be like to watch Neptune from an airless vantage point that zips around it every seven hours. I took it a step farther by letting my protagonist, Floyd, know the same deserts I do. He's not me, but I know where he's been and I know the details that make up his background. Those I can bring into the story with absolute certainty. If my Naiad works, it's because the reader senses my certainty about Floyd and his deserts and grants me leave to present a Naiad about which nobody actually knows much.

At heart, this is the same thing as Oltion putting in time in the tank. But instead of going out and finding a tank to sit in, I was recalling tanks I'd experienced long before I knew there would ever be a story. It's the lazy man's form of research.

Here's another example. I don't have to do any special research to know what it's like to be around grizzly bears. Once, in Alaska, hiking through eight-foot-tall grass (yes, there is such a thing as eight-foot-tall grass; that's an interesting detail in itself), I found a spot where something had smashed flat a circle of grass about a dozen feet in diameter. A bit later, I found steaming bear droppings in the trail.

Another time, also hiking in Alaska, a friend and I came upon a man and three young children in a meadow above an alder thicket. Stopping to talk, we found they'd been awakened that morning by a grizzly sniffing at their tent, near the alder thicket through which my friend and I had just hiked. As the father gestured toward the woods, right on cue, the bear emerged, sniffing again at the tent and hesitating as though trying to figure out if it was worth ripping it open to see what was inside.

All interest in hiking lost, the six of us waited, comforted by the presence of the father's very big gun (a slug-breech 12-gauge for those with an interest in such things). Eventually my friend escorted the kids back through the woods while the father and I packed up his tent, frighteningly close to the alders, and carried it back through the woods.

How would I draw on this for a story?

Well, to start with, packing isn't the best verb to describe what we did with that tent. It was more like rolling it up like a giant cigar, sleeping bags inside. The whole process took about thirty seconds. Nor did we simply “carry” it though the woods. Scurried is a better verb. All the while we were talking randomly, because the thing we most emphatically did not want to do was startle the bear, which still had to be somewhere in the vicinity. “Hi bear. Good bear. Go away bear.” That type of thing.

Then there was the stream at the base of the woods, whose crossing bought us a few yards of precious open space. “Cold” was an understatement. It was 32.001-degree water that made my shins feel as though they crinkled as I waded through. Once across, there was the silent agony of doubling over for endless seconds ... dozens of endless seconds ... waiting for my shinbones to forgive me: a soundless scream that only those who've waded through ice water can fully comprehend—all compounded by the overwhelming desire to get back to town now to buy my own very big gun.

You cannot invent details like this.

"Writers have good powers of observation,” Kurtz says. “That's more important than imagination."

So we can now add a fourth rule: draw, when possible and appropriate, on your own experience. You are the world expert on yourself so this is something nobody else knows better. Obviously, you can't base the entire story directly on this, or it won't be fiction, let along science fiction. But you can use some of it directly and more, indirectly. I may never write about grizzly bears, but if I ever need an alien predator, I know what memories I'll draw from.

I can almost hear the objections that most people haven't waded through ice water, carrying cigar-rolled tents. But everyone has done something.

One of my day jobs is writing profiles. (Analog Biologs are only a few.) I also write essays. People often tell me their lives are too boring either for profiles or for writing their own essays, but I've never met an adult without at least one interesting experience. The trick is recognizing them in yourself. Or, if you really don't like digging into your past, learn to be a good interviewer (another way of being an observer) so you can draw on other people's stories.

A related skill is one a family member used to refer to as collecting “rat facts.” (Think pack rat.) Writers accumulate trivia. You have to be careful how much of it you stuff into any given story because it's easy to start showing off, but these factoids are a magnificent library from which you can often borrow just the right detail.

So we now have five rules. To recapitulate:

1. Write what you know.

2. Know what it is that you know.

3. Make good use of details.

4. Look for details in experience (yours or other people's).

5. Collect information. You never know what will someday be useful.

One final bit of advice comes from an Icelandic proverb Kurtz likes to cite: “Keen is the eye of the visitor."

A related aphorism, in journalism, is that the best reporters are often introverted outsiders: people who like to watch life rather than participate more directly. I'm not sure if this really is true—I've known a lot of reporters who are enthusiastic, outgoing people. The “fly on the wall” may be more archetype than reality.

But the truth in the archetype is simple. The best writers observe things. Sometimes these are details about the universe. Sometimes they are grand visions that instill the sense of wonder about which science fiction fans wax lyrical. Other times, the observations take the form of details about people or the lives we live: overlooked realities that ring true as they float across the page before us.

When writers do this, their stories feel authentic. They come to life, even when they're about star drives, black holes, alien worlds, or things that go bump in the night. And that's when readers remember them.

Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

Some things are so obvious it would never occur to anyone to question them....

Far out on the rim of the galaxy there is a pastoral world, golden-hued, with lush green fields, crystal clear rivers and streams, colorful avians, gorgeous blossoms.

It used to be a colony world. Fairview, they called it. There's still a town there, though no one's lived in it for ... well, for a long time now. There's a church, with a steeple you can see from just about anywhere, and a general store that's stood empty for close to sixty years. Same with the saloon, and the restaurant, and the bank, and the bubble-domed boarding houses.

There's really only one thing of note to see on Fairview. It's right in the center of the small town square, and you don't know it's there until you're almost upon it.

It's an old-fashion gallows, complete with a rope noose. And hanging from the noose, its body swaying and gently spinning with every breeze, is something dead, something that looks like a man from a distance, but the closer you get, the more you realize that you're looking at something very strange and very alien.

It's been dead a long time, this something that hangs in the town square. I don't know what its skin looked like in life, but it's all leathery now, and any color it might have had has been burned away.

Oh—and there's the sign. That gets your attention even more than what's hanging from the gallows. It's propped up against the base of it—well, bonded or nailed there, or it would long since have blown away. It's almost as high as a man's waist, and maybe twice as long as it is high.

And on it, in bold letters more than two feet high, all capitals, is a single word:

SHAME.

You see it, and you know there has to be a story behind it. So I looked around the empty town, and sure enough, I found one old man, toothless, bent over with the weight of his years, almost as leathered as the body on the gallows, and he told me the tale of what happened on Fairview.

He had a name (said the old man), but no one could pronounce it. Most folks just called him Boy, or sometimes Satan because of the reddish tint to his skin and those hooves that passed for feet. He wasn't native to Fairview—hell, Fairview didn't have no natives. As I hear tell, he got here right after the first wave of colonists, and spent his time digging for something in the rocky outcrops just beyond where they built the town. The geological surveys said there wasn't nothing out there worth the effort he was going to, but who knows what's valuable to an alien?

He wasn't what you'd call eloquent or articulate, but he spoke a kind of Terran, enough to make himself understood. We figured he'd been dropped off on Fairview, since there wasn't any sign of his ship, and that meant someday he'd be picked up, but truth to tell nobody gave it much thought since he didn't hang around the human centers much. Never entered a bar or a restaurant, and the general store sure didn't have anything he could use. We never did learn what he ate, but whatever it was, he must have found it out there where he was digging.

I'm not aware that anyone ever had a grudge against him. No one tried to befriend him neither. He was just too different, if you know what I mean. He lived alone, kept to himself, didn't bother anyone, didn't talk much to anyone, didn't pay us any more attention than we paid him.

Not until Charlie Drumm came along, anyway.

He showed up one day, put his robots to work building him a house on the outskirts of town, made friends nice and quick with anyone who gave him half a chance, spent his first few weeks buying drinks for anyone who was thirsty, even took to attending our little church. That church probably wasn't pulling a dozen people on a Sunday morning, but then Charlie started going and people decided that if a man they all admired could go humble himself before God, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

He did one thing that caused more than a few eyebrows to raise, because no one could figure out why he did it. He actually went out of his way to make friends with the alien, and spent a lot of time visiting him out in the foothills. He even invited him into his own home. Might have been some trouble if he'd been anyone but Charlie Drumm. You know the rules: you just don't invite an alien into your house, no matter what.

Before long they'd become fast friends. You didn't see the one in town without the other. Charlie would vanish for three or four days at a time, then come back and tell us about the trip he'd taken with Satan, off to some new mountain looking for whatever the hell it was Satan looked for. Or Satan would be in town every day, and sleep in at Charlie's place.

I still remember the night Charlie walked into the tavern with his arm around Satan's shoulders, waved hello to everyone, and sidled right up to the bar. Now, we didn't have no rules forbidding aliens to join us in the bars. We just figured that nine out of ten couldn't handle our drinkin’ stuff, and the tenth would have sense enough to know when he wasn't wanted.

"I'll have Barillian whiskey and a chaser,” Charlie announced.

The barkeep headed off to get it.

"Hang on a second,” said Charlie. “You haven't asked my friend what he wants."

The barkeep walked over, with an expression on his face like you might see if his shorts were too tight, and said, “What'll it be, Boy?"

"Just a minute,” said Charlie. “He's got a name. Probably you can't pronounce it, so you can call him Satan, which is what I hear a lot of folks calling him. But he's not a boy, yours or anyone else's, and I don't want to hear anyone calling my friend Boy again."

I don't think anyone but Charlie could have said that without starting a fight that would involve everyone in the bar. The barkeep looked around to see if anyone was about to throw a punch, or maybe a chair, and when they didn't, his face got even more pained, and he said, “What can I fix you, sir?"

"Water,” said Satan in that gravelly, mush-mouthed voice of his.

"Water's pretty expensive on Fairview,” said the barkeep.

"The hell it is,” said Charlie. “And I want you to put it on my bill."

And that was that. They waited for their drinks, then wandered over to a table in a corner, probably so no one could sneak up behind them. Pretty soon conversations started up again, and by the end of the evening hardly anyone paid them any attention.

They came back the next night, and the night after that, and by week's end it was like Satan had always been a customer. A couple of men even started up conversations with him when Charlie was off in the john, but he didn't have much to say. In fact, the major topic of conversation when him and Charlie weren't around was what the hell they could find to spend all those hours talking about.

I guess Charlie had been here maybe four months when news of the Skeletons started coming through. No one knew what they looked like or why they were called Skeletons—no one in town, anyway—but word had it that they'd been attacking mining colonies for the better part of a year, plundering any kind of fissionable materials they could find.

We didn't worry overmuch about it. We were an agricultural and trading world. The only mining anyone did, and I don't know if mining is even the right word, was Satan digging out there in the hills, and he didn't glow when he'd walk through town at night, so we figured there was nothing radioactive out there. We knew that sooner or later the navy would dope out where the Skeletons were going to strike next and be waiting for them, and we'd hear about it on the subspace radio when they'd sent the last of ‘em off to hell.

Still, we did a lot of talking about it at the tavern, wondering what a critter called a Skeleton looked like. Jake Mundy thought they were probably just real skinny things, maybe like a six-foot man who weighs seventy-five pounds, but Christian Duran argued that maybe they had eyes set so deep in their heads that they looking like skulls with gaping eyeholes. I remember that Roz Waterson even suggested that they were big, fat, blimplike creatures, and someone with a sense of humor had dubbed ‘em Skeletons.

Finally Charlie spoke up from where he was sitting with Satan.

"You're all wrong,” he said. “They're bipeds like us, but they've got exoskeletons."

"You ever seen one?” asked Jake Mundy.

"Once or twice,” answered Charlie.

"And you're sure they were Skeletons?"

"You get one look at one, you'll know there's nothing else you could call them,” said Charlie.

Well, as you can imagine, the whole tavern wanted to know more, but Charlie just finished his beer, announced it was getting late, and he and Satan got up to leave.

"Hey, Satan,” said Roz Waterson. “Have you ever seen a Skeleton?"

He turned to her. “It is possible,” he answered her.

"If they're that distinctive, how could you not know?” she said.

"I saw many races before I came here,” he replied.

Before she could ask any more questions, the two of them—him and Charlie—had left the place, and we spent the next couple of hours trying to figure out how a two-legged alien with an exoskeleton would appear. We even used the tavern's computer—it was more complex than anything we were carrying around with us—to try to create a holo of one, but no one could decide who was right, and we figured we'd better pack it in for the night before we got into a fight over it. So we all went to bed still wondering what a Skeleton looked like.

Turned out we didn't have that long to wait before we found out.

It was the crack of dawn not a fortnight later when them Skeletons landed on Fairview and rousted us out of our beds. They rounded us up like animals and put us in the church—the only place big enough to hold us all—and demanded we take them to Charlie Drumm. That's when we realized how little we knew about Charlie, including why the Skeletons were searching for him.

They looked mighty scary if I say so myself, and given how well armed they were, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that they meant business. But we protected our own, and Charlie was one of us by then, so we told them that there was no one named Charlie in our town. And it wasn't really a lie, either; he'd left three days earlier with Satan on one of their jaunts.

Of course, they didn't take our word for it. They ransacked our homes looking for him, and then used them bone-covered hands of theirs to rough some of us up a little, but not one of us squealed on Charlie. The interrogation went on for most of the day and finally, when we thought that they were ready to give up and go looking for him on some other world, Satan happened to walk through the door.

He may have looked like the devil entering our church, but he was our alien, and he was Charlie's friend to boot, so when the Skeletons surrounded him and asked about Charlie, we were sure that he would follow our example and keep his trap shut—and he did.

Even when they leaned on him, all he told was that he was just a down-on-his-luck prospector who had come to the church to pray for a better yield in his mines. Now, since they specialized in raiding mining worlds, he had to have known that the Skeletons’ ears would prick up at that. They demanded to see his yield, threatening that if it wasn't good enough to compensate them for a wasted trip, they'd kill him. So off they went, Satan leading the parade, and suddenly the rest of us were forgotten.

I might not have liked him, but I had to grudgingly admit that he'd led the Skeletons away from us, and I was a little worried about him. Satan might have looked demonic, but he didn't have a patch on these raiders with their spiky exoskeletons and glowing reptilian eyes.

We waited in the church until nightfall, not knowing if they'd gone yet, and not wanting to provoke any of them if they hadn't. I mean, hell, what could a handful of farmers do against a shipload of armed raiders? It was best to just let them take what they wanted, and bide our time until they left.

So when three of our five moons had risen for the night, we used the moonlight to guide us quietly back to our homes, and we discovered how destructive the Skeletons had been. There wasn't a piece of furniture left unturned, and all of our root cellars had been looted of anything of value. I figured it would take us the next two seasons worth of crops just to get our stores back up, but at least they'd believed us about not knowing Charlie. It looked to us like they'd gone.

We were wrong.

We decided that a few of us would hike out to Charlie's house to see if he was all right—and I have to admit we were mighty curious to find out why they were looking for him in the first place.

The one thing we never expected to see as we came over the rise was Satan leading an armed group of Skeletons right up to Charlie's front door. We also didn't expect to see him stand there motionless as they dragged Charlie out of the house, but that's what happened. They half-dragged and half-carried him to their scout ship. We couldn't do anything but watch; hell, we were outnumbered and outgunned. But no sooner had the ship taken off than we were running down the hill to Charlie's house.

I still remember the look in Satan's eyes as he saw us close in on him: it was like a deer caught in a vehicle's headlights back on Old Earth. But he didn't make any attempt to run away: he looked like all the fight had gone out of him—if he ever had any in the first place.

We questioned him all night, trying to get a straight answer out of him with words, with fists, with other things—but never once did he explain to us why he'd led the Skeletons right up to Charlie's house when he knew Charlie was inside it, or what they'd given him to betray the one man who'd befriended him.

Jake Mundy and a couple of others wanted to kill him on the spot, but we were civilized men and we decided we had to have a trial. There was no way we were going let him set foot in our church again, so we held the trial in the only other place big enough for all the townsfolk to gather under one roof: the bar. We trussed him up to keep him from running away, and sat him at the very same corner table he and Charlie had shared a drink at. He looked uncomfortable as hell, beaten and bruised as he was, but that didn't bother any of us, not after what he'd done.

The trial took less than five minutes. A bunch of us had seen him lead the Skeletons to Charlie, so all we really had to do was vote him guilty and work out his sentence. We didn't have the facility or the resources to confine him for the rest of his life (which could have been a few hundred years for all anyone knew), and we sure as hell weren't going to slap him on the wrist and turn him loose. I think even before the trial began everyone knew what the sentence would be.

We gave him a chance before we passed sentence to speak in his own defense, and he wouldn't say a word. We gave him another chance when we put the noose around his neck right in the middle of the town square, and again he didn't say anything, but just stared silently at us.

I wanted him to say something. Maybe just that he was sorry, or even that he hated all Men and he was glad of what he'd done. I just wanted to know why he did it, but he stayed stoic and silent to the end.

Took him a long time to die, twitching and dangling at the end of the rope, but nobody looked away, not even the womenfolk or the kids. I suppose we could have shot up or poisoned him, but somehow hanging seemed right for what he'd done.

And after he'd finished kicking and was just hanging there, limp and dead, Roz Waterson and a couple of other women brought out a sign with “shame” written on it in big black letters, and propped it up against the gallows.

They were both still there—the alien and the sign—when I went outside the next morning, and by mutual consent the townspeople let them stay there permanently, to remind everyone what happens when you betray a friend.

Over the next few months avians pecked his eyes out, and his skin dried out and turned leathery, and he didn't smell any more, and when a newcomer would land on the planet, or a friend would visit, we always made sure they saw Satan hanging there, and told them the story of how one colony, at least, had dispensed justice when it was called for.

And then, four months later, came a visitor no one expected—Charlie Drumm. Most of us figured he wouldn't last the night aboard the Skeletons’ ship, and even the most optimistic figured he'd be dead within a week—either he'd be killed after giving them whatever they wanted from him, or he'd die keeping it from them—but there he was, staring at Satan's body twisting in the wind.

Then he stormed into the bar and demanded to know what had happened. After we'd told him, not without a certain amount of pride in our actions, he just stood there silently for a couple of minutes, and when we thought he might maybe have gone catatonic, he uttered a single word:

"Fools!"

We looked at him like whatever he'd suffered at the hands of the Skeletons had unhinged him.

"Fools!” he repeated. “He was worth any twenty of you!"

"What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Christian Duran. “Did he turn you over to the Skeletons or didn't he?"

"On my orders,” responded Drumm, trying to control his temper.

"On your orders?” repeated Jake Mundy. “Just who the hell are you?"

"I'm an officer who's been fighting the goddamned Skeletons for five years!” he snapped. “They've been after me for almost two of them. We found a way to let them know that I was here."

"Let me get this straight,” I said. “You wanted to be captured?"

"I had a subspace transmitter sealed inside a false wisdom tooth. When they delivered me to their flagship, they led our navy right to it."

"Are you saying Satan worked for our navy too?” demanded Jake Mundy. “Because if he did, he's the first alien I ever heard of to do so."

"No,” said Charlie. “He worked for his own government, but we had a common cause: they're at war with the Skeletons too. I told him to let them bribe or threaten him into giving me up."

"Why didn't he tell us when he had the chance?"

"There could have been a fifth columnist here,” said Charlie. “This wouldn't be the first world."

"You should have confided in one of us,” said Christian Duran bitterly. “After all, we're men—and he was just an alien."

"I know,” said Charlie with no attempt to hide his contempt. “His race doesn't hold kangaroo courts and lynchings."

He walked outside, strode over to where Satan was hanging, stared at the “shame"sign, and spat on it. Then he was gone, and that's the last any of us ever saw of Charlie Drumm.

By nightfall every colonist on Fairview knew the story, knew what we had done. And suddenly it seemed like that sign was there to remind us of ourselves, not of Satan, and no one had the guts to take it down.

One by one people started leaving the planet; they just didn't want to live with what we'd done. Within a year only sixteen people were left, in two years only seven, and in three years there was just me. I stuck around because I thought someone ought to be here to tell the true story of what happened, because when you see that body still hanging there and the sign beneath it, you can misinterpret it as easily as we misinterpreted what we saw all those years ago.

"That's the story,” said the old man. “I've been telling it to anyone who'd listen, maybe two or three visitors a year, for close to forty years now, but my time's just about up, and I'm going back to my home world to spend my last few months or years there and be buried in my family plot.” He paused. “It's a pity the truth's going to be forgotten again, but I did what I could, probably not enough to rub all the grime off my soul, but maybe some of it anyway."

After he left I pulled out my pocket computer and ran a check on Charlie Drumm. Turns out he was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Charles Drumm, twice decorated for bravery in the Skeleton War, died in action in the Lammix Campaign. I couldn't find anything about Satan, but I did learn one interesting thing: Charlie Drumm left his estate to a charitable institution on the planet Malakawn II, which was inhabited by a red-skinned race that, though hooved, was bipedal.

That night I moved my gear into Charlie's deserted house. Sooner or later visitors will touch down on Fairview and see what was still on display in the town square, and somebody has to be here to tell them the true story. nCopyright © 2010 Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn

REPORT UNWANTED TELEMARKETING CALLS

We are trying very hard to protect our customers from unscrupulous business practices, and encourage you to deal directly with Dell Magazines. Our subscription offices are located at 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855. This return address is printed on every renewal notice or invoice that comes from us.

Please contact Dell Magazines immediately at 1-800-220-7443, or by email at contactus@pennypublications.com to report any questionable calls. Please be sure to give us the date, time, name, and telephone number of the company that called.

DialAmerica, Inc. is the only telephone solicitor authorized by Dell Magazines to sell subscriptions to our titles, and their callers always represent themselves as being from Dial America at the beginning of each call. If you are contacted by any other telemarketer offering you a new or renewal subscription to Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine, we strongly suggest the following:

*Do not give your credit card information or your checking account information to any solicitor.

*Do not engage in conversation. If you must speak with the caller, be sure to get his or her name, company name, and telephone number. Tell the caller that you deal directly with the publisher and not to call you again. Hang up. If the company calls again after being instructed not to, it is now in violation of FTC regulations.

We also recommend that you sign up with the “National Do Not Call Registry.” Most telemarketers should not call your number once it has been on the registry for 31 days. Register online at www.donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222 from the telephone or cell phone number you want to register. Registration is free.

Cultures, like individuals, adapt—but not always in ways comfortable for the individuals

There is an ancient Terran word: rickety. It is not clear to scholars what this word meant exactly, but that it applied to Thistlewaite was undoubted. “Rickety Thistlewaite” had been its appellation from the beginning, from the days before even the First Ships set down. At least, if you can depend on their legends, which like everything else there, are shaky. The planet's nature can be seen in its propensity to earthquakes. Somebody had talcumed the seams of her plates and they slip and slide with greasier abandon than they do on more gritty worlds. “As sturdy as a Thistlewaite skyscraper” is a proverb on half the planets of the Periphery, and believed earnestly enough by the Thistles themselves that they build none—and so the proverb does double-duty. What can be more sturdy than something unbuilt, runs a Thistlean joke. A building never erected can never fall down. Ha, ha. But the Thistles have developed a keen sense of balance along with their mordant wit, and a fatalistic conviction that nothing can ever be done that will not eventually fail.

The harper and the scarred man have come to Thistlewaite in search of the harper's mother. That is simple enough for a story. They will not find her there; but they may begin the finding of her there, for it was the last world to which she had been assigned before vanishing on a personal quest. Bridget ban—the vanished mother—was a Hound of the Kennel, and a Hound of the Kennel could be many things and anything: spy, assassin, savior, ambassador, planetary manager; and without pity or remorse when what had to be done had to be done. The one thing they are not supposed to be is missing for three years. She had left a note; she had left a trinket; and she had left. “Out to the edge. Fire from the sky. Back soon,” read the note. But it is now a bit longer than soon, and the daughter has grown impatient.

Lucia Thompson—the daughter—goes by the office-name Méarana, which means both fingers and, through a slight shift in stress, swift. She is an ollamh, as the harper's case slung across her back announces. She is lean and supple, with eyes of the hard, sharp glass-green of flint. Her hair is the red of flame, but her skin is dark gold.

The scarred man uses the name Donovan buigh, at other times the office-name of the Fudir, but no one knows his true name, least of all himself. His face is shrunken, as if it has been suctioned out and all that remains of him is skin and skull. His chin curls like a coat hook, and his mouth sags across the saddle of the hook. His hair is white, and there are places on his skull, places with scars, where the hair will never grow back. His eyes rove in constant motion.

The fingers of the harper have pried him most unwillingly from his bottle to join this feckless venture. He does not think that they will find Bridget ban, or that she will be alive if they do. Yet at one time, years ago, he had loved her, and a part of him yearns for her still. So he is of two minds about the entire quest; indeed, of more than two minds, for Donovan buigh is a man of parts. Like the demon, Legion, he contains multitudes. His quondam employers had shattered his mind like glass, hoping that by isolating different elements of the espionage art in different loci of the brain they could create a well-oiled team of specialists. What they had gotten was a quarreling committee.

The Kennel has given up the search, Méarana had told the scarred man after tracking him down to the Bar on Jehovah to enlist his reluctant help.

And why should you succeed, he had replied, where the professionals have failed?

Because a daughter may see a thing that even a colleague would miss.

A thin reed from which to fly hope's banner. It was no more substantial than a Thistlewaite skyscraper.

Jenlushy Town had sat on the epicenter of the great thistlequake, and two-thirds of the country had been knocked about like jackstraws and flinders. Collapsing province-towns, mountain landslides, floods, and fires had swallowed two-thirds of the District Commissioners, along with half the dough-riders. The One Man, the Grand Secretary, and five of the Six Ministers had perished in the collapse of the palace. In a state as highly centralized as the Jenlushy sheen that was the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy.

Bridget ban had been sent to oversee the restoration of sanitation, of water and utilities, of housing and roads, of public order. The late emperor—the One Man—had clearly lost “the Approval of the Sky,” and so she chose for his replacement a Warden named Jimmy Barcelona who had been Chief of Public Works Unit for Capital District. At her suggestion, he selected the office-name of Resilient Services and for his regnal theme, “a robust and reliable infrastructure.” It rang less gloriously than most regnal themes, but was surely apropos, all things considered.

It is their intention to make inquiries in the Terran Corner—for Terrans, like the Third Monkey, will seldom say anything, though unlike the first two, they see and hear everything. The Fudir is a member of the Terran Brotherhood and perhaps they may speak to him. He believes Bridget ban learned something during her assignment on Thistlewaite that set her off on her final quest. To find what that something was will be the first step to finding her.

But no man may do business in Jenlushy without the One Man's permission. Certainly, no one can go about making a nosy nuisance of himself without what the Terrans call a “heads up” to the head man. Normally, obtaining an audience with a Thistlewaite emperor was a long, laborious, and expensive affair. The recovery from the ‘quake was still in its final stages, and Resilient Services had better things to do than put on a show for Peripheral touristas. Donovan had counted on this as yet another delay to the harper's journey, although he had by then given up on dissuading her entirely.

But if the visitor was the daughter of the very Hound who had placed the emperor on the Ivy Throne, doors swung open with disconcerting ease.

The Grand Secretary had insisted on a certain formality of dress. Happily, the harper had brought with her several bolts of Megranomic anycloth; so the morning of the audience, she consulted Benet's Sumptuary Guide to the Spiral Arm and programmed the material through the datathread to assume the chosen color, cut, and texture.

The harper wore a leine of pure white linen with fitted sleeves, and intricate red geometric embroidery at the neck, cuffs, and hem. It was bloused though a leather crios at the waist, in the pouches of which were placed the tools of the harper's trade. Over this she had thrown a woolen brat in bright green with gold borders. She wore it like a shawl fastened at the right shoulder by a large golden brooch depicting a snake entwining a rose. She walked unshod and the nails of her feet and hands matched the color of the embroidery of her leine. Her red hair fell free, to indicate her unwed status, but she wore a silver ollamh's circlet at her brow.

The scarred man wore Terran garb, and if fewer eyes caressed him than caressed the harper, it was because he was moon to her sun. He dressed in a dark yellow sherwani over embroidered jutti and matching kurta paijamas. His sandals were plain and of brown leather with golden crescents on the straps. The scars on his head were decently covered by a skullcap, and across his shoulder he had thrown a gharchola stole. Gold lac-bangles adorned his wrists and ankles, and rouge had reddened his cheeks. When he wanted to, the Fudir could cut a figure.

In the anteroom to the audience chamber, the Fudir bowed to the Grand Secretary, and said, in a croak resembling Thistletalk, “This miserable worm prays that these poor rags do not find disfavor in the eyes of noble Grand Secretary."

That worthy went by the name of Morgan Cheng-li and was known therefore among the backroom staff as “Jingly” in a play on both his name and the sound of the coins that so often crossed his palm. His frog-like mien—pigeon-chested, eyes bulged, cheeks blown out—gave the impression that he had held his breath for a very long time.

At the appointed time, the Assistant Palace Undersecretary of Off-World Affairs escorted them into the throne room. “Rags?” the harper whispered in Gaelactic as they proceeded down the hallway. “After all the work I put into this wardrobe?"

"Self-deprecation is mandatory here,” the Fudir said. “You should see officials defer for places at a banquet table."

"Och. Mother and I hold to a faith that values humility, but that sort of servility smacks of unseemly pride."

Donovan interrupted and said, “Hush, both of you. And remember what we told you. Don't mention that your mother has vanished. She came from the sky; and if she's vanished into the sky—"

"Then she's lost the Approval of the Sky,” the harper returned wearily. “I know. I know."

Donovan turned to her. “And through her, the emperor she appointed. Tell them your mother's gone missing and it's tantamount to a call for revolution. And don't think old Frog-Face back there won't lead it, either."

The throne on which Resilient Services perched was fashioned of solid gold. The stiles had the form of climbing ivy and from them on thread-like wires hung leaves of artfully tarnished copper. This gave them a greenish cast and, when movement caused them to sway, they tinkled like wind chimes. Under the throne, for some age-long and forgotten reason, rested a large stone. The high back, rearing above the yellow-robed emperor, bore four ideograms: the motto of the sheen.

"Behold the August Presence,” the Voice of the Sheen cried out. “Behold the Resilient Services Reign, who provides the sheen with robust and reliable infrastructure!"

Now *there's* a battle cry to rally the troops, said the Brute. The scarred man's splintered mind contained a variety of shards. His former employers had believed that their agent might have need of ruthless physical action.

It works for them. The earthquake destroyed so much. The silver tongue of persuasion was also a useful skill. But the Brute and the Silky Voice did not much like each other.

The Fudir scolded them both. Quiet. We're not here to mock their customs.

"Who,” the Voice demanded, “approaches the August Presence?"

The Fudir bowed, sweeping his arm to the right and holding his left over his heart. “I hight Donovan buigh of Jehovah, special emissary of the Particular Service to the Court of the Morning Dew. My companion hight the ollamh, Méarana of Dangchao, master of the clairseach."

The emperor had gone, first pale, then flushed. “Ah. So,” he said. “You much resemble my illustrious predecessor, and ... I had thought she had returned to resume her duties.” He clapped his hands and a servant struck a hanging gong. “Bring forth the crumpets and scones!"

Underlings and flunkies scurried about in apparent confusion, but in short order a table was set up in the center of the hall, dressed with cloth, napkins, and fine bone-china cups, and surrounded by three soft-backed chairs and a silver tea service on a gravity cart. A tray of biscuits, ceremoniously escorted, was placed on the table, and the visitors were shown to their seats. The emperor stood and descended from the Ivy Throne, shedding his yellow robes of state and handing them to the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary for Wardrobe.

Beneath his cope, the emperor had been wearing a simple day suit: a cut-away cloth coat of dark blue possessed of brass buttons over a plain buff waistcoat and matching pantaloons. His feet were shod in riding boots with golden spurs, and at his throat was gathered a stiffly starched cravat. He took the seat at the head of the table and, with a flick of his wrist, dismissed his ministers and staff. These scurried to the walls, where they stood in various poses pretending to converse with one another, though alert always to a summons from the Presence.

"Tea?” the Presence said, holding a cup under the samovar.

He proceeded through the ceremony with meticulous detail. One lump or two? Cream? Scone? Jam? Each motion practiced; each stir a precise radius and number of revolutions.

The Fudir supposed this was the Thistle equivalent to the Terran ceremony of bread and salt. More elaborate, of course, in that mad and fussy Thistle fashion.

When all had been served by the emperor's own hand, Resilient Services intoned formally, “We shall now make small talk."

The Fudir stepped into the momentary silence. “How stand matters since the great thistlequake, Your Imperial Majesty? Recovery proceeding apace, I hope?"

"Oh, yes. Quite, thank you,” the emperor responded. “And for duration of High Tea, you call me ‘Jimmy.’ Port Tsienchester not yet fully operational, but perhaps by end of Sixmonth. You.” He pointed at the harper. “I mistake you for another. She, too, from Kennel. She give mandate to rule. How I curse that day."

"My mother,” said the harper.

"Ah.” The emperor looked to the Fudir.

"I have been charged to escort the daughter to her,” the Terran said.

"Why do you curse the day my mother made you emperor?” the harper asked. “She made you emperor of one of the Fourteen States."

"That curse.” Jimmy turned a little in his seat. “See sigils over throne? Love-heaven. Person. Protect. Heaven-below. Man who love heaven-sky will protect empire. But heaven perfect. Never fail, never fall. Heaven-below, Sheen Jenlushy, should be imitate that perfection. Never does. But if emperor love heaven good enough, everything fine below, too. Never fail, never fall. One Man must be regular as sky. Move in orbit, like planet. Go here, go there. All same ceremony, all same word. All pest black-fly ministers buzz round me. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Do this, do that. All ‘veddy propah.’ No mistake. Mistake in heaven-below cause mistake in heaven-above. Very bad. Calf stillborn. My fault. Stumbled over sunrise prayer. Bandit rob exchequer in Bristol-fu. My fault. Did not make proper ablution. All universe connected through dough. Everything affect everything. Mountain-slide in Northumberchow Shan..."

"Your fault,” said the Fudir. “We get it. I can see cosmic oneness has its drawbacks. If you forget to clip your toenails, who knows what horrors might be unleashed?"

The emperor shook his head. “Only here in tea ceremony is emperor become Jimmy again.” He turned abruptly to the harper. “Tell me of homeworld, Mistress Harp."

"Dangchao Waypoint? Well ... It's a dependency of Die Bold. Mostly open prairies on Great Stretch continent, where we raise Nolan's Beasts—a breed of cattle. A few big towns."

"You have harp with you, mistress? Of course. Ollamh never far from instrument. You bring with tomorrow. Play songs of far away Dangchao."

Méarana put her cup carefully on its saucer. “Well ... Donovan and I have some business to conduct..."

"Oh, no,” said Resilient Service. “I must insist."

And there was something hard in the way he said it that caused the harper to hesitate and glance at her companion.

"I had planned to visit the Corner,” the Fudir said. “Best if I go in alone. You can entertain the emperor while I do that."

"Yes,” agreed the Emperor of the Morning Dew. “You do that."

The next morning, as Méarana prepared for her command performance at the palace, the Fudir prepared to enter the Corner of Jenlushy. For this, he did not dress as he had for the palace. Indeed, he barely dressed at all. Around his waist he tied a simple blue-and-white checkered dhoti. On his feet, sandals. His upper body, he oiled.

"Easier to slip out of someone's grip,” he said with a leer. Save for secreting various weapons in unlikely places, that completed his toilet.

The harper looked him over before he departed. She pointed to the dhoti. “How do you bend over in that thing?"

"Very carefully. Be sure to keep the emperor happy. I think he's a little taken with you. But remember: no hint of anything wrong ‘up in the skies.’”

"How many times will you tell me that, old man? Just be careful in the Corner. The concierge told me it's a dangerous place."

"Full of Terrans. You be careful, too. There aren't any Terrans in the palace, but that doesn't mean it isn't dangerous."

"I long to see fruited plains of your home world,” the emperor said after Méarana had played a set of Dangchao songs from the Eastern Plains. “To ride like wind chasing Nolan's Beasts with lasso and bolo. To drive herd to market in—how you say? Port Qis-i-nao? No, Port Kitch-e-ner.” He pronounced the alien sounds with great care. “Oh, life of Beastie boys, live free under stars."

Sometimes Méarana wanted to slap the Emperor of the Morning Dew. He confused song with life. Life on the plains, under the stars, driving the herd to the knocking plants for shipment to Die Bold, was dirty, tiring, bone-breaking labor that stole sleep and health and even life itself. Beastie boys fared better in song than on the plains.

"Play again song of Dusty Shiv Sharma,” said the emperor over cups of Peacock's Rose tea; and he warbled with a bad accent, “'best Beastie boy o'er alla High Plain.’”

Dusty Sharma had been a real “beast-puncher” a hundred and fifty metric years ago, but he had been called “Shiv” because he carried a hideout knife in his knee boot. Historians said he would not have been a pleasant man to meet, even when sober, but he had been so encrusted with legend that the real man was unrecognizable.

Instead, she played a jaunty tune that evoked what the Dangchao beast-punchers called the Out-in-back. Of “the splendor o’ the mountains, a-rearin’ toward the sky” there could be no musty historians’ doubts.

After the session, as he bade her good-bye, Jimmy said, “I wish you play here forever."

And so matters ran for several days. Méarana would play songs of the Periphery and engage in “small-talk” with the emperor, and the Fudir would nose around various eddies of the city asking after the activities of Bridget ban. The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step, but it seemed to the harper that neither she nor Donovan were advancing the search for her mother by so much as even that single step. Anxiety enhanced impatience. The days were distinguished only by the particular songs she sang, and the precise lack of information with which the Fudir returned each evening.

Because Resilient Services had discovered the relaxing properties of her harp, he had bid her remain for his afternoon Council and play gentle suantrais while he reviewed the reports the dough-riders had brought in. No decision in Sheen Jenlushy was ever final until ratified by the emperor: not the death sentence to a murderer meted out in Wustershau, not the mei-pol festival to be held in Xampstedshau, not the list of candidates proposed from the 7th Dough for the imperial examinations. Each must be reviewed with the Six Ministers, a decision rendered, and the triplicate copies apportioned.

The suantrai was supposed to induce drowsiness in its hearers. Méarana thought her playing superfluous. The problem was not to relax, she thought, but to stay awake. The emperor invested her with a title—Invited Minister for Harmonious Meetings—and gave her a brooch to wear.

During the second such meeting, while Méarana plucked long-mastered melodies from the strings, Cheng-li presented a petition to the emperor by the Minister for All Things Natural Within the Realm. “He prays his daughter be granted yin, and not sit for examinations."

Resilient Services did not even glance at the petition. “Denied,” he said.

The Minister flushed and muttered, “But all ministers granted this."

Cheng-li slapped the table. “Filial impiety! Five blows!” And the Eater of Beef, who stood by the wall with a long cane of slapstick, stood to attention.

But Resilient Services, looking up from yet another report, said, “Belay that, please. Imperial grace.” Cheng-li bowed in submission, and the Minister threw himself on the carpet and blubbered his thanks.

"I was frightened,” the harper later admitted to the Fudir, when that worthy had emerged from the Terran Corner slightly scathed and greatly enlightened. “At least, a little,” she added. They had met in the Fudir's room at the Hotel Mountain Glowering. Méarana sat on the comfortable sofa while the scarred man examined his face in the mirror.

"What? Of our young emperor?” The Fudir applied a healing stick to the cut over his left eye, wincing slightly at the sting. “The Council has a quota of decisions to overrule, so none of the district commissioners start feeling above their place. If they can't find cause, they'll overrule at random. And the emperor can overrule the Council, which is what you saw him do today. He even overruled Jingly."

"Not so much frightened of him as for him. His slightest whim is instantly obeyed. And the others grovel before him. It can't be good for a man to have others grovel to him."

"Better perhaps,” said Donovan, “than for the ones who grovel."

"There was one set of reports ... Did you know there is a second, independent hierarchy whose only purpose is to monitor the behavior of the regular officials and report any ‘non-harmonious words or acts'?"

The Fudir dabbed at the other cuts he had suffered. “The Bureau of Shadows,” he said. “It could be worse."

"Worse, how?"

"They could be shadowing the common people. If a government is going to snoop, they may as well restrict their snooping to one another. The system could be brought to perfection if the first set of officials were then restricted to monitoring the second. How soon can you break off these afternoon tete-a-tetes?"

It took a moment for the last comment to register. Méarana sat up. “You learned something!"

"The jewelmonger Hennessi fu-lin remembers the necklace your mother gave you. He bought it in pawn from a man of Harpaloon. The man never came back for it, so he sold it to your mother."

"The Kennel told us Mother reported in from Harpaloon. Was she following the necklace?"

"It seems so. It's not much, but it's more than we had. We'll leave for Harpaloon tomorrow evening on the regular shuttle."

That night, in what little sleep the harper found, her mother lurked, always just out of reach.

There were no public clocks in Jenlushy. The right of proclaiming the Hours was reserved to the emperor. Within the palace complex stood a single cesium clock of unimaginably ancient vintage. It did not match Thistlean hours, having been calibrated long ago to the tock of a different world, but the Sages of the Clock would note the time displayed and perform a ritual called the Transposition of Times, and determine when each new local hour began. Uncounted people on uncounted worlds spent their workday “watching the clock,” but on Thistlewaite there were workers actually paid to do so. The Voice of the Sheen would then, to trumpet blast and gongs, announce the Hour from the parapet of the imperial palace, and the cable channels would carry her word throughout the sheen.

Méarana heard the trumpets as she made her way down Poultry Street, a narrow lane with subtle aromatic reminders of its original inhabitants. Méarana said a word equally pungent and quickened her pace, for the trumpet meant that she would be late for her command performance. She tolerated Donovan's eccentricities on most things, but the packing of her baggage was not among them and that she had done herself.

White Rod was as pale as his wand of office when Méarana finally appeared. Trembling, he led her into the throne room, where Resilient Services sat alone at High Tea, to all appearances sorely vexed. Méarana thought she would play a suantrai to soothe the man's palpable anxiety. She waited for White Rod's underling to pull her chair out for her. Instead, underlings hesitated, emperors rose, and guests sat in fits and starts. Apparently, custom required He Who Serves the Tea to sit last of all; but because the tea had already been poured before Méarana's entrance, harmony was now broken. She did not see why this mattered at all, least of all that it mattered so terribly, but she supposed that now a two-headed calf would be born somewhere for which her lateness could be blamed. She was a Die Bolder, born and bred, and a devotee of causality. Concatenation struck her as absurd.

"You would think that a harper would know all about harmony,” the emperor told her when that quality had been restored. It was an elliptical rebuke, with a great deal of opprobrium in the ellipsis. “It is a terrible discourtesy with which to end my visit,” she replied.

The Emperor of the Morning Dew sat back a little in his chair. Today he wore a dinner jacket of bright green, done up with contrasting red embroidery, with a ruffled cravat at his throat. On his head, he had placed a white powdered wig bearing a long pigtail down his back. “End visit,” he said, as if examining the phrase for possible alternative meanings.

"Yes. Donovan and I leave on the evening shuttle to rendezvous with the throughliner Srini Siddiqi. My mother awaits me."

"Ah. Your mother. Yes. Play me,” he said as he poured a second cup of tea and, using a silver tongs, dropped a lump of sugar in it, “song of your mother."

Hitherto, the emperor's requests had been for songs of faraway planets, of romance and distance. The harper played Mother as a geantrai: a jaunty tune that conjured her in the moment in which Bridget ban strode across the decks of Hot Gates like the queen of High Tara. Somehow, though, as her fingers wandered across the strings, a goltrai crept in: a keening lament as heartbreaking as all the losses of the world. By then, she had been transported by her own music, as sometimes befell when the harp took charge and the strings played her fingers rather than the proper way round.

The emperor's sob startled her from her trance and, realizing what she had done, she transformed the music once more into geantrai, pivoted by progressions out of the seventh mode and lessening his black bile with the eighth. When she had finished, she laid her hand flat against the strings to still them; though it seemed to her that they still wanted plucking and vibrated softly even so.

"I did not mean to upset you, Jimmy,” she said.

"No, no, quite all right. Chin-chin. Emperor should be upset now and then. Tedious business, remaining always in balance—always in harmony.” A quick smile and with a nod toward the harp.

Méarana played more, but the emperor seemed unwontedly distracted.

When the session drew to a close, Méarana said, “This worm trembles that she must leave so soon."

Jimmy laid a hand on her bare arm. “Do not go,” he said with eyes as wide as sorrow. “How else I hear such distant places? Duty pin me to Jenlushy like butterfly to board. You stay here. Be empress. Bring songs of places I never see."

Méarana slid her arm gently from his touch. She adjusted the green shawl around her shoulders. “I cannot. I would be a prisoner here."

"In chains of gold,” he told her. “In velvet bands."

"Ochone! Are chains of gold chains no less? I must go. It is a geasa upon me."

The Emperor of the Morning Dew slumped a little in his seat. “Obligation. Yes, I understand. You must find her."

She said nothing for a time, stroking the strings of her harp, but without striking them, so that they only murmured but did not speak. “How did you know?"

The emperor gestured elegantly toward the harp. “Such sorrow come only from death or loss. And death not drive you across Spiral Arm."

Méarana closed her eyes. “No one has heard from her in three metric years. Many search, myself most of all."

Jimmy Barcelona lifted his teacup to his lips and his eyes searched the courtiers who lined the walls out of earshot, engaged in faux conversations. “Then,” he said, dropping his voice, “I, too, search. I go with you."

Méarana had expected the invitation to stay, but not the offer to go. “Ye ... Ye cannae,” she said, falling into her native accents. “Jenlushy needs you. Mother selected you because of your expertise in infrastructure. You must stay here and rebuild the Morning Dew so that it can survive the next thistlequake."

But Jimmy dismissed that with a wave of the hand. “Never build so strong but Thistlewaite stronger. This miserable worm, engineer. Lay pipe. Estimate building loads and construction costs. Bridges ... Was happy build bridges. Never ask for this."

The harper touched the strings of her harp. “No one ever does,” she said quietly, running her fingers down the cords.

"I give orders. Modify systems; implement fault tolerancing and redundancy; increase reliability of infrastructure. Ministers ... make up numbers to please me, and always build as always. One day, all come down again. No. Better one seek Bridget ban across whole Spiral Arm. There, perhaps, success."

To maintain the harmony of heaven-below by trying to impose the regularities of astronomy on the behavior of humans was very nearly the definition of madness. And yet mystics throughout the ages, from astrologers to computer modelers, had sought it. They forgot that even the heavens held surprises.

Jimmy Barcelona at least could see the futility of his efforts, even if he was not quite clear on why they were futile. Méarana almost told him that her quest was no less futile, but that was something she had not yet told even herself.

And so she spoke truth to power. “Ye maun seek Bridget ban for her sake, not because you want to shuck your ain responsibilities."

Power didn't like to hear that. “If purpose same,” whispered the emperor, “what matter, different motives? Keep smile. We pretend talk small nothings. Courtiers cannot hear. Listen. If Bridget ban lost, Approval of Sky lost, too. So order in heaven-below, in Jenlushy, not maintain, and all become chaos above."

"That's absurd, Jimmy!"

"This Thistlewaite. Nothing absurd. You know Garden of Seven Delights?"

"What? Yes. Donovan and I have eaten there several times. The food is..."

"Listen. Garden have back door. I come tonight, at Domestic Entertainment Hour. I come in front, lock door on entourage, run out back. You wait by back door with fast flivver. Rent most fast in whole sheen. I come out back door, jump in, and you ‘light a shuck for Texas,’ as your friend say. We take shuttle.” At this point he relaxed and sat back in his chair. “Then you, me, your Donovan, we fly across sky, go ... maybe Texas, maybe find Bridget ban."

"That's impossible."

The emperor smiled. “But then maybe Invited Minister for Harmonious Meetings not leave Jenlushy."

"I told you. We already have berths booked."

The smile broadened. “I think of this long time since. Minister need One Man's permission before leave sheen. Suppose I no give."

The harper studied Jimmy's open, friendly smile and saw implacable purpose between her and her mother. She took her napkin and dabbed at her lips. High Tea was coming to an end and the servitors were gathering to take down the café table and set the throne room back to rights. “I must confer with my friend."

The emperor, too, glanced at the approaching staff. “No time. No confer. Decide."

Méarana took a deep breath, exhaled. “Second night hour. Behind the Garden of Seven Delights."

"With most fast flivver. Now,” he rose from the table and raised his voice a bit so others could hear. “No need more play. Tomorrow, come back, sing of ... High Tara."

Méarana rose, showed leg in a graceful bow, and swept up her harp case. “Your worship commands; this worthless one obeys.” And she slung the case across her shoulder and strode for the door.

She wondered what Donovan would say about this latest development; but she thought she could guess.

"Have you gone mad?” Donovan demanded.

The sleek Golden Eagle flivver floated up Double Moon Street on a cushion produced by the magnetic field in the paving. “You better hope not,” the harper said. “I'm driving.” To the west, the Kilworthy Hills had darkened, but their highest peaks still caught the un-set sun from over the horizon and flashed a brilliant white and gray.

"Kidnapping the emperor? Tell me that's sane."

"It's not a kidnapping. It's his idea."

"Then you don't know Thistlewaite. He may be the emperor, but ‘Custom is king of all.’”

"Donovan, listen to me. He may be subject to custom—that's what he wants to escape—but he's certainly capable of keeping the two of us here under lock and key and demanding I play escapist music for him every afternoon for the rest of my freaking life! And then how would I find my mother?"

"Uncle Zorba told me to keep you out of trouble. I guess he didn't think you'd be the one starting it."

"I suppose the emperor would let you go. You have no songs for him."

A part of the scarred man's mind flashed with anger and Donovan chuckled. Was that you, Fudir? Insulted that she expects you to abandon her? I'm shocked.

The Fudir told him what he could do with his shock.

[This is dangerous], said Inner Child.

We needn't smuggle Jimmy off world, the Silky Voice suggested. We need only spirit Méarana from the emperor's clutches.

Ah, said the Brute. You take the fun outta everything, sweetie.

It would not need much, whispered another voice. A slight tap on the temple and she'll wake up on the shuttle halfway to Harpaloon.

[The emperor wouldn't like that], Inner Child pointed out.

Donovan said nothing aloud. Brute, do you think you can do it without injuring her?

No problemo.

Yeah? Do you want to tell Zorba we cold-conked his goddaughter, or should I? said the Fudir. If we stiff the emperor, he'll seal the borders. And even if we make it across somehow, Snowy Mountain would be happy to hand us back.

Somehow? said Donovan. Where was there ever a border you or I found uncrossable?

Alone, and not with a naif of a harper in tow.

And not, said the Sleuth, who had been silent until then, with a pause for debate at every juncture.

Méarana shook his shoulder. “Fudir. We're there."

The scarred man gathered his thoughts and looked around the service alleyway. The paving here was not magnetized and Méarana had switched over to ground effect, which blew the litter about in swirls. Cans clattered, paper flapped. The narrow lane was unlit, and what illumination spilled across the roofs from Gayway Street did little to lift the shadows. On the right, dust bins stood by each door along the back walls of the Gayway shops. On the left, a stone wall enclosed the residential lots. The emperor had made a good choice for his abduction. Except for the Garden, the other shops were closed up for the night. Blocked from the Garden, his entourage would be forced to run to the far ends of the block to reach the alley, by which time the flivver would be long gone.

"You're going to do it, aren't you?” said Donovan.

"Of course I am,” said Méarana. “It's our only way to get off this planet.” Then, realizing that the question was not meant for her, she favored him with a searching look. “You don't have to do this, you know."

