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Analog SFF, July-August 2011
by Dell Magazine Authors
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Science Fiction

Dell Magazines
www.analogsf.com

Copyright ©2011 by Dell Magazines

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Cover art by David A. Hardy

Cover design by Victoria Green

CONTENTS

Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: DIVISION OF LABOR by Stanley Schmidt

Reader's Department: THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY

Novella: COORDINATED ATTACKS by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

Science Fact: BEFORE YOU GET TO STRING THEORY by C. W. Johnson

Novelette: JAK AND THE BEANSTALK by Richard A. Lovett

Special Feature: MORE THAN PLOT AND CHARACTER: THE STORY-TELLING SECRETS OF NARRATIVE VOICE by Richard A. Lovett

Probability Zero: PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE by Arlan Andrews, Sr.

Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: THE DEFICIENCY OF BLACK HOLES AT THE LHC by John G. Cramer

Short Story: A WITNESS TO ALL THAT WAS by Scott William Carter

Special Feature: SCIENCE FICTION IMAGINES THE DIGITAL FUTURE by James Gunn

Short Story: DEATH AND DANCING IN NEW LAS VEGAS by Ernest Hogan

Science Fact: SO LONG, PROXIMA CENTAURI by Kevin Walsh

Novelette: ONE OUT OF MANY by Kyle Kirkland

Serial: ENERGIZED: PART II OF IV by Edward M. Lerner

Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Don Sakers

Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS

Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis

* * * *

Vol. CXXXI No. 7 & 8 July-August 2011

Stanley Schmidt, Editor

Trevor Quachri, Managing Editor

Peter Kanter: Publisher

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Stanley Schmidt: Editor

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Editorial Correspondence Only: analog@dellmagazines.com

Published since 1930

First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)

* * * *

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Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: DIVISION OF LABOR
by Stanley Schmidt

I'm not sure when or where the word “multitasking” first appeared, but it doesn't seem to be mentioned in my Webster's Third New International Dictionary, copyrighted in 1986. It first thrust itself upon me in the literature that came with the first computer I owned, a Mac Plus bought a year later than that. It referred to an application called MultiFinder that came bundled with the computer, which was said to enable “multitasking.” Initially I skipped over it, since I had only a vague idea what it was for and I wanted to get thoroughly familiar with the other bundled applications, many of them clearly intended for jobs I needed to do, before dabbling in unfamiliar items that I didn't know I wanted or needed. Besides, the computer only had one megabyte of RAM and an 800-KB floppy drive (which seemed a lot more adequate then than it does now), and the manual advised having at least a couple of megabytes and a hard drive.

Eventually, though, there came an evening when I had some rare free time and thought, “Let's take a look at MultiFinder and see what it can do and why I should care.”

An hour later I was hooked, with an intense craving for a hard drive and as much additional memory as the computer could accommodate (four megabytes total).

What made MultiFinder innovative (for its time) and liberating was not that it actually let me do two or more things at once (with a few exceptions such as background printing), but that it allowed more than one application to be open and ready for use at the same. Before MultiFinder, if I was writing with a word processor and wanted to do a graphic, I had to close the word processor, open a graphics program (which in those days typically also required ejecting one floppy disk and inserting another), and then reverse the process if I wanted to go back to word processing. With MultiFinder, and a hard drive that could hold multiple applications and documents, I could have both programs and documents open at once and flit back and forth among them with the click of a mouse, which greatly increased speed and flexibility.

Now, of course, we take that capability for granted. It has become so easy that computer users often have many applications and documents open at once, and think nothing of working on this one for a couple of minutes, jumping effortlessly into another, and so on—thereby, in effect, working on several tasks at once, or at least concurrently. That may well be how “multitask” came into the language as a verb referring to a human being rather than a machine. In the 1990s and the beginning of this century, it became a popular and overused buzzword, with people variously griping about how the excess demands on their time forced them to multitask, or bragging about how much they could accomplish by multitasking.

Now, inevitably, comes the backlash. In the last couple of years it has become fashionable to disparage multitasking as counterproductive, and a seductive practice best avoided. Part of this, I think, is because so many teenagers are doing it—e.g., carrying on multiple concurrent conversations via electronic media while doing homework—and adults have a long history of regarding anything new that teenagers do as the Death of Civilization. (If we've really been going to the dogs for as long as geezers have been saying we were, our ancestors must have really been something three or four thousand years ago!) But another reason for the current wave of hostility toward human multitasking is that some psychologists have done studies which they claim demonstrate that multitasking reduces efficiency—that, while people may think they're doing as good a job of two or three things at once as if they were concentrating on just one of them, they're not really doing any of them as well.

No doubt there is some truth in that. If jobs A, B, and C would each take an hour to do with my undivided attention, I can hardly expect to do all three of them to the same standards in one hour. But might there be circumstances in which, by doing them concurrently, I'm able to do all of them as well as they need to be done in three hours, or maybe even less? Or circumstances in which juggling the three is necessary to do all three at all, because of the specific nature of their time requirements?

In other words, if we heed unquestioningly the growing clamor to avoid multitasking whenever possible, might we be throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater?

My own experience says a resounding and unequivocal “Yes!” to all three of those questions. Consider an example from my university days: As a physics major, I often found myself taking heavy course loads with lots of assigned homework in such subjects as physics, math, and languages. As a person with a considerable range of other interests, I also had three evening rehearsals a week with two musical groups of significantly different character: a concert band and a symphony orchestra. And I insisted on getting a decent amount of sleep, and occasionally doing something “unproductive” just for fun.

Most of those things (not all; I won't pretend I valued all courses equally or found all assignments worthwhile) were things I wanted to do. I would have regretted having to forgo any of them. And if you have any idea of the amount of work involved in an advanced math, physics, or language course, perhaps you'll see that the only way I could get them all in was through extensive use of multitasking. I'm a brass player, so I had lots of long rests during rehearsals, especially in the orchestra. All I had to do during those was count, and it took little brainpower to do that. So I frequently found myself doing calculus problems or Russian exercises while simultaneously counting long rests. (Or maybe “concurrently” is more accurate than “simultaneously.” I've never been sure whether, when doing something like that, I had two parts of my brain doing different things in parallel, or was just alternating between them.) And, contrary to the advice usually presented as gospel, I almost always had music (of my own choice) playing while doing homework in any subject.

On the other hand, some of the other people I know best and respect most highly have found that the standard advice is what works best for them. They strongly prefer to work in a dedicated workplace, free of distractions, so they can concentrate exclusively and intensively on one job until it's done to the best of their ability—and sometimes that's very good indeed.

Sometimes I need that, too. Which approach works depends very much, I think, both on how a particular individual is wired, and on the nature of the task. I found it possible to do calculus problems or Russian exercises while counting rests because they were intrinsically predivided into small units (e.g., Russian sentences) or could be so divided after an initial consideration of the overall problem (e.g., carrying out the steps of a calculation once I had figured out what steps would be necessary). I could do one of those little chunks during one rest, and come back and do the next one during another. On the other hand, one of the most important lessons I learned early about music is that while counting rests is so simple and routine it can be done on “autopilot,” actually playing is a whole different animal, which does require complete concentration. Once I come to the end of a rest and pick up my instrument, I don't let myself think about anything except the next few notes—and I am intently focused on every detail of those.

Similarly, once I know where I'm going with a piece of writing, I can sometimes make decent headway on it by working in small spurts, if that's all I can find or make time for. It's even easier if I'm proofreading, which is almost purely mechanical detail work. But the hard, early, creative phase of writing a story—the part where a non-writing spectator might wrongly think I'm not working at all—requires prolonged periods of intense concentration, and it's difficult to build up any momentum without those.

Some of us prefer—or need—to do everything that way: concentrating wholeheartedly on one thing at a time. Others are comfortable enough with some kinds of multitasking to do it if there's an advantage, such as enabling them to do things that they want to do and couldn't do at all otherwise. In my college example, if I had always adhered to the principle of “one job at a time,” I would, unquestionably, have had to sacrifice some of my courses, music, or sleep—which I wasn't willing to do. And I would have spent all those long rests, which amounted to a good many hours over the years, doing essentially nothing, when I could have been doing quite a bit.

I would never try to force such a method on somebody who finds distractions distracting—but neither would I try to force one-at-a-time concentration on somebody who can multitask and likes to. In teaching hundreds of students—in classes small enough that I got to know them all as individuals—I never met two whose minds worked the same way. I quickly decided that I needed to learn as much as I could about each student, and help him or her learn to use his strengths and work around his weaknesses. Instead of trying to find a one-size-fits-all prescription for What Everybody Should Do, I think it's more important to learn how to determine what works best for each individual and then help them figure out to optimize that to their needs.

In the particular case of multitasking, some find it congenial, others extremely uncomfortable. Some jobs have particularly daunting forms of multitasking built right into them. The real-time interpreters at the UN have to learn to ignore the sound of their own voices and listen to what a speaker is saying now while simultaneously saying (publicly, on record, in a different language) what was said several seconds ago. It's a good bet that most of us could never learn to do that, and it would be cruel to expect it of someone without the special knack it requires. But it would be ridiculous—and cripple the UN—to tell those who do have the knack that they mustn't try it because Multitasking Is Bad.

Instead of trying to find a one-size-fits-all prescription for What Everybody Should Do, it would be more useful to learn how to determine what works best for each individual and then help them figure out to optimize that to their needs. That process might well include research aimed not at answering “Does multitasking work?” but rather, “When, how, and for whom does it work, and can we learn how to teach it as a technique?”

But if we can learn that, we must also make the important distinction between multitasking to do things you want to do and things you have to do. A person who is comfortable with fitting pieces of one task into lulls in another can maximize personal satisfaction by doing more things that he likes. But we're already living in a culture in which employers increasingly try to squeeze every possible erg of work out of their employees and parents schedule every second of their children's’ time to make them Achievers. That tendency is already driving too many individuals—and arguably, the society as a whole—to what Michael Flanders and Donald Swann called “the brink of neurosis.” If multitasking becomes a teachable skill, I can easily imagine the same kinds of employers and parents demanding it even of people who aren't comfortable with it, driving them to do ever more for somebody else, not themselves. That might enhance the sacred “Productivity,” but at the cost of exacerbating the cultural sickness we already have and treating human beings like the machines for which the word “multitasking” was originally invented.

Copyright © 2011 Stanley Schmidt

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY

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It's time once more to thank everyone who voted in our annual poll on the previous year's issues. Your votes help your favorite writers and artists by rewarding them directly and concretely for outstanding work. They help you by giving us a better feel for what you like and don't like—which helps us know what to give you in the future.

We have five categories: novellas, novelettes, short stories, fact articles, and covers. In each category, we asked you to list your three favorite items, in descending order of preference. Each first place vote counts as three points, second place two, and third place one. The total number of points for each item is divided by the maximum it could have received (if everyone had ranked it 1) and multiplied by 10. The result is the score listed below, on a scale of 0 (nobody voted for it) to 10 (everybody ranked it first). In practice, scores run lower in categories with many entries than in those with only a few. For comparison, the number in parentheses at the head of each category is the score every item would have received had all been equally popular.

