Way back in grade school one of my favorite teachers made what I considered—and still do, even more strongly—a really big pedagogical mistake. We had been working on short division with remainders, like 7 (divided by) 2 = 3, R 1. I breezed through a set of such problems till I came to the one at the end: 1 (divided by) 2. I found out later that I was expected to write 0, R 1, but that never entered my head. I had never before seen a division problem in which the divisor was bigger than the dividend, and I saw it as something fundamentally different. I thought long and hard about what it meant, and finally wrote down 1/2. Imagine my chagrin when she marked it wrong and said, “We'll teach you about fractions next year."

Did nobody teach her to recognize a huge leap and supremely teachable moment when she saw one? In case you're wondering, yes, I did understand what I was saying. I had a solid grasp of the idea that if I had seven candy bars to share with two friends we could each take two and have one left over. It was just as clear to me that if I had one candy bar and had to share it equally with my brother, I would have to break it into two equal pieces. I knew that those pieces were called halves, and I had seen “one half” written as “1/2.” What I had just done was to make, on my own, the connection between that and the formal process of division. It was a major conceptual breakthrough, and my teacher (in my now-professional opinion as a teacher myself) should have found that exciting and looked for a way to run with it.

I could understand if she had said, “That's very good, and we'll teach you more about things like this next year.” But she was just plain wrong to tell me I was wrong, and that bothered me a lot—perhaps more than it should have. I approved highly of most of what she did, so this isolated faux pas disturbed me more than it would have if I'd already written her off as a lousy teacher. It doesn't seem fair that we hold mistakes more strongly against people who don't make many—but we often do.

I would certainly never devote an editorial to complaining about something a long-ago teacher did, but I realized in much-delayed retrospect that my reaction to what she did was a small-scale example of what seems to be a fairly general principle of human nature; and that's what I'm writing about. It seems that our evaluation of other people's behavior is not based on a simple comparison of what they do to what they “should” do in some objective sense, but more on a comparison of what they do to what we expect of them, personally, on the basis of past experience. This has the odd effect—the one I described above as “unfair"—that we'll judge exactly the same action much more harshly if it's done by somebody we know and admire than if it's done by a stranger or someone we already regard as incompetent or unscrupulous. We'll shrug off a lie or theft or drunkenness by somebody who already has a history of that kind of behavior, with an attitude of, “What else would you expect?” But if one of your personal heroes does exactly the same thing, you'll probably be horrified.

Why is that unfair? Well, if we were going to judge all actions in an impartial way, by their consequences, those are exactly the same regardless of who does the deed. So if hero A and scoundrel B do the same bad thing, it's really just one small defect in A's long and otherwise unblemished record, and our overall judgment of A still looks quite good—just not perfect. For B, it's just another data point to reinforce our already low opinion of his character.

But that's not the way it often works. For B, we say it's just another data point and attach little significance to it. For A, we often act, at least for a while, as if that one blemish has wiped out all the earlier examples of merit.

We might call this effect the “halo handicap": a person who is seen as too virtuous is likely to suffer much more for even a small isolated misstep than someone who is already perceived as prone to big ones. The reason seems to be that people become used to getting what they want from a particular source so much of the time that they expect it all the time, and get seriously bent out of shape when that doesn't happen.

That kind of thinking—or feeling—doesn't just color our attitudes toward individuals, but toward companies, other institutions, and even whole civilizations.

And it can have destructive consequences.

For a corporate-level example, consider the recent troubles of the Toyota company. What has actually happened here? There have been, in a short recent period, a couple of recalls for problems with sticking accelerators and brakes, promptly followed by such media coverage as Time magazine's cover line reading, “Toyota: The Fall of an Icon,” to draw readers’ attention to an article further blurbed with, “It was the world's most admired automaker . . . What can other firms learn from a corporate culture that went horribly wrong?"

Far be it from me to suggest that sticky-accelerator and brake problems are not to be taken seriously. They can injure and even kill people, and there is some evidence that these have, in at least a few cases. Certainly Toyota needs to find out what went wrong and correct it, and they're working on that. Some have suggested that they're not correcting it as effectively as they could, and even that may be true.

But let's put things in perspective. “Fall of an icon” and “went horribly wrong” suggest, rather sensationally, that it's all over for Toyota and a once-excellent company has suddenly become a terrible company no longer worthy of any trust. A better statement of the facts as I understand them (in February) would be that a company long known for making hardly any mistakes has finally made a couple. Most other companies in the same business have made so many comparable ones that had they made these, the news stories about them would have been headed, far less prominently, “More recalls from Motors; details on p. 6."

In case any of you have no personal experience with Toyotas, let me illustrate with my own. My wife and I have, as of this writing, owned three Toyotas (all bought used) for a total of 22 vehicle-years. I will now recite their complete combined record of repairs (as distinct from routine preventive maintenance or body work necessitated by falling trees and the like):

Replaced one muffler clamp to prevent muffler from dragging.

Replaced one exhaust flex coupling to keep a barely noticeable noise from getting worse.

That's it.

By comparison, every one of the numerous other cars we've owned or habitually driven has needed at least a couple of significant mechanical or electrical repairs—ranging from distributor caps and washer motors to a transmission rebuild—every year. That pattern was so typical of not only our experience but also many people's that most of the car owners I've known considered it par for the course. So you can see that, at least in our experience, Toyota reliability is not just enough better than most of the competition that you can see it if you look closely at the statistics, it's so qualitatively obvious as to be in a totally different league.

So Toyota owners, having been lulled into thinking they can expect something very close to perfection, think they should be able to count on it absolutely all the time—which is neither realistic nor, in my earlier word, fair.

Please note carefully that I'm not saying that I think Toyota can do no wrong. Clearly they did do something wrong in these two cases*, and I'll be as disappointed as anybody—maybe more so, since I'd like to keep being able to get cars as reliable as the ones I've gotten from them so far—if these occurrences turn out to be the beginning of a real slide in standards. That's a real possibility; the current recession has led many (if not most) companies to cut corners, and I know no reason to assume that this one is immune to the temptation. I'll be watching carefully to see how things develop. After all, the next time I need to buy a car (which I don't expect to be soon) I'll probably go back to this company if it still seems the most likely source of the reliability I want. And I won't if it doesn't.

But in the meantime, I think it's seriously premature to think that two recalls, or even some glitches in dealing with them, prove that the company has abandoned its dedication to quality or lost its ability to deliver it. All two close-together data points prove is that a company that has long been far above its competitors is not quite as far above them as some people liked to believe. It, too, can make mistakes; maybe it was overdue for some. But unless and until more data points have accumulated that define a real downward curve, nothing more can be reasonably concluded.

But if customers panic and abandon them without waiting to see whether that happens, they may have trouble restoring and maintaining their accustomed reliability.

The same considerations apply, with new variations, at the level of whole civilizations. Our own culture, despite its members’ incessant complaining about a wide variety of concerns, has come to take for granted such a high standard of safety and comfort that many of us find it increasingly hard to imagine making do with anything less and are inclined to become frantic at the slightest deviation from what we expect. In discussions of water conservation, for example, nobody ever makes the obvious suggestion that people take showers every two or three days instead of every day. And I've heard people seriously suggest that space missions should not be undertaken until they can be made perfectly safe.

A daily shower is nice, but it's a luxury unthinkable through much of history—and, even today, through much of the world. New technologies cannot be made highly safe and reliable without first experimenting with less refined versions, which is inherently dangerous.

Such attitudes can easily bring progress to a gradual halt by making people dependent on things they don't really need, and by making them afraid to try anything new. They can do even more than that, by making civilization less resilient—less able to recover from a catastrophic collapse. If we lose our massive technological infrastructure, how many people would have either the skill or the patience to go back to doing things in the hard ways that most of our ancestors had to use? My guess is: not very many. (Maybe the silver lining in that is that the few who could would again have a real advantage, and natural selection would again have a chance to work on a populace where it's had little chance to during the long period of an artificially leveled playing field. . . .)

Let's hope that it doesn't come to that, and we don't have to find out. But in the meantime, we would all do well to remind ourselves occasionally that even if we've come to expect near-perfection from somebody or something, we can't realistically expect it all the time. And if a greatly admired person or institution occasionally slips, we should not treat that as a more detestable failing in them than in somebody who does it all the time.

Copyright © 2010 Stanley Schmidt

* At least, if the reported failures really happened as claimed. Since this was written, at least some of them have been called into serious question.

Some of the best teaching is by example, but isn't always planned!

Sol Central Station floated amid the fusing hydrogen of the solar core, 400,000 miles under the surface of the Sun, protected only by the thin shell of an energy shield, but that wasn't why my palm sweat slicked the plastic pulpit of the station's multidenominational chapel. As a life-long Mormon I had been speaking in church since I was a child, so that didn't make me nervous, either. But this was my first time speaking when non-humans were in the audience.

The Sol Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had only six human members, including me and the two missionaries, but there were forty-six swale members. As beings made of plasma, swales couldn't attend church in the chapel, of course, but a ten-foot widescreen monitor across the back wall showed a false-color display of their magnetic force-lines, gathered in clumps of blue and red against the yellow background representing the solar interior. The screen did not give a sense of size, but at two hundred feet in length, the smallest of the swales was almost double the length of a blue whale. From what I'd heard, the largest Mormon swale, Sister Emma, stretched out to almost five hundred feet—but she was nowhere near the twenty-four-mile length of the largest swale in our sun.

"My dear Brothers and Sisters,” I said automatically, then stopped in embarrassment. The traditional greeting didn't apply to all swale members, as they had three genders. “And Neuters,” I added. I hoped my delay would not be noticeable in the transmission. It would be a disaster if in my first talk as branch president, I alienated a third of the swale population.

A few minutes into my talk on the topic of forgiveness, I paused when a woman in a skinsuit sauntered through the door and down the aisle. The skinsuit was a custom high-fashion one, not standard station issue, with active coloration that showed puffy white clouds floating across the sky on her breasts, and waves lapping against the sandy beach at her hips. She took a seat on the second row and gazed up at me with dark brown eyes.

The ring finger of her left hand was unadorned.

I forced my eyes away from her and looked down at my notes for the talk. While trying to find my place again, I couldn't help thinking that maybe this woman was an answer to my prayers. The only human female listed in the branch membership records was sixty-four years old and married. As far as I knew, there wasn't an unmarried Mormon human woman within ninety million miles in any direction, which limited my dating pool rather severely.

Maybe this woman was Mormon, but not on the membership records yet because, like me, she was a recent arrival on Sol Central. It seemed a little unlikely, as a member would probably dress more appropriately for church. Maybe she wasn't a member but was interested in joining.

By sheer willpower, I managed to focus on my talk enough to finish it coherently. After the closing hymn and prayer, I straightened my tie and stepped down from the podium to introduce myself to the new arrival.

"Hello,” I said, offering my hand. “I'm Harry Malan.” I caught a whiff of her perfume, something that reminded me of strawberries.

Her hand was dry and cool, and I regretted not having wiped my palm on my suit first.

"Dr. Juanita Merced,” she said. “You're the new leader of this congregation?"

I felt a twinge of disappointment. A member would have asked if I was the branch president. “I am. How can I help you?"

"You can stop interfering with my studies.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but her eyes looked at me defiantly.

"Sorry,” I said. “I'm afraid I have no idea who you are or what studies I might be interfering with."

"I'm a solcetologist.” I must have given her a blank look, because she added, “I study solcetaceans—the swales."

"Oh.” I knew there were scientists who objected to what they believed was interference with the culture of the swales, but I had thought that since the legal right to proselytize the swales had been established two years ago, the controversy had been settled. I was obviously wrong. “I regret that you feel your studies are being compromised, Dr. Merced, but the swales are intelligent beings with free will, and I believe they have the right to choose their religious beliefs."

"You're introducing instability to a culture that has existed for longer than human civilization,” she said, raising her voice. “They were traveling the stars at least a hundred thousand years before Christ was born. You're teaching them human myths that have no application for their society."

The two missionaries, clean-cut young men in dark suits and ties, approached us. “Is there a problem?” asked Elder Beckworth.

"No,” I said. “Dr. Merced, you are free to tell the swales what you have told me: That you believe our teachings are false. But the swales who have joined our church have done so because they believe what we teach, and I ask you to please respect them enough to allow them that choice."

She glared at me with her beautiful eyes. “You're saying I don't respect them? I am not the one who tells them they are sinful creatures who need a human to save them."

"I'm not here to argue,” I said. “And we are about to have a Sunday school class, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

She spun around and stalked out. I watched her go, unable to deny that my body desired hers, despite our differences. What's more, intelligence was an attractive trait for me, so I regretted that she opposed me on an intellectual level.

I would not be adding her to my dating pool. Somehow, I doubted that fact would disappoint her.

Elder Beckworth taught the Sunday school class, which was on the topic of chastity. I found myself acutely uncomfortable when he talked about Christ's teaching “that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Because the Mormon Church has an unpaid, volunteer clergy, my calling as branch president was the result of being sent to Sol Central, not the reason for it. I worked as a funds manager for CitiAmerica, and being stationed here gave me an eight-and-a-half minute head start over Earth-based funds managers when it came to acting on news brought in from other star systems through the interstellar portal at the heart of the Sun.

From what I understood, the energy requirements for opening a portal were so staggeringly high that it could only be done inside a star. Although the swales had been creating portals for so long that they didn't seem to know where their original home star was, Sol Central Station was the interstellar nexus of human civilization, and I was thrilled to be there despite the limited dating opportunities.

The Monday after my first day at church, I was in the middle of reviewing an arbitrage deal involving transports from two colony systems when I received a call on my station phone.

"Harry Malan,” I answered.

"President Malan?” said a melodious alto voice. “This is Neuter Kimball, from the branch.” Since the actual names of swales were series of magnetic pulses, they took human names when interacting with us. On joining the Church, Mormon swales often chose new names out of Mormon history. Neuter Kimball had apparently named itself after a twentieth-century prophet of the Church.

"What can I do for you, Neuter Kimball?"

After a pause that dragged out for several seconds, Kimball said, “I need to confess a sin."

This was what I had dreaded most about becoming branch president—taking on the responsibility of helping members repent of their sins. Only serious sins needed to be confessed to an ecclesiastical leader, so I braced myself emotionally and said a quick prayer that I might be inspired to help Neuter Kimball through the process of repentance. Leaning back in my swivel chair, I said, “Go ahead, Neuter Kimball, I'm listening."

"A female merged her reproductive patterns with mine.” While many swales had managed to learn how to synthesize and transmit human speech, their understanding of vocabulary and grammar was not always matched by an understanding of emotional tone. Often they sounded the same no matter what the subject.

I waited, but Neuter Kimball didn't elaborate.

It took three swales to reproduce: a male, a female, and a neuter. The neuter merely acted as a facilitator; unlike the male and female, its reproductive patterns were not passed on to the offspring. In applying the law of chastity to the swales, Church doctrine said that reproductive activity was to be engaged in only among swales married to each other, and only permitted marriages of three swales, one of each sex.

"You aren't married to the female, are you?"

"No."

"It was just a female and you?” I asked. “No male?"

"Yes and yes."

According to my limited knowledge of swale biology, such action could not result in reproduction. Still, humans were perfectly capable of engaging in sexual sin that did not involve the possibility of reproduction, so I figured this was analogous.

"Why did you do it?” I asked.

"She did it to me."

"She did it to you? You mean, she forced you? You didn't agree to it?"

"Yes, yes, and no."

"Then it isn't a sin,” I said, both horrified at the sexual assault and relieved that Neuter Kimball was innocent of any sin. “If someone forced sexual conduct on you, you are not at fault. You have nothing to repent of."

"You are sure?"

"Absolutely,” I said. “But you may want to report the swale who did this to the authorities so she won't do it to anyone else."

"Why won't she do it to anyone else?” Neuter Kimball asked.

"Because they will punish her."

"That is human law,” it said.

I was taken aback. “You mean it's not swale law?"

"There is no such law among our people."

The swales had supposedly been civilized for longer than humanity's history, yet they had no law against rape? “That's terrible,” I said. “But the most important thing is that you did nothing wrong."

"Even if I enjoyed it?"

"Umm.” I wondered for a moment why I had been called to serve here, rather than some General Authority of the Church who had more doctrinal knowledge. I had a vague suspicion it was so the Church could easily disavow my actions if I made a huge blunder. The swales were the only sentient aliens humanity had found thus far—and the swales didn't seem to know of any others—so the Church's policies for dealing with non-humans were still new.

I pushed those thoughts aside and focused on Neuter Kimball's question. “To commit a sin, you must have the intent to do so. If you did not intend sexual activity and it was forced upon you, then I don't think it matters whether you enjoyed it."

After several more reassurances, Neuter Kimball seemed satisfied that it was not guilty of any sin and ended the conversation.

It took me ten minutes to calm down after the stress of counseling. But I still felt the urge to action, so I looked up Dr. Merced's phone number.

We met in her office. A wallscreen similar to the one in the chapel showed pods of swales moving through solar currents.

I sat in a chair across from her desk and tried to keep my eyes from straying to the animated galaxies colliding on the chest of her skinsuit. “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I said. “We didn't part on the friendliest of terms yesterday."

She shrugged. “I'm curious. Your predecessors never sought me out. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"I don't drink coffee."

"Tea?"

I saw a twinkle in her eye and realized she was yanking my chain by offering drinks that she knew were forbidden by my religion. “No, thank you. But if you want to drink, go right ahead. The prohibitions of the Word of Wisdom apply only to members of the Church."

She picked up her coffee mug and took a long sip. “Mmm. That is so good."

I merely smiled at her.

"Okay,” she said. “Actually, the coffee here is awful. I just drink it for the caffeine. Why are you here?"

"A member of my church was raped,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “What? Wait, you don't mean a solcetacean, do you?"

"Yes."

"Solcetaceans do not have the concept of rape,” she said.

"Whether they have the concept or not,” I said, “a female swale engaged in sexual activity with one of my neuter members without its consent. To me, that sounds like rape, or at least a sexual assault."

She took a sip from her coffee mug. “It may sound like it, but solcetaceans are not human. Their culture is different—"

"That doesn't make it right."

"—and their physiology is different. Tell me, was your church member injured or caused any pain?"

"No. But it was afraid it might have sinned."

She pointed at me. “That is your fault, for teaching it that sexual behavior is sinful. But, physiologically, sexual contact between solcetaceans is always pleasurable for all parties involved. And since reproduction can only occur when all three deliberately engage in sex for that purpose, casual sex never results in pregnancy. So solcetaceans never developed the taboos humans did regarding sexual contact."

I nodded. “So, if we humans hadn't developed taboos about sex, and there was no chance of your getting pregnant, then you would have no objection to my forcing you to an orgasm."

She had the decency to blush. “I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that you can't judge solcetacean behavior based on human cultural norms. After all, even your own church has had to adapt its doctrines to take differences like the three sexes into account. Not to mention there's no way you're getting a solcetacean into the waters of baptism."

"'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,'” I quoted. “Swales are not men, as you've pointed out. No contradiction there. But you're avoiding the subject, which is that anyone, swale or human, has the right to be free from unwanted sex. If the swales don't recognize that right yet, it's time we told them about it."

She rose from her chair and walked around the desk to stand facing her wallscreen. She zoomed in on one particular swale. It was labeled Leviathan (Class 10), and its size reading showed 38,400 meters. It was hundreds of times longer than Neuter Kimball, or even Sister Emma.

"Solcetaceans grow throughout their lifetime,” she said, her back toward me. “The correlation between size and age is not exact, but in general the larger, the older. Some of the oldest were old before the Pyramids were built. All the solcetacean members of your church are very young and have little influence within the community. Ancients like Leviathan are respected. Do you really think you can convince a creature older than human civilization to change, just because a human thinks something is wrong? Your lifetime is but an eyeblink to her, if she had eyes that blinked."

I pushed away my awe at the sheer size of Leviathan. “Maybe you're right. But I believe in a God even older than that, who created both human and swale. I have to try."

She turned and looked me in the eyes. I held her gaze until she sighed and said, “I was always a sucker for a man with determination.” She walked to her desk, wrote something on notepaper, and handed it to me. It was an anonymous comm address with a private access code.

"I'm flattered,” I said, “and it's not that I don't find you attractive, but—"

She rolled her eyes. “It's Leviathan's personal comm."

My face flushed. “Uh, thank you. I'll talk with her."

"Don't count on it. She hasn't bothered to talk to any of us in a couple of years, but nobody's tried talking religion at her, so . . ."

"I'll do my best.” With that, I beat a hasty retreat so I could recover from my embarrassment alone.

"Try not to offend her,” she called after me.

My email about the situation to the mission president, who was based in the L5 Colony but had jurisdiction over my little branch of the Church, received just a short reply, telling me “use your best judgment, follow the Spirit."

After a couple days spending my after-work hours studying up on swales and swale culture and preparing arguments about the rights of Mormon swales to control their own bodies, I didn't exactly feel ready to contact Leviathan. But I felt a strong need to do something.

Sitting at my desk in my quarters, I dialed the comm address Dr. Merced had given me and waited for it to connect. It rang several times before a synthetic neuter voice came on the line and said, “The party you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after—"

I hung up before the tone. I hadn't prepared to leave a voicemail message, but I should have realized that having Leviathan's private access code was no guarantee that she would actually answer when I called. So I spent a good ten minutes writing out the message I would leave her on voicemail.

Satisfied that I had something that expressed my position firmly yet respectfully, I dialed the number again.

After two rings, a bass voice answered, “Who are you?"

Startled because I had expected the voicemail again, I stumbled over my words. “I'm . . . this is President Malan, of the Church . . . of the Sol Central Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dr. Merced gave me this comm address so I could talk to you about one of my . . . a swale member of my branch.” Uncertain because the bass voice didn't strike me as particularly female, I added, “Are you Leviathan?"

"Religions interest me not.” Her voice synthesis was good enough that I could hear the dismissiveness in her tone.

"Are you interested in the rights of swales in general?” I asked.

"No. The lesser concern me not."

I could feel all my carefully laid-out arguments slipping away from me. How could I have even thought to relate to a being with no consideration for the rights of lesser members of her own species?

Before I could think through a response, I blurted out, “Do the greater concern you?"

During several long seconds of silence, I thought I had offended Leviathan to the point that she had hung up on me. Dr. Merced would be annoyed.

When her voice returned, it almost thundered from the speakers. “Who is greater than I?"

This had not been part of my planned approach, but at least she was still talking to me. Maybe if I could get her to understand that she would not like being manhandled—swale-handled—by larger swales, I could convince her of the need to respect the rights of smaller swales.

"From what I understand, swales get larger with age,” I said. “So wouldn't your parents be larger than you?"

"I have no parents. None is older than I; none is larger; none is greater. I am the source from which all others came."

Stunned, I was silent for a few seconds before I could ask, “You are the original swale?” Since they didn't seem to die of old age, it just might be true.

"I am the original life. Before there was life on any planet, I was. After eons alone I grew into a swale, then gave life to others. Where was your God when I was creating them?"

A verse from the book of Job sprang to my mind: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

Nothing in my research had prepared me for this. Speculation about the evolution of swales generally assumed that swales were descended from less complex plasma beings in another star, since no simpler forms had been found in the Sun. But if what Leviathan claimed was true, there were no simpler forms—she had evolved as a single being.

I was out of my depth and but shook my head to clear my thinking. All this was beside the point. “What matters is that Neu—” I caught myself before breaking confidentiality. “One of my swale church members believes in a God who has commanded against sexual activity outside of marriage. It just isn't right for larger swales to force smaller ones to have sex. I appeal to you as the first and greatest of the swales: Command your people against coerced sexual activity."

Seconds of silence ticked away.

"Come to me,” she said. “You and your swale church member."

The call disconnected.

"'Come to me'?” Dr. Merced's voice was incredulous.

"It was pretty much an order,” I said, settling into the chair across from her desk. “I suppose it's easy enough for swales, but it's not like I have access to a solar shuttle.” The solcetologists did, so I hoped I could sweet-talk her into giving me a ride.

"Beginner's luck.” Her tone was exasperated. “I've been here five years, and I've never had a chance to observe a Class 10 solcetacean up close.” She sighed. “Not that we can directly observe them, anyway, but there's just something about actually being there, instead of taking readings remotely."

"Well, now's your chance,” I said. “Take me to Leviathan."

"It's not that easy. Our observation shuttle is booked for projects months in advance."

"Oh.” There went that idea. How was I supposed—

"Did Leviathan say why she wanted you to go to her?"

"No. Just told me to come, then hung up."

She pursed her lips, then said, “It's just very unusual. There isn't really anything that Leviathan can say to you in person that she can't say over the comm."

"I thought about that, and I think it's size. Maybe she thinks that if my church member sees how small I am compared with Leviathan, it will give up Mormonism."

"That's actually a good theory.” Dr. Merced looked at me with apparently newfound respect. “Size does matter to the solcetaceans. And your church members are among the youngest, least powerful, and therefore most likely to be awed into obeying a larger one. And they probably don't come any larger than Leviathan."

"According to her, she's the largest."

Leaning forward in her seat, Dr. Merced said, “She told you that?"

"Not just that. She claimed to be not only the original swale, but the original plasma life form. She said she became a swale."

In a tone of amazement, Dr. Merced took the Lord's name in vain. She reached over to her comm and punched in an address. When a man responded, she said, “Taro, I think you need to come hear this.” Looking at me, she said, “Dr. Sasaki specializes in solcetacean evolutionary theory."

When Dr. Sasaki, a gray-haired Japanese gentleman, arrived, I relayed to him what Leviathan had told me about her history. When I finished, he said, “It's not impossible. I always suspected the Class 10s knew more about their origins than they bothered to tell us. But forgive me, Mr. Malan, how do we know Leviathan actually told you she was the original life-form? Why would she choose to tell you and not one of us?” He motioned toward himself and Dr. Merced.

I decided to not be offended at the implication that I was a liar. “I can't say I know why Leviathan does anything, but . . . You scientists who study the swales have strict rules about interfering with swale culture, and you try to avoid offending them. To me that smacks of condescension—you presume that swale culture is weak and cannot withstand any outside influence. Well, maybe the swales tend to think the same about human culture, so they avoid interference and try not to offend us."

Dr. Sasaki frowned at me. “I disagree with your interpretation of the motives for our rules regarding interference in solcetacean culture. And I don't see how it's relevant."

"I apparently offended Leviathan.” I glanced at Dr. Merced and said, “Sorry, but I didn't realize that implying there were swales greater than her would cause offense. Her response was to tell me I was wrong, that there could be no swale greater, and that's when she explained she was the first. Because I made her angry—something you guys avoid, thanks to rules—Leviathan responded without worrying whether she would offend me or interfere with human culture."

"How would this information interfere with human culture?” asked Dr. Merced.

"Some swale-worshiping cults have already sprung up on Earth,” I said. “Just imagine what will happen when the news gets out that Leviathan claims to be the original life-form in the universe."

With a suspicious look, Dr. Sasaki said, “News you will be only too happy to spread, I'm sure. There is only one Leviathan, and Harry Malan is her prophet."

My jaw dropped. “What?"

"That's where this is headed, isn't it?” he said. “You go out and talk to Leviathan, then come back with some ‘revelation’ from—"

"No!” I stood up. “Absolutely not. I believe my own religion and have no intention of becoming Leviathan's prophet. All I want is for the swales in my branch to be free from harassment. You're just jealous because I got handed the information you've been bumbling about trying to find."

He shot to his feet, but before he could say anything, Dr. Merced said, “Stop it, both of you."

Dr. Sasaki and I stood silent, glaring at each other.

"Taro,” said Dr. Merced, “I think you're being unfair to Mr. Malan. I truly believe he's just trying to do what is best for his congregants."

I gave her a grateful look.

"Even if he is misguided,” she added. “As for you, Mr. Malan, there is no reason to insult Dr. Sasaki."

With a bow of my head, I said, “I apologize, Dr. Sasaki."

"Apology accepted,” he said.

I noticed he did not apologize to me, but after a moment that didn't matter because Dr. Merced said, “Now that we're all friends again . . . Taro, will you let us preempt your next expedition in the shuttle to go talk to Leviathan?"

With the shuttle flight arranged for the next day, I returned to my quarters to work out other details. My Earth-based manager at CitiAmerica granted my request for two days’ vacation time.

Then I dialed Neuter Kimball's comm.

"Hello, President Malan,” it said.

"Hello, Neuter Kimball. You remember our discussion the other day about whether swales should be allowed to force sexual conduct on each other?"

"Of course."

"Well, I've spoken with Leviathan about it, and she has requested that we go to see her."

Neuter Kimball did not reply.

"Are you still there?” I said.

"You . . . told Leviathan about me?” it said. It might just have been the voice synthesis, but there seemed to be fear in its tone.

"I did not mention you by name,” I said, glad I'd managed to avoid slipping up. “But she requested that I bring you to her. I think this is a chance to convince a swale with real authority to do something to stop sexual assault."

After a short pause, Neuter Kimball said, “Why do you say Leviathan has real authority?"

"She told me she is the first and greatest of all swales. Isn't that true?” I asked, suddenly worried that I'd been taken in by a swale con artist.

"She told you?” Neuter Kimball said. “We are not supposed to talk of it to humans, but if she has revealed herself as a god to you, then that is her choice."

"A god? Leviathan is not a god. She's just . . .” I stopped. What was I going to say: an ancient immortal being who created an entire race of intelligent beings? If that didn't fit the definition of a god, it was pretty close. “Neuter Kimball, if you believe Leviathan to be a god, why did you join the Church?"

"Because I do not want her as my god."

"Why not?"

Another long pause. “I probably should not have said anything about her."

Going to see Leviathan to plead the case for Neuter Kimball had seemed like a great opportunity. Now I wasn't so sure. “If you think you will be in any danger from Leviathan, you don't have to go."

"Do you believe God is greater than Leviathan?” Its alto voice was plaintive.

"Yes, I do,” I said.

"Then I will have faith in God and go with you."

Unlike the much larger solar shuttle that had brought me to Sol Central Station, the observation shuttle had room for only two people. I strapped into the copilot's seat next to Dr. Merced, although we were both essentially passengers because the shuttle's computer would do the actual piloting.

After getting clearance from Traffic Control, the computer spun up the superconducting magnets for the Heim drive and we left the station.

On a monitor, I watched the computer-generated visualization of our shuttle approaching the energy shield that protected us from the twenty-eight million degrees Fahrenheit and the 340 billion atmospheres of pressure. I held my breath as the shield stretched, forming a bulge around the shuttle. Soon we were in a bubble still connected by a thin tube to the shield around the station. Then the tube snapped, and our bubble wobbled a bit before settling down to a sphere.

"You can start breathing again,” said Dr. Merced with a wry smile.

I did. “It was that noticeable?"

With a chuckle, she said, “The energy shield is not going to fail. It's a self-sustaining reaction powered by the energy of the solar plasma around it."

"Yeah, but on the station I can usually avoid thinking about what would happen if for some reason it did fail."

"The good news is, if it did fail, you wouldn't notice."

"There's a backup system?” I asked.

"No.” She grinned. “You'll just be dead before you have time to notice."

"Thank you for that tremendously comforting insight, Dr. Merced,” I said.

"Look, we're going to be shipmates for the next couple of days, so why don't you drop the Dr. Merced bit and call me Juanita?"

I nodded. “Thank you, Juanita. And you can call me . . . Your Excellency."

Juanita snorted. “I can already tell this is going to be a long trip. Oh, looks like our escort has arrived."

On the monitor, a swale twice the size of our energy shield bubble undulated closer. A text overlay read Kimball (Class 1, Neuter).

"Let's get the full view,” she said and pressed a few buttons.

I gasped as a full holographic display surrounded us, as if we were traveling in a glass sphere. Against the yellow background of the Sun, a giant swirl of orange and red swam alongside us. “Kimball” was superimposed in dark green letters.

"Can I talk to it?” I asked.

"Computer, set up an open channel with Kimball,” said Juanita.

"Channel open,” said the computer.

"Hello, Neuter Kimball,” I said. “It's nice to finally meet you."

"It is nice to meet you, too, President Malan, although I hope you will forgive me for not shaking your hand."

I smiled. “Forgiven.” I was constantly surprised how much swales seemed to know about our customs and culture, compared with how little we seemed to know of theirs. “And I'm here with Dr. Merced, who is a scientist—"

Juanita laughed. “It's known me a lot longer than it's known you."

"Hello, Juanita,” said Neuter Kimball. “I'm glad you are with us."

"Shortly after I began my work here,” Juanita said, “it was the first solcetacean I observed personally. It went by the human name Pemberly back then."

"Another swale had transmitted Pride and Prejudice to me, and I decided to seek out humans to see what they were like,” Neuter Kimball said. “You are a fascinating race."

The thought came to me that maybe there had been some pride and prejudice between me and Juanita—possibly because she was annoyed that a swale she particularly liked had become a Mormon. But maybe we could work out our differences and—I shoved that thought away. “Swales are also fascinating. I hope to understand you as well someday as you understand us."

"Kimball, our shuttle is on a course to take us to Leviathan, so you can just follow us,” said Juanita. “But stay at least fifty meters away from us."

"I will keep my distance,” said Neuter Kimball.

I must have shown my puzzlement because Juanita pressed a button to mute the call and said, “Solcetaceans and energy shields don't play well together. A few years back, a Class 1—about Kimball's size—was showing off for a couple of observers, and glanced off a shuttle's energy shield. It tore a big chunk off the solcetacean that took months to heal."

"What about the shuttle? And the people inside?” Sometimes I got the feeling she cared more about swales than about people.

After a moment, Juanita said, “This shuttle was the replacement."

"What happened?"

"The shield did not collapse, but part of the solcetacean made it through—probably because the shield works similarly to how solcetaceans hold their bodies together, so the shield sort of merged with the solcetacean's skin. When they recovered the shuttle, they found that the plasma had vaporized part of it, including the crew compartment."

"I guess it's good I didn't hear about this before coming on this trip,” I said.

"Don't worry—this shuttle was built with an ablative shell specifically to withstand that sort of accident,” she said. “So I'm really more concerned with what would happen to Kimball if it bumped into us."

"Or Leviathan?"

"Leviathan's so big, she might not even notice."

I spent most of the sixteen-hour trip polishing and improving what I would say to Leviathan to convince her to outlaw coerced sexual activity. I had been a debater in high school and college, so I felt I knew how to construct a convincing argument. But eventually I reached the point where I felt I was making my prepared speech worse, not better.

"Approaching destination,” the computer said.

I blinked a few times to clear my eyes, straightened up in my seat, and began looking around. Neuter Kimball's orange and red form moved silently beside us. I scanned the holographic image for more orange and red, but didn't see any.

"There,” said Juanita, pointing ahead of us. She pressed a button, and dark green letters sprang up: Leviathan (Class 10, Female).

Staring harder, I noticed a bright spot above the letters. As we drew closer, I could distinguish white, violet, and blue swirling together. “She's not orange or red."

"It's all false color, anyway,” Juanita said, “but this imaging system uses color to indicate energy levels. Leviathan is actually hotter than the surrounding solar plasma. We think she carries out fusion inside herself."

Leviathan grew in our view, stretching out to fill most of the holographic screen in front of us. The intricate dance of violet and blue amid the white was mesmerizing. Eventually she shone so brightly that I had to squint to reduce the glare. “Aren't we getting too close?” I asked.

"We're still three kilometers away,” Juanita said. But she added, “Computer, hold position relative to Leviathan."

"Neuter Kimball, are you ready?” I asked.

"I feel a bit like Abinidi going before King Noah,” it said.

I kind of agreed, but I said, “Try to think of it as Ammon going before King Lamoni instead."

"That would be better,” said Neuter Kimball. “But I am ready in any case."

Juanita hit the mute. “What was that about?"

"References to the Book of Mormon. Abinidi was burned at the stake after preaching to King Noah, but King Lamoni was converted by Ammon's preaching."

She just shook her head, muttering something about fairy tales, then said, “Computer, set up an open channel to Leviathan."

"Channel open,” the computer replied.

"Leviathan, this is President Malan,” I said. “I have come with my church member, Neuter Kimball, as you requested. We petition you to tell your people—"

"Silence, human,” boomed the voice from the speaker. “It is not yet time for you to speak."

I shut up.

"You will come with me,” Leviathan said. Her form brightened. There was a blinding flash, then the holographic system compensated and lowered its brightness.

It took several seconds before the afterimage cleared enough for me to make out shapes. Leviathan still loomed in front, and Neuter Kimball remained beside us.

"Uh-oh,” said Juanita.

"What?” I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision. The Sun's background seemed blue instead of yellow.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.” Juanita tapped at her keyboard. “Leviathan ported us to another star—one with a core much hotter than the Sun. Looks like the shield is holding, for now.” She took the Lord's name in vain—or possibly it was a heartfelt prayer for help—and added, “We're stuck here unless she takes us back."

"What about Neuter Kimball?” I asked.

"Only a Class 6 or larger can open a portal on its own."

Green letters began popping up on the screen. Unknown (Class 10, Male).Unknown (Class 9, Female). Unknown (Class 10, Neuter).Unknown (Class 8, Male). My eyes adjusted enough that I could see their forms. Dozens of swales surrounded us, all of them tagged Class 8 or higher.

"What have you gotten us into?” Juanita said.

I said a silent prayer and hoped for the best. “It's a great opportunity for both of us. Think of what you're going to discover."

She took a deep breath. “You're right. It's just that I was prepared to study Leviathan, not sixty Class 8 and up. No one's ever seen more than three or four giant ones together."

"Is Leviathan the biggest one here?"

After checking a readout, Juanita said, “Yes, but not by much.” She pointed at a swale off to the left. “That male is only about 2 percent smaller."

"So it looks like she wasn't lying about that."

She nodded her agreement, then said, “Why did you say it's a great opportunity for you?"

I swept my arm across the view. “These must be the most prestigious swales, the leaders. If I can talk to them, convince them to make a law against sexual assault, then the smaller swales will accept it. That has to be why Leviathan brought me and Neuter Kimball here."

"You are wrong,” said Neuter Kimball. Juanita must have taken the mute off at some point.

"Why do you say that?"

"This is a deathwatch council,” said Neuter Kimball. “They are here to watch me die so they can tell all swales that my death was deserved."

"What?” I said. “What have you done?"

"I'm sure Leviathan will—"

Leviathan's voice cut Neuter Kimball's off. “This little one has abandoned me in favor of a human god. Such error I could forgive. But on its behalf, the tiny human seeks to impose its moral code on us. The human's mind is infinitesimal compared to ours. The human's life is short; the history of its race is short. It is the least of us, and yet it seeks power over us."

"I don't seek power over—” I began.

"Silence!” Leviathan thundered. “The human must see the error of its ways. Kimball!"

"Yes, Leviathan?"

"Your life is forfeit. But I will grant reprieve if you will renounce the human religion and return to me."

I had read of martyrdom in the scriptures and history of the Church all my life. But nowadays it was supposed to be a merely academic exercise, as you examined your faith to see if it was strong enough that you would die for the gospel of Christ. Actual killing over religious belief wasn't supposed to happen anymore.

And I found my own faith lacking as I hoped that Neuter Kimball's faith was weak, that it would deny the faith and live rather than be killed.

"I am to be Abinidi after all, President Malan,” said Neuter Kimball. “I choose to live as a Mormon, and I will die as one if it be God's will."

"It is my will,” said Leviathan, “and I am the only god who concerns you."

Tendrils of white plasma reached out toward Neuter Kimball.

"I am the greatest of all,” said Leviathan. “Bear witness to my judgment."

I hit the mute button and said, “I've got to stop this. This is my fault."

Juanita's eyes glistened. “I warned you about interfering. But it's too late to do anything now."

"No,” I said. “If you're willing to drive this thing into Leviathan's tendrils, it may give Neuter Kimball a chance to escape."

She stared at me. “The shuttle's meant to survive a glancing blow. A direct hit like that—we could die."

The tendrils closed around Neuter Kimball.

"I know, and that's why I'm asking you. I can't force you to risk your life to save someone else's.” I hoped I was right about how much she cared about swales—and Neuter Kimball in particular.

After looking out at Neuter Kimball, then back at me, she said, “Computer, manual navigation mode.” She grabbed the controls and began steering us toward the white bands connecting Leviathan to Neuter Kimball.

I turned off the mute. “Leviathan, you claim to be the greatest. In size, you probably are."

White filled the view ahead.

"But not in love,” I said, speaking quickly as I didn't know how much time I had left. “Jesus said, ‘Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.’ He was willing to die for the least of us, while you are willing to kill the leas—"

A flash of bright light and searing heat cut me off. I felt a sudden jolt.

Then blackness.

And nausea. After a few moments, I realized nausea probably meant I was still alive. “Juanita?"

"I'm here,” she said.

The darkness was complete. And I was weightless. Maybe I was dead—although this wasn't how I'd pictured the afterlife.

"What happened?” I asked.

"I'll tell you what didn't happen: The energy shield didn't fail. The ablative shell didn't fail. We didn't die."

"So what did happen?"

Juanita let out a long, slow breath. “Best guess: Electromagnetic pulse wiped out all our electronics. The engine's dead, artificial gravity's gone, life support's gone, comm system's gone, everything's gone."

"Any chance—"

"No,” she said.

"You didn't even let me finish—"

"No chance of anything. It's not fixable, and even if it was, I haven't a clue how to fix any of those things even if it weren't totally dark in here. Do you?"

"No."