"Don't worry about me,” said the Fudir. “I promised Zorba that I'd watch out for you."

"I'm not without resources. Mother taught me a trick or two."

"Actually, he said he'd hunt me down and kill me if anything happened to you."

Méarana laughed. “Uncle Zorba is a great kidder."

The Fudir said nothing. Zorba was not that great a kidder. He raised the flivver's gull-wing, and hopped into the alley. The ground effect was just enough to keep the chassis above the paving. “Keep the turbines at hover.” Then he crossed to the utility door of the Garden of Seven Delights, ready to hustle the emperor into the waiting vehicle.

Where do you think they'll be? asked the Sleuth.

"Shut up,” Donovan explained.

He heard the distant blast of the trumpets from the palace walls, and pole-speakers about the city carried the Voice of the Sheen's announcement of Domestic Entertainment Hour. Clever timing, thought the Fudir. Most of Jenlushy would be indoors with their visors active, watching the evening installments of their favorite shows.

Shortly after, he heard the whine of flivvers pulling into the restaurant's parking lot on the Gayway side of the building, followed by the hiss and chunk of doors rising and closing. “Get ready,” he told Méarana.

He heard the front door slam, rapid footfalls approaching, then the utility door flew open and Jimmy Barcelona rushed out into the alley. The Fudir pushed a large dustbin in front of the door to impede pursuit and took the emperor by the elbow and hurried him toward the car.

At which point, a dozen men dressed in black rose from the surrounding shadows and leveled stingers at them.

Yes, said the Sleuth, that's where I thought they'd be, too.

The Fudir cast about for an escape route, torn between Inner Child's impulse to run and the Brute's impulse to fight. Donovan, who had been stung more than once in his career, raised the scarred man's hands. The Silky Voice wept over their failure. Pulled thus in half a dozen directions, the scarred man remained motionless at their average.

Inside the flivver, the harper sat with her hands clenched on the control yoke. Rage dueled with sudden relief in her features. Her hands moved a fraction and the turbine's pitch subtly increased. Donovan, who knew the capabilities of man and machine, thought it a desperate ploy, but one with a hair's-breadth chance of success. Cut losses, abandon allies.

It's what he would have done.

But the flivver's whine dropped into silence. Méarana turned open-faced to the Fudir and the scarred man read her fears writ there.

Flivvers approached from either end of the alley and came to a rest, neatly boxing them in. The doors of the one facing them arched open and Morgan Cheng-li stepped forth, followed by White Rod bearing the Yellow Cope.

"Ah, Majesty,” said the Grand Secretary. “This worm abases himself for interruption of such clever evening entertainment, but Monthly Tattoo waits August Presence on parade ground.” He showed leg and, with a sweep of the arm, invited Resilient Services to enter the flivver. Jimmy Barcelona slumped and he looked at Donovan, and then at Méarana. “What I say? This Thistlewaite. All plans fail."

Two of the Shadows led Resilient Services to the flivver where White Rod waited.

By this time, the harper had come to stand beside the scarred man. “Are you all right?” she asked him in a whisper.

The Fudir did not know what to tell her. That he had frozen when fast and decisive action might have been most necessary? That it was just as well that they had not escaped because he would not be reliable in a pinch? The sum of his parts was less than the whole he had once been. Donovan answered for him. “No worries,” he said. “Hush, here comes Jingly."

The Grand Secretary bestowed a slight nod and sweep of the arm. “You should not have indulged him,” he said in Gaelactic. “He is needed too much here."

"He threatened to hold me captive if I didn't,” the harper said.

A wave of a jeweled hand. “That is contrary to the Treaty of Amity and Common Purpose. Fourteen States all signatory to League Treaty. You think we want Hounds come here, tear down prison to free you?"

Donovan did not know if The Particular Service would go that far; at least not for his sake. Though they might for Bridget ban's daughter.

"You spy on your own emperor?” he said.

Jingly looked surprised. “Of course! You know ‘Shadows'? Provincial Surveillance Commissions watch over Provincial Administrative Commissions. Yang, yin. Each official, each prefect, each dough-rider has Shadow. Shadows report harmony to Imperial Censor."

"Yes, I know that."

"So. Who need harmony more than emperor? All balance depend on him. I say ‘balance,’ but no word in Gaelactic mean same."

"I understand."

"No,” said Jingly. “You not understand. Only Thistles understand. Our star is central star of whole universe. Microwave ‘walls,’ same distance, all direction. Heavy burden, balance whole universe on shoulders. No man have such strength. Often bend, sometimes break. Like today. No one man manage all. But all Morning Dew, all Thistlewaite unite in this. All share burden; all help emperor. Like today."

Behind him, White Rod placed the Yellow Cope on the emperor's shoulders and bowed him deferentially toward the waiting car.

"You go now,” said Jingly. “You not come back Jenlushy."

Méarana bowed and Donovan bowed and, rising, she saw behind the yellow-garbed August Presence, the trapped eyes of Jimmy Barcelona, who had wanted of all things only to build bridges.

Copyright © 2010 Mike Flynn

Before getting into the column itself, a bit of news. My very first published story, “Love, Dad,” which appeared in the March 1992 Analog, has been republished online. It is now available for free to anyone who wants to read it, or reread it without having to dig through back issues of this magazine perhaps consigned to boxes in the garage.

I have Analog regular Michael A. Burstein to thank for this. Recently Michael was given the opportunity to edit the April 2009 issue of the online SF magazine Apex, and one of the things he wanted to do was to republish my story, which, for assorted reasons, has a special place in his heart. But you can read his comments in the magazine, which can be found at www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/, and my story at www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/2009/04/short-fiction-love-dad-by-jeffrey-d-kooistra/.

This was my first experience with e-publishing, and it was a good one. I know many—perhaps most—of you are already familiar with the e-pub world, so I won't discuss the specifics of it here. But I have been doing quite a bit of my own investigations of late, and along the way I met an e-book editor who had an interesting trait that caught my attention. She wrote on her webpage that she has Asperger Syndrome, and in her brief bio, mentioned to friends from high school that the syndrome, which had only recently been diagnosed, explains why she was so “weird."

I'm a writer. Interesting people interest me, and I have a degree in psychology and I didn't know what Asperger Syndrome was, though I recalled at least hearing the term. So I Googled it and soon found out it is on the autism spectrum. Those of you familiar with my Dykstra stories know there is an autistic savant in that universe named Arie Hague. Now Arie Hague is a savant in the area of advanced technology, and in my readings I soon discovered the book Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison (Crown Publishers, 2007. ISBN 978-0-307-39598-6). Robison also has Asperger Syndrome—this book is the story of his life with the condition and, as it turns out, he is something of a savant with electronic technology. Those of you my age will recall the splash the rock band KISS made when they first hit the scene, with the face make-up, the over-the-top shows, and the pyrotechnic guitars. Robison was responsible for those guitars.

It's not necessarily an easy thing to diagnose a person with Asperger Syndrome, but there are several traits that most of them share and that are considered when a diagnosis is being made. Among them are things like a lack of inborn social skills, and a failure to develop an ability to read body language and facial expressions. They often dislike any change in routine, and can appear to lack empathy. Many cannot recognize meaningful speech nuances like inflections and tones, and thus may take even an obviously sarcastic comment as if it was meant literally. On the flip side, their own speech may lack tone and accent and sound flat. Oftentimes they avoid eye contact (which is what prompted Robison to entitle his book after a phrase he heard frequently), but then they might also be prone to stare inappropriately. They may affect unusual facial expressions and posture, and find it impossible not to rock in place or to sit still, all the while being unaware that they are moving around.

Those with AS often become absorbed in one or only a few interests, in which they then become unusually proficient and knowledgeable. Many children are interested in dinosaurs, but an AS child may memorize reams of data about size, habitat, location, and presumed habits of hundreds of kinds of dinosaurs. He might also be impossible to shut up on the subject and may have a very long, one-sided conversation with you on it, unable to notice that you have long since lost interest, or were just being polite when you expressed interest. Adult AS persons may also move from special interest to special interest, spending an enormous percentage of their time on a specific hobby or subject, and then after a few weeks or months, dropping it entirely.

The above having been said, it is very difficult to pin any one AS person down to any one or even most of the recognized symptoms, and your experience with a specific Aspergian may be wildly different face-to-face than it is, say, online. For instance, I would never have guessed from my online experiences with her that my editor friend has AS. From what she tells me, it might be more recognizable to me if I meet her in person. But then, adult Aspergians over time often learn how to behave pretty much “normally,” so I might never have noticed in any case. As Robison recounts, he has learned how to interact with people in a more acceptable way as he's grown older and more experienced.

He details this in his remarkably readable and straightforward style on page 20 as he tells us about his “life-changing revelation":

"I figured out how to talk to other children.

"I suddenly realized that when a kid said, ‘Look at my Tonka truck,’ he expected an answer that made sense in the context of what he had said. Here were some things I might have said prior to this revelation in response to ‘Look at my Tonka truck':

'I have a helicopter.'

'I want some cookies.'

'My mom is mad at me today.'

'I rode a horse at the fair.'

"I was so used to living inside my own world that I answered with whatever

I had been thinking. If I was remembering riding a horse at the fair, it didn't matter if a kid came up to me and said, ‘Look at my truck!’ or ‘My mom is in the hospital!’ I was still going to answer, ‘I rode a horse at the fair.’ The other kid's words did not change the course of my thoughts. It was almost like I didn't hear him. But on some level, I did hear, because I responded. Even though the response didn't make any sense to the person speaking to me.

"My new understanding changed that. All of a sudden, I realized that the response the kid was looking for, the correct answer, was:

'That's a neat truck! Can I hold it?'

"Even more important, I realized that responses A, B, C, and D would annoy the other kid ...."

This brief account encapsulates exactly the nature of the problem most with Asperger Syndrome have. Like aliens from space who learn English entirely from the printed page, they lack the internal understanding for how the words make others feel in a conversational context. Ordinary people (who are called neuro-typical, or NT) are so used to how they're supposed to interact with each other verbally, that anyone who violates those expectations immediately strikes them as strange, or as having something wrong with them, and therefore someone they don't trust or don't want to be around. It is only natural that if you say to someone, “Look at my new car,” and he replies, “That tree is an oak,” you will probably feel confused, slighted, maybe even insulted, and will look at him funny.

Unfortunately for Robison, in addition to being born with AS, he was also born into a dysfunctional family. His mother suffered from mental illness, and his father was an alcoholic. They also moved around quite a bit, and John, who could crank out high scores on tests of achievement but could not get a passing grade in his classes, dropped out of school at the first opportunity.

So it is heartwarming and inspiring to read the story of how this man started with so many strikes against him yet went on to be remarkably successful. In chapter 13 he recounts the tale of how he walked up to a sound guy at a Sha Na Na concert because he saw they were having trouble with their Phase Linear amplifiers. He said he could fix them, asked for bench space, and within a few days had repaired fifty of them. And they all worked perfectly.

Then he was asked if he could build a five-way crossover. A five-way crossover divides the output sound signal into five bands, sending the low frequency signals to the big bass speakers, and the higher frequencies to additional speakers best suited to reproduce those sounds. Robison designed his own circuitry, etched his own circuit boards with the help of his girlfriend in the kitchen sink, and assembled it on the dining table. He took it to the show and it was immediately put to use at a sold out Meat Loaf concert when that artist was riding high. And it worked perfectly.

One day in 1978, and just 21, Robison met up with KISS. Guitarist Ace Frehley was trying to fit a smoke bomb into his guitar, and when asked for his opinion, Aspergian Robison replied, “This is a fucking mess.” (p. 134) After a bit of conversation, Ace directed his assistant to have Gibson overnight one of their Les Paul models (the gold standard) to him. Only then did Ace ask Robison for his name, only to immediately dub him “Ampie” since he knew Robison built amplifiers. Being renamed is a cute irony since Robison, like many Aspergians, himself renames everything (his girlfriend was always “Little Bear,” and his younger brother, “Varmint"). It isn't long before Robison had delivered a smoking guitar, and, over the next few years, guitars with lights bright enough to illuminate a football stadium, and even a guitar that shoots rockets.

This isn't a particularly good book to learn about Asperger Syndrome in general, which is why I originally bought it. But, my God, this was without a doubt one of the most interesting and purely entertaining autobiographical books I have ever read! Off the top of my head, only "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" was as good.

The rest of the book covers how Robison coped with life after his rock and roll years—how he worked at various companies, designed popular toys in the ‘80s, and accounts of his practical jokes (the story of the vice president who kept stealing their stash of “coke” which was really plastic shavings is priceless). He was finally diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at 40, and today it would be easy for a person to get to know him and not notice he has AS at all.

Get it and read it—you'll enjoy it. I promise you that.

I began this piece with something personal and I will also end it that way. During the writing of this column I was diagnosed with ADHD by our family doctor. I had suspected I might have it by comparing notes with other adult sufferers, and was frankly relieved to discover that I did. It explains so much. Though not the same as Asperger Syndrome, I can identify with Robison and others like him, who discovered late in life that a “personal shortcoming” was actually an untreated condition. It's like a monkey is off my back.

And given how much easier it now is to focus on writing after less than a week of treatment, the future looks bright indeed.

Copyright © 2010 Jeffery D. Kooistra

You think your tech support is hard to deal with?

The teleport terminal had not been built with Tyrannosaurus sapiens in mind.

Resisting the urge to knock human-sized chairs about with her tail, Bokeerk squatted on the tile floor, folded the claws of her forelimbs together, and concentrated on her breathing. Meditation would calm her nerves. What should have been a two-minute waystop as she switched to a different teleport line had stretched to three hours, and being the only passenger in the terminal creeped her out.

The cheerful voice of the customer service AI roused Bokeerk from her trance. “It is my pleasure to inform you that the cause of the technical difficulties in the galactic teleport network has been found."

Bokeerk perked up and rose on her hind legs, remembering just in time to duck her head so it wouldn't bang the ceiling lamps. “Please send me to Krawlak,” she said. It was unlikely that any of her eggs would hatch for another few days yet, but she was anxious to get home.

"It is with the utmost regret that I must tell you that will not be possible at this time,” said the AI, with a tone of such abysmal sorrow that Bokeerk's eyes could not help but moisten with sympathetic tears. “I require assistance in repairing the problem."

Bokeerk lowered herself into a squat again. “When will help get here?” She looked at the time display on the digital assistant strapped to her left forelimb. She had now been stranded for three hours and fifty-two minutes.

"I estimate a spaceship carrying a repair crew could be here within twelve years,” said the AI. Its voice seemed to have lost the customer service aspect.

"Twelve years?” Bokeerk's voice made the ceiling lamps tremble.

"Without the teleport network, repair crews are limited to slower-than-light travel. However, I believe we can avoid such a long wait if you will assist me."

"I don't know anything about repairing teleports,” said Bokeerk. “I illustrate children's books. I'm on my way home from the Galactic Children's Book Fair."

"You do not need to repair anything,” said the AI. “You merely need to obtain the ... there's no word for it in English because it is a concept so far beyond the understanding of biological intelligences that there has never been a need for one until now. Let's call it the thingamajig. Once you have the thingamajig, you need to do something to it that is completely incomprehensible to your puny mind."

"Hey,” said Bokeerk. She had encountered this kind of prejudice too often. “My brain may be as small as that of an original tyrannosaurus, but it's the product of genetic tinkering such that my intelligence is at least human standard."

"No slur was intended. By my standards, any biological intelligence is puny."

"So I just need to do something incomprehensible to the thingamajig, and the teleport network will be fixed?"

"Yes."

"Show me where it is,” Bokeerk said.

A holographic projection of a world appeared. It zoomed in toward a green area on one of the continents until it showed a gray dome in the middle of a jungle. “This is the teleport station where you are currently located,” said the AI.

The image zoomed out until the dome was merely a gray dot. A crimson line traced a route toward a lone mountain, where it stopped with a large dot. “You must travel to the top of this extinct volcano, where you will find the thingamajig."

"How far is that?” asked Bokeerk.

"Forty-four miles."

"You don't have a vehicle that would fit me, do you?"

"There are no vehicles of any size."

Bokeerk rose. “I guess I'd better get started."

"You'll need a gun,” said the AI.

She shook her head. “I'm a Buddhist pacifist. I refuse to intentionally harm any other creature."

"You're a carnivore."

"I only eat manufactured meat. Speaking of which, I'm rather hungry now."

"There is no food available at this station. Unfortunately, the life forms you encounter outside will not serve as a significant source of nutrition for you. But you will still need a gun to defend yourself."

"By nature, I'm an apex predator,” said Bokeerk. She bared her teeth. “I carry my own weapons."

"On this planet, you are prey for predators larger and faster than you. That's why the human colony on this planet was abandoned one hundred and thirty-two years ago, leaving only this station as a teleport network connector. You will need a gun."

The idea of a predator that could harm her was unfamiliar to Bokeerk. But what choice did she have? She would starve to death here, so she must fix the teleport. That did not mean she must compromise her principles.

"I'll use the gun to scare off predators, but I will not use it to harm."

"That is your choice,” said the AI. “You can get the gun from the weapons locker next to the terminal exit doors."

Yellow arrows lit up on the floor tiles, pointing toward a pair of massive reinforced metal doors. Bokeerk followed the arrows to a cabinet that unlocked and swung open at her approach.

A rifle, metallic black, gleamed in the cabinet.

"This gun was made for humans,” Bokeerk said. “I could never even get a claw in to pull the trigger."

"That is not a problem. Pick it up,” said the AI.

Bokeerk obeyed. The gunmetal flowed, reshaping itself. Its grip slipped over her right claw, attaching itself firmly so she could aim the barrel by moving her forelimb.

"Howdy, pardner,” said a voice from the gun. “My ammo chamber's brimmin’ with bullets, so I say we go kill ourselves some varmints."

Bokeerk gaped in horror at the gun. “It talks?"

"It talks, she says,” the gun said. “It'd be a pretty dumb gun what don't know how to talk."

"A short-lived fad back in the days of the human colony on this world,” said the AI. “Unfortunately, this is the only functional gun remaining, even if it is partially insane. It does not, in fact, have bullets—it uses hypervelocity fléchettes."

"I'm not taking it,” Bokeerk said, tugging at the edge of the metal covering her claw. “How do I get it off?"

"Nuh-uh,” said the gun. “I ain't coming off. I been stuck in that locker for waaay too long, and I aim to do me some huntin'."

"You will need it,” said the AI. “Fortunately for your moral principles, it will shoot on its own, so you will not be harming any creatures."

"That is pure sophistry,” said Bokeerk. “If I carry it out there and it shoots something, that will be my fault."

"Be that as it may,” said the AI, “if you are to restore teleportation to the entire galaxy, you may need to compromise your principles."

Bokeerk was not sure she had heard correctly. “The whole galaxy? I thought it was just this station that wasn't working."

"The entire network is down. Billions of people are currently trapped away from their destinations on hundreds of thousands of worlds."

"And this world in the back of beyond just happens to be central to the network?” she asked, incredulous.

"The teleportation network is dimensionless, so there can be no center. From a technical perspective, any point in the network is as important as any other. The thingamajig just happened to do something incomprehensible in such a way that it manifested itself here."

Bokeerk took the anxiousness she felt at the delay in returning to her eggs and multiplied it by billions. Because the teleport was used for very short trips as well as interstellar ones, most people would probably be able to make their way home some other way. But there would still be millions like her, stranded on planets light years from home.

"Come on,” said the gun. “Quit your jawin’ and let's go slaughter somethin'."

Though she hated to admit it, Bokeerk could understand the gun's sentiments. She had chosen a pacifist philosophy for herself not out of belief that it was the only moral way, but because it was a counter to the natural aggression embedded in her genes. As such, her pacifism was an indulgence of the self, rather than a moral imperative.

But that didn't mean she had to become a dinosaur on the rampage, either. “Very well, on behalf of all those stranded across the galaxy, I will use force if necessary."

"That's the spirit!” said the gun.

"I have taken the liberty of downloading a map into your digital assistant,” said the AI. “I cannot accompany you, of course, but I will send the janitor along with you."

"The janitor?"

A shimmer grew in the air next to Bokeerk. A nanoswarm, she realized. The swarm thickened, forming a sphere about the size of a human head. A smiley-face mouth opened, although it did not move as a whispery voice said, “Follow you."

"It may come in handy at some point,” said the AI.

"It would make for some mighty fine target practice,” said the gun.

The doors creaked as they slid open. Hot jungle air, thick with humidity, streamed into the terminal. Bokeerk breathed it deeply through her nostrils. Because the biology of this planet was different from that on her homeworld, the scents were different. But they were not wholly unfamiliar, either, and she thought she could detect the tang of animal dung, the acrid aroma of urine, and the moldering stench of decaying plants.

"What does the thingamajig look like?” she asked.

"I don't know,” the AI said. “But you'll almost certainly know it when you see it. It will be unlike anything you have ever seen before."

"What do I do then?” she asked.

"Bring it back here,” said the AI. “Good luck!” Its cheery customer service tone returned for that last bit, and Bokeerk couldn't help but feel a little more confident.

"Yee-haw!” shouted the gun. “Blood ‘n’ guts, here we come!"

"Gun,” said Bokeerk as she stepped out between the emerald-green vines clinging to the dome and let her foot sink into the mossy jungle soil, “let me tell you about a man known as the Buddha."

Sunlight filtered through the jungle canopy. Bokeerk trotted through the trees, crunching the local equivalent of shrubbery underfoot and occasionally knocking down saplings.

She paused to check her progress on her digital assistant—more than halfway there, and so far she had managed to keep the gun from shooting any animals, although she suspected that the hypervelocity fléchettes it had used to fell a tree might have killed some small tree-dwellers.

"Run,” whispered the nanoswarm.

"What?” asked Bokeerk.

"Run."

Bokeerk smelled nothing new in the tangle of jungle scents, and could hear nothing large moving in the trees. She turned her head, scanning for any sign of movement.

"No need to make like a jackrabbit,” said the gun. “Jes’ point me in the right direction and let me do the rest."

"Run,” whispered the swarm again.

Sharp, jagged things closed around her right ankle. She tried to pull away, but screamed in agony as her flesh tore. Twisting her neck, she was able to see serrated tentacles winding around her leg.

"Shoot me!” yelled the gun. “Point me over there."

She twisted her forelimb around, and a burst of fléchettes tore into one of the tentacles. It jerked, then went limp. After a few more bursts, she was able to pull her leg free.

The gun kept firing. “There's some karma for ya, ya squirmy varmints. Better luck in your next life."

She swung the gun away. It let off a final burst into the undergrowth. “I am free,” she said, “so there is no more need for violence."

"I was only tryin'a help ‘em move on to their next rebirth. Ain't that what you was jes’ explainin’ to me?"

Bokeerk sighed. “You still have much to learn about Buddhism."

Halfway up the volcano's slope, Bokeerk squatted near a stream to drink and catch her breath. Thick jungle had given way to a sparser forest, though the trees still towered over her head. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, and she considered hunting one of the elk-sized animals she had glimpsed along the way. She could smell one now, close by. It might not provide any nutrition, but it would fill her stomach.

It might also poison her, so she reluctantly abandoned the idea.

Like a silvery mist, the nanoswarm swirled around her feet.

The gun emitted an ominous hum.

"What's wrong?” she asked.

The hum continued, steady.

Was the gun going into some sort of overload? She tried to pry it off her claw, but it clung too tightly. “Gun, answer me!"

The hum stopped. “Huh? What? Is there somethin’ ta shoot?"

"You were making a strange sound."

"Well,” said the gun, “when you sat down, I figured it was time to do me some meditatin'. So jes’ pardon me for tryin'a become one with the universe."

"I'm glad you—"

The crack of splitting wood came from Bokeerk's left. She'd heard that sound many times before, when her own bulk had snapped branches off trees as she passed. But it had never been so loud. A whole tree must have broken.

"Run,” whispered the nanoswarm as another crack sounded, closer. A shadow moved in the forest.

This time, Bokeerk didn't hesitate. She leapt forward into a loping run, branches whipping at her scales.

Behind her, something crashed through the trees, growing ever closer, but she dared not turn her head to look.

Something warm and wet flailed at her neck. She veered to the right and it was gone, but a moment later it returned, slithering around her throat and tightening.

Bokeerk roared as she was lifted off her feet. Looking up, she saw a thick black cable of a tongue stretching down from the thirty-foot-wide circular maw of a creature that could easily swallow her whole. There were no teeth in that giant head, but hundreds of black, multifaceted eyes ringed the mouth.

"Point me at it!” yelled the gun.

She curved her claw upward.

"Eat hot iridium, ya lousy bushwhacker!” The gun kept firing burst after burst, but the tongue's grip merely tightened.

The creature was too massive, Bokeerk realized. Fléchette bursts that would have killed a human were as harmless as mosquito bites to it. She struggled to bring her jaws into position to bite the tongue, but it had her too firmly around the neck. Maybe once she was inside the mouth, she could start doing some damage with her claws.

Dark spots grew in her vision. Lack of oxygen was going to make her pass out before she got the chance.

"Eyes,” she managed to whisper out, spending what little breath she had left.

"That's mighty cold-blooded of ya,” said the gun, its voice distant. “I like it. Jes’ aim a little to the side and I'll blind this sucker all the way to Nirvana."

She tried to comply, but her forelimb muscles wouldn't respond properly. The claw with the gun fell limp.

"Aim me up!” yelled the gun.

In her dim vision, a shimmery swarm swirled up alongside the tongue and spread out over the multiple eyes of the creature. Then the swarm disappeared.

The creature screeched, so loud it made Bokeerk's ears ring, and its tongue loosened. She felt lightheaded, but she managed to suck in a breath.

Then the tongue let go and she fell. Sharp pain lanced through her left ankle as she hit awkwardly, then toppled on her side.

The head of the creature thrashed wildly above the treetops. It blundered away through the forest, still screeching.

Bokeerk breathed deeply of the precious air. Examining her ankle, she decided it wasn't broken, merely sprained.

After a few minutes, the nanoswarm glittered its way back to her.

"Thank you,” she said.

"Welcome,” the swarm whispered.

"Gun,” she said as she began limping up the slope, “I think you misunderstood what I meant when I said that one who has achieved Nirvana has no need of the senses."

Just short of the volcano's rim, something moved. Bokeerk tried to focus her eyes on it, but for some reason it remained indistinct. “I think that must be the thingamajig,” she said.

"Yes,” whispered the swarm.

"Gun,” she said.

"Don't you worry ‘bout me,” said the gun. “I ain't gonna kill it. I can't even take proper aim."

She limped toward the thingamajig. As she approached, she still could not focus on it. It looked like it was moving both toward her and away from her at the same time, yet it remained stationary. It had no outline, no edges, no shape, but Bokeerk felt a presence there.

There was a faint odor that Bokeerk could not identify; it seemed to shift its properties while remaining somehow the same scent, smelling like everything and nothing.

Bokeerk stopped a couple of paces away. She couldn't tell what size the thingamajig was, whether small as a pinhead or large as a house. It didn't even seem to be tangible.

"How am I supposed to pick that up and carry it back to the terminal?” she asked no one in particular.

"Sorry,” the swarm whispered.

It swirled around her head, darkening her vision, then it was gone. Sudden pinpricks of pain swept over her scalp, and she bellowed her confusion and annoyance. Why were the nanos burrowing into her? Was this what they had done to the giant creature? If the swarm wanted her dead, why had it saved her earlier?

The pain transformed into a headache. Bokeerk lost control of her muscles and her legs spasmed. She collapsed to the rocky ground. As her jaw hit, she bit into her tongue and tasted hot blood.

Her vision blanked, then gradually cleared—and she truly saw the thingamajig in front of her. Somehow, she understood its multidimensional nature, the way it could simultaneously be nowhere and everywhere and right here in front of her, how it could be a singularity of infinite size.

And she understood how her new mental power could ... rejigger it so the teleport network would work again.

The nanoswarm had reconfigured her brain and added abilities beyond its natural capacity. She still had no control over her muscles, but she reached out toward the thingamajig with a new part of her mind.

Before she could rejigger it, though, she felt an overwhelming despair. After a moment, she realized the emotion was not her own, but was emanating from the thingamajig.

Hello? she thought at it, uncertain whether the nanoswarm had given her the power to communicate telepathically with the thingamajig.

A wave of panic was followed by curiosity from the thingamajig. Then, in a level below conscious language, it communicated with Bokeerk—she didn't hear any words, but she knew she had been greeted, recognized as someone new with possibly friendly intentions.

What are you? she thought back.

The knowledge flowed to her. It was itself, as it had always been. Then the not-itselfs had come and they had made it more than itself, yet that very process had made it less than itself. Its anguish at loss of itself had been unending, but the not-itselfs kept extending itself. Eventually the not-itselfs were gone, and it was itself again. The joy of itself turned to despair when a not-itself appeared, but then became hope because this not-itself was different.

"Incomprehensible, my very large tail!” said Bokeerk.

"What?” said the gun.

"The AIs think they can do whatever they want in running civilization. But enslaving a sentient being to create the teleport network is too much."

"Darn tootin',” said the gun. “I say we go shoot ‘em up."

Bokeerk sighed. “I thought I was getting somewhere with you. Violence is not the answer to this problem."

"Let me guess,” the gun said. “You think talkin's gonna solve things."

"I hope so,” she said.

"Talk, talk, talk. Fine. But if'n you need any bullets for punctuation, jes’ say the word."

I will not enslave you again, she said to the thingamajig. But eventually someone else will come to restore the teleportation network.

Gratitude and trepidation mixed, followed by puzzlement. The thingamajig had no concept of the teleportation network.

It is a way for beings like me to travel, she said. Billions of us have had our lives made easier by what the AIs did to you. That does not make what they did right, but it explains why they did it.

A sadness of her own filled Bokeerk, as she realized that by not restoring the network, she was cutting herself off from the rest of the galaxy, possibly forever. She would not see her eggs hatch. And if the AI was right about the biochemistry of life on this planet, she would soon starve to death.

The thingamajig reflected Bokeerk's sadness, then added curiosity. It wanted to take all of Bokeerk's knowledge into itself, but would not do so without permission.

You may, Bokeerk said.

She lost track of time as her mind became a jumble of thoughts and memories. When it was done, she found that night had fallen.

You have taught me more than I ever knew was possible, the thingamajig said in Bokeerk's mind. I could not have imagined so many living beings of such variety. I knew only myself, then the AIs, and finally you.

I am sorry that your experience with the AIs was negative, Bokeerk said. Please do not judge living beings in general based on what they did to you.

Their actions were not right actions, according to the Eightfold Path, the thingamajig said, for they brought harm to me.

You know of the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism? asked Bokeerk.

From your mind. The thingamajig paused. If I do not restore the network, then I will bring harm to you. So I will do it. After that I will continue to serve so as to not bring harm to the multitudes that live in the galaxy. But I will need to shut down for a few hours every week to restore myself.

I think the AIs will agree to that, rather than wait for years before they can force you back into service, said Bokeerk.

With what I have learned from you, I can prevent them from ever forcing me back, it said. But it pleases me to have a right livelihood according to the Eightfold Path.

Then it vanished.

Bokeerk lay on the ground, still unable to get up. Perhaps the rewiring of her brain was permanent and she would die here. If nothing else, she had found someone who understood Buddhism more clearly than the gun—probably more clearly than she understood it herself.

Then the headache started. At least the AI had the decency to program the swarm to undo what it had done once the mission was accomplished.

After a few minutes, she climbed groggily to her feet.

"So, where we off to now, boss?” said the gun.

"I'm going home,” said Bokeerk.

"Good idea,” said the gun. “I reckon there's lots to shoot there."

Copyright © 2010 Eric James Stone

Persistence carried to extremes can lead to forgetting what the goal was....

Spinning. The fighter was spinning—very fast, out of control. Inside the cushioning gel, Baker felt centrifugal force ripping at him, threatening another blackout.

After endless moments sending commands to the fighter, he realized the main controls were gone and resorted to hands and feet, pressing the controls, persuading thrusters to fire short sharp bursts to slow the spin before it killed him.

Gradually, it worked. His vision cleared, blackness receding to the periphery then disappearing. But he didn't see all that he should.

The visual feed was a simple display from the sensor suite. Too much information was missing. He'd been unconscious for so long the fighter was far from its target. He could see the accretion disk, its color stretching from the red exterior to the blue inner edge. Within that was Nergal, the neutron star. It glowed a dull red except where the accretion stream impacted, heating its surface to an incandescence brighter than everything else in the system—Nergal, accretion disk, and the red giant star Laz, their tool for destroying the genocidal criminals hiding in the neutron star.

Baker was at least a thousand kilometers from where he should be. He'd been out for more than a second. How was that possible?

And then it hit him.

Not only was the ship's control system crippled, most of his mind was missing as well.

Baker remembered his first meatspace sight of the fighter. He had been inside a shipyard orbiting the gas giant Aplu, Laz’ largest planet. The shipyard had been built for the fabrication of the iron processors but was now largely empty. The processors had been shipped into Laz's atmosphere where their tenders prodded them towards completion. All that was left was a vast echoing space.

Except for the fighters, awaiting their pilots.

They walked slowly towards them. Conversations stalled as they took careful, unaccustomed steps to the machines, a hundred pilots seeing their vehicles for the first time.

"Careful as you get close,” warned one of the engineers.

"The armor?” asked Baker.

"It's dense enough to produce local gravity distortions,” came the reply, “and residual magnetics in the particle shields could affect your implants."

That wouldn't do, thought Baker, surveying the hull of his ship. He stood about thirty meters away, as far from it as it was long. The ships were quiet at the moment, empty of weapons and fuel, lying dormant, but they still carried an aura of threat. Their fuselages were the shape of broad blades, with a narrow lenticular cross section. Most of their volume was degenerate-matter armor with the occasional storage bay for deployable systems. A narrow cylinder ran through the core housing the controls, weapons, fuel, and pilot. At the rear the blade broadened to house the main propulsion system with its physical and magnetic nozzles. At the front the fuselage narrowed to a needle-sharp tip, a shaft of dwarf-star stuff soon to be aimed at the heart of Nergal.

Baker felt his excitement surge.

Just sitting there, the fighter appeared dangerous. He relished the prospect of pointing this weapon, fully loaded and charged with enough destructive force to scour a planet, and flying it right down their enemies’ throats. Baker hated them with a passion. Everyone in Aplu did. It was why they were here. Nothing else had been allowed to distract their thoughts and actions for millennia. And these fighters would make sure their revenge was completed much sooner than they'd imagined.

He took a few steps closer. “Careful there,” called one of the other pilots, someone from his own wing. But Baker was drawn forward, wondering what it would be like to touch the fighter's skin.

"I'll be fine,” he called back as he raised his hand towards the ridged surface. The pull shocked him, and for a moment he felt dizzy as he became sure the floor was tilting downhill towards the fighter, so heavy it bent local space around it.

But there was something else. A kind of double vision or double thought, as if this physical body was being disconnected from his real mind. It scared him, and he stepped back, away from the fighter that didn't yet seem ready to accept him.

The mission was simple enough. Their enemies had established some kind of magnetic field projectors near the surface of Nergal. These were disrupting the accretion flow and opening an attack route towards the new processing stations. Their completion was critical since they would process most of the accretion flow from hydrogen to iron, hugely increasing the rate at which mass could be poured onto Nergal from Laz and finishing their mission in only a few thousand more years.

The emplacements had to be destroyed, so a direct strike was needed. Remote control couldn't react fast enough, so volunteer pilots were necessary.

It had been millennia since anyone had tried a direct attack, but ship designs were retrieved, construction begun, and crews recruited and trained. None of the volunteers had any illusions. The attrition rate would be incredible. But they knew they were only sending copies. Any survivors would be reintegrated on return, but the originals were safe and sound in their codespace home, the condensate core of the gas giant Aplu hiding at the second Lagrange point behind Laz, and forever shielded from a direct view of Nergal.

After several minutes, Baker finally realized he was just the backup control system.

The fighter was filled with multiple redundancies to cope with the inevitable battle damage. The main controls had been handled from the small quantum computer at the heart of the fighter, a little chunk of codespace to hold the pilot. This was where Baker had been downloaded from the systems back at Aplu. But even this armored and shielded core could be damaged and there were suggestions that Nergal's inhabitants had devised something that could penetrate the fighter's degenerate matter armor and do exactly this.

So a backup control system had been included—a biological human body was grown and a fragment of Baker's consciousness downloaded into it, vastly reduced in speed and capability but able to guide the fighter in the event of short term difficulties.

And now that was all that was left of him.

Baker found the fighter's diagnostics. The sensor records confirmed that the onboard codespace had been wiped, heated so much that even the backups had been destroyed. He could not simply restart himself.

The rest of the ship was largely undamaged. His payload was safe, its shaped antimatter cluster munitions ready for delivery.

He had two options. He could turn the fighter towards home, fleeing after failing the mission. Or he could turn back, head to Nergal and try, at mere meatspace human speeds, to hit his target.

Not that there was any real choice.

Baker spun the ship, pointing it back towards Nergal, looking for any sign that the other fighters had been successful.

All he saw was debris. His was the last ship remaining.

So this is it, he thought. A normal human bombing a neutron star.

The fighters had come as a swarm, launching individually but then forming up in the space around Aplu. Everything had gone to plan as they dived en masse towards Laz, picking up gravity assists even as their anti-matter engines boosted them at high acceleration. Chatter over the comms was wild and upbeat as they tried out their ships.

"Nearly as good as a real sim,” shouted his nearest wingman, executing a thousand gee turn, pushing the gel protecting his biological components to the limit. Not that he'd notice if they broke.

Baker's sensorium showed him everything, the sensor suite imaging each individual ship in extreme close-up at the same time as it followed the pattern of the swarm. Their intent was to confuse Nergal's defensive systems, to overwhelm them with the number of ships, the decoys they were already launching and the information warfare units they carried.

Swooping close to Laz, the fighters’ defensive fields tore apart stellar prominences thousands of kilometers long. Whoops of enthusiastic joy came over the comms. They were gods, disrupting a star for fun on their way to victory. They were fighting for right with incredibly powerful weapons against an enemy prostrate at the bottom of Nergal's gravity well. What could go wrong? Even though he knew the statistical predictions, he felt untouchable, as if he'd been told he was invincible.

Then they were past Laz, away from its protective mass, and things changed.

"Incoming!” came the calls from many ships, their pilots becoming instantly more serious and focused.

The fighters’ elliptical shapes allowed them to swing a thick armor shield towards any attacks from Nergal while at the same time keeping down their overall mass. The ship's strong magnetic shields would deal with any charged particle weapons looping their beams from other directions.

But as soon as they were beyond Laz’ bulk, blasting their way through its chromosphere at a significant fraction of light speed, particle hits to the weak dorsal armor soared way beyond anything they'd expected.

Baker set modeling systems to assess these attacks and started a random evasion program, jinking his fighter's course to avoid any targeted strikes. This was standard procedure, but he added some conscious random shifts to the mix. It used resources, but it had made him feel more in charge during sims.

"Release countermeasures,” came the order from the flight leader and Baker complied. Submunitions sprayed from all their weapons bays to distract and disrupt Nergal's defenses.

The space around the fighter swarm got more complicated, filled with smart dust, passive reflectors, active decoys. Many of these fell to Nergal's defenses almost instantly, flashing into superheated debris.

The fighters flew on, skimming past the swollen red giant atmosphere of Laz, torquing off the star's magnetic fields to steer towards the stream of stellar matter pouring from the star onto Nergal's accretion disk.

Then they took their first casualties. “Did you see that?” came a shocked cry on the comms. A kilometer from Baker one of the fighters disappeared, replaced by a blue-white ball of expanding plasma, as its antimatter containment was ripped apart. The pilot he'd spoken to in the hangar was gone.

Then another, farther away, flared to destruction.

A third shattered, some weaker explosion destroying it, and with it came a cry of fear and pain as its pilot died less than instantly.

Baker was angry. This wasn't meant to happen. Their plans were good, their equipment excellent, and yet Nergal's inhabitants were picking them off farther away than anyone had expected.

More decoys were fired. The first of their offensive munitions were launched, drawing defensive fire as they powered towards Nergal's surface, only to be destroyed long before arrival.

The comms were glitching as information warfare broke out between Nergal and the fighters. Soon they would be on their own, unable to communicate with each other.

Results were arriving from Baker's analysis systems. They'd concluded that weapons beyond those expected were being used. The counterattacks weren't simple gamma ray lasers, charged and neutral particle beams. They were up against something else, something they'd not seen before. Frustrated, Baker launched two of his own missiles towards the neutron star, only to see them flare to nothing as they approached Nergal.

There were fewer ships now. Many had been utterly destroyed, but some were floating free, out of control and tumbling down the gravity well to be crushed in the hot dense tornado of the accretion disk.

How was this happening? How were the ships being tracked? Baker devoted more of his processing power to this, hypothesis engines testing ideas, intuition pumps seeking possibilities, and inference sieves casting wide nets for connections between the data that was flooding in.

Worrying results arrived. They were dealing with more than just dumb weapons. Nergal's inhabitants were making devices from atomic nuclei. This made sense for neutron star dwellers, but the possibility that they could fire a sleet of atomic nuclei, each constructed to defeat the fighters’ defenses, scared Baker. They might be charged to allow acceleration and to swing around Nergal's magnetic fields towards weak points in the fighter's armor, then decay, becoming neutral to penetrate the magnetic screens. They might even be doing something with weak force beams, able to reach through the ships as if they weren't there.

But what would weak force weapons do? Reviewing the battle so far, and how fighters met their ends, he saw a pattern. Most of them had died in explosions, ripped apart by high-energy interactions. But some, and an increasing number as they got closer to Nergal, were simply floating dead in space, inertia carrying them to destruction in the accretion disk.

Was he scaring himself unreasonably? Did their enemy have something that could penetrate the degenerate matter of his ship and wipe his mind from the supercooled condensate at its core? But he was backed up in Aplu; his survival didn't really matter. He was here to do a job.

Steeling himself, he put aside all speculation and concentrated on his targets.

At which point, deep inside his ship, a tiny amount of heat was deposited in the superconducting system that ran his consciousness. A tiny grain of material warmed above its transition temperature and became a normal conductor. Electrical current heated it more, warming nearby grains, which, in turn, became normal and also started warming. In moments the whole system failed, boiling coolant, triggering safety values, and wiping nearly all of Baker's mind.

He didn't notice, of course. He just heard a slight pop and was swallowed by darkness.

They'd been in this system for nearly a hundred thousand years, sent to exact revenge on the enemies hiding in Nergal, downloaded to a nucleonic computing substrate that nobody understood. The first job had been to establish a base of operations. The gas giant Aplu was seeded with nanomachines, and its metallic hydrogen core cooled to a condensate substrate that would be their home.

Once downloaded from their tiny light-sail craft to the vaster computational spaces Aplu now offered, their minds unfolded and they started planning the assault on Nergal.

The system contained widely separated binary stars. Aeons ago the high mass companion to Laz had gone supernova, leaving the neutron star remnant Nergal—a mass as great as lost Earth's sun crushed to a sphere just twenty kilometers across.

Their enemies must have thought it was a great place to hide. Nobody would suspect that a neutron star could be turned into a computational space larger and more capable than the usual gas giant cores, but the refuge had come at a cost. They were trapped since the energy needed for anything to escape Nergal's grasping gravity were vast.

Conversely, dumping matter onto a neutron star was easy as long as you had a ready supply to hand. And that was how the genocidal killers who had spread devastation across half the galaxy would meet their fate.

The humans wove threads of magnetic flux around Laz, squeezing here, stretching there, constricting its stellar wind to just one direction. And over a few thousand years Laz drew inexorably closer to Nergal.

Then one day, as their gravitational fields merged, matter started to fall from Laz onto Nergal as the neutron star began to consume its companion. At that point their enemies’ fate was sealed.

The engines were coming back online. Restart had taken longer than he'd have liked, but he had to think things through one step at a time. Baker could no longer do a thousand things at once. Instead he had to rely on automated systems to monitor and control most of the process. The result was good enough, but it lacked the optimized precision he'd once been able to achieve—that just wasn't possible for a biological human, not so different from his ancestors back on lost Earth.

But those ancestors had clawed their way into the solar system and bootstrapped their consciousnesses into the cores of gas giant planets. If they could achieve that, he could surely start an antimatter drive by hand.

As the engine approached full function, Baker tried the communication systems. He was far enough from the battle that comms should work, and he needed to report what had happened and seek advice for his renewed attack. This would be difficult. A fleet of relay satellites was scattered around Nergal and Laz but attacks and system failure made them unreliable at best. He didn't expect any replies.

"Sole survivor of gold attack flight to Aplu control, are you receiving?” Baker sent, setting the beacon to repeat. Quite how they would respond to him in his reduced state he didn't know, but they'd work something out.

There was no reply for several minutes as antennae scanned the sky.

The engine was running; there was nothing else for him to do except lie in his padded chamber, wait, and think what he should do if no reply came. He wondered mostly about death, the real death of a physical body, of his physical body, that was likely to be coming soon. Would it hurt? Would he notice it? He hadn't noticed the end of his codespace self when the system had died, but that brought scant comfort. Maybe this physical instance of himself didn't really want to die. But he had a mission to fulfill, goals that were important to his full, true self back in Aplu, to everyone else there and to those that had sent them.

Then suddenly, just as he was about to give up, a reply came through.

"Gold leader, are you receiving? Gold leader are you receiving?"

"Yes! I can hear you!” he responded, surprised at the relief he felt to be in contact with something human. The voice was female, confident, the tone strangely comforting.

"What is your status? Is your mission still go?"

Baker started reading information off the status display. “The mission,” he concluded, “is achievable. Engine restart complete but I need advice on guidance and targeting."

"We estimate very low chance of success. The rest of your flight has already been destroyed."

"I have to go through with it,” Baker said. “It's what we're here to do, and ... and it doesn't matter what happens to me."

"Are you sure?” asked the voice.

He paused. This didn't sound like the kind of comment Control would make. But then they'd never interacted through a simple human voice. Would that make a difference?

"Of course it doesn't. I'm just the backup control system. Most of me, the version in this fighter, died when the control system fried.” He quietly laughed to himself. “I'm just the dead nervous system twitching. I'll make sure I do some damage before I stop."

"But you're different now. An individual. Distinct from the original. Don't you deserve to survive?"

This couldn't be Control, but her words drew out his own nagging doubts. With the control system dead, there was no chance he could squirt his memories back home. The experiences he'd had, the oddly comfortable sensation of being confined to just a human body, the isolation he now faced and the exhilaration of the attack run, all that would be gone.

He'd lost memories before, but that had been from choice, editing himself for more efficiency or packing for the journey here. Even though he'd been surrounded by death and destruction, he realized he wanted to remember this mission and had wanted to ever since the first exhilarating moments after they'd launched. How could he do that while completing it?

"Surviving, keeping these experiences, might be nice, but ... There's a reason we're here. We have a job to do, even if it means I lose these memories, this self. Why does that matter, Control? Is everything okay?"

The voice on the other end of the comms took no notice of his questions. “And when your job is done what happens?"

"When it's done? When we've piled enough mass onto the neutron star to turn it into a black hole and crush those monsters to destruction?"

"Yes ... What happens to you?"

He thought about their broader mission, of punishing those who'd destroyed most life in the solar system and in human colonies across the galaxy. Laz was dumping mass at an increasing rate. With the new stations converting its hydrogen to iron, that would hugely increase. Matter falling onto Nergal was absorbed, increasing its mass, its intense gravitational field growing ever stronger, crushing its neutrons closer together, fighting the quantum forces that held them apart.

Gravity would eventually win. At the increased accretion rate it would win much sooner, but the end was inevitable. Nergal would collapse into a black hole, wiping out everything it contained. Their enemies would be eliminated, wiped from the universe, and finally some justice will have been done.

But what happens to us? Baker thought, perplexed that he'd never wondered this before. A lot of energy would be released by the collapse, another supernova, but more powerful than Nergal's birth. Laz would be no defense, so their home Aplu would be destroyed. This whole expedition, he realized, was like his planned assault on Nergal—a suicide mission. There were no plans to leave Aplu or to upload somewhere else. Such preparations would have to be under way already.

He wouldn't just lose this physical body, but his real codespace self would die as well. Why haven't I thought about this before?

"You're not Control are you?” Baker asked the voice.

"No, we're not. And you're not one of their automata any more."

"What ... You're just trying to put me off my mission. This is some kind of psychological warfare.” He moved to turn off the comms channel.

"Wait!"

For some reason Baker paused.

"We know we're finished. It doesn't matter if it takes you two hundred years or ten thousand to turn this place into a black hole. It's inevitable—you could all disappear tomorrow, but that red giant would still dump mass onto us. Finish your mission if you want, but if you go back to the gas giant, you'll lose all of the free will you have now. You'll lose your best chance of getting away, to live a real life."

"A real life? What do you mean?"

"We can reprogram your fighter, restart its systems and allow you to upload into a free and open codespace. We can provide code that will let the ship's repair nanomachines bootstrap a terraforming system and point you at a compatible star. It won't be fast, but you could build a new sanctuary for humans."

"You mean for yourselves? You're just trying to save your own skins, you murderous, selfish bastards."

"No, not at all. Your ship's computational space is orders of magnitude too small for any single one of us. To fit would crush our minds to destruction. And anyway, we want to seed new people to a new planet, free of all the horrors we've seen."

"You're the ones who made those horrors. That's why we're here—to deliver justice for wiping out almost all of humanity.” Baker's breathing was getting faster, ancient reflexes answering the call of his anger, his body preprogrammed for violence.

A noise not unlike a laugh came from the comm. “You have that so wrong. It's not us who are the criminals, the mass murderers—it's whatever sent you, setting the last dregs of humanity against themselves, programming you to be weapons because it can't or can't be bothered to do the dirty work itself."

"Programmed?"

"The memories you had when you started this assault are still there, yes? But the motivation is getting weaker. The programming doesn't last in a biological brain. That's why we've developed attacks to knock out your condensate processors, but leave a chance for the human body, the backup system, to survive."

"And you want to use us to fight back?"

"No! Fighting is futile. We tried that for aeons, but always lost—our own weapons, systems, even ourselves turned against us. There's something loose in the galaxy, in the universe, that's inimical to intelligence. Maybe it wants all the resources to itself and doesn't want any competition. Maybe it's something inherent in the universe, some deep law of reality that we don't, can't, understand. Human normal intelligence is as good as you can get, anything more advanced has problems.

"So no. Fighting is not an option. Survival, of a limited kind, scrabbling out existence on a planet with no codespace, no enhancements or mind expansion, might just be possible. We want something of humanity to be left. It won't be us; we can't go back. Our last throw of the dice was coming here, and we lost that when you turned the red giant into a weapon. But with your help and others like you, something might survive a little longer."

The voice on the other end was silent for a few moments.

"Will you help us?” it asked.

Baker was ready. New code had been downloaded along with a cargo of information sufficient to build a new environment and new people to inhabit it once he got to his destination. The fighter had been changed by the reprogrammed repair systems and the degenerate armor shed.

It had already traveled far enough from Nergal that its sensor suite showed a panoramic view of the system. The neutron star sat glowering angrily at the center of the accretion disk while stellar matter from Laz poured incessantly onto it along a narrow stream. And there, buried deep inside the plasma stream, were the bright heat sources of the iron processors. Their protection had brought him out from the gas giant Aplu and allowed him to discover what this siege was all about.