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NOVELLAS (2.00)

1. “Phantom Sense,” Richard A. Lovett and Mark Niemann-Ross (3.23)

2. “Doctor Alien's Five Empty Boxes,” Rajnar Vajra (2.84)

3. “The Rift,” John G. Hemry (2.44)

4. “The Possession of Paavo Deshin,” Kristine Kathryn Rusch (2.29)

5. “Swords and Saddles,” John G. Hemry (1.89)

NOVELETTES (0.80)

1. “Outbound,” Brad R. Torgersen (2.51)

2. “Pupa,” David D. Levine (1.98)

3. “Fly Me to the Moon,” Marianne J. Dyson (1.93)

4. “The Robots’ Girl,” Brenda Cooper (1.88)

5. “The Man From Downstream,” Shane Tourtellotte (1.74)

SHORT STORIES (0.56)

1. “Red Letter Day,” Kristine Kathryn Rusch (2.50)

2. “Happy Are the Bunyips,” Carl Frederick (1.25)

3. (tie) “Rejiggering the Thingamajig,” Eric James Stone (1.11)

“Shame,” Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn (1.11)

4. “Cargo,” Michael F. Flynn (1.06)

FACT ARTICLES (1.67)

1. “Tips for the Budget Time-Traveler,” Shane Tourtellotte (5.27)

2. “Visit to the Forgotten Planet: What Scientists Are Learning As MESSENGER Prepares to Orbit Mercury,” Richard A. Lovett (2.30)

3. “Phantom Science: The Facts Behind ‘Phantom Sense, Richard A. Lovett and Mark Niemann-Ross (1.88)

4. “What's In a Kiss: The Wild, Wonderful World of Philematology,” Richard A. Lovett (1.45)

5. “Take Off Your Hat: You're In the Presence of Culture,” Stephen R. Balzac (1.33)

COVER (2.00)

1. December, by Bob Eggleton (3.51)

2. June (for “The Anunnaki Legacy"), by Vincent Di Fate (2.91)

3. November, by Dominic Harman (2.69)

4. April, by Jean-Pierre Normand (2.57)

5. May, by Jean-Pierre Normand (2.16)

* * * *

This year all fiction categories had clear winners, one of them by a talented newcomer from whom we hope to see much more. The score most outstanding in its field went to an unusual science fact article that appeared in the same issue as a related (and also popular) story). Interestingly, the winning novella also appeared with a related (and also popular) fact article.

Since AnLab votes are so important to encouraging authors and artists to do their best work, and to giving you the kind of magazine you most like to read, we hope to get even more next time. Use our online ballot, e-mail, or “snail mail,” whichever you prefer, but please vote! (Please be careful to vote in the right category, as listed in the annual Index. Sometimes a few votes are wasted by being cast in the wrong category, and those simply can't be counted. Using our online ballot makes this much less likely.)

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novella: COORDINATED ATTACKS
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Art By John Allemand

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People have to consider the consequences of their actions—but it's impossible to consider all of the consequences.

Four Years Ago

Bartholomew Nyquist parked his aircar in one of the hoverlots at the end of the neighborhood. The Dome was dark this morning, even though someone should have started the Dome Daylight program. Maybe they had, deciding that Armstrong was in for a “cloudy” day—terminology he never entirely understood, given that the Moon had no clouds and most people who lived here had been born on the Moon and had never seen a cloud in their entire lives.

He grabbed his laser pistol from the passenger seat, where he always kept it when he was traveling. He tucked the gun into his shoulder holster, hidden under his already rumpled suit coat, and got out of the car.

The neighborhood looked even darker than it should have, sprawled below him like something out of those Christmas Dickens plays his ex-wife loved so much. All it needed was some sooty smoke coming out of chimneys above each house to be authentically dreary.

Oh, his mood was bad. And for that, he could probably only blame himself. He should “buck up"—wasn't that what Chief of the First Detective Unit, Andrea Gumiela, had told him yesterday? Buck up, Bartholomew. Everyone gets divorced. And yours was two years ago. The attitude was understandable last year. This year, it's becoming a problem.

That, after she made him watch the entire complaint vid that his now-former partner had filed. He knew the complaints already, having heard them from previous partners and in his divorce proceeding: surly, impossible to work with, superior. Conversations filled with biting sarcasm—and that was on a good day. On a bad day, he didn't communicate at all.

And on this day, he didn't have to. Still on the force, still a homicide detective, and newly without a partner. The brass would conduct partner try-outs for him all week. The brass wanted to keep Nyquist. He had the best closing rate on the force. The problem was that regulations stated he needed a partner. He stated that he didn't. He worked better alone.

Gumiela knew that, but she followed the rules. Which was why she was his boss instead of the other way around.

Nyquist took the stairs to the sidewalk. He hated these cases in the outer districts of Armstrong. The row houses here rented for less than apartments downtown, but apartments were nicer. A lot of these houses had landlords who only owned one or two properties and couldn't afford the upkeep. It showed in dingy walls that hadn't been upgraded in decades. Moon dust stains still clung to some of the siding, even though Moon dust had been cleared out of this area since the Dome improvements two decades ago.

Not every part of the city was Moon dust free, particularly Old Armstrong, which had stupid historic regulations that prevented certain kinds of upkeep. But Nyquist knew this neighborhood didn't have that kind of regulation, and so the lack of upkeep was either a financial or a business decision.

Not that he cared about the upkeep of houses as it pertained to regulations. He cared about it as it pertained to the kind of people living inside—people on the edge of hopelessness, people whose economic future wasn't quite bleak but could be with just one disaster, one horrible thing gone wrong.

When he reached the street, he peered around the corner, saw two squads, white-and-blue lights turning, crime scene lasers already up. He should've parked down here, but he needed the walk. Besides, on days like this, he didn't want to be part of the squad. He liked being on his own, and parking his car away from the scene let him keep his autonomy.

He knew he would need it.

He sighed. He was supposed to contact Dispatch the moment he arrived in the neighborhood, and he'd been putting it off. He knew what they would say. A try-out partner would be waiting for him at the scene. Gumiela had already done this to him once. A try-out partner on scene showed the brass whether Nyquist and the newbie worked well together.

It also prevented Nyquist from rejecting the new partner outright, based on clothes, appearance, or general lack of verbal defensive ability.

The question was which of those people loitering outside the crime scene was the one he'd be stuck with all day long.

Couldn't put it off any longer. He sent a ping to Dispatch through his links, hoping they'd only look at his location and not try to contact him.

Instead, a tiny image of this morning's dispatch—a woman with dark hair and matching dark circles under her eyes—appeared in the lower left corner of his vision. God, he hated that most of all. Couldn't they just use audio like everyone else on the Force?

“Detective Nyquist,” she said, and it looked like she was speaking aloud as well as sending through the links. For the record? Probably. No one wanted to get in trouble when he got in trouble. “You'll be meeting your new partner at the scene. Her name is Ursula Palmette—”

Newly minted detective. I got it, he sent, deliberately not speaking out loud for any record.

“No, detective, not that newly minted at all. She has worked as a detective for five months.”

What happened to her training partner? he sent. He stopped only a few meters from the house that seemed to be the center of attention. He didn't want to go any further while having this conversation.

“Early retirement,” the dispatch said.

For some bad conduct? Nyquist sent.

“No, sir. Family troubles. His wife is dying and he didn't want to spend the year of her life working.”

That surprised him. He felt color touch his cheeks, something that didn't happen to him often. He was glad it happened before he met Palmette. He didn't want to step in it at the very beginning of their relationship.

All right, he sent, not acknowledging his discomfort or the slight reprimand the dispatch had given him. Anything else I need to know?

“Just that the officers on site say that they're ready for you, sir.”

He was beginning to seriously dislike this dispatch. Who was she to subtly reprimand him like that?

Instead of challenging her, he just severed the link and walked the remaining few meters to the crime scene. Police-line lasers gave the fake grass a reddish tint. An ambulance was parked sideways behind one of the squad cars, lights off.

He found that a curious detail. Either the ambulance wasn't needed and it could go off elsewhere, or it was needed and it had to stay, in which case its warning lights would be on low.

Two officers stood in front of the crime- scene lasers. A tiny woman with a cap of brown hair leaned against one of the squads, holding a steaming cup of something—probably coffee—in her right hand.

As Nyquist approached, she stood.

“Detective Nyquist,” she said. “I'm—”

“Ursula Palmette,” he said, resisting the urge to add “newly minted detective.” “I suppose you have documentation for me?”

She extended her hand. He hated chip-to-chip information transfer, but it was department policy these days. He grabbed her hand in a relatively loose grip and felt the chip in the center of his palm warm, which was a signal that the information exchange was not only complete but accepted.

In the past, he'd go through a speech—I'm the lead on this case. You shouldn't question my authority. I'll do all the talking—but she already had had a training officer and she should know this crap. Besides, he'd been told by his previous two partners that his little opening speech was off-putting. He decided not to put Detective Ursula Palmette off. He simply did not have the energy for it.

“What do we know?” he asked.

“Well, sir,” she said, then paused. “It is sir, right? Or do you prefer Detective? Or Bartholomew?”

“I prefer to know why the hell I'm here.” He hated all the protocol with names. He certainly wasn't going to let her call him Bartholomew, which seemed to be what she was angling for. He didn't like casual relationships between partners. He preferred formality. She'd figure it out.

She nodded. She couldn't have been more than thirty, with that fresh-faced, straight-out-of-the-academy look. He preferred his partners to have worked their way to the detective squad, not get fast-tracked through so-called police education.

He didn't say that, which he would have had he met her in the precinct. Instead, he watched her peel the lid off her drink, which made it steam all the more, sending a smell of cinnamon and milk into the air, turning his stomach. She took a sip before saying anything else, as if the drink fortified her somehow.

“Um,” she said, pressing the lid back on the cup. “We have a body—”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course they had a body. They were homicide detectives. Someone had to die for the street cops to call him in.

“—in the front room of the house. The woman inside called it in. The responding officers say something is a little off in the entire thing.”

“A little off?” Nyquist said.

Palmette shrugged. “Their words. You can talk to them. I was instructed not to do any investigating until you arrived.”

Because he had the high closure rate, and one of his complaints about partners was that they made his job harder, not easier. They asked the wrong questions, contaminated crime scenes all by their little lonesome, and compromised witnesses.

“And yet you know about the body, and the scene being a little off,” he said.

“Because Officer Saxe"—and she nodded at a young cop with curly red hair and copper skin standing near one of the squads—"told me the minute I arrived. I told him we had to wait for you, and so he stopped. You want to talk to him now, sir?”

So she was going to stick with “sir.” Fine.

“No,” Nyquist said. “I want to see the interior. Got a suit?”

By that, he meant protective covering for her skin and clothes. Most rookie detectives had to make do with the full-body suits that the cops gave to civilians at crime scenes, but she tapped her arm.

“Already on, sir,” she said.

That was when he noticed that her clothes were just a bit shiny. He took one of his protective suits out of the pocket of his coat. The suit was the size of his thumbnail, until he attached it to the button on his sleeve and tapped it.

Then the damn thing enveloped him. He hated that moment—it felt like walking into a gigantic spider web, which he had done once as a kid on vacation with his parents on Earth—and then the feeling went away.

“Okay,” he said as he blocked the crime- scene laser with his palm. Another chip on his palm made sure that none of the warning sirens went off. He stepped onto the fake grass and waited for Palmette to join him. “Let's see what we've got.”

* * * *

Now

Fifth political fundraiser of the week and it was only Wednesday. Armstrong Mayor Arek Soseki was beginning to hate election season, something he never thought he'd admit to anyone, particularly himself. He used to love running for office, the glad-handing, talking to the voters. Hell, he even liked manipulating the media while they manipulated him right back.

But he'd been mayor for six years now, and it looked like the job was his for life if he wanted it, thanks to the political machine he'd installed throughout Armstrong. That meant elections weren't that much of a challenge anymore. Even the fundraisers had become pro forma—the mayor shows up, the mayor asks for money, people donate money, the mayor passes the money to the proper candidate, and the proper candidate wins. End of story.