"And no help is coming from Sol Central because not only do they not know we're in trouble, but also we're in another star that could be halfway across the galaxy. When the air in here runs out, we die. It's that simple."

"Oh.” I realized she was right. “Do you think maybe we succeeded in freeing Neuter Kimball?"

"Maybe. But it didn't exactly look like Kimball was trying all that hard to escape."

"Well,” I said, “maybe it was thinking about how Abinidi's martyrdom led one of the evil king's priests to repent and become a great prophet. Perhaps Neuter Kimball believed something similar would happen to one of the great swales who—"

"Whatever Neuter Kimball believed,” she said, her voice acidic, “it was because you and your church filled its mind with fairy tales of martyrs."

I bit back an angry reply. Part of me felt she was right. At the end, Neuter Kimball had seemed to embrace the role of martyr. Would it have done so if not for the stories about martyrs in the scriptures?

And I had been willing enough to risk my life, but now that I was going to die, I found myself afraid.

Juanita didn't seem to need a reply from me. “And what's the point of martyrs anyway? A truly powerful god could save his followers rather than let them die. Where's God now that you really need him? What good is any of this?"

"Look, I'm sorry,” I said. “If it weren't for me, you'd be safe at home, and Neuter Kimball would be alive. I've made a mess of things."

"Yes."

Hours passed—floating in darkness, it was hard to tell how many. I spent it in introspection and prayer, detailing all my faults that had led me here. Biggest of all was pride: the idea that I, Harry Malan, would—through sheer force of will and a good speech—change a culture that had existed for billions of years. I thought back to what I had been told while serving as a nineteen-year-old missionary on Mars: You don't convert people; the Spirit of the Lord does that, and even then only if they are willing to be converted.

Juanita spoke. “You were just trying to do what you thought was right. And you were trying to protect the rights of smaller swales. So I forgive you."

"Thank you,” I said.

The shuttle jolted.

"What was that?” I asked. My body sank down into my seat.

"It sounded—"

An ear-splitting squeal from the right side of the shuttle drowned out the rest of her reply. I twisted my head around and saw sparks flying from the wall.

Then a chunk of the hull fell away and light streamed in, temporarily blinding me.

"They're still alive,” said a man. “Tell Kimball they're still alive."

All we got from the paramedics was that a large swale had dropped off our shuttle and Neuter Kimball just outside Sol Central Station's energy shield. Neuter Kimball had called the station, and the shuttle had been towed into a dock, where they cut through the hull to rescue us.

It wasn't until Juanita and I were sitting in a hospital room, where an autodoc gave us injections to treat our radiation burns, that we were able to talk to Neuter Kimball.

"It was Leviathan who brought us back here,” it said.

I was stunned. “But why? And why didn't she kill you?"

"When she saw that you were willing to die to save me, though I am not even of your own species, she was curious. She asked me why you would do such a thing, so I transmitted the Bible and the Book of Mormon to her. Then she brought us here in case you were still alive."

"And you're not hurt from what she did to you?” I asked.

"I will recover,” said Neuter Kimball. “Before she left, Leviathan declared that from this time forward, Mormon swales are not to be forced into sexual activity."

"That's great news.” I had won. No—I corrected myself—the victory was not mine. I thank thee, Lord, I prayed silently.

"Leviathan also had a personal message for you, President Malan. She said to remind you of what King Agrippa said to Paul."

I nodded. “I understand. Thanks for passing that along."

After the call was over, Juanita said, “What was that message about? Another Book of Mormon story?"

"No, it's from the Bible. Saint Paul preached before King Agrippa, and the king's response was, ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’ So, no, Leviathan hasn't become Mormon. But God softened her heart so she didn't kill Neuter Kimball. Or us, for that matter. Back on the shuttle, you were certain we were going to die. You asked where God was when I really needed him. Well, God came through."

Juanita puffed out an exasperated breath. “Typical."

"What do you mean by that?” I asked as the autodoc signaled that my treatment was complete.

"In one story, the preacher converts the king. In another, the king kills the preacher. And in a third, neither happens. That's no evidence that God comes through.” She pointed at me. “As I see it, you came through. By mentioning that ‘greater love’ thing, you hit Leviathan where it counted: her pride at being the greatest."

I shook my head. “I'm not taking credit for this."

After we walked out of the hospital, she gave me a tight hug that reminded me how much I was attracted to her. But I knew it would never work out between us—our worldviews were just too different.

So I was still a single Mormon man with no dating prospects within ninety million miles.

And no, an attractive single Mormon woman did not arrive on the next solar shuttle. What would be the point of life if God solved all my problems?

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.

—Psalm 104:24-26

Copyright © 2010 Eric James Stone

Medical research has dramatically improved the care patients receive today. When I completed my cardiology training in 1982, most of the medicines and procedures cardiologists now use routinely weren't available yet or were in an early stage of development. Table 1 compares some of the tests and treatments for heart disease that were state-of-the-art fifty years ago to what we have now. Other medical and surgical fields have made similar advances.

However, along with those successes there've also been stunning, even fatal failures. While medical science has traveled far along the path to improving our health, it's instructive to review some potholes along that road and see what went wrong.

Of Mice and (Wo)Men

Developing new medicines and medical devices is a complex process. New drugs undergo an extended period of evaluation regarding their safety and efficacy. The evaluation process may begin with synthesis and initial laboratory evaluation of as many as 5,000 to 10,000 chemical compounds that, on theoretical grounds, might prove effective for a particular disease. On average, about 250 of these chemicals will show sufficient promise to proceed with further laboratory testing and studies involving mice and other test animals. Only about ten of these chemicals will typically qualify for human testing.

There are four “classic” phases in evaluating new drugs in humans. Phase I trials usually involve a small number (often less than 100) of healthy volunteers. The primary goal is to assess an investigational medicine's safety and pharmacokinetics (how it is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted by the human body). This is often done by studying the effects of administering a range of dosages of the drug, with each dose being significantly less than that found to be harmful in laboratory animals.

If the drug meets safety criteria in Phase I trials, its efficacy for treating a particular medical problem is evaluated in Phase II trials. These studies may involve as many as several hundred men and women. Assessment of the drug's safety continues in Phase II trials.

Table 1. A Partial Comparison of Evaluation and Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases—1960 versus 2010

—

DIAGNOSTIC TESTS, TECHNIQUES, AND TOOLS

1960

History and physical

Stethoscope

Sphygmomanometer (used to check blood pressure)

Limited laboratory tests

Electrocardiogram (EKG)

Chest x-ray and fluoroscopy

Master's two-step test

Cardiac catheterization and initial use of coronary angiography

—

2010

Markedly expanded use of laboratory tests, including new tests such as cardiac enzymes

Exercise (treadmill and bicycle) and pharmacological stress testing

Echocardiography and other ultrasound tests

Nuclear cardiac imaging

Computed tomography (CT)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Routine coronary angiography

Coronary angioscopy and ultrasound

Electrophysiological studies

Routine use of cardiac monitoring

Holter and event monitors

MEDICATIONS

1960

Nitroglycerin

Amyl nitrite

Atropine

Limited medications used to treat high blood pressure, such as reserpine, guanethidine, and hydralazine

Limited antiarrhythmics, such as quinidine and procainamide

Anticoagulants, such as heparin and warfarin

Limited diuretics, such as chlorothiazide

Digitalis

Morphine

Aspirin was available but not routinely used for cardiovascular disease

Antibiotics to prevent rheumatic and syphilitic heart disease and treat endocarditis

—

2010

Beta-blockers

Calcium channel blockers

Oral, topical, and intravenous nitrates

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors

Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs)

Statins, fibrates, and other cholesterol-lowering medications

Expanded use and variety of diuretics

Markedly expanded range of antiarrhythmic medications

Dopamine, dobutamine, nitroprusside

Antiplatelet agents such as clopidogrel

Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors

Thrombolytic agents

Low-molecular-weight heparins

Additional antibiotics

DEVICES

1960

Initial use of temporary and permanent pacemakers

Initial use of defibrillators

Initial use of cardiopulmonary bypass ("heart-lung machines")

—

2010

Routine use of implantable pacemakers

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD)

Ventricular assist device

Intra-aortic balloon pump

Routine use of defibrillators, including automated external defibrillators (AED)

SURGERY AND THERAPEUTIC PROCEDURES

1960

Operations available for a variety of congenital heart defects

Commissurotomy for mitral and aortic stenosis

Initial use of mechanical heart valves

Initial techniques for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)

—

2010

Coronary angioplasty and coronary stents

Coronary atherectomy

Percutaneous (catheter-based) techniques for procedures that previously could only be done by surgery, such as mitral valve repair

Coronary artery bypass surgery

Routine use of a wide variety of mechanical and bioprosthetic heart valves

Expanded techniques for heart valve repair

Heart transplantation and the artificial heart

Radio frequency (RF) ablation treatments for arrhythmias

Transmyocardial laser revascularization

External enhanced counterpulsation

Refinement of techniques for CPR

* Tests and treatments available in 1960 are also still available in 2010. However, some (such as the Masters two-step test or use of amyl nitrite) have been supplanted by newer and better ones.

Drugs demonstrating acceptable safety and efficacy graduate to Phase III trials. These often involve thousands of patients and are performed at a large number of medical centers and clinics. They typically evaluate how well the new drug works and its safety compared to placebo, as well as to the best currently available ("gold standard") treatment for a disease. Statistical analyses of how effective the study medication is and its adverse effects are performed during and at the end of the trial.

Phase III trials are customarily “randomized” and “double-blinded” to make this evaluation as objective as possible. “Randomized” means that whether an individual patient receives the investigational medication, placebo, or a standard medication is determined by chance. This helps avoid “selection bias"—the possibility that physicians supervising the study would, however inadvertently, give the study drug to patients more likely to respond to it or assign placebo to those less likely to respond, thus making the study drug seem better than it really is.

"Double-blinded” means that neither the patients in the study nor the physicians caring for them know what kind of medication (e.g. study drug or placebo) an individual patient is getting. This reduces the influence of any purely subjective feelings of well-being or harm that patients or physicians might feel if they knew what type of medication was being taken. This information is, however, kept in a central database for analysis by third-party monitors.

In the United States, drugs that meet appropriate safety and efficacy criteria following Phase III trials can be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This federal agency decides whether the drug can be approved for marketing and sale. If the drug is approved, it may be evaluated further via Phase IV trials. These are typically surveillance studies that monitor the safety of the drug in a much larger number of patients than were evaluated in Phase I, II, and III trials. Data are also obtained to assess the drug's interactions with other commonly used medications as well as its safety and efficacy in particular types of patients, including those usually excluded from pre-approval trials, such as pregnant women or the very elderly.

Medical devices and biologics (agents that include vaccines and biological substances produced using recombinant DNA) undergo similar stages of testing.

Overall, it may take twelve to fifteen years from the time a new drug is discovered to when it is approved for use. The average cost of developing an entirely new medicine has been estimated at around eight hundred million to two billion dollars.[1]

And yet, despite all the time and effort that go into developing new medications, things can go wrong. Only about one out of five drugs that reach the stage of human trials is ultimately approved. And even a few that are approved can turn out to be more hazardous than helpful.

The Terrible Swift SWORD

Over my career as a cardiologist, I've been an investigator for over two dozen clinical research trials involving new medications. It's sometimes been challenging for me to find patients who were suitable and willing to participate in these studies. But in one case, I'm grateful I didn't enroll a patient before the study was stopped.

The Survival With ORal D-sotalol (SWORD) study was a large Phase III multicenter trial conducted in the mid 1990s. Its goal was to see if d-sotalol, a medication used to treat arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms), could reduce the risk of death in certain patients following a myocardial infarction (a “heart attack,” usually caused by a blood clot completely or nearly completely blocking off one of the heart's arteries). The study included patients with at least moderately decreased systolic function of the left ventricle (the main pumping chamber of the heart, which contracts during “systole") and who'd either had a myocardial infarction within six to 42 days or who had symptoms of heart failure (such as shortness of breath) more than 42 days after a myocardial infarction.

People who survive a myocardial infarction and have at least moderately decreased left ventricular systolic function have an increased long-term risk of death. This greater mortality can be due to the occurrence of life-threatening arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation. With both arrhythmias, either the right ventricle or left ventricle produces electrical impulses at an abnormally fast rate. With ventricular tachycardia, this may be as fast as 300 times per minute. Ventricular fibrillation is even faster, generating impulses at 400 to 600 times per minute. These heart rates are too rapid for the heart to effectively pump blood and can cause irreversible brain injury and death within minutes.

The scientific rationale behind SWORD was to see if d-sotalol could reduce the risk of death by preventing these life-threatening arrhythmias. The sotalol molecule has two “isomers” with antiarrhythmic properties, d-sotalol and l-sotalol. (Isomers are molecules with the same numbers and types of atoms but in different arrangements.) D-sotalol differs from l-sotalol in that it essentially lacks “beta-blocking” properties. The heart contains a type of “beta receptor” (SS1) that, when stimulated by epinephrine (adrenaline) or similar chemicals, increases heart rate and how forcefully the left and right ventricles contract. Conversely, a beta-blocker reduces heart rate and contractility.

At the time the SWORD study was initiated, it was controversial whether beta-blockers were primarily detrimental or beneficial for people with reduced left ventricular systolic function. One concern was that beta-blockers could reduce heart function to the point that a person would develop problems with heart failure—the inability of the heart to pump blood well enough to meet the body's needs. Based on this rationale, d-sotalol, with its lack of beta-blocking properties, was deemed potentially safer than l-sotalol, which has significant beta-blocker effects.

SWORD was stopped after 3,121 of the planned 6,400 patients were recruited. This was due to a significantly increased percentage of people receiving d-sotalol dying (78 of 1549, 5%) compared to those receiving placebo (48 of 1572, 3.1%).[2] A potential reason for this increased mortality included d-sotalol actually increasing rather than decreasing the risk of life-threatening arrhythmias.[3] Also, subsequent studies have established that medications with beta-blocking properties can reduce the risk of death in patients like those enrolled in SWORD, as well as certain others with at least moderately decreased left ventricular systolic function.

In retrospect, SWORD went wrong because two key hypotheses considered reasonable at the time turned out to be incorrect. Using d-sotalol to reduce mortality by suppressing life-threatening arrhythmias instead increased that risk. Beta-blockade was, on balance, found to be beneficial rather than detrimental.

CASTing Stones

SWORD was only one nail in the coffin of using antiarrhythmic medications to reduce the risk of death in patients after myocardial infarction. The C ardiac A rrhythmia S uppression T rial (CAST) in the late 1980s used three antiarrhythmic agents with a different mechanism of action than sotalol. Encainide, flecainide, and moricizine were compared to placebo in a randomized trial involving groups of patients who'd experienced a prior myocardial infarction. At the time CAST was done, encainide and flecainide were already approved by the FDA for treating ventricular arrhythmias.

The CAST study was stopped after patients were followed for only an average of ten months due to those receiving encainide or flecainide having a significantly greater mortality than those taking placebo. Sixty-three of 755 (8.3%) patients taking either of those two antiarrhythmic agents died, compared to 26 of 743 (3.5%) receiving placebo.[4]

Moricizine was not found to be associated with excess mortality in the CAST study. It was further evaluated in a follow-up trial, CAST II. However, this study met the same fate of early termination, for reasons similar to CAST. Patients who'd had a myocardial infarction were randomized to receive moricizine or placebo during an initial 14-day period. Significantly more people taking moricizine died or had a cardiac arrest (17 of 665, 2.6%) than those taking placebo (3 of 660, 0.5%).[5], [6]

Largely due to CAST's findings, encainide was removed from the U.S. market in 1991. Flecainide remains available, but for only restricted indications in patients who do not have characteristics similar to those treated in the CAST study. Moricizine was available for restricted use until its manufacturer stopped making it in 2007.

As with d-sotalol in the SWORD study, the antiarrhythmic agents used in CAST increased the risk of death in patients following a myocardial infarction. But although those particular agents were (literally) a dead end for treating those patients, the good news is that other methods to suppress life-threatening arrhythmias have been successful. Another antiarrhythmic agent, amiodarone, may be modestly useful for reducing risk of death after myocardial infarction.[7] Other medications, including beta-blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, and angiotensin receptor blockers have been shown to reduce mortality in patients following a myocardial infarction who have at least moderately reduced left ventricular systolic function.

Currently, one of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of death in certain patients with moderately to severely reduced left ventricular systolic function due to a myocardial infarction or other cause doesn't involve a medication at all. In such patients, an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) can be used.[8] An ICD is slightly larger than a conventional pacemaker and is usually implanted under the skin just below the clavicle (collarbone). A plastic-coated wire attached to the ICD is inserted into the subclavian vein and advanced into the right ventricle.

The ICD is programmed to monitor the heart for development of life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias (e.g. ventricular fibrillation and rapid ventricular tachycardia) and to treat them. It delivers a mild electric shock to the heart or, for some types of ventricular tachycardia, gives a short burst of rapid electrical impulses that interrupts the arrhythmia.

Overall, the basic scientific idea that suppressing life-threatening arrhythmias in certain high-risk patients could improve survival turned out to be correct. However, discovering an effective way to do this required studying multiple approaches, with the CAST and SWORD studies showing that some initially promising ones were harmful instead. And that's a key reason why clinical trials are performed—to see how well theory matches reality.

Good News and Bad News

Another reason why medical research goes wrong falls under the category of “What's good for one part of the body may be bad for another."

The rise and fall of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors, a class of medications introduced in the late 1990s, illustrates this principle. COX-2 inhibitors are one type of a larger class of medications called NSAIDs ("nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs"). NSAIDs are used to treat arthritis and inflammation, and include such commonly used medicines as aspirin, ibuprofen (Motrin), and naproxen (Naprosyn). These and some other NSAIDs inhibit both the COX-1 and COX-2 receptors present to varying degrees in most tissues in the body.

Inhibiting COX-2 receptors reduces inflammation—a beneficial effect. However, inhibiting COX-1 receptors can lead to irritation, inflammation, and ulceration of the lining of the stomach and other parts of the gastrointestinal tract. These adverse effects can cause bleeding and other complications. NSAIDs designed to selectively inhibit COX-2 receptors were developed with the idea that this would maximize their good effects (e.g. reducing inflammation and joint pain) and minimize bad ones, such as damaging the stomach.

Two selective COX-2 inhibitors, rofecoxib (Vioxx) and celecoxib (Celebrex), were approved by the FDA in the late 1990s and a third, valdecoxib (Bextra), in 2001. For several years they were widely prescribed for treatment of arthritis. Some studies, including the C elecoxib L ong-term A rthritis S afety S tudy (CLASS) and the VI oxx G astrointestinal O utcomes R esearch (VIGOR) study, reported that selective COX-2 inhibitors were indeed associated with a lower incidence of gastrointestinal side effects than other types of medications used to treat arthritis.[9], [10]

However, VIGOR and later studies found that COX-2 inhibitors were also associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure, and high blood pressure.[11] Although the exact mechanisms for some of these increased risks are still debated, they may include increased chance of a blood clot (thrombus) forming, as well as excessive retention of sodium and water. Based on these reported adverse cardiovascular effects, rofecoxib was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 2004 and valdecoxib in 2005.

Celecoxib remains available by prescription. However, current guidelines state that it should be used for treatment of arthritis only if less risky medications have failed; duration of treatment should be as short as possible and at the lowest effective dose; and it should be used with special caution or not at all in patients at highest risk of cardiovascular events. That includes those with prior myocardial infarction or otherwise known to have or to be at high risk of having coronary artery disease (one or more blockages in the arteries of the heart).

Interestingly, this research also indicated that older NSAIDs that produce a milder degree of selective COX-2 inhibition, such as ibuprofen, might also be associated with increased risk of cardiovascular events, but not as much as rofecoxib and similar medications. These older NSAIDs should also be used with caution in patients with known or suspected cardiovascular disease.

The COX-2 inhibitors aren't alone in initially appearing to be reasonably effective and benign, only to be found when used in larger numbers of patients to have unexpected bad effects on other parts of the body besides those being treated. In the 1990s, a medication that combined fenfluramine and phentermine (Fen-Phen) was marketed as an aid to weight loss. As use of this medication became more widespread, however, its use was found to be associated with serious and even fatal cardiovascular problems—development of increased pressure in the arteries of the lungs (pulmonary hypertension), and abnormalities of heart valves such as increased thickening and leaking.[12], [13]

In 1997, the FDA recommended that medications containing fenfluramine, the component of Fen-Phen thought to be the primary cause for these problems, be removed from the U.S. market. Phentermine remains approved for use. Injuries attributed to Fen-Phen have been part of thousands of product liability lawsuits.

The WHIs and Wherefores of Estrogen Therapy

Certain diseases are caused by a person's body producing inadequate amounts of a hormone or other chemical needed for good health. “Hypothyroidism” occurs when the thyroid gland doesn't produce enough of two hormones—thyroxine and triiodothyronine— to meet a person's metabolic needs. Diabetes mellitus is associated with either an absolute deficiency of insulin (Type 1), or an at least relative deficiency of insulin and resistance to its effects (Type 2). Having too little of other hormones—growth hormone, parathyroid hormone, aldosterone, etc.—also causes well-described symptoms and diseases. Replacement of a hormone when its blood level is too low may improve or cure the disease caused by its lack.

However, levels of some hormones fall not because of a clearly pathological process, but as a “normal” part of aging. These include dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a hormone produced by the adrenal glands, and growth hormone. Although further studies might change this assessment, so far research has not definitively shown that replacement of these hormones to “youthful” levels produces a clinically significant improvement in health.

In women, levels of the female sex hormone estrogen fall dramatically at menopause. The higher level of estrogen present in premenopausal women compared to men is associated with a significantly lower risk of these women developing coronary artery disease (CAD). Roughly speaking, the risk of a woman developing CAD prior to menopause is about the same as a man ten years younger with similar risk factors (e.g. high blood pressure, an abnormal blood cholesterol level, diabetes, or tobacco use). The drop in estrogen level that occurs with menopause is associated with a significant increase in the risk of a woman developing CAD.

The “logical” conclusion was that, if a woman's estrogen level were restored to what it was before menopause, her risk of developing CAD would fall. The possibility that giving estrogen replacement might have effects that reduce the risk of developing CAD seemed to support this idea. These potentially beneficial effects include lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, increasing high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, and reducing blood sugar. Some known effects of giving estrogen, such as raising the blood level of triglycerides (another component of cholesterol) and increasing the risk of developing blood clots, were recognized as being potentially harmful. However, these bad effects were not thought to be as significant as estrogen's good effects.

Some small studies done in the early and mid-1990s did in fact suggest that estrogen replacement was, overall, beneficial for preventing CAD in postmenopausal women. These studies contributed to the expanded use of estrogen for this indication and an unsuccessful attempt to have the FDA give official approval for it. In general, post-menopausal women were prescribed “hormone replacement therapy” (HRT) as a combination of estrogen and either another female sex hormone, progesterone, or a chemical with progesteronelike effects called a “progestin,” such as medroxyprogesterone. Giving estrogen by itself increases a woman's risk of developing cancer involving the lining of her uterus (endometrial cancer). Using estrogen with a progestin reduces this risk significantly. If a woman had a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus), she could receive estrogen alone.

However, large studies conducted in the late 1990s and in this century reached different conclusions about the effects of HRT on cardiovascular disease. They showed that using estrogen and a progestin together didn't reduce the risk of myocardial infarction or death from CAD in postmenopausal women either with or without known heart disease. HRT also didn't reduce how rapidly blockages in the arteries of the heart associated with CAD got worse.

In fact, some studies found HRT might increase risk to the heart, especially in the first year after this therapy was started. The W omen's H ealth I nitiative (WHI) study randomized 16,608 postmenopausal women between 50 and 79 years of age without known CAD to receive either an estrogen- medroxyprogesterone combination as HRT, or placebo. The women who received HRT had a 24% higher risk of having a myocardial infarction or dying from CAD than those receiving placebo.[14]

Another group of 10,739 women in WHI who'd previously had a hysterectomy were randomized to either estrogen therapy alone or placebo. In these women, treatment with estrogen showed no significant benefit or harm regarding CAD compared to placebo, but it was associated with an increased risk of stroke.[15]

Current guidelines recommend that HRT should not be used in postmenopausal women to prevent heart disease.[16] Here again, an idea that was once conventional wisdom and supported by preliminary research was not confirmed by further studies.

But the final word on this subject might not have been written yet. It's been suggested that giving HRT to younger postmenopausal women, such as those ages 50 to 59, or using a lower dose of estrogen in women age 60 or older may not be associated with increased cardiovascular risk and might still turn out to have a protective effect regarding CAD. HRT can also have good and bad effects on other parts of the body. Potential benefits include preventing osteoporosis (thinning of bones) and treating symptoms associated with menopause, such as “hot flashes.” Possible risks of HRT with an estrogen-progestin combination include increasing the chance of getting breast cancer. The overall decision whether or not to use HRT in individual postmenopausal women remains complex and hopefully will be clarified by further research.

Pills and Pregnancy

A dramatic example of how inadequate research can result in tragedy involves a woman's use of medications during preg- nancy. Both the mother and the developing baby (called an embryo from about the first four days through the eighth week after conception, and afterward a fetus until birth) share a single blood supply. During most of pregnancy, blood and nutrients are supplied to the baby through the placenta (specialized tissue attached to the inner wall of the uterus) and the umbilical cord. If the mother takes a medication, the baby can, to some degree, receive it too.

Thalidomide is a medication marketed from the late 1950s through 1961 as a treatment for morning sickness and a sleeping aid for pregnant women.[17] However, by 1961 it was belatedly recognized that use of thalidomide was associated with a high risk of serious birth defects in children born to women who'd taken it. These included severe shortening of the arms and legs—"phocomelia,” in which the hands or feet are connected to the trunk by only abnormally short or even absent long bones.

Over 10,000 children affected by thalidomide-induced malformations were born worldwide. An application to market thalidomide in the United States was submitted to the FDA in 1960. However, the physician who reviewed the application, Frances Kelsey, delayed approval pending further evaluation of the drug's safety and effectiveness. Because of her concerns, thalidomide didn't become available for general use in the United States before its “teratogenic” (birth defect-producing) effects were recognized.

As a result of these events, the FDA received increased authority and responsibility to ensure that drugs were both safe and effective. The thalidomide tragedy also showed that an idea commonly held before then, that medications given to the mother did not cross the placenta to her embryo or fetus, was wrong. It's now recognized that medications can adversely affect the developing baby in different ways throughout pregnancy.

For example, medications can cause death of the embryo soon after conception. The brain, internal organs, and limbs are most vulnerable to injury from about the first two weeks to two months following conception, when they are beginning to form and develop. Later in pregnancy, the major body parts of a fetus are better developed and mainly just growing larger. However, medicines taken at that time can cause harm by having too strong an effect on the fetus, due to its much smaller size compared to the mother, as well as interfering with normal growth and function of its organs.

The FDA has five categories for medications regarding risk to the embryo or fetus. Some medications fall into more than one category, with increased risk early in pregnancy but not later, or vice versa.

Category A medications have the lowest level of risk. Scientific studies in human mothers have not shown that these medicines cause harm when taken during pregnancy. They include ferrous sulfate (iron) tablets for treating anemia and standard doses of vitamins B and C.

Category B medications have either not been shown to harm the embryo or fetus in animal studies, or if they have been shown to cause harm in animals, studies have not shown them to be harmful in humans. Category C medicines are those known to cause harm in animal studies, but there are no studies to assess their safety in humans.

Category D medicines are known to sometimes cause harm in humans, but they may be used in certain circumstances when the overall benefit to the mother—and, perhaps, indirectly the baby—outweighs that risk. Category X medications are known to cause harm to a developing human embryo or fetus, and their risks outweigh any potential benefit to the mother.

Because of these risks, clinical trials involving investigational medications routinely exclude pregnant women from study. Only women who are incapable of pregnancy (e.g. postmenopausal or surgically sterilized) or, in some cases, potentially fertile but using effective birth control are typically included in these trials.

As a postscript to the serious harm it caused, further research found that thalidomide is actually helpful for some diseases. In 1998 the FDA approved it for treatment of erythema nodosum leprosum, a painful skin problem associated with leprosy, and in 2006 for treating multiple myeloma, a cancer involving a type of blood cell called a plasma cell. Of course, thalidomide remains in Category X, and its use is tightly regulated.

Nothing Ever Comes Easy

Clinical medical research has other limitations. It's not unusual for two or more large research studies investigating the same new medication or device to produce contradictory results. For example, one study may show a study medication is significantly better than placebo while another study doesn't find that to be so. Clinical trials typically exclude patients at the extremes of age (e.g. children), unless the trial is aimed specifically at those age ranges. Patients who have significant kidney or liver disease, cancer, or other serious medical problems in addition to the disease an investigational medication is designed to treat may also be excluded from trials due to these patients potentially having increased risk and decreased benefit from using that medicine. Individuals who participate in trials are also self-selected, in that they must agree to participate and give informed consent for treatment and follow-up.

Funding for clinical trials comes from many sources. These sponsors include government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as private medical institutions and foundations. Many trials are also sponsored by companies that make pharmaceuticals and medical devices. When a promising new class of medication or type of medical device is identified, these different companies often vie with each other to produce better versions. Sometimes this results in development of new medications and treatments that truly are improvements on older ones. However, it can also result in “me too” medicines being approved for use—new drugs that are medically not definitely better than the previous “gold standard” or each other, but which can cost significantly more than older, less expensive alternatives.

Economic, legal, and other nonmedical issues may also influence medical research. Pharmaceutical companies play an important role in developing new medicines and devices to improve medical care. However, questions have been raised about whether the results of unfavorable research concerning new or approved medications have been suppressed or at least argued against by them in ways that don't seem to make patient safety and well-being the most important considerations.[18] Also, these companies may not consider finding new treatments for rare diseases as being intrinsically profitable, thus delaying or curtailing research in those areas. Financial incentives for developing these so-called “orphan drugs” may include subsidies from governments, foundations, and other sources, as well as tax credits and special patent and marketing rights.

On the other hand, these companies can also suffer major financial losses due to product liability issues whose scientific validity is questionable at best. While these controversies are too complex to detail here, perceived adverse effects from vaccines and silicone-gel-filled breast implants have resulted in lawsuits against the manufacturers. For example, Dow Corning, a major manufacturer of silicone breast implants, filed for bankruptcy in 1995 due to lawsuits claiming that its products were responsible for an increased risk of adverse events, including breast cancer and other diseases. Subsequent studies found no significant association between silicone breast implants and those medical problems.[19]

Future Directions

The landscape of basic and clinical medical research is constantly shifting. Medications and other products that are currently approved undergo continued reappraisal regarding their uses and safety. Many medicines have significant “off-label” uses—indications that are not officially approved by the FDA, but are considered appropriate based on other research and clinical practice. Many new ways to diagnose and treat diseases continue to be evaluated. While some may turn out to be dead ends or need much more work before they're routinely available, others appear particularly promising for improving medical care in the near future.

For example, medical care individualized to a particular person's genotype—"genomic” or “personalized” medicine—has the potential to significantly increase the ratio between benefit and risk of using available medications. There is variability among individuals regarding the presence of certain genes that predispose or protect against certain diseases, or that influence how the body metabolizes and responds to medications for good or ill. Genetic profiling can help identify which medicines would be most beneficial and least likely to harm a particular individual. This would potentially be a significant improvement to the heuristic and probabilistic methods physicians employ based on known average risks and benefits for patients in general.

But every silver lining has a cloud. There's the potential risk that employers, insurance companies, or governments could use that genetic information against people who have a genetic predisposition to diseases and who therefore may be more “costly” regarding their medical care. For the individual, knowing he or she is susceptible to certain health problems can be beneficial if this information leads to improved prevention or treatment. It might also be more information than a person wants to know if the disease or other problem in question is one that's currently impossible to prevent or cure.

Stem cell research has a tremendous potential to help repair or replace damaged parts of the body. Adult stem cells are currently used for bone marrow transplantation in patients with leukemia. Embryonic and adult stem cells could someday also be used to routinely treat neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's dementia and Parkinson's disease, as well as diabetes and many other problems.[20] Preliminary studies indicate that stem cells derived from a person's bone marrow could be used to improve heart function following a myocardial infarction.[21]

The field of nanomedicine is in its infancy. Nanotechnology involves manipulating and using materials at the scale of individual atoms and molecules, at a size measured at the nanometer (1 x 10-9 meter) level.[22] Potential uses include production of drug delivery systems, biosensors, identification of cancer cells, or even nanoscale machines to repair the components of cells directly.

Overall, nanomedicine is still at a basic research stage, with its full “real life” benefits and risks still to be determined. Medicines produced using nanotechnology that are currently approved for use include more effective, nanoparticle preparations of certain anti-cancer medications, such as Doxil (doxorubicin) and Abraxane (paclitaxel). Zinc oxide nanoparticles are also used in products such as sunscreen, deodorants, and foot powder.[23]

Gene therapy offers the potential for treating inherited genetic diseases and certain cancers. Clinical research has focused on individuals with single genetic defects that produce debilitating and potentially life- threatening illnesses. Examples include severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), which produces marked vulnerability to infections; adrenoleukodystrophy, which damages the brain and adrenal glands; and Leber's congenital amaurosis, which causes severe visual impairment or blindness.[24]

One common technique for gene therapy is to introduce a “normal” version of a defective gene into a patient's cells using a particular “vector.” For example, a virus such as an adenovirus or retrovirus can be genetically modified to remove any disease-causing genes and include the desired, normal gene for the individual's genetic abnormality. After the modified virus is injected, it “infects” the person's cells and incorporates the “good” gene into that individual's DNA so that the cells now function normally—thus treating the underlying disease.

Both basic and clinical research studies are examining ways to improve the safety and efficacy of gene therapy.[25] A major setback occurred in 1999 when an eighteen-year-old patient with ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency, a genetic disease that damages the nervous system and liver, died during a clinical trial soon after he was injected with a modified adenovirus. Further, using gene therapy to not just treat diseases but to also improve a “normal” person's genome remains a possibility, but one fraught with serious scientific and ethical issues before it becomes reality.

The Long and Winding Road

As with other scientific endeavors, medical research doesn't follow a straight line from ignorance to enlightenment. Every success story is the result of some combination of inspiration, study, and hard work. Despite the best efforts to minimize them, there have been and will be missteps, dead ends, and even tragedies along the way. But the goal of helping us live longer, healthier lives is worth the effort.

Copyright © 2010 H.G. Stratmann

1 Masia N. “The Cost of Developing a New Drug. In: Focus on Intellectual Property Rights: U.S. Department of State;” 2006. p. 82-83. www.america.gov/st/econ-english/2008/April/20080429230904myleen0.5233981.html

2 Waldo AL, Camm AJ, deRuyter H, Friedman PL, MacNeil DJ, Pauls JF, et al. Effect of d-sotalol on mortality in patients with left ventricular dysfunction after recent and remote myocardial infarction. The SWORD Investigators. Survival With Oral d-Sotalol. Lancet 1996;348(9019):7-12.

3 Pratt CM, Camm AJ, Cooper W, Friedman PL, MacNeil DJ, Moulton KM, et al. “Mortality in the Survival With Oral D-sotalol (SWORD) trial: why did patients die?” Am J Cardiol 1998;81(7):869-76.

4 Echt DS, Liebson PR, Mitchell LB, Peters RW, Obias-Manno D, Barker AH, et al. “Mortality and morbidity in patients receiving encainide, flecainide, or placebo. The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial.” N Engl J Med 1991;324(12):781-8.

5 Greene HL, Roden DM, Katz RJ, Woosley RL, Salerno DM, Henthorn RW. The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial: first CAST . . . then CAST-II. J Am Coll Cardiol 1992;19(5):894-8.

6 “Effect of the antiarrhythmic agent moricizine on survival after myocardial infarction.” The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial II Investigators. N Engl J Med 1992;327(4):227-33.

7 Effect of prophylactic amiodarone on mortality after acute myocardial infarction and in congestive heart failure: meta-analysis of individual data from 6500 patients in randomized trials. Amiodarone Trials Meta-Analysis Investigators. Lancet 1997;350(9089):1417-24.

8 Epstein AE, DiMarco JP, Ellenbogen KA, Estes NA, 3rd, Freedman RA, Gettes LS, et al. ACC/AHA/HRS 2008 “Guidelines for Device-Based Therapy of Cardiac Rhythm Abnormalities: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines.” Circulation 2008;117(21):2820-40.

9 Silverstein FE, Faich G, Goldstein JL, Simon LS, Pincus T, Whelton A, et al. “Gastrointestinal toxicity with celecoxib vs. nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis: the CLASS study: A randomized controlled trial.” Celecoxib Long-term Arthritis Safety Study. JAMA 2000;284(10):1247-55.

10 Bombardier C, Laine L, Reicin A, Shapiro D, Burgos-Vargas R, Davis B, et al. “Comparison of upper gastrointestinal toxicity of rofecoxib and naproxen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. VIGOR Study Group.” N Engl J Med 2000;343(21):1520-8.

11 Antman EM, Bennett JS, Daugherty A, Furberg C, Roberts H, Taubert KA. “Use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: an update for clinicians: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.” Circulation 2007;115(12):1634-42.

12 Sachdev M, Miller WC, Ryan T, Jollis JG. “Effect of fenfluramine-derivative diet pills on cardiac valves: a meta-analysis of observational studies.” Am Heart J 2002;144(6):1065-73.

13 Fishman AP. “Aminorex to fen/phen: an epidemic foretold.” Circulation 1999;99(1):156-61.

14 Manson JE, Hsia J, Johnson KC, Rossouw JE, Assaf AR, Lasser NL, et al. “Estrogen plus progestin and the risk of coronary heart disease.” N Engl J Med 2003;349(6):523-34.

15 Hendrix SL, Wassertheil-Smoller S, Johnson KC, Howard BV, Kooperberg C, Rossouw JE, et al. “Effects of conjugated equine estrogen on stroke in the Women's Health Initiative.” Circulation 2006;113(20):2425-34.

16 Mosca L, Banka CL, Benjamin EJ, Berra K, Bushnell C, Dolor RJ, et al. “Evidence-based guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention in women: 2007 update.” Circulation 2007;115(11):1481-501.

17 Silverman WA. “The schizophrenic career of a “monster drug.” Pediatrics 2002;110(2 Pt 1):404-6.

18 Vedula SS, Bero L, Scherer RW, Dickersin K. Outcome reporting in industry-sponsored trials of gabapentin for off-label use. N Engl J Med 2009;361(20):1963-71.

19 McLaughlin JK, Lipworth L, Murphy DK, Walker PS. “The safety of silicone gel-filled breast implants: a review of the epidemiologic evidence.” Ann Plast Surg 2007;59(5):569-80.

20 Lenzer J. “The Super Cell.” Discover 2009(September):30-36.

21 Gersh BJ, Simari RD, Behfar A, Terzic CM, Terzic A. “Cardiac cell repair therapy: a clinical perspective.” Mayo Clin Proc 2009;84(10):876-92.

22 Lerner EM. “Follow the Nanobrick Road.” Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2008;128(9):38-48.

23 Jain KK. The Handbook of Nanomedicine. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. 2008.

24 Naldini L. Medicine. "A comeback for gene therapy.” Science 2009;326(5954):805-6.

25 Gene Therapy. In: Human Genome Project Information. A brief description of the current status of gene therapy. www.ornl.gov/hgmis/medicine/genetherapy.html

Extreme circumstances can require radical departures from even the most deeply rooted “traditons. . . ."

A spasm of pain made Ksho drop her forelimb-brush.

Xinecotic-ki Ksho always ached all over, from her mandibles to the tips of her third pair of limbs. Pain and hunger were the natural states of a Shacuthi juvenile—pain from constant rapid growth and hunger for the vast quantities of food she needed to sustain that growth—but this latest spasm was the bone-deep ache that meant her skin was getting to be too small. She had already molted seven times and knew this feeling well, but this next molt would be her last as a juvenile. After this molt she would pupate for three months, her ugly juvenile body replaced by a gleaming adult.

She was thrilled. She was terrified.

But for now, she had a job to do.

Ksho bent down and scrabbled with clumsy, weak two-fingered hands for the brush on the rough cloth of the floor, wishing she had an adult's hands—gleaming three-fingered structures of chitin and bone, capable of powerful grasp and fine manipulation. Finally, using both of her first pair of hands, she managed to regain the brush and resumed her laborious progress to her parent Xinecotic's grooming chamber, waddling along on stumpy little hind limbs barely capable of supporting her growing weight.

The delay probably saved her life.

Ksho did not scrape at the door before entering the grooming chamber. The scraping-board was for adults; juveniles came and went as their duties required, with no more notice or need for permission than the air that cooled the corridor. She paused for a moment with one hand on the door latch, making sure she had a firm grip on the brush, and at that moment she heard voices from within.

The unexpected sound made Ksho freeze, her skin tingling—an instinctive response honed over thousands of generations. Surely there could be no other adult in Xinecotic's grooming chamber at this hour? The hour of grooming was inviolate, a time of quiet contemplation. But life had been strange ever since they had traveled to this cold and desolate place, and it had only become stranger in the last few months. Ksho worked the lower door latch, slid the door open a crack, and poked one eye into the room.

Xinecotic was not alone in her grooming chamber. Takacha, the head of the expedition, was there as well. Neither adult took any notice of Ksho's eye peeping around the door's edge. Ten or twelve of Ksho's sisters were also present, buffing and polishing their parent's gleaming limbs and torso. None of them seemed to be alarmed by Takacha's presence in Xinecotic's grooming chamber, but Ksho told herself she shouldn't expect her younger siblings to be as observant as she. She was the eldest, after all, nearly ready to pupate.