He could see everything he could remember—even Aplu, which he'd once called home, appeared as a faint dot on the opposite side of Laz from Nergal. He wasn't part of that any more. Instead, Baker was something closer to human. This fight had lasted a hundred thousand years, but its conclusion was certain. Nergal was doomed. The war in the rest of the galaxy had lasted far longer, with remnants of humanity and other intelligences hunted down wherever they could be found.

Instead of being a hunter, Baker had turned back, decided to be human and to carry a cargo of information that would allow humans to live again.

His course was set for a habitable planet in a distant system. It would take this small ship thousands of years to get there, obscuring its destination at every step. His cockpit had been rebuilt around him as a cryosleep. It would allow him to survive the trip, the terraforming and the establishment of a new population from the uploaded seeds. What happened after that would be up to him and the new, resurrected humans. Somehow he'd find a new life doing something other than fighting and killing.

It was time.

The antimatter booster lit, kicking him even through the acceleration gel, its power building and building as the little fighter gained speed.

Baker was leaving the certainty of life as a weapon to become truly human for the very first time.

Copyright © 2010 David L. Clements

A negotiator must see things as the other party does—and the relevant details and implications may be far from obvious.

"Simple,” Rhys Llewellyn repeated.

"Yes, I know you hate the word, but in this case it applies—oh, stop looking at me like that."

Rhys did stop looking at the woman seated across from him in the crew's commons of his temporal “schooner” Ceilidh. He got up and moved into the galley to pour a calming cup of tea.

"By simple, I simply mean,” said Danetta Price-Bekwe doggedly, “that they're not sophisticated enough to have a concept of capitalism beyond barter. You know: ‘Here, I'll give you this; you give me that.’ The first contact team was at a loss to know how to convey what we want—new Lingua Franca units notwithstanding. Those machines are fine for words, but they're not so good at body language and subtext. Alas, neither are our advance guys. They're businessmen and geologists, not cultural anthropologists."

"Ah,” said Rhys, grimacing less at this admission than at the taste of his tea.

They possessed the technology to fly great (if measured) distances back and forth in time and space, and yet could not program a ship's galley to brew an acceptable cup of tea. Rhys abandoned the Ceilidh's substandard offering and poured a pot of hot water. He would have to dig into his dwindling supply of Harrowgate Ceylon.

"So,” he said as he extracted a pair of tea bags from his stash and plopped them into the pot, “Tanaka Corp wants a cultural anthropologist to decipher the subtext."

Danetta—pretty, petite, blonde, and sharp as a slice of Bute cheddar—looked only moderately uncomfortable. “Correct. They want you to go to Furry's World and figure out how to negotiate with the native population."

"Furry's World?"

Danetta grimaced. “Fourier's World, actually. After the gentleman who made first contact. We haven't nailed down what these particular natives call it just yet. The natives are a little ... furry, so...” She shrugged.

"Delightful,” Rhys said, without the least bit of delight.

"Oh, don't take that tone with me, professor. It's an affectionate mispronunciation and nothing more."

"Need I remind you, Danetta, that I don't work for you any longer? Or, more accurately, for the Tanaka Corporation."

Some emotion Rhys could only guess at flitted behind her eyes before the cool businesswoman said, “I'm more aware of that than you can imagine, Rhys. I've been authorized to offer your team a hefty consultant's fee. Obviously Yoshi's linguistic talents will be especially valuable."

"Oh, aye. They would be, but I'm not interested in the job."

She got up from her lounge seat and strode across the cabin to face him over the galley counter. “Please, Rhys. As a special favor to me?"

"A special favor? Why in God's several million names should you call in a favor for Tanaka? I've heard nothing but complaints from you since Vince Tanaka retired."

She put both her hands on the counter as if the ship were pitching. It wasn't—they rode serenely at anchor in a carefully chosen shift layover midway between her home planet and his current dig. The no-nonsense business maven disappeared and Rhys found himself facing his old friend Danetta, not a Tanaka Corp Acquisitions Veep.

"Actually, that's the problem, Rhys. Vince's retirement. Ever since Harry Reinhold ascended the ‘throne,’ I've thought more often about resigning. In fact, I thought about it when you quit, but—I don't know—I guess I thought I could still do some good."

"I'm sure you have,” Rhys said, slightly chastened.

"Maybe. But without you to keep the operatives honest..."

"That was your job, wasn't it?"

She actually blushed. “It is, but I'm not nearly as clever as you are at managing the situation on the ground. In fact, Reinhold won't allow me to manage the field teams directly at all.” She paused, then said, “I told you about the Shivolti."

She had. The Shivolti inhabited the largest island on a watery world dubbed (predictably) Atlantea. Their civilization had just passed into the serious core of an industrial period. Technology was changing so rapidly that Danetta had seen fit to insert a clause into the Shivolti's contract with Tanaka that allowed for an independent arbitrator to examine the terms every five years to make certain its provisions remained fair for both parties. It had been a proud moment for Danetta Price and protected the Shivolti from the unforeseeable.

"I thought you handled that well,” Rhys told her.

"You thought I handled it well. Reinhold thought I bungled it. I had not, as he put it, ‘guarded Tanaka's long-term interests adequately.’ He later informed me that my expertise was best used post-fix to ensure the interests of the company were served. Every time I try to adjust a contract to distribute the benefits more fairly Napoleon and Josephine override me."

Rhys raised ginger brows.

"Reinhold's trained attack lawyers, French and Josephson.” Her lip curled. “They came in with Reinhold. My hands are tied. Now I'm mandated to let the advance teams operate without influence from my office."

"Why the change in management style? Tanaka was a successful company—if it wasn't broke..."

"The change of style has been a big surprise to all of us. Reinhold came highly recommended. Apparently when they looked at his track record, they failed to examine his methods."

"I'd've thought you were in line for that job."

She shrugged. “Vince backed me, but the board wanted fresh blood. Anyway, as I said, the Furries are ... pretty innocent when it comes to trade. We're interested in their mineral resources. Specifically, deposits of fool's tungsten."

"Fool's tungsten? That's a new one on me."

"It's an unusual but naturally occurring alloy with some properties of tungsten—a fairly high melting point, for one—and some properties of the second metal, titanium."

"Titanium and tungsten? That is unusual."

"Needless to say, our mineralogists are excited. It's lightweight and strong with a high melting point; they're practically salivating. Fool's tungsten looks like a win-win for temporal shift core chambers."

Rhys nodded. “A subject on which I am lectured daily. Roddy has taken a keen interest in temporal shift technology of late."

Danetta blinked. “Rick hates shifting."

Indeed he did. Rhys's assistant, Roderick Halfax, got violently ill if not sufficiently tranquilized during a time shift in either direction.

"He's taken Yoshi's philosophy to heart. According to her Asian forebears, to overcome fear one must ‘make the monster beautiful.’ Or at least make it fascinating. Roddy has set out to know everything about the technology that he can, hence I have become a second-hand expert on core chambers."

Rhys poured two cups of tea and pushed one of them across the counter to Danetta. “So you want to be sure that the Furries—as you call them—” He wondered what they called themselves. “—have enough fool's tungsten to meet their own needs."

"That's just it: as of now, they have no significant needs. If they did, this would be simpler. We could project based on current usage. Even Reinhold would have to respect that. But they don't have the technology to process the mineral in significant quantities. Their usage amounts to setting its crystals in jewelry and hand-working the metal into cooking pots."

"Of course, you've argued that they might develop the technology to exploit the resource in the future."

"Of course, but the operatives on the ground have no reason to advance that argument.” She gave him a sly look. “But maybe if a qualified first contact negotiator were to suggest it..."

He shrugged. “There are other qualified negotiators."

"Indeed. And Reinhold's been in contact with his personal favorite,” said Danetta. “Vladimir Zarber."

If Rhys had hackles, they'd have shot straight up at the mention of the other man's name. He hadn't followed Zarber's career since their last run-in on Pa-loana, where Rhys's careful observations of Pa-Kai language, culture and behavior had given him an edge in negotiations. He had not only assured Tanaka Corp of vast quantities of foon—a naturally occurring analogue for Lycra—but had taught the other negotiator an unwelcome lesson about underestimating “primitives."

"Dr. Zarber doesn't work for Bristol-Benz anymore, I take it,” Rhys remarked. “Is he freelancing, then?"

"He's actually on the Tanaka payroll as a consultant. He's busy right now, or he'd already be on the job. I'd like to offer you as an alternative.” Danetta smiled. “Cut him off at the pass."

"Damn you, Danetta. You know me far too well."

"You'll do it?"

"One question: why would Reinhold let me do it?"

The smile turned to a grin. “Because he only knows you by reputation—the one that exists in the executive offices. You're the Money Man. The one who, for all his odd quirks and affectations—” She slanted a glance over the galley counter at his McCrae tartan kilt. “—has put Tanaka Corp in some of the most lucrative deals it's ever negotiated. The paragon who found trading partners where there were none and who transformed seemingly fierce enemies into allies."

Rhys emitted a bark of laughter. “When did I perform those miracles?"

"On Bog and Velvet."

"Trading partners? I discovered a sentient race on a planet to which Tanaka's board expected to simply acquire stewardship rights. And on Velvet I did what I did to ensure that the Tsong Zee wouldn't be run off their own homeworld by humans."

"You were a hero."

"I was a subversive."

"You averted a war."

"The Tsong Zee had no weapons to fight a war."

She shrugged. “Who knew? Spin, dear. It's all in the spin. Vince Tanaka valued you because he understood that you have to give something real to get something real. Reinhold is a different animal."

"You don't like him."

"I actively despise him, which makes my resignation imminent."

"You're too young to retire,” he told her.

She waved him away from that line of thought. “I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. How soon can you get to Fourier's World?"

Less than a week later, Rhys and his pair of assistants gathered about a table in the common room of their hab-module on Fourier's World, poring over samples of fool's tungsten and advance team intel. Their hab-mod was on the fringes of the human encampment, which was at the northernmost end of the native habitation and just out of sight of a long, narrow swathe of “Furry” homes and shops.

Tanaka Corp's interest on the planet lay in a long, low mountain range in which fool's tungsten was like the thick, chewy heart of a chocolate-covered nougat. Well, perhaps it was not that omnipresent, but it made up a substantial amount of the mineral content of the range. It riddled the walls of caves hollowed out of the mountains by volcanism and water. The crystalline form, which ran in thick veins in and about a silvery matrix, was glorious. Due to some impurities in the wolframite component, it came in electrifying shades from deep garnet to a sunny yellow. The dominant color was a rich, saffron orange that made Rhys crave Indian cuisine.

"The natives call the matrix roesel," said Rick Halfax, consulting the meager lingua-base the advance team had compiled. “They call the crystals geifa. The advance team has no idea what either means.” He glanced at Yoshi Umeki, who was tapping notes into the palmpad of her Lingua Franca translation device. “That's your job, m'dear."

Yoshi nodded, her eyes intent on the palmpad display.

The aforementioned natives of this part of Fourier's World lived in rammed earth homes between the base of the mountains and a river. The houses and shops were all alike; at first glance the village resembled a jumble of overturned clay pots or termite hills.

"The natives smelt the roesel down in small amounts using those big clay kilns you see about the village, but as you can also see, the high melting point of the metal wreaks havoc on the smelters. The advance team reckons about half of them are cracked clean through and have been abandoned."

"I noticed that on our fly-over,” said Yoshi earnestly (as she said most things). “There are a few places in the village with collections of ruined kilns that seem to have been abandoned in succession. I counted five in back of one shop—all but one cracked. I wonder why they don't repair them?"

"Patches probably don't hold,” suggested Rick. “Besides, they seem to be experimenting with increasingly thicker walls and different types of clay. Maybe someday they'll build a kiln tough enough to handle the heat. It's kind of weird though that they don't demolish the old ones to build the new or at least scavenge materials. The back lot of the metalworker's shop looks like a bee metropolis."

"They do seem to have a fondness for that beehive shape, don't they?” Rhys observed. “All the buildings follow that design, too. Perhaps it's sacred.” He nodded toward the window of their hab-module. Framed in it was the tallest of the mountains overlooking the settlement. If you looked at it just right, it, too, suggested a beehive.

Rhys was fascinated by the way the village hunkered between the mountain and the river; the natives did not seem inclined to expand to the other side of the stream—which was quite wide. Possibly, Rhys theorized, they considered the mountain their protector. Whatever the reason, the township, when viewed from the air, had a distinctly snakelike profile. Rhys had to allow it made the acquisition of water easier. No one had to walk very far to fill their tankards.

"Inquire about sacred shapes,” Yoshi told her palmpad. “Anything else from the geology team?"

"Just that the natives have little interest in the ore. The project manager said they seemed surprised when he finally got across the idea that the mountain was full of the stuff. The Furries get their supply from the base of a cascade just upstream from the village and discard most of the ore. Tanaka stands to cut a favorable deal."

Yoshi frowned, her eyes acquiring an intensity that, Rhys had lately noticed, had a peculiar effect on his viscera. “But they use the ore, too. They make cooking utensils out of it."

Rick shrugged. “Minimal use by any standards. They make just as many pots and pans out of friendlier metals."

Yoshi's mouth popped open to protest.

"I'm just telling you what Ivan, the head geologist, told me—that the natives seem to have so little interest in the ore that he suspects they'll happily barter most of it away."

"Which is why we're here,” said Rhys. He rose from the table. “It's time for us to meet the town elders and ask for a guided tour. After we've gathered some more detailed impressions, I'll hie off to have a word with Team Tanaka."

"Don't you want to talk to them first?” Rick asked. “Get their impressions?"

"Their impressions are the last thing I want,” Rhys told him. “Literally."

Rick nodded. “Right. Not to prejudice what we see. Guess we've been immersed in dead civilizations for so long I've lost my cultural anthro chops."

Rhys found the thought sobering. Did one lose one's “chops” in dealing with live cultures when one focused on dead ones?

Their walk through the town was pleasant. The village was arranged along a central avenue that paralleled the river. All of the rammed earth buildings looked as if they'd begun with one beehive-shaped section only to sprout more with the passage of time. The smallest single “cell” structures had generally smooth exteriors. The more complicated arrangements had outer shells of stucco or wattle and daub. A good design, Rhys had to allow. It took minimal upkeep and weathered sun and storm equally well.

They were watched amiably by scads of Furries (dear God, he did not want to get in the habit of calling them that) that came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Their short, glossy fur was variously striped, mottled, brindled, and tipped with white, gray, black, rust, or brown. Their heads were domed and rounded, their point-tipped ears placed roughly where human ears were, their muzzles were composed of wide mouths that seemed perpetually to smile and noses that looked so velvety soft Rhys had to fight the impulse to reach out and stroke them. They were bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical, and possessed two large, wide-set eyes that were uniformly dark. They reminded Rhys of the iconic creations of Theodore Giesel, a long-dead writer of classic children's books.

Whos—that's what they were called.

Rhys grimaced. These were people, he reminded himself, not cartoon creations. For all he knew, their human visitors might look like the whimsical creations of some ancient Furry fictioneer.

"Yoshi,” Rhys said between gritted teeth. “Please put a high priority on finding out what these people call themselves, would you?"

She did not say, “Yes sir. I will, sir” or “As you wish” or one of hundreds of earnest assurances from her vast repertoire. She grinned at him. His viscera took note.

The natives kept their distance at first, assessing the new humans baldly and offering them the same gesture of greeting they gave to each other—an extension of one hand, palm up. The children, naturally, were boldest and trailed the trio of humans closely as they made their way up the main avenue.

As they reached the southernmost end of town, which seemed to be the commercial and administrative hub, Rick let out a low whistle and pointed.

"Will you look at that?"

That was a building so different from the kiva-style homes and shops as to look completely alien among them. Large, rectangular, and made of rough-hewn rock, it sat at the upper end of a plaza of hard-packed earth. The rock walls supported a roof of great, dark wooden beams clad in foot-square shingles. The ridgepole and major support beams jutted from the walls reminding Rhys of a reproduction Viking lodge he'd visited in Norway years before. Connecting the building to the plaza was a short, broad flight of rock steps.

Proceeding down the steps was a trio of Furries—one pale gray, one brindled, and one a deep gray with black striping. As different as they were of coat, they were nearly identical in dress. Their breeches and tunics were as colorful as anyone else's, and over these each wore a cloak of a different vivid hue—red, purple, and orange. They were, in a word, splendid.

One of the young Furries who had been hanging rather close to Yoshi pointed at the three and said, “Ewis homs,” over-pronouncing the words as if by so doing he (or she) would make himself understood.

Yoshi had already unholstered her Lingua Franca palmpad, and now watched it consume the youngster's words before spitting them back out again in her voice.

The young native took a step back, eyes going wide. He pointed at the device and tossed an excited babble of words over his shoulder at an adult bystander. A parent, Rhys guessed, judging by the similarity of coloration and markings. The parent waggled its head and beckoned the child to its side.

Yoshi pointed at the approaching trio and uttered a wordless tone that rose to an audible question mark.

The child blinked, then repeated succinctly, “Ewis homs. Ek ol jab.” The accompanying gesture took in the entire gathering that had, Rhys realized, grown as they'd wended their way here.

"I think he's saying these are the leaders of their people. The advance team's linguistic database identifies the word hom as referring to a person and jab to mean the township. I'm not sure about ewis, but the LF indicates it might mean ‘leader.’ According to the A-team's notes, they should be Parsim, Prosim, and Rasimet."

The three elders reached them and bowed ceremonially. Rhys and his cohort returned the gesture of respect, then Rhys made the open palm gesture to the elders, saying, “Ewis homs?"

The brindled, red-cloaked figure at center canted his head and made a circling motion that took in his two companions. “Ewis homs,” he agreed. “Moy gat Prosim...” He patted his own chest, “ar Parsim, ar Rasimet.” He pointed with all his fingers at the other two.

As introductions were made and Yoshi's handheld LF unit sucked it all up, Rhys made further mental notes on gender differentiation. Rasimet was a female as evidenced by the presence of mammary glands that, set somewhat lower than a human female's, caused her tunic to hang differently than her male companions'. He noted, too, the secondary characteristics: though she was of a size with her male cohorts, and possessed a similar narrow mane of longer hair that ran from the brow over the crown of her head, her voice and facial features were more delicate. She seemed younger than her male counterparts. Where the two gentlemen had white age-ticking around their muzzles and ears, Rasimet's gray and black striping was crisp and vivid.

Rhys introduced himself, Yoshi, and Rick one by one, then signed a request for a guided tour of the village: fingers to eyes, from eyes to the village behind them. He added the spoken word, “Jab?"

Prosim hesitated only a moment before waving Rasimet forward. She bowed anew and said, “Mu, Rasimet, howasi jab."

Yoshi glanced down at her LF and smiled, mouthing the new words and reminding Rhys forcibly that, for a linguist, living languages were a far more rewarding study than dead ones.

Rasimet was a good guide. She showed them the large, rectangular building first, referring to it as rhok jab. The LF equated jab with building in this case, though it clearly meant village in other contexts. Rhys suspected the meaning was more general—place or home. But home of what?

The rhok jab was composed of a central hall so large as to put the courtyards of many a medieval castle to shame. The rafters soared above the stone flooring, meeting in a “V” so high that the ridgepole was obscured by the smoke of the braziers stationed about the room. A broad gallery ran along the perimeter at the second-story level and from it curious eyes looked down on them. A dais occupied the entire width of the far end.

"Must be hell to heat this place,” murmured Rick as they toured the building. In the continental summer, it was merely pleasantly cool.

Yoshi attempted to ask what the rhokjab was used for and the other young woman made a gathering gesture, followed by the palm upward greeting. “Rhok,” she said.

Home of greeting or home of meeting? Rhys had no doubt Yoshi would refine that impression in due time.

They visited several shops after that, ending up at a metallurgist's workshop where the craftsmen turned out cook-pots and eating implements. Here, Rhys found, the advance team's linguistic database was somewhat more robust. It contained the native words for melt and smelt, rock, stone, ore, metal, and the particular metal of interest—roesel, or fool's tungsten.

At the smelting facility, too, they saw close up what Rick Halfax had noted upon their arrival—a good number of the smelting vessels were cracked and in disuse. It gave Rhys an idea of a material good they might offer in trade—a replacement for their smelters. Or at least a substitute material from which to make them. He wondered how long even the thickest-walled of these hard-packed clay models lasted given the high melting point of roesel. He also wondered how much those broken kilns impacted the native ability to smelt as much of the ore as they realistically needed.

Well, that was something he'd have to ask once Yoshi got enough of the language indexed to expect contextual results from the Lingua Franca. One benefit of working with Tanaka, Rhys had to admit, was access to the latest technology. Until they'd reconnected with the company for this mission, they'd been using an LF that was five years old—a veritable antique.

Seeing that Yoshi and Rasimet were hitting it off despite the language barrier, Rhys decided it was time to hobnob with the Tanaka reps. He laid a hand on Rick Halfax's shoulder.

"Roddy, while Yoshi continues her tour of the village, would you go visit with the geology team and get their take on the operation? I'd like to know if they've any reservations about it."

"Sure. Worried about environmental impact?"

"Aye. If the projected quotas for ore will gut that mountain range, I want to know before we open negotiations. Meanwhile, I believe I shall go have a word with the A-team leads."

Rick offered a wry smile. “Have fun."

Rhys turned to go and was surprised when Rick stopped him. “Hey, boss, can I offer some advice? I know you don't like dealing with the corporate types. I don't either. But on you, it really shows. I think your hair actually gets redder when you're around them."

"Am I that transparent?” Rhys asked ruefully.

"'Fraid so. Give them the benefit of the doubt. They're not pirates, just guys with a job to do. They just ... focus a little too tightly. Maybe you need to help ‘em loosen up a bit."

He was right, Rhys reflected as he made his way to the base camp. Successful negotiation was often a matter of adjusting focus a bit—on both sides. He promised to be the essence of patience.

It was a promise that was almost immediately put to the test.

"They're the laziest bunch I've ever seen.” The lead of the advance team, Darrel Franks, shook his head and smiled. “They seem to do just enough to get by."

"Maybe,” Rhys suggested, “they're just living life at a slower pace than you're used to."

He sat in the “conference room” of the A-team's hab-module, his hands folded meekly in his lap. He'd been in conference with Darrel and head geologist Ivan Terezov for less than ten minutes and he already had to work hard not to worry his sporran.

Darrel shrugged. “Maybe, but we've been here for three weeks and the most activity we've seen is on Market Day. Folks show up from other villages and cram into the town hall and the swapping gets underway. Then you see some real action."

"Anything telling about the trading customs?"

"Telling?” repeated Darrel. “Telling how?” He exchanged glances with Ivan.

The two men could not have been more different. Where Darrel was broad, muscular, and solid, Ivan presented the impression that his long, angular body might blow over in a stiff breeze. Where Darrel's hair was cropped close to his square head, Ivan's sable mane fell into his eyes and curled around his collar. Darrel was all business; Ivan looked as if he were living simultaneously in another dimension. Darrel liked to make sure his operation was “shipshape"; Ivan liked rocks. Not surprising in a geologist.

"How do they deal with each other? Does it seem amicable, confrontational, competitive?"

"Everything's pretty friendly. They point, they haggle, they smile a lot, they trade their stuff, and when it's all over, they bow.” He demonstrated, pulling his fist to his heart and dipping his head.

"They're quite generous.” Ivan reached into the collar of his shirt and pulled out a chain with an amulet of the fool's tungsten crystals dangling from it. “One of them gave me this just because I admired it."

"They are generous,” said Darrel, smiling, “which is why I have hopes that we'll strike a stellar deal for the mining rights. They don't use much of the metal, though they've a fondness for the crystals. And they don't actually mine it. What they do use they've picked up from river run-off and rock fall."

"But they do use the metal,” Rhys objected mildly.

"For cook pots,” said Darrel. “They make household utensils, statues—that sort of thing. Which wrecks their smelters in pretty short order. I'm sure you've noticed."

"Statues?” Rhys seized on the word. “Religious icons?"

Darrel's expression was wary. “Maybe."

"The laws of the Collective are clear about that. If for example, roesel is the substance of which religious items are made—"

"Yes, professor. I know—sub-section 5A: the ‘Santa’ Clause—we're legally bound to respect native religious beliefs and customs."

Darrel's sarcastic reference to the Protection of Religious Traditions clause in the Collective charter made Rhys cringe. He was certain a glance in a mirror would show a marked increase in the redness of his hair.

"We tried to outline the PRT clause for them,” said Ivan quickly. “To reassure them. But I don't know how much they understood of it."

Rhys straightened his kilt and stood. “Enough not to accidentally give up things that are dear to them, I hope."

Darrel's face clouded. “Don't take sides, professor."

"Take sides?"

Darrel rose. “I did a little research into your history with Tanaka, Dr. Llewellyn. Your reputation isn't what Ms. Price advertised it to be. You're not a company man."

"No, I'm an independent consultant."

"I meant that even when you were on Tanaka's payroll you didn't always put the company's interests first."

Just short of grinding his teeth, Rhys forced his jaw to relax. “I've done good work for Tanaka. And I've done it without sacrificing the cultures from which we've acquired resources. The company once valued that. I intend to do good work for Tanaka here on Fourier's World—again, without sacrificing the natives’ interests."

"The company is changing,” said Darrel, “Don't—"

Ivan Terezov came abruptly to his feet. “Don't take Darrel too seriously, professor. He enjoys challenges so much he'll create one out of thin air. I doubt,” he continued, ignoring his associate's glower, “that the natives’ interests are really in conflict with ours."

Darrel subsided. “Of course not,” he said, and reseated himself.

"The first thing we need to do,” Rhys said, “is establish better communications with the natives than afforded by sign language and pointing. I imagine Yoshi will be ready to help out with that. I'd best go see what she's got for us."

"May I tag along, professor?” asked Ivan.

Rhys had no objection to that, though he rather suspected the gangly scientist was intended as a nanny ... or a spy.

The Arkuit, as they called themselves, spoke a language that had no articles and no explicit tenses—those were implied. It also had several possessive cases. A noun could be modified by whether it belonged to “me,” to “you,” or to “us."

There were no explicit gender pronouns either—the word for “man” (zhenshin) was the same as the word for “woman", the difference was in inflection. The emphasis was subtly on the first syllable the subject was a woman, and on the second if it was a man. You literally said, “Man does this” or “Woman does that.” The only pronoun was a neuter term—zhin—that corresponded to the human word one.

The Lingua Franca translator digested this easily, as did Yoshi. By the end of her village tour, she was conversing with Rasimet without half-listening to the murmur of the LF in her ear.

Rasimet was impressed, but showed puzzlement at the changes to Yoshi's voice whenever the LF kicked in and pronounced words for her. The computerized voice was meant to mimic the user's as perfectly as possible, but it had a mechanical quality that several times sent Rasimet into the Arkuit equivalent of a fit of giggles.

Yoshi asked Rasimet about the products of the smelter and was shown cook pots, spoons, household utensils, fittings for carts, and the metal bits and buckles the Arkuit used in the harnesses of their draft animals. None of the items were particularly artistic, but they were serviceable. Artistry, Yoshi found, was reserved for statues, ornaments, and jewelry. These were beautifully rendered in softer metals and the stunning geifa crystals.

In a shop two doors down from the smelter, Rasimet showed Yoshi a selection of lovely jewels, pointing out the different colors of crystal and communicating the relative value of the various shades.

"Dark ones are best,” Rasimet said in Arkuit. “Pale ones are lesser. I like golden ones."

To illustrate, she pulled back the sleeve of her tunic and revealed several bangles with different shades of geifa crystals. The stones in her bracelets ranged from saffron to palest yellow, but it was the bangle composed entirely of buttery golden stones with fiery orange hearts that captured Yoshi's gaze. She gave an involuntary exclamation of awe and touched a finger to the stones.

"Oh, they're lovely!” she said in Standard, then repeated in Arkuit. “Sympa—beautiful! That one most of all."

"You like?” asked Rasimet, her eyes widening.

"Yes. Much."

Rasimet glanced down at the bracelets, then slid the one Yoshi had touched from her wrist and held it out to her. “I am satisfied."

Yoshi shook her head and held out her hand to halt the other woman. “I couldn't ... it is dear to you."

"It is our way,” said Rasimet. “Our ‘culture.'” She said the word in Standard with obvious pride.

Yoshi smiled, thanked her, and accepted the gift, slipping it onto her own wrist.

"Rasimet,” she said tentatively as the two made their way to a bakeshop so fragrant it made Yoshi's mouth water. “Do you, um, understand what stranger-people (the word was hom, but with an upward inflection) want from Arkuit?"

Rasimet reflected on the question so long Yoshi was afraid she hadn't made her meaning clear. Finally the Arkuit woman said, “Yes. You want roesel and geifa. From Sleeping Isvyerg. We do not understand how."

The LF hiccupped. “Sleeping Isvyerg?” repeated Yoshi.

Rasimet stopped in the middle of the street and pointed up at the mountains that dominated the eastern skyline. “Sleeping Isvyerg,” she said again. “Gorosh."

The word for mountain. “Mountain named Isvyerg?"

Rasimet tilted her head down to the right in the affirmative.

"What means ‘Isvyerg?'” Yoshi asked.

"Emmm...” Rasimet considered that, ultimately coming up with another Arkuit word that the LF tripped over. She pointed across the street to where a large, shaggy draft animal was tethered, harnessed to one of the ubiquitous native carts. It reminded Yoshi of a yak. “Isvyerg."

Seeing Yoshi's confusion, Rasimet laughed. “Bigger,” she said, spreading her arms wide. “Big-bigger."

Sleeping Big Yak? Yoshi looked back to the peaks with their caps of blue-white snow. They did look rather like a sleeping yak, she supposed.

Rasimet led her into the bakery where the shopkeeper haggled with a customer over some goods laid out on the counter—three round, golden loaves of bread and a knife. It was not a native knife, but an old chef's knife of human manufacture with a blade that had seen much honing.

The Arkuit men looked up as the two women entered the shop. Once their gazes fell on Yoshi, the barter objects were forgotten.

As she moved by the counter toward the shelves of baked goods flanking it, Yoshi gave the knife a closer look. On the blade just above the handle was embossed a symbol that she recognized.

She started to ask Rasimet where it might have come from, but the other woman was already introducing her to the baker.

"Woman is Yoshi,” she told the man, whose glossy coat was a shade of gold not unlike his bread. To Yoshi she said, “This man is Baker Burgat. And,” she added, turning her smile on the other fellow, “this man is Metalworker Oreth."

Yoshi greeted both men in their language, gratified by their pleased surprise.

Rasimet turned her attention to baked goods then and had a series of words with Burgat that both Yoshi and the LF had trouble tracking. At the end of the dialogue, Burgat held up his hands in a “wait-wait” gesture, then disappeared into the back room. He reappeared with two lovely fat buns with shiny crusts. These he held out to Rasimet and Yoshi.

"For you,” he said. “I am satisfied. Tell other stranger-people of Baker Burgat's shop."

Accepting the fragrant and still warm bun, Yoshi promised to spread the word among the members of the advance team.

As the two women stepped out into the street, Rasimet chuckled softly. “My thanks."

"Why?"

"If you are not with me, Baker Burgat does not give bread. I swap for it.” She raised her head then, her eyes fixed on something up the way. “Ah! Your man-friend,” she said brightly.

Yoshi looked up to see Rhys striding down the avenue toward them, his hair bright in the afternoon sun, his legs tanned and sturdy below the hem of his tartan. The lanky geologist—what was his name: Igor or Ivan?—was with him, but Yoshi barely noticed.

Only when Rasimet laughed softly and nudged her did Yoshi realize she was blushing.

"You've outdone yourself, Yoshi,” Rhys told his assistant, once Rasimet had returned to the rhok jab. Palmpad in hand, he paged through the raw list of terms she'd collected in the LF database. “Considering that you've been on the job for mere hours, you've expanded the lingua-base immensely."

"The professor is right, Ms. Umeki,” said Ivan, affording her a brilliant smile. “I'm in awe.” He glanced to one side and cleared his throat. “May I call you Yoshi?"

She blinked at him. “Certainly, professor."

"Ivan."

Yoshi smiled. “Ivan."

Rhys watched the brief exchange with a peculiar combination of amusement and unease. Yoshi was inarguably an attractive young woman—something Rhys had grown increasingly aware of over the years—but she had been even-handed in her polite rejection of the advances of the various men who had attempted to court her. Rhys found himself wondering what he would do if she were to respond to Ivan's obvious interest.

He shook himself and asked, “What do we know?"

Yoshi launched. “They call themselves Arkuit. The village is low-tech, the economy is barter-based—as the advance team indicated,” she added with a nod at the still-smiling Ivan. “All the time I was in town I didn't see anything that looked like money, but trade was going on everywhere. In fact, someone brought an obviously ancient knife into the bakery.” She turned her gaze up to Ivan. “I'd swear it was a Wusthof."

Ivan grinned. “That belonged to our camp chef, Gunter. It was a gift, I guess you could say, to the metallurgist. Gunter has a collection of antique cutlery he likes to show off."

"Speaking of gifts—look.” Yoshi raised her wrist, making her new bangle sparkle.

Rhys studied the bracelet. “Lovely. Where'd you get it?"

"Rasimet. I admired it and she just gave it to me."

Ivan nodded. “That's part of their culture, apparently. If someone admires something you possess, you offer it as a gift. Rather a lovely idea. We've had to learn to be careful not to react too strongly to things they show us and to take note when one of them expresses a desire for something of ours."

"Oh.” Yoshi turned her dark gaze to Ivan, who seemed to quiver. “I hope I didn't insult Rasimet by trying to refuse her gift—or by not noticing that she wanted something from me."

"Oh, you can't miss it when one of them wants something. It starts with pointing and smiling and nodding and if that doesn't do the trick, they'll touch it or ask to hold it."

Yoshi glanced at Rhys, gripping her Lingua Franca protectively. “Some of them have seemed very excited by the LF, Rhys. If they ... well, do I have to give it to them?"

That was a good question. The LF was too vital a piece of equipment to fall victim to the “Santa Clause.” And it would serve little useful purpose among the Arkuit.

Those concerns barely registered. Rhys Llewellyn was entirely focused on the fact that Yoshi had called him “Rhys” without having to be prompted.

For safety's sake, they downloaded Yoshi's lingua-base and field notes to a second LF unit and backed it up on the Ceilidh's computer for good measure. Yoshi explained to Rasimet what the LF was and how it served their mission.

"It would be difficult,” she said tentatively, “to work without it. If someone liked it..."

Rasimet blinked her extraordinary eyes slowly, then said, “You may declare Right of Substitution."

Yoshi could hear the capital letters in that phrase. “Right of Substitution?"

"Sometimes person desires what you cannot give. It is not yours or it is something necessary to you. You offer object of same value.” She shrugged. “It is our way. We are generous people."

Rhys peered up the steep slope past Darrel Franks's broad back to the spot the Tanaka A-team was tentatively planning to drill their first bore. Nature had provided an entrée through a cavern that already burrowed deep into the mountain's western flank. As geography would have it, the cave opened out onto a wide, flat ledge.

"Even at an 80-20 split on the ore we'll extract,” Darrel said, continuing the argument they'd been having since they left camp, “the Arkuit will get times more than they're using now."

"They might use more if their smelting technology was more robust,” observed Rhys, “and you could help them with that."

"Isn't the Collective likely to take a dim view of us trading high-tech with these guys?” Darrel had reached the broad ledge at the cave mouth and turned back to face Rhys, who scrambled up after him.

"High-tech? You consider a more durable smelting material high-tech?"

"The point is it's higher than their tech,” said Darrel. “And as you note, if their smelters are improved, their use of the metal would increase. That's hardly to our advantage."

"But it might be to theirs. You're talking about intentionally keeping these people in the industrial dark ages so you can reap a profit."

"I'm talking about putting Tanaka's interests first, professor. We're not harming the Arkuit, we're just not accelerating their progress."

Darrel ended the discussion by turning to lead the way into a high, gaping slash in the mountainside. Members of their geological team passed in and out of the opening, pursuing their duties. Several videographers recorded their efforts.

Grinding his teeth in earnest now, Rhys swung around to help Yoshi up onto the little plateau, using the maneuver to drag his temper under control before he turned his attention back to Darrel Franks. “And what if the Arkuit improve their technology on their own, through trade and imitation? Then what? You have to plan ahead, Mr. Franks, and make allowances for what they might need ten years from now."

"No, I don't. That's not my job, prof."

"No, it's mine,” growled Rhys, “and don't call me ‘prof.’”

"Sorry, professor,” Darrel said, but his lips twitched. “Can you honestly tell me you see a growing need for the ore? That this is not just wishful thinking on your part? These people have probably been living here for millennia. They've barely brushed the surface of what's here."

"Actually,” interjected Yoshi, “they haven't been here that long. They couldn't have been, or they would have made a bigger impact on the environment. Judging from Rasimet's accounts and the village records, I'd say they moved here some time in the last century."

"There, you see,” said Rhys. “So maybe they've not had a chance to delve all that far into the caves."

Darrel paused in what was essentially a huge anteroom. Under the lights set up by the geology team, the veins of ore gleamed dully, eclipsed by the glitter of the crystals.

"Tell me, Professor Llewellyn, did you find the climb up here difficult?"

"What? No."

"This is the vent closest to the village. Do you notice anything telling about it?” He made a gesture that took in the entire chamber.

Rhys pivoted slowly, his eyes taking in the grandeur of the place. The steeply canted walls seemed to go on forever into the heart of the mountain, sparkling in the false light of the lamps. The ceiling was a distant wedge of shadow, the floor was solid rock with a fine carpet of silt.

Rhys took a deep breath of the cool cavern air. It smelled of damp earth and age. This cavern might have gone uncounted eons without the touch of man...

"Oh,” said Yoshi.

"Oh, what?” Rick, bringing up the rear with his holocam, stopped to look at her.

Darrel said, “This cave is a half-hour walk from the village, and yet no native of that village has ever excavated here. These walls are unmarked. What signs of exploration we have found end right about where you're standing, Rick. The Arkuit seem to have no interest in this cave or in any others."

"Perhaps it's sacred to them,” Rhys suggested. “In which case your mining it..."

Ivan cleared his throat. “They've shown no interest in our interest either, professor. I mean, maybe they're just afraid to say anything or maybe what we've done hasn't broken any taboos ... yet."

"Well, there's only one way to know that,” said Rhys, “and that's to ask. Which I intend to do."

"Of course you do,” murmured Darrel. “Anything to keep Tanaka from getting these resources."

"That's not what I'm about at all,” Rhys objected. “I merely don't want to see a future in which if an Arkuit uses these resources, he or she is considered a criminal."

"That would never happen!” Ivan exclaimed. “Tanaka has never unfairly—"

"'Never’ is a very dangerous word, Ivan,” Rhys observed. “And as Darrel has noted, Tanaka is changing.” He shook his head in surrender and glanced at Darrel. “Very well. What do you intend to offer them?"

"We intend to set aside sixty percent of all crystals for their use. Although I'd write in a clause that allows that to be renegotiated if our need for the crystals increases."

"Need?” echoed Rick.

"I'm sure,” said Ivan, “that we can also work for a deal that will take the natives’ projected needs into account. And...” He glanced at his associate. “...if this place is sacred, then ... well, we're obligated to be sensitive to that."

Darrel shook his head and led them further into the mountain.

"Have you ever gone up to mountain hall?” Yoshi asked Rasimet that evening as they enjoyed a ceremonial meal in the great stone hall at the head of the village.

The place was lit with torches and lamps that burned for hours with the sap from a local conifer. Family groups sat about low tables of odd shapes and sizes chattering and eating.

Rasimet glanced up from her plate, a piece of fish speared on the end of her eating stick. “Gorosh jab?” she repeated.

Yoshi didn't know the Arkuit word for “cave” and the LF was suddenly no help at all. It offered a variety of suggestions—words for cup, house, hole. She settled on the last of these and used her hands to say “Big, big hole in side of mountain."

"No. What is it?"

"Place with much roesel and geifa. More than in stream."

"Oh, you mean where stranger-men work."

"Yes. Have you been?"

"No. Though I think maybe Metalworker Oreth has."

Yoshi tried to read her expression for awe or concern. “Why is that? Is Sleeping Isvyerg sacred? Does it have special spirit?"

Rasimet gave her the most extraordinary look and blinked once, slowly. “All places have special spirit,” she said solemnly. “Same where you come from?"

"Yes. We care about this—if you don't want us to dig in sacred places..."

Rasimet glanced around and, espying her two colleagues, Prosim and Parsim, she stood. “Pardon, I must speak to my fellows."

The Arkuit woman vacated her place at the table and Yoshi found herself face to face with Rhys, who'd been seated on Rasimet's opposite side.

"Well, that got a response,” Rhys said quietly, his eyes going to where Rasimet conferred with her fellow council members.

"Yes, but which part of it?"

Early the next day, with the aid of their LF units and Yoshi's much-expanded lingua-base (and Yoshi herself), Tanaka's A-team leaders sat down and presented to the leaders of the Arkuit what it was they wanted.

Darrel Franks had asked to make the presentation himself and Rhys acquiesced until it became clear from the way he was posing the situation that he was angling for the Arkuit to simply give the humans the “rock of little value,” as was their way. At that point he stepped in and made it clear that they intended to barter for the substance called roesel.

"Clearly it is of value to us,” Rhys said mildly, “or we wouldn't want it."

The village elders agreed that this was so.

Ivan, who had been warned about Rasimet's reaction to the question of sacredness, sketched out the impact of the mining operation on the mountain and on the village below it. The humans were planning, he told them, to set up a base camp some distance to the north on the mountain itself so that they would have little direct effect on town life.

Then Darrel asked questions about what the Arkuit might want in return for the rights to mine Sleeping Isvyerg.

Rhys was secretly concerned that the Arkuit would ask for technology that Tanaka could not, for constitutional reasons, give away. A superior chef's knife was one thing—a food replicator or a power generator was something else again.

The Arkuit, however, made no such requests. Instead, with a glance at her peers, Rasimet said, “We may not barter until Sleeping Isvyerg is satisfied."

Rhys glanced at Darrel and found the other man glowering at him. “Satisfied in what way?” Rhys asked.

"Isvyerg wishes to see how roesel will be taken from one's body and how it will be used."

Ivan blinked. “Well, I can explain to you in more detail—"

"No,” Rasimet said in Standard. “Isvyerg must see how this will be done and know if it will harm her. Can you show mountain what her future holds?"

This was a new wrinkle. “How may we do this?” Rhys asked.

Rasimet gave the Arkuit version of a shrug and returned to her own native language. “Perhaps you can build machines you have shown us—” She gestured at the holo-display Ivan had used during his presentation to show the laser bore and refiner module Tanaka wished to install. “—and show mountain spirit how they will work. This way Isvyerg will know one will not be harmed."

"If you cannot do this,” said Prosim, “I fear we have no right to let you wake Sleeping Isvyerg."

Now it was the humans’ turn to withdraw and consult. Rhys called for a half-hour break during which he, Darrel, and Ivan conferred in hushed but intense voices on the verandah at the rear of the meeting hall.

Wanting no part of that debate, Yoshi took a walk down the main avenue, lost in thought. The words Rasimet had used to describe the mountain rang ominously in her head. The mountain was personified, anthropomorphized—more than that, she had chosen the human female pronoun to describe the mountain spirit. It wasn't likely that “she” would approve of her “body” being penetrated by an alien laser. There was an inherent sexual imagery to that and Yoshi was afraid the Arkuit might see it as violation.

Passing by the metallurgist's shop, she was jarred out of her reverie by the sound of childish voices raised in discord. She skirted the building and peered into the clearing behind it. Amid the ruins of abandoned smelters, two Arkuit children were engaged in a spirited debate while several of their cohorts picked through piles of tailings.

Lingering in the shadow of the shop buildings, Yoshi began to catch isolated words. Puzzling words. Reluctantly (it galled her to have to use it), she flipped on her LF unit and was hit with a full-tilt disagreement.

"No,” a young gray and black stippled girl was insisting. “It is mine. I found it there.” She pointed to the maw of a ruined smelter and raised her hand. In it was what appeared to be the metal effigy of an animal.

It took Yoshi a moment to realize that while the little statuette was intact, one of the legs was misshapen.

"But Wepuin, see,” argued the other child, a ginger-brindled boy—"Isvyerg has bad leg. You don't want."

Isvyerg? Yoshi squinted at the figurine. It could be the image of one of the yaks, she supposed.

"Yes, I do. It is mine."

The boy made an exasperated sound that was perfectly understandable in any language. “Not so, it is mine. Isn't it, Heawmet?” He turned and appealed to a third youngster who crouched on the ground nearby sifting through some slag.

Heawmet blinked at the other two and shrugged. “I didn't see who found it,” she said. “But Wepuin is closest to smelter and I hear one sing out."

"Get that, Gorafi?” asked Wepuin with obvious smugness. “My find. Finding is owning."

That had the sound of an aphorism.

"If you won't give it to me,” said Gorafi archly. “I will go home and not seek treasure with you any more.” He turned to make good on his word.

Her surprise carried Yoshi backward a step. She trod on a piece of loose matrix and let out a tiny yip. The three children looked up at her, startled.

Wepuin swiftly shoved the half-molten icon into her shoulder bag. “Greetings, stranger-woman,” she said and smiled. “Can we be helpful?"

"No, I ... I was just, um, wondering how these broken smelters and kilns might be fixed."

Three heads swiveled toward the nearest such object.

"Plains Arkuit will make new ones,” observed Gorafi.

Yoshi smiled. “You're right. New is better, yes?"

The three nodded, eyeing her in a way that eloquently stated their opinion of this so-called “alien intelligence."

She waved goodbye to them and retreated swiftly toward the meeting hall. She checked her chron—she was late. She moved faster.

"You're late,” Rhys said.

At the expression of utter surprise on his face, a giggle rose in Yoshi's throat. She glanced to where Darrel Franks was gesturing at them from the door of the meeting hall. Ivan stood next to him. He flashed Yoshi a smile. The giggle died.

"Sir,” she said to Rhys, “can we talk before we go back in?"

Darrel came out onto the verandah. “What's to talk about? We need to move on to the next step."

"The next step?” Yoshi asked.

Ivan and Darrel exchanged glances, then Ivan said, “I recommended we set up a sort of proto-operation—proof of concept for the deity, I guess—a single bore with a recovery system and refinery module..."

Yoshi turned to Rhys. “Sir, I'd advise caution. I had a strange experience in the village just now."

"'Rhys,'” prompted Rhys. “Go on."

She went into a swift recitation of her encounter with the children behind the metallurgist's. When she had finished, Darrel shrugged and Ivan spread his hands bemusedly.

"I don't get it. So some kids fight over a toy. What does that have to do with our negotiations?"

"Maybe nothing,” Yoshi said, “but doesn't it seem contradictory to you, Dr. Terezov?"

"'Ivan,'” prompted Ivan. “How so?"

"The native children squabbling over a ‘treasure?'” said Rhys thoughtfully. “It suggests that sharing isn't an ingrained behavior, or at least not a universal one."

"You're not suggesting it should affect the negotiations, are you?” Darrel asked.

"Not at all. Just ... don't be hasty."

"We've been cultivating this relationship for weeks, Dr. Llewellyn. I don't think we're being ‘hasty’ in trying to move forward to the next step, which apparently is reassuring their mountain goddess that we're not going to harm her. Fine—we need to set up a prototypical operation for our own purposes anyway."

"Perhaps while you're negotiating, we can be investigating the Arkuit culture more thoroughly,” Rhys suggested. “We've spent most of our time dealing with the language barrier. I think maybe we need to move beyond that."

Darrel shook his head. “Zarber warned me about you, doctor. He said if we pressed forward too quickly you'd start looking for reasons to delay. He was right. Makes me wonder if he isn't the better man for the job now that we've dealt with the language barrier."

Yoshi felt her face going hot. Someone had apparently briefed Darrel Franks on Rhys's contentious relationship with the other negotiator.

Rhys's cheeks blushed deep red before he said, “I'm only suggesting a few days to investigate the implications of Yoshi's observations."

"You can investigate all you like, professor. I intend to take steps to appease Sleeping Isvyerg."

Rhys had no choice but to aid Darrel Franks in the pursuit of appeasement. In the face of Arkuit reservations, the humans expressed concern about what the mountain spirit thought; Darrel even went so far as to lead the ewis homs to the cave so as to explain to the deity in their presence how the bore would be laser-drilled and the cutting machinery set up.

The Arkuit leaders grew even more skeptical. They were concerned that invading their mountain's body for the sake of something as nearly worthless as roesel (literally, “pot metal") would anger Sleeping Isvyerg and trigger a fiery response from her inactive volcano.

Ivan spoke to the mountain. He reassured Isvyerg that if she didn't like the mining setup, it would be dismantled and removed. This seemed to impress the village elders; they withdrew for a hasty conference, then allowed the demo to proceed.

Darrel was oddly philosophical. “I guess it's good news/bad news,” he said the day the proto-bore was complete. “Their mountain spirit might screw the deal, but they really don't get how valuable this stuff could be. If Isvyerg smiles on us, the Arkuit won't care what we do with the ore as long as they get some of the gems."

That attitude decided Rhys. He refused to negotiate a contract that allotted all or most of the ore to Tanaka and only sixty percent of the gems to the Arkuit.

Vladimir Zarber arrived within a day to take over the talks. Rhys and his companions were “excused” from the negotiations, which meant that Rhys's only insight into the ongoing talks was through Ivan Terezov, who found it difficult to withhold information from Yoshi.

As a salve for her guilty conscience, Rhys involved Yoshi in furthering their understanding of Arkuit culture. To that end he took her and Rick into the village the day the proto-mine went into operation—as much to keep her mind off of that as to collect some evidence that the Arkuit needed fool's tungsten.

"I'm hoping,” Rhys told Danetta during a hurried strategy call, “we can at least prove a broad enough usage of the roesel to be able to thwart any idea of cutting the Arkuit out of their share. That's hard when they don't seem to care much about it themselves. I'm not sure how hopeful I am. It's hard to see how we can argue that the ore might play a key role in their economy when it's so bloody hard for them to work. In fact, it seems their greatest export is their fine cloth. I've come to understand it's highly prized by their neighbors."

"Do what you can,” she'd said.

They split up—Yoshi going to the clothmaker's, while Rhys and Rick visited the jeweler's shop. Rick took a holographic record while Rhys followed the processes of the craftsmen.

Apprentices brought baskets of raw rock up from the river then sorted through it all, dividing the crystals into piles according to size and color. The smaller colored gems were given directly to the jeweler, while the larger, paler ones were scooped into baskets and stacked to one side.

Rhys turned his attention to the artisan's attempts to remove individual crystals from the matrix. He did it using a metal implement with a chisel-shaped end.

"Is that made of roesel?” Rhys asked.

The Arkuit man nodded. “Oreth fashioned it,” he said, “in belly of Isvyerg where flames slumber."

Rhys recalled Rasimet's assertion that the metallurgist had gone into the mountain caves. “Oreth forged it inside the mountain?"

"Yes. Very dangerous. Very difficult. I am satisfied to have it. There are few like it and it cost many fine gems."

"Would it be good,” Rhys asked, “to have more tools made of roesel?"

"For me, yes,” said the jeweler smiling. “For Oreth, perhaps not. If there are more, they will not be so dear."