He used to love the challenge of politics, but politics would not be a challenge again unless he ran for Governor-General of the Moon—and that particular title held less actual power than his position did. He could have more of an impact as Mayor of Armstrong, on everything from Moon politics to Earth Alliance regulations, because he controlled the largest port on the Moon, not to mention the largest city here, the most cosmopolitan city outside of Earth.

Eventually, everyone came through Armstrong—usually on their way somewhere else, but they came through. And stopped. And spent money. And got a little taste of the city.

His city.

And the first thing they saw when they left the arrival terminal in the port? A floating sign with his image, saying that Mayor Arek Soseki welcomed them.

People remembered that.

They remembered him.

He stood in front of the podium in the backroom of O'Malley's Diner. O'Malley's wasn't a diner, and its owner was not named O'Malley. O'Malley's Diner was one of the more upscale restaurants near the port, and its location, rather than its food, had made it a place for politicians to hold quick and dirty fundraisers. Easy access, not to mention some rather hidden back routes from the port itself, kept some of the fundraisers secret—or at least, some of the attendees.

Soseki had lost count of how many times he'd given a speech here. He almost felt like he should carve his initials into the real wood podium. The entire backroom was paneled in real wood—of a type he wasn't familiar with. Not that the Mayor of Armstrong needed to be familiar with wood. Wood was one of those things the rich indulged in that Soseki didn't understand.

He scanned the crowd. Two hundred super donors. Of the two hundred men and women in front of him, only about twenty represented their own interests. The rest belonged to some corporation or another, here for the express purpose of dumping funds into Armstrong's city council elections through legal means.

He was helping corporations buy his councilors, and he didn't care so long as those same corporations dumped money into the city. Not as much money as some of the cities on the moons of Jupiter—cities owned outright by Aleyd or Fortion or other corporations—but enough to keep Armstrong in the black for a decade or two.

As long as he was mayor, he wanted Armstrong to remain one of the greatest cities in the solar system. Hell, if he had his way, it would become the greatest city. Maybe it didn't have the history of Paris, Dubai, or New York, but history wasn't everything.

Commerce was.

And that was the theme of this speech.

The theme of every speech this week, really. Every speech this year. He was getting so damn tired of these speeches he had to play mind games just to keep the smile on his face and the enthusiasm in his voice.

He really didn't remember half the things he said here, but the crowd was clapping, people were buttonholing him, and he was posing for vids and pictures, glad-handing, like he had done since he ran for head of his neighborhood association at the ripe old age of sixteen.

And finally, it was done. His invaluable assistant, the dapper Hans Londran, put his small frame between Soseki and the last of his admirers, saying some nonsense about the mayor being tired.

Soseki wasn't tired, at least not physically. He was just tired of the constant talk about nothing.

He let Londran and the security guards flank him as they headed out of the back room into the restaurant proper. This was on Soseki's orders. Most politicians snuck in and out of venues like common criminals. Soseki went through, grinned at the patrons, shook a hand or two, and then waved as he headed out the front to the limo, paid for by the city and always at his disposal.

He ran a finger over his palms, making sure his chips were protected and the SkinSoft covering he wore wasn't bunched up. People wanted to think they were shaking his actual hand, not touching some kind of pseudoskin covering that protected him from everything from germs to rapid-acting, touch-sensitive poison.

The door opened, he smiled, and patrons at white-cloth-covered tables started shouting his name.

This part of his job never got old. He shook hands, grinned, greeted a handful of people he knew, and bustled out the door in a blaze of lights. The limo had touched down on the sidewalk—the only non-emergency vehicle in Armstrong that could—and one of his guards opened the door for him.

He was almost there when a hand brushed his sleeve.

“Mr. Mayor?”

He turned but didn't see anyone except Londran and the guards, all frowning at him.

“Mr. Mayor?”

That wasn't a stranger's voice. That was Londran's, and he looked concerned. Why would anyone look concerned, especially after the meeting had gone well, the money donated was within expectations?

“Mr. Mayor?”

Then he realized what was going on. He hadn't moved from the entrance to the restaurant even though he thought he was walking across the sidewalk. He should have been to the limo by now. He should have slid inside. He should be careening through Armstrong's streets, heading to the next meeting, working on the next crisis.

But he wasn't.

And he wasn't even sure if Londran was repeating himself or if the phrase had been caught in a loop in his own mind. He should have answered by now. He should have asked, “What?”

He usually asked “What?” when Londran used that tone. But he couldn't move his mouth or his legs. And his arm ached.

No. It didn't ache. It was cold. He was cold. Chilled like he hadn't been since that conference of Earth Alliance mayors held in, of all places, Alaska in the winter.

The chill was moving from his arm, down his chest, reaching for his heart. And, for the first time that day, for the first time in weeks—no, years—he actually felt afraid.

That chill didn't dare reach his heart.

Because when it did, his heart would shatter. He would shatter.

And everything would stop.

* * * *

Four Years Ago

The front door was open, just like it was supposed to be, with one more officer stationed outside. He nodded at Nyquist as Nyquist went inside.

The interior was very dark, even though the lights were on. They didn't seem to have enough power to penetrate the house's gloom. The place smelled funky too—not just the smell of death, which while Nyquist wasn't used to it, was at least something he expected at a crime scene.

No, this place smelled of greasy cooked food, coffee, and garbage. The front room was square and somewhat useless, standard in a row house like this one, where it seemed like the architect couldn't decide whether this room was an entry or a living area, so he decided to turn it into both.

Usually tenants turned the front room into one or the other. As Nyquist's eyes adjusted, he realized that the people who lived here had gone with the original architect's vision and kept it as both. Two faux leather chairs leaned against the wall separating this room from the next (probably a kitchen). A table covered with dirty dishes, clothes, and some decorative rocks squeezed between the two chairs.

On the left side of the door was a mat for shoes, which were scattered haphazardly. Some kind of plastic runner made a trail between the door and the kitchen, leading him to a supposition.

Whoever lived here had lived on Earth. Or somewhere Earthlike, somewhere with weather that changed daily, got on the shoes, and had to be accommodated when a person came inside.

Soft voices murmured farther into the house. Palmette brushed up against him. He could feel her impatience. She wanted to get inside and look at the body.

She didn't realize that the body was the king of the chessboard—the reason for the investigation, but not the center of the investigation. Everything else was much more important, and if Nyquist didn't look at the details now, he would run the risk of missing even more in the future.

The walls were unadorned except for a series of coat hooks above the shoes, and a public access terminal on the wall beside the chairs. The terminal's screen was dark and covered with some kind of slime—probably that grease he was smelling—indicating that it hadn't been used in years.

Which meant that the people who lived in this house had their own way of connecting to the nets. They were probably linked, and unless there was a public viewing screen in another room, they seemed to prefer to entertain themselves rather than share entertainment.

Palmette stepped beside him, apparently trying to go in, but he blocked her with his arm.

“What are we doing?” she asked.

“Working,” he said. If she couldn't figure it out, that was her problem. Hopefully, it wouldn't become his.

The body lay in a little nook beside the door, on the opposite side of the room from the shoes, and just in front of the chairs. That small section of wall had a window, which Nyquist knew from being outside, but the window wasn't just blocked off. It was covered with some kind of blackout material, so that no one could see in or out. So that it seemed like a part of the wall, instead of something that looked out upon the street.

Strange. He wondered if the other windows were blocked off. It would explain the smell. The house had its own air circulation system—all houses in Armstrong did—but they were enhanced by the circulation system in the Dome. Open windows allowed an air exchange that kept everything fresher. Besides, the Dome had stronger filters, so the air coming in was cleaner than the air going out.

He went a little farther in, staying on the runner. “Stand beside me,” he said to Palmette. “Don't get on the carpet yet.”

“Did we put this mat down?” she asked, revealing just how new she was.

“No,” he said and crouched.

The body belonged to a man, folded in a near-fetal position. Blood pooled beneath the torso, and the face—aside from spatter—was undamaged. Hands and arms cradled around the abdomen. Impossible to tell how tall he was, but Nyquist got a sense of athletic solidity. The muscles in the legs, visible through the tailored pants, seemed pronounced. The hands had a muscularity to them as well, one that extended up the wrist. That, combined with broad shoulders, made Nyquist think that this man was probably tall as well.

Nyquist couldn't tell if the athletic ability was real or enhanced, and it probably didn't matter. What mattered was that this man appeared strong and somehow someone had brought him down.

The man's hair was short with tight black curls against his well-shaped skull. His eyes were open, his mouth as well. He looked to be mid-thirties.

The corpse had a smell all its own. Loosened muscles usually meant loose bowels, but this stench was greater than that. Nyquist extended a hand, silently warning Palmette to stay back, then he stood and took two steps forward.

The carpet squished beneath his feet. More blood lost than what was obvious. Nyquist nodded to himself.

He went a little farther and crouched again. Hands clasped around the belly, not to cover a single laser wound, but to keep the insides from escaping. Something had gutted him—some kind of blade, probably—and had pierced his intestines in more than one place.

That explained the smell.

The man's hands were covered in black fluids. If this was his only wound, it had taken him some time to die. And he had been in agony.

Nyquist stood.

“Can I see now?” Palmette asked.

“If you want,” he said, and squelched across the carpet to the front door. He scraped the lower part of his protective gear off, handed it to the officer to bag for a crime scene tech, and got out another suit for a second lower layer of protective gear.

Then he went back inside, ignoring Palmette, who crouched near the body, her feet exactly where his had been. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. At least she followed some rules. If she followed most, she might actually be possible for a long-term partner.

He forgot all about her, though, as he stepped into the next room. It was a kitchen. The walls were legitimately grease stained, like he expected from the smell. He had no idea how much work—or grease—it took to cover walls like that. Someone had to shut off the walls’ self-cleaning feature or completely overwhelm it.

At the moment, he voted for overwhelm. Dishes stacked everywhere and all of them filthy. He had no idea how anyone could even live here, let alone cook here.

No one stood in the kitchen, not that there was a lot of room. It was more of a galley kitchen than a full kitchen. Someone—long ago—had changed this row house's standard design and cut the kitchen in half, an odd choice, he thought.

He stepped through the next door and found out why. A full formal dining room stood there and surprisingly, this room was clean. Stairs curved up the side of the room and disappeared into bedrooms above.

A woman sat at the head of the table, her eyes wide as she looked at him. He got a sense of nervous containment, as if she would jump toward him at any moment. Another woman—this one an officer—sat in a close chair, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug that was still full.

Smart woman. She hadn't had anything to drink from the mug, even though it had clearly been offered to her.

“I'm Bartholomew Nyquist,” he said softly. “I'm the detective they sent over to talk to you.”

Normally, he would have introduced himself as the detective in charge of the scene or the crime or the death, but he had a sense that would be the wrong thing to say here.

The woman, whose skin had an odd blotchiness, bit her lower lip.

“This is Alvina Ingelow,” the officer said. “She lives here.”

“Thank you, Officer,” he said in his most gentle tone, not for her sake, but for the woman's. “Give us a few minutes alone, if you don't mind.”

She nodded and stood. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn't.

Instead, he added, “If you don't mind waiting outside. I'll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

Meaning he would talk to her, not Palmette. He hoped the officer understood that. He didn't want her to talk to anyone other than him. She probably had some early arrival information that he couldn't get any other way, and he wanted to be the first to hear it.

He touched a chip on each hand, recording the conversation. But he didn't tell Alvina Ingelow he was doing that. He didn't want to scare her. He'd let her know in a while. He'd used this technique before, and while it was dicey legally, the information he got from these interviews usually remained part of the court case.

“I know you told the officer what happened,” he said, and the woman nodded—a bit too eagerly, he thought. “But I want you to tell me. Take your time. I know this is hard.”