"You should have realized,” Takacha was saying, “that you wouldn't be able to maintain this deception forever.” As she spoke, a flavor of apprehension drifted through the slightly open door to Ksho's fingers. Both adults were nervous, verging on terrified. Why?

"Don't do this, Takacha.” Xinecotic was holding perfectly still, most unlike the usual rolling and preening of an adult being groomed. “You can stop this madness now, before any permanent harm is done. I'm authorized to offer clemency if you halt the operation immediately and surrender."

Takacha chuttered, antennae lifting, as though Xinecotic had just said something funny. “Clemency.” She raised one hand, and Ksho's already sour stomachs soured still further, with fear, as she realized Takacha held a weapon leveled at Xinecotic's thorax. That explained her parent's unnatural immobility. “You'll have to offer far more than that to make abandoning this operation worthwhile."

One of Ksho's sisters ran out of grooming-wax and headed toward the wall niche for more. Neither adult paid her any heed. “Think, Takacha. What you've done so far is only a level-three offense, but harming an agent of the Grand Nest means death by suffocation. And if I don't check in, there will be an investigation."

"Oh, you will check in tomorrow, at twelve past the hour of waking, just as you have been doing every sixthday.” Xinecotic's eyes twitched at the statement, and the flavor of anxiety that pervaded the room intensified. “Yes, we've been monitoring your communications. And we're able to reproduce them as well. You won't be missed until after our job here is done."

Xinecotic bristled. “A bad clutch of eggs always hatches a bad swarm. One of your compatriots will betray you to the Grand Nest in exchange for leniency."

All during this conversation Ksho's mind raced—there must be something she could do to help her parent. But her soft little voice would never be heard more than a few rooms away, and even if she ran for help, no adult would listen to a juvenile. Even the structural failure alarms were deliberately out of reach of her stubby little limbs; everyone knew that juveniles, with their undeveloped brains, could not be trusted with such a responsibility.

But Ksho was almost an adult. Anyone could see how close she was to pupation. Surely she could use that fact to convince someone to come and help.

Just as she was about to slip her eye out of the door and ease it closed, Takacha buzzed “None of my compatriots would ever betray me! This nest is as one."

This nest is as one. Takacha was saying that every single adult on the expedition was part of . . . whatever it was that Ksho's parent was trying to stop. Something illegal. That meant that even if Ksho managed to get one of the adults here to believe her . . . it wouldn't save Xinecotic.

Ksho trembled, immobilized by fear, her eye still peeping into the room.

"The Grand Nest is mired in tradition,” Takacha continued, the weapon still pointed at Xinecotic. “We are the future. What we are doing here may be prohibited today, but the children who hatch from eggs not yet even laid will hail us as the saviors of our species."

And then, to Ksho's horror, Takacha squeezed the weapon's actuator. A sharp, acrid flavor filled the room as the weapon discharged its load onto Xinecotic, the powerful acid eating through chitin and muscle and revealing the bone beneath. Xinecotic hissed in pain and lunged toward Takacha, but she fired again, the acid spewing right into Ksho's parent's face. With a horrid gasping hiss she collapsed, eyes and antennae dissolving into a smoking ruin at Takacha's feet.

Four of Ksho's siblings had also been caught by the acid and writhed hissing on the floor. The rest stood stock-still, ancient instincts holding them rooted even as their parent, the only adult in hundreds of leagues who would care for them, lay dying within easy reach.

Ksho's own body froze, trembling in terror. Takacha was already slipping the weapon into one of the folds of her garment and striding toward the door where Ksho stood. Ksho barely managed to pull her eye from the door and move out of the way before Takacha reached it. She brushed past Ksho, taking no notice whatsoever of the trembling juvenile. A moment later Ksho heard the nest's weather door scrape open, then shut, leaving her alone with her dead parent and dying siblings.

The hideous flavors of acid and spilled bodily fluids suffused the air.

Ksho, too, was doomed, as were her sisters, even those who hadn't been struck by the acid. The offspring of a deceased adult of eggbearing age were usually adopted by close relatives, but Xinecotic had no relatives at all in this tiny, isolated encampment. Ksho realized now why this was so—she had been one of the Grand Nest's “wasps,” an undercover agent hidden in a nest of criminals. None of them would adopt even the smallest, most innocent grub of Xinecotic's. Left alone, the younger ones would starve within days. Ksho, nearly an adult, was capable of feeding herself, but without a parent to watch over her during the long months of pupation she would surely be eaten by predators or succumb to parasites.

It would be so easy to die. To sit here, petrified with fear, until thirst or starvation or predators took her. Every instinct told her to hold still until the danger had passed.

But Ksho knew the danger would not pass. Not by itself.

Something would have to be done.

And there was no one but Ksho to do it.

It took her many long, panting breaths to convince her body to move. To edge one limb forward was an effort; to haul her ungainly, gravid body across the floor was an agony. And hunger, always present, clawed at her stomachs like a predator.

She must be her own adult, and her sisters’ adult as well. She pulled in her eyes for a moment, comforting herself with the darkness, before resuming her painful movement. The sharp flavor of her own fear soured her stomachs, but she persisted, returning to the door through which she'd seen her parent's death.

Nothing in the room moved. Ksho's sisters sat as motionless as Xinecotic's acid-mangled body. Even those that had writhed in pain now lay still.

Bitter grief lay strong on Ksho's fingers.

"Ksho will find help,” she told her unmoving sisters, though she didn't know how she would manage it. Even the shape of the number Ksho in her mandibles reminded her that, no matter how close she was to pupation, she was still only a juvenile—unfit to bear a personal name or to use the pronoun I. “Seko-cho,” she said, addressing the eldest of her younger siblings, “after Ksho leaves Xinecotic's nest you must seal the doors behind her, and do not let anyone else in until she returns. Can you do this?"

"Seko-cho does not know. . . .” she responded, her voice very small, only her mandibles moving. The flavor of fear seeped from her. She was only a little more than two-thirds Ksho's age.

"You must.” Ksho hauled herself to Seko-cho's side and stroked her trembling skin. “You must."

"Seko-cho will try."

Ksho stayed beside Seko-cho for a moment longer, taking comfort from the touch herself as well as giving it, before dragging her heavy body to the nest's weather door. She closed the door behind herself, satisfied to hear Seko-cho's mandibles working at the edge of the door to seal it. The seal would not withstand a concerted effort, but would hold off anyone who tried to enter out of idle curiosity, at least for a day or so.

She turned away from the door and took in a great breath, letting it out with a shuddering hiss through the spiracles on her sides.

The expedition had set up on the side of a rocky, inhospitable mountain far from the nearest outpost of the Grand Nest. The individual nests of the expedition members—all criminals, Ksho realized now, except her own dead parent—lay scattered across the gravel-strewn slope wherever their occupants had thought best to build them. A cold wind blew down from the top of the mountain, making Ksho shiver.

What should she do now? What could she do?

No one here would help her voluntarily. There was nothing to eat here outside of the central refectory, and only an adult could requisition food from there. Stowing away on the lone air transport that connected this site with civilization would be impossible—Ksho had often overheard the pilot complain about how every minim of weight was accounted for and double-checked. She could, she supposed, slip a written note onto an outbound transport, but to whom, and who would believe a note written in a juvenile's scrawl?

But there was one other way out of the encampment.

Ksho considered her options. A long moment's thought convinced her that the few alternatives were no better.

Tasting determination as well as fear, she shambled toward the center of the encampment.

The portal was a ring of pale glowing metal standing upright, twice the height of an adult. Its bottom edge hung a span above the ground, apparently unsupported. Anyone or anything that passed through the ring went . . . elsewhere. Some people and things came back. Armed soldiers surrounded the ring, ready to defend the encampment and the planet against any attack from the other side at a moment's notice.

They paid no attention to Ksho, though, as she waddled across the stony ground toward the ring. Juveniles were often seen running errands and carrying messages to and from their parents on the other side. Ksho herself had done so several times a day since the portal had been opened a month and a half ago, and all juveniles looked alike to adults other than their own parents.

She remembered how pleased everyone had been when, after months of fruitless searching, the portal had finally connected to a world with breathable air and people worth trading with. A very strange people, but people nonetheless. Ksho hoped they would be willing and able to help an orphan.

Using all four hands of her first two pair of limbs, she boosted her swollen body over the ring's lower edge.

Immediately the suffering of her overgrown body seemed to double as she fell into the other world's gravity field. The gravity here was actually only a little higher than what she was used to, but its leaden pressure seemed to emphasize the grief that weighed her down. The air, too, seemed heavy—chill and dense with unaccustomed metallic and astringent flavors.

And then there was the weight of the hunger in her stomach, which dragged her down and sapped her energy. She realized she should have eaten something before she left her deceased parent's home. How many other mistakes had she made? Would the armed soldiers shortly come charging through the portal, with orders from Takacha to detain and dispose of her?

Ksho straightened herself and moved away from the portal as quickly as her stumpy limbs could carry her in this strange environment. The ground here had been covered with a prickly bed of tiny plant stalks when they'd arrived, but after the first half month many paths had been trampled into bare dirt. Eventually the dirt had been replaced by a dark and gritty surface that tasted like a cross between fuel and broken stone.

This side of the portal had its own defenses: towering two-legged aliens clad in their own version of body armor, huge hulking vehicles flavoring the air with iron and solvents, towering walls of rough artificial stone topped with coils of jagged metal. But the alien defenders, too, were so used to juveniles appearing from the ring that they paid her little heed. As always, she was required to pass through a portal that hummed and tickled her insides, but otherwise her progress was unimpeded.

Beyond the defensive walls stood an even larger structure: smooth sheer cliffs of gleaming white stone pierced at regular intervals with hard-edged, angular openings. This structure, which the aliens called the White Nest, was the center of the aliens’ government and was the reason the portal had been shifted to this location from the point of initial contact. The structure was entirely flat planes, straight edges, and square corners except for an imposing forest of cylindrical columns that stood in a semicircle before the structure's weather door. This enormous pile of stone was the dwelling of just one alien, one who held more power than any on this world. Or else it was the workplace of hundreds of aliens and home of none of them. It wasn't clear. Perhaps there were translation difficulties.

There were always translation difficulties.

Ksho was seized again by a spasm of pain, her body stretched nearly to its limits and her aching bones squeezed by the higher gravity of this place. Her stomachs, too, throbbed with renewed hunger, and whether the White Nest was dwelling or workplace, it seemed the most likely place for her to find something to eat. She moved toward it as rapidly as she could manage.

As she hauled herself along the path, she passed several of the towering aliens, all of which stared at her with predatory intensity. Their disturbing eyes, dark circles within light circles, each looked like the opening of a weapon pointed directly at her; their movement, accomplished by a shift of weight from one of their two lower limbs to the other, emphasized their intimidating height and made them seem even more huge and ponderous than they were.

After a long time she passed through the half-ring of imposing columns and approached the giant structure's weather door, not a proper door at all but a pair of huge, flat, angular plates that hinged open at one side. She had passed through this door many times before, but every other time she had been expected and one of the aliens had been here to open it for her. Now the door stood closed, silent and untended.

Ksho realized she had been a fool. She'd stepped through the portal to an unknown world, throwing her own fate and that of her siblings into the strange hands of alien beings with unknown motivations. They might be just as likely to eat her as to feed her.

Suddenly an alien appeared on the other side of the door, peering at her through one of the transparent plates in the door's substance. Ksho froze in terror.

This alien was different from any of the others Ksho had met. It was no bigger than Ksho herself, both shorter and smaller around than any other alien she'd seen. It was dark like a Shacuthi, instead of pale like most of its kind, which made it seem a little more familiar but also made its disturbing eyes even more prominent and strange. And the tendrils on its rounded head, which curled in tiny dark ringlets, were gathered into tufts on either side. Each tuft was bound at the base by a few turns of some soft, sparkly material. Was this unusual tufting some indication of caste or status?

The alien and Ksho stared at each other for a time. And then the alien leaned forward and pushed the door open a couple of spans. Moving the huge door was clearly an effort for the small alien, which made Ksho feel a little sorry for it—it seemed nearly as unsuited to this enormous, heavy world as Ksho herself.

And then the alien spoke. Its voice burbled and lapped like a stream flowing over pebbles, an almost pleasant sound, higher and softer than others Ksho had heard. A moment later a device strapped to one of the alien's limbs spoke in an approximation of Ksho's language: “Speaker equivalence (assertion) Ah-lec-sa (proper name). Identity listener (possessive) existence (query)."

The second translated phrase was one Ksho had heard before; it meant what is your name? Still petrified with fear, she struggled to reply. “Xinecotic-ki Ksho,” she managed to stammer.

The alien's head drew back and its eyes narrowed a bit. Ksho had no idea what that might mean. “Zi-neh-ko-tick (proper name, possessive) three (ordinal) existence (denial) name.” It took Ksho a moment to recognize her own dead parent's name, as rendered by the alien's mandibles and then the translation device, and another moment to puzzle out the sense behind the translation: "Xinecotic's Third” is not really a name.

And, indeed, ksho was not a proper name, an adult name, at all. It was just the number three, indicating that Ksho was the third of Xinecotic's offspring: The first had failed in the egg and the second had died as a grub. Then there had been three more deaths before Seko-cho, number seven; Xinecotic's luck with offspring had not been good. And now there would be no more siblings at all.

Ksho tasted grief but could not give in to the emotion. How to explain all of this to an alien?

"Ksho is not a name, but is Ksho's designation,” she said. “Ksho is a juvenile and does not have a name like an adult's."

After Ksho finished speaking, the alien held its upper limb close to one side of its head—those curved protuberances had to be its ears—while the device burbled softly in the alien's language. It seemed to consider for a moment what it had heard, then replied. “Listener existence (assertion) merely juvenile,” came the translation. “Speaker equivalence (assertion) listener."

You're just a juvenile, the alien meant. I am the same.

That explained why this alien was smaller than the others, and why it was willing to speak with Ksho. Ksho relaxed a bit, allowing herself to breathe but still not moving from the spot. Perhaps the young alien would also be willing to help one like itself. “Ksho is hungry,” she said. “Ksho needs food for herself and her siblings."

After hearing the translation, the alien suddenly bared its teeth—a vicious surprise of white against the dark skin that made Ksho freeze again. The alien's flavor, salt and iron and flowers, told Ksho nothing about its emotions. Then it spoke: “Speaker bring (conditional) listener building within.” Ksho didn't know why the verb was flagged as conditional, but the statement was accompanied by an unmistakable gesture: The alien pushed the door open wider and stood to one side, leaving enough space for Ksho to enter.

Ksho hesitated, trembling, for a long time before convincing her limbs to move her forward. Everything in this place was so strange and frightening. But the alien, despite its inexplicable habits and the language barrier, waited patiently until Ksho could coax herself into entering the structure.

As the door closed behind her with an ominous clack, Ksho immediately regretted her decision. The air inside was even colder than outside, and the light here was unnatural and flickery and made everything look strange. “Speaker bring (future) listener toward food-preparation-place,” the alien said, and moved off toward the interior of the structure. Ksho envied its gait, which was more of a leaping bound than the larger aliens’ ponderous motion, as she dragged herself through the heavy gravity. But the promise of a “food-preparation-place” drew her forward. She'd eaten the aliens’ food before, at ceremonial negotiations, and knew that it was not harmful and could even be nutritious and delicious.

They came to a place of hard surfaces and bright lights, all ceramic and metal. Many large aliens were here, all working diligently at incomprehensible tasks, and the air tasted of a hundred different things, some delicious and some disgusting. As soon as the small alien entered, one of the larger ones stopped whatever it was it was doing and bent down to the small one's level. They warbled at each other for a while, both of them aiming their strange eyes at Ksho between glances at each other.

Ksho fought to relax. Nothing good would come from freezing in fear; she was deep inside the aliens’ nest and if they meant her harm it was already too late to escape. But she didn't think the small alien intended any harm, and some of the flavors in the air here made her stomachs clench with renewed hunger. She had no idea how long it had been since she'd eaten.

The larger alien went away, then returned with a large, flat, angular metal plate upon which were arranged small dabs of many different substances. Ksho tasted each dab with a finger, saying “Ksho likes this one” or “This one tastes awful” for each. The large alien didn't have a translation device on its limb, but the small alien interpreted for Ksho, and a short while later the large alien brought out bowls with larger quantities of some of the foods that Ksho had liked best. She had no idea what any of them were, but some were absolutely delicious and she had soon eaten her fill.

"Ksho would like more of this one, and this one, please. To take back to her siblings.” There was some difficulty with the translation, but eventually she made herself understood, and the large alien brought her two containers full of food, warm and flavorful even through the sealed lids. Ksho arranged the two containers in her panniers and spread her upper limbs wide in what she hoped was a universal gesture of thanks.

The small alien led Ksho back to the structure's weather door. With full stomachs and a heavy load in her panniers, Ksho moved even more slowly than before, and the ache in her limbs reminded her that she must pupate soon.

As they made their way, they conversed in a halting and tentative fashion.

If you are a juvenile, where is your parent? At least, that's what Ksho thought the alien was trying to ask. The translation device kept insisting that “parent” was plural.

"Ksho's parent is dead,” Ksho replied.

The alien expressed unhappiness at the news, though its flavor didn't change. Who takes care of you?

"No one takes care of Ksho now. Ksho must care for herself and her siblings.” She didn't mention—didn't want to think about—the fact that when she pupated she would probably die, and her helpless siblings along with her. She was just trying to cope with one day at a time.

That seems cruel, the alien said.

The alien's statement surprised Ksho. She hadn't thought that an alien might have any concern for the fate of one Shacuthi juvenile. Then she considered the fact that the small alien was the only juvenile she had seen in all the time she'd spent on this planet, and all the adult aliens seemed to treat it with astonishing deference. Juveniles here must be very rare and precious. “Shacuthi juveniles are not important,” she said. “They hatch in great numbers and are put to work. Only a few survive to adulthood."

That took a long time to explain.

The alien's reply took even longer for Ksho to understand. So long, in fact, that the two of them had to sit down together at one side of the long narrow room they were moving through, the hard floor tasting of stone and solvents. Large aliens moved by as they talked, staring at the alien and Shacuthi juveniles in conversation, but Ksho barely noticed because what the small alien said demanded so much concentration to understand.

The aliens, it seemed, had several different tribes, or clans, differentiated by lightness or darkness of skin. The small alien, with its dark skin, belonged to a clan that had in the past been considered inherently inferior to another, pale-skinned, clan. “Speaker (possessive) clan believe (denial, past tense, passive) person (plural),” the alien said. My clan was not thought to be people. But members of the dark clan, together with some members of the pale clan, had insisted over and over, across many generations, that they deserved to be treated like people—like Shacuthi adults rather than like juveniles. After a long time they had seen some success. In fact, the small alien's parent, a member of the dark clan, was the leader of this entire part of the planet—a very powerful alien indeed, with authority over pale and dark aliens alike. This was not a perfect situation, the small alien said, but it was an improvement over what had come before.

And then the alien said something that seemed very important to it. “Important dark-clan leader Yeh-seh-yak-sung (proper name) write (past tense) famous ancestor-song.” Then its strange eyes widened, it leaned forward, and its burbling water voice deepened in pitch. Its words had a formal cadence, though they didn't sound like any ancestor-song Ksho had ever heard before:

"Speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person.

"Speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person.

"Speaker equivalence (provisional assertion) impoverished.

"But speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person.

"Speaker equivalence (provisional assertion) juvenile.

"But speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person.

"Speaker equivalence (provisional assertion) (untranslatable).

"But speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person.

"Speaker equivalence (provisional assertion) small.

"But speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person . . ."

It went on like that for a while. Ksho didn't understand all of it, but the message was clear and it was obviously very meaningful to the alien.

The ancestor-song ended with yet another repetition of “Speaker equivalence (assertion) significant-person.” Then the alien bent, laid one hand on Ksho's flank, and said “Listener comprehension (query).” Do you understand?

It was the first time Ksho had been touched by an alien, but she didn't flinch away—the touch was firm but not hostile, cool but not cold. It didn't seem to fit with the alien's lengthy assertion of its own significance. “Ksho understands,” she said, “that you are a significant person."

Upon hearing the translation the alien seemed to become upset, standing up and turning in a small circle before sitting down again. This time it placed both hands on Ksho's skin and leaned in even closer. “Listener (emphatic),” it said. “Listener (emphatic) equivalence (strong assertion) significant- person.” You! It is you that is significant!

Ksho tasted her own surprise and disbelief. Ksho was not significant.

"Repeat (imperative) speaker (possessive) statement,” the alien said. Repeat my statement.

The command was clear, so Ksho complied, although she didn't believe it. “Ksho is significant."

The alien closed its eyes and struck itself on the forehead with both closed hands, an extremely peculiar gesture. “Listener equivalence (strong denial) three (ordinal). Listener equivalence (assertion) name speaker (personal pronoun).” They went back and forth on that one several times before Ksho understood what the alien meant: You are not “number three.” You are “I."

"Repeat (imperative) speaker (possessive) statement comprising name speaker (personal pronoun),” the alien said.

"I am significant,” Ksho said.

It was the first time she had ever used the personal pronoun, “I,” for herself. It was wrong . . . ungrammatical, inappropriate, a violation of propriety. It made her feel strange even to form the words without meaning them.

"Repeat (imperative) statement,” the alien insisted.

"I am significant.” It felt a little less strange the second time. There was, after all, nothing extraordinary about the sentence itself . . . Ksho had heard sentences like that all her life, just never from a juvenile. “I” was for adults.

But Ksho was almost an adult. Ksho was not only nearly ready to pupate, as the constant ache in her bones reminded her . . . she was responsible for the care of her siblings.

"Repeat (imperative),” the alien said again.

"I am significant."

This time she began to believe it.

This time . . . I began to believe it.

Ksho . . . I . . . was acting as an adult, and must take on adult ways of thinking and speaking.

"I am significant,” I said again. I.

I.

"Listener equivalence (assertion) significant-person,” the alien concurred, tipping its head up and down.

Ksho realized that much time had passed, and the containers of food in her panniers had grown cold. “I must return to Ksho's . . . to my siblings,” she said.

I. I said.

"Affirmation. Return (imperative). Remember (imperative) listener equivalence (assertion) significant-person."

"I will remember. I am significant."

I hauled myself up from where I had sat for so long on the alien's hard floor. During that long conversation Ksho's hunger had begun to return and the ache of impending pupation had grown even stronger. But I knew Ksho's siblings would be even more hungry. I had to hurry.

Returning through the portal, seeing the encampment again, Ksho felt herself returning to old ways of thought. The air here, which had felt so cold before, now seemed warm and full of familiar flavors; the normal gravity was a great relief. But the weight of the two containers of alien food in . . . my panniers reminded me that I was now an adult, in terms of responsibility, if not physically. I could not relax into old habits; I had no adult to feed and protect me or my siblings.

And yet there was no denying I was still a juvenile. My bones ached, my limbs twinged with every step, and adults gave me no more notice than they would a rock or a patch of lichen. This could be useful to me, though. I could, perhaps, survive through invisibility like any other small camouflaged creature.

I came to Xinecotic's nest and tasted the edges of the weather door, finding only Seko-cho's flavor there. My relief was so strong I was sure my siblings inside could taste it from there. “Seko-cho,” I called. “Ksho is here, with food."

Soon enough Ksho was inside, and Seko-cho and the rest fell on the strange food with mewlings of desperate need. There wasn't very much left when they all had eaten, but it was a start. Perhaps Ksho would return to the alien planet soon for more.

After Ksho . . . after I, too, had eaten, I looked around. My siblings, always busy and diligent even without adult direction, had already cleaned up the ruins of Xinecotic's body, leaving only a dark and pitted acid stain on the floor where she had died. I tasted grief, but my responsibilities were pressing.

The whole time I had been making my way from the portal to Xinecotic's nest I had been formulating a plan. Takacha and the other criminals would be happy to leave my siblings and I alone to starve, but if I could find a way to inform the Grand Nest that their agent Xinecotic had been killed, they might send other agents, and those agents might take us back to Xinecotic's relatives. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best I had. Whatever I did, it had to be done quickly—the rapidly intensifying pain along my back told me that I would have to pupate within a day or two. I didn't know what would happen if I tried to resist the impulse, but it felt as though my skin would burst right open. But how could I contact the Grand Nest?

Right before killing my parent, Takacha had said something about Xinecotic checking in with the Grand Nest at twelve past the hour of waking every sixthday. Thinking back, I realized that early every sixthday, Xinecotic would retire to her meditation niche . . . a common enough habit, but not one she had practiced before coming to this encampment.

Searching the niche, tasting every corner and cranny, I soon found an area where Xinecotic's lingering flavor had a slight tinge of anxiety and anticipation. It was a subtle difference, not something anyone other than her own offspring would ever have noticed, but I examined the area closely and eventually found a cleverly concealed panel, closed by a hidden latch. Behind that panel a small compartment contained a notespool and a communication device, both strongly flavored of my late parent.

The communication device was designed for an adult's fingers, and I was unable even to open the case. Frustrated, I opened the notespool and ran its tape through my fingers. The sequence of flavors I read there astonished me.

Xinecotic had discovered here, and documented with her usual meticulousness, an extensive conspiracy to violate the laws against exploitation of less advanced species. Takacha and her fellow criminals were representing themselves to the aliens as the duly authorized representatives of the Grand Nest, offering wondrous technology in exchange for large quantities of alien artworks, genetic material, heavy elements, and other valuables. But the promised technologies did not exist except as convincing fakes; the criminals’ plan was to extract as much from the aliens as possible and then close the portal, leaving the aliens with nothing but some complex-looking but worthless devices. After closing the portal, they would “poison” the channel to the aliens’ planet, preventing the Shacuthi or any other species from ever opening a new portal and discovering the crime.

The last item on the spool indicated that Xinecotic was nearly ready to transmit her notes to the Grand Nest. Takacha must have discovered this, somehow, and killed her to prevent it.

I sat there with my parent's last written words between my fingers, already hungry again, with my bones aching and my skin feeling ready to split. Under normal circumstances I would be curling up in my little nest already and preparing to pupate.

These were not normal circumstances. If I pupated now I would die, and my siblings with me. My parent's death would go unreported and unpunished. Worse, a whole planet of innocent aliens would be swindled and cut off from civilization forever, and the crime might never even be discovered.

I hated to think of that happening to the juvenile alien who had been so helpful to me. And I was the only one who even knew about it.

But what could I do to prevent it? I was only one juvenile, small and weak and powerless. I had no relatives to protect me, no adult would listen to me, and I couldn't even work my parent's communication device.

Then, as I sat lamenting my fate, I remembered what the alien had made me say: I am significant.

I am significant, I told myself.

I didn't really believe it. Deep down, I knew that no matter how close to pupation I was, I was still only a juvenile. But acting as though I believed it was the only way I had any chance to stop all those awful things from happening.

"I must go out again,” I said to Seko-cho, tucking the notespool and communication device into my panniers. A strong flavor of confusion came from her, and I realized it was because I was speaking as an adult. But, just as though I really were an adult, she said nothing and waited attentively for further instructions. I decided to continue using “I"—it would help to keep Seko-cho and the others from panicking. “You must seal the door behind me, as before. I will return with more food as soon as I can."

"When will that be?” Seko-cho asked, not unreasonably.

I thought for a long time before answering. “I do not know. I may not return at all. If I do not, you must take care of your siblings and yourself as long as you can. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Xinecotic,” Seko-cho responded, unthinkingly calling me by our parent's name.

I left as quickly as I could, so that my own flavor of grief and self-doubt would not infect my siblings.

Outside the weather door, considering my options, I realized that my best hope was to return to the alien planet and try to find the juvenile that had helped me before. Its parent was a leader of its people; if nothing else, the information might prevent the aliens from being swindled. And I might be able to return with one more load of food before I had to pupate.

But as I moved across the encampment toward the portal, I realized that pupation had advanced much farther than I'd thought while I'd been reading Xinecotic's notes. My limbs were swollen and stiff, my vision was beginning to cloud, and the pain along my spine had turned into an itching line of fire that felt ready to tear open at any moment. And the faster I tried to go, the worse the pain got.

I am significant, I told myself. I matter. I can make a difference. But only if I keep going.

I dragged my swollen body across the stony ground toward the portal. As I passed through the ring of soldiers guarding it against alien invasion, one of them eyed me warily and said to her neighbor “That juvenile looks sick."

"Maybe we should put an end to its suffering,” the other soldier replied.

As the soldier raised her weapon, I froze in fear. I had not considered my appearance, or what any considerate adult would be expected to do upon seeing a juvenile in pain.

"No!” I managed to cry, despite my paralysis. A whiff of surprise leaked from the soldier's armor—no juvenile, especially a sick one, would ever say such a thing to an adult—but she hesitated. “I—Ksho is delivering an important package to her parent on the alien planet.” I gestured to my pannier. “Ksho must do this before pupating."

I waited, trembling. The soldier seemed uncertain what to do.

After an eternity, the other soldier spoke. “Oh, let her go,” she said. “If she dies over there, no one will ever know."

Somehow I managed to will myself into motion. The soldier's weapon continued to follow me, and I expected a gout of acid to strike me at any moment, but finally I found myself on the other side of the portal.

I never expected to feel relief at the cold, the strange flavors, the leaden weight of the other planet's gravity.

That relief was short-lived. Now I had to find the alien juvenile.

The path to the huge stone structure seemed infinite as I hauled myself along it. The aliens who passed did not react any differently than they had before—they probably did not know the difference between a healthy and a sick juvenile—and I was glad there were no Shacuthi present. At one point I felt a tearing pain in my side, followed by a slow trickle of fluid down my flank, but I pressed on, not wanting to know what it looked like.

At last I came to the structure's massive door, which stood firmly closed. There was nothing like a scratching-board . . . I had no idea how to signal for entrance.

Then a form loomed up behind the door's transparent panels. For a moment I felt hope, but then I realized it was just an alien adult, one I'd never seen before. It did not appear to have a translation device on its limb.

I needed the alien to bring me to the juvenile. But how?

And then I remembered the very first thing the juvenile had said to me: “Speaker equivalence (assertion) Ah-lec-sa (proper name).” It had made no sense to me at the time, but I realized now what it had meant: I am Ah-lec-sa.

"Ah-lec-sa,” I said to the alien at the door.

I repeated it as the alien opened the door.

I continued to repeat it until the alien departed, then returned with another that had a translation device. “I must speak to Ah-lec-sa,” I said. “It is vitally important."

I sat on the cold stone outside the structure's weather door for a long time, unmoving from pain and fatigue more than from fear. Something tore open on my other flank.

I waited.

And then a whole crowd of aliens appeared: the juvenile Ah-lec-sa, followed by several others with dark skin like hers, and several more.

I dug in my pannier and brought out the notespool, and I explained as best I could what my parent had learned. Another alien brought a larger, more complex version of the translation device, and that made the conversation a little easier. Many other aliens came. When I brought out Xinecotic's communication device, two of the larger aliens immediately moved in and took it away from me. I was too tired to argue.

After a long while they brought it back, saying they had examined it and determined it was safe. I explained how to open it, and one of the aliens who had taken it away tried, but in the end it turned out that only Ah-lec-sa had fingers small and strong enough to work the catch. I showed Ah-lec-sa how to feed the notespool into the device's reader and how to initiate transmission.

"You must take the device through the portal,” I said, “and transmit from there.” After so much talking, my voice was hoarse and whispery.

The aliens argued a long time among themselves. I didn't follow the argument very well—I was drifting in and out of consciousness—but I gathered that Ah-lec-sa was the only one who could manipulate the device, and the other aliens didn't want it to go. Eventually, though, Ah-lec-sa bent down to where I could see. My vision had nearly failed. “Speaker travel (future) and return (future),” it said to me. “Listener wait (imperative) at this location."

"I will wait,” I said. I didn't really have much alternative.

Ah-lec-sa left, accompanied by four of the largest aliens. I slumped where I sat. Some of the other aliens asked me questions, but I was barely able to respond.

I realized I had done all I could.

I crawled into a corner and began to wrap myself, beginning with my tail and working up. I had waited almost too long; my skin had stiffened to the point that I could barely reach my tail with my mandibles. I did the best I could, but it took much longer than it was supposed to. I hoped my adult form would not suffer because of the delay.

While I worked, many other aliens came, pointing devices at me that flashed and beeped. I ignored them.

I was nearly finished, just my head and one limb unwrapped, when Ah-lec-sa and the others returned. My vision had failed nearly completely by now, but Ah-lec-sa's flavor, different from the other aliens’ though equally strange, had become familiar to me.

"Transmission completion achieve (past, assertion),” Ah-lec-sa said. “Grand Nest acknowledge (past) transmission. Grand Nest send (assertion) soldiers, apprehend (future) criminals."

"Thank you, Ah-lec-sa,” I sighed.

"Listener status (query),” Ah-lec-sa asked.

"I am pupating now,” I whispered. “You must watch over the pupa for three months. Do not let predators eat it, or let it get too warm or too cold. The soldiers from the Grand Nest will tell you what to do, and will care for my sisters."

"Speaker talk (future, assertion) with listener in three months."

I paused in wrapping the one remaining exposed limb. “No, Ah-lec-sa. The adult that emerges from the pupa will not be me. She will know the things I have done and learned, but I am told it is like reading a spool about the ancestors, not like a memory. She will be a different person. You will need to introduce yourself to her."

Ah-lec-sa and the other aliens discussed this for a long time, while I continued wrapping myself. Covering my own head was the most difficult part, but I relaxed and let my instincts guide me.

"Speaker equivalence (assertion) great sadness,” Ah-lec-sa said.

"Do not be sad, Ah-lec-sa. The new adult will be glad to meet you. She will enjoy hearing from you what we have done together."

"Adult feel (future, assertion) pride about listener. Listener equivalence (assertion) significant-person."

"I would never have been significant,” I said, “if you had not taught me to be."

I tucked my mandibles against my neck, feeling the wrappings begin to harden, and let myself relax into the long sleep.

Copyright © 2010 David D. Levine

First contact is likely to require special skills—and not necessarily the ones you might think!

Billy Whilmer wasn't sure when he realized there really were thoughts better left unthunk. Not that he believed in thought police waiting to get him. There were just some ideas that, once planted, rattled around your head until your only option was to test them. Either that, or go mad, wondering. Which, he supposed, is why there really would be thought police if anyone ever came up with a way to do it.

Not that Billy was all that philosophical. He just liked to play with ideas.

Whenever his epiphany came, it was after the gelatin incident. He'd been noodling around, doing nothing in particular, when the idea was handed to him in a news story. Some girl had sneaked in at night and dumped a gazillion pounds of gelatin into a high school swimming pool. The next day, she'd gotten to the locker room early so she could be there when the first victim ran out, jumped in . . . and emitted a yell, accompanied by a sucking, slurping noise the commentator rendered as “spludge."

Billy didn't hear the rest of the story. Some ideas, once planted, really can't be unplanted. “Spludge” was the seed. He wanted to hear it for himself.

It took months. First he had to locate massive quantities of gelatin at an affordable price. Nor could it be colored, lest a lemon or cherry tint give the whole thing away. A pale, swimming-pool blue, that's what he needed, whipped up with clear gelatin and a few bottles of food coloring.

Then, after he finally found a restaurant-supply business that didn't balk when he placed the order on his father's credit card, he had to gain the janitor's trust so he could get into the building late at night. He also had to learn how the pool's water pumps worked. Ruining expensive equipment wasn't his goal.

Practical jokes aren't for the lazy. Billy had to join the swim team and do enough six a.m. laps that by the time he was ready to lug gelatin bags around, he was already developing a physique. Billy-the-jock . . . not something he'd ever envisioned.

He only forgot one thing: The boys and girls teams shared workout time. Technically speaking, he didn't forget. He just didn't think it relevant. Unfortunately, the first (and only) one into the pool that morning was a girl. And, while the gelatin made a most satisfying sound as she hit it in a shallow racing dive, she was wearing a two-piece suit . . . part of which kind of got left behind.

Billy was charged with sexual harassment. The school principal wanted it upped to assault, but Billy's attorney convinced him that since she'd hit the, er—even the attorney had trouble coming up with a word, but eventually settled on “surface"—under her own power, Billy hadn't quite assaulted her.

That rather technical distinction saved him a lifetime as a registered sex offender. But it was pretty much the only thing that went his way. If it had been a guy who'd been first into the pool, Billy might have had detention for the rest of his high school career, but it would have been academic detention. As it was, he was eighteen by the time they let him out of juvie.

You might think he'd have learned. But Billy, now going by Bill, breezed through his first year of college short-sheeting beds and placing prank phone calls.

Meanwhile, he found himself increasingly interested in science. It seemed odd; he'd always seen himself as the class clown, not an egghead. But before the gelatin incident he'd not been a jock, either, and he now worked out five days a week.

He wasn't much of a theoretician. More like the ultimate experimentalist. But his trip to reform school and Nobel prizes stemmed from the same basic question: I wonder what would happen if . . . ? Nobel laureates were just better at constructing controlled experiments. Bill's more often went something like this:

* HYPOTHESIS: What would happen if I stuck both ends of a heavy-gauge wire into a wall outlet?

* PROCEDURE: Wear gloves. Use insulated pliers. Stand on rubber mat.

* OBSERVATIONS: Brief but spectacular pyrotechnics. Sparks shooting to ceiling, star-shaped scorch on outlet and wall. Globs of molten copper buried in desktop.

* CONCLUSION: Entire dorm floor wired to single circuit breaker. Bad design, but at least nobody knows who did it.

Another lesson came his senior year, when he realized that government agencies have zero sense of humor. He was doing a stint on the college newsblog, the Daily Truth, and one afternoon he went to the state capitol to sit in on a committee hearing. When he got back to his car, he found a ticket.

Irritated, he plucked the bright yellow “courtesy” envelope from beneath his wiper. A box was checked: Parking in Reserved Space, $110.

"What the . . . ?” he said, raising his arms to the heavens. “Where the hell does it say reserved?"

And there it was, painted on the parking garage ceiling like a direct answer from God. Who puts a reserved sign on the ceiling?

Of course he wrote about it. When life gives you a lemon, and all that. It was almost as entertaining as spludge and a lot cheaper than the gelatin. Not to mention legal.

A month later he was back at the capitol. Gone were the painted “reserved” signs on the ceiling. Someone had made hundreds of shiny metal plaques and posted them in front of each and every reserved spot.

That wasn't funny. A lot of tax dollars had been spent to ensure that no one would ever again poke fun at the parking czars.

For the next several years, Bill, now going by William, stifled all public traces of humor. He took a job with the Western Times and wrote serious tweets and pod-scripts about politics, science, climate change, and why the Chinese were beating everyone at just about everything. He married a woman who made the mistake of confusing his public persona with his private one . . . and divorced him six months later.

Then the aliens landed.

It wasn't quite clear how they got here. One moment, scientists were reporting a new comet. Then the Chinese, Brazilians, Europeans, Japanese, Americans, and Qataris were all accusing each other of launching something big, unannounced. The next morning, LGM were walking up the lawn of the Taj Mahal.

Why they picked the Taj Mahal was one of those things nobody ever figured out. There was also a bit of debate, later on, about whether they really were little green men. They were definitely small, lime-colored, and most emphatically male looking, in a Mayan-statuary type of manner. The question was whether this was their normal appearance or whether they had chosen it.

Like most of the world, William watched on tri-vid, though unlike many, he flattened the 3D so the LGM's lime-green Mayan-statuariness wasn't quite so, uh, intrusive. By this time, LGW, equally Mayan in their Earth-mother attributes, had decanted from an honest-to-goodness flying saucer on the White House lawn. Maybe they were drawn by the color of the grass. There certainly wasn't any reason William could see for them to be attracted by the current president.

Still, it was the president's job to greet them, and if he wanted to be re-elected, hiding in the Situation Room wasn't going to do it. So, to the obvious dismay of his Secret Service contingent, he was on the lawn, trying not to stare.

One of the little green women raised a four-fingered hand in an odd V-pattern. “Take me to your leader,” she said. “Nano-nano. Live long and perspire."

"Uh, you too,” the president said, plummeting a couple of points in the polls with each word. “I think. Whatever you say."

The alien was carrying a large box. She reached in and withdrew a little green baby. Or maybe it was a pet. It was hard to tell. “For peace between our races,” she said solemnly, holding the tiny whatever-it-was out to the president.

"Er, thanks."

The president glanced at his aides for inspiration. Finding none, he reached out and took the baby awkwardly. He'd had two children, William knew, but that didn't mean he had any clue about the best way to cuddle aliens.

The baby didn't seem to mind. It cooed—more like a dove than a child—then, just like uncounted scenes in a hundred years of bad movies—unleashed a stream of urine directed with admirable precision at the president's face.

The aliens bounced up and down on the balls of their feet.

The SatNet newscasters suggested they were angry at the president's inept handling of the baby, but William knew laughter when he saw it. Soon enough, the aliens would be giving everyone their equivalent of spludge.

Meanwhile, they continued talking, the TriVee operators picking up every word. “We seek to see how good you be at caring,” the one who'd presented the infant said as the president pretended not to notice the magenta fluid dripping from his chin. “Please bring Kemrit back to us each day for checking-up."

"Kemrit?” The president glanced at the baby. “You wouldn't actually mean. . . ?"