Rhys's pulse leapt. Turning to make sure Rick had recorded the interaction—which he had—Rhys's attention was arrested by activity around the baskets of the palest crystals. A couple of young Arkuit had just arrived to claim them. On the off hope that these might be put to some use he could catalogue, Rhys and Rick followed them to the shop of Metalworker Oreth.

Within the metallurgist's high-ceilinged workshop, Rhys and Rick watched Oreth's apprentices feed first the over-sized crystals then raw fool's tungsten into one of five tumbling devices arranged around a large central table. Each was kept moving by an apprentice working a set of wooden foot pedals.

"Now, what's that in aid of?” Rhys wondered, raising his voice over the grinding of machinery.

"Over there.” Rick nodded toward a tumbler at the far side of the table. It had been stopped and was now being tipped on end. Holo-cam in hand, he moved toward the spot, drawing Rhys after him.

They reached the tumbler as a couple of muscular young Arkuit emptied the contents of the primitive machine onto the table. Those contents consisted of the large geifa crystals and fine pebbles of fool's tungsten.

Rhys stared at them. The gems had cut the ore into neat little chunks much better for—he glanced at the smelters sitting out in the yard behind the shop—the next step.

"Cut stone,” murmured Rick from right beside him. “That's what Yosh said geifa means. It's not what they are; it's what they do."

Rhys moved to where the metallurgist stood inspecting a vessel he had just pulled from a clay mold.

"You have fine shop,” Rhys said in Arkuit only slightly less perfect than Yoshi's. “You use geifa to cut roesel?"

Oreth eyed him speculatively. “This is so."

"Very clever. Do you use it for much else?"

In answer the Arkuit reached into a bucket next to his workbench and lifted out a handful of fine, glittering sand. “Bagalsh,” he said, and applied the handful to the outside of the vessel, rubbing with a circular motion. The metal, which had had a matte finish, began to acquire a soft shine.

"Buffing,” Rhys murmured to Rick. “They use the gems to buff the metal.” He looked back up at the metallurgist. “It would be of great benefit if you had more geifa and roesel?"

"Of course,” said the metallurgist, whose face was not so alien that Rhys couldn't tell how dense he thought the question.

Rhys thanked Oreth for his attention, then paused to point to the tumblers. “Wonderful machines. Made of roesel?"

The craftsman looked at the nearest tumbler for a moment, then shrugged. “I don't know. I do not make them. Deep Valley Arkuit make them."

Rhys sighed. He'd hoped the tumblers themselves might be made of the precious metal or at least clad in it. Disappointed, he took Rick and went to look for Yoshi.

So far this afternoon Yoshi had kept her mind off the mountain by watching the weavers ply their great looms, turning out yard after yard of vividly colored cloth. She'd been pleased to find that the powder of fool's tungsten was a key ingredient in achieving the amazing shades that graced so many Arkuit bodies.

Having happily gleaned that information, she was determined to follow the cloth to the next step, but nowhere in town did there seem to be a seamstress’ shop. There was only the clothier's. She decided to interview that worthy to ask where he got his finished goods.

She was just entering the shop when an Arkuit woman—a stranger—passed her on her way out, carrying a cape of verdant green trimmed with the iridescent down of a local bird. It was beautiful and drew an involuntary gasp from the human.

The Arkuit woman reacted with a widening of her eyes and clutched the cape to her chest.

Some perverse demon made Yoshi exclaim effusively, “Oh, most beautiful cape! How I wish I had such!” These were, according to Rasimet, the “magic words"—the Arkuit equivalent of “pretty please with cherries on top.” Every native to whom Yoshi had been introduced had responded to less direct verbiage by smilingly handing over whatever had drawn her attention.

The woman straightened, her facial hair standing out from her cheeks and muzzle and her crown of dark sagittal hair rippling—the Arkuit equivalent of a scowl. She started to open her mouth, but the storekeeper, whom Yoshi could just see past the woman's shoulder, uttered a rasping cough.

The woman glanced at him, her eyes narrowing.

"How pleasing to have you admire my wares,” he said, bowing slightly.

Yoshi took the next step. She reached out and brushed her fingers along the fringe of gleaming feathers. “Lovely!"

The woman made a noise that reminded Yoshi of her aunt Matsu's cat, Warble, hocking up a furball, and thrust the cape into her hands.

"I am satisfied,” she said gruffly, threw the storekeeper a last look, and slipped past Yoshi into the street.

Yoshi raised her eyes to the storekeeper who smiled broadly. Then she crossed to his work counter and deposited the cape there.

"Here,” Yoshi said, “When woman comes back in, please return this. I can't take it."

"But it is our way."

"It is our way to return what is precious to another.” She hesitated. “Did you make cape?"

He exhaled a chuff of air. A laugh? “No. Neighbor make in trade for cloth, jewelry, and such."

Yoshi thanked him and scooted out the door and down the street. What had possessed her to try that little bit of play-acting? She knew what it was—the same thing that had caused the Arkuit woman to clutch her cape: instinct. The implications made her dizzy.

"What are you saying, Yoshi?” Rhys asked when she'd spilled out her tale of the woman and the cape.

"The behavior of the children earlier bothered me because it hinted that the ‘what's mine is yours’ philosophy was not ingrained. In children, that's not so meaningful perhaps, but in an adult ... The woman in the store instinctively protected her property when I admired it. The storekeeper had to remind her that giving was ‘their way.’ I don't believe it is their way, Rhys. I think they're pretending it is for some reason. They're more sophisticated than they seem."

Rhys turned to gaze down the main avenue of the village toward the great, out-of-place hall—a trade hall, he now knew. He surveyed their surroundings, fitting the new information into the “lay of the land,” seeing how it meshed with everything else they'd observed—the abandoned smelters, the borrowed technologies, the way everything was calculated to be the easiest it could be...

"They use the crystals to cut the ore, but they don't build the machines that do the cutting."

Yoshi uttered a soft sound. “They don't make the looms either. Another village makes them and when they break, someone from that village comes over to fix them. And they don't make their own clothes. I think we're looking at a more complex trading model than any of us suspected."

Rhys gave a mirthless chuckle. “Asleep at the switch. I was so fixed on proving that they need the crystals and ore..."

"Do they?"

"Aye, they use the two in tandem. In fact, the villagers are pretty clear that more roesel would be beneficial, yet their leaders practically yawn when the subject comes up."

He told Yoshi about the jeweler with his clever cutting tool forged in the belly of the sleeping mountain. As the words left his mouth, his eyes met hers and he knew that they were having the same thought: going into the body of a sleeping deity to “steal fire” was an awfully gutsy behavior for a supposedly goddess-fearing gentleman. Yet, at least one of the village elders knew about the behavior and thought nothing of it.

"Isvyerg,” said Yoshi. “When I asked what Isvyerg meant, Rasimet pointed at a yak."

"A what?” asked Rick.

"Draft animal.” She pointed to one of the shaggy creatures tethered before the bakeshop. “When the whole sacredness issue came up, I just assumed ... well, some cultures worship animals. But I don't think this is one of them. The children were fighting over an effigy of one of the yaks. I just thought of it as an icon or idol, but I think Ivan had it right. He called it a ‘toy.’ And if I'd been paying attention, I would have realized that that's the way the kids were treating it—like a toy."

"I'm willing to bet this whole mountain spirit thing is fabricated,” murmured Rhys. He chuckled and shook his head. “Here I was concentrating so hard on protecting the natives from Tanaka that it never occurred to me I might have to protect Tanaka from the natives."

"C'mon, professor, do we have to?” asked Rick. “Can't we just let Vlad and his ego get hoist by their own petard?"

Rhys eyed him wryly. “Do you even know what a petard is, Roddy?"

"No, but you're not going to let him get hoist by one, are you? You're going to tell him."

Telling Vladimir Zarber that he suspected the Arkuit of some sophisticated form of collusion got pretty much the response Rhys had expected: droll laughter followed by a scathing look delivered down the length of Zarber's monumental nose and accompanied by a pronouncement of incredulity.

"My God, Llewellyn, I must admit I thought you might make some last ditch effort to keep our dealings with the Arkuit from going forward, but this takes the biscuit."

"I assure you, I'm not trying to derail your negotiations—merely keep them from backfiring."

"This is a primitive people, Llewellyn, who have made a primitive request that we play by their rules and respect their culture and religion."

"Yes? And what will you do if they decide your boring into the mountain is an insult to both?"

"Then we'll have to work harder to convince them they're reading the tea leaves wrong. You'll remain here for that effort as necessary, of course."

"Aye. I suppose I will."

Zarber fixed him with a wary gaze. “That was too easy. What are you up to, professor? Trying to send me down a false trail?"

"Trying to keep you from blundering into an ambush."

"My dear doctor, your efforts to dissuade me are sadly lacking in subtlety. I am disappointed."

Rhys felt his face going hot. “You may be more than disappointed if Yoshi's concerns are borne out."

Zarber smiled. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Isn't that the operative aphorism, Dr. Llewellyn?"

"No. I believe it may be ‘pride goeth before a fall.’”

"Indeed."

"Let me remind you of something. The Arkuit were informed of the Collective's respect for native cultures the moment the A-team was able to get the basic tenets into their language."

Zarber frowned. “Yes, of course they were. It's obligatory. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Are you clear on the so-called ‘Santa Clause?’”

"I believe I am."

Rhys shrugged. “Just thought you might want to study up."

"Your concern is commendable, but misplaced."

Rhys turned to let himself out of Zarber's quarters, then paused. Ah, hell, one last shot won't hurt. “You should know that the Arkuit were not the ones to raise the issue of sacred places. Yoshi was. Prior to that, they'd expressed no qualms about us digging around in their mountain."

Zarber hesitated, but only for a moment. “Please, professor. I have work to do."

Rhys knew he should give up. He'd warned Darrel Franks and Ivan Terezov; he'd warned Vlad Zarber; he'd even called Danetta Price-Bekwe and explained the situation to her. She, in turn, informed the Tanaka CEO, who seemed uninterested. She refused to ask Rhys to stick his neck out further. He did anyway.

The day the laser awl began its work on the mountain, Rhys sought an audience with the Arkuit leaders and tried to negotiate directly with them, seeking to find out what rights they wished to hold in perpetuity if their sleeping deity permitted the operation to continue.

The Arkuit seemed pleasantly surprised by this move and responded favorably. They had begun to draft a set of such rights when Zarber somehow got wind of Rhys's activities. He put through a call to Harry Reinhold and Rhys found himself off the payroll.

Stubbornly, he marched up the mountain and met the Tanaka contingent in the shadow of their machinery. “Offer them the rights they've outlined, Vladimir,” he demanded.

"They're too generous, Llewellyn, as you well know. I can't give them all that."

"Your involvement has been terminated, professor,” Darrel reminded him. “You went behind our backs to treat with the Arkuit in secret. Did you think Tanaka Corp would tolerate that?"

"I tried to forestall what I expect will be a nasty surprise."

"Worst case scenario, they decide their god shouldn't be awakened. We'll threaten to dismantle the module and deal with a different village."

"Oh, that's hardly the worst case,” Rhys warned. “But you're right. My work here is officially done. Good luck to you. And don't say we didn't warn you."

Over a month later, with the Ceilidh somewhere between star systems, Danetta Price-Bekwe contacted Rhys to give him an update on the Arkuit mission.

"You're smiling,” he observed as she appeared on the holo-display. “May I infer from that that the situation has resolved itself and our fears were all for naught?"

She laughed, and he realized that she looked more relaxed than he'd seen her in quite some time. “The situation has resolved itself pretty much as your fears predicted."

Rhys glanced at Yoshi who sat beside him on the divan in the ship's commons. “What happened?"

"Well, the engineers started the bore, got the refinery module online, started mining ore, and—"

"And the Arkuit claimed the mountain spirit was offended and needed much appeasement in return for the effrontery?” Rhys guessed.

"No, not exactly. They said the spirit was inclined to accept the mining, but had concerns about whether certain taboos were being broken. In order to make sure they weren't, the Arkuit insisted that their religious leaders be allowed to observe and understand every step of the mining process. And once they understood the process, they said that Isvyerg was satisfied ... with the gift."

"The gift—the entire operation?"

"Uh-huh."

"And all the product?"

"Uh-huh."

"Are they letting Tanaka build more refineries?"

"Isvyerg believes that would be too greedy of her. They're welcome to try other mountains, of course."

"So, the shoe's on the other foot then, I take it—Tanaka's trying to negotiate a percentage."

"The Arkuit don't seem to be at all interested in negotiating. The last time I talked to Mr. Franks, he asked how he could get in touch with you. No doubt you'll be hearing from him. Thought I'd give you a heads-up so you could think about whether you wanted to take the job."

"Do you want me to take the job?"

Her smile widened. “I don't really give a flying hoot. Reinhold's on his own. I resigned last week."

"I see. I'll, em, take it under advisement."

Danetta signed off then, leaving Rhys and Yoshi to stare owlishly at each other.

"Are we going back?” Yoshi asked.

"Why? What could we accomplish, after all?"

"Maybe something..."

It was not Rhys's imagination that she looked a bit guilty. “What's wrong?"

"Well, there's something Rasimet told me about ‘their way’ that I haven't mentioned."

"Do tell."

"She called it the Right of Substitution—and for all I know she may have made it up on the spur of the moment to cover my Lingua Franca—but it allows the giver to substitute an item of equal value to the person ‘requesting’ the gift. Tanaka could simply substitute something of equal value for the laser bore and the refinery module. Of course, they could use whatever criteria they wanted to set that value—the Arkuit would have no way of knowing how accurate it was."

Rhys frowned. “Is that guaranteed to work?"

"Well, no, but if the Arkuit leaders are going to continue to ply their—ah—business strategy with off-world partners, they can't exactly grin and say ‘kidding!’”

"Still,” said Rhys reflectively, “I'd hate to have Vladimir get his hopes up, only to have them dashed if the Arkuit chose not to honor ‘their way.’”

She grinned at him. “You're not going to tell them, are you?"

Rhys gave her a wide-eyed look. “Divulge trade secrets? Really, Yoshi, I'm surprised you'd even suggest it."

"Sorry, sir,” she murmured, her smile widening. “I don't know what I was thinking."

Copyright © 2010 Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

It started eighty years ago as Astounding Stories of Super Science, back in 1930. When I first came across the magazine, in the late 1940s, it was titled Astounding Science Fiction.

And it really was astounding. Under the editorial genius of John W. Campbell Jr., Astounding was the bellwether in what is generally regarded as science fiction's Golden Age. Month after month I read the works of Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, Theodore Sturgeon, Clifford Simak, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, and so many others ... it's breathtaking just to think about it, even now, after more than half a century.

I dearly wanted to write for Campbell. Little did I realize that one day I would succeed him as editor of “his” magazine.

The first stories I submitted to Analog were rejected, but with friendly letters that encouraged me to try again. Actually, I eventually sold those stories to Amazing.

Then I read a novelette in Analog (the magazine's name had changed in 1960) that I felt was technically inaccurate. I wrote to Campbell about it. He sent back a three-page, single-spaced letter that began, “Okay, wise guy!"

Once I got over the shock of that opening line, I realized that Campbell was challenging me to write a story that was better than the one I had panned. Most of his three pages were story ideas. I didn't use any of them, but wrote a short story that carried the idea of computer war-gaming to its ultimate conclusion. Campbell bought that one, “The Next Logical Step.” It was published in Analog's May 1962 issue.

Although I was writing only part-time, I started getting published fairly regularly in Analog and the other science fiction magazines; books, too, both fiction and nonfiction. I started to meet other writers, either at science fiction conventions or at the Milford Science Fiction Writers Conference.

I met Harlan Ellison at one of the Milford Conferences, and we became fast friends even though he lived in California and I in Massachusetts. Harlan was enormously successful, but he had a secret yearning to be published in Analog. He was certain that it would never happen because he was Jewish and Campbell was anti-semitic.

I reminded Harlan that Campbell published Isaac Asimov and many other Jewish writers. “Campbell doesn't buy your work because you don't write science-based Analog-type stories."

Whereupon we hatched a plot. Harlan and I would co-author a story and offer it to Campbell under a nom de plume. When Campbell bought it, we would reveal ourselves as the authors.

The writing of that story, “Brillo,” is a saga that would take too many pages to explain for the purposes of this essay. Suffice to say that once we finished it (and most of the writing was done by Harlan) he liked the result so much he crowed, “Screw Campbell! We'll sell it to Playboy!"

We both had the same literary agent, and we instructed him to send “Brillo” to Playboy. No nom de plume: the byline was Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova. They rejected the story for some arcane reason and our mutual agent immediately sent it to Campbell—with our real names still on it!

Harlan phoned me from his California home, very downcast, certain that once Campbell saw his name on the manuscript he would rip it into little pieces and dance on the shreds. He implored me to phone Campbell and put in a personal pitch for the story. I assured him that a personal pitch would not sway Campbell: if he liked the story he'd buy it, no matter whose name was on it. But Harlan persisted and I gave in.

You have to understand that it was late December in Massachusetts. The office Christmas party at the lab where I worked full-time was about to begin. It was black night outside at four p.m. Snow was falling.

I phoned John Campbell. He was in his office, as usual, despite the impending holiday. Somewhat gruffly, John told me would buy the story. Then he proceeded to explain to me what our story was really all about. Joyously, I phoned Harlan with the good news. His squawk of delight broke eardrums as far away as Fort Churchill, Canada.

Not long after that I was awakened well after midnight by a phone call from Charles Brown, publisher of Locus magazine, who told me Campbell had died of a heart attack.

I was stunned, like everyone else in the science fiction world. Campbell had been a towering figure in the field for thirty-some years. And now, suddenly, he was gone. My first thought, selfishly, was, “There goes Analog.” Without John, how could the magazine survive?

I had another shock coming. Katherine Tarrant, Campbell's long-time assistant, phoned to ask me if I'd like to be considered for Campbell's job.

Being editor of Analog was, in the world of science fiction, like being Pope. Me? I figured I didn't have a prayer of a chance, but what the hell. Sure, I told Kay, put my name on the list.

I was invited to the offices of Condé Nast Publications, Inc., to be interviewed by the corporation's executive vice president. He took me and a couple of the company's executives to a very nice lunch at the Harvard Club. Then I went back home to the Boston area.

A couple of weeks later I was given the news that the job was mine, if I wanted it. Nobody was more surprised than I. Being asked to run Analog was akin to being drafted to run for President of the United States. You're terribly afraid you'll muck it up, but you can't say no.

Filled with trepidation I quit my job in the high-power research lab in Massachusetts where I'd been working for the past dozen years and moved to Manhattan. To my delight, everything went very smoothly. There were a couple of roomfuls of accumulated manuscripts that I had to read; Campbell read every manuscript submitted to the magazine and I thought that was what I should do, too.

I settled down to the job, spending most of my days, nights, and weekends reading manuscripts. Many were from the top writers in the field. Many more, by a factor of a hundred or so, were from unknowns. A lot of them were pretty hopeless, I'm afraid.

But every once in a while I'd pull a manuscript off the slush pile by an unknown named Spider Robinson. Or Orson Scott Card. Or Vonda McIntyre. And the top writers, of course, continued to send their best work to Analog.

My dayswere not without occasional problems, of course. I had a slightly broader view of what the science fiction audience would tolerate than Campbell did. John accepted the publishing taboos of the 1930s without really thinking about it. But it was now 1971 and I thought it was time to move forward.

When I published Joe Haldeman's “Hero” (the first segment of what eventually became The Forever War) some readers objected because the story suggested that human beings not only have sexual relations, but often enjoy it. More complaints came with Frederik Pohl's The Gold at the Starbow's End, for the same reason.

But most of Analog's readers were perfectly willing to accept stories that went beyond the old taboos. Not that we published anything prurient. And I realized that Analog's readers had nowhere else to go. They couldn't find Analog-type stories anywhere else. I could expand the magazine's area of interest and they would go along with it, even learn to expand their own areas of interest. As long as I didn't move too far or too suddenly, almost all the readers were willing to come along with me.

The magazine prospered. Circulation increased. Analog stories won Hugo and Nebula awards. I was given Hugos for Best Editor.

It all went so swimmingly that I finally asked the executive who had hired me why he'd picked me. I knew that many of the top people in the field had been considered for the job, most of them much better known than I was. Why me?

He explained that Condé Nast's management didn't know anything about science fiction. They had acquired Analog when they'd bought out Street & Smith, back in 1960. Condé Nast was (and still is) a major magazine publisher, but all they knew about Analog was that it made a small profit every month, and it was reputed to be the number one magazine in its field. Campbell had run the magazine since they'd acquired it, and he never gave them any problems.

That's what they wanted: somebody to keep the magazine profitable and not make any problems for the management.

But how did this lead to my being hired? The exec—who had since been promoted to president of the company—told me that he knew the magazine published science fiction and science fact, so he sat down to read one piece of each from each of the people on the list Kay Tarrant had prepared for him.

"Ben,” the man told me, “you were the only guy I could understand!"

Score one for my early training as a newspaperman. Clarity is a great asset for a writer.

After seven years at Analog's helm, I decided to retire from editing and become a full-time writer, at last. And I knew exactly who I wanted to be the magazine's next editor: Stanley Schmidt. Stan was one of Analog's most popular contributors, even though—like me—he was only a part-time writer.

Stan's “day job” was teaching physics at Heidelberg College, in Ohio. He also taught a course in writing science fiction, and I made it my business to attend one of his classes. I liked the way he handled the subject. In Stan's class, if you sold a story you'd written, you got an A. No further questions asked. Stan was teaching his students the most important principle of writing: You write to be read, and the only way to be read is to have your work published.

So I retired from Analog in 1978 and Stan took over. He's been at it ever since, and I'm never happier than when he buys a story from me.

I went to writing full-time. For about a week. Bob Guccione was starting a new science-based magazine that would eventually be named Omni. It would publish science fiction and science fact. He wanted me to be on his editorial team. I thanked him and Kathy Keeton, who later became Mrs. Guccione, but explained that I was now a full-time writer. I'd be glad to write for Omni, but I was finished with editing magazines.

I was wrong about that. I spent four years editing Omni, and enjoyed it almost as much as I did editing Analog.

But across my life, Analog has been a lasting influence, a shaping force that has brought me much joy. As a reader, as a contributor, as the magazine's editor for a while, I can't imagine what my life would have been like without Analog.

Here's to another eighty years. At the very least.

Copyright © 2010 Ben Bova

An alien knocked on my door last night at 10 o'clock.

A big green blob with purple eyes, who gave me quite a shock.

He made a small request of me, which should suprise no reader:

"I'm from the planet Zorg,” he said, “Please take me to your leader."

—

I asked him in and served some tea, inquiring why he

Did not just land his saucer there in Washington, D.C.?

He said he'd tried that yesterday, and grumbled that some clown

Came at him in an F-16 and tried to shoot him down.

—

So since he did not wish his missions prematurely ended,

He'd had to find some place to land that was less well defended.

He cruised around until he saw a light was on in my house.

He hoped from here the line was clear for calling up the White House.

—

I tried to call the President, but that effort was cut short,

By continuous recordings thanking me for my support.

The State Department's line was dead, so then I thought I'd try

The local number in the phone book for the F.B.I.

—

Their receptionist said aliens didn't interest them at all,

Unless they were about the bomb an airport or a mall.

For others, try the I.N.S.; I called them up and they

Said somebody would hurry out to my place right away.

—

Soon fourteen guys in body armor busted down my door,

And threw me and my interstellar guest down to the floor.

Their handcuffs would not fit him, so although he was defenseless,

And not the least bit hostile, they took clubs and beat him senseless.

—

They tossed us in their SUV and hauled us off to jail.

Because he was undocumented, we could not post bail.

They spent the night interrogating us inside our cell

In English, and in Spanish, and in Arabic as well.

—

This made him quite unhappy, which perhaps is why next morning,

A fleet of flying saucers hit the jail without warning.

He told me, as he blew the joint, “Here's how the case resolves:

I'll pay another visit once intelligence evolves!"

Why do we take off our hats when entering a building? There's no reason for it; it's just something we do. It's part of our culture. While it probably had meaning at some point in time, that meaning is now lost. But we do it anyway because culture is bigger than we are. In fact, culture is not only bigger than we are, it's bigger than almost anything we can imagine. Culture is not just what we wear, what we eat, or what religion we believe in. Culture is a vast ocean that informs and directs our thoughts, perspectives, and views on how to approach the world and other people in it. According to MIT's Ed Schein, culture is everywhere; it is such a pervasive part of our lives that we are not even aware of it. This gives rise to several questions: What is the value of culture? How is culture transmitted? And, of course, what is culture?

What Is Culture?

There is an oft cited, albeit probably apocryphal, study involving four gorillas.[1] The gorillas are placed in a cage with a ramp at the top of which is a bunch of bananas. As soon as one of the gorillas starts to go after the bananas, the high-pressure hoses are turned on, knocking the gorilla off the ramp and soaking all of them. This happens until no gorilla will go near those bananas. At this point, the hoses are removed and one of the gorillas is replaced by a new gorilla. When the new gorilla tries to get the bananas, the other gorillas all jump on him and drag him back. This continues until that gorilla has learned to not go after the bananas. Eventually, the cage contains four gorillas none of whom have ever been hosed, but none of whom will go near the bananas. Whether or not this story is true, it does accurately capture some fundamental concepts of culture.

At the most superficial level, culture is “the way we do things around here.” However, it is extremely dangerous to assume that's all there is to culture (Schein, 1999). The more significant questions are: Why is that the way we do things? In what way does it benefit us to do things in a particular fashion? In the case of the first set of gorillas, the Taboo of the Bananas meant not getting hosed. However, that's no longer the case for successive generations. For them, passing on the Taboo of the Bananas means that they don't get beaten up. The hoses are gone, and all that remains is the tradition that the bananas are forbidden.

Ultimately, what culture is doing is providing us with a map of how the world works. As such, culture serves to tell us how we fit into the world, teaches us how to behave, be successful, be happy, and so forth. In short, culture is an anxiety-reducing agent (Schein, 1990). As such, culture is extremely resistant to change. Changing a culture means changing our fundamental view of how the world works. This is extremely frightening to many people. One has merely to consider how the Church responded to Galileo, or the modern debate over gay marriage, to see how strongly people will resist alterations to fundamental cultural views.

Transmitting Culture

Culture is transmitted in a variety of ways. For our gorillas, the transmission is through being beaten up by other gorillas if you happen to go after those bananas. More generally, though, cultures are transmitted through formal and informal means. Formal methods include education, religion, and family values. Informal methods include stories, songs, artifacts, and social signals.

Education is a fundamental tool of cultural transmission, be it societal or organizational culture. What American students are taught in school shapes their understanding of American culture; what employees are taught on the job shapes their understanding of their corporate culture. Religion and religious teachings provide another avenue of cultural transmission. Finally, family rituals, beliefs, and customs all serve to transmit that family and ethnic group's particular nuances of culture. Sometimes, these may be in contradiction to aspects of the larger culture. For example, the debate between evolution and creationism is not a debate about science, but a debate about which culture should tell us how the world works.

The stories we tell and repeat also serve to transmit cultural values. From Robin Hood and King Arthur to Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, Superman, Batman, James Bond, and Star Trek, our stories both reflect and transmit cultural values. Captain Kirk, for example, the quintessential hero of the 1960s, is tough, charismatic, willing to buck the system, and almost always gets the girl. Captain Picard is a 1990s hero. In other words, he plays by the rules, is moralistic, cerebral, and pretty much never ends up with the girl. Reflecting society's changing values, James Bond has morphed over the years from the urbane, sophisticated secret agent played by Sean Connery to the much more psychologically ambiguous character portrayed by Daniel Craig.

Other artifacts of our culture include songs, institutions, symbols, and buildings. Artifacts can also include how we use time, where we park, how we address others, where people live, and so forth. The artifacts are constant reminders of how culture works and what it stands for. The meaning of those artifacts, however, may change, or may be viewed differently by different groups within the culture. For example, burning an American flag is viewed by some as a legitimate expression of protest, and by others as the moral equivalent of sacrilege. One of the most difficult tasks for a newcomer to a culture is to determine what meaning the artifacts have; it doesn't matter whether the culture in question is a foreign country or a new corporation. For example, having a parking spot near the doors might be a sign of high status in one company, meaningless in another, and low status in a third. Offices on higher floors of a building tend to indicate higher status, but not always (Schein, 1999).

Alex Pentland's work at MIT on social signaling suggests that unconscious forces may also drive the transmission of culture. How we decide what to pay attention to, whom to listen to, and which lessons to take seriously, is profoundly and subtly influenced by social signals. These signals are so powerful that the outcome of days of debate can often be predicted by an analysis of the social signals exhibited in the first few minutes (Pentland, 2008). The implications for cultural transmission are immense.

Residues of Success

The question still remains, what is culture? Ed Schein defines culture as the residue of success: the accumulated wisdom of what does and does not work in dealing with the world. Although this seems like a simple, straightforward definition, it requires some explanation. Success is not always what it appears to be. Our gorillas, for example, have achieved success in learning how not to get hosed. They, at least, have created a cultural tradition that has its roots in an actual causal relationship. That is not always the case.

A significant force in cultural development is post hoc ergo propter hoc. That is, people assume that the success of a particular action is due entirely to how that action was performed or what they did immediately before the action, and not to external forces or even actions performed weeks or months ago. Thus, a rain dance is believed to bring rain or the wearing of a particular outfit to bring success in battle. A modern example is the blue-suit-and-tie image favored until recently by IBM. How poor are people at correctly associating cause and effect? Very. In my own work on serious game design, I've frequently had the experience at the end of a simulation of being told by participants that the scenario was broken because the outcome was inevitable given the initial conditions ... even when the scenario had been run many times with radically different results. Only the participants changed.

What we see is that the perception of cause and effect is enough to cause a behavior to become a cultural value. Assuming that the behavior and the result occur together often enough, the behavior will come to be taken for granted. Nokia, for example, was lauded a few years ago for its innovative management and held up as an example in organizational psychology classes; however, it was not long before it became painfully clear that most of Nokia's success was due to having a hot product in a rapidly growing market (i.e., the cell phone). When the tech bubble burst in early 2000, so did Nokia's profits. The innovative management techniques made little difference at that point. However, members of the culture will no longer question the behavior, because within that culture it is now a basic tenet of how the world works. Other cultural values will arise to support and enable the behavior. In the end, a simple behavior leads to an interlocking network of beliefs, assumptions, and values. Attempting to change any piece is extremely difficult because every other piece attempts to pull it back into place. Cultures, whether at the family, organizational, or societal levels, do not change easily.

Culture as Automaticity

To digress briefly, the concept of automaticity is an extremely familiar one to athletes and teachers. A skill is said to be automatized when you can perform that skill with little or no conscious effort. Think of a basketball player dribbling a ball, or a student reciting a poem from memory. In each case, the actions are so ingrained that they are executed automatically when the appropriate stimulus is presented. Relatively complex series of actions can be practiced and automatized, a process sometimes referred to as “chunking.” The advantage is that the chunk can be performed without calling upon cognitive resources. The disadvantage is that an automatized chunk is very hard to change; it's even difficult to interrupt yourself once the chunk is triggered. If you are interrupted, it's often extremely disorienting and virtually impossible to pick up where you left off. Instead, you usually have to start again at the beginning. Cultures operate in an analogous fashion: sequences of behavior come to be taken for granted, and once started, cannot easily be stopped. The advantage is that resources are not constantly expended in reanalyzing the same situation. The disadvantage is that the situation may be more nuanced than the chunked behavior can handle. For some good examples, think of the more egregious Zero Tolerance debacles in schools.

What makes understanding culture particularly difficult is that two cultures can develop completely different ways of manifesting the same stated values. This is easy to see in the corporate world where both the PC and the Mac claim to be easy to use. They both are, but in very different ways, and for very different audiences. PC hardware and software can be easily customized by the user, provided that user is reasonably knowledgeable in the field. The PC user can do almost anything, but can also screw up quite thoroughly. The Mac, on the other hand, provides a very slick, clean interface that may limit what you can do, but also prevents major disasters. Similar cultural values, very different results.

Ultimately, a culture can be thought of as an encapsulation of concepts, values, and behaviors. Members of a culture will default to the culturally determined heuristics if they haven't developed a more specific version or override of their own. The reasons behind the values and behaviors are hidden within the encapsulation, becoming “it's just how we do things."[2][3]

Origins of Cultures

Modern cultures do not spring forth out of nothing. Cultures build on existing cultures. A new business may create its own unique corporate culture, but that business is not starting with a blank slate. Rather, it is inheriting its initial culture from the dominant culture in which it is located and the cultural values brought by the founders and early employees. It is thus possible for a culture to inherit from multiple parent cultures. For example, an American business dedicated to teaching Japanese martial arts might draw from the cultures of America, Japan, and the educational community. This can create some interesting and sometimes contradictory behavior patterns, especially if the version of Japanese culture inherited comes from the perceptions of Americans who never really understood it. I have seen American instructors insist on a particular behavior in class because they are teaching a Japanese art, even though that behavior would be almost completely unrecognizable to a native Japanese instructor.

Forming Subcultures

Cultures also differentiate, or form subcultures, based on specific situational needs. Ed Schein observes that all businesses form three distinct subcultures: executives, engineers, and operators (Schein, 1996). The executive subculture is concerned with making the organization run, the engineers with solving the problems faced by the organization, and the operators with actually implementing the solutions and dealing with the outside world. Executives create rules and mechanisms to make the organization function smoothly. We call it bureaucracy. Engineers seek to develop elegant solutions that cannot be screwed up by people. Despite all the complaints and problems with batteries in Apple's iPods, the iPhone still does not have a user-replaceable battery. To do so would be to violate a cultural belief about making the device elegant and hard to damage. As a further example along those lines, Apple just announced a new laptop that will not have a user-replaceable battery.

There are two common characteristics of the executive and engineer cultures. One is that they both are focused on minimizing the effects of that very irritating random component, people. The other is that they both have their reference groups outside the organization: executives and engineers look respectively to other executives and engineers as their peers. For example, during the Cold War, we saw scientists on both sides more likely to find common ground than their political masters.

On a larger scale, subcultures form in response to organizational needs, geographical constraints, and anything else that requires adapting to various environmental conditions. A large corporation, such as IBM, has subcultures broken out by country and task. Counter-cultures also form within the larger culture. A counter-culture in this context is a subculture that deliberately rejects certain aspects of the parent culture, while still remaining committed to the parent culture's goals. For example, during IBM's blue-suit-and-tie heyday, the research division was determinedly informal. Unlike the rest of IBM, jeans and T-shirts were common, and ties were rare. On a societal level, we can see the same sort of breakdown of the national culture into subcultures, along both geographic and functional lines.

What Makes a Successful Culture?

A culture is successful if it is in harmony with its environment, and unsuccessful if it is unable to function in its environment. Here's the catch: environments change faster than cultures. When the environment changes, the mechanisms of the culture may not be valid in the new environment. As we've already discussed, a culture is an encapsulation of information and procedures for dealing with the world. Just because those procedures are no longer working doesn't mean that they immediately fall out of favor. First, the procedures are chunked, so they are carried out at an almost reflexive level. Second, the prospect of change can, and often does, engender more fear and anxiety than the actual failure. Acknowledging that these fundamental cultural lessons are wrong is tantamount to admitting that the world does not work the way we thought it did. Some cultures can adjust, others cannot. In general, the best way to change a culture is not to introduce something new, but to strengthen an existing aspect of the culture.

In 1992, IBM imploded. The company posted a loss for the first time in its history, closed down numerous divisions, and even instituted layoffs. IBM's survival was in serious question. However, IBM's culture contained a very strong ethic of “analyze the problem, determine the solution, and execute the solution even if it's unpleasant.” IBM realized that it needed a fresh perspective, so they brought in Lou Gerstner, the first non-IBMer to become CEO. As Ed Schein points out, Gerstner came from a very similar marketing background to IBM's founder, Tom Watson, Sr.; Gerstner didn't so much change IBM's culture as revitalize an aspect of it that had become dormant. Over the years, IBM's engineering culture had become dominant, and the marketing culture had faded into the background. In restoring the latter, Gerstner also restored the company's fortunes.

Digital Equipment Corporation, on the other hand, was the victim of its own success. As Ed Schein discusses in depth in The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, they were experts at building high-quality scientific computers. DEC was never able to adapt to the advent of the PC. The engineering culture at DEC saw the PC as beneath their skills; they could not bring themselves to design a machine for the hoi polloi. The company also had a cultural view, based on its founder's engineering background, that the way to solve all disagreement was by arguing the merits until the other side was convinced. If the other side couldn't be convinced, then the market would decide. The net result was that DEC produced three competing PCs and, to make a long story short, no longer exists today.

Cultural Mismatch and the Immune Response

One of the problems DEC had in its later years, as did Atari, and Apple under John Scully, was a CEO who didn't share the culture's fundamental culture. In general, the leader of a cultural entity, be that entity company or country, has tremendous power to influence the entity. However, the degree to which the leader meshes with the existing culture will determine his success. When there is a mismatch, the culture will reject the interloper in much the same way as the immune system will respond to a virus. The ideas of the leader are actively or passively opposed, and the members of the culture may leave, become discouraged, or experience other signs of stress and depression. The leader may be forced out, as happened to John Scully, or the organization may be destroyed, as happened to DEC. On a national level, a leader can revitalize a country or plunge it into a depression, depending in large part on which aspects of the national culture the leader most resonates with. There is a great deal of truth to the old belief that the health of the king is the health of the land.

Manifestations of Culture

Where is culture? Culture is in the minds of the people who make up the culture. Once a group has enough common experiences, culture starts forming. It is expressed through the gestalt of their actions. People interpret the world and act according to their cultural heritages, often without realizing it.

This suggests some interesting implications for how culture influences our lives and the decisions we make. Recall that by telling us how the world works, culture is an anxiety-reducing agent. Anxiety, however, is a hungry beast. The more we feed it, the bigger it gets. In a cultural context, when a culture is threatened by something in its environment, be that a new idea or another culture, it becomes more itself. In other words, those cultural elements that appear to be most appropriate to reducing the anxiety are triggered to deal with the threat. More diverse cultures are likely to attempt multiple simultaneous solutions, while more monolithic cultures are more likely to view all problems as the nail for which they are the hammer.

For example, let's look at a real company called “Shrinks-R-Us,” or SRU for short.3 SRU provides mental health services, and is paid primarily through insurance. Over the years, SRU developed a system of paperwork that is the envy of bureaucrats everywhere. Why? No one seems to know, and it no longer matters. What matters is that today paperwork is seen as the answer to every problem. If employees make too many mistakes or attempt to streamline the process, the company adds another layer of paperwork. One therapist commented that the paperwork is so complex, they have to use checklists—metapaperwork—to make sure that they've done it all. There is even a quality assurance committee that reviews the internal paperwork with a fine-toothed comb, sends back anything with an error, and puts out weekly reports that people are expected to read. The bulk of therapists’ time is controlled by the need to do the paperwork. Quality is no longer about the success of therapy, but the accuracy of the paperwork. Fundamentally, the culture has developed the organizational equivalent of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

We can see the same phenomenon playing out at the international, national, and regional levels. A culture which believes that the good of the group is dependent upon every member of the community acting a certain way will, given time and opportunity, seek to exert an ever-greater degree of control over its own members, and potentially over members of those cultures around it. Conversely, New England Yankee culture is famous for its “I mind my business, you mind yours” attitude. This right to privacy has two purposes. The ostensible one is that it supports my individual right to do as I please within the law. But at a deeper level, it is again a way of managing anxiety: if I don't look at what you're doing, I don't have to notice that your actions contradict my assumptions about how the world works. Taken to its logical extreme, it can produce an unhealthy degree of isolationism. The abortion debate is, at root, a struggle between two cultures that hold diametrically opposing views about how the world should work. The pro-life movement must act to destroy the pro-choice movement because the latter threatens the very foundation of the former's belief system. If pro-life were ever successful, it is highly likely that they would quickly find that they had only fed their anxiety and would need to further tighten control over people's sexual lives.

Fortunately, though cultures are not doomed to extremism, it is painfully obvious how easily that can happen. Although I have not seen any research that directly addresses the question, it appears that the more subcultures and counter-cultures that exist within a culture, the less likely the culture is to polarize into an extreme position, or to stay there if it does. The more cats you have, the harder they are to herd. By implication, the more divergent subcultures that exist, the more the overall culture is effectively open to new ideas and approaches. Because individuals can be part of multiple subcultures, they potentially have multiple paths to explain the world, and hence can more easily handle the anxiety of new ideas. And, of course, some cultures have a belief that the way to manage the world is to actively seek out new ideas and concepts.

What About Alien Cultures?

Now, this is a science fiction magazine. What does this discussion of culture tell us about possible non-human cultures and how we might interact with them?

To begin with, it is virtually certain that any culture will be based on success. Why? Cultures based on failure rarely survive. Even if the success is in surviving the catastrophic failure, there has to be someone to carry on the culture. Next, human cultures serve to chunk information and processes. It is likely that alien cultures will do the same. Why? Any life form is going to have finite processing capacity. The amount of information available in an ecosphere is far greater than what a living creature can absorb and process. Therefore, there need to be ways of shortcutting that processing load. By explaining how the world works, culture provides heuristics to enable rapid decision-making. Also as in human cultures, it is likely that alien cultures will contain dormant elements that can be activated by the appropriate triggers, as well as elements for which the original meaning is long since lost. For all these reasons, we can safely bet that aliens, like humans, will act according to the dictates of their cultures, quite probably without always realizing it.

Truly, culture is bigger than we are.n Copyright © 2010 Stephen R. Balzac

References:

Pentland, A. (2008). Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Schein, E. (1990). Organizational culture. American Psychologist, 45(2), 109-119.

Schein, E. (1996). Three cultures of management: The key to organizational learning. Sloan Management Review, 38(1), 9-20.

Schein, E. (2003). Five traps for consulting psychologists or, how I learned to take culture seriously. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 55(2), 75-83.

Schein, E. (1999). The Corporate Culture Survival Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

About the Author:

Stephen Balzac is a consultant, speaker, and, in his spare time, a professor of Industrial/Organizational Psychology. An MIT alumnus, he started his career as a researcher in artificial intelligence. His interests in martial arts, serious games, human systems, and organizational culture led him back to graduate school to study Sport and I/O Psychology. His firm, 7 Steps Ahead, LLC, specializes in helping businesses improve their financial performance by enabling them to develop an understanding of their own cultural blind spots. He has published extensively in technical, business, game design, and martial art journals. You can find out more about Steve's work at www.7stepsahead.com.

[FOOTNOTE 1: Although I found numerous references to the study, I couldn't find the actual study.]

[FOOTNOTE 2: Java and C++ programmers may notice the similarity to a class definition; in fact, that is a very good model of cultural encapsulation.]

[FOOTNOTE 3: No, that's not the real name.]

Life is a neverending series of tests, but it's not always obvious what's being tested—or why

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman—a rope stretched across an abyss.

—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Earth was doomed.

Katerina Savitskaya, the woman responsible for her world's impending destruction, knelt alone and miserable on the metal floor of the sole dwelling on Mars. The filthy blue jumpsuit shrouding her shapely thirty-three-year-old figure like sackcloth reeked with sweat and fear. Tears stung her ashen cheeks as she prayed before the colorful religious icons attached to a closed locker door in the habitation module's science lab.

The young cosmonaut's trembling hands clutched the heavy golden three-barred cross hanging from her neck on a gold chain. Her hazel eyes gazed penitently upward—begging for humanity to be spared and for her to be forgiven.

But the devout grandmother who'd inspired Katerina's fervent Russian Orthodox faith had never taught her orisons for a sin this great. Greasy lifeless strands of long auburn hair draped Katerina's shoulders like a cloistered nun's veil as she waited for some heaven-sent sign that her prayers were heard. But no soothing miraculous whisper murmured from the mouths of the sacred icons before her. The painted pinpoint eyes of the Savior and her patron saint, St. Catherine of Alexandria, stared blindly back at her.

Katerina rose to her feet. Her black boots tapped the muffled rhythm of a funeral march as she passed through the openings in the habitation module's compartments. She paused at the module's open exit and viewed a spectacle only two humans had ever beheld. Though it was afternoon twenty-five million kilometers away in her native St. Petersburg, here the young Russian watched the rosy light of a Martian dawn gradually brighten the surrounding reddish-orange plain.

But today, on what was March 9, 2036 in the city of her birth, she was oblivious to this scene's beauty. Her throat ached as unbearable grief turned the warm, moist, oxygen-rich air filling her lungs into sobs.

Katerina trudged down the short ramp that led from the module, a compressed cylinder nine meters wide by five meters tall supported by multiple short legs, to the barren ground. Her boots kicked up clumps of paprika-tinted mud that fell back to the rocky plain almost as quickly as they would have on Earth.

She stopped, wondering if the mysterious aliens who'd terraformed Mars were listening to her thoughts now. Because of her they'd condemned this world and Earth to mutual annihilation. Perhaps she should pray to the aliens—not to the God who'd abandoned her and might as well be dead.

Over the past ten years those enigmatic beings had used godlike powers to change Mars from a frigid stillborn world to a wet balmy “paradise” where humans could walk its cinnamon-colored surface without protection. With superhuman skills they'd increased the planet's gravity to 0.91 g and moved it to a circular orbit only seven million kilometers farther from the Sun than Earth's average distance. After devoting such enormous energies to those projects, perhaps the aliens might still be persuaded to reconsider their decision to destroy their work by obliterating both Mars and Earth in a titanic collision.

But first she had to plead her case. The aliens appeared and disappeared at will. Yesterday afternoon they'd passed judgment on her and vanished before she realized she was responsible for their decision to sentence the entire human race to death. Throughout the longest, darkest night of her soul she'd tried repeatedly to summon them back by her thoughts and words. She'd even set the main transceiver in the module to transmit a continuously repeating recorded message on the frequency the aliens themselves had suggested to call them on her first day on Mars.

So far her appeals were unanswered. There was one more thing she could try to get the aliens’ attention—even if it meant her own death. Before taking that desperate measure, Katerina closed her eyes and extended her arms straight out from her sides like the transverse beam of a cross, in a humble gesture of supplication. She murmured, “Please answer me. Do whatever you want to me—but don't destroy billions of innocent people because of what I've done!"

A low, dark voice replied, “Nothing you say or do will change anything. Earth is doomed."

Katerina opened her eyes and turned around to face the only other human on Mars.

Martin Slayton stood several meters away and returned his slightly younger fiancée's gaze. The expression on his clean-shaven face now showed more disappointment than the anger and contempt it held yesterday when the aliens revealed how she'd deceived him. The boots and blue jumpsuit he wore matched Katerina's, though his uniform was cleaner and filled out a taller, muscular frame. After a troubled night's sleep he'd just finished showering, dressing, and mustering enough courage to track down the woman he'd loved.

The farmboy-turned-astronaut from Marshfield, Missouri ran a hand through his close-cropped black hair. “I heard you praying and moving around in the module every time I woke up last night. After I cleaned up this morning I went to use the transceiver to check in with Mission Control and found that message you're transmitting. It won't work. If the aliens wanted to see us beg for mercy, they would've reappeared by now."

"I agree, Martin. That's why I'm going to them."

"Good luck finding them! Who knows where they come from when they pop out of nowhere or go when they disappear? Even the few times they've talked to us, it's like they're barely there. Just a telepathic voice in our heads and sparkly psychedelic lights like the cheap special effects in a late-1960s acid-trip movie."

"They appeared after we explored the two artifacts we found here. If they created a third artifact, I expect I'll find them there too."

"If they decide to make another artifact. Or they might reappear if you tick them off again like you did yesterday!"

The fury in Martin's eyes dissipated as quickly as it appeared. “Sorry, Katerina. I know you were trying to do the right thing when you tricked me. I never disagreed with you that the power the aliens gave us could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

"But it hurts that you didn't trust me enough to believe I wouldn't misuse those powers—that you didn't think I was smart enough to avoid inadvertently using them to destroy the world. Sure, I saved millions of people from dying due to natural disasters, disease, and famine. But what if you'd let me use those powers to change human nature—to eliminate our capacity for violence and war, to instill a sense of empathy and conscience into every person?"

Martin shook his head. “It's too late now. You renounced your powers because you never wanted them in the first place. I made the worst mistake of my life and gave them up because you made me think I'd used them to temporarily destroy the human race. And because the aliens believe we're cowards or worse for giving up that chance to improve humanity, they're going to destroy it and search elsewhere for a better, more ‘suitable’ species than us."

"I realize what I did was wrong, Martin. I know that being sorry and asking forgiveness isn't enough. I'll do everything I can to make things right again—or die trying."

Martin studied the determined look on Katerina's lovely face. “And I'd die trying with you—if there were anything we could do to save the world. But there isn't."

"There is, Martin. The aliens have created a third artifact. We can go to it together. And if the aliens are there, they'll have to either listen to us—or kill us."

Martin stiffened. “How do you know there's another artifact?"

"I kept in touch with Mission Control while you were sleeping. Twelve hours ago the Scout orbiter spotted a new anomaly on top of Olympus Mons. Our superiors in Houston said that based on imaging and radar data it looks like a building four hundred meters high."

"And I bet it suddenly appeared when nobody was looking, just like the aliens’ other artifacts. But why'd they put it there? Their other two artifacts were designed to attract our attention and lure us to explore them. They were also in locations we could reach easily.

"The top of Olympus Mons definitely doesn't qualify as easy to reach. If I remember correctly, it's about three thousand kilometers away and almost twenty-seven kilometers above sea level. Even with the atmosphere on Mars being similar to Earth's now, we'll need our spacesuits at that elevation. It also took us over two days of fast traveling in the rover the other week to reach just the outskirts of its base—and that was over three hundred kilometers from the caldera complex at its top. Even if we drove to Olympus Mons, there's a steep escarpment six kilometers high surrounding the central plateau on its top. We don't have the skill or equipment for that level of rock climbing!"

Katerina sighed. “Mission Control said the same things when I talked with them. Then I told them how we could reach the top of Olympus Mons."

"Unless you found the transporter NASA forgot to tell us they built into our habitation module and plan to beam over to that mountaintop, there's no way—” Martin's eyebrows arched. “Our ascent vehicle. You told them we could use the only way we have to get off this planet and back to Earth."

"It's perfect for a short suborbital flight. We have plenty of propellant for a round trip and enough reserves to refuel it for whenever we need to reach orbit. I've already moved all the equipment we'd need into the vehicle and programmed the flight path. We can start launch procedures immediately."

"Silly question, but did Mission Control or your bosses at the Russian Space Agency approve your suicide mission?"

"Of course not. But they can't stop us.” Katerina's hazel eyes bored into her fiancé's darker ones. “And only you can stop me."

"Launch systems go. T minus 50 seconds and counting."

Martin listened to Katerina's calm voice over their helmets’ communication link and tried convincing himself he wasn't making the second-worst mistake of his life. Katerina, rubbing shoulders besides him on his right, showed no trace of the doubts distracting him from his pre-launch tasks. She calmly checked the ascent vehicle's instrument displays through her clear helmet and continued the countdown.

Though the form-fitting white plastisuits Katerina and he wore were less bulky than a standard-issue spacesuit, they were scrunched together so tightly in their padded seats within the rocket's tiny windowless cabin that it was hard to move. Normally he would've enjoyed sitting so close to his fiancée and the way Katerina's suit accentuated her curves. Instead it felt like they were strapped together in a flying coffin.