She shot him a grateful look. The sympathy was calming her. Good, because he thought she was wrapped just a bit too tightly, even for someone who had just discovered a body in her home.

“I was coming home,” she said. “I opened the door, and there he was.”

Nyquist nodded but didn't say anything. He had promised her time, so he wasn't going to derail her with questions. Not yet.

“I sent for help through the links, and then your people came. And the ambulance. They sent an ambulance.” As if she were surprised by that. He would have to listen to the link contact. He wondered if she had said the man was injured.

Nyquist waited for a good minute, his gaze steady on hers. Her eyes were as odd as she was. The pupils seemed to vibrate ever so slightly. He wondered if that was a trick of the light, an enhancement of some kind that he wasn't familiar with, an effect of a link, or some kind of drug interaction.

But he didn't ask that either. He'd learned long ago to take investigations slowly, to absorb the information as it came to him, to study the people surrounding the deceased and to make suppositions, but not to assume they were facts.

When she didn't say anything more, he realized that was her story. Remarkable in its brevity and lack of emotion.

So he would have to ask questions after all. The trick now was to ask the right questions to draw out her story, not to direct it.

“You said you were coming home.” He was careful to repeat her language. “From where?”

“Work,” she said, folding her hands in front of him. The movement caught his eye. “I got the night shift.”

Her hands were remarkably clean. They were probably the cleanest thing in this entire house, except for her dress, which was also clean, if a bit rumpled.

“Where do you work, exactly?” he asked.

She waved one of those very clean hands. “Near the port. I'm a cocktail waitress.”

No business near the port employed actual cocktail waitresses. All of the bars there used robotic servers, especially late at night. Some places did employ women under the job description cocktail waitress, but they didn't wait on anyone and they certainly didn't serve cocktails.

She was either a stripper or a sex worker. Neither profession was illegal, but neither was that socially acceptable either. He wanted to lean back and look at her body, but he didn't. He hadn't gotten the sense that she was enhanced the way strippers usually were. If she was a professional sex worker, her enhancements might not be visible.

He tried not to shudder in distaste.

“When does your shift end?” He didn't ask where she was employed. He would circle back to that in a moment. He wanted her to focus on what happened here, not on her discomfort at her own job.

“Six,” she whispered.

The whisper caught him by surprise. She said it almost as if it were forbidden information.

“And you came right home?”

She bit her lower lip again.

“Did you walk?” That was the only way to explain the time discrepancy. He had been told that uniforms arrived at eight. If she'd found the body and called, it couldn't have been any longer than six-thirty if she had come directly home.

She shook her head once. “Car,” she said, almost as softly as that whisper.

He nodded. Something else to circle back to. “And when you came in, he was here.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And who is he?”

“He thinks he's my boyfriend,” she said with so much venom that Nyquist resisted the urge to lean back. “But he's not.”

Nyquist let out a small breath. So many directions to take here, and given her emotion, only one was a good direction.

He tried not to look at those really clean hands. He wanted her to stand, so that he could see the rest of her, but this wasn't the moment to ask.

Or was it?

“Did you make some fresh coffee for the officer?” he asked. “Because I would love a cup.”

She smiled at him. The smile warmed her face, made her seem young—almost childlike—as if his request pleased her somehow.

“Sure,” she said, and stood up.

She was taller than he expected. She smoothed her dress—which was more of a long shirt—over her legs. They were covered in black tights. She wore heels so high that she tottered as she went into that galley kitchen.

He didn't stand, but he did turn slightly in his chair so that his back wasn't to her. He slid the chair silently sideways so that he could see her move in the kitchen.

Her figure wasn't spectacular, the way a stripper's would be. So she was most likely a sex worker. He would have to ask, or have Palmette do it, very delicately. This woman was on an edge, one he didn't like.

I opened the door and there he was.

He thinks he's my boyfriend. But he's not.

Dishes rattled in the kitchen. Nyquist could see her moving plates around to find a mug. He allowed himself a shudder this time and hoped she wouldn't take it as an insult when he didn't actually drink the coffee he had asked for.

As he waited, he sent a silent message through his links to Dispatch: Need to hear the emergency call for this residence ASAP. Through private links only, please. And need a timestamp.

He got an automated acknowledgement. This kind of request was routine, although something that usually happened while on the scene. Usually the detective got the auxiliary information back at the precinct.

“Here you go.” She came back, carrying two mugs by the handle. They steamed. She set his mug down in front of him, then put one in front of her place. She smiled at him again, which struck him as really strange, considering that there was still a dead man in her front room, a dead man she claimed she knew.

“Thank you,” Nyquist said, and smiled back.

As she sat down, he looked at her shoes. Clean. He hadn't expected that. He had expected some dried blood on the bottom. Anyone who had gone near that corpse would have blood on their shoes.

“What's the name of the gentleman in the front room?” Nyquist asked.

“He's not a gentleman,” she snapped.

Again the mood shift was sudden, the vehemence almost tangible.

“My mistake,” Nyquist said calmly. “What's the name of the man you called us about?”

“Callum,” she said as if she didn't want the word to pass through her lips.

“Callum what?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Why? He'd never been asked that before at this stage of an investigation. “Just so that we can put the right name on the files.”

“Sheel,” she said as if it were top secret.

“And he's been bothering you,” Nyquist said.

“You have no idea,” she said.

“You want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“Boy, do I ever,” she said, and began to talk.

* * * *

Now

“He's what?” Noelle DeRicci, Chief of Security for the United Domes of the Moon, sank into the chair behind her desk. The chair, designed to accommodate her form no matter how she was sitting, shifted slightly and she wanted to growl at it.

She wanted to growl at everything.

Even her beautifully designed office, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, its comfortable chairs, its green plants at strategic places, failed to calm her. It wasn't working.

Or maybe she expected too much, particularly when her assistant, Rudra Popova, stood next to the desk, threading her fingers together as if she could pull them out of their sockets.

“Mayor Soseki's dead, sir.” Popova swallowed hard. Her normally impassive features were drawn. Her long black hair, usually as smooth as water, was mussed, and her eyes were red.

She'd known Arek Soseki. They both had.

DeRicci had known him better. She had countless meetings with him since, as mayor, he was the head of Armstrong Dome. He often butted heads with the governor-general of the United Domes. He believed the mayors should have more power regulating DeRicci, even though she worked for the United Domes.

She couldn't quite wrap her mind around the words “dead” combined with “Soseki.” Arek was a dynamic man, not the kind who keeled over in early middle age.

“What happened?” she asked softly. She'd had her external links off, leaving only the emergency links and the contact information for people who worked with her directly.

Popova wiped the bottom of her left eye. A tear. Even the great Popova—the calmest woman on the Moon—had emotions.

DeRicci felt faintly surprised at that.

“They don't know,” Popova said. “He seemed fine, and then he froze and collapsed. His last physical came out fine. He had no health problems, nothing that would have caused this. They're wondering if it was murder.”

“Wondering,” DeRicci repeated. “It would be nice to know.”

Because if it was murder, she had an entire set of protocols she had to follow. If it was just a death (just a death; what a thought), she had another.

She had to be able to function right now. She didn't have the luxury of tears.

“I'll get on it, sir,” Popova said, wiping at the other eye as if it annoyed her.

DeRicci wondered why Popova was so broken up about the mayor. She'd been through other high-profile deaths before.

“Who is investigating this thing?” DeRicci asked.

“I don't know, sir,” Popova said.

“I want some answers, Rudra, right now. I want the place where he died blocked off immediately—the wider the perimeter the better. I want one of our investigators down there—the best one we have—and I want someone from the police department, someone good, there as well.”

“Detective Nyquist?” Popova asked.

DeRicci stiffened. Everyone knew she and Nyquist were involved, but she tried to keep that part of her life personal.

“I don't tell the police department how to run their business,” she said. “Except for this. They'd better have the best investigator in charge of this thing, and by best, I mean someone who can close cases and someone considered incorruptible. If this is murder, then we have to plan not just for an arrest, but for a conviction.”

“And if it's not murder?” Popova asked softly.

“That's not a concern at the moment,” DeRicci said, knowing she sounded cold. “We're going to proceed as if it is. Get some medical examiner down there too. We need answers as fast as we can.”

“Already done, sir,” Popova said.

DeRicci didn't doubt that. Popova had a great ability to multitask. She'd probably been sending messages through her links as DeRicci spoke. Back when DeRicci first got this job, and she discovered that Popova was going to be her assistant, it irritated her that Popova could do more than one thing at a time. DeRicci didn't entirely believe it; she felt like people who multitasked the way Popova did were less competent.

But Popova was more competent because of her work method, and DeRicci now relied on it, even if she didn't understand it.

“I assume there's some kind of audio or visual footage,” DeRicci said. “I want that immediately. I want eyes and ears on this case right now.”

Popova nodded, then hovered. Popova never hovered. That was odd too.

“Thank you, Rudra,” DeRicci said. “Now give me a minute.”

“Yes, sir,” Popova said, and walked out of the room. Just from her tone, DeRicci could tell Popova thought DeRicci was going to take a private moment to mourn.

But she wasn't. As shocked as she was, she was also calm. She hadn't really liked Soseki, although she worked with him. She never felt like she knew the man, just the politician.

She sighed, got up, and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Armstrong, and, curving in the distance, the Dome. From this vantage, nothing looked different. But on the ground, she knew, everything was about to change.

She knew how things changed in an instant. She'd been through it more than once. The worst time was four years ago, when an unknown suicide bomber tried to destroy the Dome. The resulting blast ruined an entire section of the Dome and demolished a whole neighborhood.

She had been the chief investigator on that bombing. She had learned most of what happened—what kind of bomb it was, why it did the kind of damage it had, what it had destroyed. What she hadn't learned—no one had—was who the bomber was, and why that person had tried to destroy the Dome.

Usually this view reminded her that not everything had an answer—and even without answers, the city went on. The people continued, life moved forward, and everyone could recover from catastrophic events.

She had no idea if Soseki's death was a catastrophic event.

She would find out—and if it was, she would minimize the damage, just like she was paid to do.

* * * *

Four Years Ago

The woman—Alvina—had only been talking for ten minutes but it felt like two hours. Nyquist had wrapped his hands around the coffee mug and tried not to think about its slimy exterior. She had been going through a list of grievances against this Callum Sheel, and at this point, Nyquist wasn't sure if they were real grievances or imagined ones.

At this point, he wasn't sure it mattered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Palmette move into the kitchen. He cursed silently, then sent her a message through his links.

Back off. She's talking.

I'll just listen and record from in here, Palmette sent back.

No, you won't, he sent. Back off.That's an order.

The woman stopped talking. He wasn't sure if that was because she heard Palmette in the kitchen or if his expression had changed, letting his irritation at Palmette show.

“You don't believe me,” the woman said.

“Oh, I do,” Nyquist said. “He stalked you.”

“Yes! That's the word.” Then she peered at the kitchen. “You hear that?”

Get out, he sent to Palmette, but she hadn't moved. Dammit.

“That,” the woman said in the calmest voice. Then she stood. “He's in the kitchen.”

Crap. It was exactly what Nyquist thought. She was delusional.

She moved quicker than he expected, cross the distance between her chair and the kitchen door in five seconds, maybe less. He stood, but not fast enough. She had already gone inside, her hand finding a knife as big as her forearm, and it looked like it was covered with something.

She wielded it like a pro, and Palmette, surprised, didn't grab her weapon. Instead she raised her hands like a victim.

Nyquist grabbed his, but kept the muzzle pointed downward. He didn't want the woman to see it if he could at all avoid it. He wanted to keep what little trust he had built up.

“Alvina,” he said softly.

“I told you he'd be back,” she said. “I told you. He's right there, and he's going to call for help. House! Off!”