The lead alien huddled with two of its coterie. A moment later, it turned back to the president. “Your language it be strangely linear. Ours does not so adapt. Mekrit? Remkit? Kermit? Pick your choose."

The president made an odd noise that dropped his ratings another couple of points. “Kemrit,” he eventually managed. “I like Kemrit. The other's too gree—” Then political correctness stopped him. The aliens were again bouncing.

Moments later, William was online, booking a flight to D.C. When it came, the spludge was going to be impressive.

Writing serious stories hadn't been a waste of William's time. He knew someone who knew someone who knew the president's assistant press secretary, and that was good enough that the next day he was among the reporters on the White House lawn.

"Barry expanding gratitude to female sheep,” the lead alien said as the president arrived with the baby. William laughed. Their English was getting worse with each meeting, a sure sign they knew exactly what they were doing. But the president had spent too many years dealing with humorless government agencies. Again he sought refuge in his favorite word. “Er?"

He handed the baby to the lead alien, who took it into the spaceship. “Our wharf must examine to make sure you know how to care good,” another said.

A few minutes later, the alien doctor reemerged. “Much good,” she said. “Kemrit well do."

Every day for nearly two weeks, the ritual was repeated. Each time, the president brought out the baby, and the aliens, after finding ever-new ways to slaughter the language, retreated with it for a check-up. “Our goodly relations are increasing in prospecutuity."

Kemrit was clearly thriving. He was visibly larger, and the president, his ratings expanding as well, hadn't said “er” in days.

That was when William knew what the aliens were up to. “Oh, crap,” he told his editor's editor. “The baby's a turtle."

The editor-in-chief was one of the best in the business. That meant he saw no reason to join the president in trying to look more intelligent than he felt. “I thought it was a frog."

"Trust me,” William said. “It's a turtle.” He then explained the most famous practical joke in history, in which the joker gave his landlady a baby turtle, then swapped it, each day, for a slightly bigger one. “One of these days, they'll reverse the process and the baby will get smaller. We can't let that happen."

For a week, William wracked his brain trying to figure out what to do. How do you beat a practical joker? Ideally at his own game. He ordered a new copy of World's Best Practical Jokes (his own thumb-worn edition was back home, in his apartment), but found no inspiration. Squirty fountain pens and clown handkerchiefs weren't going to do it, and nobody was going to let him close enough to the aliens to try something like that anyway.

By this time, the baby had expanded enough that even the most obtuse had noticed. Right-wingers, left-wingers, new-wingers: All were preening about what great care “we” had taken of the infant and how the aliens would soon, surely, open to us the secrets of the Universe, whether they be of godlike enlightenment, warp drive, antigravity, or a cell phone that never dropped calls.

William winced every time he heard it. If he were the aliens, he'd already be starting to shrink the baby. Maybe they were and the president's advisers were already fretting.

William tried talking to the press secretary's assistant but got nowhere. Why would the aliens play a gag on us? There was no way the assistant was going to suggest such a thing to her boss, and even if she did, her boss would never suggest it to the president. Briefly, he thought of asking why she thought they'd showed up looking like caricatures of the most grotesque sex toys. But there was no point. Politicians, like bureaucrats, have no sense of humor.

What would the aliens do when they found us easy marks? Have a good laugh and go find someone else to play with? Or conclude we deserved anything else they might do, like steal our planet? Maybe they'd just give us what we wanted—with a twist. A hyperdrive that blew up in our faces? Sorry about that. An antigrav unit that lofted its user into outer space? Oops. Hope she had life insurance.

If he could write his own script, William would turn the tables and make the baby expand when it should be contracting. But the only way to do that was to raid the aliens’ store of . . . whatever. Babies. Turtles. It didn't really matter. Somewhere there was a whole bin of them.

Except . . . the obvious. It couldn't be done. Not without breaking into the alien ship, which might not be the worst idea unless they were too heavily armed, but which nobody was going to do. What was needed was the type of technology everyone was hoping to get from the aliens. A turtle transporter would do nicely. Beam one in and another out, day by day. Nano-nano, live long and perspire, and all that. Defy them to complain.

Except, of course, the transporter didn't exist either.

Meanwhile, William worked his sources. Everything was off the record, maximum deniability, you'll-never-work-this-town-again-if-you-breathe-a-word, but the upshot was that yes, the baby's weight had plateaued, and yes, the president was worried. William again tried to pass the turtle story back up the line—but that merely lent new meaning to the word hopeless. This was a test, everyone believed, and we were flunking.

Belatedly, he remembered that there were two groups of aliens. He was patriotic enough to be primarily concerned with one, but that was no excuse not to keep track of what the ones at the Taj Mahal were up to.

Nothing relevant, it turned out. Mostly they just seemed to prance around. Though they too did a lot of bouncing on the balls of their feet. They seemed particularly fond of the Cult of the Ultimate Phallus, which sprang from nothing to celebrate their welcome. But they also graced (if that was the word) online pharmacy ads, environmental pacifist gatherings ("Grow greens, not bombs!"), and assorted nudist camps and “bare buns” jogging clubs.

One evening, he had dinner with his editor. The editor was getting tired of William talking about turtles instead of filing stories, but his name was Mastrione and even though he'd never been to the old country, he was inordinately fond of all things Italian.

William hated paying for meals a course at a time, but as long as the Times was footing the bill he was amenable. Somewhere between the antipasto and dessert, he found himself staring vaguely across the table, thinking about spaghetti.

"What?” his editor said. “Do I have something on my tie?"

"Sorry.” It was the way the spaghetti had been drooping from his boss's fork that had caught his attention. William was a winder. His boss was more of a shoveler. Not the most pleasant thing to watch, but the dangling spaghetti had reminded him of something. “Did you ever hear of the old spaghetti-tree hoax?"

"Uh-uh.” His editor snagged another fork of spaghetti. “What's that got to do with alien babies?"

"Nothing. Or everything. I'm not sure yet. It's been called the best April Fool's Day joke of all time.” William paused, trying to remember the details. “I think it was BBC who did it, back at the dawn of TV. They ran this wonderful segment about how a mild winter and improved control of the dreaded spaghetti weevil had given the Swiss a record spaghetti harvest. There were even videos of peasants plucking noodles from trees, with interviews explaining how they're straightened and dried for packaging, and how the trees are carefully bred for each strand to be the same length.” He lifted his fork in mock salute. “Half the world fell for it.” He grinned. “Even though everyone knows spaghetti trees don't grow that far north."

His boss was staring at his plate. “Spaghetti grows on trees?"

"Of course not.” His editor was competent enough, but nowhere nearly as bright as the editor-in-chief. “But the scam was so good that even smart people fell for it.” Smart or not, there was no point not buttering him up a bit.

William's mind was still churning. “We need a spaghetti tree."

"Huh?"

"A scam of our own. Something to make them change their minds and leave us alone."

"You want to run a fake news story?"

"Yes."

"What about?"

William sipped his wine. “I don't know yet."

"We'll be laughing stocks."

"Only if we play it wrong. We might also save the world."

His editor leaned back. He might not be the brightest bulb on the planet, but he'd come up the way most senior editors did: through news and editorial. If you wanted to be read by millions, you went into sports or features. But news writers, however hard-bitten they might claim to be, didn't just want people to read their stories. They harbored a secret desire to change the world.

"Okay,” his editor said. “I'll have to convince the publisher, and we'll need something that will give us deniability if too many people freak out. But go ahead and run with it for the moment. Too bad April Fool's Day has passed."

Actually, William realized, that was precisely when the aliens had landed. They must have found that inordinately funny. It was also amazingly arrogant. But then, William realized, he'd always been that way himself.

For three interminable days, William read about practical jokes. He found a way to make a saltshaker blow its lid the first time someone tried to use it. He found ways to make people vomit, and to give their bodily fluids bright, exotic colors. There was even a formula for glow-in-the-dark semen.

Meanwhile, word from his off-the-record sources was that the White House was getting very nervous. The current theory was that the alien baby had reached a stage where its nutritional needs were changing, and its caretakers were seeking advice from every trade association that had ever put a dime in the president's coffers. The Apiary Institute suggested honey. “All that pollen in it is good for you,” a representative said. “It's got lots and lots of phytochemicals.” The Confectioners of America lobbied for chocolate. Enologists United urged red wine. “Just because alcohol isn't recommended for human babies doesn't mean it's bad for aliens."

William sighed. Time was running short, and the White House was obsessed with micronutrients. Potato skins. Whole grains. Broccoli. Spinach. Citrus peels. There was an expert for everything.

It was the citrus peels that did it.

The aliens looked like limes. They were even kind of bulby around their joints. He could do something with that. Years ago, he'd written a story about some trade dispute involving Key limes. It had involved subsidies, tariffs, and a bunch of posturing between governments, but what really mattered was that he'd learned more than any reasonable person ever wanted to know about limes. Not to mention that lime growers are a small industry. If he was going to get the Western Times sued, better by them than someone bigger, like the spinach, broccoli, or Christmas tree folks.

It's amazing how easy it is to write when you don't have to worry about truth. The hardest part was finding a picture of a frog whose natural color was nearly indistinguishable from the aliens.

The headline was also a challenge. It needed to catch attention, without looking too much like that's what it wanted to do. Eventually William settled on a combination of techno-babble and scare words: Prion Blamed for Rapid Spread of ‘Green Cancer'—Mad-cow-like disease kills frogs and fruit, but officials say no cause for alarm.

The last bit was the best. Nothing produces panic better than bureaucrats saying “no problem.” The photo was good too. Not only was it the most vividly colored amphibian William had ever seen, but its neck, back, and limbs were covered with tumors that looked like chartreuse raisins. A memorable mix with your morning coffee and Danish. Who cared if the frog died twenty years ago, probably due to dioxin or something like that. Within hours of publication, that photo was going to be everywhere.

Once he knew what he was doing, the article practically wrote itself. “A new plague, sometimes called the ‘green cancer,’ has escaped from a Mexican hothouse and is sweeping toward the U.S.,” he began:

A representative of the Baja Citrus Institute, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed that the plague appears to have originated in a clandestine biotechnology laboratory where scientists were seeking to strengthen the color of Key limes.

Key limes draw their name from the Florida Keys but are widely grown in other parts of the world.

"They turn yellow when they ripen,” the official said. “Customers sometimes confuse them with lemons."

Also, she said, market research has shown that people who've never eaten Key lime pie before expect it to be green, not yellow. “Strengthening the color would increase sales, especially to first-time customers,” she said.

To green up the fruits, the researchers developed a subcellular particle called a prion.

Prions are deformed proteins that cause similar biomolecules to deform as well. “Some people think they're the simplest form of life,” said Siti Medeski, a virologist at the Moldavian Centre for Advanced Epigenetic Studies. “They reproduce, mutate, and spread like wildfire. They're also damn near impossible to eradicate."

This particular prion causes green pigments to reproduce themselves. It worked well in limes, but nobody expected it to affect frogs.

"Unfortunately, the prion wasn't color-blind,” the Citrus Institute official said. “Even though frogs have different green pigments than plants, it saw them the same way."

In fact, the reaction in frogs is even stronger than in limes.

Xander Hollyfield is a herpetological biochemist, currently on sabbatical at the University of Central Jamaica. “The prion causes the pigments to duplicate themselves very rapidly,” he said by satellite phone from a remote research station. “That makes them run rampant as they attempt to turn the entire frog into nothing but themselves."

Infected frogs can live for days. “By the time they die, they're nothing but hopping, flopping balls of greenness,” Hollyfield said. “It's like mad cow disease, but only if you're green."

Getting the story approved took longer than writing it. First, his editor had to pass it up the line to the editor-in-chief, and from there to the publisher. Then the publisher wanted to see what the company's attorney had to say about it, which meant yet another delay. Meanwhile, William cobbled together websites for as many of his “sources” as he could manage, especially the elusive Xander Hollyfield. That way, he could field inquiries from other news outlets, once the story got moving. Practical joking had never been for the lazy.

Finally, though, he found himself in a conference room overlooking Farragut Square.

"You have got to be kidding,” the attorney said. Not that this was a surprise. Farragut Square was named for the admiral who cried, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” but if attorneys had their way, no news outlet would write about anything more controversial than the best new dessert recipes. Even then they'd be afraid of being sued by someone's grandmother.

"That's kind of the idea—” William started, but his editor-in-chief cut him off.

"Will our insurance cover it?"

"Sure. But they're guaranteed to raise your rates. If you're determined to run the thing, why not make it more obvious it's a joke?"

"That won't work,” the editor-in-chief said.

"Why not?"

The editor-in-chief hesitated, and for a moment William thought he was going to explain about Kemrit, turtles, and the looming spludge. But nobody trusts lawyers. They have even less of a sense of humor than politicians. “It's probably better you don't know."

Thanks to all the delays, the story didn't make it out until the evening blogfeed. But maybe that was for the better. The slow start meant it simmered overnight and by morning half the news outlets on the planet had it, elaborating as they went. One even had two Nobel laureates and a bestselling author commenting on how this proved why biotechnology needed greater regulatory controls. “Someday they'll turn the whole world into green goo,” the author said, “and not just the frogs."

But nobody seemed to be connecting it with the aliens. That day's baby exchange proceeded as planned, and this time William didn't need to ask if it had shrunk. Compared to pictures from only a few days before, it was not only thinner, but shorter.

Briefly, William wondered if he was too late. Or worse, had played into the aliens’ hands. After all, he was giving them an example of human carelessness they could use in accusing us of mishandling the baby. But that made no sense. The turtle joke was intended to make us squirm over something that wasn't our fault. Besides, the frog in the picture was deformed, not shrunken.

Not that William had much time to think about Kemrit. He was too busy both fanning the flames of his story and putting out unexpected fires.

The first problem was that Americans, who'd never been all that fond of vegetables, were reverting to French fries and onion rings. Anything that wasn't green. To counter that, he trucked out another imaginary source, Guy Herrero, a “pigmentologist” at the Pacific Rim Research Fund's division of advanced botanical studies.

"The disease affects only green pigments,” William had Herrero say. “Humans can't get it."

Nor was the entire biosphere about to be destroyed. “Only the limiest green of lime-green organisms are involved,” he quoted the reliable Xander Hollyfield as saying, still from the seclusion of rural Jamaica. “Unless you're the color of that frog or a Key lime, you could roll in the stuff and nothing much would happen."

By this time, the story was taking on a life of its own. At first, it was mostly environmental and anti-biotech groups whose blogs and tweets were alive with hand-wringing about how human meddling was wrecking yet one more element of Gaian Earth. But there was also an announcement from the World Federation of Circus Clowns that, just to be on the safe side, green face paint would no longer be used until it could be certified prion-safe.

By the third day, the aliens finally seemed to be taking note. The baby exchange was perfunctory, with no bouncing, few words, and an apparent reluctance to touch the returning baby.

It was time to administer the coup de grace. Green Prion Goes Airborne, William wrote the following day:

Green cancer is spreading far faster than a frog can hop.
Although the disease is still confined to remote regions, it appears to be moving through the American Southwest along the path of the prevailing winds, and is expected to reach the Eastern Seaboard by the end of the week.
Zoos and aquariums are already taking precautions to protect their greenest specimens. Lime growers have nothing to fear except a possible increase in the market value of their crop, offset, perhaps, by an increase in insect pests once eaten by frogs.

Accompanying the story was a weather map, showing the likely spread of the prion, with one plume headed straight at D.C. As an aside, he added a second plume, originating from a second laboratory, in the Seychelles Islands, where monsoon winds would soon send it toward India.

The next morning, the aliens didn't emerge from their spaceships. Two hours later, both vessels powered up and rose into the sky.

William and his editor watched in silence. “What about the baby?” the editor asked.

William shrugged. “I told you, it's not a baby."

Then, right on cue, the television feed was interrupted by a green face. “We sorry we must leave so soon,” it said. Male or female was hard to tell in the close-up. “Keep Kemrit, a gift from our species to yours. If he not grow bumpy, maybe we return with other gifts.” Then with a half-hearted nano-nano, the alien went off the air. Moments later the spaceship vanished.

William was still trying both to catch up on sleep and convince people to eat their vegetables again, when a message was forwarded from several of his fake websites. Help needed (URGENT), read the subject line. With an addendum: And yes, I know it was a hoax.

William's stomach clenched as he opened it. But it wasn't an accusation. “You're story's obviously phony,” the email began. “I'd know that guy Hollyfield if he really existed. But how the hell did you know that a color prion could jump species like that? We've been working with fresh-blanched broccoli, trying to preserve that super-green color, and we're starting to see some weird things out on the lawn . . ."

William reached for the keyboard, then drew back. How do you beat a practical joker? Was he talking to humans or aliens? Reprisal or ecological disaster?

Suddenly he felt very tired. The fate of the world might depend on him getting this one right. He reached for the keys again, then again changed his mind. Practical jokes really weren't for the lazy.

Copyright © 2010 Richard A. Lovett

A little knowledge . . .

Graduation rehearsal—middle of the afternoon on the final Monday of the final week of school. The graduating seniors at Barack Obama High School gather in the gymnasium, get the wrapped packages with their robes (ordered long ago), their mortarboards, and their blue and white tassels. The tassels attract the most attention—everyone wants to know which side of the mortarboard to wear it on, and which side to move it to.

The future hovers, less than a week away, filled with possibilities.

Possibilities about to be limited, because it's also Red Letter Day.

I stand on the platform, near the steps, not too far from the exit. I'm wearing my best business casual skirt today and a blouse that I no longer care about. I learned to wear something I didn't like years ago; too many kids will cry on me by the end of the day, covering the blouse with slobber and makeup and aftershave.

My heart pounds. I'm a slender woman, although I'm told I'm formidable. Coaches need to be formidable. And while I still coach the basketball teams, I no longer teach gym classes because the folks in charge decided I'd be a better counselor than gym teacher. They made that decision on my first Red Letter Day at BOHS, more than twenty years ago.

I'm the only adult in this school who truly understands how horrible Red Letter Day can be. I think it's cruel that Red Letter Day happens at all, but I think the cruelty gets compounded by the fact that it's held in school.

Red Letter Day should be a holiday, so that kids are at home with their parents when the letters arrive.

Or don't arrive, as the case may be.

And the problem is that we can't even properly prepare for Red Letter Day. We can't read the letters ahead of time: privacy laws prevent it.

So do the strict time-travel rules. One contact—only one—through an emissary, who arrives shortly before rehearsal, stashes the envelopes in the practice binders, and then disappears again. The emissary carries actual letters from the future. The letters themselves are the old-fashioned paper kind, the kind people wrote 150 years ago, but write rarely now. Only the real letters, handwritten, on special paper get through. Real letters, so that the signatures can be verified, the paper guaranteed, the envelopes certified.

Apparently, even in the future, no one wants to make a mistake.

The binders have names written across them so the letter doesn't go to the wrong person. And the letters are supposed to be deliberately vague.

I don't deal with the kids who get letters. Others are here for that, some professional bullshitters—at least in my opinion. For a small fee, they'll examine the writing, the signature, and try to clear up the letter's deliberate vagueness, make a guess at the socioeconomic status of the writer, the writer's health, or mood.

I think that part of Red Letter Day makes it all a scam. But the schools go along with it, because the counselors (read: me) are busy with the kids who get no letter at all.

And we can't predict whose letter won't arrive. We don't know until the kid stops mid-stride, opens the binder, and looks up with complete and utter shock.

Either there's a red envelope inside or there's nothing.

And we don't even have time to check which binder is which.

I had my Red Letter Day thirty-two years ago, in the chapel of Sister Mary of Mercy High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Sister Mary of Mercy was a small co-ed Catholic High School, closed now, but very influential in its day. The best private school in Ohio, according to some polls—controversial only because of its conservative politics and its willingness to indoctrinate its students.

I never noticed the indoctrination. I played basketball so well that I already had three full-ride scholarship offers from UCLA, UNLV, and Ohio State (home of the Buckeyes!). A pro scout promised I'd be a fifth-round draft choice if only I went pro straight out of high school, but I wanted an education.

"You can get an education later,” he told me. “Any good school will let you in after you've made your money and had your fame."

But I was brainy. I had studied athletes who went to the Bigs straight out of high school. Often they got injured, lost their contracts and their money, and never played again. Usually they had to take some crap job to pay for their college education—if, indeed, they went to college at all, which most of them never did.

Those who survived lost most of their earnings to managers, agents, and other hangers-on. I knew what I didn't know. I knew I was an ignorant kid with some great ball-handling ability. I knew that I was trusting and naive and undereducated. And I knew that life extended well beyond thirty-five, when even the most gifted female athletes lost some of their edge.

I thought a lot about my future. I wondered about life past thirty-five. My future self, I knew, would write me a letter fifteen years after thirty-five. My future self, I believed, would tell me which path to follow, what decision to make.

I thought it all boiled down to college or the pros.

I had no idea there would be—there could be—anything else.

You see, anyone who wants to—anyone who feels so inclined—can write one single letter to their former self. The letter gets delivered just before high school graduation, when most teenagers are (theoretically) adults, but still under the protection of a school.

The recommendations on writing are that the letter should be inspiring. Or it should warn that former self away from a single person, a single event, or a single choice.

Just one.

The statistics say that most folks don't warn. They like their lives as lived. The folks motivated to write the letters wouldn't change much, if anything.

It's only those who've made a tragic mistake—one drunken night that led to a catastrophic accident, one bad decision that cost a best friend a life, one horrible sexual encounter that led to a lifetime of heartache—who write the explicit letter.

And the explicit letter leads to alternate universes. Lives veer off in all kinds of different paths. The adult who sends the letter hopes their former self will take their advice. If the former self does take the advice, then the kid receives the letter from an adult they will never be. The kid, if smart, will become a different adult, the adult who somehow avoided that drunken night. That new adult will write a different letter to their former self, warning about another possibility or committing bland, vague prose about a glorious future.

There're all kinds of scientific studies about this, all manner of debate about the consequences. All types of mandates, all sorts of rules.

And all of them lead back to that moment, that heart-stopping moment that I experienced in the chapel of Sister Mary of Mercy High School, all those years ago.

We weren't practicing graduation like the kids at Barack Obama High School. I don't recall when we practiced graduation, although I'm sure we had a practice later in the week.

At Sister Mary of Mercy High School, we spent our Red Letter Day in prayer. All the students started their school days with Mass. But on Red Letter Day, the graduating seniors had to stay for a special service, marked by requests for God's forgiveness and exhortations about the unnaturalness of what the law required Sister Mary of Mercy to do.

Sister Mary of Mercy High School loathed Red Letter Day. In fact, Sister Mary of Mercy High School, as an offshoot of the Catholic Church, opposed time travel altogether. Back in the dark ages (in other words, decades before I was born), the Catholic Church declared time travel an abomination, antithetical to God's will.

You know the arguments: If God had wanted us to travel through time, the devout claim, he would have given us the ability to do so. If God had wanted us to travel through time, the scientists say, he would have given us the ability to understand time travel—and oh! Look! He's done that.

Even now, the arguments devolve from there.

But time travel has become a fact of life for the rich and the powerful and the well connected. The creation of alternate universes scares them less than the rest of us, I guess. Or maybe the rich really don't care—they being different from you and I, as renowned (but little-read) twentieth-century American author F. Scott Fitzgerald so famously said.

The rest of us—the nondifferent ones—realized nearly a century ago that time travel for all was a dicey proposition, but this being America, we couldn't deny people the opportunity of time travel.

Eventually time travel for everyone became a rallying cry. The liberals wanted government to fund it, and the conservatives felt only those who could afford it should be allowed to have it.

Then something bad happened—something not quite expunged from the history books, but something not taught in schools either (or at least the schools I went to), and the federal government came up with a compromise.

Everyone would get one free opportunity for time travel—not that they could actually go back and see the crucifixion or the Battle of Gettysburg—but that they could travel back in their own lives.

The possibility for massive change was so great, however, that the time travel had to be strictly controlled. All the regulations in the world wouldn't stop someone who stood in Freedom Hall in July of 1776 from telling the Founding Fathers what they had wrought.

So the compromise got narrower and narrower (with the subtext being that the masses couldn't be trusted with something as powerful as the ability to travel through time), and it finally became Red Letter Day, with all its rules and regulations. You'd have the ability to touch your own life without ever really leaving it. You'd reach back into your own past and reassure yourself, or put something right.

Which still seemed unnatural to the Catholics, the Southern Baptists, the Libertarians, and the Stuck in Time League (always my favorite, because they never did seem to understand the irony of their own name). For years after the law passed, places like Sister Mary of Mercy High School tried not to comply with it. They protested. They sued. They got sued.

Eventually, when the dust settled, they still had to comply.

But they didn't have to like it.

So they tortured all of us, the poor hopeful graduating seniors, awaiting our future, awaiting our letters, awaiting our fate.

I remember the prayers. I remember kneeling for what seemed like hours. I remember the humidity of that late spring day, and the growing heat, because the chapel (a historical building) wasn't allowed to have anything as unnatural as air-conditioning.

Martha Sue Groening passed out, followed by Warren Iverson, the star quarterback. I spent much of that morning with my forehead braced against the pew in front of me, my stomach in knots.

My whole life, I had waited for this moment.

And then, finally, it came. We went alphabetically, which stuck me in the middle, like usual. I hated being in the middle. I was tall, geeky, uncoordinated except on the basketball court, and not very developed—important in high school. And I wasn't formidable yet.

That came later.

Nope. Just a tall awkward girl, walking behind boys shorter than I was. Trying to be inconspicuous.

I got to the aisle, watching as my friends stepped in front of the altar, below the stairs where we knelt when we went up for the Sacrament of Communion.

Father Broussard handed out the binders. He was tall but not as tall as me. He was tending to fat, with most of it around his middle. He held the binders by the corner, as if the binders themselves were cursed, and he said a blessing over each and every one of us as we reached out for our futures.

We weren't supposed to say anything, but a few of the boys muttered, “Sweet!” and some of the girls clutched their binders to their chests as if they'd received a love letter.

I got mine—cool and plastic against my fingers—and held it tightly. I didn't open it, not near the stairs, because I knew the kids who hadn't gotten theirs yet would watch me.

So I walked all the way to the doors, stepped into the hallway, and leaned against the wall.

Then I opened my binder.

And saw nothing.

My breath caught.

I peered back into the chapel. The rest of the kids were still in line, getting their binders. No red envelopes had landed on the carpet. No binders were tossed aside.

Nothing. I stopped three of the kids, asking them if they saw me drop anything or if they'd gotten mine.

Then Sister Mary Catherine caught my arm, and dragged me away from the steps. Her fingers pinched into the nerve above my elbow, sending a shooting pain down to my hand.

"You're not to interrupt the others,” she said.

"But I must have dropped my letter."

She peered at me, then let go of my arm. A look of satisfaction crossed her fat face, then she patted my cheek.

The pat was surprisingly tender.

"Then you are blessed,” she said.

I didn't feel blessed. I was about to tell her that, when she motioned Father Broussard over.

"She received no letter,” Sister Mary Catherine said.

"God has smiled on you, my child,” he said warmly. He hadn't noticed me before, but this time, he put his hand on my shoulder. “You must come with me to discuss your future."

I let him lead me to his office. The other nuns—the ones without a class that hour—gathered with him. They talked to me about how God wanted me to make my own choices, how He had blessed me by giving me back my future, how He saw me as without sin.

I was shaking. I had looked forward to this day all my life—at least the life I could remember—and then this. Nothing. No future. No answers.

Nothing.

I wanted to cry, but not in front of Father Broussard. He had already segued into a discussion of the meaning of the blessing. I could serve the church. Anyone who failed to get a letter got free admission into a variety of colleges and universities, all Catholic, some well known. If I wanted to become a nun, he was certain the Church could accommodate me.

"I want to play basketball, Father,” I said.

He nodded. “You can do that at any of these schools."

"Professional basketball,” I said.

And he looked at me as if I were the spawn of Satan.

"But, my child,” he said with a less reasonable tone than before, “you have received a sign from God. He thinks you blessed. He wants you in his service."

"I don't think so,” I said, my voice thick with unshed tears. “I think you made a mistake."

Then I flounced out of his office, and off school grounds.

My mother made me go back for the last four days of class. She made me graduate. She said I would regret it if I didn't.

I remember that much.

But the rest of the summer was a blur. I mourned my known future, worried I would make the wrong choices, and actually considered the Catholic colleges. My mother rousted me enough to get me to choose before the draft. And I did.

The University of Nevada in Las Vegas, as far from the Catholic Church as I could get.

I took my full ride and destroyed my knee in my very first game. God's punishment, Father Broussard said when I came home for Thanksgiving.

And God forgive me, I actually believed him.

But I didn't transfer—and I didn't become Job, either. I didn't fight with God or curse God. I abandoned Him because, as I saw it, He had abandoned me.

Thirty-two years later, I watch the faces. Some flush. Some look terrified. Some burst into tears.

But some just look blank, as if they've received a great shock.

Those students are mine.

I make them stand beside me, even before I ask them what they got in their binder. I haven't made a mistake yet, not even last year, when I didn't pull anyone aside.

Last year, everyone got a letter. That happens every five years or so. All the students get Red Letters, and I don't have to deal with anything.

This year, I have three. Not the most ever. The most ever was thirty, and within five years it became clear why. A stupid little war in a stupid little country no one had ever heard of. Twenty-nine of my students died within the decade. Twenty-nine.

The thirtieth was like me, someone who has not a clue why her future self failed to write her a letter.

I think about that, as I always do on Red Letter Day.

I'm the kind of person who would write a letter. I have always been that person. I believe in communication, even vague communication. I know how important it is to open that binder and see that bright red envelope.

I would never abandon my past self.

I've already composed drafts of my letter. In two weeks—on my fiftieth birthday—some government employee will show up at my house to set up an appointment to watch me write the letter.

I won't be able to touch the paper, the red envelope or the special pen until I agree to be watched. When I finish, the employee will fold the letter, tuck it in the envelope and earmark it for Sister Mary of Mercy High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, thirty-two years ago.

I have plans. I know what I'll say.

But I still wonder why I didn't say it to my previous self. What went wrong? What prevented me? Am I in an alternate universe already and I just don't know it?

Of course, I'll never be able to find out.

But I set that thought aside. The fact that I did not receive a letter means nothing. It doesn't mean that I'm blessed by God any more than it means I'll fail to live to fifty.

It is a trick, a legal sleight of hand, so that people like me can't travel to the historical bright spots or even visit the highlights of their own past life.

I continue to watch faces, all the way to the bitter end. But I get no more than three. Two boys and a girl.

Carla Nelson. A tall, thin, white-haired blonde who ran cross-country and stayed away from basketball, no matter how much I begged her to join the team. We needed height and we needed athletic ability.

She has both, but she told me she isn't a team player. She wanted to run and run alone. She hated relying on anyone else.

Not that I blame her.

But from the devastation on her angular face, I can see that she relied on her future self. She believed she wouldn't let herself down.

Not ever.

Over the years, I've watched other counselors use platitudes. I'm sure it's nothing. Perhaps your future self felt that you're on the right track. I'm sure you'll be fine.

I was bitter the first time I watched the high school kids go through this ritual. I never said a word, which was probably a smart decision on my part, because I silently twisted my colleagues’ platitudes into something negative, something awful, inside my own head.

It's something. We all know it's something. Your future self hates you or maybe—probably—you're dead.

I have thought all those things over the years, depending on my life. Through a checkered college career, an education degree, a marriage, two children, a divorce, one brand-new grandchild. I have believed all kinds of different things.

At thirty-five, when my hopeful young self thought I'd be retiring from pro ball, I stopped being a gym teacher and became a full-time counselor. A full-time counselor and occasional coach.

I told myself I didn't mind.

I even wondered what would I write if I had the chance to play in the Bigs? Stay the course? That seems to be the most common letter in those red envelopes. It might be longer than that, but it always boils down to those three words.

Stay the course.

Only I hated the course. I wonder: Would I have blown my knee out in the Bigs? Would I have made the Bigs? Would I have received the kind of expensive nanosurgery that would have kept my career alive? Or would I have washed out worse than I ever had?

Dreams are tricky things.

Tricky and delicate and easily destroyed.

And now I faced three shattered dreamers, standing beside me on the edge of the podium.

"To my office,” I say to the three of them.

They're so shell-shocked that they comply.

I try to remember what I know about the boys. Esteban Rellier and J.J. Feniman. J.J. stands for . . . Jason Jacob. I remembered only because the names were so very old-fashioned, and J.J. was the epitome of modern cool.

If you had to choose which students would succeed based on personality and charm, not on Red Letters and opportunity, you would choose J.J.

You would choose Esteban with a caveat. He would have to apply himself.

If you had to pick anyone in class who wouldn't write a letter to herself, you would pick Carla. Too much of a loner. Too prickly. Too difficult. I shouldn't have been surprised that she's coming with me.

But I am.

Because it's never the ones you suspect who fail to get a letter.

It's always the ones you believe in, the ones you have hopes for.

And somehow—now—it's my job to keep those hopes alive.

I am prepared for this moment. I'm not a fan of interactive technology—feeds scrolling across the eye, scans on the palm of the hand—but I use it on Red Letter Day more than any other time during the year.

As we walk down the wide hallway to the administrative offices, I learn everything the school knows about all three students, which, honestly, isn't much.

Psych evaluations—including modified IQ tests—from grade school on. Addresses. Parental income and employment. Extracurriculars. Grades. Troubles (if any reported). Detentions. Citations. Awards.

I know a lot about J.J. already. Homecoming king, quarterback, would've been class president if he hadn't turned the role down. So handsome he even has his own stalker, a girl named Lizbet Cholene, whom I've had to discipline twice before sending to a special psych unit for evaluation.

I have to check on Esteban. He's above average, but only in the subjects that interest him. His IQ tested high on both the old exam and the new. He has unrealized potential and has never really been challenged, partly because he doesn't seem to be the academic type.

It's Carla who is still the enigma. IQ higher than either boy's. Grades lower. No detentions, citations, or academic awards. Only the postings in cross country—continual wins, all-state three years in a row, potential offers from colleges, if she brought her grades up, which she never did. Nothing on the parents. Address in a middle-class neighborhood, smack in the center of town.

I cannot figure her out in a three-minute walk, even though I try.

I usher them into my office. It's large and comfortable. Big desk, upholstered chairs, real plants, and a view of the track—which probably isn't the best thing right now, at least for Carla.

I have a speech that I give. I try not to make it sound canned.

"Your binders were empty, weren't they?” I say.

To my surprise, Carla's lower lip quivers. I thought she'd tough it out, but the tears are close to the surface. Esteban's nose turns red and he bows his head. Carla's distress makes it hard for him to control his.

J.J. leans against the wall, arms folded. His handsome face is a mask. I realize then how often I'd seen that look on his face. Not quite blank—a little pleasant—but detached, far away. He braces one foot on the wall, which is going to leave a mark, but I don't call him on that. I just let him lean.

"On my Red Letter Day,” I say, “I didn't get a letter either."

They look at me in surprise. Adults aren't supposed to discuss their letters with kids. Or their lack of letters. Even if I had been able to discuss it, I wouldn't have.

I've learned over the years that this moment is the crucial one, the moment when they realize that you will survive the lack of a letter.

"Do you know why?” Carla asks, her voice raspy.

I shake my head. “Believe me, I've wondered. I've made up every scenario in my head—maybe I died before it was time to write the letter—"

"But you're older than that now, right?” J.J. asks, with something of an angry edge. “You wrote the letter this time, right?"

"I'm eligible to write the letter in two weeks,” I say. “I plan to do it."

His cheeks redden, and for the first time, I see how vulnerable he is beneath the surface. He's as devastated—maybe more devastated—than Carla and Esteban. Like me, J.J. believed he would get the letter he deserved—something that told him about his wonderful, successful, very rich life.

"So you could still die before you write it,” he said, and this time, I'm certain he meant the comment to hurt.

It did. But I don't let that emotion show on my face. “I could,” I say. “But I've lived for thirty-two years without a letter. Thirty-two years without a clue about what my future holds. Like people used to live before time travel. Before Red Letter Day."

I have their attention now.

"I think we're the lucky ones,” I say, and because I've established that I'm part of their group, I don't sound patronizing. I've given this speech for nearly two decades, and previous students have told me that this part of the speech is the most important part.

Carla's gaze meets mine, sad, frightened and hopeful. Esteban keeps his head down. J.J.'s eyes have narrowed. I can feel his anger now, as if it's my fault that he didn't get a letter.

"Lucky?” he asks in the same tone that he used when he reminded me I could still die.

"Lucky,” I say. “We're not locked into a future."

Esteban looks up now, a frown creasing his forehead.

"Out in the gym,” I say, “some of the counselors are dealing with students who're getting two different kinds of tough letters. The first tough one is the one that warns you not to do something on such and such date or you'll screw up your life forever."

"People actually get those?” Esteban asks, breathlessly.

"Every year,” I say.

"What's the other tough letter?” Carla's voice trembles. She speaks so softly I had to strain to hear her.

"The one that says You can do better than I did, but won't—can't really—explain exactly what went wrong. We're limited to one event, and if what went wrong was a cascading series of bad choices, we can't explain that. We just have to hope that our past selves—you guys, in other words—will make the right choices, with a warning."

J.J.'s frowning too. “What do you mean?"

"Imagine,” I say, “instead of getting no letter, you get a letter that tells you that none of your dreams come true. The letter tells you simply that you'll have to accept what's coming because there's no changing it."

"I wouldn't believe it,” he says.

And I agree: He wouldn't believe it. Not at first. But those wormy little bits of doubt would burrow in and affect every single thing he does from this moment on.

"Really?” I say. “Are you the kind of person who would lie to yourself in an attempt to destroy who you are now? Trying to destroy every bit of hope that you possess?"

His flush grows deeper. Of course he isn't. He lies to himself—we all do—but he lies to himself about how great he is, how few flaws he has. When Lizbet started following him around, I brought him into my office and asked him not to pay attention to her.

It leads her on, I say.

I don't think it does, he says. She knows I'm not interested.

He knew he wasn't interested. Poor Lizbet had no idea at all.

I can see her outside now, hovering in the hallway, waiting for him, wanting to know what his letter said. She's holding her red envelope in one hand, the other lost in the pocket of her baggy skirt. She looks prettier than usual, as if she's dressed up for this day, maybe for the inevitable party.

Every year, some idiot plans a Red Letter Day party even though the school—the culture—recommends against it. Every year, the kids who get good letters go. And the other kids beg off or go for a short time and lie about what they received.

Lizbet probably wants to know if he's going to go.

I wonder what he'll say to her.

"Maybe you wouldn't send a letter if the truth hurt too much,” Esteban says.

And so it begins, the doubts, the fears.

"Or,” I say, “if your successes are beyond your wild imaginings. Why let yourself expect that? Everything you do might freeze you, might lead you to wonder if you're going to screw that up."

They're all looking at me again.

"Believe me,” I say. “I've thought of every single possibility, and they're all wrong."

The door to my office opens and I curse silently. I want them to concentrate on what I just said, not on someone barging in on us.

I turn.

Lizbet has come in. She looks like she's on edge, but then she's always on edge around J.J.

"I want to talk to you, J.J.” Her voice shakes.

"Not now,” he says. “In a minute."

"Now," she says. I've never heard this tone from her. Strong and scary at the same time.

"Lizbet,” J.J. says, and it's clear he's tired, he's overwhelmed, he's had enough of this day, this event, this girl, this school—he's not built to cope with something he considers a failure. “I'm busy."

"You're not going to marry me,” she says.

"Of course not,” he snaps—and that's when I know it. Why all four of us don't get letters, why I didn't get a letter, even though I'm two weeks shy from my fiftieth birthday and fully intend to send something to my poor past self.

Lizbet holds her envelope in one hand and a small plastic automatic in the other. An illegal gun, one that no one should be able to get—not a student, not an adult. No one.

"Get down!” I shout as I launch myself toward Lizbet.

She's already firing, but not at me. At J.J., who hasn't gotten down.

But Esteban deliberately drops and Carla—Carla's half a step behind me, launching herself as well.

Together we tackle Lizbet, and I pry the pistol from her hands. Carla and I hold her as people come running from all directions, some adults, some kids holding letters.

Everyone gathers. We have no handcuffs, but someone finds rope. Someone else has contacted emergency services, using the emergency link that we all have, that we all should have used, that I should have used, that I probably had used in another life, in another universe, one in which I didn't write a letter. I probably contacted emergency services and said something placating to Lizbet, and she probably shot all four of us, instead of poor J.J.

J.J., who is motionless on the floor, his blood slowly pooling around him. The football coach is trying to stop the bleeding and someone I don't recognize is helping and there's nothing I can do, not at the moment, they're doing it all while we wait for emergency services.

The security guard ties up Lizbet and sets the gun on the desk and we all stare at it, and Annie Sanderson, the English teacher, says to the guard, “You're supposed to check everyone, today of all days. That's why we hired you."

And the principal admonishes her, tiredly, and she shuts up. Because we know that sometimes Red Letter Day causes this, that's why it's held in school, to stop family annihilations and shootings of best friends and employers. Schools, we're told, can control weaponry and violence, even though they can't, and someone, somewhere, will use this as a reason to repeal Red Letter Day, but all those people who got good letters or letters warning them about their horrible drunken mistake will prevent any change, and everyone—the pundits, the politicians, the parents—will say that's good.

Except J.J.'s parents, who have no idea their son had no future. When did he lose it? The day he met Lizbet? The day he didn't listen to me about how crazy she was? A few moments ago, when he didn't dive for the floor?