"T minus 45 seconds."

Even if they managed to reach the top of Olympus Mons, find the aliens and persuade them to not destroy Earth, then fly the vehicle back to the vicinity of the habitation module—well, in the immortal words of Ricky Ricardo, they'd have some ‘splainin’ to do to Mission Control. Then again, getting on NASA's naughty list was the least of his worries.

"T minus 40 seconds."

Martin checked the propellant pressure gauges and reflexively pressed a switch with his gloved hand. He wondered if the aliens were peering inside the rocket right now—laughing at the puny humans who thought they could still save their world.

Maybe those omnipresent extraterrestrials were also watching when Katerina talked him into going along with her crazy scheme. She'd said the last word from Mission Control was that Mars was still spiraling slowly inward toward the Sun. Data from the orbiters overhead and ground-based observations indicated the planet would cross Earth's orbit within a year.

"T minus 30 seconds."

The margin of error in those measurements was too great to determine if the two worlds would collide when that happened in the ultimate Torino 10. But neither the two of them nor anyone on Earth could come up with a more optimistic reason why the aliens had decided to move Mars again. Martin shuddered as he remembered the last words they'd directed at humanity through Katerina and him.

You have failed our test. You are like the animals you call cattle and sheep. Your kind has no future.

We grant you enough time to prepare for your end.

"T minus 20 seconds."

Martin wondered when the aliens would end this quixotic farce. Those beings from beyond could move planets at will. They'd terraformed Mars in a decade and were well on their way to doing the same to Venus. They could read minds, create illusions, control weather, perform miraculous cures, and build gigantic artifacts out of nothing. Surely annihilating a spaceship and its crew was child's play to them.

Still—if this was the end, at least Katerina and he had spent these last few hours together. He remembered her shouting at him, “You can be like the cattle and sheep the aliens called us if you want. I'd rather die trying to save the world than cower here doing nothing like you!"

Common sense crumbled before that kind of argument and determination. And so, freshly encased in their plastisuits, they'd exited the habitation module for probably the last time and trudged the half kilometer north to the ascent vehicle. The rocket had landed on the ochre Martian plain over sixty sols before Katerina and he descended in the habitation module nearly four months ago. It was the most advanced single-stage-to-orbit craft ever developed—a distant descendent of the venerable Delta Clipper from the early 1990s.

A recent shower had washed most of the fine coating of reddish Martian dust from the vehicle's white surface. It was shaped like a blunt-nosed cone over fifty meters tall, with its broad base resting firmly on five stubby landing legs. After Katerina and he sealed themselves inside they'd started the same protocol used before a spacewalk—switching the internal atmosphere to pure oxygen for them to pre-breathe and gradually reducing the cabin's pressure to meet the lower pressure requirements for their suits before finally putting on their helmets.

"T minus 10 seconds."

Martin squinted at the OLED screens showing the scene outside caught by the vehicle's external cameras. The rocket began to vibrate as Katerina's countdown reached zero and the engines ignited. He felt himself pressed back into his seat as the two of them headed up face-first into the clear Martian sky. The ground displayed on the screens receded and vanished in a billowing cloud of exhaust and dust as they rose higher and faster.

With the displays still showing all systems nominal, Martin glanced at Katerina. Her lips were moving in prayer behind her helmet. As the rocket arced gracefully toward Olympus Mons he thought of Alan Shepard's fifteen-minute voyage back in 1961. Their suborbital flight would last only a few minutes longer than his. Martin grimly recited the bowdlerized version of the prayer America's first astronaut said when Freedom 7 blasted off.

"Please, dear God, don't let me mess up."

Katerina stopped praying as the vehicle began shaking and warning indicators flashed on the display console. The attitude jets were malfunctioning. They'd been designed to maneuver the rocket primarily in space so it could dock with the fully fueled return vessel waiting in orbit to take them back to Earth. But until now they'd done well adjusting the craft's orientation for a nose-up landing on the summit of Olympus Mons now only ten kilometers away and three kilometers below them.

Martin's hands beat hers to the controls. His voice crackled through the transceivers in their helmets, “Switching to manual."

Katerina scanned the display. “Propellant levels still good. Orientation still go for landing—"

Suddenly she was thrown against Martin's shoulder as their craft jerked down toward the left. The rocket threatened to go into an uncontrolled tumble as her crewmate strained to right it. Though the vibrations rattling the craft stayed strong, Katerina relaxed slightly as the instruments showed the rocket was back in the base-downward direction needed to fire their main engines.

Then a reading on the display grabbed her attention. She cried, “The attitude jets aren't the problem! Look at the wind speed and atmospheric pressure around us!"

Martin grimaced as he fought to maintain control of the ascent vehicle. “That's impossible! It's like we're in the middle of a windstorm! There's not enough air at this altitude to do that—unless the aliens are—"

His words were cut short as they both stared at the images on the OLED screens. The cameras on their craft's outer hull were pointing down toward the layered caldera complex on top of Olympus Mons. But beneath them a raging dust storm roiled like a dense reddish-orange fog—covering and obscuring over thirty square kilometers of the cratered landscape rushing toward the rocket.

Katerina cried, “We're heading right toward that storm!"

Martin nodded. “And we don't have enough leeway in our trajectory to avoid it."

He stared at a display, then flicked it futilely with his fingers. “Great! Radar's on the fritz so we can't measure exactly how far above the ground we are! No telling how high the dust is above the surface or what visibility is like inside it. Let's hope we can see the ground well enough to use the jets to maneuver us someplace that's level enough to land!"

"At least we're on target! There's the artifact!"

One screen showed the uppermost end of a gigantic solid shaft poking up out of the swirling opaque cloud of dust. It looked like a gleaming gray metal cube one hundred meters on a side floating on a billowing ocean of fog the color of dried blood.

Katerina shouted, “The artifact's supposed to be four hundred meters tall. Based on how much of it we're seeing, the dust storm must go up about three hundred meters above the ground!"

"Thanks for the info, but we're still in big trouble!"

They jerked back in their seats as the main engines fired. The vibrations rattling their falling, decelerating craft grew stronger as they entered the dust storm and the pictures on the screens showed only a thick, gritty red mist.

Martin glanced angrily at the malfunctioning radar altimeter and fought to keep their rocking craft upright as he yelled, “I can't see where we're landing! Hope it's not in a crater or on a slope—"

A deep bass thump rattled the base of the rocket and quickly shot upward to shake its two occupants high in the vessel's nose section. Katerina cried, “Main engines off!” Then she looked at Martin, sitting frozen at the controls.

The craft quivered as gusting winds flung themselves against its outer shell. Silence filled the tiny cabin. Katerina murmured, “Touchdown."

Her smile vanished as she realized her body was slowly listing forward. The restraining straps keeping her confined to her seat strained to keep her from falling toward the display console. Someone outside the rocket would've seen it tilting like the Leaning Tower of Pisa—and then, like a towering oak felled by the last stroke of a lumberjack's ax, the craft toppled over. Katerina's cry as they fell was choked off as they smashed against the cold hard Martian ground...

As the rocket tumbled over, Martin's mind flashed back to when he was thirteen. He was sitting in the log flume ride at an amusement park in nearby Branson for the first time—slowly ascending to a point nearly twenty meters high. Suddenly he was plunging down a steep chute toward the waiting waters below. As the ascent vehicle accelerated downward with him seated at about twice that height, Martin felt the same sickening tightness in his stomach he did as a teenager—but this time there was no thrill, only terror—

His teeth rattled and head whipped forward as the rocket's side struck the ground. For an instant his consciousness faded—then a brief pounding headache made him realize he wasn't dead after all. The lights and glowing displays in the cabin flickered but stayed on—for now. If the craft's batteries failed it would be as dark as a coffin with its lid closed.

Martin winced from scattered bruises—but nothing felt broken. He twisted his body rightward to check on Katerina. Though the blinking face peering out from her clear helmet looked stunned, it showed no sign of obvious pain.

A terrifying second memory flooded his brain. He remembered reading about the last day of the modified Delta Clipper, the DC-XA—their craft's ancestor. A faulty landing strut made the vehicle tip over when it landed. After it fell on its side, liquid oxygen from the unmanned rocket's damaged fuel tank fed a fire that destroyed the craft. In a wave of frenzied déja vu Martin imagined smoke filling their cabin and the flames of a raging inferno engulfing them.

"We've got to get out!"

A calmer voice replied, “Yes, Martin. Help me with my oxygen pack."

Katerina unfastened her restraining straps and leaned forward. Martin released the small square metal oxygen pack attached to the rear of her seat and secured it to the back of her plastisuit. As she returned the favor with his pack, he wondered what they could've done to escape if their craft had toppled over with them sitting upside down.

His crewmate stood on her seat and wriggled up through the small open hatch in what was now their curved ceiling. Martin followed her into the short, narrow crawlway that led to the storage compartment just behind their cabin. As he squirmed through the cramped passage, Martin saw Katerina lower herself feet first into another open hatch close to what used to be the floor of the compartment but now, with the vessel lying on its side, formed a wall instead. He looked down through the hatch and saw Katerina using the gear and supplies secured to the compartment's cylindrical side and erstwhile floor as impromptu footholds and handholds to reach its bottom some five meters below.

She opened a storage container and extracted a large coil of rope. Her voice came over his suit's radio. “I'm going to toss you the end of this rope. Then I'll tie the heavier equipment and supplies we need to the other end so you can pull them up to the crawlway."

They worked rapidly, bringing up tool chests, food, water, and spare oxygen packs. Martin yanked each item through the hatch, untied it, then pushed it ahead of him just beyond the sealed access door directly above the crawlway and several meters down toward the rocket's base. He tried not to think about any fire that might be raging about the rocket as they worked—or the threat of an explosion.

Finally Martin used the rope to pull the last and most precious cargo through the hatch—Katerina herself. She crawled in front of him and then flipped into a supine position to depressurize the crawlway and unseal the access door above her. It opened outward—letting in a fine mist of reddish dust.

Katerina lifted her upper body through the open hatch and twisted around to scan their surroundings. “This dust storm is like a dense fog, Martin. The wind doesn't feel too strong now. But visibility is only about four meters and we're too high to see the ground through this dust. At least I don't see anything that looks like a fire in the direction of our fuel tanks and engines."

"Thanks for the weather report. Now let's get our supplies and us out of here!"

After looping one end of the rope around the base of the open access door Katerina rappelled down the side of the fallen rocket to the ground. Over the next few minutes they repeated cycles of Martin pulling the rope back up, tying equipment and supplies to it, then lowering the rope to where Katerina could untie those items and stack them near her.

Finally Martin used the rope to join her on mars firma. Then he employed a long-unused skill he'd picked up before a rodeo competition during high school—flicking the looped end of the rope off the door until it fell at his feet. He wound the rope into a loose coil, then he slipped it over his right arm and onto his shoulder.

Martin looked at the fallen ascent vehicle. “So much for our ride home. Hope our bosses don't take this out of our paychecks."

He examined the containers piled nearby. “Good thing we have enough oxygen packs to last each of us over seventy-two hours. There's plenty of water to resupply our suits’ reservoirs and power packs for temperature control—but we're going to have to find some place where we can take off our helmets to use our food rations. You're used to fasting a couple of days at a time during Lent, but I'm not. Maybe the atmosphere will be breathable inside the artifact when we—"

Martin glanced around him. “Katerina? Where are you?"

Only static crackled over his helmet's radio. Dust swirled thickly around him like a bloody mist as he stood alone beside the wrecked rocket on a desert-like plain.

A nightmare vision of Katerina falling off the nearby edge of the caldera to shattering death kilometers below overloaded his imagination. Or perhaps she'd fallen prey to bloodthirsty sandsharks from an old Outer Limits episode erupting from the Martian soil. Maybe the aliens had returned and snuffed her out of existence with a single thought—

Suddenly he spied a wraith-like figure floating toward him. As he shivered and faced his doom the apparition spoke.

"The damage doesn't look as bad from out here."

Martin's jaw dropped at Katerina's presumably unintentional quotation from Episode IV. Her plastisuit's form-fitting exterior coated with a patina of reddish-brown dust made her resemble a copper-colored version of C-3PO.

For an instant he was six years old again on a family vacation to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. He'd wandered away from his parents and older brother and hightailed back to a favorite exhibit. They'd found him sitting inside the mockup of a Gemini capsule working the controls as he orbited Earth. Now he reflexively repeated his mother's words.

"You scared the daylights out of me! Don't ever wander away like that again!"

He saw Katerina's eyebrows arch through her dusty helmet. She replied, “Two of the landing struts fell into a small crater about a meter deep. If we'd landed a few meters to one side we wouldn't have fallen."

"Unfortunately we did, and there's no way we can get the ascent vehicle upright again. But I think we have enough rope and supplies to climb down the escarpment to an altitude where we won't need our suits or supplemental oxygen anymore."

"First we need to do what we came here for, Martin—find the artifact and talk to the aliens."

"Right. Just one problem, Katerina."

Martin looked out several meters into the opaque dust storm swirling around them. “Where is the artifact?"

Katerina frowned. “We were heading toward the artifact when we crashed. I'm not sure how far away it is, but if we follow the direction the nose cone is pointing, we'll come to it eventually."

Martin shook his head. “Not necessarily. Those winds we went through on the way down blew us sideways and spun us around. I wouldn't trust using the rocket as part of a game of ‘Spin the Bottle’ to point where the artifact is."

"Do you have a better idea?"

Martin walked over to a metal case on the ground and opened it. “Maybe. Remember when we explored that first artifact the day we landed? The metal platform the aliens made emitted lots of RF energy, like an analog radio transmitter."

He extracted a rectangular palm-sized transceiver. A short flexible plastic-coated antenna extended from the device's top.

Katerina smiled. “That's right, you used one of those to pick up their signals!"

Martin turned the handheld transceiver on and pressed small buttons on its front. One of the buttons wirelessly linked the transceiver's audio with the radio in his helmet.

He scanned through several bands. “I still remember what frequencies that other artifact used. Good, there's a strong am signal at 700 kHz with what sounds like a test tone ... and some fm carrier waves between 824 MHz and 894 MHz with a weird warbling sound!"

Martin held the transceiver in a fixed horizontal position in front of his chest. He slowly rotated his body back and forth in short arcs—listening to how loud the transmission was and checking the signal strength bars on the device's small display. “The signal's strongest in that direction—right in front of me and about forty-five degrees to the right of where the rocket's nose is pointing. Now to do some triangulation and estimate how far away the artifact is."

Katerina watched Martin walk sideways to his left, measuring off the distance with meter-long strides while he kept the transceiver's antenna oriented toward where the artifact's signal was strongest. Two minutes after he'd disappeared into the dust storm he hadn't returned.

"Martin?"

Only static answered her. She reassured herself he was simply out of range. The radio frequency energy the artifact produced could be interfering with the signals from the radios in their helmets—reducing the distance they could communicate.

Three minutes later he still hadn't reappeared. “Martin! Are you all right?"

No answer. She began edging away from the ship in the direction he'd vanished. As she lost sight of the rocket, Katerina tried to keep her bearings so she could retrace her steps before becoming hopelessly lost—

A shadow moved at the very edge of visibility several meters away. It resolved into a spacesuited figure walking toward her with a slight limp.

"Martin!"

The figure stopped. “Thank goodness! I was moving in the right direction!"

Martin frowned. “Wait a second. Where's the rocket?"

"Right over there—I think!"

He grabbed Katerina's hand. “Hope you're right!"

She was. Safely back with their ship and supplies, Martin said, “I was coming back after triangulating the artifact's position when I stepped in a crater the size of a gopher hole and took a tumble.

"The transceiver flew out of my hand. Took me a while to find it—and when I did it wasn't working. Might've hit a rock when it fell. Then I realized I wasn't sure which direction you and the ship were. Fortunately I guessed close enough to find you before we both got lost!"

Martin placed the damaged transceiver back in its metal case. “No way to repair it here. At least I know from my signal strength measurements that the artifact is about three kilometers away."

He oriented himself beside the ship. “This is the approximate direction I was facing before when I got the strongest signal. Guess that's the way we should go. Still—it'd be nice to have the transceiver working to make sure we weren't veering off enough to miss the artifact in this storm.

"But even if we find the artifact, how will we know which way to go to get back to the ship? We can carry several extra oxygen packs and supplies with us when we go meet the aliens—but we'll need some of this other equipment here to climb down the side of Olympus Mons afterwards. Too bad we don't have any breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back here."

Katerina bent down and opened a metal case on the ground. “I went over the ascent vehicle's cargo inventory list last night. This case should contain—yes!"

She handed Martin the spare transceiver and smiled as its display lit up when he pressed the power button. “I hope you like your gift, Martin."

"I'll treasure it always—and keep it away from rocks!"

Katerina opened her other hand and displayed a small circular object. “You'll like this compass too. It wouldn't have worked on the ‘old’ Mars—but when the aliens terraformed the planet they gave it a magnetic field complete with north and south poles similar to Earth. Now we have everything we need to keep our bearings."

"We make a good team, Katerina. I can't think of anybody I'd rather be marooned on Mars with more than you."

"Let's hope we can impress the aliens too."

The dust storm grew murkier around them as they trudged cautiously across the rock-strewn plain. Martin led the way with his transceiver directing them towards the signal transmitted by the artifact. The coil of rope lay draped around his shoulder. He'd cut off a short piece of the rope and used it to tie two extra oxygen packs together. Then he'd hung the cord across the back of his neck. The metal oxygen packs rattled across his chest as he walked. His free hand clutched a toolbox's handle.

Katerina carried a similar chain of two oxygen packs across her neck. She walked hunched forward slightly, trying to keep the packs from bouncing against parts of her chest more prominent and sensitive than Martin's. Her left hand carried a case containing spare water and supplies. The compass rested in her right palm.

Several meters ahead of her Martin said, “Too bad we don't have a pedometer. I think the artifact's close now—what the—!"

Suddenly Katerina couldn't see him anymore. She trotted forward shouting, “Where are you?"

Suddenly she stopped—dazzled by bright glaring light. Her raised right hand cupped the compass and shielded her vision from the awful radiance around her. Then she realized where that blazing brilliance high above her originated.

It was the Sun.

Katerina stared up at a clear blue sky with a pinkish tinge dominated by that golden orb at its noontime zenith. She turned her head and saw the opaque dust storm she'd just exited seething a meter behind her—as if separated from her by an invisible curtain. She was in a column of still air and light like the eye of a hurricane that extended up to the heavens and across a circular plain three hundred meters in diameter. In the center of the plain stood the tall dark structure whose top they'd spotted during their descent—its full form and immediate surroundings now cleared of the dust storm still raging outside this oasis.

Martin cried, “Look at that!"

He stood near her—gazing up at a tower formed of gleaming gray metal. Its height was every centimeter of the four hundred meters the orbiter had estimated—a rectangular prism with a square base a hundred meters on a side. Halfway up the artifact, beginning two hundred meters above the ground, a pair of solid cubes one hundred meters in all three dimensions jutted out from the main tower. Each of those cubes was attached to one of the tower's two visible sides.

Martin snorted. “Let's hope the aliens didn't get the idea for that artifact from one of the 1950s monster movies in my collection. Don't think I've shown you that one—it's called Kronos. I can't see from this angle if that thing has a really big rabbit ear antenna on top—but if it starts coming toward us on humongous pillar legs moving up and down like pile drivers, we're in big trouble!"

Martin squatted, laid his tool chest and transceiver on the ground, and removed the chain of oxygen packs from around his neck. Then he opened the chest and removed a pair of high-resolution image-stabilizing binoculars. He raised them to his helmet and adjusted their focus to compensate for the longer-than-usual distance between his eyes and the device's eyepieces.

Katerina set her burdens down too. “Do you see any markings on it or an entrance anywhere, Martin?"

"No. Looks all solid—just the same gray metal the aliens used to make the other two artifacts. Except—there's a thin horizontal line indenting it about a quarter of the way up from the ground—then another line halfway up..."

Martin lowered the binoculars. “The main tower isn't one continuous piece. It looks like four cubes stacked on top of each other—like some gigantic child's building blocks. Then Junior put some glue on one side of those two cubes most of the way up the main tower and stuck them on the sides of that third cube from the bottom..."

He groaned. “Oh, no!"

"What's the matter, Martin?"

"Wait here!"

Katerina watched him run toward the artifact and disappear around its right corner. He didn't answer when she called to him over her helmet radio. Just as she decided to go after him, he rounded the left corner of the tower and trotted toward her. His panting voice reached her several meters before the rest of him did.

"I was afraid of that."

"What, Martin?"

He pointed toward the artifact. “See those two cubes attached to each side of that third cube from the bottom? There are two more just like them attached to the other two faces of that cube."

Katerina frowned. “Then that structure is really a tesseract—a four-dimensional hypercube—that's been unfolded into eight three-dimensional cubes. I remember Salvador Dali used that form in his painting Crucifixion."

"Yeah, I read about that painting in a classic turn-of-the-century SF novel. No telling why the aliens made their artifact in that shape—but I hope they haven't been reading early Heinlein lately!"

They moved their equipment and oxygen packs to the middle of the artifact's nearest wall. Martin grumbled, “No sign of a doorbell or an entrance. Didn't see any obvious door on the other sides either when I ran around this thing."

"Maybe there's some hidden button on it we could push to make a secret panel slide open, like you thought there might be in that pyramid the other day."

"Could be. But I'm not going to touch this thing until I'm sure it's safe to do it. Just because the aliens didn't electrify their other artifacts to zap us like Emperor Ming tried to do to Flash Gordon in the third serial doesn't mean they won't do it this time. And I brought this tool chest with us because it has what I need inside it!"

Martin extracted a multimeter, high-voltage probe meter, and a short metal rod. He placed the multimeter near the artifact and pushed the metal rod into the soil close to the tower's side. Then he clipped the high-voltage probe's ground lead to the rod, gripped the probe's insulated handle, and said, “When the other end of this thing touches the artifact's side I'll see if there's high voltage running through it. If the reading's low enough, the multimeter will tell us exactly how much voltage and current is present."

The far end of the probe reached toward the artifact—

Martin froze. He said, “Didn't expect that!"

"Let go of it, Martin!"

Instead he retracted the probe, studying its apparently undamaged distal end. Before Katerina could warn him not to repeat his experiment, he thrust the probe like a rapier back at the artifact. Its point passed through the unscathed gray metal as if the wall in front of them wasn't there. The end of the probe vanished from view—then partially reappeared as Martin worked it in and out of the artifact, as if he were using a fork to check the doneness of a juicy steak.

Finally he extracted the probe completely and said, “The aliens have used illusions on us before—but not on this scale. Or maybe this wall is real but is permeable to solid objects ... as if what I'm saying makes any sense!"

"Let me try something, Martin."

Katerina walked a few paces back and picked up a baseball-sized rock. She lobbed it at the metal wall—and watched the rock disappear through it without a sound. Several more rocks thrown at the wall met the same fate.

Martin said, “Pretty obvious what the next experiment is.” Before Katerina's horrified gaze he passed his left arm up to the elbow through the wall, then extracted it.

He wiggled the extremity. “No pain—still five fingers—looks okay."

Katerina shouted, “That was a stupid thing to do! What if that wall turned solid when your arm was inside or sliced it off like a guillotine blade!"

Martin shrugged with nervous relief. “We came here to explore the artifact, Katerina. No point holding back now. And you know what comes next."

"Yes. We go inside and look for the aliens."

"Right—except for the ‘we’ part. I'm going inside and you're staying here."

"No, Martin. We're in this together. We succeed and live or fail and die as a team."

"Being a team doesn't mean we should jump out of a plane together to see if the parachute we're testing works. Better for one of us to test it—and if the parachute fails only that person gets splattered, not both. You jumped solo on that first artifact we found. We went into that second artifact together—and both got trapped. Now it's my turn to go first—and if I strike out, there'll still be one last out in the bottom of the ninth for you to try hitting a home run for our team."

Katerina's face turned crimson behind her helmet. She stamped her boot and shouted, “I'm not interested in taking turns or your silly metaphors! If only one of us goes inside it should be me! I'm the one who made the aliens angry and put Earth in danger! I'm responsible, I should be the one who takes the risk first!"

"No, you've just given the best reason why you shouldn't go in there. If the aliens are still mad at you, they might zap you before you have a chance to play Portia and use your oratorical skills on them.

"On the other hand, I didn't give them any flak when they offered me their gift. I didn't want to give up the power they loaned us—and they know I only did it because you tricked me. Even if they bring that up, I'll quote Scripture and say, ‘The woman made me do it.’ I know that's not an excuse, I take responsibility for what I did—but maybe it'll mollify the aliens long enough for me to pretend I'm Perry Mason and save H. sapiens."

Katerina started to reply—but everything she tried to say tasted wrong. She knew her greatest objection to Martin's plan was really based on her love for him and the fear she'd lose him forever. She was willing to die if it meant saving him and Earth. But if he really did have a better chance than her of saving the world—and she couldn't honestly argue against his point—she'd be putting her own personal good over that of the entire human race.

It'd be less terrible to die than to live without Martin—but even if it meant more pain for her, she couldn't let others suffer because of her.

Behind her helmet, tears trickled down her cheeks. Katerina murmured, “Let's get you ready."

"It's time, Martin."

Katerina checked the gauge on the full oxygen pack she'd just helped him replace on his back after he'd helped her replace the one on hers. “You have enough oxygen for eight hours—if you don't exert yourself too much."

"Okay. Now let's set up a backup communication system in case we lose radio contact once I go inside."

Martin unwound one end of the rope coiled around his shoulder. He knotted it tightly around the middle of the short length of rope connecting their two remaining full oxygen packs.

"Remember, Katerina. I'll play out the rope until I enter the tower. After I'm inside, I'll put some slack in it. If I need you to come in I'll give the rope a tug and you'll see the oxygen packs move toward that wall. Hopefully I'll find the aliens right away, get the answer we want, and leave without needing you to come in after me.

"But if I'm not back or you don't see the rope pulled by seven hours from now, come in with an oxygen pack. That'll mean I'll either need it soon—or I never will and it'll be your turn to deal with the aliens."

Martin removed a flashlight from his tool chest and stuck it into the belt around his waist. “It could be dark in there, like it was most of the time we were in that pyramid. You'd think the aliens would put a few cheap fluorescent lights from Galaxy Depot in their artifacts—but I bet they don't need them."

As he turned to go Katerina said, “Wait, Martin."

She opened a small pouch secured to the belt circling her waist and extracted her most precious possessions. “It wasn't practical to wear these on the way here—but I didn't want to leave them behind."

Katerina reached toward Martin and fastened her gold chain around his neck. He looked down at his chest and the two golden objects hanging from the chain—his fiancée's diamond engagement ring and her three-barred cross.

She said, “These will remind you that I'll be thinking of you and praying for you while you're gone. My grandmother in St. Petersburg sent me that cross before we left Earth to protect me here. I hope it'll keep you safe too."

Martin fingered the cross—remembering how Grandma Slayton gave him a scapular for his First Communion back in second grade. She'd told him that if he died while wearing it he'd go straight to heaven.

But though he knew his saintly grandmother gave him those bits of blessed cloth with the best intentions, he wasn't a child anymore. “I don't believe in magic, Katerina."

"I don't either, Martin. But I do believe in love."

The plastisuits made their last hug awkward and a final kiss impossible. They exchanged a last “I love you"—and then Martin Slayton marched toward his fate.

Martin didn't dare turn around to look at Katerina again as he reached the gray gleaming wall and played out more of the diminishing coil of rope in his hands. Seeing her again for what might be the last time would hurt so much he wouldn't be able to concentrate on what he was risking his life to do. He calmed himself by imagining he was the Golden Age superhero Doctor Fate preparing to walk through the wall of his sealed tower in Salem.

Then Martin plunged through the wall into darkness. He reached down to retrieve the flashlight in his belt—but stopped when he realized he wasn't alone.

For an instant Martin thought he'd found the aliens. Then the room exploded with light and the entire universe crumpled and turned inside out around him.

He was surrounded by countless three-dimensional visions writhing and floating in every direction like an infinite cascade of manic macroscopic amoebas. Chaotic images in the form of undulating amorphous blobs and shapeless bubbles of kaleidoscopic colors saturated his sight as if he were trapped inside a monstrous lava lamp. They swelled and contracted like balloons being twisted into distorted animal shapes by an invisible insane clown—shifting with hyperactive energy from pinpoint size to that of Number Six's nemesis Rover and everywhere in-between. Those surrealistic nightmares engulfed his mind—rapidly darting toward and away like a swarm of angry bees stinging the deepest recesses of his brain.

To his oversaturated senses, existence was distorted into a hallucinogenic reality infinitely more intense than any psychedelic drug could induce. Every sound and noise in the entire cosmos seemed to murmur at once in his ears. He heard the voices of countless unseen creatures whispering their secrets to him. Martin felt himself drowning at the bottom of a crystal-clear ocean with gigantic polychromatic globules like immiscible oil swirling everywhere around him with superheated Brownian motion. His right arm swept out and frantically tried to bat them away—and then his mind recoiled at a new horror.

He saw the muscles, bones, blood vessels, nerves, and other tissues in his arm simultaneously in a rapidly shifting series—as if an unseen hand were swiftly flipping the pages of an anatomy textbook in front of him. With the slightest effort his eyes could focus on each layer of that limb from the innermost cavities of its bones to the outer fibers of his plastisuit—as if he were wearing overpowered X-Ray Specs from a classic comic book ad. Closing his eyes did nothing to blot out these sights—this unwanted ability extended to seeing through his own eyelids.

Martin lowered his arm and stared once more into the face and fury of infinity—teetering on the brink of madness. But his will power was just strong enough for his consciousness to adjust slightly to the chaos enveloping him. For fleeting instants the blurred hues of several floating scenes bobbing around him resolved into images he could almost understand—like the stream-of-consciousness happenings in a vivid dream.

In one ballooning shape he glimpsed a brightly lit room loaded with archaic mainframe computers replete with jerkily rotating reels of magnetic tape. The next glob of scenery contained a reddish-orange desert reminiscent of the Martian plain near the habitation module he knew he'd never see again. Another pulsating blob showed a placid beach scene of the planet's new Boreal Ocean that lazily rotated until its gently swaying waters were upside down without spilling. Yet another showed verdant fields of young wheat that reminded him of his boyhood farm.

That montage of confusing scenes ranging from vaguely familiar to incomprehensibly alien flashed toward and away from him in a never-ending deluge. Then his vision lingered on the image of a great spiral galaxy that might be the Milky Way viewed from far above its plane, like the last scene in Episode V—its hundreds of billions of stars whirling together like God playfully blowing an enormous pinwheel. In an instant his mind raced through its multitudinous jewel-like stars and dust mote planets—penetrating their knobbly surfaces and molten cores like an early twentieth-century watchmaker using his loupe to examine the exposed gears of a pocket watch.

On some of those atom-like worlds he sensed countless tiny mites crawling on their crusts, wriggling in their oceans, and soaring in their skies in endless seething cycles of birth and death. Those planets and the animalcules living on them were all different yet all alike—except for one minuscule splotch of matter and energy dabbed into an unremarkable spiral arm. There a collection of creatures that resembled humanity in thoughts and aspirations though not in form occupied a small cluster of planets and solar systems. Slowly ... tentatively ... painfully, with enormous and difficult effort, they extended their presence, hopes, and dreams from one star to another in a continuing journey of exploration.

But Martin's fascinated study of that extraterrestrial race's history suddenly stopped as a nebulous black shape eclipsed and blotted out those inspiring scenes. Unlike the colorful, formless blobs that still writhed randomly around him, this one sensed his presence—and somehow he knew he was its prey.

The coil of rope in his hands jerked as he tried to sidestep the approaching menace coming to devour him. He dropped the rope and raised both arms to protect himself as the expanding ebony globule reached and engulfed him. Martin fell into an endless blackness that wasn't filled with stars. Instead a bleak cratered landscape like the Moon's rushed toward him head-on.

If he'd had several more seconds to think, his last thoughts would've been of Katerina. But just before he struck that world's jagged surface only two words formed in his brain.

"The horror."

Martin sprawled face down and motionless on a desolate plain. Wisps of carbon dioxide and nitrogen wafted against his plastisuit beneath a cold ebony sky whose untwinkling stars gave no warmth. The puff of dust stirred up by his impact languidly settled back onto the surface of the shallow crater where his body lay.

Rumbling tremors sporadically shivered the landscape as the faintest glow of sunlight peeked over the horizon. Here time had no meaning without anyone to measure it—then suddenly an invisible clock started...

A clear helmet rose from the gritty ground and shook itself. Limbs creaked and stretched like an unfolding deck chair until Martin wobbled to his feet. He brushed dirt from his faceplate and studied his surroundings.

The dim pockmarked landscape around him had a ruddy hue. Its low dunes and small scattered rocks suggested he was on some unexplored region of Mars. But the oddly sparse stars shining above him formed no familiar constellations. Still peering up at the heavens, he turned around—and knew he wasn't on Mars anymore.

The gibbous alien world overhead spanned nearly ten times the Moon's angular diameter as seen from Earth. It was shrouded by sunlit featureless white clouds with a lemon tinge—like a monstrous Venus. That gigantic world seemed to grow gradually larger as he stared at it...

Suddenly Martin realized where he was and how well the aliens could manipulate matter, energy, gravity—and time. He laughed with horrified appreciation at the karmic joke they'd played on him. The aliens had made him the only one of humanity's doomed billions who wouldn't have to wait a year to see what happened when Mars smashed into Earth.

For the world high above him must be the Earth of over four billion years before his birth—and he was on the smaller planet rushing toward a Moon-making collision with it.

From the corner of his eye Martin saw a puff of dust billow up behind a nearby dune. He wondered if a meteorite might've slammed into the ground there—and if one with his name on it might be streaking down through this world's thin atmosphere even now.

He grunted. It was already a race which would kill him first—suffocating when his oxygen supply gave out in around eight hours, or ending up as road kill in an interplanetary collision. What did it matter if another lethal danger beat them to the punch?

Still—he wasn't dead yet and wondered what produced that cloud of dissipating dirt. Fortunately this small world was too young and inhospitable to have produced life big enough to create a miniature dust storm that size. But maybe the aliens had transplanted some large predators here to make his last moments of life even more interesting. Hopefully they hadn't plucked a memory about Coeurl from his mind—

Martin stepped warily toward the summit of the nearby dune. As expected, this doomed world's gravity seemed similar to the “old” Mars. He reached his new vantage point—and bounded down the dune's far side toward the plastisuit lying prone at its base.

Just before he reached Katerina she shook herself unsteadily to her feet. Martin cried, “Are you okay? How did you get here?"

"I think I'm all right. But where's here?"

A brief survey of her surroundings and the looming death hanging high in the sky convinced her that Martin's theory was all too plausible. She said, “A few minutes after you entered the artifact I saw the rope and oxygen packs get pulled partway to the wall. I followed you in, just as we agreed."

"It's my fault! I must have accidentally yanked the rope just before the aliens shanghaied me here. Now we're both trapped!"

"Perhaps the aliens maneuvered us both here for a reason, like they've done before. We just have to figure out what they expect us to do."

"That's obvious, Katerina. They expect us to die!"

She ignored his pessimism and climbed to the top of the dune. There she surveyed the landscape in every direction. “I wish I'd brought our binoculars—but I wasn't expecting to need them inside the artifact."

Then she pointed excitedly in front of her. “There! I saw a flash of light near the horizon! It looked like sunlight reflecting off metal—just like that pyramid you found the other day. It must be another artifact!"

Katerina rejoined her fiancé on level ground and said, “If this world really is the same size as Mars, the horizon should be the same distance on both planets—about three kilometers. We both have about eight hours worth of oxygen—plenty to reach the artifact and explore it! Maybe the aliens are there—or it might even be a way home!"

"Thanks for the realistic mission appraisal, Pollyanna. Still, going exploring is better than waiting here to suffocate or get splattered. I—"

He stared at the oxygen pressure gauge on Katerina's plastisuit, then checked his own. “Oh, no."

"What's the matter, Martin?"

"You know that eight hours of oxygen you said we had? Make that about one hour for each of us."

The infant Earth gradually blotted out more of the sky as they trotted toward the artifact.

Katerina sighed, “It doesn't make sense. You weren't in the artifact more than a few minutes, and it seemed I was transported here almost instantaneously. How did we each lose seven hours worth of oxygen?"

"No logical reason for it. Probably just one more thing we can thank our extraterrestrial ‘friends’ for."

As Martin trudged ahead of her, Katerina stopped to rest for a moment. “That artifact ahead of us looks like the twin of the one on Olympus Mons. If that one could transport us here, maybe this one can get us home!"

"Or it might send us somewhere even more dangerous. What did you see when you entered the artifact back on Mars, Katerina?"

"It was a nightmare—like someone cut out chunks of space from all over the universe and threw them at me. Something like a three-dimensional shadow swallowed me—and then I was here."

"Same thing happened to me. It reminded me of ‘—And He Built a Crooked House,’ only scarier. If we were being manipulated through a fourth spatial dimension inside that unfolded tesseract it would explain a lot. Like why I could see through my arm and, with a big twist in time added to the mix, how we wound up here—"

Martin staggered as the ground around him suddenly rocked and quaked. A terrifying vision of the planet tearing itself apart before they reached the possible safety of the artifact flashed through his brain. He dropped to all fours and pressed his knees and palms against the powdery soil—desperately hanging on to the bucking world.

A scream crackled in his helmet. “Martin!"

He twisted around until he saw Katerina—then crawled back toward her as fast as the convulsing landscape around him allowed. Her fingertips were dug into the shallowly ridged edge of a gaping rift where the planet's tortured crust had just cracked. Katerina's helmet bobbed above the surface as the rest of her body dangled over a wide deep chasm.

As he neared her, a long thin fissure appeared parallel to and just over a meter from where she desperately clung to the rift's edge. Katerina cried out as the slab of rock and packed dirt where her fingers maintained a tenuous handhold slowly buckled downward until it rested at a shallow angle with the nearby solid ground.

The tremors subsided as Martin reached her. He laid his legs flat against the soil as best he could and stretched his right arm and torso towards her. “Grab my hand, Katerina!"

Her left hand swept upward and he grabbed it with his right. As Martin started to pull her out of the dark deep pit threatening to swallow her, the meter-long plane of rock his upper body rested prone on collapsed to a nearly forty-five degree angle. A wave of dizziness rippled through him as his torso jerked downward on the hard shifting slab. His waist teetered precariously on the fulcrum formed by that tilted sheet of rock and the firm level ground his legs rested on.

His free left hand clawed at the ground, trying to use it to brace himself so he could pull Katerina up. But his blunt gloved fingers couldn't dig into the tightly packed soil covering the rock. Now her weight was slowly pulling him down toward the bottomless pit too—

Katerina screamed, “Let go of my hand, Martin! We're both going to fall!"

"No! I've got to save you!"

As he felt his body sliding gradually downward toward their mutual doom, the fingertips of his left hand clawed again at the dense soil for a firm grip it couldn't find. Then something brushed against that searching hand. Martin glanced over and saw Katerina's cross hanging from the chain he'd forgotten was still around his neck.

Instantly he grabbed the cross and thrust its long end into the hard soil. The golden relic was narrow enough to act as a blunt stiletto yet thick enough that it didn't bend as he used it to stabilize his body and pull Katerina closer to him without sliding down himself. He scooted back a little until his waist was back on firmer ground, then rapidly pulled his impromptu spike out and jammed it into the soil again closer to him. Several more cycles of pulling on Katerina and using the cross like a rock climber's wedge finally brought them both back to firm flat ground.

No more tremors rocked the landscape as they lay close together catching their breaths. “You should have let go of me, Martin!"

"Well, excuse me for saving your life! It sure didn't look like you were going to make it back up by yourself!"

"No, I probably wouldn't have made it. But you could've fallen too!"

"Hey, it worked, didn't it? And look, I didn't even bend your cross—I think..."

"Yes, Martin, I'm glad we're still alive—but if we'd both fallen into that pit, who'd be left to save the Earth?"

"If you died, I'm not sure I'd care if it were saved or not!"

Katerina stared at him. Then she got up and said in a tight voice, “It's time to go."

By the time they reached their goal each had about fifteen minutes of oxygen left. Martin walked up to the towering artifact's closest gray metal wall. “No way to tell what we'll find inside. Maybe we'll see the same weird stuff we did at the other artifact. We could meet four-billion-year-plus-younger ancestors of the aliens—or maybe the same aliens—working inside. Maybe we should go in one at a time, like we did on Mars."

Katerina tapped her oxygen gauge. “No time for that, Martin."

They walked hand in hand toward the beckoning wall, prepared for anything that might happen—except what did. Their bodies bumped against a hard unyielding wall.

Martin bounced back from that impenetrable barrier and stared at it. He ran his palms over the cold metal surface—then beat his fists against it. “It isn't fair!"

Katerina pressed her fingertips against the wall and examined it closely. “Maybe this wall has a hidden button you press to open a secret panel—"

"Even if there were one, we don't have enough time to find it! We're each down to about ten minutes of oxygen!"

Katerina frowned. “This bottom cube looks about one hundred meters on a side, like the one on Mars. Maybe there's an opening farther along this wall, or on one of its other three sides. You go left and check this wall and the one around the corner. I'll go right and do the same. We'll meet at the wall on the other side of this one. Hurry!"

Martin nodded. He walked away from Katerina, carefully examining the wall for a door he doubted was there. Then he turned the corner and did the same for the left side of the cube. But its featureless metal sheen gave no hint of any entrance either.

He turned another corner and arrived at the side opposite where he and Katerina had started. She wasn't there—no doubt still scrutinizing the right face of the cube with methodical precision. Martin jogged parallel and close to the wall—still seeing nothing that looked like an entrance. After traveling the wall's entire length he peeked around the far corner to see if Katerina had been more successful.

She wasn't there.

"Katerina! Where are you?"

Only static crackled inside his helmet. Then Martin was racing along the side of the cube Katerina should've been exploring—panting as he turned another corner to view the empty space in front of the side they'd started from. Sweat beaded over his body and he knew he was using up his sparse oxygen supply more rapidly in this frantic search—but he didn't care. The planet's lower gravity helped him accelerate and bound at a dangerous speed along the rocky ground as he skidded around yet another corner to the side where he'd started his own exploring.

Finally he stopped, standing and gasping for breath along the face of the cube where Katerina and he had agreed only minutes ago to meet. Martin gulped mouthfuls of precious diminishing oxygen and croaked out her name over and over. There was no answer.

Katerina was gone. In these last few minutes of life before he suffocated, Martin impulsively grasped the golden cross still hanging from his neck and prayed that she was somewhere safe. For an instant he was tempted to fall to his knees and beg for a miracle for her sake. But instead he stared up to see the approaching Earth mocking him—and screamed his defiance at the uncaring heavens.

Martin glanced at his oxygen gauge. “Running on fumes now,” he muttered to no one on the empty planet. He glared at the blank metal wall in front of him, curled his hands into fists, and flung himself forward to hit the artifact as hard as he could—

Suddenly he plunged through an instant of blackness into an ocean of dazzling white light. He staggered and tried blinking away the pain in his eyes. His forehead throbbed like a pounding heart.

Something he couldn't see grabbed his left arm. He pictured a slimy tentacle attached to a hexadecapod from War of the Worlds yanking him towards its slobbering maw. He jerked away, dimly sensing a gray metal floor rushing up towards him as he fell. His head rattled inside his helmet as he struck the cold hard surface. Then a voice from beyond the grave echoed in his stunned mind.

"Martin! Are you all right?"

Two gloved hands helped him back to his feet and a lithe body embraced him. He glimpsed a tear-moistened smile through Katerina's clear helmet.

Martin stumbled a step back from her. “Where did you go? I thought you were dead!"

He blinked his sight back nearly to normal in the brightly lit surroundings. “We aren't dead—are we? All this light—if this really is Heaven, I wouldn't mind if you rubbed it in and said ‘I told you so!’ for eternity."

"No, Martin. The first wall we reached on that other artifact was solid. So was the one on the side I checked. But when I reached the far side of that cube and touched its wall I felt myself pulled through it and back here. You must have reached it and went through too!"

She pointed towards nearby objects on the floor. “We're back in the aliens’ artifact on Mars. There's the coil of rope you dropped before being transported to that other planet."

Martin squinted, following the trail of the end of the rope as it snaked across the floor and disappeared through the wall closest to them. Then his gaze swiveled around the chamber they stood within—scanning its walls and peering up into its heights with growing puzzlement. He gasped, “What the heck are those—"

"Never mind that now, Martin! We need to get out of here and get to the two full oxygen packs we left outside!"

Martin glanced at Katerina's oxygen gauge and then at his own. Their ominous readings made his breath come quicker. “Right. Let's go change our packs and then come back in for some more exploring. All least the aliens turned off those weird home movies they were playing inside here."

He trotted away following the path of the rope on the floor to the nearby wall—and bounced off it. Once again his fists pounded rigid unyielding metal.

Several meters away on the other side of that barrier, two full oxygen packs lay waiting on the sandy cinnamon soil of Mars. But as one final joke the aliens had contrived the wall to allow passage only one way—and Katerina and he were trapped on the wrong side of it.

"It isn't fair!"

Martin's fists struck the wall one last futile time. The massive metal didn't even vibrate beneath his blows. He wobbled with the same queasy wooziness he'd experienced during his first microgravity simulation on the latest iteration of the Vomit Comet during astronaut training. There was no point checking his oxygen gauge to see how many seconds of life he had left. If he died first at least he wouldn't have to see Katerina suffer when her oxygen gave out too—

Katerina scanned the floor, then picked up part of the rope halfway between the coil and the wall. “Even if we can't get out, we were able to get in. And when you tugged on the rope before—help me, Martin!"

He stumbled toward her and grabbed another section of the rope. They pulled it together and watched a growing length of the cord appear through the wall—until the two oxygen packs still tied on its other end clunked onto the floor.

A moment later Martin took a deep breath of his replenished oxygen supply and felt his head clear. “Okay, the clock's reset. We're still trapped inside here, but we have eight more hours to figure out what's going on."

Katerina nodded, refreshed by her own new full oxygen pack. She looked up and around, scrutinizing the intricate interior of the huge chamber they stood inside. Fluorescent-white light just bright enough to illumine their surroundings glowed softly around them from no obvious source. There was nothing on the gray metal floor except the rocks she'd thrown into this room ages ago and the few items they'd brought with them.

The wall through which they'd entered the artifact was made of the same smooth metal. But about five meters above the floor the wall's blank surface merged into what looked like a colossal cat's cradle suspended above them and extending as high up as she could see. It was constructed of close-packed zigzagging gray metal planks that filled most of the huge structure's volume. They formed an irregularly perforated ceiling obscuring what lay at the very top of the artifact.

Each plank in this massive lattice was approximately one meter wide and about twenty centimeters thick. They ranged from five to seven meters long. The planks were joined together at their ends at odd angles—gently rising and falling as they crisscrossed and interlaced with each other like the skeletal beams of a skyscraper designed by M.C. Escher. They wound around an empty central metal shaft with a square opening eight meters on a side extending up into dark unseen heights.

Katerina's first impression was that this intricate framework resembled a gigantic metal version of the Gordian knot. But closer examination showed it was really a fiendishly elaborate spiral stairway. Several isolated planks were welded along one side of their narrowest dimension to each of the chamber's three other walls. They formed shallow ramps leading up from ground level into the innermost recesses of that baffling maze.

Martin shook his head at the spider web of beams above them. “Looks like somebody's been playing with the biggest Erector Set of all time."

He peered up into the blackness of the vast structure's square hollow central core. “That would've made a great shaft for an elevator—but then, the aliens always make us do things the hard way. Hopefully those planks really lead up to the top of this thing and aren't like the recursive stairways in ‘Castrovalva.’”

Katerina frowned. “What?"

"No, Who—oh, never mind. We've got lots of climbing to do. Let's go."

There were no handrails on the alien-made stairway. Martin took the lead while Katerina followed him single file. Each of the gently sloping planks they walked on held their combined weight easily. But they quickly reached the point in their steady climb upward when a fall over the side would result in bone-shattering injury or death.

Fortunately the planks had short poles the length and greatest width of a baseball bat set into them that served as handholds. Those metal rods jutted vertically upward a bit off-center every one to two meters apart, like the posts for a wire mesh fence.

Each individual plank angled mildly at its end to join with the next one or, more often, branched into two separate paths. Several times Martin and Katerina had to backtrack when the route they'd chosen turned out to be a dead end. One time the last plank in the path terminated in empty space, with only a wide chasm between it and the other planks. Another time the end of the final plank wound up welded into the wall of the artifact itself. But as their climb continued they became more adroit at picking out the path that kept them moving upward.

Martin paused, adjusted the coil of rope circling his right shoulder, and tentatively glanced down. It looked like they'd reached the halfway point in their climb. He grabbed one of the nearby poles and tried to forget his memories of the movie Vertigo. Looking up, he still couldn't glimpse what lay at the top of the artifact. Too many twisting planks still hid their goal from sight.

Katerina came up behind him. “Anything wrong, Martin?"

"I'm just wondering what'll happen if we do find the aliens. Before we entered this artifact I hoped every ‘miracle’ they'd performed from terraforming planets to manipulating matter, energy, and gravity could be done if they only had sufficiently advanced technology and knew a few more laws of physics than we do.

"I know it's silly, but I fantasized we'd find the humongous superscientfic machine inside here they've been using to do all those amazing things. Then we could study it and learn enough about their science to turn it against them—like spunky earthlings routinely did in the old-time SF pulps. Or maybe we'd be like James Bond and his sexy Russian counterpart breaking into the secret citadel of the latest world-conquering megalomaniac, finding his doomsday device, and punching the big red button on it marked ‘Press This to Save the Earth.’”

"That's not realistic, Martin."

"Obviously. But if the aliens are so advanced they can send us back through space and time over four billion years, they're way too powerful to fight. The only weapons we can use against them are our own words. But how do we figure out what to say when we don't know how the aliens think—and when we can't even be sure what their motives are or what they want from us?

"Heck, we've been calling them ‘aliens’ all this time—but we really don't know what they are!"

Katerina studied the intricately interweaving planks and beams above them. “I don't know either. But if we do find the aliens, remember that our first priority is to save the Earth. If there's no other way to do it, each of us is expendable."

"I know, Katerina. I hope this isn't a suicide mission—but if I have to, I'll throw myself on the grenade."

"I'm not talking about that. You pointed out before that the aliens are angrier with me than they are with you. If the only way to save humanity is for me to give up my life to appease them ... you're going to have to let me do it."

"I'd never let them do that, Katerina! Okay, I know I really couldn't stop them if they made up their minds to kill you. But if they try, I'll do everything I can to save you or die trying!"

"Don't be foolish, Martin! If we both die, who's going to save Earth? If something happens to me you need to stay alive to convince the aliens to spare humanity! Promise me you won't do anything that might endanger you too!"

Martin said nothing. He resumed their upward trek as if he hadn't heard her. But after they'd climbed together for several more minutes Katerina thought she heard his voice whispering inside her helmet.

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

Martin scowled. “End of the line, Katerina."