And suddenly everything went dark. She had a smart house, despite the state of that public wall link. A smart house set to make sure she had the advantage, not anyone else.

Get out of the damn kitchen, he sent to Palmette. Now!

“Alvina,” he said out loud. “I need just a little light here so that I can see him. I'll help you with him.”

Faint light rose above Nyquist and the woman. The rest of the kitchen was in darkness, although even from this distance, he could see Palmette's shadowy form.

Alvina moved forward, slashing. He heard a crash and a grunt. It didn't come from Alvina.

We need the ambulance team in here now, he sent, relationship with the crazy woman no longer a concern. Right now.

Door's closed and sealed, someone sent back to him.

Great, he thought. Then he sent, Do what you must to get in here. I can't open it at the moment.

She had moved farther forward. He couldn't tell if the form he saw belonged to Alvina or to Palmette. He couldn't use the laser pistol. He stepped into the kitchen, his foot hitting fallen dishes, clattering them.

Someone—Alvina?—whirled. He raised his pistol—

And something banged.

But bang was too small a word for that sound. Something happened—a collision, an explosion—something so loud that he felt the concussion as if it had actually hit him.

He staggered sideways, and then staggered again, keeping a grip on his pistol. Someone screamed, and this time, the lights—all of the lights—went out.

He sent, What the hell was that? but no one answered.

Palmette? He sent.

Still no answer. His head felt different. It took a moment to realize that all of his links had been severed.

Had Alvina done that somehow? Was that the concussive feeling he'd had? If so, how the hell had she managed it? Only the highest-end security systems had the ability to sever all links, including emergency links installed into emergency service personnel, like him.

“Alvina,” he said, and then the building rocked again. Thudding or pounding or something so intense that he staggered into the counter, and the pistol fell from his hand.

He grabbed the edge of the counter—more slime and it interfered with his grip, making him lose his balance.

He slipped in the fallen cups and plates, feet sliding out from underneath him, landing on shards of pottery and something else. It kept shifting beneath him, and then something fell on him, and more somethings fell and more, and a loud, booming crack resounded throughout the building, and that was when he realized it was all coming down on top of them.

Something had destabilized the building and it was collapsing. No matter how crazy Alvina was, she had nothing to do with that.

He crawled away from the kitchen and headed toward the table, keeping his head down, hoping nothing more would fall on him.

It was a vain hope. Bits of the ceiling had landed on him, pieces of wallboard. His hand gripped a chair leg and he let out a small sigh of relief. He found the table, and miraculously, there was nothing beneath it but carpet.

He crouched under there, listening to things fall. A wail had started from the direction of the kitchen, and beneath that, a voice. He thought maybe it was saying his name, but he couldn't tell.

His ears ached and everything rocked, and he wondered how long it would be before he died.

* * * *

Now

Detective Savita Romey crouched next to Mayor Soseki's corpse. How anyone could have mistaken this death for a natural one was beyond her. She knew that his aides didn't want to cause a panic, but their caution had already slowed down an important part of the investigation.

The man was gray. Steel metal gray, the kind you could see in the Museum of the City of Armstrong on the old ships originally flown to the Moon hundreds of years ago. Uneven gray—darker on his left side, and getting lighter across his face, until there was no gray at all on his right side.

None.

She had no idea what this was, but she'd bet her entire career that it was intentional.

“I need vids,” she said to one of the on-scene officers. “And we need to canvas. I want to interview everyone who was in the area when this happened.”

“Everyone?” the officer said, with some surprise.

She looked up at him. Young, so innocent that he didn't even have frown lines around his mouth. He probably hadn't been on the job longer than a year.

“Everyone,” she said.

“What do you consider to be the vicinity?” he asked. Which was a really good question. She had no idea. One block? Five? Ten? It didn't entirely matter. She had taken so long to get here—the system had taken so long to contact her—that if anyone wanted to get away from the crime scene they could.

“Five-block radius,” she said, just because it sounded good. “Up and down. See if anyone saw anything from windows and aircars too.”

He nodded crisply. She had a hunch he'd get this done efficiently, which would make her life easier.

She should have gotten his name, and by the time she had that realization, he was already gone, doing what she needed.

The mayor's aides were fluttering around her, trying not to ask her questions, looking nervous. She should feel nervous as well, but she didn't. Even though this was the biggest case of her career.

The mistakes had already been made. One hour from death to a detective on site. That was the biggest error and it wasn't hers. She'd make note of it in her report as a cover-her-ass moment. Not that she needed it.

This investigation would be gone over, detail by detail, by law enforcement branch, by the press, and by the hundreds of conspiracy theorists that seemed to live in the Moon dust.

She couldn't think about them. She needed to think about doing this properly.

She had full control of this investigation. The chief of police had hand-picked her due to her closing record and her ability to handle high-profile cases. He gave her carte blanche. She could pick her team, and she could conduct the investigation as she saw fit.

She saw a lot of fit. Crime-scene lasers in the wrong place, too many people close to the corpse, too many ways into and out of the scene, from the door to the restaurant to the open limo door to the sidewalk, up and around.

She sent a message to Dispatch on her links. I needed crime scene techs an hour ago. And how come there's no coroner yet?

Ethan Brodeur wanted to make sure his lab was in order before he brought in such an important corpse, the dispatch sent. She didn't just send audio but added an icon, a sketch of herself rolling her eyes, which was more of a commentary than Romey had ever seen from anyone on Dispatch.

Not that anyone liked Brodeur. He was marginally competent at best, and he'd screwed up more cases than he had resolved. She had a hunch he was a political appointee—or he knew where all the bodies were buried, and he used that knowledge to keep his job.

Send that new coroner—the one with the stupid name—?

Jacobs? The Dispatch sent.

Yeah, her. What's her first name?

Marigold, Dispatch sent.

This time it was Romey's turn to roll her eyes. How could she forget a name like that? But she had.

Send her, Romey sent, and get Bartholomew Nyquist here ASAP. I need someone competent, and right now, I'm surrounded by politicos and street cops.

Anyone else? Dispatch sent.

Not at the moment, Romey sent, even though she should have reminded Dispatch that she was supposed to have a supervisor/advisor of sorts from Moon Security.

That was the only part of this case that really bothered her. She didn't have a true buffer between her investigation and the United Domes of the Moon. When she knew anything, she was supposed to contact Security Chief DeRicci.

Romey supposed she should contact her now. But she was going to wait a few minutes. She half-thought she'd let Nyquist do it, but that wouldn't work. The stupid man had some kind of relationship with DeRicci, and that alone might complicate the case.

It certainly explained why Romey had lead here, and not Nyquist. Since he got back from sick leave more than a year ago, he went back to his old ways, closing more cases than anyone, and alienating partners.

He'd asked her to partner with him twice, and she'd said no, not because they'd be a bad team—they wouldn't—but because they'd be a damn good one.

He was the first man she'd met in years who intrigued her. Who more than intrigued her.

Who fascinated her.

And that didn't make for a good working relationship.

Except when she needed him.

Like right now.

* * * *

Four Years Ago

The shaking stopped, the building stabilized, but the keening continued. Something fell onto the mess beside him, but it was a solitary fall, like a water droplet in the shower, waiting for the last possible moment to let go of the showerhead and plummet to the ground.

Dust rose around him, making him cough. The air smelled foul, worse than it had when he got in here, and his eyes watered. Something was burning, and he couldn't tell if it was in here or outside.

He reached into his pocket, removed a small face mask to cover his mouth and nose, wishing he had thought of it earlier. It wouldn't keep out the stench, but it would keep out the particles. Then he reached into his other pocket and found the emergency light he'd bought years ago and transferred every time he changed suits. He'd never needed it before. Indeed, one of his partners (he couldn't remember which one) always teased him for having so many supplies on his person.

But he never knew when he was going to need them. So he carried them.

And now he needed this one.

He clicked it on. Dust, dirt, and shards of broken mugs had slid under the table. He moved the small light to look out from under the table. Chairs had fallen, and bits of the ceiling or the wall (he couldn't tell) had fallen on them. Some areas were mounded. Others weren't.

Dust rose everywhere, filling the air with particles, which told him that the circulation system had either collapsed or shut down. Or both.

The moaning continued, along with some rustling as someone tried to move.

He reached for his pistol, but he had lost it in the chaos. He tried his links again. The silence that greeted him was disconcerting. It made him think of childhood, when he was alone in his head, before they had installed links, before he went to school. He could have a thought and even try to force it out of his brain as a send, but it felt as if the thought bounced off the interior of his skull, trapping it inside.

He pulled himself out. The whimpering got louder and, it seemed to him, had a tinge of fear.

He wasn't sure who he should call for. Palmette or Alvina? Palmette was his partner, but Alvina was dangerously unstable.

“Hey,” he said, deciding to call on neither of them. “Anyone's links working?”

The rustling got louder, then something toppled, falling in a tinkle of glass.

His hands were covered in grit. He looked at them, saw shards of glass embedded in the protective covering he wore for the crime scene. He was probably covered in glass and who knew what else. If he crawled, he'd get even more on him. Eventually the sharp things would break the protective layer, and he would get injured.

Still, he couldn't exactly stand on the pile of debris, not with it shifting underneath him.

He moved some debris and found the floor. It looked uneven to him, but he wasn't sure if that was his own perception. He stood, and used the light.

It hadn't been his perception. The floor was canted. One of the walls had collapsed toward him, resting on the table and other bits of furniture. The ceiling had fallen there as well, revealing part of the next floor. That's what some of this debris was—stuff from the second floor.

He turned his light forward, and his breath caught.

Alvina was moving, and she had the knife clutched in her fist like she was about to bring it down.

She was close to Palmette's last position.

And the whimpering had stopped.

“Alvina!” he shouted. “I need you! Callum is over here!”

She turned, her eyes wild, her hair, face, everything, covered in dust.

“Where?” she asked, the edge in her voice terrifying all by itself.

“Here!” he said, keeping the light in her eyes so that she couldn't see anything. “Behind me.”

She staggered toward him, tripping on the debris, extending her hands to catch herself. For a moment, he thought—prayed, really—that she had dropped the knife, but she hadn't.

She waded through the debris as if it were knee-deep water, lifting her legs, moving forward with an intense momentum.

He didn't have the gun, and he was no match for that knife, but he had his cuffs. He pulled them out of his belt and held them loosely in his left hand.

“Where?” she asked, so close to him now that he could smell her, the sharp odor of sweat combined with the rusty scent of blood.

“He just dove under the table,” Nyquist said.

Her eyes narrowed. “I'll get him,” she said as if they were conspirators. “You stay here.”

She bent down, and he shoved her forward, half wishing she would impale herself on that damn knife. Instead, she squealed and turned slightly, up toward him, still clutching that stupid knife.

But he was too quick for her. Years of practice subduing everyone from the wiriest to the biggest attacker. He shoved his knee into the middle of her back, then put all his weight on her, not caring if he broke something.

He grabbed her knife hand first. She tried to wrench it away from him—and she was strong, one of the strongest he'd ever fought. The crazy ones always were. His training partner had told him that, and damn if the man hadn't been right.

She kept struggling, using her other hand to try to get purchase on that canted floor, so that she could turn around and use the knife.

He slammed her knife hand against the ground over and over again. Just when he thought she would never let go, he heard something snap. Finger, knuckle, he didn't care. The knife clattered, and he yanked her arm backward, grabbing for the other at the same time.

He got them both and shoved them into the cuffs, setting them on high. He didn't care if they shut off her circulation. He didn't care if they ended up cutting off her hands and killing her—not that they could. There were failsafes for that, failsafes he didn't know how to override.