I will never know.

But I do something I would never normally do. I grab Lizbet's envelope, and I open it.

The handwriting is spidery, shaky.

Give it up. J.J. doesn't love you. He'll never love you. Just walk away and pretend that he doesn't exist. Live a better life than I have. Throw the gun away.

Throw the gun away.

She did this before, just like I thought.

And I wonder: Was the letter different this time? And if it was, how different? Throw the gun away. Is that line new or old? Has she ignored this sentence before?

My brain hurts. My head hurts.

My heart hurts.

I was angry at J.J. just a few moments ago, and now he's dead.

He's dead and I'm not.

Carla isn't either.

Neither is Esteban.

I touch them both and motion them close. Carla seems calmer, but Esteban is blank—shock, I think. A spray of blood covers the left side of his face and shirt.

I show them the letter, even though I'm not supposed to.

"Maybe this is why we never got our letters,” I say. “Maybe today is different than it was before. We survived, after all."

I don't know if they understand. I'm not sure I care if they understand.

I'm not even sure if I understand.

I sit in my office and watch the emergency services people flow in, declare J.J. dead, take Lizbet away, set the rest of us aside for interrogation. I hand someone—one of the police officers—Lizbet's red envelope, but I don't tell him we looked.

I have a hunch he knows we did.

The events wash past me, and I think that maybe this is my last Red Letter Day at Barack Obama High School, even if I survive the next two weeks and turn fifty.

And I find myself wondering, as I sit on my desk waiting to make my statement, whether I'll write my own red letter after all.

What can I say that I'll listen to? Words are so very easy to misunderstand. Or misread.

I suspect Lizbet only read the first few lines. Her brain shut off long before she got to Walk away and Throw away the gun.

Maybe she didn't write that the first time. Or maybe she's been writing it, hopelessly, to herself in a continual loop, lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.

I don't know.

I'll never know.

None of us will know.

That's what makes Red Letter Day such a joke. Is it the letter that keeps us on the straight and narrow? Or the lack of a letter that gives us our edge?

Do I write a letter, warning myself to make sure Lizbet gets help when I meet her? Or do I tell myself to go to the draft no matter what? Will that prevent this afternoon?

I don't know.

I'll never know.

Maybe Father Broussard was right; maybe God designed us to be ignorant of the future. Maybe He wants us to move forward in time, unaware of what's ahead, so that we follow our instincts, make our first, best—and only—choice.

Maybe.

Or maybe the letters mean nothing at all. Maybe all this focus on a single day and a single note from a future self is as meaningless as this year's celebration of the Fourth of July. Just a day like any other, only we add a ceremony and call it important.

I don't know.

I'll never know.

Not if I live two more weeks or two more years.

Either way, J.J. will still be dead and Lizbet will be alive, and my future—whatever it is—will be the mystery it always was.

The mystery it should be.

The mystery it will always be.

Copyright © 2010 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Desperate times call for . . .

Quin and Zoe had swept away the orbiting debris field and were almost back to the Mary Shelley airlock when Jill broadcast her warning over the corporation's open radio band.

"Heads up out there! We've got incoming."

Zoe canceled her momentum right away. Quin slid past her, managing to stop his own progress just three meters from the lock. He spied a streak of light beyond the leading edge of Mary Shelley, movement against the matte black of space that could be nothing else but sunlight thrown back from a fast-moving object, and the thirty-meter-long extended-range work vehicle shuddered as if it was a great bone caught up by some invisible Brobdingnagian mutt. Everything was still for one long instant and then vapor and debris spewed into space at the edge of Quin's vision.

It was from the life support and propulsion module.

"We are hit, Cayley Station."

Jill's transmitted voice was dead calm now, and at the sound of it a chill skittered down Quin's spine. He sucked in a deep breath of pure, cool oxygen.

"I repeat,” Jill said. “We are hit but still in one piece. I am evaluating damage."

In the next instant, she switched to the team's private band.

"Zoe, are you all right?"

There was no reply. Jill tried again.

"Zoe?"

Quin thumbed the propulsion joystick and gaseous nitrogen jetted from nozzles along the frame of his independent maneuvering unit. He began to rotate away from Mary Shelley and spotted Zoe hanging against the blackness ten meters away. Quin tapped the joystick again and began to glide toward her.

"I see her, Jill,” he said.

Her back was to him and she was turned one hundred eighty degrees off his orienting line. Her figure was contorted, bent at the waist to the limits of the suit, with both hands clasped upon her left thigh. Quin called to her this time.

"Zoe?"

"I'm here,” she replied. Her voice was weak, reedy.

"Zoe, what's wrong?” Jill asked. Her words were hesitant now, worried.

"Something hit me, punched straight through my thigh, I think. I can't make it back inside on my own."

"Damn it, Quin!” Jill said. “Help her."

The measured pace of his progress was maddening, and Jill's goading itched like an old scab. Even so, now was not the time to lose focus and follow his emotions, as he so often did, to rush forward without thought. He drew another deep breath and reached for that calm center the yoga instructor at Sonny Carter Training Center had encouraged.

Breathing is involuntary, an essential part of life. You can't control whether or not you breathe, but you can control the way that you breathe. Inhale on a four-count and exhale on a four-count. Match the rate for both. Control can save your life.

As his respiration slowed, he forced himself to think the situation through. He had to be analytical. It was what Zoe would do if the situation were reversed.

One humid Wednesday at Sonny Carter, Quin had scrawled faster than a speeding bullet in his notebook after the instructor had told them an object maintaining orbital velocity at a crossing orbit would travel at multiples of the velocity of sound.

So if Zoe had been hit, and Quin was certain she wouldn't say it if it wasn't so, it had to be debris from Mary Shelley. If it were the object that had hammered the work vehicle or a traveling companion of that object, the systemic shock of the impact alone would have killed her. And whatever hit Zoe had to be tiny, because even debris as small and thin as a potato chip would have blown her leg away.

Quin remembered something else from that Wednesday lecture too. In the event of a small puncture, your secondary oxygen pack is designed to maintain pressure in your mission suit long enough for you to get inside to safety. So there had to be time to rescue her. No, that was the wrong way to approach this. There would be time to save her. He would do everything just right. He could do this.

He tapped the joystick and came to rest next to Zoe. Just on the mark.

"I've got you, Zoe,” he said.

"Good,” she said, almost whispering. “I want to go home."

Home had set there, two hundred miles below Quin Torres, forever turning against the deep black curtain of space. He was convinced that Earth was God's masterpiece of performance art played out just for him to the metered sigh of oxygen and framed within the polished plastic faceplate of his helmet in all the sweet colors of life.

"Are you ready, Quin?” Zoe Fraser asked, over the team's band.

Quin flinched. He had been caught gawking again.

He glanced to where Zoe floated, waiting for him. Her white mission suit glistened, as if it were a beacon he could never reach. Quin envied Zoe. She was always focused, always ready and able to handle any situation. She never let passions get in the way of what needed to be done. That was why she wore red chevrons on her mission suit, identifying her as team leader, while Quin wore the green slashes that marked him as a newbie.

He took a slow, cleansing breath. It was time to focus, to get to work.

"I'm moving into place now, Mary Shelley,” he said.

"About time, Junior,” Jill Papadopoulos said.

Jill was the team's pilot. She was Zoe's opposite, boisterous and profane. Always ready to laugh at the world around her or to poke fun. But in her own way she was just as competent as Zoe, and it seemed to Quin that she delighted in pointing out his low status and his incompetence. Still, every word out of her might be some sort of jape aimed at him, but Zoe's quiet disdain stung even worse.

Quin thumbed the joystick and began to glide toward Zoe, who was already in position a meter ahead of the debris that was today's prize. It had taken hours, riding the slow pulse of Mary Shelley's fuel-efficient ion engines, to match orbit with the loose field of aluminum bits.

The field was the size of a misshapen beach ball, and each piece within the field tumbled in its own eccentric way, all moving along an ever-curving path, together in a complicated orbital dance. A file in some distant data bank kept track of what the debris had been. Perhaps a panel from a defunct satellite or a section of discarded solar array.

Quin itched to know its history, but that didn't seem to matter to Jill and Zoe. To them it was just one more thing the corporation paid to have swept up and thrown away. Three days after boarding Mary Shelley, during a meal break, Quin had tried to express the excitement he felt working in space for the first time. Jill had laughed.

"Hell,” she said. “We aren't anything but trash haulers, plain and simple."

"Well-paid trash haulers, though,” Zoe added.

Jill laughed again and ran her fingertip across the knuckles of Zoe's hand.

"Amen to that, babe,” Jill said.

Gossip was a game that everybody played at Cayley Station, so Quin knew Jill and Zoe were a couple when he accepted assignment to the Mary Shelley team, but he hadn't expected that they would tease him with their coupling. From the first second they met him at the airlock, holding hands, it seemed to him they were saying that he didn't belong and never would.

Zoe tried to help pull them into the airlock, but her movements were feeble and erratic.

For one awful moment, Quin was certain that his efforts wouldn't be good enough, but then Zoe's shoulders popped through the open maw and the next instant they were both within the lock. Quin punched the control sequence, the gauges turned green, and Jill was there, taking Zoe into her arms.

"We've got to get her out of that damned suit!” Jill said.

Her words were brittle and her voice too loud. Zoe's hands slipped from her leg as Jill pulled at her. Fat deep-red globules pumped from a dark spot on the left thigh of the mission suit and swirled through the air to splatter against Jill's face and upper torso.

"God damn it!” Jill said. Her voice rattled Quin's headset. “Help me!"

"Me first, Jill,” Quin said, working to keep his own voice calm. “Get me out first."

Jill stared at him, her eyes unblinking. Then she nodded, as if they just had met, and she pushed herself forward, reaching for his helmet ring. She worked with furious purpose. Only the nine-millimeter-thick toughness of the suit prevented her from destroying it. Soon Quin kicked free of the last piece and the scattered segments drifted about the module, to be dealt with later.

Together, they attacked Zoe's suit. Jill ripped at the clasps of the life-support pack while Quin worked the ringed system that held the helmet in place. There was a sigh of air when the seal broke. That was a good sign. With the helmet off, Quin tugged Zoe's snoopy cap and communications gear clear and then touched fingertips to her throat, feeling for a pulse.

It was there, weak and thready, but there.

"I'm getting a pulse,” he said.

Jill didn't respond. She had moved on to the gloves, going after them with the same intensity she had applied to undressing Quin. Zoe moaned when Quin touched her again. Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked up at him. Her voice cracked as she spoke.

"I can't feel my leg.” She sounded as if she had just awakened from a nap.

"You're going to be all right, Zoe,” Quin said. “I got you back inside."

"Pay attention, Quin,” Jill had said. “So you can get your asses back inside."

Quin ignored her. He activated the automatic inertial attitude lock and reached back to the IMU frame for one of the collecting-foam cans tethered there. He fumbled the first attempt, and Zoe waited, not saying a word, as he juggled the can into place. At last, he rolled the red arrow stenciled on the yellow can's side into line with an identical mark on the can she held.

"Mary Shelley,” Zoe said. “We're setting the cans."

The cans touched and both arrows faded to yellow, signaling a successful link. The science behind it was more than Quin cared to ponder, and explanations involving self-bonding polymers and shifting absorption spectra just made it sound like magic. All he cared about was that the cans stuck to each other or to adhesive from the pressurized dispenser stashed in an insulated mission suit pocket. He had been told that the bond would never fail, short of total destruction.

Jill called it “better living through chemistry.” She collected ancient advertising slogans like that, the way other folks accumulated political campaign buttons or china dolls. Her hand-made signs were plastered upon every free surface within the Mary Shelley crew quarters.

"We have adhesion,” Zoe said. “Push the button."

A dot glowed red on each can and neon-orange bubbles popped into being at the trailing faces. The thermosetting- polymer foam bubbles swelled until they touched and flowed together, forming a globe a meter across. Zoe touched her joystick and began to drift away. Quin followed suit.

"We are clear, Mary Shelley,” Zoe said.

Solid-fuel rocket cells on each can flared, and the debris field gained upon the bubble. The gap closed and the leading debris fragment sank into the foam. Second by second, piece by piece, the field was absorbed into the still-reactive plastic mass.

"That's a sweep,” Jill said at last. “The screen is green."

Working in tandem, Zoe and Quin set two larger degradable solid-fuel rocket cells into place. Jill did her little timing speech, the new cells flared, and the bubble fell away. The change in its velocity would hurry orbital decay and it would soon plummet to Earth.

Station Manager Marg Dierker claimed Cayley's vacuum smelting operation would be operating by year's end and collection teams would be required then to ferry collected debris to the station so that the scrap could be salvaged and refined.

"Just more corporate bullshit,” Jill had said, the first time Quin mentioned it. “Word is that station managers have been saying the same thing since the station opened. Six years, Zoe?"

"No,” Zoe said. “Five years. March 5, 2024."

"Hell, junior," Jill continued. “AshCor can't meet a schedule any better than the other big boys. Me and Zoe will be living on Rising Sea, sipping Hatuey beer and watching launches off the coast of French Guiana, before anyone hauls this stuff in."

Rising Sea was the forty-two-foot Hunter sailing yacht Jill and Zoe were paying for with their high-risk salaries. Jill called that a-good-chance-of-dying pay. Within a week, Quin was calling it that too. Truth was, it was business as usual, even if they were in orbit. The hardened bubbles of orange collecting-foam would continue to burn to cinder as they tumbled through the atmosphere and what was left would disappear into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

Almost an hour gone by since the collision, and Quin spent every second of it outside examining the Mary Shelley systems module. Whatever hit them had been small, not even the size of the pieces in the debris cloud he and Zoe had collected earlier. Even so, damage was extensive.

Both nearside solar arrays had been pulverized in passing, and the outer skin of the equipment module was shredded from initial impact, leaving a hole big enough for Quin to crawl through, even wrapped in the cumbersome layers of the mission suit. From outside, he could see the twisted guts of the ion propulsion units beneath the gaping wound.

There had been an explosion within the equipment module, as well, large enough to blow out the away side of the cylinder and send bits of metal and plastic shrapnel spewing into space. The other two solar arrays on the far side of Mary Shelley were chewed to pieces by that new debris, and a piece of it had struck Zoe.

When Quin returned from his inspection, Jill handed over a plastic sample tube. The aluminum bead she had found floated inside. It was melted by the impact and formed by the absence of gravity into a perfect little sphere not much larger than a pinhead.

"Had to cut her suit apart,” Jill said. “Found the damned thing wedged in the Kevlar layer of her insulated undersuit."

"Is that all it was?"

"It's enough."

The salty copper scent of blood filled the crew compartment of Mary Shelley, and dulled red splotches mottled every surface. Zoe was strapped into her bunk, nodding in and out of consciousness. Jill had cleaned the wound as best limited medical supplies aboard Mary Shelley would allow and sheathed Zoe's left leg from knee to hip in compression bandages.

She lingered now beside the bunk, pushing a squeeze bottle at Zoe from time to time, forcing her to take liquids. Across the compartment, Quin settled upon a saddle stool and tucked his toes behind restraint bars. He watched the two of them for a time.

"It could have been worse,” he said at last. It didn't seem as if Jill even heard him.

"She's lost a lot of blood,” Jill said. “And all I can manage here is first aid. We've got to get her to Cayley's sick bay soon or she may die."

"How do you figure to do that?” Quin asked.

Jill turned to him and Quin was certain for a moment that she would launch herself across the compartment to tear him to pieces.

"No!” she said. “How do you figure to do it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're the damned hotshot mechanic, aren't you? That's the line Dierker handed us when she pulled Jen and stuck us with you. But I haven't seen you do squat since you came on board except screw up every little thing you touch. You figure how the hell to get us moving or I swear I will haunt you to your grave. Pull your weight, goddamn it!"

"That's not—” The speaker system crackled.

"Mary Shelley." Quin recognized the voice. It was Marg Dierker.

"Mary Shelley, do you copy?"

Quin turned away from Jill's anger and kicked himself out of his saddle. Three weeks’ practice hadn't given him much grace, but it had taught him accuracy. He caught a handhold as he approached the far wall of the cylinder and pulled himself to the communications panel.

"This is Torres, Cayley Station,” he said.

"Sorry I've been delayed, Mary Shelley," Dierker said. Her voice was corporate cool, but Quin could hear nervous conversation rolling in the background, under the operations manager's thick German accent. “I was on a conference call with home office. What is the situation there?"

Quin glanced toward Jill. She still looked upset and distracted, still ready to chew off his ears. This was his to handle, whether he was ready to do so or not.

"We've finished initial inspection, ma'am,” he said. “We might not be able to get back to you on our own."

Quin might as well have been on his own aboard Mary Shelley.

The work schedule was four weeks out and then two or three days off duty at Cayley Station before starting the cycle all over again first of the month. If these first weeks were any indication, it would be a long and lonely six-month tour.

He had been told his whole life that he had an easy way with people, but try as he might, he couldn't win Zoe and Jill over. He always seemed to be in the way, and while they didn't ignore him or keep important information from him, Zoe remained distant and judgmental while Jill picked at him over little things he could never fix. He was clumsy. He was slow. He smelled wrong, for God's sake. Not bad—wrong.

The two women hated his music too. So his off-duty time passed on the stationary bike, logging required hours of exercise, or in his bunk. Ear buds in place, he composed his own music on the SoundStik that had taken up most of his personal-allowance weight, or listened to recorded music on his audio pod.

Quin loved the old-gold rock his father had played while working in the family's auto- repair shop in Key West, and his favorites were by a bunch of Brit rockers known as Queen. He spent hours in his bunk whispering the words of “We Will Rock You” or “Fat Bottomed Girls” along with lead singer Freddy Mercury.

But his love for music wouldn't be enough to carry him through six months. He would go crazy if something didn't change; Quin knew that. Even so, he had no idea what he would have to do to make that happen.

Marg Dierker was all business and never asked about Zoe's condition or how Quin and Jill were holding up. All she wanted to know about was damage sustained to Mary Shelley. Quin reported his findings, sending video data via microwave uplink as he spoke.

"What do you think, Cayley Station?” Jill asked.

Silence.

"Cayley, are you still there?"

"Here.” It was Emil Teague, the station's maintenance chief. “Marg got called away again on other business."

"Typical,” Jill muttered. She brushed loose hairs from Zoe's forehead and offered up the squeeze bottle once again.

"How bad is it, Emil?” Quin asked.

"I had hoped for better news."

"Oh?"

"We've been studying the equipment telemetry. Your visuals confirm our data. I can try to talk you through repairs to the ion engines, but I don't think there's much hope."

"Can't you send another ship?” Quin asked.

"Edwin Abbott is preparing now to initiate first burn on a Hohmann transfer orbit."

"How soon will they be here?” Jill asked.

There was no response. Jill pushed away from Zoe's bunk and caught a handhold on the fly, pulling herself into position next to Quin.

"Answer me, Emil! How soon?"

"Without the engines, you can't start home,” he replied at last. “If you can't change your own orbit, there's no way they can rendezvous with you in less than fifty hours."

"Zoe can't make it that long!"

"That's not our first concern,” Emil said.

"What do you mean?” Jill demanded.

She was inches from the comm panel speaker now, ready to wrap her fingers around Emil's throat. He was silent again. When he spoke, his voice was hushed and conspiratorial.

"I shouldn't tell you this. If Marg finds out, she'll chew on me until I'm raw. She's been talking to the bean counters back on Earth."

"So?” Quin asked.

"They may decide to abort the rescue effort. Marg told them you'll be dead before Edwin Abbott can reach you."

"God damn it!” Jill said. “Why would she say that?” She was crying in her rage. Quin pushed close and put his arm around her. She didn't pull away.

"Look, your electrical system is on battery standby now,” Emil said. “And your engines are just so much scrap metal."

"I can replace the solar arrays,” Quin said.

"You can replace one of them,” Emil said. “That's all you have on board. Any more just wouldn't have been cost-effective. One array can't generate enough electricity."

"The initial data said breathable atmosphere was good for seventy-two hours!"

"It will be,” Emil said.

"Well—” Quin began.

"Emil?” It was Zoe. Her voice lacked volume, but it was steady. “What don't we know?"

Jill launched herself away from the comm panel in an instant. She was clutching Zoe's hand before the answer came.

"There were cost-cutting measures implemented when the work vehicles were built.” Emil sounded defensive. “The electronics always overgenerate heat. Insulation was reduced to allow the heat-dispersal system to be downsized."

"It doesn't matter how much air we have, does it?” Jill said. Her voice was icy calm now. “With only one collector we'll have to shut down a lot of equipment. It's going to get damned cold in here."

"No one considered this sort of contingency,” Emil said.

"How long?” Quin asked.

"Within thirty hours it will be one hundred below in there."

Another six hours passed. Quin installed the spare solar collector and then moved on to the engines. Emil had been right. Even with the engineer looking over Quin's shoulder via video camera, pouring all his technological expertise through Quin's headset, it was beyond what the two of them could manage. At last, they were forced to admit defeat.

"You did everything you could, Quin,” Emil said.

"Why doesn't that make me feel better?"

Quin was ready to throw tools, to snap the tethers and hurl the offending metal into the void, the way his father so often had hurled a wrench across the garage when a customer's automobile refused to give in to his attentions. Quin drew a cleansing breath.

"Thanks for trying, Emil,” he said. “And for telling us."

Dierker returned to the radio once in those six hours to tell them that Edwin Abbott was on the way and to admit to the coming cold. She didn't explain the reasons for the temperature loss though, and neither Quin nor Jill had pressed the matter.

Quin cycled through the lock and returned to crew quarters. He could feel edges of chill already. Jill was wrapped in layers of clothing and was hovering next to Zoe, who was wrapped in every sizable piece of fabric Jill could find. Quin maneuvered into place beside Jill.

"Any luck?” Zoe whispered.

"No."

Jill glanced at him. She reached out and tapped her fist against his shoulder.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you before,” she said. Her voice had lost its earlier nasty edge.

"No, you were right,” Quin said. If she could bend, then he would too. “I've been slacking, feeling sorry for myself because the two of you are together."

Jill ignored his apology.

"Marg is just going to sit there and let us die, isn't she?” she asked.

"That's how I see it,” Quin replied. “But Emil and his crew are still working on ideas."

"Meanwhile, we sit here and freeze,” Jill said. “Just three more pieces of junk."

"We'll save ourselves,” Zoe whispered.

"How?” Jill demanded. “The batteries are almost gone and I've scrounged every bit of cover I could find."

"The suits?” Zoe whispered. Jill glanced at Quin and then spit out her confession.

"I hacked yours apart, looking for the junk that hit you."

"Wear yours, then.” If she could have managed more force, it would have been an order.

"No!” Quin said. “I won't pray I'll survive while I watch you freeze to death."

Jill tapped him with her fist again, harder than before. It felt like a stamp of approval.

"What the hell,” she said. “We'll go out together, three more pieces of junk. Edwin Abbott can just stick us into orange foam and send us down the chute."

Zoe slipped her hand from beneath the blankets and managed a thumbs-up, but Quin was still. Jill's words had struck a spark. He turned toward Jill's advertising placard, taped to the bulkhead across the cabin. Better living through chemistry. And the notion came to him, every little detail bright and hard as diamond.

When he had finished laying it all out, Jill hugged him.

Once they did the homework, it took seventeen minutes to get Emil back to the radio, and when he came he sounded fuzzy and apologetic. Quin and Jill were shoulder-to-shoulder now, anchored before the communications station, and Jill had slipped a headset onto Zoe so she could be heard.

"Sorry,” Emil said. “I was sleeping."

Quin didn't offer up a polite response; there was no time for niceties.

"Emil, how long would it take for us to splashdown,” he asked, “if we pushed Mary Shelley out of orbit just like we do all the junk?” Quin could almost hear Emil's calculator.

"Eighty-seven minutes from initiation of burn,” Emil said. “But it would never work."

"Why?” Quin asked. “The command module's an Orion unit. It's designed for re-entry and we can blow away the rest of the ship with explosive bolts."

"You've got no engine.” Quin had anticipated that reply.

"We still have enough solid-fuel cells to do the job,” Quin said. “Jill's done the math. All I have to do is fabricate a platform to mount them around the aft hatch."

"Maybe—” Emil began. Jill interrupted, maintaining the momentum.

"All we need, Emil, is a 2-percent delta vee. I can send my data."

"No need. I'm doing it myself right now.” Seconds passed in silence.

"Well?” Zoe asked.

When he responded, Emil didn't sound sleepy anymore.

"It's possible,” he said. “But there are other issues."

"Name them,” Jill demanded.

"The Orion's not equipped for anything but a ballistic descent. Without parachutes, it would be a nasty splashdown."

"But it's been done!” Jill said. She ticked off her hasty research. “The Soyuz TMA-Eleven capsule in 2008 came down damned hard in Kazakhstan, and the Russian and the Korean walked away from it. The Expedition Six crew in 2003 survived this sort of descent too. Hell, just look at Voskhod Two back in 1970."

"And we'll be bringing it in at sea,” Quin said. “We could—” Emil interrupted.

"There's one other major problem. You have to get down there in one piece, even for a hard landing, and you don't have a heat shield."

Quin glanced at Jill. She was looking up to him, eyes bright, and she was grinning. They had been waiting for this one.

"Tell him,” Zoe whispered.

"That's not a problem, Emil,” Quin said. “I'm going to fabricate one."

"It's ridiculous!” Dierker said, five minutes later. She didn't sound sleepy, either. “No one has ever built a heat shield from collecting foam!"

"Just because it's never been done doesn't mean it can't be done,” Emil said.

"Shut up, Emil!” Dierker said. “I will not allow—"

"Ma'am,” Quin said. “Would you rather have us freeze to death, waiting for rescue that won't arrive in time?"

That quieted her for a moment. She wasn't about to send a message to the entire Cayley staff that she considered employees to be expendable.

"Of course we don't want you to freeze,” she said. “We're doing the best we can. It may not be enough, in the end, but what you're suggesting is suicide."

"You don't know that!” Jill said.

"No!” Dierker thundered. “I will not allow it."

Jill was close in again, her fingers itching to settle around Dierker's throat. Quin had no more patience for these games, either.

"Marg,” he said. “Just how do you plan to stop us?"

Dierker argued a bit longer, but there was no question now as to the outcome; there would be a revolt aboard Cayley if she didn't let them try. When she returned the microphone to Emil, he was so excited he almost stuttered. Quin listened as Jill helped him suit up to begin work, and he was reminded of the instructors at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Some of them had seemed as if they ate plankton, slept in their wetsuits, and pissed seawater.

"The idea is genius, Quin,” Emil said. “The foam is called Vespel. It's a thermosetting electrostatic dissipative polymer with a graphite reinforcement component. Its tensile strength is incredible."

His words tumbled over each other in his rush to explain.

"Inherent resistance to combustion. Fantastic heat resistance. Tested at 900 degrees Fahrenheit for hours. Some of the aerospace manufacturers used it for lightweight heat shields on suborbital flights."

"Will it stand up to re-entry temperatures, though?” Quin asked.

Emil was silent for a moment, a bit of wind knocked from his sails.

"Flip a coin to figure that out,” he said at last. “It's a long way down."

There was no time now to admire the panorama of Earth, waiting so far below; no time to wonder what Zoe would do, if she were able. Quin examined his handiwork. The cells were set in place on the scaffold he had built around the docking ring at the nose of the command module. Working in the mission suit still was slow but seemed less clumsy now, even though he and Emil were making up procedures as they went.

To form the ablative heat shield, Quin had sprayed the blunt end of the command module with polymer adhesive, one small section at a time, and then affixed collecting cans in concentric circles. The last bit of work was to stretch a sheet of gold-permeated reflective foil over the cans and affix it to the circumference of the module.

Quin was pleased with the results of his work.

The jury-rigged effort might not be enough to take them home in one piece, but it wouldn't be for lack of trying. He had read once—he wasn't certain where—that to die trying was the proudest human thing. He understood that now.

"Okay, Mary Shelley," he said. “It's time to set off the cans."

"Copy that,” Jill said. She was sniffling from the cold. “On my mark."

Under the foil, the cans began to exude their orange bubbles. The bubbles touched and flowed together, constrained by the loose-fitting foil. The foam filled every opening, swelling the foil into a rounded, metallic face that mirrored the contour of the module. Quin watched the holographic timer on his helmet's faceplate. When it reached zero, he reached out and touched the foil. It was unyielding.

"The cake is baked, Mary Shelley," he said. “I'm coming inside."

It had taken fifteen hours to complete the work and temperatures inside the capsule were frigid. Vapor trailed behind Quin, swirling about in miniature cirrus clouds, as he moved to his place in the empty acceleration couch. Jill already was in place in the pilot's position, and she had swaddled Zoe in every bit of available fabric after strapping her into the central couch.

It was time to do this thing.

"We expect splashdown in the Pacific between the Marquesas Islands and Hawaii,” Emil said. “Recovery vessels will be tracking you all the way down, using your GPS signal."

"Thank you,” Quin said. “For everything."

"Buy me a beer next time you see me,” Emil said. “Hey! We've just got the weather report—blue skies and calm seas."

"Mary Shelley copies all of that,” Quin said.

"And we're ready to blow this pop stand,” Jill said.

"Do it,” Zoe whispered. She sounded purposeful.

Jill nodded and tabbed an ignition switch. The capsule vibrated as the array of solid-fuel cells Quin had set up on the scaffold caught fire and pushed with all their puny might against the forward progress of the Mary Shelley command module.

Precious seconds passed. Quin watched the gauges, intent upon the numbers, listening as Jill continued to talk to Emil. They needed to bleed away 2 percent of forward speed to begin the drop out of orbit and put them into the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere. Air drag and gravity would do the rest.

"It's all about drag coefficient,” Emil had said earlier, trying his best not to lecture. “The greater the drag, the less the heat load. Air will build up under the capsule and act as a cushion to push hot gases and heat energy around you."

"Burn is over, Emil,” Jill said.

"Copy, Mary Shelley."

"Velocity is dropping,” Quin said, watching the gauges. “How do we look?"

"We're coming onto track.” Jill's voice could have been generated by a computer. “And lining up five by five. I'm initiating turnover now!"

Quin couldn't feel the change in orientation, but his gauges soon told him the attitude jets had rolled the capsule into a new position. They were moving backside-first again and falling, committed now to the flames.

"Velocity is still decreasing.” Quin struggled to keep rising emotion from his own voice. “At 2 percent now and still going down!"

Cheers filled Quin's headset. Dierker might not be pleased with the dismantling of her precious equipment, but the rest of Cayley Station was celebrating.

"We are in the pipeline and on our way down,” Jill said, in her best test-pilot voice.

What was left of Mary Shelley began to bounce, as thickening atmosphere wrestled against their extreme velocity, and Quin began to feel the rise in temperature.

"We're losing signal, Mary Shelley," Emil reported.

His voice sounded hollow in Quin's headset. It died away and then came back, faint and distant, one last time.

"God bless, Mary Shelley."

Quin was sweating now. The gauges showed the module's interior temperature at ninety degrees Fahrenheit and still rising. Intensity of vibration continued to climb, as well. It felt as if they might shake to pieces at any moment.

Flame licked at the Plexiglas ports, Emil's promised shock wave building beneath the capsule, creating a pocket of heat so intense it ionized the very air. Quin didn't want to consider what would happen if his handmade shield produced uncontrollable wobble, so that what was left of Mary Shelley flipped end for end to finish a hellish descent with its unprotected nose falling into the flames.

"Quin?"

It was Zoe. Quin looked to the central acceleration couch. Her face was turned toward him. She was so pale her skin seemed translucent, but her eyes were bright and she was smiling.

"Thank you,” she said, whispering.

"Yeah,” Jill said. “You're a god-damned genius, Junior. We need to celebrate."

She grinned then and touched a switch on her control console. A high, clear, recorded harmony filled the cabin. A single tone. The opening Oh! toQueen's “Fat Bottomed Girls” with Quin's own guitar licks laid over top of it. Jill had pirated his pod.

He grinned too. That was just what they needed right now, what he hoped he had been clever enough to fashion for what was left of Mary Shelley, a fat bottom that would carry the old girl through the ferocious heat of re-entry. He flicked off his own microphone, cleared his throat, and sang the opening line of the chorus. Outside the ports, the matte black had gone to vivid orange. Jill joined him for the second line. Their voices filled the capsule, howled defiance of the odds, as the music swelled.

And together the three of them rode the fire home.

Copyright © 2010 K.C. Ball

In my June 2010 column, I said I would reply in this one to some of the issues raised in letters to Brass Tacks (and elsewhere) concerning my “Lessons from the Lab” November 2009 column, with “gloves off.” At the time I wrote that, I assumed I would be challenged to reign in my combativeness before I submitted the finished manuscript. However, so much news has broken under the collective name of “Climategate” since then that I now find myself challenged to reign in my desire to gloat, and so, the gloves stay on.

Even by the time this Alternate View sees print many readers will still think, “Gloat about what?” For those of you who feel that way, more power to you, but you may not feel like reading further. Other readers have been skeptical of the apocalyptic claims made about the dangers of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) for even longer than I have. Perhaps they see Climategate and the subsequent damage to the “Warmist” cause (the political aspect of AGW) as vindication that they were right all along, and with them I concur. Those in the middle I hope have at least accepted this particular truth: The science isn't settled after all.

I have been scouring the news and reading extensively in climate studies for the last few months, and I have a confession to make—most of this shit bores the hell out of me. Nevertheless, visit to my blog—www.jeffkooistra.blogspot.com—will find additional discussions about global warming and links that I think useful. (Posts with AGW in the title are climate-change-related.) The topic is too big to discuss much of it in a few AV columns, so I will do so there. I have too many other topics I'd rather cover in the pages of Analog.

There is an attitude among the AGW camp followers that can best be summed up with: “How dare you question climate scientists and their peer-reviewed studies!” In my case, I dare because I am a sentient being. Since I do not know everything, I ask questions to find out. I ask people, I read books, I interrogate Nature herself, and I even question myself. One of the reasons I write Alternate Views is to learn, by putting my ideas out there and having them questioned. No one's words should be accepted uncritically. And if there is one thing of which I am most skeptical, it is excessive certainty.

I think, therefore I question.

True, I have been skeptical of the alleged dangers of AGW for years. But I lost interest in following the story closely once I became convinced that there was no imminent danger to the human race, regardless of whether or not “excess CO2” was causing some amount of “excess warming."

Some personal history is in order.

When I first heard of AGW, I thought it was a reasonable hypothesis worth investigating, since it is not unreasonable to study whether or not CO2 produced by the activities of Man has resulted in additional terrestrial warming. However, I heard about AGW in connection with dire warnings that sea levels would rise by a foot or two in the next hundred years (or whatever the exact claim was at the time). It struck me as ridiculous to think this problem would pose a serious challenge, so it also served as my introduction to global warming hysteria.

Despite the noise of the Y2K hype, the contested presidential election of 2000, and the calamity of 9-11, around that time I learned of the “hockey stick graph.” This graph removed the medieval warming period (MWP—you know, when the Vikings were setting up colonies in Greenland) from history, and claimed to show that we were living in a period of unprecedented warmth and increasing warming. Around then I also learned there were “Deniers.” I realized I must be one because I was certain of the historicity of the MWP. Naively I assumed anyone with scientific sense would feel the same and that the claim of unprecedentedness would soon fall by the wayside.

Yet it did not.

I vaguely followed the subsequent ongoing debate, such as it was. I was investigating superfluid aether theories then, which interestingly enough would contribute to my skepticism about AGW claims. I picture the atmosphere and oceans as complex systems of coupled nonlinear oscillators, which we are only just beginning to understand. Once you learn how difficult it is to adequately model even simple fluid systems, automatically, skepticism greets assertions of certainty about what a computer model predicts for Earth's future climate. Long-term predictions made on the basis of these models, though interesting and perhaps suggestive, are not remotely certain.

But that is not how the predictions were treated.

In my April 2007 column, “Baseball and Hurricanes,” conceived shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I confronted the claims being made that hurricanes were going to be more frequent and powerful than ever due to AGW. I pointed out that such claims presuppose an accurate knowledge of hurricane statistics from the era before we had satellites and modern technology to count hurricanes and measure their strengths. Not having such knowledge, the claims remain hypotheses only. And as it turned out, the years following Katrina brought relatively calm hurricane seasons.

My feelings about AGW circa 2007 can be summed up in several quotes:

"It makes very little sense to believe the output of the climate models."

"When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations, and the superficiality of our theories."

"Computer models of the climate . . . [are] a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs."

"We do not know how much of the environmental change is due to human activities and how much [is due] to long-term natural processes over which we have no control."

All of these quotes are from Freeman Dyson, one of the handful of living physicists who is undisputedly a genius. He, like I, does not get money from oil companies to preach “anti-AGW heresy,” and he certainly is neither stupid nor anti-science. A few more Dyson quotes like these can be found here: noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman-dyson.php. Though his statements sum up my views at that time, I did not know Dyson was a fellow AGW skeptic until recently. I arrived at the same understanding independently and for the same reasons he did, but why quote me when I can quote him?

In recent years I stumbled upon www.wattsupwiththat.com, a page popular with “AGW denialists.” This is the site of Anthony Watts, the man behind the surface stations project I discussed last November. I did not go there to learn about global warming, though. I went because he had a link to the SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) satellite and I wanted to see sunspots. But there were hardly any and no one really knew why. I found this interesting and would visit to read updated reports on sunspot numbers and how this low-count period compared with those of the past.

Watts also occasionally posted pieces entitled “How Not to Measure Temperature, Part (number).” I liked these because I am a stickler for experimental measurement and technique. The postings usually came with a picture of a particularly egregious example of improper siting of an official temperature station, most of them in the US. Watts was up to Part 88 when I decided I'd be discussing the results of the surface stations project in an Alternate View.

What I really appreciate about Watts’ page are the comments following the assorted postings. Reading them is very much like being at the Analog online forum. Some who weigh in do so entirely from a political perspective, which is interesting even if not scientific. Quite a few AGW embracers also join in the discussion, and it is sometimes valuable to read their input. But the best comments and commenters are like the best on the Analog forum. They are intelligent people from all walks of life, many of them toiling in or retired from scientific, engineering, or other technical professions, all of them with a lifelong interest in science. I feel every bit as comfortable with them as I do in a gathering of the Analog Mafia. It is people like us who volunteered to photograph and survey stations for the surface stations project.

I did make a pedagogical error in my November essay. When I said I was fortunate that there was a slow but tedious way I could recover my data in my junior year physics experiment, I assumed readers understood that my case was anything but typical. The only reason I could recover my data (and even then it was only good enough for an experiment fulfilling a school requirement, not for journal publication) was because I did one, and only one, thing wrong. And it was with one piece of equipment, and I was the only person making the measurements. There is no magic computer program or methodology that can undo bad measurements taken with bad or improperly placed sensors. Period. You can attempt to recover some useable data in some cases if you can isolate the source(s) sufficiently, and the nature of the correction is sufficiently simple (i.e. add 0.5 milliunits to each measurement). You still pay for it in increased uncertainty. But you cannot recover accurate data from a thermometer that is sited in a swamp and next to air conditioning units. (See this link for a discussion of that particular station: wattsupwiththat.com/2009/ 06/09/revisiting-detroit-lakes/more-8299. See this one for a detailed discussion of another station from which you will never know what the readings would have been: wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/22/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-84-pristine-mohonk-lake-ushcn-station- revisited/more-6436.)

Some have suggested the number of poorly sited stations is not enough to seriously compromise the data set. This is nonsense. With 80% of stations surveyed, 89% don't meet the NOAA's own siting criteria. 58% were rated as class 4, meaning the expected error is greater than 2 degrees C. That's three times the entire claimed 0.7 degrees C increase for the twentieth century. If this doesn't matter, why have siting criteria at all?

Take any arbitrary century-wide slice of Earth history. Ascertain the averages of the statistics considered relevant to AGW—temperature, sea ice extent, glacial increase and recession, animal population densities and extents, hurricane numbers and intensities, and so on. For any of these categories, it would be unusual to find no change whatsoever from one end of the century to the other. Glaciers come and go, hurricane seasons vary greatly, animal populations are far from static whether people are around or not, and some periods are warmer than others. There are no changes now being attributed to AGW that would not have been changing anyway.

What, you Warmists, is the world supposed to look like if there were no AGW at all? On what grounds do you assert that expectation is valid? You cannot claim to know, and with certainty no less, that the world is warmer than it should be due to AGW if you do not know how warm it would be without it.

One thing that Climategate has accomplished is the loosening of the tongues of those climate scientists who, even though confident that AGW will ultimately be validated, felt all along that claims were presented with more certainty than the state of the science could provide. Another thing it brought is something no scientist can do without: A healthy dose of hard-earned humility.

Copyright © 2010 Jeffery D. Kooistra

A key step in solving any problem is to identify its real cause. . . .

The picture of his son caught Michael by surprise. He'd been reading Melissa's email, smiling at her account of another day spent answering school kids’ questions about the International Space Station, when he'd paged down and there was David looking out of the screen at him. He'd clearly been playing; his hair was tousled and his cheeks were flushed red in the autumn chill. It was such a wonderfully stereotypical photo that Michael laughed, but his laughter caught in a lump in his throat and before he knew what was happening he was in tears, crying quietly there in his corner of the Zvezda Module.

He turned toward the bulkhead so neither Larisa nor Quentin could see him. Thank goodness there weren't any cameras in the crew quarters. He could see the headlines now: NASA Sends Crybaby to Space; Blubbering Biologist Embarrasses Entire Nation.