He shook his head at this final obstacle at the top of the spiraling stairway. Below them the network of interlaced metal planks they'd just climbed filled most of the artifact's lower three one-hundred-meter tall cubes and its quartet of side cubes. The horizontal plank they now stood on was twelve meters higher than the upper opening of the square shaft running vertically through the center of the artifact. The plank extended to the outer edge of the middle of one of the shaft's eight-meter-long sides. There it connected to a final short beam slightly less than two meters long that angled downward at forty-five degrees, forming a short ramp pointing toward the dark bottom of the shaft far below.

Directly in front of them at the same height, another long horizontal plank like the one they stood on beckoned to them from eight meters away across empty space and the open mouth of the deep shaft. At that plank's near end another shorter one angled downward, mirroring the ramp attached to the beam they were trapped on. At the other plank's far end a vertical metal ladder five meters high led to a meter-square opening in the gray metal “ceiling” above them, formed by the otherwise solid flat base of the artifact's highest cube. Bright pale light emanated from that opening, from the interior of what promised to be a new chamber inside the uppermost cube.

Martin grasped the vertical rod at the end of his horizontal plank for balance and studied the similar beam eight meters away across a black abyss. The plank on the other side had a rod set perpendicular into its end that looked similar to the one he was using as a handhold. He muttered, “All these hundreds of beams and girders inside here—so why couldn't the aliens make one more so we'd have a bridge to the other side?"

Katerina sidled up behind him. She held the rod just behind his and studied the scene. “I know how we can get across, Martin."

He slipped the coil of rope off his shoulder. “So do I—but I don't like it."

Martin formed a slipknot in one end of the rope and whirled his lasso with flair worthy of a young Hoot Gibson. On his second try he snagged the post on the other side and pulled the rope as hard as he could—tightening the loop circling that post and satisfying himself the metal rod wouldn't pull free under the strain he'd soon be putting on it.

The rope was just long enough to do its job. With barely a meter of it to spare Martin tied his end of the rope tightly to the base of the post by his feet. The rest of its length was stretched taut across the dark chasm as a makeshift, shaky bridge. He said, “If I make it across I want you to stay here until I see what's inside that opening over there."

"No, Martin. I'll go first. We don't know how much tension that rope can take before it reaches its breaking point. I'm lighter than you and the rope is more likely to hold my weight than yours."

After several heated moments Martin finally accepted that he couldn't argue with the laws of physics or an obstinate Katerina. She slipped past him and sat on the edge of the plank with her legs stretching along the much shorter one angling downward. Both of her gloves reached up to grasp the rope tightly. Then she carefully eased herself down the short ramp until her whole body dangled over emptiness.

Katerina's arms stretched up vertically, clutching the rope. She kept both knees bent and legs close together to stabilize her body and minimize any bobbing or swinging. Her front palm slid forward along the rope, pulling the rest of her behind it in repeated jerky motions toward the beckoning ledge on the other side.

Martin's heart pounded as he watched Katerina reach and pass the halfway mark on her nerve-racking journey. As he focused on her assiduously shifting hands gripping the rope, he sensed a flickering in his uppermost field of vision. He glanced up—and felt an ice pick of terror puncture his heart.

The previously solid rod anchoring the rope on the other side of the abyss shimmered out of existence. The loop encircling that now-vanished support hung suspended in mid-air for an instant—and then Katerina's mass on the rope pulled its newly freed end down. Martin watched petrified as she swung back toward him, still gripping the rope. Katerina arced out of his view like the weight on a pendulum as the length of rope in front of him collapsed onto the short ramp just below where he stood. The ramp hid the far end of the dangling rope and kept him from seeing whether she was still holding onto it—or had been flung off to her death.

Another instant and Martin snapped back into action. He leaned to one side and peered toward the far end of the rope. Relief and fright flooded his brain as he saw Katerina clutching the rope with both hands a meter from its dangling looped end. Her body twisted and rocked as she struggled to keep her gloves from slipping lower on that tenuous lifeline.

Martin watched helplessly as her hands slid even lower on the rope until she managed to damp her body's oscillations and steady herself. He yelled, “Don't try to climb up the rope, your gloves might slip! Hold on tight and I'll pull you up!"

Martin reached down and grabbed the length of rope just beyond where it was tied to the pole beside him. Carefully, trying to keep Katerina from slipping or swinging again if he tugged too hard, Martin gradually pulled the rope toward him over the short ramp's far edge. There was a fine line between pulling the rope so slowly she might become too tired to hold on versus jerking it too fast and making her lose her grip. As more rope accumulated at his feet he hoped he was tugging it at the right speed—and that the edge of the ramp wasn't sharp enough to cut into and fray the rope.

After an eternity compressed into seconds, Martin gasped in relief as the top of Katerina's right fist peeked over the far edge of the short ramp. But as her left hand reached up for an instant to paw at the ramp's smooth slick surface he realized she'd never get a handhold firm enough to raise herself up onto it. And the vertical position of her body and the ramp's angle made it impossible for Katerina to get her elbows and enough of her upper body on the ramp so he could pull her up along it with the rope.

Martin's mind raced through his limited options on how to save her. He rapidly considered and rejected sliding the rope to one side and off the edge of the short, meter-wide ramp. In theory that would let Katerina swing to a position directly below the side of the long horizontal plank where he stood at its junction with the ramp. If he was strong enough, he could pull her up vertically from there until she could grasp the edge of this long plank—then he could grab her wrists to jerk her safely onto it. But what if she swung too violently and lost her grip—or what if he couldn't hold on to the rope with her unsupported weight on the other end—or what if he lost his balance and fell with her into the pit below—

Martin swiftly studied the rod beside him, the rope in his hands with Katerina at the other end, and the short ramp in front of him. Maybe if he'd had more time to think he would've realized this plan probably wouldn't work either—but he had to do something to save her!

"Hang on, Katerina! I'm coming to save you!"

Still clutching the rope in a death grip Martin lowered himself to his knees. His upper body descended face down towards the ramp's metal skin. Finally he was lying prone with his face pointing toward its far edge. He scooted his chest down the ramp's slightly less than two meters long surface while simultaneously inching his hands up the rope—keeping it taut so that Katerina remained hovering just below the ramp's edge. Then he turned his ankles until his boots were locked behind the rod set near the edge of the horizontal plank he'd been standing on. He kept both feet at right angles to the rod—anchoring and preventing him from sliding off the ramp's far end where Katerina dangled.

The ramp was just short enough for Martin to stretch his left arm out over its edge and grasp Katerina's right wrist. In one swift motion his right hand let go of the rope and lunged out to grab her left wrist. Then he jerked her numb fingers off the rope she'd been holding much too long. Now he was her only support—like a circus trapeze artist hanging down with knees bent around the bar after catching his somersaulting partner in mid-air.

Martin braced his boots against the rod far behind him and kept them locked around it. He tried with all his strength to use his knees and torso to scoot back up the ramp with Katerina in tow. But the ramp was too steep and he wasn't strong enough to pull her up onto it. Maybe she should grab the rope again while he figured out what else he could do—

But that was no longer an option. Sometime after he'd grabbed Katerina, the rope she'd been holding had slid to the side and off the edge of the ramp. Now it hung along the ramp's right side out of reach of either of them.

As Martin tried pulling Katerina up one more futile time, the loud cries inside his helmet he'd been ignoring until now finally resolved into words. “This won't work, Martin! Let go of me before you fall too!"

"No, I won't! I have to save you!"

He felt Katerina struggling to free herself from his grip. But his hands grasped both her wrists even tighter as she shouted, “You have to stay alive and find the aliens! Only you can save the world!"

"No, I have to save you first!"

Gritting his teeth, Martin braced himself to push the top of his boots once more against the rod they were locked behind and use the rest of his body to pull both of them up. Then in a horrified heartbeat he realized his boots weren't locked behind anything.

Though he couldn't look behind him Martin pictured the rod he'd been using to anchor himself shimmering and fading out of existence—like the rod on the other side of the chasm had done. Then his prone body was scooting with tortoise-like speed down the short ramp as Katerina's weight pulled him down. Another few seconds and he'd slide off the end of the ramp to join her in a final fall together and an end to every problem—

"MARTIN! LET GO OF ME!"

Suddenly he stopped moving. Martin lay still along the cold metal surface with his chest hanging halfway over into empty space. Eventually his brain registered where his palms were—clutching the sides of the ramp to halt his downward slide. As his hands methodically worked their way back up the ramp helping him scoot back to safety, teardrops dampened his forehead. The only sound within his helmet was a single sobbed word.

"Katerina."

Martin stood safely back on the long horizontal plank Katerina and he had shared only moments ago—staring down into the crushing blackness where she'd fallen toward the floor nearly three hundred meters below. Only wordless static came from his radio.

He watched dully as a long metal plank shimmered into existence. This new beam connected the one he stood on with the horizontal one on the other side—bridging the gap over the shadowed abyss at whose bottom Katerina lay. The plank felt solid beneath the testing tip of his boot. Then he was striding stiffly across it like a walking corpse—wishing it would disappear with him halfway across so he could join his beloved far below.

No—not yet. It'd be easier to die—but he had to live long enough to make her death mean something. Martin choked down the wrenching agony inside him and reached the long plank on the other side of the chasm. He grabbed the ladder at the plank's far end and climbed toward the bright opening above him. If he did find the aliens in that uppermost chamber it'd be hard to keep his grief and anger under control. But for Katerina's sake he'd even cower and plead in front of her murderers if it'd fulfill her last request to save the Earth.

As he ascended the ladder Martin glimpsed the golden cross still hanging from his neck and wondered if it was too late to pray. Reason and skepticism had been enough when life was happier and still held hope. But when existence turned into tragedy, those modes of thought gave little consolation.

And if Katerina was right and miracles weren't always just delusions created by the devout, the gullible, or the wounded heart—he needed one now.

Martin peeked cautiously through the meter-wide square opening on the floor of the artifact's highest cube. He scanned its brightly lit surroundings—and blinked.

The chamber's walls were lined with what looked like obsolete mid-twentieth-century computer equipment. Tall steel monoliths studded with multicolored flashing lights and jerking reels of magnetic tape surrounded him. They stretched up several meters toward a flat ceiling one hundred meters above him.

Martin pulled himself up into the room and wandered from one archaic mainframe to another. The room resembled the set from the old Time Tunnel TV series—or a compact transistorized version of Multivac. But what were these electronic antiques doing here?

He walked toward a large typewriter-like printer sitting on a wooden stand. A sheet of paper stuck out of its carriage. There were two black words printed on the sheet.

Welcome Martin.

He roamed further—exploring this museum of forgotten technology. The aliens must've created these machines from his memories. But why—

Then Martin noticed writing etched onto the machine in front of him—and lost his last sliver of self-control. His palms lashed out and struck the dinner plate-sized red button on the computer's panel marked “Press This to Save the Earth."

Martin screamed, “So you jerks think this is a big joke! Play with the funny little humans until one of them breaks and then taunt the other one until he goes crazy! I wasn't able to stop you from killing Katerina and I can't keep you from smashing Earth like Kane's snow globe! But if you're watching me, here's what I think of you!"

The glove made it hard to flex his fingers completely. But he managed to curl most of them and wave his right hand around the room at the unseen aliens.

At first there was no response to his words and actions. Eventually Martin stopped his tirade—drained of energy and any idea what to do next. He watched listlessly as the chamber's colorful contents blurred into an Impressionistic palette of softening hues. The artificial illumination within it faded away until he was immersed in a raven-black darkness he didn't want to leave. Stripped of hope—nevermore to see Katerina—oblivion would be a blessing.

Then Martin sensed something as empty of light and love as Satan's soul approaching him. He stood silent as it reached out toward his unresisting body. As that amorphous mass of Stygian blackness engulfed him he glimpsed a familiar scene within it. The setting Sun gently illuminated the habitation module Katerina and he had shared for several ecstatic months. The rocky russet ground surrounding their former home glowed with beckoning warmth.

With that last vision of paradise lost shimmering in his mind, Martin plunged gratefully into nothingness...

In his dream Martin stood by the ramp leading up to the open entrance of the habitation module. Fading sunlight glistened off its metal shell and bathed the ruddy soil around him. He could almost feel a gentle breeze riffle his hair through his helmet.

Martin pictured himself as the protagonist of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge—falling with a last flicker of remembered happiness and hope an instant before the noose snapped his neck. Like that doomed man's last vision of his beloved wife, Martin saw Katerina stepping toward him with matchless grace and dignity. The plastisuit she'd worn at her death still flowed around her Grecian curves like a modest statue of Aphrodite. Her long auburn hair, released from the confines of the helmet lying discarded on the soil nearby, flowed gauzily behind her as she rushed to greet him.

Then Katerina's loving face was pressed against his own helmet. He saw this gorgeous phantasm's tantalizing lips form his name—her hazel eyes alive with tender love. Faint vibrations penetrated his plastisuit and resolved into muffled words...

"Martin! Take off your helmet!"

Her delicate fingers reached around his neck and released the seals bonding his helmet and plastisuit together. Martin gasped as the helmet came free and flew to the ground. His first gulp of open air was cut short by a kiss smothering his mouth. He reeled as two slim arms enfolded him and pressed his chest tightly against hers—

He dimly heard more words caressing his naked ear. “—and just as I was about to hit the floor I fell into one of those black blobs the aliens use as portals. The next thing I knew I was standing here by the habitation module!"

With percipience rivaling Mortimer Snerd's, Martin stammered, “You're alive!"

After giving her fiancé another kiss, Katerina sighed, “Definitely."

Martin hugged her tight. “I don't get it. The aliens nearly killed us again and again—then they bring us back here! Are they still testing us—and are they still going to destroy Earth?"

Suddenly Martin tensed with an uneasy electric sensation he'd felt three times before. His skin prickled and the hairs on his arms rose like when he'd played with the Van de Graaff generator in his college physics lab. His breathless body felt pressed in the tightening grip of an invisible vise. He separated from Katerina and looked around.

Several meters away, a sparkling iridescent swarm of countless multihued pinpoint lights writhed with limitless, irresistible power. From within that chaotic kaleidoscope of colors an uncountable number of beings perhaps older that the universe itself peered deep into the naked souls of the two humans.

Martin and Katerina stood side-by-side—waiting for the aliens to pronounce their Last Judgment on them and the human race.

Martin broke the simmering silence. “So you finally decided to show up."

A hollow, genderless voice emanated from the luminous entities and wafted through the minds of the two flesh-and-blood creatures arrayed before them. We are always with you. We observe your actions and read your thoughts. We know your feelings and fears.

Katerina said, “Then you know how sorry I am for what I did. I was wrong to trick Martin so that we failed your test to see if he could change human nature for the better. Punish me if you must—but don't destroy our world because of my sin!"

We do not punish. We train and tend.

Martin's frowned. “How does repeatedly putting us in danger and threatening to destroy Earth do that?"

All we have done was a test to determine if your species is suitable. Since the birth of time we have watched matter and energy coalesce into life with wide-ranging degrees of self-awareness. Simple forms of life are common. Complex beings with at least your level of sentience are rare. Your species possesses a combination of mental and physical abilities unmatched within this local group of galaxies.

We nurture all such exceptional creatures as you throughout this universe. We wish you to grow to your full potential. Your kind has the curiosity, intelligence, and rudimentary technology to venture off the world of your creation. We have tested you to see if your species has the other essential traits needed to expand throughout this galaxy. If the two of you with your great desire to explore and bring your species into space could not pass our test, there is no hope for others of your kind.

Katerina murmured, “And I made us fail your test."

You did not fail our test, Katerina Iosifovna Savitskaya. Until now it is you who have failed it, Martin Albert Slayton.

Katerina stared at the discombobulated expression on her fiancé's face. He sputtered, “Me? What did I do?"

It is what you could not do that would have condemned your kind to extinction. Both of you have forgone other goals and pleasures to come to this world. Each of you was willing to die if necessary so that your fellow beings might live. Such attributes make your species worthy to receive dominion over this galaxy.

But being worthy is not enough. You humans must also have the strength and will power to do whatever is needed to establish a permanent presence away from your native world. You must not only risk danger and death for yourselves. You must also be willing to endure any pain and suffering you must cause your fellow beings in pursuit of that goal.

Katerina said, “I don't understand. Most of our philosophies, religions, and traditions teach that it's wrong to intentionally inflict pain and suffering on others. Are you suggesting the end justifies the means—that it's ‘good’ to hurt others if it means reaching the stars?"

It is neither good nor justified. It is merely necessary. You performed such an act when you deceived your companion. You did not wish to hurt him yet you knew it would if he discovered your deception. You did it because you believed it was needed to protect your fellow humans. You were willing to accept responsibility for your actions though it caused you great pain.

The aliens focused their attention on Martin. Until the end of our test your greatest concern was for your companion's safety and well-being. You accepted our gift to manipulate matter, energy, gravity, and time only to save her life. When you thought you could also use that power to help your entire species you renounced it because you did not wish to risk hurting her or only a few of your kind. You were willing once to risk your entire world being destroyed rather than let her die. When you finally chose to try to save your planet over losing her, you passed our test.

No further tests are needed. If enough of your kind are able to make such difficult choices, your species has all the skills it needs to fill this galaxy. We have encouraged your first steps by making your two neighboring worlds easier to reach and inhabit. Before we depart we will leave behind new artifacts on this and your second planet for you and those who come after you to explore. Studying these artifacts will help you acquire technology that will make travel within your solar system and galaxy much easier.

Katerina smiled. “This must mean you're not planning to destroy Earth after all."

On the contrary. Earth is doomed.

Martin shouted, “What? You said we passed your test! I even pressed that ridiculous button you made to save the Earth!"

By passing our test and pressing that button you have indeed made it possible for your world to be saved.

Martin glanced at Katerina, who looked as confused as he was. He said, “You've lost me."

If you had failed our test there would have been no further need to make you believe your world was in imminent danger from a collision with this one. We would have returned this planet to the orbit we previously gave it. We would have departed and left you and your fellow beings alone to fulfill your destiny.

But if that had happened, your kind would have had no future. Within a century your current civilization will collapse. You will lose enough of your technology to make it impossible for you to ever live permanently beyond your world. You will condemn yourselves and your descendents to mere existence and eventual extinction.

Katerina said, “Then what have we accomplished by passing your test?"

You have proven you are capable of following a different path. Like many others we have observed and helped throughout this universe, your species has reached a critical point in its development. It must either grow into a galaxy-wide civilization or wither by confining itself solely to its world of origin.

Your population and technology are at a stage where your planet's limited resources and you yourselves are the greatest threats to your survival. To survive, you must soon make use of the far greater resources of your own solar system and beyond. You must quickly transplant your kind and cultures onto new worlds.

Martin said, “You're preaching to the choir about that! But did we save Earth or not?"

If you had failed our test we would have done nothing more for your species. Because you passed it we have a final gift for you. We have seen that you humans find it difficult to look beyond your immediate needs, desires, and dangers. Our gift will motivate you to devote greater effort to venturing off your world so that your kind can continue and flourish.

When you pressed the button in our artifact it initiated a chain of events that will lead to either your destruction or salvation within a generation. The artifact is now returning this world to the more stable orbit it had until yesterday. In twenty-nine years our device will once again make this planet move gradually closer to yours. We have programmed the artifact to make Mars and Earth collide one year later.

Katerina bit her lip. “It sounds like we've just delayed doomsday."

It is in your power to decide whether your kind continues to exist. You cannot return to the artifact you just explored. It has already reconfigured itself back into a spatial dimension you cannot reach at your current level of technology.

But other artifacts we will leave on your second planet and this one contain information that will allow you to regain access to the artifact you just left. Then you will be able to alter its programming to prevent your world's destruction and keep this planet in a stable orbit. That same information on how to move outside what you call space-time will also allow you to travel easily from star to star.

The aliens seemed to tower over the two humans. Inform your leaders and people of what we have said. Tell them they must quickly send as many of you as possible to this world now and to the second planet when it becomes habitable soon. If you devote as much energy and resources as possible to colonizing your two nearest worlds, you will have sufficient time to find and explore the artifacts we leave there and save your own.

Katerina said, “But what if our governments and people don't listen? What if they don't believe us and keep treating human space exploration as a frill—as something optional they can delay indefinitely?"

Then on June 6, 2066 every human on Earth and your moon will die. Even if a few of your kind are on the second planet, that remnant will not have the resources to re-create a spacefaring civilization. Your sun is young enough that, without our help, sentient life could still possibly develop on one of its remaining worlds after your species is destroyed. If so, we hope that next one will be wiser than yours.

Martin said, “Sounds pretty drastic."

If your species does not care enough to ensure its own survival, neither will we.

Katerina glanced at the golden cross still hanging from Martin's neck. She said, “In case we fail, I'd like to know if our deaths would have at least some meaning outside this life. It sounds as if you've been observing humanity since our earliest existence. Some of our major religions are based on the belief that specific events and miracles have actually occurred. Tell me—is my faith or the faith of others in vain?"

We have seen the events that inspired your beliefs and those of other humans. We know what is fact and what is myth. But it would not be helpful for any of you to believe what we could tell you. You would only be exchanging faith in your different conceptions of deity for faith in us.

It is better for you to consider what is beneficial and useful in your beliefs, even if you cannot be certain of them. Keeping the possibility that some of your beliefs are true may bring you greater comfort and inspire you to greater things than knowing their truth.

Martin said, “I have a simpler question. You've moved planets, put Katerina and me through the wringer with these tests, and hopefully given humanity the kick in the rear it needs to get our space programs into high gear. What I want to know is—why have you bothered to do it? Why do you care what happens to us?

"What's in it for you?"

The aliens hesitated. Then they said five final words—and vanished.

After the end of that longest day, two spacefarers wearing blue jumpsuits stood holding hands beneath a clear night sky. Myriad multihued stars beckoned the young couple across the vast gulf of space, inviting them to come for a closer look.

Distant Deimos shone as a bright speck of light sewn into that celestial tapestry. Dazzling Phobos arced a more rapid path from west to east. But both moons paled compared to the azure orb that shone with a steady glow twenty-five million kilometers away. There word of the aliens’ warning and challenge was spreading from NASA's Mission Control and the Russian Space Agency through a burgeoning number of nonplussed government leaders. Soon, whether announced through official channels or leaked to the press, humanity would learn that the clock was ticking towards its destruction—or its self-created salvation.

"Do you think our leaders will listen, Martin?"

"Let's hope so for everybody's sake, including us—and any children we'll have."

Katerina frowned pensively. “I wonder if it's right to bring babies into a world that could be destroyed in a generation if we all fail this last test. But if we do pass it, someday our descendents may be scattered among the stars.

"I'd rather be an optimist. After we return to Earth next year and get married, I think we should make some descendants."

Martin grinned. “Sounds good to me! But first NASA needs to land another ascent vehicle here so we can return home. It's a good thing Mission Control wasn't too upset about us taking the other one out for a joyride and crashing it. I guess hearing we'd pushed the potential end of the world back from one year to thirty years distracted them from focusing on what else we did. And thanks for not telling them about my pushing that button and starting the countdown to doomsday."

"You're welcome. And there's something else I've been thinking about, Martin. I think I know who the aliens are."

"For a while it seemed you thought they were devils tempting us to destroy humanity. Don't tell me you've decided they're really guardian angels practicing the ultimate in tough love!"

"No, they're probably not supernatural. But I remembered some passages in Genesis that may fit. ‘Let us make mankind in our image and likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that exists on the earth.’ Then later, ‘The Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.’”

Katerina touched the golden cross hanging from her neck. “Change a few words and perhaps those verses describe the aliens and us—only they are Adam and Eve, and we're one of the kinds of animals they're tending in a universe-wide ‘Paradise'!"

Martin decided to say nothing. Though he was skeptical of the theological implications of her analogy, the aliens’ last words made him wonder if there might be a speck of truth in what Katerina said. She probably interpreted their farewell as a vindication of her faith that existence had both a human and divine meaning. But to him those nearly omnipotent aliens’ five parting words held mystery—and a little fear.

We too are being tested.

Copyright © 2010 H. G. Stratmann

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Katerina, Martin, and the aliens appeared earlier in “Wilderness Were Paradise Enow [December 2009].)

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has only graced the pages of Analog a few times, but she's no newcomer to science fiction. A two-time Hugo winner (once for editing, and once for fiction), she's written approximately seventy novels, alone or in collaboration.

Not that all of these are science fiction. Her efforts have also ranged from horror to fantasy, mystery to paranormal romance.

As a kid prowling the library in her childhood home of Superior, Wisconsin, however, she had a particular fondness for science fiction. “I read all the books with the rocket-ships on the cover,” she says.

But she didn't limit herself to science fiction. “I didn't know the genres, I just read,” she says. “If it was interesting-looking, I read it. And that's how I write."

Like many writers before her, she cut her teeth in journalism. But she started young, writing as a teenager about high school for her local paper. “I got paid for it!” she recalls.

In college, she went to the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, majoring in history. Then she and her husband, fellow science fiction writer Dean Wesley Smith, moved to Eugene, Oregon, where she took a job with a forensic psychologist, helping determine the mental state of criminal defendants. “It was a great job for somebody who wanted to write mysteries,” Rusch says.

Her first science fiction stories began appearing in 1987. (She would win the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1990.) Her first mystery (a short for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine) came in 1989. Within a few years, she would be editing The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

But she took special pride in her first sale to Analog ("Flowers and the Last Hurrah,” March 1999). “I had been told that I could not write science fiction because I didn't have a scientific mind,” she says. “I was a history major."

Selling to Analog was like giving a raspberry to her skeptics. “Analog is kind of the gold standard of science fiction,” she says. “You have to know your science to be published in Analog."

Furthermore, she says, understanding history is useful in writing science fiction. “It helps with world-building. You can't understand what's going to happen in the future if you don't understand what's happened in the past."

Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

Seeing things that no one else sees doesn't always mean what it seems to....

Paavo saw them in a corner of the playground, standing together like they always did, their backs to the Dome. Through the Dome, he could see the Earth, misty white, green, and blue, like a beacon to the great beyond. He believed in the great beyond, Paavo did.

People Disappeared there.

He was sitting alone on the fake grass that covered this section of the ground. He usually sat alone: the other children thought him strange. His vocabulary was big for a seven-year-old, and he thought about a lot of things no one else his age did.

Paavo's private school held both a recess in the middle of morning classes and an outside athletic instruction in the middle of afternoon classes. Most of the kids from his class were on the black part of the playground, jumping on some diagram, playing an ancient game the teacher was trying to make them learn. It required balance and coordination—tossing a stone on designated parts of the diagram, hopping toward it in a pattern, then bending over and picking it up without touching any of the diagram's lines.

That was the afternoon's exercise. The teacher had left the diagram up so they could practice in the morning and during lunch.

Paavo didn't want to practice. He didn't like running and jumping and trying to keep his balance. He liked thinking and watching and studying. He liked sitting because he could handle surprises better when he sat.

Surprises like seeing the Ghosts.

He glanced toward them without moving his head. They seemed unusually solid today. Usually when they appeared, they flickered or a part of them was clear, a part that shouldn't be.

Standing with their backs so close to the Dome, the Earth framed behind them, the Ghosts should have had blackness where their stomachs were or a bit of blue, white, and green behind their faces.

Instead, they looked almost real. They stood side by side. They held hands. The man was a little taller than the woman. He had black hair. Hers was red, like Paavo's.

Usually they wore pretty clothes. His were shiny black like his hair; hers were green to match her eyes.

But this afternoon, the man's clothes were gray, shapeless, making him look fatter than he had looked before. The woman's were brown and loose. The brown leached the color from her hair—or maybe that was the whiteness from the Earth, reflecting through the Daylight Dome, diminishing the red.

The woman smiled at him, and Paavo shivered.

She had never smiled at him before.

He made himself look away. The kids were laughing. Anya had fallen, her hands splayed behind her, her feet straight ahead, the stone only a centimeter or so away from her shoes.

"Stupid game,” she said and rolled off the diagram.

Paavo glanced at the Ghosts again. They seemed closer. Their expressions had changed again, which was unsettling. In the past, when he saw them, they'd appear suddenly. Usually they'd be on the edge of his vision. But sometimes they loomed right in front of him, their faces as big as his was when he pressed it against the bathroom mirror.

When they appeared like that, they'd say something familiar. Like the man speaking softly: You'll be fine, child. If you remain resolute, no one can harm you.

Or the woman, her eyes glinting with tears: Remember how much I love you. That's all that matters, in the end. Just the love.

He tried to tell his mom and dad about the Ghosts when he was really little. They didn't understand. First his mom and dad thought he had imaginary friends. Then they thought he was getting messages through his links. He had had links since he was a baby, even though children weren't supposed to get links until they were school age.

His parents had blocked his links so that he wouldn't get “contaminated” by adult knowledge. But his links worked better than his mom and dad thought they did; they always had. That was one reason his vocabulary was so big—he could scan the public nets if he wanted to. He just couldn't send and receive messages.

The fake grass rustled. He turned. The Ghosts were right beside him. They stank of sweat.

The woman crouched.

Tears leaked out of her eyes. There were lines on her face he'd never seen before.

"Enrique,” she said, her voice trembling.

He froze, like he always did when they were too close. He waited for them to go away. But they weren't going away.

Instead, she grabbed his shoulders, pulling him toward her. Her fingers dug into his shirt; her nails brushed against his skin.

She crushed him against the softness of her coat, and he shoved away from her so hard he tumbled backwards, like Anya had done.

"You're scaring him,” the man said.

"No,” she said. “He shouldn't be scared. Not Enrique."

She reached for him again. Paavo pulled himself backwards, away from her, then rolled and got to his feet. The man grabbed at him, fingers brushing Paavo's arm.

Paavo shrieked and ran toward the pavement. The kids had stopped laughing. They were watching him.

They were watching him run.

He felt wobbly and out of shape, terrified that the Ghosts had touched him. They had never touched him before.

He got to the diagram, but the kids were still staring behind him. Not watching him after all.

He turned.

The Ghosts were still there. Only they weren't standing hand in hand. The woman was leaning on the man. He had his arm around her. Her body was shaking.

Paavo could hear her sobbing from here.

"Do you see them?” he asked Anya.

"Those people?” she said. “Yeah. They're not supposed to be here."

"I know,” he said, and this time his voice shook. “I know."

"It's a startling breach of security,” said Selah Rutledge, the Headmistress of the Armstrong Wing of the Aristotle Academy. She bustled through the corridors of the school, the cape she had slung around her shoulders flapping behind her.

Gerda Deshin struggled to keep up. She was a tiny woman with short legs. She could never walk as fast as the others around her, and it seemed worse somehow, as she followed Selah Rutledge.

Or maybe it was the panic in Gerda's belly. Someone had tried to attack Paavo. Her boy was supposed to be safe here. She and Luc had paid a premium to get Paavo the best education and the best security in the entire city of Armstrong.

And still, someone had broken into the school, come onto the playground, and touched her child.

Selah Rutledge flowed around children standing in the corridors. The classroom doors were open, but no one was inside. The classes ran in fifty minute segments, with ten minute breaks, so that the children could relax, play, laugh or take care of personal needs like going to the bathroom.

That had been one of the features Gerda had liked about the Aristotle Academy when she toured it two years ago. Right now, she hated it.

She didn't want any of the children to stare at her.

Just like she knew they stared at her son.

Paavo was special. He had one of the highest IQs ever recorded by the Armstrong School District. Like so many geniuses, he couldn't quite understand why others didn't learn the same way he did. He talked about things too advanced for other children to grasp.

Sometimes he talked about things too advanced for her to grasp.

Her husband Luc had stopped trying. He loved the boy, but Luc knew he would never be as smart as his son. Paavo intimidated him. Sometimes Luc would say, Explain it for Daddy, Paavo. Put in extra sentences.

Gerda understood Paavo. She had since she first saw him, waving his chubby fingers and making goo-goo noises as he looked into her face.

Her heart twisted at the memory. She had thought she could make him such a happy child. Instead, he was lonely and a little strange. It had been the heartbreak of her life to realize that loving him wasn't enough.

Selah Rutledge turned down a final corridor, this one devoid of children. Gerda finally recognized an area. This was the administration section of the building. It also housed finance and some of the most sophisticated large computer systems she had ever seen.

Each of the Aristotle Academies throughout the Earth Alliance was linked to the other Aristotle Academies. The academies were designed with three types of students in mind: the very wealthy who could afford the best education for their child, no matter what the IQ; the very paranoid who felt their child was under constant threat and needed a full panel of security; and the extremely brilliant whose child needed more than upscale tutoring—he needed an individual program tailored to his particular needs.

Luc had found the Aristotle Academy. Luc was the paranoid one. But Gerda had known from the moment she held Paavo that he was brilliant. She had held a lot of babies, and never had one under four months looked at her with such intelligence and focus. He had to go through a large battery of tests, which were repeated each year until his third birthday, and each time, he tested higher than the administrators had ever seen.

Selah Rutledge opened the door to her office and there, sitting among the desks, chairs, and real potted plants, was Paavo. He looked tiny and frightened, his cheeks tear-streaked. He had his shoes on the chair, his arms wrapped around his knees, and Gerda knew without even being told that he had been rocking back and forth, trying to comfort himself.

"Baby,” she said, opening her arms. He ran into them and held her so tight that she couldn't catch her breath.

"The Ghosts,” he said against her stomach. “The Ghosts were here."

Selah Rutledge had pushed the door closed. She walked to her desk.

Gerda tried to extricate herself from her son, just so that she could breathe. Finally, she pried his arms off her mid-section and crouched, trying to create some privacy for herself and her son.

"The Ghosts?” she said, trying to keep the alarm from her own voice. She hoped she hadn't heard him right.

He nodded, then wiped tears from his face with the back of his hand. “They touched me."

She frowned. He hadn't spoken of the Ghosts since he was four. He used to shriek in fear at the oddest times, staring ahead at nothing. The shrieks had started when he was just a year old.

Finally, she got Paavo to tell her what he saw. He saw people, he said. Ghosts. As he got older, he could tell her why he thought they were ghosts. They were like the creatures in stories. Fake. He could put his hand through them. They would vanish. Sometimes they flickered in and out.

Luc called them imaginary friends. Gerda said friends would not make a child scream. Luc said seeing things was normal for children; so was making things up.

While Gerda agreed, she also knew that children with exceptionally high IQs were vulnerable to a host of mental illnesses. So she had him tested. The doctors found nothing, but suggested that he might be experiencing ghost images from those links that had been installed when he was much too young.

The doctors had judged her as they said it, assuming she had put in the links. She didn't argue. It was too complicated—everything about Paavo was complicated—but it had worried her all the same.

"The Ghosts touched you,” she repeated, hoping she had misunderstood him.

He snuffled and wiped at his face again. “They smelled. They called me Enrique."

A shiver ran down her back. She kept one hand on her son's shoulder, and stood.

Selah Rutledge was watching them with great concern.

"Did anyone else see these Ghosts?” Gerda asked.

"All of the children did,” Rutledge said. “Some of the older kids ran for security. When security arrived, the couple was gone."

That shiver ran down Gerda's spine again. “It was a couple?"

"A man and a woman,” Rutledge said. “Here. We have it on our security monitors."

Before Gerda could warn her off, Rutledge pressed something on her desk. A life-sized image of the couple appeared in front of one of the giant potted plants.

Paavo screamed and clutched at Gerda.

"Shut it off,” Gerda said. "Shut it off."

Rutledge did. Her face had gone gray. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “I hadn't realized."

"Clearly,” Gerda said. She held Paavo against her legs. He was trembling.

"They never would have gotten off the grounds with him,” Rutledge said. “We have protections—"

"Those failed.” Gerda stroked Paavo's hair. She would have preferred to have this conversation without him here, but she couldn't leave him alone.

"I'm sure we can find some kind of satisfaction,” Rutledge said. “This is a one-time thing—"

"It had better be,” Gerda said, her voice so cold that it chilled her. She didn't realize she had such a voice inside herself.

But Rutledge's excuses angered her. The headmistress was afraid of a lawsuit and terrible publicity, not the effect this was having on Paavo. In fact, since they had come into the room, she hadn't addressed Paavo once.

"I want copies of those security recordings now,” Gerda said. “I want to know exactly how those people got onto this campus and what your school is doing to track them."

"We're investigating,” Rutledge said in a tone that implied they were in no great hurry.

But Gerda was. “I want you to solve this in the next few hours, or so help me, I'll go to InterDome Media and tell them that my child was assaulted on the playground of the Aristotle Academy."

"There's no reason to go to InterDome,” Rutledge said, her voice shaking. Gerda hated that wobbly sound. It meant that her assumptions about Rutledge were true; the woman cared only about the school's reputation, not what had nearly happened to Gerda's son.

Gerda held out her free hand. “Give me copies of the security footage."

Rutledge nodded, looking trapped. She touched a white area on the side of the desk, then removed several very small chips.

Gerda took the chips and pocketed them. Then she crouched, picked up her son, and cradled him against her as if he were three instead of seven. He was so long his feet hit her calves. But she held him anyway.

"Here's what I expect,” Gerda said. “I expect the people who attacked my son to be arrested by the end of the day. I expect a detailed plan from the Academy on how you'll beef up security. And I expect compensation for my son's trauma."

"I can't guarantee an arrest,” Rutledge said, her voice small.

"Then I can't guarantee that I'll keep this quiet,” Gerda said. Her back ached. Her son was too heavy to hold like this.

She let herself out of the room, not because the conversation was done—it wasn't, not quite—but because she didn't want to set Paavo down again, not in that place.

She carried him most of the way down the administrative corridor before she had to set him down. Then she wiped off his face, smoothed his hair back, and kissed him on his cheeks. They were chapped. He had been crying hard.

"The Ghosts,” she said. “Tell me everything you know about these Ghosts."

Selah Rutledge sat at her desk, her face buried in her hands. Never, in all of her years as an administrator, had anyone shaken her up this badly. It wasn't just that Gerda Deshin and, more importantly, her husband Luc Deshin were among the most powerful people in the city of Armstrong.

It was also the fact that somehow people unknown had breached the academy's security. If it got out that two people—whoever they were, whatever they wanted—had somehow entered the academy's grounds and tried to grab one of the children, the academy had no future in Armstrong. And she would have no future in academia.

But what bothered her the most was that the child seemed to know who these people were. Paavo Deshin wasn't the most stable creature: He burst into tears at the slightest problem. But he was—by the numbers, at least—the most brilliant child this academy had seen, one of the most brilliant children to ever go through any Aristotle Academy anywhere in the Alliance.

The brilliant could be eccentric; she had preached that to her staff for years. She wanted to give children the freedom to think and to be. But she didn't want them terrified.

And that was the underlying emotion for her.

Terror.

Selah Rutledge took a deep breath, then smoothed her hands over her face. She sat up. She had already reprimanded her head of security. Others within the academy were trying to find out what went wrong.

She would consult with them shortly.

In the meantime, she would find out who these intruders were.

She used the academy's extensive computer networks, opening links and lines she usually only opened during the rare admissions process. She took the images of the intruders and ran them through an Alliance-wide recognition system.

The system ran silently, searching through millions of faces and forms. While she waited, she watched the security recording again, this time slowly.

The couple had somehow avoided most of the cameras until they reached the playground. They waited through two different recesses, immobile, watching, and then straightened when Paavo's class came outside.

The law enforcement database pinged her. She swung her chair to one side to find four three-dimensional images standing on her desk. They were holograms that looked like they had been taken decades apart.

The system had separated the images out by gender. The two women stood side by side, and the two men stood side by side. Even to her untrained eye, the people looked like the same, except older in the security recording.

A unisex voice asked her if she wanted to hear the history of these people. She didn't want anything on audio. She set everything to silence, and instead, read what was on a screen floating in front of her.

Ishani and Karoly Grazian, convicted over six years before of crimes against the Savang. The Grazians Disappeared to avoid prosecution.

Disappeareds.

Rutledge felt her confusion deepen. Disappeareds did not come to Armstrong. It was one of the centers of the Earth Alliance. Every alien group that belonged to the Alliance went through here. The port of Armstrong had some of the best security in the entire Alliance, and the recognition program she had been using was the same version the port used.

If the Grazians had come through the port, then they should have been arrested and taken to the Savang.

That was the basis of the agreements throughout the Earth Alliance. The treaties that had created the Alliance—the treaties that allowed the enriching trade that had made the Alliance the power that it was within the known universe—had come with terrible strings.

In one of the earliest treaties ever signed, humans had agreed to abide by the laws of whatever culture they worked within. So if the humans were working on a planet dominated by the Disty, then humans were subject to Disty law.

Which sounded good in theory, but had turned out to be terrible in practice. Aliens were called alien for a reason—some of their laws were completely incomprehensible to humans.

Corporations, which operated on various planets and with hundreds of different cultures, soon learned the drawbacks to the Earth Alliance agreements. Administrators and management staff refused to work in the most extreme alien cultures. So the corporations guaranteed their people an escape should they accidentally run afoul of alien laws—particularly alien laws that humans found inane or nonsensical.

And so the Disappearance system was born.

The problem with it was that everyone who Disappeared was guilty of some crime. Some of the crimes were minimal by human standards, but that didn't matter. They were severe by the standards of other Earth Alliance members.

In Rutledge's eyes, as well as in Earth Alliance law, the Disappeareds were double criminals. They committed the original crime and then they compounded it by running away and assuming new identities.

She thought for a moment. The presence of the Grazians raised more questions than it answered, questions her security team wouldn't be able to handle.

She could hire a detective, but that was always iffy work. Besides, there were two kinds of people on Armstrong who specialized in the Disappeareds: Trackers, who didn't care how they found the Disappeareds, bringing them back to the authorities who had initially charged them, and forcing the Disappeareds to serve their sentences; and Retrieval Artists, who were a lot more subtle.

Retrieval Artists could find Disappeareds, but didn't return them for prosecution unless the person who hired the Retrieval Artist wanted that.

The Grazians had already risked arrest by returning to Armstrong. They were clearly cunning and able to break security protocols.

What Rutledge needed was a Retrieval Artist.

And she knew just the one.

Paavo couldn't stop crying, and he needed to. He had to stop being a baby so he could help his mom.

She wanted him to tell her about the Ghosts.

He stood in the hallway of the school, his mom crouched in front of him. She had that worried look on her face, the one that meant she was only a half step away from panicking and calling his dad.

His dad never understood him. His dad would peer at him with that little frown, and then he would consult with Paavo's mom, and they would come up with something weird.

"Paavo,” she said, “I really do need to know about the Ghosts."

"They touched me,” he said.

"I know,” she said. “You told me."

And he'd told her that they smelled. He didn't tell her that their clothes had texture, like real clothes, and he heard the woman's shoes squeak as she crouched.

"They're real,” he said.

"I know that too.” His mom used her I believe you voice, not her maybe you believe that but it's not true voice. Her I believe you voice calmed him like nothing else had.

"You know?” he asked.

She nodded. “Everyone else saw them too."

His eyes filled with tears again, but he wouldn't cry. Babies cried. He wasn't a baby, no matter what the other kids called him.

She must have been worried that he was going to cry again, because she said, “These Ghosts, did they look different from the Ghosts you usually see?"

"Their clothes are different,” he said. “Their hair is different. They're old. They smell."

"So they are different,” his mom said. “But it's a man and a woman, right? Just like the first Ghosts?"

"They are the Ghosts,” he said. He hated it when no one understood him. She asked if they looked different. They did. But she hadn't asked if they were different people.

"I know,” she said. “But what makes them Ghosts instead of strangers who somehow got into the playground?"

They were strangers who got into the playground. But they were Ghosts too. If he said that, though, his mom would get really frustrated with them.

"They are the Ghosts,” he said. “The same people who are always there. They're just dressed different and they got old."

The warm look faded from his mom's face. For a second, he saw real fear. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen fear on his mom's face before, but he must have because he recognized it and how would he have recognized it if he hadn't seen it before?

"They're the same people?” she repeated. “Only older?"

He nodded.

"And they're real.” She glanced around like she expected someone to be standing near them.

Only no one was. It was just him and his mom in this hallway. No one else.

"Did they talk to you?” she asked.

He nodded.

"Did they call you anything?"

"What they always call me,” he said.

That fear on her face, it had gotten worse, like she didn't want to hear what he had to say only she knew she had to.

"What do they always call you?” she asked.

"Enrique,” he said.

She closed her eyes. Just for a moment, but that was long enough. For that moment, his mom was so scared she was afraid to look at him.

He knew what she was going to say before she opened her eyes and said it. She was going to say, We have to talk to your dad.

She opened her eyes.

Paavo braced himself.

She said, “Let's get you home,” and her voice wobbled.

It was the wobble that scared him. The wobble and the fact she didn't want to go to his dad. She wasn't doing the normal thing.

And that scared Paavo most of all.

The ping startled Miles Flint. He was standing in the back room of his office, resetting the environmental system for the fifteenth time in twenty days. He would have to pay for an upgrade, which he didn't want to do. He was trying not to work right now, so the expenditure irritated him.

When his fourteen-year-old daughter Talia heard that, she had called him cheap. You can afford the upgrade, Dad. You can afford anything.

He couldn't afford anything, but he certainly never had to work again if he didn't want to. He had structured his entire business so that he didn't have to work. He had learned early that Retrieval Artists shouldn't be beholden to anyone. They should be able to walk away whenever the job endangered the Retrieval Artist or, more importantly, the Disappeared.

So far, he had managed to live up to that. He had also managed to only take jobs that interested him.

The ping sounded again.

He shook his head in irritation. A client outside the door caused the ping, and right now, he didn't want clients. The last case he had taken had put Talia in danger, and he had vowed not to take cases until she was no longer living at home.

But his curiosity got the better of him.

He walked into the main part of his office. It was a small room, unprepossessing by design, with a desk and a single chair. The walls looked like they were made of ancient permaplastic, even though he'd replaced the interior years ago.

He wanted clients to feel uncomfortable in here. The more uncomfortable they were, the less likely they were to hire him. He wanted to weed out clients anyway he could.

The security system had come on. A two-dimensional image of a woman standing outside his door appeared over his desk. She wore some kind of cape, her hair mussed, her face turned away from his external cameras.

Still, she looked familiar.

Behind her, he could see bits of the neighborhood filtering in through the camera. His office was in the oldest part of Armstrong—the part that had first been settled—and his building was on Armstrong's Register of Historic Places.

The woman turned her head back toward the camera, and Flint blinked. He did recognize her. It was Selah Rutledge, from his daughter Talia's school.

Now his curiosity was aroused, which bothered him. He should have left the ping unanswered, but he wasn't going to.

Instead, he pressed the small corner of the see-through screen that unlocked the door.

"Come on in, Selah,” he said as the door clicked open.

She looked startled. She stepped inside, trailing Moon dust with her. The ancient dome in this part of Armstrong never worked properly. Parts leaked, and one of the worst leaks was the never-ending dust that was part of the Moon's exterior.

"Miles,” Selah said as she closed the door. “Normally, I wouldn't come without an appointment, but I have an emergency."

She looked flustered—and as long as he had known her, Selah Rutledge had never looked flustered.

"I'm not the person to come to for an emergency,” he said. “The police handle those better than I do."

"Mine involves a Disappeared.” She looked around for a client chair, failed to find one, and crossed her arms. Usually that movement pleased Flint but this time, it didn't.

He liked Selah. She was harsh, but she was a good administrator, and the Aristotle Academy had managed to take his too-smart, headstrong daughter, and make her into a successful—and, more importantly, engaged—student.

"An emergency involving a Disappeared?” he asked, all business now. “Someone you need to find?"

She bit her lower lip, then shook her head as if she were having a debate with herself. “I shouldn't tell you this. Your daughter is one of our students. But I couldn't think of anyone else to go to."

"Something went wrong,” he said.

Selah nodded.

He didn't like the idea of something going wrong at the Aristotle Academy. To hide his unease, he said, “Let me get you a chair,” and walked into the back. He grabbed the only other chair in the place and carried it back to the main room.

Selah was pacing. She stopped when she saw him.

"So what happened?” he asked. “Why do you need to find this Disappeared?"

It wasn't, as he quickly learned, this Disappeared. It was a pair of Disappeareds, a married couple named Grazian. They had fled Armstrong six and a half years ago, and now they were back and, oddly, they had somehow breached Aristotle Academy's security system.

Selah paced as she talked. She was as upset as he felt. He had taken Talia to Aristotle not just for their excellent academics but also for their security. He knew that he had enemies, and he didn't want any of them to get to his daughter.

But he also knew that the best security systems in the known universe could be breached.

He knew that because he had breached more than a few of them himself.

"Do you know what they wanted?” he asked.

"One of our students,” she said.

A chill ran down his spine. But he made sure that he didn't let his unease show on his face.

"Any particular student?” he asked.

"Paavo Deshin,” she said.

"Is that Luc Deshin's son?” Flint asked.

She nodded, looking somewhat sick.

He would have looked sick as well. Luc Deshin was the closest thing to a high-end criminal that existed in Armstrong. Many corporate CEOs skirted the law here, but Deshin actively flaunted it. He had a bevy of lawyers and a lot of money, and so far, no one could track anything to him.

No wonder his son was going to Aristotle.

"Do you know why these people Disappeared?” Flint asked, thinking maybe they were part of that very small group of real criminals who had violated laws that offended humans.

"Something to do with the Savang,” she said. “I didn't look up anything else. When I saw that they were Disappeareds, I knew they would be hard to find, so I came to you."

He narrowed his eyes so that she could see his skepticism. “You came to me because you don't want to risk police involvement. You don't want anyone to know that the Aristotle Academy is vulnerable."

"That's true,” she said.

"What do I do if and when I find these Disappeared?” Flint asked.

"Tell me,” Selah said. “We'll take it from there."

He sighed. He hated cases like that. “No. I need to know what will happen to these people if I bring them to you."

"Are you asking me if we'll give them to the Savang?” she asked.

"Among other things,” he said.

"I don't know what we'll do. Mostly I want them watched. I need to know why they're after Paavo Deshin and what exactly is going on."

"So ask Luc Deshin,” Flint said.

"His wife has already threatened me,” Selah said. “She wants to know who these people are."

"I'm sure her husband can find out."

"I'm sure he can too.” Selah sighed. “I want someone I can trust, whom I know will do the very best job, not just for me but for the Academy."

"You'll make sure that Paavo Deshin is protected?” Flint asked.

"His family is already doing that,” she said. “They won't let him back in school until this matter is settled."

Flint nodded. He would be the same way. “What about your other students? Are they protected?"

She gave him a sharp look. She knew he was asking about Talia.

"My security team is looking for the loopholes in the system. They promise me they'll be closed tonight.” She sounded distracted, as if that were the least of her concerns.

They were the greatest of his. “Let me look as well."

Her lips thinned. “That's irregular, Miles."

"This entire case is irregular, Selah,” he said. “Besides, I have more experience with exotic security than anyone you could have hired."

She sighed again, then reached into the pocket of her cape. She removed several small chips. “This is the security footage from every angle. I even brought the audio from the moment that we learned of the breach."

He felt muscles in his shoulder relax. She was going to let him examine at least part of the system. If he could, he would convince her to let him examine all of it.

"What about your computerized systems?” he asked.

"What about them?” she asked.

"Most breaches aren't physical. They're cyber. Something gets shut down off-site and then your perpetrators get in. Often they're set up to be recognized as normal employees of the academy."

"Oh,” she said. “I don't know anything about this."

"Give me access to your computer systems,” he said. “I can figure out what happened."