She started kicking as the cuffs tightened, and then she started bucking. He almost fell off her. He reached for his other set of cuffs, but they were gone.

This woman was going to be the death of him. Or of Palmette.

He grabbed something out of the debris pile. He wasn't sure what it was because he had dropped his light as he fought with the woman, but whatever he grabbed was jagged and big and filled his hand. He brought the thing down on the top of her head with such force that her head bounced against the floor, not once, but twice.

And she stopped moving.

He didn't see if the blow had killed her. He didn't care. He tossed the jagged thing far from the table. If she was badly injured or dead, he would come back here and find something jagged that sort of fit, press it against the wound, and then drop it near her.

No one would notice.

No one would care.

Not after what she did to Palmette.

Or what he thought she did to Palmette.

He wasn't sure.

All he knew was that Palmette was terrifyingly quiet.

And that wasn't good.

* * * *

Now

DeRicci had put the visual with Savita Romey on the big screen in her office. The screen was in the middle of her office floor, and it rose up like a live thing, covering the floor-to-ceiling windows and extending from her favorite comfy chair to some green plant-thing whose name she always forgot.

She wished she hadn't made the screen so big when Popova let her know that Romey wanted a visual link. DeRicci thought it would be nice to cover the windows, so she wouldn't be focusing on the city itself. But the oversized visual hadn't blocked the city from her mind.

Instead, it had made her concern worse.

Romey was talking to her from the crime scene itself, and it was a crime scene, no doubt about that. Soseki's corpse didn't even look human. DeRicci had seen a few aliens that color, but never a human being, and not in those gradations. Human skin wasn't the same color all over, but it was usually within some kind of range unless the person purposely changed the colors.

She knew Arek Soseki. He would not want people to see him in shades of gray.

She winced at the mental pun, then wondered if that was intentional. It couldn't have been, could it?

She wondered if she should mention it to Romey, then decided against it, at least on a link everyone on the Moon could watch.

“I've already asked for a different coroner,” Romey was saying.

“Let me guess. You had Brodeur first.”

Romey nodded. “And I've asked the crime scene techs to double-time it here. But we lost an hour to some dithering about the cause of death—”

Meaning that the aides’ unwillingness to call it a murder had put the detectives behind.

“—and I think we've lost maybe half a dozen witnesses, maybe permanently—”

Meaning the suspects had probably escaped.

“—so we're already behind in this investigation—”

Meaning if the killer never got caught, it wasn't Romey's fault.

“—I also wanted to let you know I've requested Detective Nyquist. I think he's one of the best investigators on the force.”

“I agree,” DeRicci said.

“Your people haven't shown up yet, by the way,” Romey said. “What do you want from them?”

And that was when DeRicci realized Savita Romey was ever so much better at diplomacy than DeRicci had ever been, particularly when DeRicci had been with the force.

Romey had just requested that Nyquist be the liaison between Moon Security and the Armstrong Police Department.

DeRicci was going to let her own reputation for a lack of subtlety speak for her. She pretended to misunderstand.

“Just keep them informed,” she said. “They're not trained in homicide, so they're not going to be active in that part of the investigation. But they have clearance on issues that never make it to the local level and that might be important.”

Meaning this case might be bigger than Armstrong, although DeRicci sincerely hoped not.

“And keep me apprised too, Detective,” DeRicci said. “Unlike the members of my team, I do have experience in homicide, so I might see a few things that echo from my new job into my old one. I'll have my assistant send you a list of banned substances that might cause the skin tone gradations, and I'll send a few other things.”

Things that she couldn't mention on a public link, like groups that specialized in such substances, groups that were not allowed in Armstrong, or in the Earth Alliance itself, for that matter.

“Anything else, Detective?” DeRicci asked.

“Not at the moment, Chief,” Romey said. “Thank you.”

DeRicci nodded as she severed the connection, wondering what the heck Romey had to thank her for. DeRicci used to hate it when the brass or another department got involved in her investigations. She suspected Romey did as well.

The screen pinged her links, asking if she had further use of it. She didn't like it when inanimate objects talked to her, and she used to refuse to answer. But now she just sent a simple no, and let the screen slowly and majestically descend into its little cage or cubby or whatever the hell it was stored in.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. She wasn't going to do the next part by visual link. That would simply be too irritating. Because now she had to inform the governor-general they had a situation, and then the governor-general would probably tell her to inform some other group, and DeRicci would spend the rest of her day talking about ways to “handle the crisis” instead of handling the crisis herself.

She'd already handled a bit of it, by having Popova inform the governor-general's assistant that DeRicci was well aware of the death and was investigating to see if it was a United Domes matter.

Now that she knew it was, she was going to have to go into full crisis-management mode.

Sir? Popova sent via the office internal link. We have another situation.

What? DeRicci sent.

“Better to show you.” Popova had opened the door. Apparently she had been walking toward it as she contacted DeRicci—or the news had been so severe that she had leaped out of her chair and sprinted to the door.

She didn't even wait for DeRicci to tell her to go ahead. Instead, she raised that damn screen back up and it was already running.

Eight different 2D images ran along the edges. A small holoimage dominated the middle.

They all showed Keir Julian, Mayor of Moscow Dome, being hustled inside a building by his security people. He was stumbling and looked wild, but DeRicci couldn't tell, through the cacophony of voices, what actually happened.

So she muted everything except the holoimage in the middle.

The redheaded reporter looked like she was floating above the floor. She also was so tiny that it seemed like DeRicci could pick her up and throw her through a window as easily as she could throw a coffee cup.

“. . . attempt on his life,” the reporter was saying. “Moscovitius University Hospital reports that his condition is stable at this time . . .”

Hospitals were always supposed to say that about heads of state.

DeRicci muted the redhead, too, although the image continued to float as the redhead pointed to various images behind her desk. Images within images within images. If DeRicci wasn't careful, they would give her a headache. (As if that, and not the day itself, would cause the headache.)

“What have we got?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Popova said, her voice a little shaky. She still hadn't recovered from the Soseki announcement. “No one from Moscow Dome has contacted us.”

“Get them to,” DeRicci said.

“Sir, Moscow Dome is as far from here as you can get—”

“I know,” DeRicci growled. She was familiar with the Moon's geography. And she understood the implications. “Get busy, Rudra. We need investigators there too. Send one now, maybe with an advisor from Armstrong PD.”

“Any suggestions, sir?”

DeRicci was tempted to recommend Nyquist just to get him out of her hair. But she didn't. She wanted him here.

“No,” she said. “That's not my job. Someone good. Now get busy.”

“Yes, sir,” Popova said and left the room, with one hand pressed against the side of her face as if she could talk through the chips on her palm.

DeRicci might have to replace Popova for the day. The woman was too shaken to do a good job, and she usually took on the job of half a dozen people without a blink.

But DeRicci didn't have the time to think about that at the moment. She issued an emergency warning to all heads of state here on the Moon, informing them of the dual attack and cautioning that they might be in danger. Then she wiped the screen in front of her clean and requested a visual conference with the governor-general.

Some low-level assistant appeared in a cramped low-level office.

“I need the governor-general, now," DeRicci said.

“Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir,” the assistant said. He looked like he was about twelve. “I can't get her for you, sir.”

“You will, or you will find me someone who can,” DeRicci snapped.

“I'm sorry, sir, it's not that I won't. It's that I can't. She's just been taken to Deep Craters Hospital, and I'm not sure she's going to survive.”

* * * *

Four Years Ago

Nyquist found Palmette. She was half buried in debris, her eyes closed. He touched her shoulder and his hand came away wet with blood.

He cursed. He'd picked up his light after knocking Alvina unconscious, and he used it now to see if he could figure out what was going on with Palmette.

What was going on was that she was losing a lot of blood. More than he wanted to think about.

He felt in his pockets for some kind of emergency kit, something to help, but he couldn't find anything at all. He would have to make do in this mess somehow. He needed to see the wounds, see which was bleeding the worst and figure out how to stop it.

For good measure, he tried to send for help on his emergency links, but got no response. Maybe he could send, but he couldn't get any message in return. He had no idea, after all, and no way of knowing, so he set the emergency link on automatic, having it ping the system every thirty seconds, requesting an ambulance, backup, and help for the crew outside.

Then he went cold.

How long had he been in here since the crisis started? Five minutes? Ten? Thirty?

The exact time didn't really matter. What mattered was that none of the group outside had tried to come in.

The thought made his pulse race. Something was seriously wrong, something that was beyond this house or even this set of row houses. His people should have broken in by now.

He made himself take a deep breath to calm down, then immediately regretted it because the air tasted of dust. He shone his light around, saw piles of junk and no cloth.

But there was a tablecloth in the other room and if he remembered correctly, it was relatively clean.

He picked his way back in there, as quickly and as carefully as he could, shining the light on Alvina first to make sure she hadn't moved. Then he grabbed the cloth, which was still on the table. Some of the cloth wouldn't come—it was trapped under the fallen bit of ceiling. But he tugged as hard as he could and the cloth ripped free.

Then he carried it back into the kitchen.

He shone the light on Palmette. Her hands were on top of the debris and they were covered in defensive wounds. Blood oozed from those. A bad slash on the top of her arm, but it avoided the arteries on the underside, at least so far as he could tell.

The bulk of the wounds, though, were on her torso, and he wasn't sure how to stop them from bleeding.

He could tie off her arms, but he couldn't tie off her chest.

He wished for the damn links. Somewhere on there, someone or some stupid FAQ file could tell him what to do to tie off wounds, help him be creative with what he had.

But he was on his own here.

He put the light between his teeth and slung the cloth over his shoulder. Then he dug the debris away from her. Her stomach had been slashed, and another slash ran along her thigh.

The thigh wound was bleeding the most. Solution to that one was obvious. He had to tie it off. He ripped some of the cloth and tied it around her leg (thank God she was thin), pulling as tight as he could.

He wished he could research her to see if she had signed up for an emergency healing service, something that would close up small wounds with a simple command. She probably didn't or she would have ordered it the moment the wound happened.

Still, she might not have been thinking clearly—most people didn't when attacked—or she might have passed out too soon.

Although he doubted she had. She had been the one who was moaning.

He tied off her arms, too, and then peered at that stomach wound. It was bad. She'd bleed out, just like that poor man in the living room had.

Nyquist needed supplies, and he wasn't going to get them in here.

He pressed the remaining cloth against her stomach, put something flat, heavy, and unidentifiable over it to hold it in place, hoping that would at least staunch some of this.

Then he wiped his hands on his pants. “I'm going to get help—”

He was going to say her first name to comfort her—people liked hearing their names in moments of crisis—but he couldn't remember it. He didn't think calling her Palmette was right.

“I'm going to get help,” he repeated softly. Then he shone his light on that opening into the front room. Part of the ceiling had come down there as well, blocking the door. But nothing had fallen on the body, oddly enough, and that window seemed remarkably untouched.

So if whatever had blacked out the window wasn't made of an unbreakable material, he might be able to smash his way out of here.

He had to try.

* * * *

Now

DeRicci paced around her office, studying the carpet as she walked. She had long ago given up on that big screen. It made her nervous, and she couldn't be nervous. She needed to concentrate, and she needed to remain calm as she held conversations along her links.

She had probably done fifteen circuits of her office already, and she had a lot more to do. She was handling a lot of information, and doing most of it in her head, which would piss off Popova.

Too bad. DeRicci didn't have time to worry about niceties or legalities. She had to deal with a lot of people, and a lot of problems.

This was the first time in years that she had dealt with a Moonwide emergency. Last time, the bureaucratic system she was a part of got in her way. Now it was crumbling around her.