He sniffed his suddenly runny nose and dabbed at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. Tears didn't run in free fall; they built up into big globs that eventually broke free and quivered their way around the hab module until they eventually got sucked into one of the myriad circulation fans. Not a problem if the fan was just blowing into an air recycler—those were designed to deal with high humidity—but most of the fans on board cooled electronic equipment. Splashing salt water on a live circuit could make more than just Michael cry.

He looked at David once more, then closed the lid on his laptop computer. He could read the rest of Melissa's email later, after he'd regained his composure.

Deep breaths helped a little. It was an old trick he'd learned years ago, back when he'd been teased mercilessly in grade school for his emotional outbursts. His unfortunate last name, Bebe, had provided the perfect nickname for his tormenters—"Baby Bebe"—and try as he might to suppress the tears, it wasn't until he'd learned to fight that they finally left him alone.

Exercise had helped him then. Maybe it would help now. He pushed himself over to the stationary bicycle and strapped in, set the resistance to “10,” and began pedaling his way around the Earth. Maybe if he worked up enough of a sweat, Larisa and Quentin wouldn't notice his tears.

Half an hour later he was exhausted enough to have an excuse for weeping, but though he could still feel the outburst lurking there beneath the surface, he seemed to have beaten it into submission for the moment.

Showering in space was both a luxury and a pain. No matter how well you sealed the compartment, water always got loose and you wound up chasing it around with your towel. In the month he'd been on board, Michael had learned to scrape himself clean with a wet cloth instead. He was toweling off when Quentin drifted into the module.

"How's it hanging?” Quentin asked, the same question he always asked, no doubt because it was even more inane than usual in free fall.

"Good,” Michael answered automatically. Both of them spoke loudly, not with macho bravado but out of necessity. All the cooling fans and circulation fans on board the ISS gave it the background ambience of a railroad yard.

"Yeah?” Quentin let the word hang between them for a moment, an invitation to talk if Michael wanted to.

"Yeah, things are actually . . . actually just about perfect. I'm in space! It's been my dream for as long as I can remember."

Quentin grinned. “Mine too. It's not quite the Buck Rogers scout ship I imagined as a kid, but here we are. I'm kind of sorry to be going home next month."

He'd been on board for five months already. Duty tours had settled down to a regular six-month schedule now that the Russians were responsible for all the flights. Michael had come up with the last supply rocket, and the cosmonaut he'd replaced had ridden it back down. Quentin would go on the next one. Two months after that, Larisa would go, and Michael would be the old-timer on board until his replacement came.

Quentin gestured at the walls, festooned with equipment Velcroed, tied, or simply wedged into place against every available surface. “Good thing the place looks like such a dump in the photos, or the competition for space up here would be even worse than it is, eh?"

"Right, good thing,” Michael said.

"Enjoy it while you've got it,” Quentin said.

Michael tried. He succeeded, too, but the problem was, he seemed to be enjoying it too much. In the days that followed, he teared up over the most trivial things. The sight of Earth curving away from him out the window, the smell of dinner in the otherwise nearly antiseptic space-station air, even the sight of the tiny crocuses in the Ukrainian high-school experiment that he, as both the biologist and the low man on the totem pole, had to tend each day.

It was a simple experiment. The high school class had decided to watch one of their country's native plants through an entire growth cycle and see how the lack of gravity affected it. They had chosen Crocus angustifolius, the “cloth of gold” crocus, because it was small, responded well to cultivation, and had pretty yellow blossoms. They had sent up a cylinder about a meter long and a third that wide, already planted with half a dozen corms that had sprouted within days after Michael had watered them and switched on the light.

The whole experiment had nearly come to an early end. On his first full day on board the station, when he was still getting used to maneuvering in free fall, Michael had underestimated his inertia and had careened into the experiment rack, busting a big chunk out of the Plexiglas cover with his elbow. He had duct-taped it back together, but it didn't fit tight anymore, so he had to be extra careful when he watered the plants.

Nobody had said anything, but he could imagine what went unsaid. The hotshot biologist had nearly blown the simplest experiment on the station. Wonder how he'll do on the DNA sequencer?

Not half bad, it turned out, except for the day when he burst into tears at the sight of a zebrafish genome. One of the fish strains that had been on board for nearly five years was developing longer, lacier fins, and he had found the genetic sequence that controlled it. Researchers on the ground had long ago shown that the fgfr1 gene affected fin growth and regeneration, but this was the first proof that evolutionary pressure could switch it on. When Michael had realized he was looking at the very blueprint of evolving life, he'd lost his self-control and the next moment he was crying like a mother at a wedding.

Fortunately, he was alone this time. Larisa was asleep in the crew quarters, and Quentin was across Node 2 in the Kibo module. Michael sniffed and dabbed at his eyes and bit his lip and clenched his fists and took deep breaths, and he eventually brought himself under control again, but later that day he got out the medical kit and self-prescribed an anti-depressant. He was supposed to confer with Mission Control first, but like any astronaut from Alan Shepard onward, he had learned not to involve the flight surgeon's office in anything he didn't have to. The only thing those guys ever did for astronauts was ground them if their health wasn't absolutely perfect. And an astronaut who couldn't control his emotions was sure to be grounded. If word of this got down to Mission Control, it would be Michael, not Quentin, who would be headed back to Earth on the next supply ship.

Antidepressants didn't just stop depression. They also moderated highs. They clipped both ends of the emotional spectrum, so Michael figured they might help him cope with his overwhelming feelings of joy. For several days they seemed to do so, which was probably the placebo effect since the package insert said it usually took at least a week for anti-depressants to kick in. Then one of the crocuses bloomed, and Michael dissolved at the sight of its pale yellow blossom reaching out toward the grow-light and just touching the top of its Plexiglas dome.

There was no hiding it this time. Larisa was just three feet away on his left, tending to her cryomanufacturing test equipment.

She looked over at him. “Problems?"

He sniffed and rubbed his eyes while he considered what to say. She had been all business with him from the moment he came on board. There had been moments of candor and mirth, as with any colleague, but never any real warmth. How much did Michael want to tell her?

She was the commander of the station. She had a right to know when one of her crew was compromised. So he said, “I'm having trouble controlling my emotions."

"In what way?” she asked.

He gripped the edge of the crocus experiment for support. “It's weird.” Sniff. “Normally people have trouble with negative feelings, but I keep becoming overwhelmed by joy.” Sniff. “I burst into tears at the slightest provocation.” His voice cracked.

"I see.” The corners of Larisa's mouth turned up in a hint of a smile. Michael instantly felt his fists and jaw clench in anticipation of the mocking laughter of his childhood, but Larisa merely said, “How long has this been going on?"

"About two weeks."

She considered that for a moment. “You are unable to control it?"

"Most times I can,” he said. “It's just when something catches me by surprise that I—” Sniff “—I go over the edge."

"You have tried antidepressants?” She didn't even pretend that a career astronaut would ask anyone first.

"Yes. They help, but apparently not enough."

Quentin drifted into the lab module, twisting to orient himself heads-up with the others. Then he saw the expression on his crewmates’ faces.

"Am I interrupting something?"

"No, this involves you too,” Michael said. “I'm having trouble keeping my emotions under control. I'm afraid if I can't get a handle on them, Mission Control is going to send me back down."

Quentin's face betrayed his first thought. If Michael went down in his place, Quentin could stay in space for two more months. But to his credit that expression came and went in an instant, replaced by genuine concern. “Something wrong at home?"

"No. Nothing's wrong anywhere. Maybe that's the problem. I'm at the pinnacle of my life, right here at the apex of my dreams, and the sheer magnitude of it all is apparently more than I can handle.” He wiped away tears with his fingers, transferring them to the absorbent fiber of his flight suit before they could drift loose.

Larisa said, “There are techniques for controlling emotion. Breathing exercises, thought stopping, aversion—"

"I've tried all that. I used to have this problem when I was a kid. I tried every trick in the book and invented some of my own. I beat it, too, until the last couple of weeks."

"You will have to beat it again,” Larisa said. “We can't have you crying in a spacesuit."

"Thanks for being so understanding,” he said.

She snorted. “I understand exactly. Men tell women all the time that we're too emotional. Unfit for command because we might burst into tears at a crucial moment. Every woman in Russia since Catherine the Great has learned to lock her emotions away if she is to succeed at anything. The fact that I'm here proves it's possible. You can do it as well."

Michael bit his tongue. For Larisa, that was a pep talk.

He turned to Quentin, who shook his head sadly. “Man, I wish I knew what to tell you. I'll cover for you however I can, but . . .” He left the statement hanging, either unable or unwilling to state the obvious.

"But I can't do EVAs,” said Michael, “and I can't do interviews, and I can't be depended on in a crisis."

"We don't know that,” Quentin said. “If the shit hits the fan, you'll probably be too busy tryin’ to survive to worry about how you feel about it."

"That's a comfort.” Sniff.

Larisa's cryo unit beeped at her. “We're falling behind,” she said. “Let's get back to work.” To Michael, with as much tenderness in her voice as he'd ever heard, she said, “Try to concentrate on the job in front of you and not think about how you feel."

"No pink elephants. Roger, captain."

She wrinkled her brows. “Pink elephants?"

"Pernicious cultural referent,” Quentin said. “Once it's in your brain . . ."

"Pink elephants. Thank you for that image.” She turned away.

Michael got through his shift without another outburst, but he felt on the edge every second. The watery eyes, the catch in his throat, the shortness of breath; all hovered just inside him, ready to break free at any moment. He concentrated on zebrafish genes and crocus plants and bacterial cultures until his mind felt so packed with data there was no room for emotion, yet the moment he relaxed at the end of the day it all rushed back on him and he spent half an hour soaking his sleeve in the deepest corner of the Kibo module before he brought it under control and headed for the crew quarters.

Larisa was fixing her dinner. “Pink elephants,” she said when she saw him. “All day with the pink elephants. Some of them were dancing. What have you done to me?"

"Were the dancing ones wearing tutus?” he asked.

"Tutus?"

"The frilly short skirts that ballerinas wear? Dancing pink elephants in tutus are the most common form of hallucination in America."

"Stop!” She held her hands over her ears.

"Better than—"

"Stop!” she yelled again, but she was smiling.

And a moment later Michael was weeping like a father at his son's graduation. He couldn't control it any more than he could have breathed vacuum. He pushed past Larisa, grabbed his towel from his sleep station, and dabbed at his eyes, but the harder he tried to bring himself under control, the worse it grew until he was sobbing uncontrollably, the towel wrapped around his head to muffle the sound and possibly, hopefully, smother him before he died of embarrassment.

The realization that Larisa was holding him in her arms shook him out of it, shut off the waterworks like a switch. The universe was seriously out of kilter if Larisa was acting motherly.

Michael took a couple of deep breaths, wiped his eyes and nose on the towel, and slowly extricated himself from both the towel and Larisa's embrace. “I'm okay now,” he said. “I'm . . . thanks."

They looked at one another for a moment, then she turned away and busied herself with her meal.

"I've got to let Mission Control know about this, don't I?” he said.

She nodded. “It would be better coming directly from you.” The implication was clear: If he didn't, she would.

"And thus ends my career as an astronaut."

"Nonsense,” she said. “Valentina Tereshkova was an astronaut to the end of her life, and she only spent three days in space. Deke Slayton was an astronaut even when he was grounded due to a heart irregularity."

"Neither of them went psycho."

"You're not psycho. You're emotional. There is still much you can do within the space program."

"But not up here."

She looked at him for a long moment before she said, as softly as she could and still be heard over the background of the circulation fans, “No. Not up here."

The conversation with the flight surgeon went just as he expected. The doctor offered a great deal of sympathy, but no magic cure to flatten Michael's emotional roller coaster. Anti-depressants were the only medication on board the station for that sort of thing, and if they weren't working, then nothing else could be done besides bringing Michael home on the next supply ship.

He switched the radio to standby and looked up at Larisa and Quentin, who looked back at him as they might look at a ghost. Surprisingly, he felt no urge to cry now. He thought he might throw up, or perhaps suffer a debilitating stroke if his heart wouldn't quit pounding, but the enormity of his downfall had knocked him so far past emotion that he could have attended Melissa's funeral without a sniffle.

He wrote her an email, trying to soften the blow with the news that they wouldn't have to be apart for six whole months after all, but he couldn't help wondering if she would still want to spend the rest of her life as Mrs. Baby Bebe.

He sent pictures of the crocus flower to the Ukrainian students and added a p.s. that he wouldn't be running the experiment for the full six months after all. He wrote a weaselly explanation full of vague references to personal problems that required his presence on the ground, then deleted it in disgust. If he started lying to high school kids just to save himself from embarrassment, then he had truly lost everything.

So he explained exactly what was happening to him, putting it in as scientific a context as he could manage. Something was clearly wrong with his mind, something apparently congenital that might even provide more insight into how the brain worked if he could find a doctor interested in studying it, but the space station was not the place to be experimenting with emotional instability. For the safety of the other crewmembers, and himself, he would be going back to Earth in a little over a week.

He sent the email, then for lack of anything better to do, started cleaning up his personal space. He could probably have waited until half an hour before his departure if he wanted to, since all his gear would barely fill a duffel bag, but he needed something to keep his mind occupied.

He didn't expect a response from the high school class. It was the middle of the night in the Ukraine. But a couple of hours later he checked his email and found a reply from one of the students:

"Dear Mr. Bebe,

"I think not you have the mental problem. I think you have allergy. I have same problem with crocus, also iris and freesia. Is growth canister leaking airs?

"Wishing you luck the best,

"Anita Yelokovna"

He stared at the screen for a full minute, trying to wrap his brain around the concept that he might not be damaged goods after all. An allergy? How could it be an allergy? Tears were an emotional problem, not a chemical imbalance.

A little voice said, Tell that to a chef slicing onions.

But slicing onions didn't lead to emotional instability. Being teased about crying, on the other hand . . .

His mother had grown crocuses. And irises too. They'd been all around the house when he'd been growing up.

The space station had emergency oxygen packs in every module. Michael removed the one beside his bunk space from its Velcro harness and slipped its mask over his face. He cracked the valve and made sure oxygen was flowing, then clipped the tank to his belt and pushed his way out of the Zvezda module and down the station's long central axis to the science modules.

Quentin was in the Columbus lab. He looked up when Michael came in, saw the mask, and flinched as if he'd heard a meteor strike. “Is something wrong with the air?"

"That's what we're going to find out,” Michael said. The mask muffled his voice, but not so badly that Quentin couldn't hear him.

He disconnected the crocus cylinder and pushed it ahead of him across Node 2 and into the JEM module, where he opened the inner door of the airlock that led to the vacuum exposure facility.

Quentin had followed along behind him. “Dude, you're going to space the flowers?"

"No,” Michael said. “I'm going to seal them up in their own atmosphere, and you're only going to open the lock to water them when I'm on the opposite side of the station breathing through an oxygen pack.” While he attached the canister to a tie-down inside and closed the airlock, he told Quentin what he'd read in the Ukrainian girl's email.

"Allergies?” Quentin asked when he was done. “That doesn't seem like—"

"I didn't buy it at first, either, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. What if the allergy gives me all the symptoms of crying—the sniffly nose and tears in the eyes and tight throat and all that—so I'm right there on the physical edge of it already when I get an emotional trigger. Normally the trigger would just push me a little bit toward tears, but not enough to actually bring them on. But if I was already near the edge, it could push me right on over."

Quentin nodded. “Yeah, okay, I could be convinced."

"And I could stay up here for four more months if it's true. Sorry, buddy."

"Hey, it's your tour if you can beat this thing."

"Consider it beaten,” Michael said.

It took three days to convince the flight surgeon, but after breathing pure oxygen for two hours to flush his system and changing all the air purification canisters on the station, Michael knew. He could feel it. Where before it had seemed like he had an unseen companion looking over his shoulder, ready to attack him at any moment—exactly the way he had felt in grade school too—now he felt the security of a teenager in a shopping mall. He was in his element again, with a huge buffer zone between his emotions and trouble. He could look straight out the window at the Earth, watch the clouds swirling past beneath him, and not even blink.

For the acid test, he pulled up the picture of his son, David, his cheeks flushed red from playing among the autumn leaves. He smiled and wished he could reach out and run his fingers through the boy's hair, but he felt nary a sniffle. Not even when he went down to the JEM airlock and looked through the porthole at the yellow crocuses—three of them in bloom now—did he feel the slightest urge to cry.

At the end of the week he watched Quentin leave on the supply ship and welcomed Quentin's replacement, Olivia Rhodes, on board the station. She was everything Larisa was not: exuberant, friendly, talkative, and full of questions. Michael gave her the tour, but as he showed her through the station, he realized that she was everything he was not as well. A lifetime of fearing his emotions had given him more self-control than he'd realized, to the point where he must have come off as cold and distant to her, and probably to Larisa too.

He floated awake that night in his sleeping harness, wondering if he actually had the capacity to feel emotion like a normal person anymore, or if his lifelong overreaction to a simple allergy had robbed him of something basic. Maybe he needed to cultivate crocuses and keep one on hand in a sealed baggie for those moments when emotion was appropriate.

He was still wondering a week later when the Moon slid in front of the Sun, causing a total eclipse for people on the ground in a line running from Oregon to South Carolina. The space station raced through the shadow in less than a minute, but the real show was below, as the fuzzy pool of darkness slid across the face of the Earth, blotting out clouds, mountains, cities, and lakes in its relentless eastward sweep.

Olivia was snapping pictures through the cupola windows and squealing with delight. Larisa and Michael shared another window, quietly watching the display of celestial mechanics unfold beneath them. He wanted to take her hand in his, just for the human contact in such a once-in-a-lifetime moment, but he was afraid of how she would interpret it.

Then he heard her sniffle and looked over to see her rub a tear from her eye.

"Eta prekrasna," she said. “It's beautiful."

"Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.” Something blurred the view for a moment, and it wasn't until he blinked and it cleared that he understood what it was.

Throwing caution to the winds, he held out his arms in invitation. Larisa arched her eyebrows in surprise, but she smiled and snuggled in next to him. Arm in arm, they watched the shadow recede behind them.

Copyright © 2010 Jerry Oltion

It can be nice to have someone else do your work for you, but their criteria for making decisions may not be the same as yours. . . .

Quinton silently crept along the dark hallway until he reached the door to the projection booth, but before he could slip inside, Mark emerged from the shadows. The two graduate students glared at each other, their faces barely visible in the dim glow of a light strip. Faint voices leaked through the door to the projection booth—the secret faculty meeting in the conference room had begun.

"We seem to have had the same idea,” said Mark.

Quinton nodded. It had happened often in the year and two months since Quinton enrolled in the biophysics program at the University for Advanced Research. Although he and his chief rival had more or less observed a truce since classes had been canceled indefinitely, Quinton had not forgotten the sometimes-messy battles they'd fought. Ideas fueled careers, but ideas were easily stolen. Mark had sticky fingers.

"There's room for two in the projection booth,” said Quinton.

"It's locked,” said Mark, moving to block the doorway. “How do you propose to get in?"

"With the keypad. I'll show you if you step aside."

Noise from the conference room intensified. People were raising their voices.

Mark didn't move. The dim light strip, already beginning to flicker and die, washed out the color of Mark's shoulder-length auburn hair and gave his face a veiny, bluish tint. Quinton's southern tan had long since faded; now, with his dark hair and pale complexion, he had a gothic, cloistered appearance.

"How do you know the code?” asked Mark. “The projectionist left a week ago."

"He gave me the code before he went. In case we needed to use it before he returned."

Mark shook his head. “He knew he wasn't coming back. He was headed for the really bad part of town. I'll bet you didn't try to talk him out of it. You wanted the code—"

"If you'll let me get to the keypad,” prompted Quinton. When Mark finally moved, Quinton punched the numbers. Mark watched closely.

Too bad for you, thought Quinton, that the projectionist also told me how to change the code. It won't be the same tomorrow.

The deadbolt whirred. As the door unlatched, Quinton wondered how Mark had intended to get inside. Out of the corner of his eye, Quinton saw Mark quietly lay a thick screwdriver against the wall. Typical, thought Quinton. Brute force approach.

Quinton pushed the door.

"Don't open it so wide,” said Mark. He nudged Quinton inside and quickly closed the door. The cramped booth was dark, but the stark light from the conference room fluorescents streamed in through the plate glass at the front of the booth. “They could have seen the door move. You might as well announce we're here while you're at it."

Quinton saw that he was right. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He crouched in the midst of racks of audiovisual equipment, along with a useless computer that hadn't been touched in weeks. The Internet routers were the first things that DCC had crippled, isolating every computer in the world.

The voices became more distinct. Quinton and Mark leaned against the forward wall, just beneath the glass. When Quinton put his ear against the clapboard, he heard Professor Borden Timms saying, “. . . can't change the past, we have to deal with the present."

The comment didn't go over well with the other faculty. A farrago of angry voices erupted.

Quinton recognized another voice breaking through the din. “This is what happens,” shouted emeritus Professor Grange, “when you put a machine in charge. It's murder, nothing short of murder. Don't call it downsizing."

Raised voices.

Grange's booming voice overrode the others. “. . . don't care what that machine says. It's murder."

More shouting.

Quinton found his breathing had become labored. Not enough air? No, he thought. He was just scared.

Chairman Timms restored order. “Terminology isn't important. Yes, it's infuriating, but it's also irrelevant. We need to focus on how we should respond. And what we should tell the students and staff."

"My God,” whispered Mark. “The rumor's right."

Quinton turned to look at him. The light coming from the conference room highlighted Mark's hair, leaving his face in shadow. But Quinton could sense the fear that was no doubt etched in Mark's expression. And his own.

"Is DCC going to nuke us?” said Mark, his voice trembling. “I saw someone on the roof earlier, adjusting the antenna. Timms might be trying to contact our satellite. For defense, maybe."

"How? It gathers data, it doesn't have any weapons."

"But we could . . .” Mark groped for words. “Alter its orbit. Yeah. Smash it into another satellite, a military satellite. If one comes overhead."

Quinton had also heard rumors that the shortages and service disruptions had been a prelude to something even more sinister. Why had DCC gone berserk? “You think that's how it would attack?"

Mark raised his voice. “How else would DCC do something global? If population reduction is its goal—"

"Quiet, they'll hear you."

Quinton put his ear back on the wall.

". . . trying to get a signal,” somebody was saying.

Then the conference room got quiet. The silence stretched for an unbearable minute.

"What's going on?” whispered Mark.

Quinton didn't say anything, although he was afraid he knew the answer. In one ear—the ear turned away from the wall—he had heard Mark's question. But the ear against the wall also seemed to pick it up—through the wall.

Quinton remembered all the times he'd sat in the conference room listening to a professor deliver a lecture. A communication system permitted a two-way conversation between the speaker at the podium and the projectionist in the booth who was in charge of visuals. All the speaker had to do was flip a switch. “Busted,” he said.

"'Busted’ is right, Quinton,” said a voice that rang like a bell in the projection booth. “Mark, is that you in there with him?"

Quinton stood up and looked out the window. Professor Timms waved his arm, indicating that both students should enter the conference room. Mark opened the front door of the projection booth and stepped out.

"He made me do it,” said Mark, pointing to Quinton. His grin didn't last long.

Quinton felt the overwhelming tension in the room. Clustered around the dais were twenty somber professors, ranging in age from Grange's eighty years down to a young assistant professor who'd just been hired before the trouble began in earnest last autumn. Timms, scarcely older than the assistant professor, stood at the podium in front of the crowd. With long blond hair past his shoulders and a tendency to skip the top three buttons of his shirt, Timms often got caricatured in students’ doodles with a guitar strapped to his shoulder and a colorful tat on his forearm.

Also on the dais, close to the maintenance closet, sat Professor Sandra Rebbin, balancing a small screen and keypad on her lap. Nearby was a table covered with food packages and cans—the only thing available to eat was packaged or canned food, since everybody had long since run out of fresh fruits and vegetables. Most of the packages on the table were still almost full.

"So much for secrecy,” muttered a professor as Quinton and Mark walked sheepishly down the aisle.

"I hope not,” said Timms. “These two outstanding young men are currently working in my laboratory, and I can vouch for them. If not for their character—for as you can see they're not the best behaved of our students—then for their superb intelligence and inquisitive nature.” He gave Quinton and Mark a pointed look. “You both understand that this information is strictly confidential?"

The tone of voice admitted no objection, and Mark nodded eagerly. But Quinton bit his lip, and Timms and everyone else noticed.

"Don't worry,” said Timms, in a gentler tone. “The moment the other students need to know, we'll tell them. But let's not panic anyone unnecessarily."

Rebbin suddenly spoke up. “Got it!” she cried triumphantly.

"Hurry,” said Grange. “We only have a few minutes before it passes over the horizon."

A printer underneath Rebbin's feet began whirring. Paper spewed into the output tray.

Three professors scrambled onto the stage and grabbed at the sheets of paper. Several pages got ripped during the tussle.

Timms quickly separated the professors, pushing them away from the stage. “I expect the faculty at this university, even at a time of great stress, to behave as reasonable and intelligent adults.” He gathered and sorted the printer output, carefully folding the torn pages.

"Lost it,” said Rebbin, frowning.

"But you did a great job,” said Timms. He stacked the pages in a neat pile. “Since you're the one who got us this information, Sandra, you should be the first to look it over.” He gave her the paper.

As she was reading, Timms looked at Quinton and Mark. “We contacted our satellite on its previous orbit,” he explained. “Earlier today we heard a rumor on the ham radio that some scientists in Chicago had found and studied one of DCC's zombie computers. It contained some data concerning a frightening plan."

"Plan?” asked Quinton.

"Extermination,” said Grange. “But I couldn't hold the connection long enough to learn more."

Timms frowned. “Not extermination. The solution to the overpopulation problem. I guess DCC decided that the problem warranted a drastic solution. Better to kill half than for the whole population to suffer catastrophic failure."

"Insanity,” said Grange.

"Not to an AI,” said Timms. “The food riots in Los Angeles, Moscow, Rio, Paris, and elsewhere probably tipped the scales. Too many people, not enough resources."

"Which half?” asked Quinton. He tried to keep his voice as steady as his thesis advisor.

"Which half to eliminate?” Timms shrugged. “That's the big question. We're hoping to find out soon. I suspect it'll be random. Some kind of virus, perhaps. Sandra managed to program the satellite to communicate with Chicago as it flew overhead. Apparently, it succeeded in uploading some of their results."

Grange said, “We've got to finish wresting control away from that machine and its minions. It's gone crazy."

"If it's a virus,” said Timms, “we might be able to use antivirals or some other means to neutralize the infection. Then later we can deal with DCC."

"My god,” said Rebbin. Her face had gone even paler than usual. She handed some sheets to Timms. He scanned them quickly.

"DNA inactivation?” he said, eyebrows raised. “Ingenious. Diabolical, but ingenious. It's going to silence critical sequences that are carried by about half of the population."

Quinton's mouth gaped open. And then he shut it quickly, hoping nobody noticed.

I know how to prevent it, he thought.

Quinton's research thesis, which he'd chosen himself, was on DNA inactivation. He'd kept working through the tumult—what else was there to do? Home was 1,000 miles away in South Carolina, and there was no way to get back there. So he'd stayed busy in the laboratory and applied himself; it was therapy, taking his mind away from negative thoughts. He'd made some important discoveries, which he hadn't told anyone about—no way in the present crisis to publish and ensure you got credit for your work. He had found an unusual reagent that precluded DNA inactivation. At the time he'd considered the finding interesting, but the technique wasn't useful to his research—he was studying the effects of DNA inactivation and why some genes became inactive at certain times, so he wanted to initiate the process rather than prevent it—but now he realized it could possibly foil DCC's plan.

But there were problems. He wasn't entirely sure he could replicate the results. He didn't know if the procedure was safe for humans—it worked in a cell culture, but he hadn't even tested it in animals. And even if it was safe and effective, he only had enough material to protect perhaps a dozen people, and there was little chance of replenishing supplies.

Despite Timms's calming influence, the meeting occasionally degenerated into shouting matches as a mixture of panic and resignation began to set in. Several professors scrambled home to their families—to do what, nobody knew. No details of DCC's plan emerged; how DCC would carry it out, and when, was unknown, although the Chicago group apparently believed it would happen shortly, perhaps within a few days or a week at most. Rebbin couldn't re-establish contact with the satellite when it again flew overhead. She said it may have been disabled—DCC could have detected the transmission. Grange had insisted on launching a strategic attack on DCC, but in the absence of communication and the means of coordination with other communities, little could be done.

A few hours after the meeting had begun, the building's solar power cells were almost fully depleted. The lights faded and the electrical equipment quit working. Timms dismissed the remainder of the faculty. He said that he would post the Chicago news at the central bulletin board because it was the fastest way to get the word out. Everyone, they agreed, should be told as soon as possible. He asked people not to panic. “I know it's tough, but try to stay positive,” he said, as the remainder of the assembly numbly drifted toward the exit. “We'll try to think of something to do, some kind of counteraction. And Bill Grange will keep monitoring the radio for more information."

Quinton followed Rebbin at a discreet distance. He waited until she had gotten outside and started walking down a street where many of the professors lived. The night was dark—no moon, so brilliant stars filled the sky. Quinton couldn't help looking up at them every once in a while; he had never realized there were so many. He never saw very many stars in Charleston, or anywhere else. Up until now, there'd been almost nowhere in the world to get away from city lights, which obscured the light from most stars, since the world's population had grown so large that the cities and suburbs had spread even to mountains and deserts. He'd read somewhere that virtually all astronomers had been forced to rely on orbiting telescopes.

Rebbin switched on a flashlight. Quinton wasn't carrying one; he hadn't expected to be out so late.

A car passed along the street. It was the only sound in the quiet night—a soft humming of the engine. One of the professors had managed to recharge his electric car's batteries with a relatively high-capacity solar power cell somewhere—he refused to reveal where —but he could only go about ten miles on the charge. Persistent rumors of a cache of gasoline on campus had failed to yield any results.

Quinton had wanted to blurt out his secret during the meeting. Could they use the satellite to transmit his research discovery to everyone? Anyone?

His indecision was agonizing. He'd said nothing, but had come close. He had caught Timms staring at him once or twice. Timms had probably noticed Quinton's internal debate.

Increasing his pace, Quinton caught up to Professor Rebbin. She whirled around, shining the flashlight in Quinton's face. “Who's there?"

Quinton said, “Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

Rebbin aimed the flashlight at Quinton's chest. Her voice remained unsteady. “What do you want?"

Quinton realized that she might misinterpret the reason why he'd followed her. Reports floated all over campus that one of the female professors and two female graduate students had been attacked. Most of the campus cops had stopped coming to work—no way to get to the campus unless they lived nearby. “The satellite,” said Quinton hurriedly. “I was wondering if there was any way to contact it again, and configure it to send a message."

"I believe I made myself clear at the meeting. The satellite went silent. No signal at all."

Quinton struggled for the right words. “I heard what you said. But I thought maybe there was something you weren't saying."

"Sandbagging?” Rebbin sounded suspicious. “No, I wasn't holding back."

"So the satellite is definitely gone?"

"Ask Professor Timms. He knows more than I do about it.” She paused. “What sort of message did you want to send?"

"Never mind. Sorry to bother you.” Quinton began walking back to the campus.

"What's there to do?” shouted Rebbin. “We're helpless! And there's only a day or two until . . ."

Quinton didn't answer. The flashlight beam shined on his back and he saw his shadow in front of him until Rebbin turned to go. Then the darkness enveloped Quinton, but the stars shined so brightly that he could see the hazy outline of the concrete sidewalk.

A gentle breeze blew. The air had become fresh in the last few weeks and smelled pure—no exhaust fumes.

The campus was quiet, like a graveyard. Almost all the undergraduate students had gone home or were staying with friends in the city, though many graduate students had stayed because most of them, like Quinton, weren't from the area. A few candles lit up dorm windows, and the student lounge was occupied. Things hadn't gotten bad on and around campus yet. Stragglers coming from other parts of the city told horror stories about the lawlessness they had witnessed, but the campus remained relatively safe.

Quinton wondered what would happen when the “population solution” began to take effect. Would DCC really carry out the plan? Could it succeed? How? Several DNA inactivation molecules had been identified, but how could the machine and its helpers expose so many people? Aerosol dispersion, perhaps. But worldwide? I could be torturing myself for nothing, Quinton thought. It all sounded a little bit far-fetched.

But Distributed Computer Control maintained its grip on the world's digital and electronic infrastructure, and apparently some loyal government workers still served it. There'd been stories in the newspapers, just before the blackout, of a few government employees wearing swastika armbands. And some people apparently had begun worshiping DCC, maybe even offering sacrifices in horrific ceremonies.

It had seemed like such a good idea to put an advanced artificial intelligence in charge of the world. A world without politics, no more bias. It was a worthy goal. Rational decision-making would prevail. Or so people thought.

Was it rational to kill half of the world's population? Even if you were convinced it was ultimately necessary to save the other half? Perhaps there'd been a bug in DCC's programming. But people had insisted on an enormous variety of safeguards before handing over control, and computer experts had tested DCC for years before implementation. Yet experts clearly underestimated the degree to which civilization relies on infrastructure—and also underestimated DCC's ability to introduce small but precisely directed glitches that snowballed into debilitating problems.

Which half would be chosen? With genetic sequences, you could do it randomly or you could target a specific trait, depending on the sequence. DNA varied, with some people having one sequence and others having a slightly different one. Sometimes the sequences varied in ways that didn't seem to be important—the result of convergent evolution, with distinct genes having evolved to perform the same function. In these cases the sequence differences were irrelevant, and randomly distributed among the population; select one or the other of these sequences, and your targets would be random. You could also select repeating sequences whose number and location seemed to vary randomly in the population. On the other hand, genetic differences often led to functional or behavioral differences. Pick one of these sequences and you could attack a specific trait.

Which would it be? The Chicago scientists had indicated the selection would be random, but they weren't 100 percent certain.

He desperately wanted to talk to someone. But whom could he trust?

Quinton stopped beside the biology building that housed Timms's laboratory and the other biomedical labs. Rays of light shot out of a couple of windows. A few people had lamps with batteries recharged by solar power that would last well beyond midnight; Quinton's flashlight began to fade around ten o'clock if he left it on, so he conserved it as much as possible.

Something stirred in the shadows behind the bushes. The branches rustled.

Probably cats, thought Quinton. Some people had turned their pets loose because they could no longer care for them or they had left town and set them free. Cats swarmed the campus.

The rustling stopped.

Quinton paused, then looked at the dorm, situated on the other side of the pedestrian walkway at the heart of the campus. The twenty-story building loomed into the starry sky, blocking a large swath of precious starlight.

He took a few steps when he heard the bushes rustle again. And then something that sounded like voices. Quinton stood still, straining to hear. Definitely voices.

Quinton ran toward the dorm. His path was lit by solar lamps that threw out a ring of fading light around the statue of the university's founder, at the center of campus. He reached the dorm entrance and raced to the stairs. Lights were dim but not extinguished. Twelve flights went by, and he paused only once, at the ninth floor, to catch his breath.

He remembered that Mark Leidenhauser had stared at him a couple of times during the meeting. He and Timms both had noticed something. They had probably noticed the struggle, Quinton's internal debate.

Professor Timms didn't know what project Quinton had chosen for his thesis because Quinton hadn't told him yet. Quinton hadn't assembled his thesis committee yet—the first year at the university had been filled with class work and laboratory rotations, although Quinton had spent all of his time since then working on DNA activation because he found it fascinating. Nobody knew why the body silenced certain genes and DNA sequences at certain times.

And nobody could have guessed that DCC would hit upon the scheme of inactivating critical sequences at inappropriate times for genocidal purposes.

Timms may have had a vague idea what Quinton had in mind for his thesis project because they had discussed DNA inactivation a few times, but Timms was a well-funded researcher with an army of postdocs and more than a dozen graduate students besides Quinton and Mark Leidenhauser. He couldn't possibly keep track of everything that went on in his lab.

What did Mark know? Probably, thought Quinton grimly, as much as he could learn by snooping.

Quinton inserted his magnetized ID card, and his room door popped open. He grabbed his flashlight and raced out.

He paused at the top of the stairs. Hefting his flashlight, he tapped the wall with the end of the flashlight that held the heavy, rechargeable batteries. Lots of mass. It made a pretty good weapon. Not optimal, but it would have to do.

Twelve flights of stairs came and went, two steps at a time, and then he exited the dorm.

Quinton figured they were guarding the entrance to the lab. Mark Leidenhauser and some of his friends. They probably suspected he would go into the lab tonight.

But Quinton hoped they hadn't thought about the door at the unloading dock. It'd be locked, but the projectionist, who had also helped cart and store supplies, had told him the code. Quinton was glad that Mark belittled instead of befriended the university staff. Quinton listened to Timms when he'd said, “Smart people are nice to secretaries and assistants. You never know when you'll need a favor to gain a competitive advantage."

Staying in the shadows, Quinton reached the biology building. The ramp that led to the dock sloped downward, and Quinton could stay hidden all the way to the door. No one seemed to be around. He turned on the flashlight but dimmed it with his shirt so that it emitted only enough light for him to see the keypad. Hoping that the battery-powered lock still worked, he tapped the code and pressed the handle.

It opened.

Quinton switched off the flashlight and groped his way down the dark hall. Listening for noises, he heard only a steady drip from a leaky faucet somewhere. The water supply had been out most of the day and had been intermittent across campus for the last two weeks, but someone must have restored it recently. He saw the barely visible red light of the “Exit” sign, running from an emergency battery supply that had almost fully drained. It pointed the way to the stairs.

Slowly and cautiously he opened the door to the stairwell. It creaked like a thousand banshees, and Quinton held his breath. But nothing leaped out of the darkness at him.

He felt his way up the unlit stairs. Already Quinton found himself making a list. All the way up the stairs his thoughts were racing, formulating a list of people he would try to protect. If they would let him. If he could get his hands on the reagent. If it worked.

Timms. Grange. Rebbin. That's three. Had to protect them first. And some of the other brilliant professors that remained on campus. They needed the smart people, the leaders, the “alphas,” to live. If not, what would happen to the survivors? Who would lead them back to civilization?

Ten people, maybe twelve, already populated Quinton's list of guaranteed survivors. That would probably exhaust the supply. And what about himself and the others? He had no close friends on campus, but if there were any reagent left over, he'd distribute it to as many students as possible.

And he'd have to reserve some for himself or take his chances. He would make that decision later. First thing to do was to protect the leadership. This DCC takeover was a test, a challenge. That's the best way to look at it, he thought. Nobody will be able to say that I didn't do what's right for the university and the city.

He counted the floors until he reached the third. A faint sliver of light escaped from underneath the door. The lights had not yet fully discharged, although they would be extremely dim.

The hinges of this door didn't squeak like the other. Quinton nudged it open, peering into the corridor.

Nobody. The dusky hall was empty.

Quinton tiptoed down the hall to the door leading to his section of the lab. His familiarity with the keypad enabled him to punch the code without even having to look. The bolt slid away and the door snapped open, sounding like a rifle shot. Quinton flinched, then peered inside. The room was completely dark except for a trifling amount of light streaming through the open doorway.

Slipping inside, Quinton closed the door. He didn't have to turn on his flashlight to find his locker, which stood in a corner along with four others. Feeling his way along the wall, he at last touched the cold metal of the locker. He dropped to his knees and felt for the combination lock.

The locker door swung open.

Astonished, Quinton used his shirt to dim the flashlight and switched it on. Someone had pried open his locker. His lab notebooks were missing.

"Nice one, Mark,” muttered Quinton. “You won that round. But good luck trying to decipher my notes.” Quinton allowed himself a laugh as he imagined what Mark's face would look like when he discovered his theft would do no good.

Without his notes, Quinton would have to guess on dosages. But he felt confident he could get it right.

Quinton shut off the flashlight and crept over to the supply cabinet. He knew where the reagent would be. Using a dimmed beam he saw it at once and grabbed it.

A sense of relief shot through his body. Even though he knew it would be there, he felt a release of tension once the bottle was in his hands.

Quickly he sorted through some of the other chemicals. He grabbed six others. Decoys. If he were stopped, then nobody would attach particular importance to the vital substance.

As he stowed the chemicals in a plastic bag, he heard the lab door open. He shut off his flashlight and dived beneath the lab bench as a beam of light swept across the room.

"I know you're in here,” said Mark. “So you can come on out.” He took a step and paused. “Come on, Quinton. You can't hide in here. I'm going to find you. Why don't you show yourself? What are you afraid of?"

Quinton stashed the chemicals under a sink and scooted down the aisle. The beam of light swung in his direction.

"I hear you,” said Mark.

Quinton rose from behind the bench, twenty feet from the sink. “What do you want?” he asked.

The flashlight beam shined briefly in his face. Then Mark lowered it. “What are you doing here?"

"You're wondering how I got in the building, aren't you?"

"I assume,” said Mark, “you came in the front door, like I did."

"Stop pretending you're not looking for me.” Quinton's voice wasn't as steady as he'd hoped.

"Okay, I'm looking for you,” said Mark. “I admit it. You know something. Something about what's going to happen."

"I don't know any more than you do.” Quinton slowly stepped around the bench and toward the door.

Mark moved to block him. “I think you do. The minute Timms said something about DNA inactivation, your expression changed. That's what you're working on in the lab, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's what I'm working on. So? I was amazed at the coincidence."