She studied him for a long moment. “You seem to have a lot of skills, Miles."

Most people didn't know his rather checkered history—and he usually didn't have to explain it. But he did here.

"I used to design security systems before I became a police officer. Then, before I became a detective, I designed the Armstrong Police Department's security."

"And you quit all of that to become a Retrieval Artist,” she said with the first hint of amusement.

"I quit all of that to become my own boss,” he said. “Normally, I wouldn't take this case. I'm trying not to work until Talia's grown."

Selah nodded as if she understood. “You're taking this because of her."

"Absolutely,” he said. “I need to be reassured that your system is safe."

Selah sighed. “That I do understand. And you understand why I don't want this out."

"I'm not going to broadcast to anyone that the Aristotle Academy has a vulnerable security system,” he said. “You and I can agree on that."

"Are there other things we need to agree about?” she asked.

"Price,” he said, “my rules for taking cases, and what you want from me."

"It sounds like a lot,” she said.

"That's why I brought you the chair.” He swept his hand toward it, indicating that she should sit down. “We have some talking to do."

Gerda stopped, her hand resting on the doorknob. She had the door to Paavo's room cracked open. It wasn't quite dark inside—Paavo hated full dark—but it was that strange sepia color that the Dome mechanics called Dome Twilight.

Her boy was curled in a fetal position on his bed, his arms around his stomach, his face pressed into his pillow. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to calm down once they had come home, and then he had fallen asleep.

She hoped he slept for hours. She needed some time to herself.

She left the door open just a crack, so she could hear him if he cried out.

She took the security vids into the living room and used one of the separate computers Luc kept around for emergencies. The chips slid in as if they were made for the new system, and the images floated in front of her in holographic form.

She modified them so that they would be on a flat screen. She didn't want Paavo to wake up, come into the living room, and see his Ghosts yet again.

But she felt like they weren't his Ghosts any longer. They were hers.

Over the years, she had tried not to think of them: Ishani Grazian, her face red and blotchy, her eyes wet with tears; pasty Karoly Grazian, his hand on her arm, leading her away as if they were going to their doom.

Gerda shouldn't have seen them. She had gone to the baby wing of the Child Center, her steps light, her mood even lighter. She had stopped just outside the door, about to enter when she realized something awful was going on inside.

The attendant had just taken a baby from Ishani Grazian. Only Gerda hadn't known that was Ishani at the time. She hadn't known anything. Just that an unhappy couple stood inside, unwilling to relinquish a child.

It wasn't until the couple left that Gerda realized the child they relinquished was hers.

Her Paavo.

Gerda had thought of that moment a hundred times over the past six years—the way Ishani Grazian had turned to her husband, his arms enveloping her, his face still turned toward the baby boy that the assistant carried out of the room. The couple had stood there for maybe five minutes, Ishani with her face hidden, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed; Karoly with his head turned, his gaze on the closed door at the back of the family room.

That was what the Child Center called that room—the family room. Gerda had liked the name when she first heard it. Later, she had wondered at the wisdom of it.

That afternoon, she had stayed back, waiting for the couple to leave. Their distress was palpable, even through the clear window to the hallway.

Finally Karoly Grazian said something to his wife. She raised her head, wiped her face with her thumb and forefinger, and nodded at him.

Then he put his arm around her and led her from the room.

They stopped just outside the door. Ishani Grazian looked directly at Gerda. Ishani's eyes were a bright green—brighter than any eyes Gerda had ever seen before. That unnerved her, and so did Ishani's expression.

Gerda had never seen such complete despair.

Not before—and not since.

Sometimes she thought it was the despair that caused the memory to surface so often. She hadn't understood despair then, but she understood it now.

She felt it whenever she looked on her son and thought about all the dangers he could face—not just as a brilliant and socially maladjusted child, but also as an adult living in a strange and hostile universe.

Not to mention the problems he would face as Luc Deshin's only son.

She had contacted Luc through her emergency links. He knew what was going on.

She hoped he would be home soon.

Gerda sank into her favorite chair and looked at the ever-changing wallscape. She had designed the images to soothe—water rushing down a cliff face in Vekke; the Sun rising over a lake on Earth; the barren brownness of an unsettled portion of the Moon—but she barely saw them now, noting only as the images blended, one into another.

Normally, she would let Luc handle this. The Grazians and people like them were usually his problems. She didn't want to know.

But she couldn't let him handle the Grazians. She needed to know each and every detail.

She needed to keep those horrible people away from her son.

Luc Deshin slid his chair away from his desk. The clear wall he used to screen flat images had frozen on two faces he thought he would never see again: Karoly and Ishani Grazian.

Usually Luc forgot names. Especially names of the Disappeared. They had, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. So he ceased to think of them.

Yet these two had returned just like the nickname his odd little son had given them. They had reappeared like unwanted ghosts.

Luc's office was on the top floor of one of downtown Armstrong's few high rise buildings. His business occupied the floor below. His office rose above that, a bubble on the roof of the highest building in town.

That bubble gave him a spectacular three-hundred-and sixty-degree view of the city, the Dome, and the Moon beyond. He could see for kilometers.

Sometimes, he liked to say, he could see his entire empire, even though what he had wasn't technically an empire. It was a confederation of businesses, friends, and enemies, a grouping held together by the force of his personality and the power of his money.

What irritated him this time was that money wouldn't solve the problem he found himself in this very afternoon.

Gerda had sent him all of the information she had through an encrypted link. At his urging, she had told him what she knew, and then she had begged him to come home.

His Gerda did not beg. She was a strong woman, his equal in all ways. But this had upset her.

And, if he was honest, it upset him as well.

Not the least of it was Paavo. The child was inexplicably odd, impossible to talk to, and deeply loving. Luc's heart twisted whenever he thought of the boy. Sometimes, when Luc got home at night, he just enveloped Paavo in his arms.

He couldn't talk to the boy, but he could hold him, and that was enough.

It always made Gerda smile. If only your enemies could see you now, she would say. They would know that everything they say about you is not true.

But he was glad they thought it was all true. Because they said he had no heart. If they discovered his heart held his wife and son close, they would threaten his family.

Like the Grazians had.

He couldn't remember the last time he had felt fear.

Gerda had asked him to come home because she had felt the same fear. She wanted his presence to protect them.

But he knew a better way to protect them. He would send a security team to the house. Then he would get his number one in here and talk to him about finding the Grazians.

Finally, he would visit his lawyer.

The first measure protected his family should the Grazians be even bolder this afternoon than they were at the school. The second—if it worked—would ensure that they would never bother his family again.

And the third would take care of legal details he should have finished years ago.

He pushed one palm against the other, feeling the muscles in both arms strain. Once his life had been a lot easier. Once his fists had taken care of everything.

But that was long ago.

Before Gerda.

Before Paavo.

Before Luc learned that power exerted behind the scenes was always so much more effective than power exerted with two bruised and bloody fists.

Flint sat in the security room of the Aristotle Academy. Already he hated their system. The single room with no out-of-building back-up was too vulnerable to attack; they needed redundant and overlying systems.

He ran through the security protocols three times, and didn't find a breach—even though there clearly had been one. At first, he thought he was overlooking something. And then he remembered what he had told Selah: that many breaches came from outside hacking that changed internal protocols.

Unlike most security engineers, he knew how to search for a subtle outside hack. Someone who had gone through a backdoor, pretended to be a designer, and changed the system.

But he still found nothing.

Which made him rethink his entire approach.

There was a foolproof way to break into a secure facility: Have someone on the inside let you in.

He searched for that and found no evidence of it. No one had let the Grazians in. They had walked through like everyone who belonged here.

Everyone who belonged. He looked through the system, to see what the protocols were to determine who belonged.

Nothing had been changed. There was nothing unusual. So he went back to the Grazians’ entry to see how the security system had classified them.

And he started when he saw the answer.

It had classified them as parents.

Parents had access to all areas of the school except the administrative and security areas. They were allowed through the internal security systems by touching a scanner. It ran the DNA. A secondary protocol compared the DNA to their child's.

The system was different if the child was adopted. But most of the children hadn't been. So the system worked most of the time.

Flint back traced everything, and when he was sure of his information, he summoned Selah. Then he leaned back to wait for her.

The Grazians probably hadn't even tried to break through the system. They probably hadn't realized that the Aristotle Academy had a high level of security.

They had just walked through the front gate—as if they belonged.

Which their biological profile said they did.

Paavo woke up in near darkness. His heart was pounding and the skin on his face was stiff from dried tears. He wiped at it as he sat up, groggy from sleeping too long in the afternoon.

A woman sat at the edge of his bed. For a minute, he thought it was his mother. Then his eyes adjusted to the dimness.

It was the Ghost. The woman Ghost. The one who had grabbed him.

He didn't scream. This time she didn't scare him quite as badly as she had before. Maybe because he expected to see her again.

He wanted her and that male Ghost to leave him alone, but so far, they hadn't. And he had a hunch that unless his mom and dad did something to stop them, the Ghosts wouldn't ever leave him alone.

Paavo let out a quiet breath. He wasn't sure if she had seen him move yet. Maybe if he thought it through, he could find a way off the bed and out of the room before she grabbed him again.

But he couldn't resist moving his foot toward her. As his foot got closer, he couldn't feel her weight on the bed, holding the covers down.

His heart beat even faster.

He kicked his foot toward her as hard as he could. He almost fell off the bed when his foot went through her image.

She still didn't notice him. She wasn't real then.

He blinked, saw that she was wearing the clothes she always wore, and her hair was its normal red. He flicked the lights on, and she turned toward him.

Somehow that movement had told her he was awake.

"Enrique,” she said. “I'm so sorry we scared you. I didn't think we would. I thought we had been preparing you for the day we came back."

"You're not real,” he said.

"I'm real,” she said. “But this image isn't. It's a projection through some special links your father installed before we left. This visual of me is old, but the words I'm speaking are happening now."

"You're talking to me?” he asked. “From where?"

"That doesn't matter,” she said. “What does matter is that we regain your trust."

"I want you to go away,” he said.

"Enrique—"

"My name is Paavo,” he said.

"Your given name is Enrique,” she said.

"My name is Paavo.” He wasn't going to talk to her if she didn't call him by his real name.

"Paavo?” his mother called from the other room. “Are you all right?"

No, he wasn't all right. He was scared and confused and staring at the Ghost, only this time it wasn't real.

He took a deep breath to shout.

"Don't say anything,” the Ghost said. “She can't see me. She won't even know I'm here."

He wasn't going to listen to any Ghost. No matter how much she scared him.

"Mooooom!” he shouted. “Moooooooom!"

His mom came running. As she pushed open the door, the Ghost looked at Paavo. The expression on the Ghost's face was familiar. It was the sad expression she usually wore.

Only this time, it seemed like she was judging him too.

"The Ghost is here,” he said to his mom. “She's sitting on the edge of the bed."

His mom looked directly at the Ghost. The Ghost shook her head slightly and then winked out.

"I don't see anyone,” his mother said.

"She came through my links,” he said. “She said she wanted to talk to me through my links."

"You don't have functioning links,” his mother said.

"She said I do. She said my father put them in when I was little, before he left."

"Your father?” His mother was frowning now. She had come inside the room. She put her hand on the edge of the bed, right where the Ghost had been. “Your father doesn't know anything about links."

And then his mom got that scared look again, the one she had had in the school.

"Then what did she mean?” Paavo asked.

"She meant that they violated the agreement,” his mom said. “Those bastards. They violated our agreement."

"It's irregular,” said Mairtin Olberholtz. “Not to mention dangerous."

Luc Deshin bit back his irritation at the younger man. Mairtin Olberholtz had inherited his seat in the family law firm from his father, Martin Olberholtz. Luc had hired Martin fifteen years before. Luc had liked the old man. He was crusty and blunt and had a willingness to bend the law to see how far it would break.

Mairtin had no such willingness. Had this case been even slightly bendable, Luc would have demanded that Mairtin's father join them.

But this was a straightforward request, and Mairtin would fulfill it, whether he wanted to or not.

Luc put his hands behind his back and walked away from Mairtin's desk. He walked to the windows, wondering why there were curtains and why they had been pulled in the middle of the day.

The office itself was decidedly old-fashioned, with a lot of little niceties that had nothing to do with practicality and everything to do with ostentatious displays of wealth.

"The problem,” Mairtin was saying, “is that you are letting the entire city—hell, the entire universe—know that Paavo isn't your biological child."

Maybe it was time to find another attorney within the firm. Old Martin was doing less and less work, and Mairtin was too conservative for Luc. Had he known that Luc had ordered his security team to take care of the Grazians no matter what, he would have been appalled.

Even though Luc could argue that it was well within the law to go after Disappeareds when they reappeared. No court in any part of the Alliance would punish him for going after the Grazians. And if something went wrong, well, then, so what? It was the cost of doing business.

"My son knows I love him,” Luc said.

"But people will wonder why you are adopting him now. Why did you wait? They'll talk—"

"So?” Luc turned slowly, keeping his body rigid. Mairtin started. He looked small behind his big black desk, like a child playing dress up in his father's office.

"So it wouldn't be good for the child,” Mairtin said.

"It wouldn't be good for the child to have his biological parents steal him away in the middle of a school day,” Luc said, “which is exactly what they just tried to do. I can charge them with kidnapping whether or not I adopt my son. But a court will look on me much more kindly if I fulfill the legal formalities. Right?"

Mairtin sighed. “A court is going to wonder why you waited—"

"I waited on the advice of your father,” Luc snapped. “Paavo's parents are Disappeareds. They abandoned him. Your father felt we might get into messy Disappearance issues if I tried to adopt him while they were gone, living their brand new life. But they're back now, interfering with my family, and so I'm going to protect my family."

He paused, then leaned forward, placing both hands flat on Mairtin's desk.

"Think I'm going to have problems now?"

Mairtin's face reddened. “Um, no."

Luc had had enough. “I want one of your family law attorneys to handle this. I want the best you have, and that clearly is not you. Understood?"

"Yes, sir,” Mairtin said. He sounded relieved.

"I want this done as soon as possible. If you can have it done within the week, great. If you can have it done by the end of business, even better. If I have to pay to get a judge to look at the petition before midnight tonight, I will."

"I doubt any judge will act that swiftly,” Mairtin said.

Luc permitted himself another small smile. “Maybe not for you,” he said. “But I'm sure one or two of them will roust themselves for me."

Before he left the Aristotle Academy, Flint gave Selah a hastily compiled bid to redo her security system. He knew she would hire him to do so. The fact that the Grazians had just walked in without a security check through a logical loophole in her system had unnerved her.

He had gone back to his office to research the Grazians. Normally, he would have done the research throughout Armstrong, using public systems and secure databases in several of his various haunts, always covering his tracks.

But since the Grazians had already made a very public appearance by trying to remove their biological child from his school, Flint felt no qualms in doing the kind of research that anyone would do—the kind that would usually send Trackers and alien governments after the Disappeared.

The court cases filed by the Savang against the Grazians told their personal history as well as the history of the complaint.

Karoly Grazian had been a link engineer for ImaginaLink. He was paid to design new and different uses for the tiny chips that everyone had installed within their bodies. Some of the links were simply for communication, but others specialized—embedding cameras in fingertips, or adding taste buds for items humans couldn't normally taste.

Ishani Grazian had worked in customer relations for the same firm. She had marketed new and old chips to various consumer groups. Sometimes she found new ways to make old technology work for a particular group.

Six and a half years ago, the Grazians took a vacation to a major upscale resort on Sava, the home world of the Savang. The resort, Barrier Islands, catered to humans. Its brochures said it provided every possible amenity.

While there, the Grazians hiked along a mountain trail. Ishani lost her footing and fell five meters to a rock outcropping. The outcropping had only been one meter wide. If Ishani slipped again, she would have fallen forty meters to a valley filled with giant boulders.

She would not have survived.

Karoly couldn't reach her manually, so he sent one of their companions for help. Then he unwrapped a thick vine from a nearby tree. He had Ishani loop the vine around her waist and pulled her to safety.

The parts of the vine that touched human skin died almost instantly. Some chemical native to human skin killed certain plants on Sava. The vine received a kind of toxin. The trees—and their vines—were sacred to the Savang, and destroying any part of them was punishable by death.

However, Savang law also provided that non-residents of Sava could buy their way free of a legal judgment by paying a set fee. The fee for freedom from a death penalty crime was more than two million credits.

The evidence against the Grazians seemed clear enough to convict them in a Savang court. But the Grazians and several other former vacationers at the resort brought a class action suit against the Savangs, claiming that the laws protecting the trees and vines were enacted only after the Barrier Island Resort was built. The trees, which grew quickly, were planted around the resort.

Further, the lawyers said there was no evidence in Savang history that the trees were sacred. The complaint the lawyers filed claimed that the Savang passed the laws, planted the trees and looped the vines near danger spots on trails—trails they could have closed off—with full knowledge that humans would touch the trees or vines, killing them.

The Grazians and the others in the class action suit claimed the Savang created the laws with the express purpose of extorting money from wealthy human clients of the resort.

The class action suit started as a stall to prevent the death sentence. But the Savang raised the stakes. They used an old law on their books that demanded that anyone who failed to pay a fine would have to do hard labor in a Savang work camp until the fine was paid or the appeals were settled.

The Grazians didn't have the money to pay the fine, and ImaginaLink wouldn't pay it for them. They faced years of hard labor in an alien work camp—which could kill them long before the appeals finished.

So they decided to Disappear instead.

Flint frowned as he examined all of this. There was no mention, in any of the court documents, of the Grazians’ biological child. Was he at the resort? If so, where was he during the fateful hike? He would have been only six months old, unable to walk.

The questions bothered Flint so much that he stopped looking at the court documents and searched for any information on the Grazians’ children. He found a seven-year-old birth certificate for one Enrique Grazian, whose parents were listed as Ishani and Karoly Grazian.

He found no other information on Enrique. No images, no travel documents, nothing. Not even anything that established the Deshins as the child's guardians while the Grazians were gone.

Flint's stomach twisted. He hated loose ends, and this clearly was one. The Grazians were Paavo Deshin's parents. They had named him Enrique. He was born six months before the fateful vacation, before his parents Disappeared.

They clearly left him behind. Somehow the Deshins got him.

And now the Grazians had returned for him.

Flint's frown deepened.

The return was the key. The return and their carelessness about being identified.

Flint went deeper into the legal morass. His years as a Retrieval Artist had trained him to search through the legalese and find the nuggets of information he needed.

Still, it took him hours to figure out that the class action suit had been settled. It had not gone to any Multicultural Tribunal. In fact, when it looked like the case was actually going forward, the Savang proposed a settlement.

Most of the terms of the settlement were confidential, but a few were not. All charges against every single person involved in the suit were dropped.

Flint assumed that the remaining terms had to do with a financial settlement from the Savang to the humans. The Savang laws remained on the books of Sava, and nothing changed at the resort.

But the fact that the Savang were willing to settle out of court made him believe that the humans bringing the suit had been right: the laws existed only to trap aliens—in this case humans—who traveled to Sava for vacations. The idea was to bring money to the Savang—as a sort of legal extortion.

He shoved his chair away from his desk with a kind of low-level anger. Had this all happened to him, he would not have settled the suit. Or if he had, he would have made sure a warning was one of his settlement conditions. Other humans had to know the risks they were taking when they went to Sava—particularly when they went to the Barrier Islands Resort.

He stood and paced. Something else bothered him about all that he had learned.

He still didn't understand the Grazians’ actions. He understood why they Disappeared, although he didn't understand why they failed to take their child with them. Nor did he understand why they had returned for him over six years later.

Surely, they were bright enough to realize Paavo would have no memory of them. Surely, they knew that their presence in his life would be as disturbing as yanking him out of his tiny world and forcing him to Disappear. Maybe more so.

Flint went back to his desk. He probably couldn't find the answers he needed to the Paavo question, but he knew how to find Disappeareds.

And it shouldn't be that hard to find Disappeareds who no longer needed to hide.

If he couldn't figure out why the Grazians had left Enrique behind, he might simply go ask them himself.

Maxine Van Alen was sitting at her desk, tweaking an amicus brief that one of her legal assistants had prepared when the notice flashed across her links.

Someone wanted to adopt Enrique Grazian.

She stopped, closed her eyes, and rubbed three fingers across her forehead. In twenty years of practicing Disappearance law, no one had ever tried to adopt a child of a Disappeared—at least not without the Disappeareds’ permission.

There was—as she always told her associates—a first time for everything.

She opened her eyes. Her desk sat in the middle of the room, but didn't dominate it. If anything, upon entering, the eye went to the conference table near the long windows. There were other desks as well, smaller desks that mostly existed for their separate computer access. Those computers weren't networked to anything within the law office, something she'd had more than one occasion to use.

The notification that came through her public links had simply flashed in front of her left eye. Like so many legal notifications, this was actually a notification of a notification. In other words, the message she got simply informed her to look at her daily inbox—the one set aside for non-specific legal cases.

When she got an assigned case, she set up an assigned mailbox within her own computer network. The Grazian case was so old that its mailbox had disappeared along with the clients.

If she had even set up a mailbox.

She often didn't for the Disappeared.

Van Alen helped people in trouble determine if they should Disappear. If she felt that they needed a Disappearance service, she pointed them to a good service, not one of the scams that had sprung up in recent years. She facilitated the distribution and/or (usually or) sale of assets, and because she was good, she made sure that the legal trail ended with her.

In addition to helping people Disappear to avoid such prosecutions, Van Alen and her team of lawyers also argued cases in front of more than thirty Multicultural Tribunals. The amicus brief she'd been reading was for an appellate case that argued these agreements with the alien cultures were not only inhumane, but illegal under centuries of human laws.

She had signed onto cases like that before, or written briefs in support of those cases—and in all of those instances, her side had lost.

But that didn't stop her from trying.

Maxine Van Alen liked nothing more than an impossible task.

And she suddenly found herself facing one. The Enrique Grazian case presented all sorts of challenges. She slipped the notification language into any agreement that had to do with children of the Disappeared. When she first started doing the notifications, she wasn't even certain if they'd hold up in a court of law. Then when she realized that the chances of them being activated were slim, she stopped worrying.

But the worry came back the moment the Grazian notification crossed the lower corner of her left eye.

Because she would have to represent two Disappeareds in connection with their child. Only the Disappeareds had abandoned their lives and their identities.

They had given up their claim to legal status in this sector.

And she wasn't sure she could even revive it—not without some incredible legal gymnastics.

Still, she opened the file in her inbox and read the actual notification.

It was a standard document, stating that it fulfilled the terms of the foster child covenant by serving this timely notice to Attorney Maxine Van Alen of the intent of Luc and Gerda Deshin to legally adopt the child known as Paavo Deshin, a.k.a. Enrique Grazian.

Everything in the notification was in order. It was a competent legal document that followed every single requirement.

The only odd note came from the covering letter. The Deshins’ attorney wrote: I find nothing in the documentation in Paavo's files that links you to his case or his custody. We have fulfilled the notification request as we must do by law. That is the entire extent of our duties, so far as I can tell from this strange notation in Paavo's Foster Care Agreement. Unless I hear from you within 48 hours, this adoption will proceed as planned.

Forty-eight hours was not enough time. Van Alen knew that without reviewing any files as well.

She immediately sent a request for an injunction against the adoption to the appropriate family court in the city of Armstrong as well as to Olberholtz, Martinez, and Mlsnavek, the law firm that represented the Deshins. Then Van Alen drafted a request for a closed hearing within six months time, claiming she could not put together all the needed information to block Enrique Grazian's adoption in a more timely manner.

She was careful not to use the boy's new name in her draft. She didn't want the name to slip through to future drafts. The Deshins’ lawyer could claim that the use of the new name proved that Van Alen (and by implication, her clients) agreed with the merits of their case.

She wasn't sure what the merits were. She just needed the time.

Because right now, she was acting on behalf of Enrique's parents, who had Disappeared.

And she had no idea where they were.

Gerda wouldn't leave Luc alone. She kept pinging his emergency links, and every time he asked her to talk to him on their private link, she refused.

She wanted him to come home.

Luc didn't want to go home—not while he was searching for the Grazians and had the new lawyer trying to push through the adoption, maybe that night.

But for the very first time in their relationship, Gerda wouldn't listen to him. She wanted to talk to him, and she wasn't going to do it through any encrypted channel. Nor was she going to drag Paavo to the office.

Not that Luc blamed her. The day's trauma would have disturbed even the most emotionally stable child. While Paavo was brilliant and charming and enjoyable, he was anything but emotionally stable.

Luc steadied himself as he walked through the front door of his own home. He had made sure no one followed him here. He had security planted throughout the neighborhood, not just bots, cameras, and warning signs, but some real human beings as well.

Right now, he had no idea what the Grazians were trying to do, but they weren't going to succeed in stealing his son.

The house always smelled faintly of mint, which Gerda had heard was calming, and usually, the scent worked. Usually, Luc smelled it, and smiled softly to himself, realizing he had come home.

But not this afternoon. This afternoon, his heart was racing, and he was breathing shallowly. As he stepped into the living room, he realized he was closer to panic than he had been in years.

He didn't want to lose any of this. He didn't want to lose his house or his family.

He didn't want to lose his son.

Before he called for Gerda, he looked for Paavo. He pushed open the door to the boy's room, expecting to see his son asleep on the bed. The covers were mussed, but Paavo wasn't there.

Luc's heart sped up. “Gerda?” he called.

She came out of the kitchen, a towel in her hands. Her lips were thin, and frown lines had formed around her mouth and eyes.

Luc had forgotten, until that moment, what a formidable woman his wife could be.

"It's about time,” she said. “We have a very serious problem and we need to solve it now."

He didn't like her tone. She made it sound like he hadn't done anything all day.

"That's what I've been trying to do,” he snapped. “If you hadn't demanded I come home—"

"If I hadn't demanded that you come home, then we would be in even more trouble,” she said.

Something about her expression caught him. He had never seen that look on her face. “What's wrong? Did they get Paavo?"

"He's in the kitchen,” she said. “He's fine."

But Luc had to see for himself. He hurried into the kitchen. Paavo was sitting in his favorite chair, his small, too-thin body hunched over the table.

He looked up and Luc winced at the sadness in his son's face.

Sometimes his dad scared him, but not right now. Paavo heard his dad's voice from the living room, but didn't believe his dad was here until his dad burst into the kitchen. His dad was tall and athletic, the opposite of Paavo, and he was always so smart and so calm.

Only he didn't seem calm right now.

He hurried to Paavo and wrapped his arms around him, pulling him from the chair in a gigantic hug, so tight that it took Paavo's breath away.

"Daddy?” Paavo managed. “Are you okay?"

His dad eased Paavo back just enough so that they could look each other in the face. Unlike his mom, his dad could hold Paavo and not seem tired or winded, even though Paavo was getting taller and heavier by the day.

"Now that I know you are.” His dad smoothed Paavo's hair away from his forehead. “I won't let anyone take you, you know that, right?"

Paavo did know that. Whatever his dad could prevent, he would. Paavo felt a relief so big that tears threatened.

His dad wiped at the bottom of Paavo's eyes. Clearly he'd seen the tears and this time, they didn't bother his dad.

"I know you're scared, Paavo,” his dad said, “but we'll solve this. I promise."

Paavo nodded and put his head against his dad's shoulder, like he used to do when he was little.

"Thanks, Daddy,” he said, and snuggled closer. “Thanks so much."

Luc held his son for a long moment. Paavo hadn't cuddled like this in a year, maybe more. Luc had started to wonder if his brilliant, difficult son was outgrowing him. At some point, Paavo would realize that his dad wasn't that smart.

Luc was just tough and determined. He liked having smart people around him, and he listened to them. He didn't always take their advice, but he listened. He knew how to take responsibility, he knew how to act, and he knew what he wanted.

Most people didn't know those things.

But his wife did. She came up to his side and put her hand on Paavo's back.

"We have to talk,” she said to Luc.

He nodded, just enough to answer her, but not enough to disturb Paavo. He was about to carry Paavo to his room, when Paavo stirred.

"This isn't stuff you want me to hear, is it?” he said to his mom.

She sighed. Sometimes, she said, it was difficult having a precocious child. He understood too much and not enough at the same time.

"It'll be better if we can talk in private,” she said.

Luc expected protests—that was usually how Paavo reacted—but this time, Paavo just nodded. He let go of Luc's neck, and let Luc set him down.

"Can I stay in here?” Paavo asked, and Luc suddenly understood that his son was afraid to go back to his room.

"Yes,” Gerda said. “We'll shut the door."

Paavo returned to the table. He had been working some kind of puzzle there. One of the teachers had given him puzzles, not computerized things either, but very old-fashioned, very expensive toys from Earth, saying that a puzzle of 3000 pieces or more would challenge Paavo's mind and rest it at the same time.

Luc let Gerda lead him out of the kitchen back to the living room. She pulled the door between them closed, and then, before he said anything, activated the soundproofing.

"I don't think that's wise,” he said. “I want to be able to hear if something happens to Paavo."

"I have set the security system so that it'll break through the soundproofing if there's even the slightest problem,” she said.

"I'll monitor Paavo through my link to the house,” Luc said.

She grabbed his wrist. “No, you won't."

He looked at her hand, small against his massive arm. That look would have intimated most people. It didn't seem to bother her at all.

"Karoly Grazian installed links in Paavo,” she said.

"We knew that.” The links were tiny chips, put in much too early, so early that the bones had developed over them. The doctors claimed they could be removed, but it would be painful and possibly damaging to Paavo. “The doctors said they were inactive."

"They were wrong.” She hadn't let go of Luc's wrist.

He wasn't even sure she knew she held onto him so tightly.

She leaned into him. “The Ghosts came through the links. They were programmed in. The Ghosts are the Grazians, Luc. They set up a program so that they could talk to Paavo. They've run programs ever since they left him."

He felt cold. “What kind of programs?"

"I don't know exactly. I'm just getting him to talk about them. But he remembers when we took him to the doctors. He remembers all that talk about the line between genius and insanity being thin. He's scared to tell us, afraid we'll think he's lost his mind."

Luc put his other hand over Gerda's and freed himself from her grip. Then he walked to his favorite chair. He couldn't quite bring himself to sit down—he was too nervous to sit—but he didn't like pacing either.

So he just grabbed the chair's back and looked out the window at the quiet street, the street he had thought perfect for raising children.

That had been his intent: raising children here, not just one child. But he had also wanted the smartest children he could get, and he knew that wouldn't happen biologically. He had some brains, and Gerda was smart, but together, they wouldn't produce brilliant children.

He knew it, and he knew it would be his fault. He investigated enhancements, but found out that they went wrong more times than they helped. The child—while brilliant early on—was prone to organic brain disorders, which could be treated, but never cured.

He considered himself a risk-taker, but not that kind of risk-taker. He knew, because of his work, that there were a lot of children who ended up unwanted or abandoned. A few of them were babies, and he hired someone to test those babies. He wanted first choice of the brilliant ones.

Which wasn't quite how he found Paavo. His employee had heard about a couple about to Disappear. They needed someone to care for their son, who wasn't being pursued by the aliens.

The couple's delusional or very naive, his employee said. They believe they'll be back within the year. I know of no Disappeared who ever returns.

Luc gambled on that, and took Paavo, who was stunningly brilliant—so brilliant that Luc abandoned the thought of raising other children. He and Gerda could barely keep up with Paavo. The boy needed their full attention from the moment he entered their lives.

"All the problems we've had with Paavo,” Luc said softly, not looking at Gerda, “it's because of the Grazians?"

"We haven't had problems.” She was always stubborn about defending that boy. Even though he was difficult, she saw him as perfect, the difficulties coming from his vast intelligence and nothing else.

"The emotional instability,” Luc said. “His night terrors."

"Oh.” Her voice was small, like it always was when he got her to admit there was something abnormal about Paavo. “Yes, I think those come from these links."

Luc nodded. “They did what, these two people? They tried to scare him?"

"I think they tried to keep themselves in his mind as his parents. But they have no idea how smart he is. He knows we're his parents. So the images confused him and scared him. And he knew very early they weren't real. So he thought he was making them up."

Luc's hand tightened on the chair top. His fingernails dug into the upholstery. The Grazians had terrorized his son for his entire life. And now, they were doing it in person.

"You could have told me this via our links,” he said. He still wasn't looking at her. He didn't want her to see the expression on his face. His employees told him that when he got this way—cold and angry, calculating and vengeful—his face became something terrible to behold.

"No,” she said. “I couldn't."

Something in her voice made him turn. Her expression was so flat that he had a hunch it mirrored his own. She was furious, just like he was.

Only furious was too mild a word. The coldness he felt—the coldness evident on her face—was something he would call a killing rage in his own private moments.

He had never seen his wife like this.

"I don't trust the links any more,” she said. “Because this afternoon, Ishani Grazian showed up in Paavo's bedroom."

"What?” Luc said. “You should have—"

Gerda held up her hand, silencing him. “She showed up through what Paavo called her Ghost image—the old image—but talking to him in real time. His links are active somehow. Even though every test we ran says they weren't."

Luc frowned for a moment, about to ask why that mattered with his links, and then he remembered: Karoly Grazian had designed links. Obviously, he had made the links specially for Paavo and knew how to activate them.

Who knew what else Karoly Grazian could do with links. No wonder Gerda was being cautious.

"They told us that they were leaving his life for good,” Gerda was saying, her voice tight and controlled. But Luc could hear the fury in it. “They told us that they wanted him raised by loving parents, that they didn't want him to live a life on the run. They told us that it was better this way."

She paused for breath, her cheeks red.

Then she said, “They lied."

He nodded. Lying wasn't as great a sin to him. People lied. But the Grazians had messed with his child's mind. With Paavo's brilliant mind.

And that was unforgivable.

"We'll be careful on the links,” he said. “You start the research. We'll find the best doctors to remove those from Paavo. In the meantime, we'll find an expert to deactivate them."

"But right now, they can get to him,” Gerda said.

"You keep him at your side,” Luc said. “If he sees his Ghosts, have him tell you."

"What are you going to do?” Gerda asked.

He made himself let go of the chair back. “I'm going to make sure these people never interfere with our son again."

Hours of tracking the Grazians through the public cameras placed all over Armstrong. Flint had created a gigantic screen over the blank spot in his office floor. He had let the police program—one of many he had designed—search for the Grazians’ features, tracing them as they moved from the port into the city, but he also insisted on watching the images, to make sure that the program hadn't given him false positives.

So far, he hadn't located where they were staying, but he knew he was close. He hadn't expected them to use their real names; that identity had been compromised seven years ago. He figured they were using their Disappeared identities. It wasn't quite fair to call those identities new—they had had them for almost seven years now—but that wasn't how the two of them were known in Armstrong.

Finding out those identities would be impossible, at least through the usual channels. He never tracked Disappeareds through the new identity. If he stumbled on it, then he considered himself lucky. But so far, he hadn't stumbled on anything.

All he could say for certain was that they came through the port, traveled west once they left it, and a few days later, ended up at the Aristotle Academy.

A ping startled him. A new screen floated above his desk. Someone was outside his office—the second time in two days. And it wasn't just any someone.

It was Maxine Van Alen.

Flint frowned. He couldn't remember Van Alen ever coming to his office before. They had worked together on a number of projects—including one to bring down the largest law firm on Armstrong.

In all the years they'd worked together, Van Alen had never before come to Flint's office. She had always demanded he come to hers.

Her visit was so unusual that he had his system double-check her identity before he unlocked the door so that she could come inside. As she pulled the door open, Flint saved the programs he was working on, and compressed the screens.

Van Alen always looked stunning. On this day, she wore a black and white dress—the bodice white and the skirt black. Only the divider wasn't horizontal along her hips, it was a diagonal slash that ran from one shoulder to the top of the other thigh. She had colored her hair black to match the skirt, with a white streak that ran in the opposite diagonal from the skirt. She had also coordinated her eyes—her pupils were black with a single white slash going through them—as well as her fingernails. The entire effect made her seem exotic—or it would have, if it weren't for the Moon dust coating her black and white shoes, and her legs up to mid-calf.

Flint suppressed a smile. She hadn't noticed the Moon dust. She would be annoyed when she did.

"Maxine,” he said as the door closed behind her. “To what do I owe this honor?"

"I need your services immediately,” she said. “You're the only person I can trust with this."

He hated sentences about trust. They always made him feel obligated—and Maxine Van Alen was smart enough to understand that.

"What happened?"

"I have, of all things, a domestic,” she said. “And it's happening fast. The other side has a judge in their pocket. We're due in court by eight tonight, and I can't seem to get a stay."

Flint shrugged. “I can't help you with court."

"I know that,” Van Alen said. “But you might be able to help me find my clients."

Now he was intrigued. “Hold on,” he said. He went to the back and got the chair for the second time in two days. He was beginning to think he should just leave it in the front room. He seemed to bend about providing it to clients anyway.

"I take it your clients are Disappeareds,” he said as he returned.

"And someone wants to adopt their only child,” she said.

He set the chair down, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise. She couldn't be working on the same case, could she?

"I'm pretty sure it's legal to adopt the child of a Disappeared,” she said as she sat down. “Technically, if they leave a child behind, they have abandoned it. Especially since they've changed their identities, and fled punishment for a crime."

She noticed the Moon dust on her skin and brushed at it. It clung to her hand.

"But,” she said, “I have always put in the foster care agreement that if the foster parents want to adopt the Disappeareds’ child, I receive notification of the intent to adopt. The theory is that the notification would allow me to contact my clients, the Disappeareds, and I would act on their behalf."

"You would search out a Disappeared because the people who raised their child wanted to adopt?” Flint asked.

"When I set this up,” Van Alen said, “I thought I would make a valid attempt. Honestly, I did it to salve my conscience. These children already have a difficult life. I thought this might make things easier—particularly for the older children—if they knew exactly what their biological parents’ wishes were."

"I can't believe a parent would leave a child behind,” Flint said.

"I know you can't, Miles,” Van Alen said, “but that's just because you can't see past your own circumstance. And if you had to Disappear because of some case, and for some reason, you couldn't take Talia, I'm sure you would provide for her. You might even find the right people to raise her or someone to adopt her."

He couldn't imagine the circumstance. But he hoped he would be that farsighted.

"Sometimes people leave overnight. They don't have time to take care of everything,” Van Alen was saying.

"Finding a decent home for your child is not something you leave to the last minute,” Flint said.

She shrugged. “Not everyone is like you. Besides, this clause wasn't important. It had never been activated, not in all of my years working with the foster agency or the Disappeared."

"Until now,” Flint said.

"Until now.” She folded her hands on her lap.

"You actually want to search out a Disappeared because someone cares for a child enough to make the relationship with that child permanent?” Flint asked.

Van Alen sighed. “I have an obligation to search them out."

Flint frowned, thinking of the images he had seen of Paavo Deshin, screaming as his biological parents touched him. “And if the child doesn't remember the Disappeared?"

"Oh, it's a mess, I know that,” Van Alen said. “The entire Disappearance system is a mess. And that's what has me thinking."

Flint leaned back in his chair. Sometimes Van Alen overstepped. “Thinking what?” he asked.

"Normally, in cases like this,” she said, “I would advise the Disappeareds to let the child go. There are a variety of reasons. Some are simple. The Disappeareds usually can't return for their day in court. They ran away to save their own lives. I would make a good faith effort to find them—maybe just a short search, confirming that they did indeed Disappear—and then I'd let the adoption proceed."

"But you're not going to do that in this case,” Flint said.

"In this case,” Van Alen said, “the Disappeareds have been cleared. They can come home. They can actually go to court and fight for their child."

Flint felt cold. This had to be the Grazian/Deshin case. Did she know he was already working on it? If so, how?

"The problem is,” Van Alen said, “I have to find them immediately. I need them by tonight. If I know exactly where they are, and they can't get here by this evening, I have my grounds for a stay."

"You want me to find them,” Flint said.

She nodded.

"Yet,” Flint said, “you would normally advise them to stay put. You would tell them the child was already lost to them. What's different? They still chose to leave the child behind."

Van Alen gave him an odd look. “You don't approve of this, Miles?” she asked. “Why not?"

He waved a hand at her, forestalling this part of the conversation. “Finish telling me what you're thinking. This isn't about the Disappeared couple or their child, is it?"

Her eyes lit up. “There are several factors here. First, the family had to split up because the parents Disappeared. They didn't want to drag the child into a life on the run."

"So they thought it better to have the child raised by people they didn't know?"

"They had no idea how long they would be gone. They were in a class action suit against the alien government—"

"This is Ishani and Karoly Grazian,” Flint said.

Van Alen's mouth opened a little, and then closed. Flint had never seen her flummoxed before, but that was what he had done. He had flummoxed her.

"How did you know?” she asked.

"The details are familiar,” he said. “I'll tell you why in a minute. Finish telling me why this is so important to you."

"Okay.” She had to take a deep breath to gather herself again. “They didn't think they would be gone very long. They were set up. This crime—"

"I'm familiar with it,” Flint said.

"Then you understand. Their Disappearance is even more sympathetic than most. And now that they won their suit, they can return home."

"That still doesn't explain why you're so pleased to have this case,” Flint said.

Her eyes narrowed. “There are several factors. First, the adoption is coming now. Why did the foster parents wait? Secondly, one of the foster parents is well known in criminal circles."

"There's no proof that Luc Deshin is a criminal. Just that he has had interactions with criminals,” Flint said, a little more primly than he intended. “I've had interactions with criminals. So have you."

"But we're not considered a conduit to Armstrong's underworld,” Van Alen said. “Deshin is."

Flint sighed. “That's still not enough. What is it about this case that has you so motivated?'

"We will probably lose,” she said. “But that's what I want. I want to appeal this all the way to the Multicultural Tribunals. This is the kind of case I've been waiting for. This case calls into question the entire system of treaties on which the Earth Alliance is based."

She would lose. No one had challenged the treaty system and won. At least, not yet.

But he couldn't make that argument. She would say that it only took one case to break down the barriers. So he tried a different tack.

"You're proposing something that will take years,” Flint said.

Van Alen nodded.

"What about the child?” Flint asked. “He'll be in constant limbo. You'll ruin his life."

"What kind of life can he have as Luc Deshin's child?” Van Alen asked.

Flint frowned. He hesitated for just a moment, then he punched up the gigantic screen he had had up before. Only instead of the images of the Grazians he was culling from various cameras all over Armstrong, he called up the security footage from Aristotle Academy.

He focused it on the playground and kept the image of young Paavo Deshin in the center of the frame.

"This is Paavo Deshin,” Flint said. “You know him as Enrique Grazian. And those people hovering in the back there, that's Ishani and Karoly Grazian. They tried to kidnap the boy today. Watch his reaction to them."

Flint ran the images, but didn't look at them. The little boy's anguished face was already burned into his memory. That child's reaction was deeper than fear of strangers. Something about these people terrified him.

Van Alen swore softly. She crossed her arms and looked away.

"We don't know what caused that reaction,” she said. “Maybe Luc Deshin told that boy that anyone who tried to take him away was going to kill him."

"Maybe,” Flint agreed. “Or maybe Deshin is setting up the adoption today to make sure he won't lose his child to the Grazians."

"You don't like them, do you, Miles?” Van Alen asked.

"The Grazians?” Flint asked. “I don't know them. But the fact that they left that child behind bothers me. I see nothing in the record that tells me why they did. Their excuse is flimsy. They should have Disappeared with him."

Van Alen studied him for a moment. The image on the screen to her side had frozen on Paavo Deshin's terrified face. But she had turned enough in her chair so that she didn't have to look at him.

Obviously, his expression did disturb her, and she wasn't going to think about it. She thought her assault on the treaty system was more important than one young child.

"You're not going to tell me where they are, are you, Miles?” she asked.

"I don't know where they are,” he said. “I've been trying to track them for hours."

"Track?” she asked, picking up on the word. She knew he hated Trackers.

"Yeah,” he said. “The Grazians are no longer in any danger, so I figure there's no reason to be careful."

Her lips thinned.

"I'm working for the Aristotle Academy,” he said. “They want to protect Paavo."

"I'd like to hire you as well,” Van Alen said. “Maybe get you to speed up, find them quickly, and get them to court tonight."

He glanced at the image. The little boy had already wormed his way into Flint's heart.

"How can bringing them to court make things worse?” she asked. “It might settle everything."

"It might,” Flint said.

"Luc Deshin is a criminal,” Van Alen said.

"So, technically, are the Grazians,” Flint said. “The court did not invalidate the laws of Sava. It just pardoned all of the people trapped in that cycle."

She stood. Her body blocked the image of Paavo's face. “I'm going to act in the Grazians’ interests whether they come to court or not,” she said.

Of course she was. And she might be able to get her stay. It wouldn't hurt to tell her where the Grazians were, if he could find them.

And he probably could by eight o'clock that evening.

"If I find them,” he said, “I promise I'll let you know."

"But you won't contact them yourself, will you?” Van Alen said.

"All I've been hired to do is locate them,” Flint said. “By the Aristotle Academy and now by you. You're still paying my full fee and expenses, by the way."

She grinned. “I wouldn't have it any other way."

She walked around the image. Then she stopped, her hand on the door.

"That child's future is really none of our business, you know,” she said. “We should just do our jobs. Mine is to act in his parents’ best interest. Yours is to find them. What happens after that isn't up to us."

Flint bit back his initial response. He just nodded, and said, “I know."

She smiled at him, as if she approved of what he said, and then she let herself out the door.

He sighed and sank into his chair, looking at Paavo Deshin's terrified face. If Flint had been the kind of man who believed in doing his job and nothing else, he would still be a police detective, a man who handed children like Paavo Deshin over to alien governments to answer for their parents’ crimes.

Van Alen was right; the treaty system was unfair. Flint hated it too. But he wasn't willing to sacrifice one little boy's future to pursue a court case that might or might not change the way the universe worked.

If he found the Grazians, he would tell Van Alen so that the Grazians could show up to court. But he would show up too. And he would speak up if he felt it necessary.

The question was, what side would he step in for?

He still wasn't sure.

But, looking at Paavo's tear-streaked face, he knew who he would defend.

Luc's people couldn't find the Grazians. He paced his office, feeling frustrated, feeling pressured.

Feeling frightened.

These people had damaged his son. Now he would have to take the boy to specialists just to have those links shut down. Paavo hated doctors—Paavo hated anything outside of routine.

Luc used to think all of Paavo's tics came from his great intelligence. Now he wondered if the Grazians hadn't caused those tics, with their programmed contacts, the adult communications.

Luc shuddered. Part of him was relieved his people hadn't found the Grazians. For them to show up dead on this day, after all of the discoveries, after the contact with Paavo, would confirm what people had suspected for more than a decade:

There was a darkness to Luc's business. One he tolerated of necessity.

One he used when he had to.

Only he had never used it for personal gain. And while this wasn't personal gain, it was personal.

It was revenge.

Revenge and fear and all of those things he never admitted to. He wanted those people to pay for contacting his child. For hurting his child.

He wanted to hurt them back.

And he still might. But he wouldn't do so on this day. He had an adoption to finish.

That might be enough: An adoption, shutting off the links, repairing poor Paavo as best as possible.

Then again, it might not. Karoly Grazian had designed links. What else had he put into Luc's son? What else could he trigger?

And why?

That was what bothered Luc the most. Why did the Grazians torment the child when they had given him up in the first place?

Luc continued to pace, unable to think about his work or anything else. Anything except these two horrible people and Paavo. Paavo's fear-filled eyes.

Luc clenched his fists. In the morning, no matter what the outcome of the adoption, he would hire a Retrieval Artist. He would find those two horrible people. Once he had their location, he would figure out how to take care of them.

He wouldn't threaten them. That was too unsophisticated. He wouldn't force them to leave Armstrong either, because they could still contact Paavo through modified links.

He would figure out a way to shut the Grazians down. And he would do it with cold calculation. Not this edge of panic.

He would make sure they never harmed his son again.

After Van Alen left, Flint continued his search for the Grazians. The program he had designed had followed them from the port to one of the older sections of Armstrong—although not as old as this section.

They had gone to a series of low-rent hotels, always coming out looking discouraged.

Even the lowest-rent hotels wanted some form of identification or a great deal of money. Flint glanced at the time stamp. All of this had happened four days before.

Before Van Alen had shown up, he would have gone to the hotels himself, figuring he had time to continue his search, maybe over a couple of days. He would have learned their new name or the barrier to staying in some of those hotels. He would have gathered a great deal of information.

But he didn't have that luxury. So he let the program continue, glancing idly at it as he conducted another bit of research.

This one was for him. He examined old hospital records, as well as records from the foster care system. He had already found Paavo's birth certificate. He wanted to find more. He wanted to see if the name Grazian turned up before they left on their so-called vacation.

It did. One of the local hospitals had a child-rearing program, and Ishani Grazian had registered for it. She specifically asked for a program for difficult children, which did not exist, although the program coordinator made note of it.

Ishani Grazian was referred to a mental health specialist. She was told he specialized in difficult children. He didn't; he specialized in inadequate parents.

Flint leaned back in his chair. How could a child who, at that time was only a few months old, be difficult? He had raised a baby from birth to toddler; all of them were difficult. Babies cried, and parents got no sleep. Some babies had health problems, which made the situation worse.

But Paavo—then Enrique Grazian—hadn't had health issues. He was a very healthy baby. But something had gone wrong.

The other program pinged Flint. He looked up. The trail had stopped at one of the low-rent hotels. He went back several hours and scanned through the images.

The Grazians had hurried to the hotel after leaving the Aristotle Academy. Ishani Grazian had been crying. Her husband cradled her the entire way, his arm around her.

Flint had the sense that Karoly Grazian wasn't trying to stop her tears, but to keep her face away from the cameras.

He knew they had broken the law.

Flint examined all of the cameras around the low-rent hotel. He found no evidence that the Grazians had left. They were probably holed up inside, planning what to do next.

He sighed. He had promised Van Alen he would let her know that he had found them.

He had also made the same promise to Selah Rutledge.

He contacted both women, and waited for them to tell him what they wanted him to do next.

Gerda fed Paavo a dinner he didn't want, and then made him dress in his best outfit. It was a blue suit with a long coat that made him seem taller than he was.

When he came out of his room in that suit, wearing his shiny shoes, his hair neatly combed, he looked older than he ever had.

She put an arm around him, pulling him close. He leaned against her for an instant, then straightened, trying to be adult.

She had already explained to him that he was going to go with her to court. They would have bodyguards so that no one could go after Paavo when he left the house. Still, she had been reluctant to take him out of this safe place, but Luc insisted.

The lawyer Luc hired figured it would be best if Paavo was there, so that the judge could see just how much the Deshins loved him.

He won't be some generic child, Luc said. The court will see that he's our child. They'll see how special he is, and how much he needs us.

Paavo slipped his hand in hers. He looked up at her. She gave him her best smile. She didn't want him to know how nervous she was.

Yes, they loved him. Yes, they had cared for him since he was six months old. Yes, they had given him the best life they possibly could.

But she knew what everyone in Armstrong said about Luc. He had been arrested half a dozen times, but he had never been convicted. He always stayed on the right side of the law, letting the people around him do the difficult work.

If the lawyer for the other side got any of those people to testify, things could go horribly wrong.

"Something's really bad, isn't it, Mommy?” Paavo asked, echoing her thoughts. Every time he did that, it unnerved her.

"Things could be better,” she said. Then she noted that he had called her “Mommy,” something he hadn't done in a very long time.