The governor-general did not have a replacement. Regulations stated that the Elected Council of the United Domes of the Moon would pick a replacement should one be needed. And one would be needed in case the governor-general died or became incapacitated.

Which she was now. DeRicci had just finished talking to the head of Deep Craters Hospital, a man used to handling delicate inquiries. Deep Craters was the best, most expensive private hospital on the Moon, and it had the best facilities off Earth—some claimed better than those on Earth. Everyone who was anyone and had health issues went to Deep Craters.

Even Nyquist, after he was attacked by a Bixian assassin more than a year ago, ended up there. But he ended up there because a friend picked up the tab, not because his government health insurance allowed it. Someone had made the decision that the governor-general needed the best possible care, not the care that her government health plan dictated.

That worried DeRicci more than anything.

Most of the heads of the domes had checked in, all except for the mayor of Glenn Station. He liked to shut off his links, including his emergency links, just like DeRicci used to when she was a cop, so she had to press upon his staff that this was urgent and life-threatening and he had to contact her immediately.

She was aware that the deep sense of frustration she felt after that encounter was ironic. She finally understood why everyone else in the Armstrong Police Department had been irritated with her all those years ago.

She also reached every single councilor for the United Domes. None of them had been attacked—yet, she stressed—and she encouraged vigilance.

Against what, she wasn't sure.

But she didn't like this. She knew this was some kind of coordinated attack, much more subtle than the kind they'd seen four years ago when Armstrong Dome got bombed. More akin to the biological agent that Frieda Tey had tried to unleash inside the Dome five years ago.

The domes were always under attack by some crazy; dome life was delicate, and people knew that. But most attacks were vast plots against the domes themselves, which made the attacks easier to deflect or defeat.

Someone with a brain realized that they could accomplish a sophisticated terror attack by targeting leaders. Communities went into lockdown, panicked, froze, when their leaders got attacked.

When their leaders died.

And things were worse here. Even though Soseki's Deputy Mayor, Diane Limon, had already issued a live don't-worry message to the city, that wasn't the same as having a healthy, living mayor.

No one had reported yet that Soseki's death was anything other than natural causes, so on that front, the mayor's staff's decision to hesitate about the cause of death had been a good thing. But it had hampered the investigators.

And time was of the essence in figuring out who the killer was and what group or groups he was affiliated with.

Because these coordinated attacks were not an accident.

And it wasn't long before other people—regular people, media people—figured that out.

* * * *

Four Years Ago

It felt like climbing a damn mountain to get to the window. A trip that had taken Nyquist only seconds an hour ago now took him at least ten minutes. Ten minutes, he—or more properly, Palmette—didn't have.

Along the way, he'd found two heavy cylindrical items he could use as cudgels. He had long ago given up trying to figure out what something was. In the dark and the dirt and the chaos, everything familiar seemed like something alien.

And the body, sprawled on the floor beside him, seemed vastly unimportant. Nyquist just had to be careful to stay out of the sticky and congealing puddle of blood.

The blackout material over the window was some kind of nanofiber. Unbreakable, untearable, without proper authorization, and he doubted, given Alvina's level of paranoia, that she would have left in the protective authorization for emergency services. He didn't even try, because he was inside, and the theory was that someone inside was there by invitation.

He should be able to get the blackout material to lift on its own.

His effort was almost anticlimactic. He rolled up the bottom of the screen, and it continued to roll the rest of the way. He'd volunteer to do a commercial for the manufacturer when this crisis was over. The only part of the house still functioning was the nanofiber blackout curtain.

The window itself was so covered with filth—on the inside—that Nyquist couldn't see out of it. He doubted anyone had opened the damn thing in a decade.

One benefit of not having a conventional smart house was this window actually had handles so that someone could open it. He set one of the cudgels down, tucked the other underneath his left arm, and grabbed the window handle, wincing at the slimy feel. Then he braced himself and lifted upward.

For a moment, he thought the window was stuck. Then it slid up and open, sending in light and air and noise—sirens and shouts and moans—and a stench so sharp he thought of closing the window again.

It took him a moment to recognize the smell. Burning chemicals. His eyes watered and he had trouble catching his breath.

What the hell had happened?

He didn't have time to think about it. He squeezed out of the window into the noise and smell, and eased himself to the ground.

The ground wasn't ground, not really. It was debris, just like in the house. In fact, much of it might have fallen from the house. He surveyed the neighborhood—saw more collapsed or canted buildings. Parked vehicles had moved, and the air had a sludgy oily feel.

A brown haze covered everything, and there was something wrong with the Dome.

He squinted at it. The Dome looked closer, and he didn't believe it was a trick of the light.

He tried his links before he even had a chance to think about it, trying to see if the Dome had some kind of addition here, but got nothing.

His links were still down.

He couldn't think about it. He had to get help for Palmette.

Two men—he thought maybe they were medical personnel from the ambulance—crouched over the male officer by the door. No other officers appeared in Nyquist's line of sight. The crime-scene lasers had fallen away from their moorings, sending their thin red lights into the air. That alone had added to the cacophony—warning sirens went off when light from crime-scene lasers got broken.

No one had fixed that, not in the last hour.

His heart was pounding.

The medical workers looked like they were working on the male officer. He didn't interrupt them. Instead, he headed to the ambulance. If nothing else, he would get a wound repair kit himself.

Inside, he found two other people on stretchers and one harried-looking medico supervising them.

“Your links working?” Nyquist asked.

“I need your help here,” the woman said. “I need someone to monitor their vitals—”

“I have an injured woman in the house back there who needs immediate attention,” Nyquist said. “Are your links working?”

“No,” the woman snapped. “No one's are.”

“What the hell happened here?” he asked.

“What the hell happened everywhere?” she asked. “I'm not in charge, nothing's working and I have no damn idea. Now help me out.”

“If I do, Palmette will die.” For all he knew, she might already be dead. “She's bleeding out.”

The woman looked at him with compassion. “If you stay here, I'll get her.”

Nyquist shook his head. “You'll never find her on your own. Just give me something and some instructions on how to use it. I'll try to get her to you.”

The woman gave him a strange look, as if she didn't believe he could do that, then she shrugged.

“Bleeding out from what?” she asked.

“Stab wounds,” he said.

The woman paled. “You stabbed her?”

“Hell, no. I'm a detective with the Armstrong PD.” Although he probably looked a lot more disreputable than that right now. “My partner and I were called here to investigate a death, and the killer attacked her.”

The woman cursed, then grabbed a kit. “Some AutoBandages here,” she said. “They should last long enough to get your friend out here. But I don't have anything to replace the lost blood.”

He couldn't worry about that now. He had to deal with one thing at a time. First thing, stop the bleeding. Second, get Palmette out of that house. Third, deal with the blood loss.

Maybe by the time he got her out here, links would work again and someone could help them.

But he doubted that was the case.

This wasn't a simple little disaster, covering one block. From what he could see—which was damn little—the entire neighborhood had been affected.

He was on his own with Palmette and Alvina—and he had no idea how long that would be the case.

* * * *

Now

Normally the restaurant would be a full-blown crime scene, but it had been compromised from the moment the crime happened. Romey made certain that crime scene techs had gone over the table nearest the manager's office first, gathering what evidence they could. She recorded it all, then when they were done, piled her own information on top of it.

That table became her on-scene command center. She set her own flat screen on top of the table and expanded the image size. Then she pressed information from one side to another, including the list DeRicci had sent her concerning the banned substances in the City of Armstrong.

Romey had just assigned that to one of the crime scene techs—as in, check for any of these—when she got another, coded message from DeRicci.

And the message was enough to make her knees buckle.

The governor-general unconscious at Deep Craters. Mayor of Moscow Dome nearly dead of similar attack. Mayor of Glenn Station unavailable, maybe off links, maybe injured. Critical that we have information about your investigation as soon as you have it. You'll share that info with your counterpart in Moscow Dome. Might be coordinated attack. Need to stop it now.

Might be a coordinated attack? Was DeRicci insane? Did she miss the clues? Or was she trying to be discreet because she sent the message across the links?

If so, she wasn't discreet enough.

“You okay, Savita?” The voice was new, not one Romey had been hearing all day.

She looked up. Bartholomew Nyquist stood on the other side of the table.

She had never been so relieved to see his slightly mismatched face. He'd nearly died when a Bixian assassin had sliced him up, and he had foregone all but the most basic reconstructive surgery. He had no scars, but in the right light, he looked like he hadn't been assembled properly.

His rumpled clothes didn't help. Nor did his slouch. He was one of the few people she knew who didn't care at all about how he looked, no matter where he was or what he was doing.

And she found that oddly comforting right now.

“I'm glad you're here.” She sounded a bit too relieved. But she felt very alone on this, and she knew whose hide this entire mess would come out of if her investigation failed.

With Nyquist on board, it wouldn't fail.

She had to believe that.

He gave her a small smile—an appropriate smile, given the circumstances they found themselves in, rueful and acknowledging and gentle.

“You need to see this,” she said, and forwarded DeRicci's message to him.

His eyes widened, then his gaze met hers. He was too much of a professional to comment out loud, but he sent back: Crap.

Her sentiments exactly.

He bent over the screen. “What have you got?” he asked.

“Nothing yet,” she said. “Not even a preliminary coroner's report. People are gathered everywhere and right now, I have uniforms interviewing them. I can't do all this quickly.”

He was staring at the list DeRicci had sent over. “And this is?”

“The substances that could have caused the death. Have you seen the body?”

He nodded. He still wasn't looking up. That list seemed to fascinate him.

“What are you seeing?” she asked.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “But something's close.”

“We have to move fast,” she said. “I'm not used to that kind of investigation. I want the time to talk to everyone, to put all the information together—”

“We can do that,” he said, “but our first priority is to find out what, exactly, is going on. We know a few things already. Whoever planned this is not a suicide attacker.”

She looked at him, then let out a small sigh. She was letting herself get overwhelmed with what hadn't been done, instead of what she could do. She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

“And,” he said, “we know that whoever did this could blend in, which unfortunately, is a strength. We also know that he, she, it, whatever the hell it is, has access to some pretty exotic substances.”

She looked at him, still stuck at “blend in.” O'Malley's was a human enclave. The people who came here were known for their love of politics. They also wanted to keep Armstrong's City Government as alien-free as possible—and by aliens, they didn't mean humans from other places. They meant nonhumans. They wanted to keep nonhumans off the council and out of the mayor's office.

“We're looking for a human being,” she said slowly.

“Most likely,” Nyquist said, “although I'd want to find out who did food prep first. Whoever touched that food or any beverages Soseki had might have a way in.”

“Or the hands he shook,” Romey said.

“We need to track his last movements,” Nyquist said.

“I already have someone on that,” she said. “And the crime scene techs are looking at everything he consumed. I'll have that expedited.”

“And everything he touched,” Nyquist said. “Unless he's wearing that protective skin that politicians sometimes use.”

“I'll have the techs check.” She smiled at him, the relief stronger than it was even a moment ago. “It's nice to have someone to talk to.”

“Someone smart,” he said, more to himself than to her. She heard the echo of every failed partnership in that sentence. She'd had a few failed ones herself, but not as many as Nyquist. Some of his failed partnerships were legendary in the department.

“Yes,” she said, “someone smart. Someone who understands investigation.”

“And urgency.” He finally looked up. “You want to coordinate, since you're in charge, or you want to help me on the substances here?”

“You're going to track them?”

“I think that's our best lead,” he said.

“Go,” she said. “I'll find out how whatever it was got into his system, and who had access.”

“Think you can cover that in an hour?”

He was turning this into a competition, so that they wouldn't concentrate on the emergency, just on getting the knowledge. And that was brilliant. It took the emotions out of the investigation.

“I'm sure I can,” she said.