"Sure,” said Mark. “But you looked like you stayed amazed for an awfully long time. Amazed, and something else too. Troubled, I'd say."

Quinton had gotten about ten feet from the door. Mark's beam shined on his chest. Quinton couldn't make out Mark's face, but he could sense the tension in his voice and in his stance. Quinton increased his grip on his heavy flashlight. Could he really bring himself to hit somebody with it? Hard enough to hurt him? Quinton recalled his childhood and the way he was raised—chess, chemistry sets, books, and piano lessons; unlike most of his classmates, Quinton had never been interested in football or wrestling.

Then he saw the knife. A stray beam caught a wicked-looking knife strapped to one of Mark's belt loops. The glinting blade, showing through the straps of the sheath, was enormous—a hunting knife, with a blood groove.

Quinton tensed. But he noticed that Mark's free hand did not seem to be anywhere near the hilt.

Footsteps in the hallways caused them both to spin toward the door. It opened authoritatively.

"What's going on in here?"

Mark's flashlight illuminated the face of Professor Timms. Quinton felt a flood of relief.

Mark said, “We were just talking."

"Come out into the hallway,” said Timms. “Both of you."

Although the corridor lights glowed dully, Quinton could see Timms and Mark. Quinton moved closer to Timms, facing the professor; Quinton's back was to the wall. Mark flicked off his flashlight and stood sullenly beside the lab door.

"What was the argument about?” asked Timms impatiently. When he didn't get an immediate answer, he said, “Now is not the time to be playing childish games."

"I'll tell you in private,” said Quinton.

"Okay,” said Timms.

Mark stirred. “Now wait a minute. This thing involves everybody. And he knows something.” Mark took a step toward Quinton.

"He stole my lab notebooks,” said Quinton, looking at Timms. “But he can't read them."

"Look out!” cried Timms.

The professor shoved Quinton to the floor. Quinton hit the tiles hard, then heard a buzz-ing sound that lasted a few seconds. Quickly he rose to his hands and knees. An acrid smell hung in the air.

Quinton looked around. Mark lay on his back; Timms stood over him holding a gun in his right hand. Quinton scrambled to his feet. “What happened?"

Timms didn't answer. Quinton stepped over to Mark and got down on one knee for a closer look. In the dim light he could barely make out Mark's eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. Wisps of smoke escaped from his ears.

For once Timms seemed to be rattled. “Is he . . . is he dead?"

Quinton felt for a carotid pulse. Nothing. “Yes.” He noticed that the hunting knife remained snugly in its holder.

Quinton rose and faced Timms. For the first time it dawned on him that he was two inches taller than the professor. If someone had asked him earlier, Quinton would have said that he was shorter than Timms.

"What did you do?” asked Quinton. He gestured toward the gun. “What is that thing?"

Timms's reverie broke suddenly. He stashed the weapon in his pocket and put a strong hand on Quinton's back. “Things are spinning out of control. Let's go to my office. We need to make plans."

Quinton sat in Professor Timms's expansive, well-lit office. Somehow the chairman had managed to commandeer sufficient power to keep the lamps shining. And to circulate the air, which did not smell stale, as it did in the rest of the building.

From behind his gigantic desk, Timms stared at Quinton. “What was the fight about?"

"We weren't fighting. What makes you think we were?"

Timms frowned. “I know you two have been at each other's throats since you came into my lab. Don't try to snow me, Quinton. I've got a lot of people working for me, but not so many that I don't know what's going on. You two were my most competitive students."

Quinton still couldn't quite believe that Mark was gone. “What was that gun you fired? Was it a Taser?"

"Sort of. That's not important. What's important is—"

"Mark's dead. I can't say I liked him very much, but you killed him."

"He lunged at you. He would have killed you. You saw the knife."

"It was still sheathed."

"His hand went to the handle. I had to act fast. The gun is just a prototype; it doesn't have any kind of control. I didn't think it would kill him."

"Where did you get it?"

Timms waved a hand. “Research I did some years ago. For the military. Back when I was struggling to get funds. We all take on projects sometimes just for the grant money. The army wanted a weapon to overstimulate an enemy's nervous system and incapacitate him. We developed a microwave emitter that set up seizure-inducing oscillations in the brain."

"You weren't supposed to keep a prototype, were you? You held it back."

Timms expression hardened. “We're all competitive to a certain extent. We're all looking for an advantage. You never know when something like this weapon could be useful. Necessary, even."

"You were sandbagging at the meeting, too, weren't you?” A surge of emotion swept over Quinton. He couldn't define what it was—a mixture of excitement and fear. “I think Rebbin suspected something. She told me that you knew more than she did."

"You know how modest Sandra can be."

Quinton kept staring at the professor. Timms had completely regained his composure. But you're lying, thought Quinton.

"Okay,” said Timms. “Let's stop playing mind games.” He rose and walked to a cabinet. Opening a door, he lifted a bottle and examined the label. “Pour you a drink? Good scotch."

Quinton shook his head.

Timms set a shot glass on his desk and poured until it was half full. “Sure you don't want any?"

"What are you holding back?"

Timms put away the bottle and returned to his chair. “I palmed a few pages of the printout when I was collecting them and folding the ones that had been torn."

"What did they say?"

"Speculation, mostly. According to Chicago, DCC's plan is to use dispersion agents. Like the rainmakers, I guess, who use condensation nuclei. They'll drift with the wind, scattering the inactivation compounds."

"What will it inactivate? How much time do we have?"

"We might have already run out of time. I've got to hand it to DCC, it knew what it was doing. The plan is to target certain brainstem neurons that are responsible for controlling respiration. Keeps them from making a certain protein, an ion pump, which maintains the electrical gradient. No gradient, no activity. The neurons slowly run down."

"You quit breathing?"

Timms nodded. “You can keep yourself alive for a while by forcing air into your lungs. But you need these neurons to make breathing automatic. They monitor oxygen levels and adjust the rate accordingly. Respiration is usually not conscious—you don't have to think about it. But without these neurons, you do have to think about it."

"Which means,” said Quinton, “when you go to sleep . . ."

"You die. Victims will feel tired, get short of breath. They'll probably lie down and rest. Then they'll fall asleep. They won't know they're running out of oxygen because the neurons that monitor the oxygen levels are shutting down. Nobody will know what's happening until the next morning—when about one out of every two people will have expired. It's clever and painless."

"Clever?"

Timms shrugged. “You've got to admit that it has a certain kind of brilliance.” He stared at Quinton. “The real question is, what are we going to do about it?"

"You withheld this information to prevent panic? Or for some other reason? To gain an advantage over the competition, perhaps."

"I don't have to explain myself to you.” Timms sipped his drink. “Now is not the time for philosophy or psychology."

Quinton thought about Mark. Saw the body in his mind's eye. Then a flash of insight struck. He opened his mouth, ready to speak. But he held back.

"Yes?” said Timms. “Something you want to say?"

And I ought to say it, thought Quinton. But he wondered if the gun was still in Timms's pocket.

Timms leaned forward. “You've got an idea, Quinton? Let's hear it."

"Mark didn't steal my lab notebooks. You did.” A brief flush came over the professor's face, telling Quinton he was right. “At first I was sure it was Mark, but now that I think about it, that doesn't really make much sense. Mark had already been looking over my shoulder; he would have known that I write my notes in code. It's not a simple one either. Vigenere cipher. Mark knew that stealing my notebooks wouldn't have been useful, but you didn't.” Quinton paused. He felt short of breath. “That means you murdered him when you realized I would find out Mark didn't take them."

The professor's expression went cold and hard, but his poise quickly returned. “He really did lunge for you, Quinton. He didn't reach for his knife, but I thought that's what he was planning to do."

Quinton watched him closely. The professor's hand crept toward his pocket. “You can threaten me, but you can't kill me,” said Quinton. “I know something you don't."

Timms smiled. Quinton was amazed that the professor's smile seemed fluid and relaxed. “You have a point. But some of the other people in my lab are anxious to replicate and extend your discovery. You have made a discovery, haven't you, Quinton?"

"I won't tell you,” said Quinton.

"Why not? You want half of the people in this community to die?"

"You couldn't save them. Even if you wanted to—which I doubt."

Timms leaned back. “Not enough material? I figured there was a reason you didn't say anything at the meeting. Well, maybe we can scrounge up some more somewhere."

"No, it's a special order,” said Quinton. “You'd only protect yourself. And some of your goons."

"Goons?” Timms looked genuinely surprised. “These people are scientists, they have doctorates—"

"Doesn't matter. What you're doing isn't right. And what you've already done isn't right. I don't care how smart you are."

"And what about yourself? You're prepared to roll the dice?"

Quinton nodded.

Timms shook his head. “Come on, Quinton. You're as competitive as anyone, including me. We're both competitive, and that's why we have so much success whereas others fail. I promise that you'll be one of those we protect."

"No."

"I can't believe you've gone so soft. You're smart enough to know that there will always be winners and losers. And it's better to win than lose."

"That's true. Winning is always better. But I guess I'm a lot more different from you than I thought. Where we disagree is on the definition of ‘winning.’”

Timms frowned. “I think you'll tell us what we want to know, though we might have to do a little bit of persuading.” He reached for the intercom. “Believe me, Quinton, I hate to do it, but we're fighting the clock on this one. You leave me no alternative."

Quinton aimed and threw his flashlight. Timms saw it coming and ducked. The heavy cylinder bounced off his shoulder, but Quinton heard the thud of metal against bone. The flashlight had struck the professor's clavicle.

Racing out of the room, Quinton was suddenly blinded in the dimness of the hallway. His night vision was gone—his eyes had adjusted to the brightness of the professor's office.

But Quinton had walked these hallways day and night for a long time. He bumped into the wall a few times but still reached the stairs quickly. Just as he was racing down the steps he heard the heavy footfalls of pursuers.

Quinton stayed in the lead, finding the exit at the unloading dock and then sprinting up the ramp. He raced across campus, able to stay the course using starlight and the stray light of the flashlights of the people running after him. He won the race to the dorm.

With burning lungs and aching legs he galloped up the stairs. After he reached his room he yanked the deadbolt, clasped the chain, and pushed his dresser against the door for good measure. Then he collapsed.

As he lay on the floor in the pitch-black room, he heard thumps and scratches on the metal door. They'll have to wait until after the sun rises to use power tools, thought Quinton. And by then it might be too late.

Quinton drew deep breaths. Shoulders, chest, abdomen rose and fell. Was he out of breath because of the unaccustomed exercise? Or was he one of the victims?

Maybe they'll find the chemicals under the sink, he thought. But probably not. And even if they did, they wouldn't know which one to use or how. “For once,” he muttered, “the playing field is level. Too bad for you, Professor Timms."

He closed his eyes. His breathing softened, his thoughts drifted. If it's going to happen, he figured, he should just accept it.

What would Timms do if both he and Quinton survived? How would Timms treat Quinton? What would he say, what would he do? And how could Quinton ever look at Timms again and not think of him as a cold-blooded killer?

But Quinton decided to worry about that later—if, that is, he had a later. His last thought was, what exactly is my definition of winning?

Clouds thickened during the early morning hours. By dawn a light rain fell on campus. The dark skies promised a wet, cloudy day. Lights would be dim all day and go out early in the evening.

The gentle rain unleashed fresh scents. Shoots of grass poked up between cracks in the ubiquitous concrete.

Quinton opened his eyes. Light filtered through the curtains. Rain beat a soft tattoo on his window.

"I made it!” he cried.

He rose and looked out of the window. The campus appeared active, lots of people walking about. Many of them carried umbrellas.

Quinton listened at his door. Silence. He moved the dresser and unchained and unbolted the door. He peeked outside. Nothing. But dents and scratches covered the front of the door.

He looked for his flashlight, then remembered what he'd done with it. A twinge of regret came over him. He wondered if he should have tried to escape without hitting the professor.

Curiosity wouldn't let him stay in his room. He came out and started down the stairs. He met two sleepy grad students on the stairwell.

"What's the news?” he asked.

They shrugged. Apparently, they knew nothing about what had happened last night.

Quinton stepped out into the misty weather. No one who passed by him seemed especially alarmed or affected.

Maybe DCC hasn't released the toxins, he thought.

He wandered to the biology building. A postdoc he knew slightly went inside. He followed cautiously.

The first person he met was emeritus Professor Grange. He was carrying a plastic bag and striding rapidly down the hall when he saw Quinton. He stopped and stared, saying, “I wondered when you would show up."

"What happened?"

"It's all over the radio. I heard just a few minutes ago. They've finally taken down DCC and its zombies. We're in the process of reestablishing an Internet connection."

"DCC didn't have time to carry out its plan?"

Grange muttered an expletive. “It was carrying out its plan, all right. It just wasn't what we thought."

Four men appeared in the hall carrying a covered stretcher. Professor Grange and Quinton made way for them to pass.

"My God,” said Quinton. “How many?"

"Just a few.” He watched the men carry away the body. “That was Borden. Borden Timms."

"What—"

"He's been stabbed.” Grange looked at Quinton. “I understand you and he and some of his friends had a set-to last night."

"I didn't kill him!"

"I know you didn't,” said Grange, gently. “I heard what happened. I'm sketchy on the details, but I think I've got the general idea.” He reached into the bag and pulled out Timms's gun. “He was clutching this in his hand. Apparently, he threatened somebody with it. Somebody who was a little faster than he was."

"His shoulder,” mumbled Quinton. “Slow on the draw, I bet."

"How's that?"

Quinton shook his head. “Never mind. What did you mean when you said DCC's plan wasn't what we thought?"

"That genocide or whatever you want to call it. It was a lot of nonsense. DCC was never going to do anything like that. But that's what it wanted us to think. It encouraged the rumor, spread it around, and leaked news of all kinds of schemes with which it would carry it out."

"Why would it do something like that?"

"That,” said Grange, “is going to be the subject of a lot of research and debate over the coming years.” He closed the bag and wrapped it up tightly. “Once the police get on their feet again, I'll let them dispose of this properly. In the meantime, Sandra Rebbin and I are getting the labs safely up and running again. Regular electric power will be restored soon, or so the city tells me."

Quinton followed him.

"Professor,” said Quinton, “what really happened? Do you have a theory about DCC? What was the goal?"

"I'm not sure.” Grange paused. “But maybe it was genuinely concerned about civilization—we're facing a lot of problems, you know—and perhaps it wanted to encourage a reduction in population the old-fashioned way. Set up a situation in which people would fight it out. Red in tooth and claw."

"Maybe,” said Quinton. “But I have another idea. Maybe DCC learned only too well from its human programmers."

"What do you mean?"

"Holding back—sandbagging. It didn't reveal its true plan. It held back—on those who usually do the same."

"With the goal . . . ?"

Quinton shrugged. “Maybe it thought the best way to deal with overpopulation was to get rid of the people with the least tendency to cooperate. People who try to gain an edge by withholding important information. If it could fool them, somehow get them to eliminate each other—"

"Interesting theory,” said Grange, “but far too complicated for a machine. How would such a plan work? I think the simplest theory is the best, and that's the theory of evolution. That's what must have guided DCC. It believed that the strong would kill the weak, increasing society's fitness . . ."

But Quinton wasn't listening. He'd seen a couple of postdocs struggling to move a crate and stopped to lend them a hand.

Copyright © 2010 Kyle Kirkland

Are you sure this didn'thappen?

Consider a journey of eight miles. One could walk it in less than an afternoon; in a carriage, it would take an hour, or one could conquer the distance in one of Stevenson's steam trains in fifteen minutes or less. Set two towers eight miles apart, and a signal may be transmitted by flashing mirrors in less time than modern science is able to measure. Eight miles is not all that it used to be, yet seek to travel eight miles straight up and you come to a frontier more remote than the peaks of Tibet's mountains or the depths of Africa's jungles. It is a frontier that can kill.

My journey of eight miles began in London, in the spring of 1840. At that time I was the owner and operator of a hot air balloon. It was reliable, robust, and easy to fly, and I provided flights to amuse the jaded and idle rich. It was a fickle income, but when I had clients, they paid well for novelty.

Lord Cedric Gainsley was certainly rich, and when his card arrived I assumed that he wished to hire my balloon to impress some friends with a flight above London. I kept it packed aboard a waggon to launch from wherever the clients wished. Its open wicker car could carry six adults; indeed, the idea of six people of mixed sexes packed in close proximity seemed to add to the allure of a balloon flight.

My first moments in Gainsley's London rooms told me that he was no ordinary client. The walls of the parlour were decorated by maps alternating with sketches of mountain peaks and ruins. The butler showed me into a drawing room completely lined with books. This was nothing unusual, for many gentlemen bought identical collections of worthy books to display to visitors. At that time it was also fashionable to collect, so Gainsley collected. In and on display cases were preserved insects, fossil shells, mineral crystals, old astronomical instruments, clocks dating back to the fourteenth century, lamps from the Roman Empire, and coins from ancient Greece. Seven species of fox were represented by stuffed specimens.

As I began to look through Gainsley's library, however, I realised that many books had been heavily used, to the point of being grubby. They were mainly concerned with the natural sciences.

"Does geology interest you?"

I turned to see a tall man of perhaps forty handing a top hat to the butler. He wore a black tailcoat with a fashionably narrow waist, but was just slightly unkempt. A rich man who did not want to draw attention to himself might look that way.

"Geology—you mean the books?"

"Yes, they made me rich. I learned to tell when minerals were present, in places where other men saw only wilderness."

The butler cleared his throat.

"Lord Cedric Gainsley, may I introduce Mr. Harold Parkes,” he improvised, not entirely sure of the protocol when the baron had opened the conversation first.

"Thank you, Stuart. Now have Miss Angelica ready and waiting for my summons."

"Very good, my lord."

Once we were alone, Gainsley waved at a crystal brandy decanter and told me to make myself at home. He paced before the fireplace as I poured myself a glass, and showed no interest in a drink for himself. I took a sip. It was very good—far better than I was used to.

"How high can your balloon ascend, Mr. Parkes?” he asked.

"I take pleasure-seekers a mile above London,” I began. “My rates—"

"Your rates are not a problem for me. Could you ascend, say, two miles?"

I blinked.

"At two miles the air is thin and cold, sir. Besides, the view of London is not as good as from a lower altitude."

"Two miles, and hold that height for six hours."

I blinked again. Pleasure flights seldom lasted more than one hour. People got bored. More to the point, the balloon needed to carry fuel for its burner to maintain the supply of hot air. That was a constraint.

"I must ask some questions, sir. How many passengers, what weight will they total, and what weight of food and drink will they carry? You see, to stay aloft for so long, the balloon must carry some fuel to keep the air heated. With the weight of fuel for six hours, I may not even be able to get off the ground."

"Yourself, myself, a young woman of one hundred and forty pounds, and food and drink not exceeding ten pounds. Nothing more."

"Then it is possible, but not certain."

"Why not?"

"Nothing in ballooning is certain. Above us is a dangerous and unforgiving frontier."

Gainsley thought about this for a time.

"You are a man of science, Mr. Parkes, like me. You invented the mercury ascent barometer, and you calibrated it to five miles."

"With the help of Green and Rush, yes. They took it on their record-breaking flight some months ago."

"Yet you are in difficult circumstances."

"There is not a big market for ascent barometers. Many of my other inventions turned out to be impractical, but proving them impractical nearly bankrupted me. Pleasure flights are not my preferred career, but they are lifting me out of debt."

I had once had visions of becoming the George Stephenson of the skies by inventing the airborne train, and I spent all my money installing a purpose-built Cornish steam engine with small windmill blades beneath a hot air balloon. Alas, although it did drive the balloon in any direction on a calm day, in wind it was useless. As I found out, a balloon is effectively a huge sail, and the wind was more than a match for any steam engine small enough to be carried aloft.

"Mr. Parkes, my flights are to be no pleasure jaunt, and I need an innovative balloonist, one who can solve technical problems as they arise,” Gainsley now explained. “I intend to study the effects of extreme altitude on a very special person. I will pay you fifty pounds for each ascent, and I shall also pay for the fuel to inflate your balloon with hot air. My condition is that you work for nobody else while in my hire, and that you exercise absolute discretion regarding the flights and the nature of my research."

His rates were certainly better than I was currently making from pleasure flights. In fact, as a business proposition it was too good to be true. Once I had agreed, he pulled at a red velvet tassel that hung beside the fireplace. The butler appeared within moments.

"My lord?"

"Stuart, fetch Miss Angelica now."

Angelica was a young woman a little below average height, with a delicate, angular face. She was wearing a dark blue woollen cloak and close-fitting bonnet, but I could see nothing more of her attire. There was something odd about her eyes. They were listless, almost lacking in life.

"Miss Angelica has been in my service for some months,” said Gainsley. “I named her Angelica because she comes from very high altitudes."

"A fallen angel?"

"Quite so. It is my little joke. Now then, put your glass down, make sure you are seated comfortably, and prepare yourself for a shock."

Gainsley unpinned her cloak and let it fall to the floor. Such were my expectations that it took some moments to realise that she was neither clothed nor naked. Angelica was covered in fine, dark brown fur, except for her face. She had three pairs of breasts, each no larger than that of a girl in early pubescence. Her chest was surprisingly broad and deep, however, and I would estimate that her lung capacity was greater than mine. Her ears were pointed, in the manner of a fox. I sat staring for some time.

"Well?” asked Gainsley.

The young woman showed no sign of shame, which was a very strong clue. She was probably used to being on display.

"I have seen the like before,” I replied uneasily.

"Indeed? Where?"

"At fairgrounds, in the novelty tents. Women with beards, boys with six and seven fingers, I have even seen a child with two heads. By some accident of birth the human template was not applied to them correctly by nature. For this young lady, it is the same."

"You are wrong,” said Gainsley. “She is a werefox, for the lack of a better word. She speaks no language, sleeps on the floor, and is not familiar with clothing."

I managed not to make a reply, which is just as well because it would surely have been sarcastic.

"You clearly do not share my opinion,” he prompted.

"Indeed not, sir."

"Then how would you account for her condition?"

"A feral child, abandoned by her parents. She was born covered in fur, so they cast her out. Perhaps wild beasts raised her."

"I thought that, too, at first. I did indeed find her in a fairground. Her manager said she had been bought from a dealer, who also sold dancing bears. When she was captured in India's northern mountains she had been more active and entertaining; she could even do little tricks. At low altitudes she became very lethargic, however, and was only of value as a passive curiosity. It was not until some days later that I realised the truth. I returned to the fair and bought her."

"And what is that truth?"

"The girl is adapted to very great altitudes. At sea level the richness of the air overwhelms her, much as a diet of that brandy would overwhelm either of us. I believe there is a whole race of humans who live on the highest of mountains, adapted to the thin air."

The idea was fantastic. I looked back to the girl. Her lungs were certainly large in proportion to her body, and the fur would have protected her from the cold.

"I am not sure what role you have planned for me,” I said at last. “I know nothing of mountaineering."

"Ah, but your balloon will be a substitute for the mountains. A trip to India would take years, but my business interests do not allow me to leave England for more than days. Your balloon can take us two miles high in . . . how long?"

"Twenty minutes, perhaps thirty. It depends on the load."

"Splendid. We can do the flight above my estate, north of London, and be down in time for dinner. At two miles I can observe how Angelica reacts to thin air and cold. If it restores her senses, I might even be able to speak with her, to question her about her people."

Gainsley helped Angelica back into her cloak, then rang for the butler to escort her away. Once we were alone again he walked over to the window and gestured to the crowded street outside.

"Look upon my prosperous neighbours, Mr. Parkes,” he said. “Merchants, bankers, financiers, landed gentry. What do they do, other than grow rich and live well?"

"Visit the theatre, attend the races, go to balls?” I guessed. “Some take balloon rides above the races. That is all the fashion just now."

"Theatre, balls, races,” Gainsley muttered, shaking his head. “Within a year of their deaths, such people are all but forgotten. I want to be like Isaac Newton, James Cook, or Joseph Banks— I want to be remembered for discovering something stupendous. Miss Angelica will make my name."

"You have lost me, sir."

"I have a theory, Mr. Parkes. In my theory of adaptive morphology I assert that humans take other physical forms under extremes. For example, in polar regions they may become seals if they dwell there too long."

"The silkie legend of the Scots: people turning into seals."

"Yes, and I think that extreme altitudes might render us into a form like that of Angelica."

Gainsley's estate was not far to the north of London, and he sent his draught horses to draw my transport waggon there. Kelly and Feldman were my tending crew, and they spent most of the night setting the frame and unpacking and checking the balloon itself. I was up two hours before dawn, adjusting my altitude barometer and installing it in the wicker car.

Inflating a balloon on the ground is not a problem. One has unlimited fuel to supply the hot air, and to keep that hot air maintained. Once aloft, it is a different matter. The little furnace in the wicker car is fuelled by lamp oil that the balloon must carry, so this oil must be used sparingly. It was the work of a half hour to inflate the bag sufficiently that it stood up by itself. Then I sent word to the manor house that we were ready to ascend. Gainsley emerged with Angelica, leading her by a chain attached around her waist. She was dressed in the manner of a boy.

We rose very rapidly, drifting right over the roof of the manor house. The wind was southerly and very light, and the sky was clear. At first Gainsley made a big show of looking over the side and exclaiming at the sight of his estate, far below. He almost seemed to forget why we were there, and chattered about ascending with an artist next time, to have his lands painted from above. I had the barometer calibrated to display altitude in quarters of miles. At a mile and a half Gainsley suddenly remembered why he had paid for the ascent.

"A mile and one half; almost eight thousand feet,” he said, peering at my barometer.

"We are ascending slowly, at about five miles per hour,” I reported.

"Six minutes from the prescribed height,” he replied. “Angelica was apparently found at eleven thousand feet. Can you hold that altitude?"

"That I can, sir. Bleeding a little hot air from the balloon will reduce our buoyancy and stabilise our height."

I released some hot air and we continued to ascend, but at a much slower rate. According to my barometer, we settled at twelve thousand feet. By my estimate we were drifting north northeast at three miles per hour. The direction of the wind was different up here.

It was at this altitude that the visions began. Actually, the term visions does not do them justice—they were more like memories that were not mine being implanted in my mind. I seemed to have walked beside canals built across deserts of red sand beneath an unnaturally dark blue sky with a pale and tiny sun. In the distance I could see a city, but it was more of a metropolis of immense crystals of saltpetre, feldspar, and quartzite than like London.

I had paid Angelica no attention until now, being occupied with tending the furnace, checking the barometer, and monitoring the direction and progress of our drift relative to the ground. It was Gainsley who took me by the arm and pointed to her. Angelica had begun the ascent sitting on the floor of the wicker car, paying no heed to what was going on around her. Now she was on her feet, looking over the edge of the car. As I watched, she turned away and scrutinised my altitude barometer. For a full minute at least she stared at the mercury. Then she raised a hand slowly before making a horizontal chopping motion.

"Sign language,” said Gainsley. “She is telling us that she understands what is happening. We have been rising, but now we have stopped."

"More than that,” I said with a very odd prickle in my skin. “She understands my altitude barometer on first viewing."

In London, at sea level, Angelica had show-ed not the slightest interest in the machines and furniture that surrounded her. Even the mechanics of doors were beyond her. Now she was able to read a barometer, and that ability was beyond ninety-nine in every hundred of my fellow Britons.

I noticed her eyes. For the first time they were alert, calculating, even intelligent.

"Angelica, can you hear me?” asked Gainsley.

At the sound of her assigned name she turned her head.

"Angelica, speak to me,” urged Gainsley. “Speak. Speak English, French, Hindi, anything."

He put a hand to his ear, to signify that he expected an answer. Angelica did not reply.

At the pace of a slow walk we drifted over the countryside. Far below I could see farmhouses and other manors. Gainsley continued to coax and question Angelica. She proved disappointing. He showed her pictures of mountains, foxes, and even a sketch of herself. She displayed vague interest, but did not speak.

"How long have we been aloft?” he asked me.

"One hour and thirty minutes."

"And what endurance have we?"

"Very little. The seal of the bag is imperfect—some hole that my crew missed—so hot air slowly leaks out. I balance that by stoking up the furnace and working the bellows, but the air is cold and thin up here, and it is using too much lamp oil."

Gainsley scowled but did not argue. This was a ship, after a fashion, and I was the captain. He returned to his questioning of Angelica. The wind swung around and began to blow us back toward London. There was little for me to do, other than feed in hot air every so often to maintain height. I watched as Angelica became even more alert. She examined the magnetic compass, Gainsley's pocket watch, and even the furnace. After studying the last-mentioned for some minutes and watching me at work, she gently pushed me aside, bled in some lamp oil, and applied herself to the bellows.

"Astounding,” I gasped. “She deduced its operation, merely from watching."

"Very high intelligence,” said Gainsley.

"And an understanding of machines."

Now Angelica scrutinised the barometer, where the mercury indicated that we had risen another quarter mile. To my complete astonishment she touched her finger to the new level of mercury.

"She understands the operation of this balloon as well as the altitude barometer,” I said. “Very few of my passengers could claim that."

"Up here, in rarefied air, she is transformed,” Gainsley observed.

"How can this be?"

"Remember my theory, adaptive morphology? I think she comes from a civilization in very high mountains. Ascending into cool, thin air frees her mind from the effects of the sludge that we breathe."

Finally, I declared that we would have to descend. By then Angelica had not spoken a single word, but she had demonstrated awesome intelligence. My balloon was one of the most advanced vehicles available, yet she understood its workings and instruments.

"Only four hours of exposure to the thin air, yet her brain cleared,” said Gainsley in triumph.

"She did not speak."

"Yet she understood the balloon's workings."

"Her werefox race must have its own language,” I suggested.

It was at this point, just as we began our descent, that Angelica began tapping at the altitude barometer and making upward movements with her other hand. The part of the scale that she was indicating was for eight miles. This part of the scale was where I had marked uncalibrated altitude projections. She looked to me, her eyes alive and full of pleading. I held up the empty lamp oil barrel and shook my head. She seemed to comprehend, for she now sat quietly on the car's wicker floor and closed her eyes, resigned to the oblivion of sea level.

Using the varying directions of the wind at different altitudes, I managed to steer us back over Gainsley's estate, then bring us to earth just a mile from where we had ascended. Kelly and Feldman presently arrived with the waggon, then Gainsley's groom brought a light carriage. He was quick to get Angelica into the carriage and away from sight, but with this done he returned to speak with me as I helped my men pack the balloon away.

"How high may we ascend?” he asked, “and how long may we stay there?"

"Hot air has its limitations,” I explained. “My balloon must carry its own fuel. Going higher means using more fuel. Using more fuel means less is left over to sustain the hot air and maintain our height."

"Could you build a balloon to reach eight miles?"

I almost choked on my own gasp. The question was akin to asking whether a new type of gun could shoot a duck even more dead than dead.

"There is no point,” I replied. “Above five miles the air is so rarefied that one may not breathe."

"But could you build a balloon to do it?"

"Using hydrogen, yes, but to what end? It would be our dead bodies that achieve the feat."

"Then how high may we go?"

"I think you mean how high in safety. Four miles is my answer."

"Why four?"

"Remember, the air thins as we ascend. I have ascended three and one half miles. It was distressing but endurable. My lips and those of my companion turned blue, and fatigue set in very quickly. Four miles is double what we achieved today."

"Have others gone higher?"

"Yes. Some months ago the aeronauts Charles Green and Spencer Rush reached five miles. They found it near impossible to breathe, however, and consider themselves lucky to have survived."

"Five miles. The height is comparable to the highest of mountains to the north of India."

"So I have read."

"So we too could do it?"

"Yes, but it would be appallingly dangerous."

"I fought Napoleon, just a quarter century ago. How can this be more dangerous than trading volleys with his soldiers?"

"Death is death, whatever the cause. Why ascend five miles in search of it?"

"Because at four or five miles we may well clear Angelica's mind to a greater degree. She may even be able to speak. Begin planning for another hot air flight tomorrow, but also draw up plans for a balloon filled with hydrogen."

"Do you realise that hydrogen is even more volatile than gunpowder?"

"Of course, Mr. Parkes, I am a man of science. Send the bills for whatever you need to me.

"So am I to be kept in your employment?” I asked.

"Yes, yes, board and lodging, plus whatever rate you were earning by taking people on pleasure flights. The same for your men."

That night I dreamed, and my dreams were lurid. My mind was filled with visions of vast, gleaming things that glided through blackness, and blossoms of fire that became twinkling clouds of glitter. I awoke, not so much distraught as puzzled. The dreams had become part of my memory. What was more confusing was that I had other memories that were not part of the dreams. There were splendid cities full of graceful crystalline towers and wide promenades, yet all of them were strewn with dead creatures. At first I thought that the bodies were of vermin, but many of them were wearing straps and belts, gold braid, ceremonial swords, and even helmets. Perhaps they had built the cities, these creatures that wore no clothes but fur. They closely resembled Angelica.

We made another dozen hot air ascents while the hydrogen bag was being fabricated. We did not manage much more in communicating with Angelica, but the visions continued to pour into my head every time we ascended. I said nothing, because practical men are not meant to have visions and I wanted to keep Gainsley's trust. Would you travel on a ship whose captain said that he could see water sprites, mermaids, and harpies? I can only compare my visions to leafing through randomly chosen books in a library. I saw nothing of the whole picture, just snatches of fragments.

A gasworks at the edge of London provided the hydrogen, which saved the cost of buying a hydrogen reactor, and chemicals to fuel it. The first hydrogen flight saw us ascend from the city in the half-light before dawn. We remained at four miles for only a quarter hour, because Gainsley quickly weakened, then lost consciousness. I descended rapidly, and when he revived he confessed that his lungs had been weakened by some childhood disease. On the other hand Angelica had been vastly improved by even the brief exposure to the thin air, and had even scrawled some characters and diagrams on a notepad. Alas, we could make no sense of them.

On the way down I had a number of ideas. Gainsley had been complaining about his lungs preventing him from staying at four miles. I offered to take Angelica to five miles without him and report what she did, but he would not hear of it. Whatever she did, he wanted to be there to see it.

"If only I could make the ascent myself,” he sighed.

"Impossible. Even at four miles we are on borrowed time. You especially."

"Green and Rush did it."

"Only briefly. They were on borrowed time too."

"Yet they lived."

"They lived because they descended in haste. People must acclimatise slowly to very high altitudes. Mountaineers I have spoken to say that it takes weeks."

"Find a way. Two hundred pounds, and I will pay for whatever you need."

"Two hundred pounds, you say?"

"I do pledge that."

"Then there may be a way. I have been reading about the nature of air, my lord. You may have heard of the experiments with glass jars and candles. Burn a candle in one, and it will go out when the oxygen is exhausted. Introduce a mouse to that depleted air, and it soon suffocates."

"Explain further."

"Suffocation interests me, being a balloonist. I performed this experiment, then piped some pure oxygen into that depleted air. The mouse revived."

Gainsley thought about this for some time, smiling and nodding every so often.

"How heavy is the mechanism for supplying oxygen?” he asked at last.

"I need a bigger reactor to supply enough oxygen for humans, but it need not be very heavy. Just a tank, some pipes, spigots, and a sealable chute."

"Then build it, build it! I shall pay for the materials and labour."

"And the two-hundred-pound bounty?"

"It is yours."

The problem of staying alive at extreme altitudes occupied my mind a great deal in the days that followed. Oxygen is the essential ingredient of air that gives us life, yet it occupies only one part in five of air's volume. Provide air that is five parts in five oxygen, and one might well survive in much thinner air. I paid a visit to Darkington and Sons, Pneumatic Systems and Valves of Sheffield. Jeremy Darkington was about Gainsley's age, but he was dressed as a tradesman and spoke with a hybrid Yorkshire-Cockney accent. He was a skilled metalworker who had made good by supplying valves for steam trains.

While he sat behind his desk, I unpacked my chemicals. I uncorked a bottle and poured a little solution into a glass, then opened a jar of dark purple crystals. I dropped one into the glass, where it began to bubble with great vigour.

"Permanganate of potash added to peroxide of hydrogen will release oxygen,” I explained as we watched the reaction turn the liquid to a greenish purple froth.

"I know t'reaction,” he replied.

I now laid out drawings before him.

"I wish to have a reactor built. Peroxide will be fed in here, potash here. Oxygen will be released into this pipe as they react, and when they are spent, the solution will be vented through this tap before fresh materials are introduced to give off more oxygen."

He examined the drawings, scratching his head from time to time, but generally nodding. At last he looked up.

"Can be built, but what end for it? There's oxygen all about."

"I have an application that calls for pure oxygen. An industrial application."

"Ah."

"How much to build it, and how long?"

"Summat busy for present . . . thirty pounds. Just now there's batches of valves for Mr. Stevenson's new engine fleet . . . a fortnight?"

"Done! Put my contract on your books."

My reactor looked viable in principle, but the only way to test it was by means of a flight. That was risky. Still, it was worth the risk.

My father had two sayings that I lived by. Luck is opportunity recognised, was sensible enough, except that opportunity generally eluded me. That which is too good to be true is never true, was a little less positive, yet it had kept me out of trouble on many occasions. Gainsley and his schemes seemed too good to be true, yet he paid generously enough.

I was returning from Sheffield and was within ten miles of Gainsley's manor house when a rainstorm swept over the countryside. Because it was late in the afternoon, I decided to spend the night at a small inn on the edge of a hamlet. I was dining on a pork pie when a bearded man approached me. He was dressed as an itinerant labourer, but that illusion vanished as soon as he began to speak.

"So, you are Gainsley's latest balloonist,” he said in a soft, almost conspiratorial voice with a French accent.

"I do not know you, sir,” I responded warily.

"My name is Norvin, and I know you to be Harold Parkes."

Clearly he had something serious to discuss. I gestured to a chair.

"You said I was Lord Gainsley's latest balloonist, yet the baron never flew before I took him aloft."

"He has had four balloonists. Routley, he died in a mysterious duel in 1831. Sanderson died of food poisoning, two years later. Elders fell from the carriage of a train in 1837, and was found beside the tracks with his neck broken. I would wager my last pound that it was broken before he fell."

I felt a stab of alarm, but the stranger show-ed not a trace of hostility.

"You said four balloonists,” I prompted.

"I was on a fishing boat, supposedly being taken back to France. One mile out to sea, I was padlocked to a length of iron rail and heaved over the side."

"Yet here you are, alive."

"When on hard times I supplemented my income by liberating goods guarded by padlocks. Thus my pick wire is always upon my person. It was a near thing, picking a lock in darkness, under water."

I was aware that those balloonists he had named had died, for we are a small fraternity. Now I speculated.

"The balloonist Edward Norvin was French and a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He vanished in 1836."

"So I did, Monsieur Parkes. The seventeenth day of July at one hour before midnight. One does not forget days like that in a hurry. I grew a beard and developed a new identity."

"Can you prove that Gainsley was involved?"

"Can you prove that Gainsley and yourself have had any business dealings?” he asked in turn.

I raised my finger and opened my mouth to reply . . . but said nothing. All of our dealings had been in cash. My men Kelly and Feldman now lived on the Gainsley estate, as did I. Nobody knew. The colour quite probably drained from my face. Norvin smiled and took a sip from his tankard.

"You are having dreams and visions, Monsieur Parkes,” he continued. “The visions begin to tumble through your mind when ascending with Gainsley and Angelica. They begin at about ten thousand feet, the altitude at which the fox-woman's mind becomes more clear. It is as if she were emerging from a drunken stupor, raving randomly."

"But she has never said a thing."

"She is not like us. She speaks with her mind; her words are images of thoughts. I would say that you have said nothing of this to Gainsley as yet."

"Why?"

"You are still alive."

I did not want to hear any of this, yet it seemed true.

"I saw landscapes that were all red and green under a violet sky,” Norvin continued. “There were cities of silver crystal, their streets strewn with bodies although the buildings were intact. It looked like a scene of plague. My perspective was odd. It was as if I were being dragged about, being made to look at the bodies. The only moving figures were wearing helmets and coveralls that resembled a Seibe diving suit—except that the helmets were made of glass and had no air hoses."

Now I began to feel really frightened. Norvin was describing precisely what I had seen, both in the ascent visions and in my dreams. I decided to be honest, in order to gain his trust.

"I have also had dreams filled with vast, gleaming things that floated in blackness against constellations of unfamiliar stars,” I confessed.

Norvin nodded. “I have had similar dreams and visions. Tell me more."

"I—I cannot describe the gleaming things because they are like nothing in my experience, yet they moved with the stateliness of huge ships. They blossomed into white fire that yellowed, then became twinkling, gleaming clouds of fragments."

"Warships of the air, perhaps, fighting at night. I saw great crowds cheering Angelica. There had been a battle. She was a hero. She was their leader."

"A woman as leader? Preposterous."

"Why so? The young Queen Victoria is currently monarch of your vast empire. In the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth ruled you, and she was indeed a warrior queen. In France we had Joan of Arc."

Again we sat in silence. By now I was in a cold sweat, in spite of the fire roaring in the hearth.

"It is my opinion that Angelica came from somewhere very, very high,” Norvin speculated. “Perhaps from Tibet, in regions that have never been explored. Regions that cannot be explored, because we cannot breathe there. I have studied maps, such as they exist. I have read accounts by the explorers Celebrooke and Webb. They reported mountains five miles high. I think that our visions are of cities high in those mountains. It is a region the size of France of which we know nothing. What of the bodies in the visions? What is your thought on them?"