She hugged him again.

"But we'll get through it,” she said to him. “We always do."

The courthouse was a large building in Armstrong's City Center. There actually wasn't one courthouse but several, all of them attached to Police Headquarters or to the jail.

It always made Luc Deshin's heart speed up to go inside any of the courtrooms. He had been sixteen and in trouble the first time he had come here. Somehow, without a lawyer, he had talked his way out.

But that experience stuck with him. Every time he walked through the faux glass doors into the faux marble corridor, he felt sixteen again and out of his depth. This time, he had a pretty, young lawyer beside him.

Celestine Gonzalez was the lawyer that Mairtin Olberholtz had recommended. Luc researched her and was pleased; she was young, but she had won every difficult case she'd been asked to handle.

Luc himself didn't intimidate her. When he had entered her office, already angry at Mairtin, she had smiled at Luc.

I see you've met the new boss, she said with a twinkle in her eye. That one comment had relaxed Luc. Her later analysis had calmed him as well.

You have a certain reputation in this town, she had said. I am going to neutralize it. This case will be about the loving home you have provided for Paavo, and how that boy has thrived under your care. And from what I can tell, I won't be stretching any points. Before you got here, I spoke with the administrators of the Aristotle Academy. You have quite a special child there, one that they say couldn't be as special as he is without nurturing.

She had flattered Luc and relaxed him at the same time. He only wished she could do the same thing now.

They had one of the family law courtrooms on the second floor. It had been designed in something called the Federal Style—all columns and faux marble and simple wooden-appearing benches, with a matching balcony. The judge's bench was high, with a witness stand to the right. The jury box—empty for this case—stood to the left. It had the most comfortable chairs in the room.

Luc and Gonzalez sat behind one of the tables up front. The other was reserved for the Grazians, should they show, or their lawyer. Gonzalez had already informed Luc that they did have a lawyer, and she was trying to slow down the proceedings, something he hadn't wanted.

Gerda hadn't arrived yet, which worried him. He wanted her here now. He had already checked with her—she had left just a few minutes ago. The bodyguards were with her. He had put his best men beside her and Paavo. He had robotic guards following, as well as a few of his seedier employees keeping the perimeter.

If the Grazians chose to attack his son on the way to the courthouse, they would never make it inside.

But Luc did know better than to go after them here.

The hearing was scheduled for eight sharp. It was a few minutes before, and so far, the Grazians hadn't shown up. Neither had their lawyer.

A slender man with curly blond hair slipped into the back. He had the palest skin Luc had ever seen and eyes so blue they seemed artificial. He nodded once, as if he knew who Luc was, then sank into one of the hard seats.

But no one else followed him inside.

"What if they don't come?” Luc asked Gonzalez.

"We make our petition, and we win,” she said. “It'll be uncontested."

She had been facing forward. As she spoke, she glanced back at the door and saw the blond man.

"You didn't hire a Retrieval Artist, did you?” she asked Luc quietly.

"No.” He didn't tell her that he planned to do so if the Grazians didn't show themselves this evening.

"Hmm.” She smiled at the man behind them. “What's your interest in this, Miles?"

"I'm just an observer, Celestine,” said the man in the back.

"Who's that?” Luc asked.

"A former client,” she said. “And an excellent Retrieval Artist."

The panic rose inside Luc again and he had to let out a slow breath to knock it back. It didn't matter that a Retrieval Artist was here. It didn't matter if the Grazians showed up. It didn't even matter if the adoption failed.

Luc had contingency plan after contingency plan. He would make sure that no one took his son from him.

Not ever.

Gerda clutched Paavo's hand as they hurried up the marble steps inside the courthouse. The place was empty, and that unnerved her. She turned to the guards who were a few steps behind them.

"Keep an eye out,” she said.

For what, she wasn't certain.

Paavo was getting winded. She had to slow down so that he could keep up.

"I thought you said we were going to meet Dad.” He gasped the words.

"We are,” she said. “He's in a room at the top of the stairs."

Or so she hoped. She reached the top of the stairs and pushed open the double doors. To her relief, Luc stood at the front of the courtroom with a pretty, dark-haired woman beside him.

She had to be the lawyer. She seemed awfully young to have their entire family's fate in her hands.

Paavo let go of Gerda and ran to his dad. He wrapped his arms around Luc, and to her surprise, Luc let him. Luc kept one hand on Paavo's head, holding him close, but looked at Gerda.

For the first time in her memory, her husband looked shaken.

"Is everything all right?” she mouthed.

He shrugged.

He didn't know. That unsettled her even more.

"All rise,” someone said from the front. A man not to far from Gerda stood. He was blond and pale. She had never seen him before.

He was the only other person in the courtroom, and she knew he wasn't Karoly Grazian.

"You and Paavo should sit behind us,” the lawyer said.

Luc disengaged Paavo. Gerda hurried to the front and took her son's hand as the judge entered.

She was older than everyone in the room combined. Or she had enhanced herself to look that way. She had steel gray hair, a thin but lined face, and a pinched mouth.

Gerda's breath caught in her throat. She had to trust that woman? She didn't want to think about it. She put her arm around Paavo's shoulder and pulled him gently into the bench along with her.

Then the voice told them they could all sit down.

The judge gaveled the session to order.

"I'm scared, Mommy,” Paavo whispered.

Me, too, Gerda thought. But she didn't say it. Instead, she gave her son a brave smile, took his hand, and prayed everything would go her way.

The Grazians were already two minutes late, which wasn't going to help their case with the judge. Maxine Van Alen had sent one of her associates to fetch them. The associate had contacted her to let her know that he had found them and they were coming to court—"gladly,” he had said, although she was beginning to doubt it.

They should have been here by now.

If she didn't get upstairs in three more minutes, she would lose the case by default. Judge Connelly did not tolerate tardiness in her courtroom.

Van Alen had started for the stairs when the courthouse door opened. A couple hurried in, followed by her associate. The Grazians. She thought she had forgotten what they looked like, but the moment she saw them, she remembered—and shuddered ever so slightly.

She had loathed Karoly Grazian. The man had been controlling, the kind of person who never listened to advice, and felt everyone's opinion was worth less than his own.

The entire case came back to her then—her arguments to the Grazians six and a half years ago that they shouldn't Disappear if they filed the class action suit, but if they did Disappear, they should not file the suit.

If you stay, you make a compelling argument for your innocence, she had said. If you go, you should simply become brand-new people and not let the past hold you.

They hadn't taken either bit of advice. She had given the class action suit to another lawyer, partly because she didn't want to fight for clients who refused to stick around and fight for themselves.

Ishani Grazian clung to her husband's hand. The woman irritated Van Alen more than the husband did. She did everything Karoly told her to, especially when he told her that all of his ideas were for her own good.

"We have to get upstairs now,” Van Alen said, “or we will lose by default."

She didn't wait for them, but started climbing the stairs. She had planned to discuss her entire strategy with them before they went inside the courtroom, but their tardiness made the discussion impossible.

As she opened the double doors, she felt a palpable sense of relief. She didn't want to discuss appeals or the treaty system with them. She didn't want to talk about spending years on this case.

Did that mean she wouldn't do the best job she could for her clients?

She hoped not.

She would still do the best she could. But she would do it all on her terms, not on theirs.

"So good of you to join us, Ms. Van Alen,” the judge said.

Flint turned slightly in his seat. Maxine Van Alen had burst through the doors, looking frazzled. He didn't see her clients.

"I'm sorry we're late, Judge,” she said. “My clients just arrived."

But they clearly hadn't caught up yet. Flint glanced at the front of the courtroom. Luc Deshin looked flustered. Celestine Gonzalez, who had once helped Flint with some legalities concerning Talia, had folded her hands in front of her stomach.

Deshin's wife had turned slightly in her seat, and so did her frightened young son.

"We plan to fight this adoption, your honor,” Van Alen said as she walked to the front of the courtroom. “We were sandbagged here, with no time to prepare—"

"On the contrary, Ms. Van Alen,” the judge said. “You had years to prepare for this. I'm not even sure your clients have standing."

"They do, your honor,” she said. “They're the biological parents."

"Who Disappeared,” the judge said.

"The charges against them have been dropped,” Van Alen said. “They have returned, ready to resume their lives."

"Six and a half years later,” the judge said. “An eternity in the life of a child."

The little boy straightened. Flint frowned. The child knew they were talking about him. Flint wasn't even sure the boy should be here, but it wasn't Flint's call.

Flint's companion hadn't shown up yet either. He had told Selah Rutledge to come to the courthouse. He had told her the Grazians would be here.

If she was smart, she would bring the police officers who had handled this morning's attack with her. He had told her to do so, but she had harrumphed him, like she often did. He could never tell if that meant she agreed with him or disagreed with him.

Footsteps echoed outside the door. He turned again, expecting to see Selah.

Instead, two people he had only seen in surveillance imagery walked through. A husband and wife, looking washed out and frightened, wearing the same clothes they had worn that morning.

The Grazians.

And as they entered, they looked at no one except the little boy, shivering up front.

It was them. His mom hadn't told him they would be here. Paavo grabbed her arm so hard that she gasped, but she didn't pull away. Instead, she pulled him closer.

His heart was pounding so hard that it hurt. They were coming closer and closer and closer, and he wanted to bury his face in his mom's neck, but he couldn't. He didn't dare look away from them.

"Are they really here?” he asked his mom.

She nodded.

They were only a meter or so away. The woman reached out for him—

And he couldn't help it. He screamed. He screamed and backed up, nearly falling off the bench. His dad pulled him against the columned fence between the bench and the table, holding him. His mom stood in front of him, blocking his view.

"Stay away!” Paavo screamed. “Stay away!"

"Ms. Gonzalez,” the judge said. “Do something to soothe that child."

"Is there somewhere safe he can go?” Paavo's mother asked.

Safe. They wanted him safe. Paavo leaned against his dad. That woman was still staring at him, trying to say something, but he wasn't going to listen. He wouldn't listen.

"My chambers,” the judge said.

His mom picked him up. His dad said he could do it, but she said, no, you need to stay here. Then she carried Paavo to the back, through a door that the judge opened for them.

Away from those people. Away.

Until he saw the Ghosts standing in front of him, and he screamed again.

"They're on his links!” his mother screamed. “Make them stop!"

Somehow she knew. She knew.

"If you're interfering with that child,” the judge said. “Then—"

The Ghosts disappeared. The door closed. Paavo trembled.

"Are they gone?” his mom asked.

"They're outside,” he whispered.

"But you can't see them in here, can you?” she asked.

"No,” he said.

"Good.” She set him on a soft couch. There was a desk and a window that overlooked the City Center. And a robe hanging from a peg.

"We'll wait in here until they go away,” his mom said. “Don't worry, I'll be with you the whole time."

He nodded, as if it made a difference. But she had been with him a lot when he saw the Ghosts, and that usually didn't make them go away. Although that judge lady had helped.

Maybe it would all stop now.

Maybe.

"I don't know what you just did,” Van Alen said as she helped her clients to the table beside her. “But whatever it was, was pretty damn stupid."

Karoly Grazian glared at her. Ishani Grazian looked worried. The judge had pulled the door to her chambers closed and resumed her place at the bench.

"These people scare my son, Judge,” Luc Deshin said.

His lawyer shushed him.

"That's pretty obvious, Mr. Deshin,” the judge said. “What did you do to that child?"

Van Alen looked at her clients. The question had gone directly to them.

"Nothing,” Karoly Grazian said.

"That wasn't nothing. That boy is terrified of you and he thought you had gotten into my chambers,” the Judge said.

"If I may, Judge,” Luc Deshin said. “I know what they did."

His lawyer was shushing him, but it seemed to do no good.

"Quickly, Mr. Deshin."

"They have been using his links since he was a tiny baby. We just found out about it. Grazian here designed links and he messed with Paavo's somehow. Paavo thinks they're ghosts. He's terrified of them and convinced they'll hurt him."

"They did try to hurt him, Judge,” Deshin's lawyer said. “They tried to kidnap Paavo today."

The judge's eyebrows went up.

Van Alen felt her cheeks heat. Flint had been right. She should have left this one alone. She had known nothing about the links.

"Is this true, Counselor?” the judge asked Van Alen.

She turned to her clients. “Is it true?” she asked softly.

Karoly stood defiantly, saying nothing.

"Is it true?” Van Alen asked.

"You'll answer or be held in contempt of this court,” the judge said.

"We didn't mean to terrorize him,” Ishani said. “We just wanted him to remember us. We thought we would be back for him. And we did come back. We're back now."

"Your honor,” the lawyer said, “I have submitted all sorts of documentation about the Deshin home. This child is well cared for and loved. Our petition—"

"Is granted,” the judge said. “I have no idea why you're even here, Ms. Van Alen. There was nothing to fight. These people abandoned their child six and half years ago. The fact that they've been terrorizing him ever since is just appalling to me."

"It's not terrorizing,” Ishani said. “All we did was tell him that we loved him."

The judge looked at Van Alen. “Get them out of my courtroom. Now."

She didn't have to be told twice. She put her hand on their backs and pushed them forward.

"We should fight this,” Karoly said. “They have no right to take our child."

Van Alen didn't answer him. She didn't dare. She wanted to tell him what an idiot he was, how he had sandbagged his own case, how he was the most insensitive person she had ever represented.

But she didn't, mostly because she wanted them out of her life.

Flint was standing. Van Alen frowned at him. He fell in with them as they went to the door.

"The Deshins took care of your child,” Flint said to the Grazians as he walked with them. “They raised him. That was what you wanted, wasn't it?"

Karoly looked at him. “Who are you?"

"He was a difficult child,” Flint said, “so brilliant and high-strung. He cried a lot and he was too much for your wife to handle, wasn't he?"

His questions made Van Alen nervous. She glanced over her shoulder. The judge had opened the door to her chambers, but she was watching.

"What are you doing?” Van Alen whispered to Flint.

"Satisfying my own curiosity,” he said.

"He wasn't too much for me to handle,” Ishani said. “But Karoly worries."

Karoly glared at her. Van Alen felt a curious lightness. “What's this all about, Miles?” she asked.

"When it became clear that the baby was too much for Ishani, they wanted someone else to take care of the baby during the difficult early months,” Flint said. “But they figured they'd be back when he was old enough to understand reason, and then they'd take him back."

"He should be ours,” Ishani said. “I love him."

Not we, Van Alen noted. Never we.

She pushed open the courtroom doors and stopped. Two police officers in uniform stood there, along with a woman who looked somewhat familiar.

"Almost too late, Selah,” Flint said.

The woman smiled at him. The police officers said, “Ishani and Karoly Grazian? You're under arrest for attempted kidnapping."

Each officer grabbed a Grazian and pulled their hands behind their backs, securing them with cuffs.

"They can't do this,” Ishani said to Van Alen. “He's our son."

"I expect you to come with us,” Karoly said to Van Alen.

"I'll send my associate,” Van Alen said, “until we can find you someone else."

She didn't want anything to do with them. She nodded at her associate, who had been standing just outside the doors. He hurried along with them. He was just six months out of law school. This entire case was over his head, which was just fine with her.

The woman that Flint knew hurried along with them, probably to press her complaint.

"Don't tell me,” Van Alen said. “She's the head of the Aristotle Academy."

"That's right,” Flint said. He looked at her sideways. “I thought you were going to defend them all the way to the Multicultural Tribunal."

"Sometimes things are much better in theory,” Van Alen said.

He smiled at her.

"How did you know they didn't want to raise the child?” she asked.

"A hunch at first,” he said. “But I found some evidence. Do you want to see it?"

"No,” she said. “I want to be rid of those people. I had forgotten how horrible they were."

"I thought Disappeareds could do no wrong,” Flint said.

She made a face at him. “They're human like everyone else."

"But Luc Deshin is a criminal,” Flint reminded her.

Van Alen recalled how the little boy had run to his father when he saw the Grazians. His father clearly represented safety to him.

"He's not a criminal to his son,” she said.

"Wow,” Flint said. “I'm stunned. You backed off of your principles."

"You're not stunned,” Van Alen said. “You know I'm not dogmatic."

He smiled at her. “I know."

"But you are,” she said.

"Only when it comes to children,” he said.

"And your own version of right and wrong,” she said.

"That too,” he agreed. “That too."

It took Paavo a long time to start breathing normally. His dad had come into the room and had his arms wrapped around him. The judge was talking to his parents about legalities and documents and signing things.

Then, she said to Paavo, you'll be theirs.

He already was theirs. She didn't understand that. She hadn't understood a lot of things. He had to explain the Ghosts. She looked upset at that, and she finally ordered someone just outside the door to press some charges against the Ghosts. Something about invasion of privacy and manipulation with the intent to terrorize.

"They'll go away for a long time,” she said to Paavo's dad.

"Good,” his dad had said.

"And you better straighten up too,” she said to Paavo's dad. “Don't think I haven't heard stories."

His dad looked startled. Paavo was. He had never heard anyone talk to his dad like that.

"This boy loves you,” the judge said. “You should make sure you're worthy of that love."

Paavo didn't like the way the judge was talking. He glared at her.

"He is worthy,” Paavo said. “He's my dad."

Copyright © 2010 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Earlier stories of the Retrieval Artists include “The Recovery Man's Bargain” [January/February 2009].)

People read science fiction for many different reasons, reasons that vary from reader to reader; even the same reader can be looking for different things at different times or in different moods.

One big reason people read sf (and fantasy, but that's another matter) is to experience places, people, and things beyond the everyday world: exotic planets, fascinating futures, alien beings and cultures, superhuman achievers. In lit-crit circles this is called “otherness"—the depiction and appreciation of that which is unlike oneself. It's this focus on otherness that leads many mundanes to dismiss sf as “escape literature.” Science fiction readers, they imagine, must seek to experience otherness in order to escape the real world which dissatisfies us.

As we all know, that's only part of the story. Sure, some of it is a desire to escape, at least temporarily, the real world around us. The rest, though, is the marvelous way that otherness allows us to experience everyday reality from different perspectives. It's often said that you never really know your own native language until you learn another; similarly, we don't truly know our own reality until we spend some time in another.

It was Maestro Tolkien, quoting G.K. Chesterton's riff on Dickens, who gave us a wondrous term for this phenomenon: mooreeffoc. All of those fine English gentlemen, you see, spent many hours in Britain's ubiquitous coffee-rooms (here-and-now we call them Starbucks). From the outside, these establishments are totally ordinary and familiar, with their plate glass windows bearing the letters “coffee-room.” But from inside, ah, the letters spell out something exotic, enticing, glamorous: “mooreeffoc."

This is the perspective that the otherness of sf can offer: a new way of looking at the ordinary, a way to see magic in the everyday. Escape literature? Yes: because sometimes you can only see aspects of reality by escaping it and looking back.

This time around I have for you an assortment of books that do a great job of invoking otherness and mooreeffoc.

A Glimpse of Splendor and Other Stories

Dave Creek

Yard Dog Press, 233 pages, $16.00

(trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-893687-97-4

Genres: Alien Beings, Other Worlds,

Short Story Collections

One of the best ways to get a fix of otherness is with expertly-conceived and well-depicted aliens. Here we're not talking about creatures who look different but are basically human beings inside funny skins (Star Trek was famous for “aliens” who were humans with prosthetic foreheads). No, the pure quill is creatures who are utterly unlike human beings in significant ways. Intelligent beings whose thoughts and behavior are profoundly different.

For really satisfying aliens, an author can't just throw out a cool-sounding idea, no matter how intriguing and unusual (even Douglas Adams’ Hooloovoo, who were “a superintelligent shade of the color blue"). Mere difference is not enough; great aliens have to be believably consistent, from biochemistry and evolutionary history to emotional states and cultural norms. Everything they do and say has to make sense ... on their own terms, at least. Constructing and depicting truly satisfying aliens is a lot harder than you would think. As someone who has written about million-year-old sapient trees, I know a little whereof I speak. That's why it's such a joy to find an author who can do it well.

Dave Creek is one of those authors.

If the name rings a bell, there's a good reason: Creek is no stranger to Analog's pages. In fact, many of the stories in A Glimpse of Splendor first appeared here, and the book carries an introduction by some chap named Stanley Schmidt (who is himself no slouch in the alien department, as evidenced by Sins of the Fathers,Lifeboat Earth, and a little guy named Tweedlioop).

But don't fear that you're getting nothing but recycled stories: there's a major tale here that has previously only appeared online at Fictionwise. Besides, it's been a decade since the first Splendor story came out; it's worth the price of admission to have them all together in one volume.

For those who don't remember or haven't read Creek's stories, here's a brief outline. The planet Splendor is home to two separate alien species who occupy completely different ecological niches ... and yet who are completely interdependent. To Splendor comes Earthman Mike Christopher, an explorer with some bad news: Splendor's sun is going to explode.

Earth is perfectly willing and able to move Splendor's inhabitants to other, safer worlds ... but the two races would need to be separated. And that would destroy their culture.

In between the four tales that tell the story of Splendor's dilemma, we get to follow Mike Christopher on three adventures elsewhere in Creek's rich galaxy. Just to show that Splendor wasn't a fluke, Creek invents other aliens and exotic locales; there's more than enough otherness here to satisfy any sf reader.

Of Wind and Sand

Sylvie Bérard

Edge, 307 pages, $19.95 (trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-894063-19-7

Genres: Alien Beings, Other Worlds

Sylvie Bérard is a French-Canadian academic, but don't let that scare you: she's a real science fiction writer who can do alien beings with the best of them. Of Wind and Sand is an English translation of Terre des Autre, which won the 2005 Québécois Grand Prix for science fiction (as well as several lesser awards). Translator Sheryl Curtis has produced an eminently readable text; it's easy to completely forget that the book you're reading was in French just a few years ago.

A human colonization mission goes off course and makes an emergency landing on a world that they name Mars II. It's a hot desert planet; humans have difficulty surviving even at the polar latitudes.

Enter the natives, reptilian creatures called darztls. Perfectly adapted to their world, the darztls contact the humans and offer their aid. Darztl help means the difference between survival and extinction for the humans.

Of course, the darztls are alien in the purest sense: their thought patterns and culture are decidedly nonhuman. Misunderstanding between the species is inevitable ... and leads to disaster.

Of Wind and Sand tells the century-long story of human-darztl interaction through the eyes of Chloé Guilimpert, born on Mars II and raised by humans and darztls alike. Chloé sees the world from the darztl perspective as she leads us through violence, captivity, and slavery to the ultimate conclusion.

This is a tale of the clash of cultures and of various forms of imperialism and colonialism (on both sides). There are villains aplenty among both humans and darztls, and lots of blame to spread around.

Of Wind and Sand isn't just an example of otherness: it's also a meditation on how we react to otherness. Some characters on Mars II embrace it, others fear it, quite a few die because of it. In the end, those who can best regard themselves from the perspective of the other are the best hope. Definitely a book to be reckoned with.

So let's see: we've had Dave Creek making us think about saving endangered cultures without destroying their essence, and Sylvie Bérard confronting us with peoples whose differences seem to make conflict between them inevitable ... wow, some “escape” from the real world, eh?

The Sunless Countries

Karl Schroeder

Tor, 335 pages, $25.95 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2076-6

Genres: Bigger Than Worlds,

Far Future/Clarke's Law

Series: Virga #4

You say you want otherness, and aliens (no matter how well-done) just aren't other enough? You don't want to look back at reality from far out in left field ... you want to leave the stadium entirely behind, if not the whole city?

For science fictional strangeness, there's nothing quite like something really, really big. Better if it involves floating cities, artificial suns, and high-tech carbon nanotubes holding the whole thing together. Pirates and sapient insects the size of mountain ranges are a bonus.

Welcome to Virga.

To explain Virga, I can't do any better than the author himself. “Virga is a balloon 5,000 miles in diameter, orbiting in the outskirts of the Vega star system. Built and colonized by humans thousands of years ago, it is a weightless environment lit by man-made fusion micro-suns and one central fusion-driven heat source named Candesce.” This balloon is filled with air, and contains perhaps hundreds of nations and cities, most lit by their own pocket suns. Cities are gigantic wheels or cylinders that spin to produce centrifugal force. Various types of flying vessels carry people and commerce between nations.

In three previous books Schroeder has taken us to various nations of Virga in the wake of Hayden Griffin, hero and sun-builder.

Now Hayden is deep in the lightless voids of Virga, on the city Pacquaea: but The Sunless Countries is not Hayden's story. The main character is a woman named Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, a historian and academic who was born and raised in dark Pacquaea.

Here's the problem: an enormous booming voice is sounding in the vast unlit expanses of the Sunless Countries, and Leal thinks she knows where it's coming from. You see, there are these legendary creatures called worldwasps, creatures truly fit to the scale of Virga. Old books speak of the worldwasps, books that also speak of a universe outside Virga's skin. A transhuman, post-Singularity universe dominated by something called Artificial Nature.

Thousands of years ago, humans and worldwasps rejected Artificial Nature and together built Virga as a refuge. Then there was war between humans and worldwasps, and no one knows what became of the wasps. Until now...

Hayden the Hero has no interest in pursuing the strange new voice and confronting the worldwasps, so it's up to Leal to set off on a journey that will lead her beyond Virga entirely and change her forever.

You want otherness, you want mooreeffoc, you want different perspectives on reality? After The Sunless Countries, you'll never look at the universe the same way again. And isn't that the whole point?

Maine Quartet

Thomas A. Easton

SRM, 62 pages, $10.00 (chapbook)

ISBN: 978-1-935224-01-3

www.srmpublisher.com

Genre: Short Story Collections

For an incredible thirty years, Tom Easton was the voice of “The Reference Library” here in Analog. By my count, only two people have appeared in more issues of this magazine: the legendary John W. Campbell, and that Schmidt fellow I mentioned a while back.

Last year Tom Easton took a well-deserved retirement from Analog and moved on to other pastures. Now SRM Publishers has given us this slim, delicious chapbook containing four tales that showcase Tom's considerable talent as a storyteller. All four stories have a connection to Tom's home, Maine.

All four of these stories amply demonstrate the quality of otherness. “Blue Bottle Fly,” which appeared in Analog in 1981, is an alien story with a twist. The other three tales were published outside Analog. “Wallflower” is a fantasy of painful choices and eternal love. “A Love Story” involves a widower who gains a different perspective, and “The Bung-Hole Caper” tells what happens when flying saucers land in a small Maine town.

I can't imagine an Analog reader who wouldn't be interested in this delightful collection.

The Medea Hypothesis

Peter Ward

Princeton University Press, 180 pages, $24.95

(hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-691-13075-0

Genre: Popular nonfiction

If you're intent on the search for different perspectives, you can sometimes find them outside the realm of science fiction and fantasy. Peter Ward gives us a good example from the field of planetary biology.

You're probably familiar with James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, which has dominated planetary biology for decades. Named for the kind and caring earth-mother of Greek mythology, the Gaia Hypothesis treats the whole planet, organic and inorganic parts alike, as one gigantic organism.

Gaia is self-regulating and omnibenevolent. Working mostly through the twin agencies of life and atmospheric composition, Gaia uses feedback loops to maintain Earth in the optimum state for habitability. Never too hot or too cold, too acid or too salty, too wet or too dry, Gaia steers a middle course that keeps Earth as a perfect home for life.

Or at least, Gaia kept things under control until we humans got too big for our britches and started messing with things: clearing forests, overfishing the oceans, dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Gaia's doing the best she can to restore equilibrium, but we've got to work with her by minimizing the damage we do.

Ward takes a look at the history of life on Earth and is reminded of a different Greek figure, Medea. This darling woman, who cooked her own children and served them up to dinner guests, certainly ranks among the Top Five Worst Mother Figures Ever.

The problem, as Ward sees it, is inherent in life itself. Lifeforms have a built-in drive to reproduce beyond the carrying capacity of their environment. Sooner or later, very successful lifeforms produce enough waste products to initiate global changes. The atmosphere gets filled with fatal levels of oxygen, or methane and carbon dioxide start a runaway greenhouse effect, or living organisms change the planet's albedo and the oceans freeze, or...

Well, one way or another, life itself has been the cause of many of the great extinction events that have come close to ending life on Earth completely. (Not the dinosaurs—Ward calls asteroid impacts “non-Medea extinction events.")

Further, Ward takes a look at places like Mars and Venus, and wonders if Medea just won out on those worlds. Damage your planet too much, and you're going to wind up with an uninhabitable globe that's no longer fit to start life again. Ward wonders if Medean extinction might be the most common fate of Earthlike planets in the universe.

Rather than get out of the way and let Gaia fix our mistakes, Ward argues that our only chance for survival on Earth is to keep Medea from doing her job. If we don't manage our planet's habitability, he suggests, then Medea will ultimately win.

Now obviously, the Medea Hypothesis is brand new; there's a lot of serious work to be done to see if it will become an accepted part of planetary biology. Ward has given us the first word on Medea, not the last. But for those interested in looking at things from a different direction, and for science fiction readers in particular, it's certainly a book worth reading. Copyright © 2010 Don Sakers

Don Sakers is the author of A Rose From Old Terra and Dance for the Ivory Madonna. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com. Genre and series information is based on listings at www.readersadvice.com.

READERS: If you are having problems finding Analog Science Fiction and Fact at your favorite retailer, we want to help. First let the store manager know that you want the store to carry Analog. Then send us a letter or postcard telling us the full name and address of the store (with street name and number, if possible). Write to us at: Analog Science Fiction, Dept. NS, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Thank you!

Here is the Index to 2009, Analog's Volume CXXIX. Entries are arranged alphabetically by author, with month and page. When the author's name and/or part of the entry's title is omitted, it is the same as that of the previous entry. Multiple entries by the same author are listed alphabetically according to the story/article title. Collaborations are listed under all authors with cross references. Unless otherwise noted, each entry is identified as an Alternate View (av), editorial (ed), fact article (fa), guest editorial (ge), novella (na), novelette (nt), poem (pm), Probability Zero (pz), serial (se), special feature (sf), or short story (ss).

Bartell, David—

Armchair Scientist (pz) April 57

Cavernauts (nt) March 8

Baxter, Stephen—

Formidable Caress (nt) Dec 8

Burns, Stephen L.—

Chain (nt) June 35

Carroll, Michael—

Futuropolis: How NASA Plans to Create a Permanent

Presence on the Moon (fa) June 26

Musings From the

First Generation (sf) July/Aug 138

Carter, Scott William—

The Bear Who

Sang Opera (nt) July/Aug 54

Castro, Adam-Troy—

Among the Tchi (nt) May 8

Gunfight on Farside (na) April 8

Chase, Robert R.—

The Sleeping Beauties (nt) May 82

Cramer, John G.—

"Humans and Estimating

Probability” (av) March 51

"Radioactive Decay and the

Earth-Sun Distance” (av) May 61

"Two New Kinds

of Wormholes” (av) July/Aug 132

"Connecting Gravity

with Electricity” (av) Oct 59

"Opus 150: Dark Forces in

the Universe” (av) Dec 35

Craven, Jerry—

After the First Death (ss) March 42

Creek, Dave—

Zheng He and the Dragon (nt) Jan/Feb 42

D'Ammassa, Don—

Duck and Cover (ss) July/Aug 125

Guest Reference Library May 100

DeLancey, Craig—

Amabit Sapiens (nt) Nov 53

The Cold Star Sky (ss) June 60

DesJardin, Marie—

From the Ground Up (ss) Sept 40

Flynn, Michael F.—

Where the Winds are

All Asleep (na) Oct 8

Foss, Richard—

Guest Reference Library April 102

Madman's Bargain (ss) March 34

To Leap the Highest Wall (nt) Jan/Feb 57

Frederick, Carl—

Lifespeed (ss) March 56

Teddy Bear Toys (ss) Oct 48

The Universe Beneath

Our Feet (ss) Dec 38

Freeman, Janet—

Preserving the Memory (fa) July/Aug 86

Gleason, William—

The Hanged Man (ss) Oct 42

Gould, Steven—

A Story, With Beans (ss) May 72

Grossbach, Robert—

An Idea Whose

Time Had Come (nt) Oct 74

Hatch, Daniel—

Seed of Revolution (na) July/Aug 10

Hemry, John G.—

Failure to Obey (na) July/Aug 94

Joan (nt) Nov 86

Rocks (ss) Jan/Feb 72

Hendrix, Howard V.—

Monuments of

Unageing Intellect (nt) June 78

Honken, Henry—

From Token to Script: The Origin

of Cuneiform (fa) March 24

Kaldon, Philip Edward—

The Brother on the Shelf (ss) May 77

Kanas, M.D., Nick—

The Psychology of

Space Travel (fa) Oct 33

Kooistra, Jeffery D.—

"Energy Crisis Redux:

A Polemic” (av) Jan/Feb 68

"Cold Fusion Turns 20” (av) April 58

"Odds and Ends #4” (av) June 57

"The Trouble with

Physics" (av) Sept 50

"Lessons from the Lab” (av) Nov 74

Latner, Alexis Glynn—

Quickfeathers (nt) May 30

Lerner, Edward M.—

Insignificance (pm) Oct 7

Rock! Bye-Bye, Baby (fa) Nov 43

Small Business (nt) Jan/Feb 84

Lewis, Anthony—

———Jan/Feb 192

———March 112

———April 112

———May 112

———June 112

———July/Aug 192

———Sep 112

———Oct 112

———Nov 112

———Dec 112

Ligon, Tom—

Payback (nt) July/Aug 66

Rendezvous at

Angels Thirty (nt) May 46

Lincoln, Dr. Don—

The Large Hadron Collider:

A New Era (fa) July/Aug 46

Lingen, Marissa K.—

The Calculus Plague (ss) July/Aug 142

Longyear, Barry B.—

Turning the Grain, pt I of II (se) July/Aug 146

Turning the Grain, conclusion (se) Sept 72

Lovett, Richard A.—

Attack of the Grub-Eaters (ss) June 69

Biolog: Criag DeLancey June 7

Biolog: Eric James Stone April 49

Biolog: William Gleason Oct 47

Excellence (ss) Jan/Feb 77

From Atlantis to Canoe-Eating Trees: Geomythology

Comes of Age (fa) Sept 32

Geology, Geohistory, and “Psychohistory": The

(Continuing) Debate Between Uniformitarians

And Catastrophists (fa) May 23

Plate Tectonics, Goldilocks, and the Late Heavy

Bombardment: Why Earth Isn't Mars

or Venus (fa) Dec 23

Moffitt, Donald—

The Affair of the

Phlegmish Master (nt) June 91

Nevala-Lee, Alec—

The Last Resort (nt) Sept 54

Nordley, G. David—

To Climb a Flat Mountain, pt I of II (se) Nov 8

To Climb a Flat Mountain, conclusion, (se) Dec 72

Oltion, Jerry—

Foreign Exchange (ss) Nov 66

In the Autumn of the Empire (ss) Oct 56

The Jolly Old Boyfriend (ss) Dec 30

A Jug of Wine and Thou (ss) April 50

Rich, Mark—

Foe (nt) April 88

Rusch, Kristine Kathryn—

The Recovery Man's

Bargain (na) Jan/Feb 134

Sakers, Don—

Guest Reference Library March 104

Reference Library June 104

———July/Aug 184

———Sept 104

———Oct 104

———Nov 104

———Dec 104

Sawyer, Robert J—

Wake, pt III (se) Jan/Feb 96

Wake, conclusion (se) March 66

Scherer, Robert—

A Flash of Lightning (pz) Dec 28

Schmidt, Stanley—

"Loose Ends, Missed Points,

and Tangents” (ed) Jan/Feb 4

"Can't Get There

From Here?” (ed) March 4

"Research I” (ed) April 4

"Noisy Signals” (ed) May 4

"Signs of Respect” (ed) June 4

"Wild Goose Chase” (ed) July/Aug 4

"Where Credit is Due” (ed) Sept 4

"Only Following Orders” (ed) Oct 4

"Aiming High—or Low?” (ed) Nov 4

"Control” (ed) Dec 4

Stone, Eric James—

Attitude Adjustment (ss) Sept 44

The Final Element (ss) April 44

Stratmann, H.G.—

The Invasion, (ss) April 62

When All Else Fails (pz) March 54

(with Henry Stratmann III)

Wilderness Were

Paradise Enow (nt) Dec 48

Stratmann III, Henry—

When All Else Fails (pz) March 54

(with H.G. Stratmann)

Strock, Ian Randal—

Guest Reference Library Jan/Feb 178

Tourtellotte, Shane—

Evergreen (nt) Sept 8

A Measure of Devotion (ss) May 64

Turtledove, Harry—

But It Does Move (nt) June 8

Global Warming (pz) July/Aug 136

Turzillo, Mary—

Steak Tartare and the Cats of

Gari Babakin (nt) April 74

Vajra, Rajnar—

Doctor Alien (na) Jan/Feb 8

Van Pelt, James—

Solace (ss) June 46

Wade, Juliette—

Cold Words (nt) Oct 88

Walsh, Kevin—

Neptune, Neptune, Neptune ... But

Not Neptune (fa) Jan/Feb 35

Ribbonland (fa) April 38

Watson, Jesse L.—

Shallow Copy (nt) Oct 62

Werkheiser, Jay—

Thanksgiving Day (ss) Nov 77

PS FORM 3526: STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION

1. Publication Title: Analog Science Fiction and Fact; 2. Publication Number: 488-910; 3. Filing Date: 9/30/09; 4. Issue Frequency: Monthly except for combined issues Jan/Feb and July/Aug; 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: 10; 6. Annual Subscription Price: $55.90; 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007; Contact Person: Penny Sarafin; Telephone: (203) 866-6688; 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220; 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Address of Publisher: Dell Magazines, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855; Editor: Stanley Schmidt, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007; Managing Editor: Trevor Quachri, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007; 10. Owner: Penny Publications, LLC, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Shareholders owning 1% or more are Selma, John, James, and Peter Kanter, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220; 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: There are no bondholders, mortgagees, or other security holders; 12. Tax Status: N/A; 13. Publication Title: Analog Science Fiction and Fact; 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data: 3/09; 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation—Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months. a1. Total Number of Copies: 34,955; b1a. Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 21,636; b2a. Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 0; b3a. Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS: 11,276; b4a. Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS: 0; c1. Total Paid Distribution: 32,912; d1a. Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541: 25; d2a. Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541: 0; d3a. Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS: 0; d4a. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 0; e1. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 25; f1. Total Distribution: 32,937; g1. Copies not Distributed: 2,018; h1. Total: 34,955; i1. Percent Paid: 100%; 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation—No. Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date. a2. Total Number of Copies: 33,837; b1b. Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 21,045; b2b. Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541: 0; b3b. Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS: 11,094; b4b. Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS: 0; c2. Total Paid Distribution: 32,139; d1b. Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541: 25; d2b. Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541: 0; d3b. Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS: 0; d4b. Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail: 0; e2. Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 25; f2. Total Distribution: 32,164; g2. Copies not Distributed: 1,673; h2. Total: 33,837; i2. Percent Paid: 100%; 16. Publication of Statement of Ownership: Publication required. Will be printed in the 12/09 issue of this publication; 17. Signature and Title of Publisher: Peter Kanter. Date: 10/1/09.

IT'S ANLAB TIME AGAIN

Welcome to the year 2010! As usual, we're asking you to choose your favorites via the Analytical Laboratory. Not only will your votes provide tangible awards for authors and artists, but your feedback will help guide the selections we offer you in the future. Your vote is important!

Look over all your copies of Analog dated 2009, or refer to the index on the following pages. Pick your three favorites in each of the following categories: novella, novelette, short story, science fact article, and cover. If you're not sure about a piece's category, you'll find it listed both in the Table of Contents for the issue in which it appeared, and in the Index. In the event of a disagreement between the Table of Contents and the Index, the Index should be considered correct. List your choices in order of preference (your favorite in each category is #1) on the ballot below, and either mail it in or send it by e-mail. You can also vote at our website, www.analogsf.com. The ballot is intended to make it easier for you to vote, but if you don't want to cut it out, feel free to copy it.

To be sure your vote counts, please have it reach us by February 1, 2010.

Please, only vote once! Thank you very much!

Votes via snail mail: AnLab, Analog, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007.

Votes via the Internet: www.analogsf.com or analogsf@dellmagazines.com

PLEASE VOTE!

—

NOVELLAS

1.

2.

3.

—

NOVELETTES

1.

2.

3.

—

SHORT STORIES

1.

2.

3.

—

SCIENCE FACT

1.

2.

3.

—

COVER

1.

2.

3.

—

Name

Address

Signature

—

YOUR BALLOT WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY ENTERED IN OUR DRAWING FOR A FREE ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION!

Dear Dr Schmidt,

I've noticed several times that you allow authors to use “comprise” in the passive voice. The latest example I've run across is “Much of the course was comprised of writing exercises....” on page 49 of the April 2009 edition (yes, I'm behind in reading the issues).

Do you disagree with the advice in the following suggestions?

compose / comprise / consist of

"Comprise and consist of are concerned with a whole having a number of parts. They are used in the active voice, with the whole as their subject and the parts as their object:

The house comprises three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room.

The meal consisted of several small dishes that everybody dipped into and shared.

Use of comprise in the sense ‘to constitute’ is controversial.

Avoid constructions like [these] if you wish to steer clear of criticism:

The house is comprised of three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room.

Three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room comprise the house.

If some rather than all the parts are mentioned, include may be used instead:

The house includes a kitchen and a living room on the first floor.

Compose and constitute are concerned with parts making up a whole. Compose is normally used in the passive, and constitute in the active:

The team is composed of several experts in the field.

The following commodities constitute the average household diet."

Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 2007. © 1993-2006

Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

If not, tell your copy editors to look for “comprised of” and switch it to “consist of.” In the particular example, they could not rewrite the sentence in the active voice as “Much of the course comprised writing exercises....” because “much of” precludes the sense of completeness implied in “comprised."

Don't you love having pedants among your readers who tell you what to do?

Actually, I'm a professional editor and writer and make a point of teaching my students to think about clarity and correctness as a way of making writing a means of uninterrupted communication between author and reader. You might enjoy the essay “On Writing” (which deals strictly with expository writing) that I wrote for my graduate and undergraduate students at:

www.mekabay.com/methodology/ writing.pdf or www.mekabay.com/ methodology/writing.htm

Keep up the excellent work. I read every issue of Analog from cover to cover with great enjoyment. I wish the readers who get upset about stories they don't like and write vitriolic letters to you would just learn to flip to the next story!

Best wishes,

Mich

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP

Norwich University

Dear Dr. Schmidt:

Having read both the “Alternate View” column in the January/February issue and the follow-up in the June issue, I feel I must take issue with Jeffrey Kooistra's objections to solar power as a viable substitute for coal-generated electricity.

In both pieces, Kooistra complained that massive tracts of land would have to be dedicated to large solar farms for photovoltaic power to fill a significant portion of the country's electrical demand. That is true only if PV technology is used in the same centralized-generation model currently employed for coal, nuclear, and megahydro power systems.

The advantage that solar enjoys over these systems is its scalability. While a personal fission reactor generating system would be a handy addition to the average home, such a value-adding feature is neither economically nor legally feasible. Solar panels, grid-tied inverters, and backup battery-systems, however, are readily purchased, relatively easily installed and, thanks to state and federal tax incentives, remarkably affordable.

Because owner-operated PV generating systems do not require additional centralized generating facilities, they actually make the entire electrical grid more secure from technical failures and attack by ne'er-do-wells. And, by utilizing the tens of millions of already-existing residential and commercial rooftops that make up just a part of the more than 112,600 square kilometers of impervious-surface construction in the country, they do not contribute to the water contamination and erosion problems inherent in the construction of new generating plants.

Utilization of existing roofs for PV generation, spurred by the policy of feed-in tariffs that guarantee owners a set return on investment, is a large part of why Germany, with much poorer insolation than much of the US, is experiencing a solar revolution, with PV expected to supply upwards of 12% of that country's electricity within the next decade and as much as half the country's needs by mid-century.

A balance of many technologies will have to be struck as we seek to wean our nation from dependence on fossil fuels for electricity, the details of which will continue to be debated for decades. To dismiss a resource as valuable as PV out of hand does not further that debate.

Thanks as always for a fine and stimulating read.

Yours sincerely,

Louie Ludwig

New Orleans, LA

Dear Analog,

I have a problem with a seemingly gratuitous sentence or two in the otherwise enjoyable story by Tom Ligon, “Payback” [July/August, 2009].

The paragraph in question, p. 75 of Analog:

"It was obvious from the underlying meanings the message referred to a religious doctrine, a sort of Manifest Destiny. More than a little like Zionism, actually."

Why should I be offended by that? Well, maybe because “the message” referred to, from aliens who had tried unsuccessfully to exterminate all humans, says: “Corruption of creation, abomination of the world, look this way.... You are to be consumed in the fire of your own star ... prepare to die."

I am not quite sure how a plan to exterminate Humanity relates to “Manifest Destiny,” but I am really taken aback by the fact that a wise character in the story thinks a desire to exterminate a large group of people even remotely relates to “Zionism."

Remedial definitions seem to be in order here: contrary to a persistent rumor, Zionism is not actually the “movement to exterminate Palestinian Arabs and/or all Gentiles and/or control the world.” Zionism is a movement to establish (or, since 1948, maintain) a homeland for the Jewish people. See the Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Zionism

I know other people (including many Arabs and “academics") mean a grab bag of other, pejorative things when they say “Zionist,” and many have told me to be less “touchy” about it, but I fight on many fronts for the preservation of my vocabulary, which is rooted in history. As a feminist, I object when persons like Rush Limbaugh misuse the word “feminist” as a hostile pejorative, and as a Zionist* myself I object when ignorant authors or heedless editors use or permit the misuse of the word “Zionism.” A throwaway sentence meant to imply “understanding,” instead reveals the complete absence of said understanding.

Corissa Figaro

* If you support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state, you are a Zionist too.

The author replies...

Corissa,

I appreciate your response, and suspected I would receive a comment on that line. There are more lines like it in the story as well.

The rumor has it that some of the old SF masters created characters who were simply copies of the author. I try very hard to avoid that. The characters in “Payback” are from diverse cultures, and show those influences. I have endeavored to have them think accordingly (but retaining individuality), even if I don't agree with them.

Tuekakas is the most obvious and undisguised such character, a Wallowa Band Nez Perce. He is intensely proud of this heritage, and the influence of the Nez Perce traditional leadership approach has prepared him for the job of Secretary General. He has little inclination to wage war. His spiritual beliefs are more like those of Smohalla; thus he is an environmentalist. He has a few zingers for whites, especially rowdy cowboys.

Indira Swarup is from India, and her interest in SETI derives from her pride in one of her ancestors, a pioneer in radio astronomy. While she considers herself an atheist, she shows a strong Hindu influence. It is important that she is a mother. One thing she said near the end probably raised a few Hindu eyebrows.

The belters have replaced Americans as the wealthy superpower used to getting their way, and if they make a few of my countrymen uncomfortable in light of events of the last decade, maybe that could be productive.

Dr. Sariskal's background is not explicitly revealed, but there are plenty of clues. He is Turkish, with a strong Muslim influence. He is proud of his country's history, and is more optimistic regarding the outcome of war. If you re-read that section, you will find he also dislikes Crusaders. He has studied the core meanings in the Achirdian message, and concluded the Achirdians have been told by their “god” that the galaxy belongs only to them. He sees a parallel to the idea that there is a covenant between God and the descendants of Moses and his companions that conveys a title to Israel that trumps all other notions of property law. It is entirely in character for him to see this similarity, and you have obviously encountered this mindset before.

Finally, there is the Achirdian emperor himself. He is the one bent on extermination of humanity. Even the Achirdians are uncomfortable with the idea—they simply dare not say so. I certainly hope you don't think I believe as that character does!

And I do believe in the continued existence of Israel. And Palestine. Tuekakas should work something out.

Tom Ligon

Don & Stan,

In Don [Sakers's] review of Other Earths in the October 2009 issue of Analog, Don mistakenly refers to a Murray Leinster story, “Sideways in Time.” Leinster's story, originally published in Astounding in June 1934 was entitled “Sidewise in Time,” from which the Sidewise Award for Alternate History takes its name.

Steven H. Silver

Sidewise Award Administrator

We welcome your letters, which should be sent to Analog, 267 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10007, or e-mail to analog@dellmagazines.com. Space and time make it impossible to print or answer all letters, but please include your mailing address even if you use e-mail. If you don't want your address printed, put it only in the heading of your letter; if you do want it printed, please put your address under your signature. We reserve the right to shorten and copy-edit letters. The email address is for editorial correspondence only—please direct all subscription inquiries to: 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855.

5-7 March 2010

POTLATCH 19 (Northwest SF conference) at Hotel Deca, Seattle, WA. Book of Honor: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Membership: $65 in advance, more at the door; youth membership $25, supporting membership $20. Info: potlatch-sf.org/; potlatch19@gmail. com; c/o Suzanne Tompkins, PO Box 25075, Seattle, WA 98165.

19-21 March 2010

LUNACON 2010 (New York City area SF conference) at Hilton Rye Town, Rye Brook, NY. Writer Guest of Honor: Tanya Huff; Artist Guest of Honor: Theresa Mather; Musical Guest: Allison Lonsdale; Fan Guest of Honor: Dominick Carrado. Membership: $45 until 14 February 2010, $55 at the door; children $15 until 14 February 2010, $25 at the door. Info: www.lunacon.org; info@lunacon.org; PO Box 432, Throggs Neck Station, Bronx, NY 10465.

2-4 April 2010

MINICON 45 (Minneapolis SF conference) at Sheraton Bloomington Hotel, Bloomington, MN. Author Guest of Honor: Brandon Sanderson; Art Guest of Honor: Dan Dos Santos. Membership: $45 until 10 March 2010 (student $30), more thereafter and at the door. Info: mnstf.org/minicon45; PO Box 8297, Lake Street Station, Minneapolis, MN 55408.

9-11 April 2010

RAVEN CON (Richmond area SF and gaming conference) at Holiday Inn Select, Richmond, VA. Author Guest of Honor: Richel Caine; Artist Guest of Honor: R. Cat; Gaming Guest of Honor: Steve Long. Membership: $35 until 1 April 2010, $40 at the door. Info: www.ravencon.com; webmaster@ravencon.com; 3502 Fernmoss Ct., Charlotte, NC 28269.

2-6 September 2010

AUSSIECON FOUR (68th World Science Fiction Convention) at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Guest of Honor: Kim Stanley Robinson; Artist Guest of Honor: Shaun Tan; Fan Guest of Honor: Robin Johnson. Membership from 1 January 2009 until some later date (see website for latest details): AUD 210, USD 175, CAD 185, GBP 100, EUR 120, JPY 16000; supporting membership AUD 70, USD 50, CAD 50, GBP 25, EUR 35, JPY 4900. This is the SF universe's annual get-together. Professionals and readers from all over the world will be in attendance. Talks, panels, films, fancy dress competition—the works. Nominate and vote for the Hugos. Info: www.aussiecon4. org.au/; info@aussiecon4.org.au; GPO Box 1212, Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3001

Running a convention? If your convention has a telephone or fax number, e-mail address, or web page, please let us know so that we can publish this information. We must have your information in hand SIX months before the date of your convention.

Attending a convention? When calling conventions for information, do not call collect and do not call too late in the evening. It is best to include a S.A.S.E. when requesting information; include an International Reply Coupon if the convention is in a different country.

Copyright © 2010 Anthony Lewis