"A plague. Angelica fled for her life. Down, out of the cool, pure air. Down into the thick, warm, soporific atmosphere of humans. For her it would have been like lying in a bath of warm whiskey. Her brain is permanently addled by the dense air. Back in the mountains she would be restored, but in my balloon, four miles above this tavern, her mind also begins to clear in the thin air."

"No plague,” said Norvin. “I have had four years to think about the content of my visions. Angelica was not fleeing a plague, she was exiled. There was a war. She was their Napoleon, and she lost."

"That is just too fantastic—” I began.

"Gainsley hopes to learn the secrets of her people's weapons and crafts by listening to the babblings of her mind. As her mind clears, she speaks delirious visions in the minds of all those nearby. That is why he employs you. He wants to learn secrets that could change the world. He has sketched machines and weapons that he does not yet understand, and each flight allows him to gather more fragments from her mind. His problem is that he must always have a balloonist with him, because he is prone to faint in thin air. That is why he killed the others. He does not want anyone to accumulate as many of Angelica's visions as he has. You told him nothing about the visions, so perhaps he assumes you have a deafness of the mind."

Now I laughed.

"This is preposterous! What would Napoleon or Wellington know about metalworking, cannon manufacture, flintlock mechanisms, or even weaving cloth for uniforms? It is artisans who know those things, not generals."

"Really? How do you make gunpowder?"

"Why, take sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre, and mix them in proportions suited to the usage. Sixty percent saltpetre . . ."

Suddenly I realised what he meant. Some important secrets were very, very simple. Again I shivered in the warmth of the room.

"One single breakthrough can change a world, Monsieur Parkes. Simple ideas, simple enough for even generals and monarchs to understand. Gunpowder can win wars. Invent the bond market, and you can finance wars more easily. Have you ever thought about how accounting changed the world? What about replacing a ship's steering oar with a rudder? All of those things can be comprehended by any idiot—or politician."

"But surely not all of those things lead to war."

"Think again. Suppose you were a governor of some colony, and you were brought word that the local natives were being taught to cast cannons and build warships. What would you do?"

"Why, send a fleet of gunboats before any ship was launched."

"Precisely. Angelica's people will not take kindly to us if we catch up with their sciences. They will put us back in our place, make no mistake, and they will destroy our civilization to do it. Good day to you, Monsieur Parkes."

He stood up to go. I stood too.

"Wait! What are you proposing?"

"To you, sir, I am proposing nothing."

"Then why speak with me?"

"Why, Monsieur Parkes? Because when I do what I have to do, I want at least one person to know that I acted out of honour."

I had not told Norvin everything. I was actually the first balloonist in the employ of Gainsley to use an altitude barometer. On no other flight had Angelica been able to point to eight miles on the scale, because my predecessors did not have barometers. Eight miles. Much of the Earth is unexplored, but we do at least know that mountains do not rise to forty- two thousand feet. Not on our world, anyway. If Angelica were adapted to such a height, it meant that she had once lived on another world. Mars, perhaps. It was a small planet, so its air might be thin.

I did a lot of research in libraries. Polar caps and seas had been observed on Mars in the midseventeenth century, and in 1665 the Italian astronomer Cassini had measured its day to be not much different to that of Earth. It was a world like our own, I quickly established. Now I turned to the literature of the fantastic. Godwin's The Man in the Moon had been published over two hundred years earlier, introducing us to the idea of travel between worlds, and the great Voltaire made use of the idea in Micromegas. Clearly, planets were other worlds, possibly with inhabitants. If a suitable ship could be built . . . but perhaps it already had.

For me the conclusion was inescapable: The whole of our planet was Angelica's island of exile, her Elba.

We had been to half of the height that she was adapted to. Her mind had cleared, but not to any great extent. What might she reveal when fully conscious, with a mind as sharp as a newly wrought cavalry sabre? Eight miles. It was a very long way up. The balloon could do it, but I could not. Not without my new oxygen reactor. My oxygen reactor that had only ever been tested at sea level.

Then there was Gainsley. Had Norvin been telling the truth? Had Gainsley killed those other balloonists? Anyway, what to do about Gainsley? Eight miles was double the altitude that was causing him distress. Even with pure oxygen, I would be pushing my own powers of endurance to the very limit. Gainsley had no place on the flight, and I told myself that I was excluding him for his own good. In case he was as dangerous as Norvin had said, I decided to take my father's old Tower flintlock pistol on the next flight.

The day of the next ascent began perfectly. The air was calm, and the balloon stood tall and stately above the gasworks. The first flights had all been from the privacy of Gainsley's estate, and had been in hot air balloons. Our initial flight from the gasworks had been done unannounced, and had taken everyone by surprise. This time we had crowds, and the newspaper people were there. Gainsley announced to the public that he would ascend alone, so Angelica and myself had been hidden in the wicker car during the night. We remained crouched down as the balloon filled and the sky lightened.

The people of northern London seemed determined to make a big occasion of the flight. Gainsley had declared that the ascent was purely scientific, and that he intended to chart the properties of the atmosphere at extreme altitudes. He would measure wind direction, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, and even the intensity of sunlight. A band began to play and people cheered. As Gainsley began speaking about the importance of science and progress, I heard two workmen nearby say that the balloon was full, and that the hydrogen lead should be tied off.

Gainsley had had the balloon tied down to the roof of the gasworks. One of his trusted men was ready beside a release lever, and pulling upon this would send us on our way. The rope passed through the base of the wicker car, however, and was secured to the main ring at the base of the gas bag. Unknown to everyone, I had brought a butcher's cleaver aboard.

Three blows severed the rope.

The balloon ascended with the speed of a sprinting man. For some moments the band struck up a triumphant march, but above the music I could hear Gainsley's cries of outrage. A large part of the crowd seemed to think that the launch had gone according to plan, so cheering erupted. I remained crouched down, out of sight. Angelica was as passive as ever.

So far luck was with me, and that had me worried. I preferred to have my bad luck at the beginning of a flight, and the good at the end. I had feared that the outraged and frustrated Gainsley or his men might shoot at me, but the huge crowd of witnesses meant that this was not an option. I monitored my watch, and at thirty minutes I stood. The barometer indicated that we were at twelve thousand feet and climbing rapidly. Looking down, I saw that we were above the edge of London, but drifting northeast very slowly, out over fields.

We rose through the first four miles in fifty minutes. Angelica began to take an interest in her surroundings again, and to gaze over the side. As expected, visions were flickering in my mind, but this time I paid them little heed. At five miles I activated the oxygen reactor. I had left it rather longer than was probably safe, but its efficiency in thin air was unknown, and I wanted the chemicals to last as long as possible.

We were now at the height of the mountains at the northern frontier of India. If Angelica were from there, this would be her preferred altitude. As I expected, however, her mind did not clear completely. This was bad tidings for me.

I knew that I would not last long, even with the oxygen. We were at a height that I should have allowed weeks to adapt to. By moving very little I tried to conserve my vitality, but my condition was definitely deteriorating.

There were new visions that were not from my mind. I was at a balcony, and thousands were cheering. All around me stood werefox people, wearing no clothing, but decorated with gold braid, studded straps, ceremonial swords, and belts that glowed with tiny lights. Some had apparently dyed their fur in green, purple, blue, and yellow patterns. Angelica stood next to the barometer, still tapping the scale at the eight-mile mark.

Not of this world, that was for certain now. At this height she should have collapsed without the oxygen tube, yet she now looked the most alive and vibrant that I had ever seen her. By rising so high into the atmosphere, we were definitely simulating the air of her own world.

Her images kept flooding into my mind. Angelica was in something like a courtroom, presided over by judges whose fur was dyed black. Many werefoxes gestured and pointed at her. I understood the wordless trial, I cannot say how. Earth's air is thick and laden with oxygen, so she was sentenced to exile on our world. Here there was too much oxygen, too much pressure, too much heat. At sea level she walked in a stupor, aware of who she was but unable to put words together. It was a subtle punishment, like being perpetually, helplessly drunk.

Now another thought reached me. At a certain height, freedom. The barometer indicated that we were in excess of six miles altitude when her random thoughts ceased to flood through my mind. It was a distinct relief, as I was now having trouble operating the oxygen reactor that was keeping me alive. I was again lucky, for the device was functioning precisely as it had been designed. When next I checked the barometer, we had passed seven miles.

It is difficult to convey the sense of serenity seven miles above the English countryside. There were no birds or insects, and even the cloud tops were small, remote things far, far below. Those sounds that I could hear were muted in the thin air and were no more than the creaking of the wicker car and the bubbling of the permanganate of potash and peroxide of hydrogen. It was very, very cold. Although I was dressed in heavy furs and woollens, the cold passed through them like needles of ice.

The light was like nothing I had ever seen, and I was aware that I was the first human ever to see the sky from this altitude. Every breath was an effort, in spite of the pure oxygen from the tube in my mouth. Angelica's thoughts began to trickle into my mind again. These were not the random scatter of memories from her mind as it emerged from the fog of sea-level breathing, but sharp, precise, focussed thoughts. She was communicating with me. The trickle became a deluge.

My last glance at the barometer was at eight miles. We went higher. How high, I shall never know, but it might have been in the vicinity of forty-five thousand feet. Thoughts flooded into my mind: specifications, philosophy, principles, tolerances, laws, limits, battles, honours, defeats. Angelica now tended the oxygen reactor as I lay on the floor of the car, holding the tube to my mouth. One last jar of peroxide was left when she looked down at my face. A corona of light seemed to blaze around her head, and tendrils of purple discharge crackled around us. I was wondering if the electrical sparks might ignite the hydrogen in the bag above us when there was a flash of the most intense and pure white light imaginable.

I opened my eyes to a sky of deep violet in which a small, pale sun was shining amid thin, scattered clouds. In the distance was a gleaming white crystalline city of spires, columns, buttresses, and arches, a city that was a work of art in itself. Before me was a canal lined with stone in which purplish water flowed. It stretched straight, all the way to the horizon from the city. The fields to either side of this canal were filled with low, bushy trees on which yellow fruit grew.

"This is not real,” I said aloud.

Angelica materialised beside me.

"Of course not. We are in my mind."

"Then where am I?"

"Beneath a balloon, eight miles above the countryside. If we do not descend in another minute you will die, but minutes can become hours in the mindscape, so do not worry."

"You can talk."

"No, I cannot. I have merely imagined that I can talk. It preserves your sanity."

"Then . . . what shall we talk about?"

"People that I can see in your memories of history books and lessons. Napoleon, Wellington, Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal."

"Edward Norvin says you are like Napoleon in exile on Elba. He says you must not be allowed to escape, or you will start new wars and cause unimaginable suffering."

"He did not discuss Hannibal."

"No. Should he have?"

"Were he being fair, yes. Hannibal fought bravely and cleverly for his Carthaginian people against the Roman state. He lost, after a long and devastating war. His defeat was more due to the stupidity of his government than Roman supremacy in the battlefield. He fled into exile. Rome despoiled Carthage and annihilated its people so completely that the entire civilization ceased to exist. Even its fields were poisoned, so that no city could ever be built there again."

"I know the story well."

"So let us go back two millennia."

The landscape dissolved, then we were somewhere on Earth, at night, in a town that reminded me of paintings done in Egypt. I was sitting with an imposing, dynamic-looking man, in some sort of outdoor tavern. He looked tired, even haggard, but by no means defeated. He smiled at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Angelica?” I asked.

"Hannibal to you. Look behind me, what do see?"

"A man with two mugs on a tray. He is adding powder to one of them. Poison?"

"Of course."

The assassin came up to us, bowed, gave us our drinks, then hurried away. He had Norvin's face.

"Remember, I am Hannibal,” said Angelica. “If you reach across and fling the contents of my mug into the dust, I may live to raise another army of Rome's enemies. This time I may defeat Rome. Think of what would be gained and lost."

I thought. Rome had many accomplishments, but it also had a lot to answer for.

"But Hannibal suicided to avoid capture and humiliation."

"You think so? Victors write the histories. I should know."

"Will it be any better under your rule?” I asked.

"I would like to think so. The Carthaginians were more merchants than conquerors."

The figure of Hannibal began raising the poisoned wine to his lips. Without being entirely sure why I did it, I reached across and struck it from his fingers.

The scene dissolved into a modern workshop. We were standing beside a workbench, upon which an unusual piston assembly had been dismantled.

"Powered by a very ordinary steam engine, this piston and valve system can slowly withdraw air from a chamber the size of a small room. It can reduce the atmospheric pressure to one tenth that at sea level."

"The pressure at eight miles?"

"Yes. I could dwell within it and have full control of my mind."

"Do you want me to build it?"

"That is the wrong question, Mr. Parkes. Do you want to build it? I have pleaded my case, now you are my judge. What is my sentence?"

Once more the scene began to dissolve, but this time only blackness followed.

We were at four miles when I revived. Breathing was not easy, but a trickle of oxygen seemed to be still issuing from the reactor. Angelica was back to her old vegetative self, sitting on the floor.

In my haste to plan the abduction of the balloon, I had made no real plans for the return to earth. While still a few yards from the ground I released the rope and grapple. It snared a tree in a windbreak, then the car came to earth gently in what was actually one of my better landings. I helped Angelica from the car, and pausing only to discard my heavy coat and gloves, I hurried her to a nearby stand of trees. We had come down in a field not far from the edge of London, and I estimated that we had travelled no more than fifteen miles laterally. Gainsley and his men would arrive soon, to fetch Angelica back and have me dead. My thought was to hide until a large crowd had assembled, for he would not want to kill me in front of witnesses.

A pair of farm labourers arrived at the balloon after a few minutes. Although fearful of the huge gas bag at first, they soon began striking poses in front of the wicker car. One even put on my heavy fur coat, as if he had been the aeronaut.

It was now that Gainsley arrived, riding hard with his butler, groom, and two other men. My worst fears were justified when he shouted an order and all four of his men produced rifles and fired at the man in my coat. He fell to the ground. His companion raised his hands. It was clear that Gainsley had mistaken the two men for myself and Angelica. He soon realised his error.

"The man and woman— where are they?” he screamed, dismounting and seizing the surviving labourer by the smock while pressing one of those tiny American percussion cap pistols between his eyes.

"Dunno, sir,” the man answered. “Me an’ Fergus, we found the balloon ‘ere. We thought we'd guard it until the owner got back."

"My balloon was stolen by the man who owns that coat. Where is he?"

"Dunno sir, the coat was on the grass when we arrived."

The temptation for Gainsley to kill him was probably near to overwhelming, but by now another horseman was approaching. One death could have been a mistake. A second would send Gainsley to the gallows, baron or not. He ordered his men to dismount and reload as the rider drew up.

"Ho there, sir, we are pursuing dangerous criminals who stole this balloon,” was as much as Gainsley managed to say before the rider produced a pistol and shot him between the eyes.

It was at this point that I recognised Norvin. Gainsley's four men had not yet managed to reload their Enfield rifles, so they attempted to mob him. They had not realised that he was armed with one of the new pepperbox pistols by Cooper of London. It could fire six shots from six barrels in as many seconds, so at close quarters it made one man as effective as six. Two more men were shot down before one of the others used his rifle butt to club Norvin from the saddle. He fell, but shot a third while lying on his back in the grass. The survivor raised his hands.

"Mercy, sir, you'd not shoot an unarmed man, would you?” he cried.

"How much mercy did you show me, Monsieur Garrard?” asked Norvin, who then shot him down.

By now the farm labourer had got to his feet and was running for his life. Norvin calmly took a percussion lock rifle from his saddle, aimed with smooth, professional style, and fired. The side of the man's head burst open as a ball seven tenths of an inch across did its work. Even at distance I could see the gleam of tears on Norvin's cheeks. He was a good man, being forced to kill. He was a Frenchman killing a Napoleon for the greater good. He probably thought he was saving the world. Knowing only what he did, which of us would not do the same?

I lay absolutely still. True, I had my father's flintlock, but I am no flash shot, and would have trouble hitting a steam train from the platform. Norvin had killed six men with as many shots, and still had one shot remaining in his pistol. Apparently satisfied that he had killed Gainsley and his men, and that Angelica and myself were the dead farm labourers, he mounted and rode away. We remained hidden amid the trees until more people arrived at the balloon and discovered the massacre. When the authorities arrived I emerged and played the part of a yokel who had come late to the scene, and of course Angelica was quite convincing as a village idiot. It was no great effort for us to slip away and walk back to London.

That was two years ago, and since then I have prospered. I have my own workshop, where a steam engine chugs night and day to maintain the world's only altitude chamber. It is the size of a small room, and within it lives Angelica, in conditions of pressure that can be found at eight miles. Otherwise, it is furnished very comfortably in red and green leather upholstery, Regency furniture, a small library, a desk where she draws diagrams of things for me to build, and a workbench where she builds tiny, intricate metal machines like surreal insects with wings of blue and silver lace. Food and drink passes in through an equalisation chamber. What comes out is mainly diagrams.

I am building a voidcraft. The thing resembles a streamlined steam train with no wheels. It stands on grasshopperlike legs driven by pistons plated in gold. In place of a cabin there is an airtight double chamber with portholes. One side is for Angelica, the other is mine, and they are at very divergent atmospheric pressures. I tell the artisans that help with construction that it is a new type of armoured balloon, and in their ignorance they believe me.

The parts were made at a thousand different workshops in Britain, continental Europe, and even America. It is a beautiful thing, with a body of brass pipes, steel tubes, crystal mechanisms mounted in gaslight enclosures, and riveted boilers in which nothing boils. Even in its incomplete state, it is awesome in its performance. Last night we rolled back the moveable roof of the workshop, ascended into the night, and looked down upon the gaslit, smoky haze of London in comfort . . . from eight miles. How easily the frontier becomes the commonplace. Angelica spoke within my thoughts, asking whether I wished to fly on to the Moon, but I was not ready for that. Like lungs acclimatising to the air at great altitudes, my mind needed time to adjust to such wonders.

Currently, I am having four quite different engines built to add to our craft. To me they make no sense, but Angelica insists that they will work. The clever and industrious Mr. Brunel has contracts to make some of the parts. If only he knew that he was really building boilers to confine matter more black than soot that has no real existence as we know it. The electrical experimenter Faraday is supplying many of our electromagnetic and electrostatic controls, while the jewelers Pennington and Bailey fabricate crystals to almost-conduct electricity, and Harley Brothers Watchmakers build control clockwork that they do not understand.

The voidcraft of rivets and iron plate will be able to travel to the stars, even though my mind cannot comprehend the distances in any more than the most general sense. It will be armed with a tube being built in two sections in the workshops of Glasgow and Sheffield, a tube that will one day enclose a fragment of a star's heart. With it one can vaporise a warship at ten miles using not one thousandth of the power available. Angelica will be the captain, navigator, and gunner, yet when she leaves, I will be with her. After all, what engine can work without a humble stoker and oiler?

Norvin was right in a sense. Angelica is a Napoleon from an unimaginably advanced race, and Earth is the Elba where she was exiled. Norvin also feared her, but in this he was mistaken. It is with worlds too distant to comprehend that Angelica has her quarrel. After all, why would a Napoleon want to conquer a little Elba when so much more is within reach?

Copyright © 2010 Sean McMullen

One of the key skills of the science fiction writer is world building: the process of constructing consistent, believable planets. Selecting and calculating a planet's physical parameters (orbital dynamics, axial tilt, mass, surface gravity, atmosphere, temperature, and so on) is only the first step in building a world. After that comes geography, climate, biology, history, sociology, and economics . . . to name just a few. All of these factors define and constrain characters and plot elements, giving shape to the kinds of stories the writer can tell. Then, if the writer does a good job, all of this effort becomes largely invisible to the reader, serving as the unique background of the story.

Examples of fine world building are legion in science fiction. Some of the great names of the past were masters: Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, Philip José Farmer, Robert L. Forward, Harry Harrison, E.C. Tubb, and Jack Vance instantly spring to mind. David Brin, C.J. Cherryh, and Larry Niven made their names with excellent world building. Other recent notable world builders include Stephen Baxter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons, Sheri S. Tepper, John Varley, Joan D. Vinge, and Vernor Vinge. Really, just about any science fiction writer of tales set on another planet has engaged in world building to one degree or another.

What I want to talk about now, however, goes beyond mere world building. In some cases, a writer presents a particular fictional world that is so interesting and compelling that it moves out of the background, transcending mere setting to become almost a character in its own right. These are SF's beloved worlds, places so convincing in their artificial reality that readers feel as if they've actually been there—or even that they want to move in. These are the worlds that so fascinate readers that their creators have no choice but to keep writing books set there.

In the early days of SF, Edgar Rice Burroughs turned Mars into the world Barsoom, and for decades readers longed to visit its dead sea bottoms and ruined cities. The field has since moved on and modern readers are likely to find the Barsoom books less than accessible; if you once loved them and now feel the urge to revisit, you're well advised to approach them in a spirit of friendly nostalgia. (Nevertheless, there's a killer movie or several waiting in those books, now that special effects technology has caught up to Burroughs’ imagination. Do you hear me, Hollywood?)

Frank Herbert's desert world Arrakis, usually quite rightly quoted as the premier example of world building, is another world that's become almost real to readers. I don't know how many of us would want to actually live there, but everyone certainly wanted more than one visit: the ever-expanding Dune series is the result. About the only planet that can compete with Arrakis in readers’ hearts is Anne McCaffrey's Pern. Compared to Arrakis, Pern is a lovely place . . . and now that they've got that Thread problem licked, I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to have at least a summer house there. (And while we're at it, where are the Dragonriders of Pern movies? Peter Jackson, I'm looking at you.) Incidentally, both Pern and Arrakis first saw print in the pages of Analog, a fact which gives an interesting perspective on the eternal question of whether Pern is SF or fantasy. (My own argument is that any books that repeatedly reference the chemical formula for nitric acid, as the Pern books do with the compound called “agenothree,” clearly belong under the SF umbrella. I don't know whether it was McCaffrey or Campbell who came up with that one, but either way it's sheer genius.)

Other such beloved places in SF include Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, Philip José Farmer's Riverworld, and Larry Niven's Ringworld. All of these took hold of readers’ hearts and imaginations and did not let go, resulting in multiple books. Some other classic beloved worlds such as Discworld, Earthsea, Witch World, and of course Middle Earth are fantasy and thus beyond our immediate purview—but don't let that stop you from paying a visit.

Science fiction, it's time to add another world to the club.

Coyote Destiny

Allen Steele

Ace, 337 pages, $25.95 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-0-441-01821-5

Series: Coyote 5

Genre: Other Worlds

The planet called Coyote, 46 light years from Earth, first appeared in Allen Steele's 2002 aptly titled novel Coyote (based on stories that had appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine). The next two books, Coyote Rising (2004) and Coyote Frontier (2005), completed a trilogy describing the settlement of Coyote, growth of human civilization on the world, and the political troubles of the colonists. In the end, advanced aliens helped Coyote's people build a hyperspace starbridge to allow near-instant travel to and from Earth (as well as other planets).

Steele thought he was done with Coyote, and he moved on to two other novels (Spindrift and Galaxy Blues) set in the same universe, but away from Coyote's lush riverscapes. Readers, however, weren't ready to leave. As Steele himself says, “Readers continued to insist that I write more about the world I had created, and after a while I came to realize that, although the original story arc was complete, I wasn't finished with the place yet."

Thus came Coyote Horizon (2009) and Coyote Destiny (2010). These two form a continuing narrative, but it's not necessary to read one in order to enjoy the other.

So what is it about Coyote that so grabs the readers? First, there's Allen Steele's writing. He tells sometimes-complex stories in a very straightforward way, and his characters are realistic and appealing. Fact is, Allen Steele is just a good storyteller, so we readers are already inclined to enjoy any place he takes us.

Second, Coyote is a compellingly interesting place. It's a Mars-size moon of a gas giant, there are rivers all over the place, and the biology and ecology are fascinating. In both geography and biology, Coyote falls squarely between the familiar and the exotic. It's an immediately comfortable place for the reader, although the opinion of the first settlers may have differed.

Third, Coyote is a place of hope. The first three books concern the struggle between collectivism and individualism, between society and individual freedom. These are themes that resonate well with Western readers. As the series progresses and things on Earth get more and more dire, Coyote becomes the shining beacon, the future of the human race. It's hard not to feel good about a place like that.

In the previous book, Coyote Horizon, religious revolution came to Coyote in the form of an alien philosophy book. Human Hawk Thompson, putting the alien philosophies into practice, became the leader (chaaz'maha) of a powerful new cult. Coyote Horizon ended with Thompson's death in a terrorist bombing that also destroyed the starbridge, thus severing Coyote's link to Earth and the rest of the Galaxy.

After a brief prologue, Coyote Destiny opens twenty years later. The starbridge is rebuilt, but for some reason there has been no contact with Earth. Jorge Montero is recalled from an exploration mission, along with his comrade, Inez Torres, to find his world turned upside down.

For one thing, Inez (on whom Jorge has an unrequited crush) turns out to be Inez Sanchez, daughter of Hawk Thompson and Jorge's cousin. For another, a ship from Earth has arrived with shocking news: Hawk Thompson, the chaaz'maha, survived the blast and is alive in Boston. And finally, the terrorist is also still alive, and loose somewhere on Coyote. And he's planning worse.

So Jorge and Inez are off to Earth to find Hawk, while another group goes in search of the terrorist.

What follows is a story with plenty of action, adventure, politics, religion, exotic locales, and fascinating aliens. It brings the story to a satisfactory ending, but we can trust that this isn't the last we'll see of Coyote. I hope.

Geosynchron

David Louis Edelman

Pyr, 520 pages, $16.00 (trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-59102-792-8

Series: Jump 225 3

Genre: Cyberpunk

Now let's talk about a place you wouldn't want to visit in person: the future of David Louis Edelman's Jump 225 trilogy. It's a crazy, dangerous world filled with crazy, dangerous people—and boy is it fun to read about!

If you've read the previous two books (Infoquake and MultiReal), please skip ahead while I attempt the impossible: describing Edelman's madcap future in a nutshell.

Take one part Silicon Valley, one part Wall Street, one part Libertarian philosophy, and several large parts of neuro-biological nanotechnology. Stir together, add a few Machiavellian schemes and assorted psychopaths, connect the whole thing to a couple high-voltage lines, and allow to simmer for a few centuries. What you wind up with is a world of corporate power gone mad and software become the basis of reality. After the Autonomous Revolt of AIs devastated the world centuries ago, the tyrannical Defense and Wellness Council took control. Thousands of corporations (fiefcorps) market nanotech-based programs that run not on computers, but on, in, and around the human body itself. The road to success is to work for a fiefcorp that can become powerful enough to dominate.

Into this world is born Natch, a gifted programmer and total sociopath—which means he has just the skills he needs to succeed. Natch gets involved in a civil war between two of the world's richest and most powerful people: Margaret Surina and Len Borda. Along the way, Natch gains access to a new technology called MultiReal, which allows the creation and manipulation of multiple realities. By the end of MultiReal, though, Natch is infected with Black Code, a mysterious virus that render him blind and helpless, and his side seems doomed to defeat. Meanwhile, violent rebellion against the Council has sprung up worldwide.

In Geosynchron, the concluding volume, Natch awakens and moves from peril to peril while the world falls apart around him. No, literally: MultiReal and similar technologies have become weapons in the civil war, weapons that threaten reality itself.

Natch might just be the only person who can save the world, but there are two huge obstacles to overcome. First, he has to save himself. And second, he has to be convinced that this world he ultimately despises is worth saving.

This is the kind of book that jumps you in a dark alley, steals your wallet, and races away daring you to keep up. It's an adrenalin rush from beginning to end, and if it takes a few chapters to get your bearings, you don't really mind. Don't worry if you haven't read the first two books: Geosynchron contains a helpful synopsis to get you up to speed.

InterstellarNet: Origins

Edward M. Lerner

FoxAcre, 290 pages, $23.00 (trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-9818487-4-7

Series: InterstellarNet 1

Genre: Alien Beings

Faster-than-light travel is such a commonplace convention in SF that we seldom consider the flip side: a universe in which FTL does not exist. In this book, a collection of short pieces that originally appeared in Analog and a few other venues, Edward M. Lerner uses such a universe to great effect.

Just because we can't travel between the stars, there is no reason we can't communicate with alien races. In the present day, a SETI-like program receives a signal from intelligent aliens. Before long, the U.N. gets in on the fun, settling the question of whether we should reply or not, and who's going to be in charge of everything we learn.

Over time, Earth becomes part of InterstellarNet: a communications network based on trading intellectual property, new technologies, and the like. AI agents are put in charge of the negotiations, but there are still a lot of surprises.

These are mainly nice little puzzle stories, reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's early robot stories. They're certainly enjoyable enough. Even if you read the ones in Analog, you'll get a few extra stories here—and it's nice to have them all in the same volume.

A second volume is in preparation.

The Business of Science Fiction:

Two Insiders Discuss Writing and Publishing

Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg

McFarland, 269 pages, $35.00

(trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-7864-4797-8

Genre: Nonfiction

Between them, Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg have published over 150 books. Both are legends in the field. When the two of them get together to discuss the state of SF and the publishing industry, who wouldn't be interested in what they say?

Well, for more than a decade, these two hardworking writers have been doing just that in the pages of the Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Now 26 of these dialogues have been collected in one volume, and it's every bit as fascinating, educational, and downright fun as you'd expect.

The topics break down into three main subject areas: Writing and Selling, The Business, and The Field. Under the first heading, topics range from the marketplace to conventions to collaborations. In the second section, they discuss such mysteries as agents, professionalism, print-on-demand, and the irresistible “really dumb ideas.” And in the third section these two writers, who have been part of the SF scene forever, talk about the history and future direction of the field.

Obviously, if you're an aspiring writer (I think there are one or two still around), you won't want to miss this volume. At $35 it might seem a little pricey, but if you think of it as a textbook for a writing class, it's a bargain. One caveat, though—the publishing industry is currently in the grip of enormous changes, and what was good advice ten years ago might be less applicable two years from now. Still, an awful lot of what appears here is timeless.

For the non-writing fan of SF, this book might be a harder sell. If it helps, this is a fun and engaging read—Resnick and Malzberg are good writers, after all—and there's a fair amount of interesting gossip about the SF publishing world (nothing salacious or titillating, I hasten to add). If you have any interest in what goes on behind the scenes of the books and magazines you read, this is a painless way to find out.

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.

Dear Dr. Schmidt:

I'm writing to thank you for your editorial “The Rest of the Data” in the 2010 April Analog. It said many of the things I would have said had I written about Dr. Kooistra's “Alternate View” article: global warming is global, not limited to US measurements, and many other data such as glacier retreat indicate that global warming is taking place. This is not necessarily a bad thing: we are about 4,000 years overdue for an ice age.

However, there is one thing I would have said that you didn't discuss, nor was it mentioned in any of the letters on the article in that issue.

Global warming is not about absolute temperatures; it is about trends in the temperatures. Even if the US temperatures are skewed, their trend, if any, should still be valid. And there is clearly a warming trend in the temperature readings taken in the past 30 years, since the changes to the thermometers cited in the article.

I recently renewed my subscription for another two years, and look forward to many more thought-provoking editorials, articles, and stories.

Jeffrey R. Carter

Mesa, AZ

Stanley,

Thank you for responding to Jeff Kooistra's article. I agree that known systemic errors can be corrected (with an error term).

I presume that you wrote the editorial prior to the publication of the “loss” of data by the English IPCC group (I've forgotten the precise name) and the computer code with the fudge factor multiplier. Also included in the suspicious activities are the discarding of the recent Little Ice Age and the warming that produced the name “Greenland."

I am a Global Warming skeptic to the extent that I believe too much of the discussion has had the flavor of a new religion or at least a political campaign. I am not a climatologist or a meteorologist and don't have access to the data and cannot make a reasoned argument pro or con. As a long-time science fiction reader, I can imagine several reasons for actual warming—or cooling. As a professional data analyst, I also understand the problems of generating good forecasts of data trends.

I am worried on the one hand that the politically proposed remedies for Global Warming will cause more harm than doing nothing. On the other hand, I am worried that the revelations of problems with the IPCC reports will create a “boy crying wolf” effect.

The readers of Analog certainly include a large number of independent thinkers who could generate a decent analysis of the situation, given the data. Is this possible?

Dean Hartley

Hi,

I just finished reading Mr. Kooistra's “Taken on Faith” Alternate View piece. As I read it, I could not help but think that there seems to be a consistent separation between religion and science. This separation seems fundamentally wrong because the commonly accepted definitions of “the universe” state that the universe includes everything that exists everywhere. If these are true, then the universe must include God if God exists.

It seems reasonable to expect that the proof of God's existence will be more difficult than proving Mr. Ford's existence using only the Model T, if only because Mr. Ford put his last name on the Model T. But in light of Mr. Kooistra's comment that “. . . the universe cannot be mathematically inconsistent with itself,” it seems reasonable to think that somewhere someone will eventually discover and unleash the math of God.

Sorry, I could not resist.

Thank you for the intellectual stimulation and the consistently excellent magazine.

John Harcinske

Mitchell, SD

Dear Analog,

Stanley Schmidt's [May 2010] editorial “Growing Pains” raises a provocative question: whether a culture must make certain wrong choices, early in its history, in order to survive and flourish far enough to recognize that the choices were wrong. If this turned out to hold true, then time travelers (or anyone else visiting—and able to influence—the early stages of another culture) would face an ethical dilemma even greater than the one Schmidt sees.

Schmidt suggests that benevolent time travelers visiting Earth's past (and initially hoping to save their ancestors from embracing such illogic as astrology or the practice of keeping slaves) might instead adopt a hands-off, “Prime Directive” premise, on the grounds that these wrong choices laid the necessary groundwork for further and better developments (astrology became astronomy, enslavement led some of its practitioners as well as its victims to understand—by contrast—the importance of freedom). However, Schmidt has not looked at the other side of the “Prime Directive” premise: If developing cultures somehow need to embrace certain wrong ideas at some stage—even cruel, silly, or otherwise destructive ideas—in order to arrive at better ideas later on, might well-meaning time travelers (or space explorers) regard it as their duty to introduce those wrong ideas to cultures that lacked them? If so, how would the people in such a culture respond, if they learned that their visitors were teaching them new things not because the visitors believed these things were right and good, but because the visitors believed that these things were wrong and harmful but that generations afar off might—or might not—someday benefit somehow from having had their ancestors believe wrong things?

In today's USA, at least, we are reluctant to sacrifice the interests of living people for the possible interests of potential people not yet born. We would, for instance, respond with horror if someone said: “I have decided to systematically miseducate my children. I'm teaching them that pi equals three, the moonwalks never happened, whales are fish, and blue-eyed people are mentally inferior—none of which I believe myself—because I believe that someday my children may decide to have children or grandchildren of their own who may benefit from my action. If I teach my children today that pi equals three and blue-eyed people are inferior, their unborn descendants in 30 or 100 or 300 years may become better and greater people from learning to reject such notions, and I have no right to deprive them of that opportunity.” We would react with horror if someone proposed to do that to his or her own children, for the sake of unborn future generations—should we feel less horror if time travelers or space explorers introduced wrong ideas (no matter how culturally necessary these ideas appeared to the explorers) into some culture that had not yet made those particular mistakes, and that seemed unlikely to do so without external “help"?

Other comments on the May 2010 issue:

David Livingstone Clink's poem “Skippy the Robot” jarred me, and likely jarred others, because of its inexcusably sloppy scansion. Whether a subject is painful or merry, whether its treatment is grave or light-hearted, a reader of SF poetry (as of any other kind of poetry) should not have to dig through metrically inept verse to find out. Metrically (and otherwise) competent verse abounds today in the world of SF fandom; if this was the best SF verse that Analog could find to print, I can only hope that more of today's SF poets will submit their works in order to give Analog anything better.

Further sloppiness annoyed me where I had least expected to find it: in a story by H G. Stratmann. His “The Day the Music Died” made a small musical blunder, but one quite out of key (if you'll pardon the pun) with this generally proficient writer's usual high competence at checking facts in any subject he writes on. Specifically, Stratmann has his narrator, an aficionado of music, improbably referring to a well-known composition by Villa-Lobos as “Bachiana Brasileira No. 5” instead of the correct “Bahiana Brasileira No. 5": the bahiana is a Brazilian samba form that has little, if anything, to do with Bach. Please get that corrected before this otherwise excellent story enters some anthology—as I hope it will.

Kate Gladstone

Albany, NY

Your speculation is a good example of the kind from which stories grow, and if you decide to try that, I'd be interested in seeing the result. I must confess that I find it harder to imagine circumstances in which time travelers would want to introduce an idea like slavery, as distinct from deciding not to try to root it out, but I suppose it could happen. I did not mean to suggest that every culture needed particular bad ideas as indispensable steps toward a greater good, but only that they may well have played such a role in our particular history. There may be other, and perhaps better, ways.

I'm sorry you didn't like “Skippy,” but I don't agree that it's “inexcusably sloppy” or “metrically inept.” Yes, it has some playful deviations from the prevailing metrical pattern, but it's been a long time since most readers thought every poem had to follow a strictly regular metrical pattern throughout. Such a requirement is a little like saying music that is predominantly tonal should never use a chord more dissonant than a dominant seventh, or allow an occasional 5/4 measure in a tune that's mostly 4/4.

And speaking of music, I recommend extreme caution and carefully “checking facts” when tempted to accuse H. G. Stratmann of sloppiness in regard to it. In the case you cite, I regret to inform you that you're wrong. I don't doubt that there's a dance form called the bahiana, but that's not what Villa-Lobos wrote and Stratmann referred to. The Bachiana Brasileiras (and that is what they're called) is a group of pieces fusing Brazilian folk and popular music with a Bach-based contrapuntal style—hence the name. You can find a complete list of them in Wikipedia (and there's not a bahiana in the lot).

Stanley,

I appreciate your philosophical comments. What I find lacking is definition of some growing pains mistakes. And possible solutions. For instance I believe that one of our growing pains mistakes was allowing the automobile to out-compete mass transportation and ignoring alternate energies in favor of petrochemicals. Still we persist in not only allowing these entrenched vested-interest industries to continue defining our future, we subsidize them. Refusing to learn from our mistakes in favor of feeding our professional and intellectual communities.

Les Platt

Hi,

Just read this story ["Swords and Saddles,” May 2010] and it was excellent! The characters were realistic and the story entertaining. But it was not science fiction. A nearby lightning strike makes the group of men translate to another world/dimension, which happens to have a slightly different history—a classic fantasy premise, but definitely not science fiction.

Dan

Stanley Schmidt,

I have a comment about your generalization that astrology is “largely nonsense” in your May 2010 editorial. I have a scientific & engineering background and my wife does astrology readings. She uses the full birthday/birthplace for individuals and her results are (to me) surprisingly accurate. She does personalities, trends, and challenges/easy areas that individuals are or will have. The horoscopes in the paper are meant to cover such large variations in birthdates and locations that they are of not much use. A personalized chart using exact data is much more accurate. I have seen her predict problems with surgery, how a person's office is organized, challenges a person is facing now, challenges a person will face (and been right), and other things. With my background this all makes no sense, but it is not nonsense. Like anything else, some individuals will try to apply it in ways it is not accurate to apply it. This makes the whole discipline look bad—the subject of a number of your editorials.

Steven Hodder

Laramie, WY

I'm willing to be convinced by suitable data, but so far I haven't seen it.

24-26 September 2010

FOOLSCAP 12 (SF/Fantasy literature and art conference) at Redmond Marriott Town Center, Redmond, WA. Guests of Honor: Emma Bull & Will Shetterly, Cory & Catska Ench. Membership: $50 until 17 September 2010. Info: www.foolscapcon.org; P.O. Box 2461, Seattle, WA 98111-2461

1-3 October 2010

CONJECTURE (San Diego SF conference) at Town and Country Resort, San Diego, CA. Guest of Honor: Robert J. Sawyer. Membership: $35 until 30 April 2010, $40 until 31 July 2010, $45 until 30 September 2010, $50 at the door. Info: 2010.conjecture.org, P.O. Box 927388, San Diego, CA 92192-7388.

22-24 October 2010

CAPCLAVE (DC area SF conference) at Hilton Washington DC/Rockville, Executive Meeting Center, Rockville, MD. Guests of Honor: Connie Willis; Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. Membership: $55 until 30 September, $60 until 17 October. Info: www.capclave.org/ capclave/capclave10/; Blog: www. capclave.org/capclave/capclave10/

28-31 October 2010

WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION (Fantasy convention focused on the whimsical side of fantasy) at Hyatt Regency Hotel, Columbus, OH. Guests of Honor: Dennis McKiernan, Esther Friesner, David Hartwell, Darrell K. Sweet. Membership: until 15 June 2010 (see website for updated information) attending: $125; supporting $35. Info: www.contextsf.org/WFC/; WFC2010@contextsf.org; WFC 2010, 3824 Patricia Dr., Upper Arlington, OH 43220.

17-21 August 2011

RENOVATION (69th World Science Fiction Convention) at Reno-Sparks Convention Center, Reno, Nevada. Guests of Honor: Ellen Asher, Tim Powers, Boris Vallejo. Membership from 1 May 2010 until some later date (see website for latest details): Attending adult: $160; Attending 17 to 21: $100; Attending 0 to 16: $75; Supporting: $50. [Ages as of 17 August 2011.] 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.renovationsf.org/, info@renovationsf.org, PO Box 13278, Portland, OR 97213-0278. Facebook: www.facebook.com/ pages/Renovation-The-69th-World-Science-Fiction-Convention/112169025477179?ref=ts; LiveJournal: community.livejournal. com/renovationsf/

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