His smile was sadder than the previous one. “You're on.”

And he was right: She was on.

It all rested on her.

* * * *

Four Years Ago

Nyquist didn't want to go back in that house. The whole thing looked unstable, not like a block of row houses at all. They had toppled inward against each other, roofs caved, walls leaning precariously against each other—or against nothing at all.

He recognized his only by the emergency workers still working on the officer in front of the door.

Not that he could go in that way anyhow. Debris had fallen in front of that door, and it opened inward.

He was going to have to crawl through that window and over that body one more time.

He crossed the yard quickly and stopped in front of the window, feeling a bit stunned. It was higher than he expected. He didn't remember such a far drop to the ground, but he must have made it.

He placed his hand on the sill and levered himself upward, balancing precariously. Then he hoisted himself over the edge, careful to step down as near to the wall as he could to avoid the drying blood.

The wall felt wobbly. He wondered if it truly was wobbly or if that was his imagination, working extra hard now that he knew what condition this place was actually in.

He paused long enough to listen to see if he heard anything. A moan, a rustle, anything. He hoped to hear a moan from Palmette, and he didn't want to hear anything else. He didn't want Alvina to have gotten loose from her cuffs and come after him.

He heard voices from outside, over the sirens, but nothing from inside, at least that he could tell. He stepped back over the debris pile, then made his way to the kitchen.

He glanced at Palmette. She hadn't moved, which was a bad thing. He wanted her squirming, maybe trying to get to the door. But she hadn't done anything.

Still, he had to go past her to check on Alvina first.

Alvina was still splayed face down near the table. She didn't look like she had moved either, and he wasn't sure if the splotch of blackness he saw on the floor near her head was a growing puddle of blood or something else entirely.

He didn't go near her to check. The last thing he wanted was to get close enough to have her grab at him, pull him down, or use some hidden shard of glass as a weapon.

Instead, he went back into the kitchen and crouched near Palmette.

She was still breathing. Her skin was clammy, and she was even paler than she had been before. Despite his efforts, she was losing blood.

She was dying.

He grabbed the kit, slid health gloves over the protective material he already wore on his hands, and then grabbed the AutoBandages. Only one was big enough for that stomach wound.

He pulled up her shirt and hesitated for just a moment: remove the cloth he had stuck in the wound or leave it there? He had no idea which would be better or worse. He wanted to download the information through his links, but he didn't have it.

He was alone on this.

Finally, he gave it a bit of a tug, figuring if it was loose, he would pull it out, and if it wasn't, he would leave it.

It was loose.

He pulled it out. It was barely recognizable as cloth, and it dripped as he cast it aside. The kitchen already smelled so bad he couldn't tell if the stink around him came from the bandage, the wound, or the garbage in the room.

So he just ignored it all. He opened the AutoBandage, held it over the wound like he had done a dozen times before for other officers down in the line of duty, and then pressed.

AutoBandages attacked the skin and the wound, binding to it almost immediately, becoming part of the injured person's body. He had no idea how doctors got the damn things off or if they just managed to reverse the process somehow, and he didn't care.

All that he cared about was that it staunched the blood flow.

He used the rest of the bandages on the rest of her wounds, and hoped he got everything in the dark and the dust.

Then he took a deep breath, pulled off the gloves, and tossed them into the pile that was the kitchen. He pushed a path to the door, knowing that taking a few minutes now might save him a lot of grief while he carried Palmette. The last thing he wanted to do was fall on her, or drop her on something sharp. That would only make matters worse.

He shoved debris away from the door, then he went back for Palmette.

She still hadn't moved, but she didn't look worse—so far as he could tell, anyway. He apologized to her as he scooped her in his arms. He had to be hurting her. He hoped she couldn't feel it.

He would have draped her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, but he was afraid of making that stomach wound worse. He hoped this would work.

She was heavier than she appeared, and her clothes were sticky with blood. Her head tilted back, her arms trailed down the side, and her legs hung free. He staggered a bit, trying to get his balance—he was tired, which surprised him—and then managed to move forward along that path he carved.

Sometimes her feet grazed the debris. Once he bumped her head against something and he apologized again.

But she didn't move, and if it weren't for her shallow breathing, he would have thought he had already failed, that she was already dead.

As he picked his way across the dirt, he found himself mentally apologizing for all the bad thoughts he had had about her ever since he heard he would have yet another new partner, all the bad expectations, all the horrible plans he had for dumping her as quickly as possible.

He hadn't been fair to her, and it hadn't been her fault. She had done the best she could following his instructions—better than any other new partner—and she had waited as long as she could before seeing if she could get involved in the investigation, following department protocols.

It wasn't her fault that she got injured. It was his. He should have been watching out for her, instead of trying to keep her away.

He made it to the door. He juggled her form, bracing it against one side of him as he reached for the latch. He managed to pull it open, startling the emergency workers outside.

The officer on the ground was covered in bandages as well. It looked like they were operating on him on the spot.

“Can one of you guys help with this?” Nyquist asked.

He must have looked a fright, covered in dirt and dust and blood.

But one of the emergency workers stood and took Palmette from him.

“We have an ambulance,” the emergency worker said, “but right now the streets are blocked. The Dome sectioned and we're trapped here. There's no hospital in this section.”

It took Nyquist a moment to understand what “the Dome sectioned” meant. It meant that the Dome's protective walls came down, here at least, and maybe all over the city.

“There's been a breach?” Nyquist asked. That was the only thing that he knew of which would cause a dome's protective walls to come down.

Although he had heard, after that Moon Marathon disaster, that the city itself could order parts of the Dome partitioned off from other parts.

“We don't know,” the worker said. “Our links are down. Nothing's working. We assume so, though, given the smell.”

The burning chemical smell. Nyquist hadn't gotten used to it, but he had started to ignore it.

“You sure that's not happening in this section?” he asked.

“We're not sure,” the worker said. “But it hasn't gotten worse in the last hour, and that's a positive, at least.”

A positive. They were searching for positives. Which made Nyquist even more worried than he already was.

“Well,” he said, “Do what you can for her. I have a prisoner in the back that I have to get into some kind of custody.”

“A prisoner?” the other worker asked.

“The reason we all came here in the first place,” Nyquist said. “The woman inside that house murdered a man in the front room.”

He didn't add that she might have murdered his partner as well.

“I think she's better off in there,” the worker said.

Nyquist shook his head. “Too many possible weapons,” he said. “Besides, she's our responsibility if the building collapses.”

The back of the squad could be modified into its own tiny jail cell. He was going to use that.

Provided she didn't kill him first.

“Wish me luck,” Nyquist said, and went back inside.

* * * *

Now

Romey crowded near the far wall of the restaurant, silently thanking every single god she'd ever heard of that she had put someone good on the visuals. Emmanuel Tyr should have retired decades ago, but he loved solving things. In particular, he loved processing the visual information that filtered through a case.

And this case had a lot of visuals already.

Almost everyone who had attended Soseki's speech had recorded it for personal use. O'Malley's itself had made four recordings of the speech from different parts of the room. Then there were the security cameras, the kitchen cameras, the back hallway cameras, and once Soseki had entered the restaurant proper, more visuals from more onlookers who were determined to have a bit of Soseki to take with them.

Why the man had decided to go through the crowded restaurant instead of disappearing out the back like most politicos baffled Romey. But she wasn't here to understand him, not yet at least. She was here to look for something, someone, suspicious.

Tyr had set up five screens so that they enveloped the watcher. The screens had holo capability, so that the watchers could feel like part of the scene if they were so inclined.

Romey wasn't so inclined.

“I had the choice of tens of thousands of images per nanosecond,” Tyr was saying. That was the only downside of working with him. He had a tendency to overexplain, and Romey had a tendency to tune out. She didn't dare on this one, although she missed a lot of the explanation already.

Tyr was a short, square man with a full head of black hair. The black hair had to be an enhancement, some kind of holdover from his youth. It looked out of place against his leathery skin, something he'd obviously decided not to enhance, thinking—or so he had once told her—that aged skin gave a person an air of authority.

“I have a program that selects for the best image based on customized details. I set up six different versions of this program, searching for suspicious behavior, someone manipulating our guy's food or his drink or touching him inappropriately, stalking him—you get the idea.”

Yes, she got the idea, but she knew better than to push Tyr. She didn't add anything, because he'd hear the addition as a question, then he'd answer it, and she'd lose even more time.

“When you set up a stalking program for a politician,” he said, musing aloud, “you have to be careful to exclude bodyguards and majordomos. You still get a lot of false positives, but that's where we got our best hit. Watch this.”

She leaned toward the screens.

Tyr pointed to the center one. He had set up the surrounding screens so that she could see the entire room and what everyone was doing. The other nice thing about Tyr was that he appreciated input from other people. He knew that there were things he—and by extension, his programs—missed.

“See that guy?” he asked, finger brushing against the image of a thin blond with floppy hair and an arresting face. “Watch him.”

She was still staring at the blond's appearance. Blonds were rare anywhere, but they were particularly rare on the Moon. This one was young, maybe twenty-five, unless he had enhancements to make him seem younger than he was.

But she didn't think so. He moved like a very young man, and he had that thinness that most men outgrew by the time they were thirty. Even if they used enhancements to stay thin, they never had that sticklike appearance again.

The blond stood in the back, arms crossed, expression neutral as he watched Soseki give his speech. Fortunately, Tyr had the sound turned off. Romey had heard most of Soseki's speeches—and no offense to the newly deceased mayor, but they had a certain sameness to them, one she didn't need to experience again.

Then the mayor finished, all two-hundred-plus people in the room applauded—except the blond—and then most moved en masse toward the podium for a moment or two with Soseki.

He posed for pictures, shook more hands than she ever wanted to consider, and chatted happily with a number of people he clearly didn't know. All the while, his bodyguards and his aides stood nearby, looking impatient.

She already knew that the substance that killed him hadn't come through his hands. He wore SoftSkin, and except for the epidermals from all the various hands he touched, his SoftSkin had nothing on it.

He was, she had learned this day, a cautious man, one who never ate at these events, who brought his own liquids, who in fact never ever did anything that would allow people to harm him—at least using known methods.

Soseki had lived through the Dome bombing. He'd been brash back then, but the bombing taught him caution. He'd also received an inordinate number of death threats, particularly as the press reported on the political machine he'd built inside the city. He could have been, according to more than one person she'd spoken to this afternoon, mayor for life. And, she had thought a bit unkindly, he had been. For his life, anyway.

She would have been pursuing the mayor-for-life angle if the governor-general and the mayor of Moscow Dome hadn't been attacked as well. This was not a vendetta against a particular person. She doubted this attack had much to do with Soseki at all. It had to do with his being Mayor of the City of Armstrong.

It was symbolic—and Soseki would have hated that.

Tyr continued to point out the blond man. Each time Soseki moved, the blond man moved as well. But the blond man was good. He didn't hover, nor did he stalk. He didn't even seem obvious.

At one point, he simply looked like a man who wanted to get out of the restaurant, and when one of the bodyguards blocked him, he looked annoyed.

Finally, the blond man made his way to the door. He stepped outside just before Soseki finished glad-handing. If someone had been watching the blond man—and Romey wasn't sure anyone had—they would have seen a man impatient to get out of a crowd, and then once out, a man who needed to catch his breath before he went on.

Romey wagered that when she showed this to the bodyguards—who wouldn't remember the man until they saw him—they'd say that he claimed to be uncomfortable in crowds. If she hadn't seen him in the room where Soseki was making the speech, leaning comfortably against the wall, unconcerned when people brushed past him, she would have believed he had some kind of phobia against crowded places.

Poor Soseki. His bodyguards weren't as good as they should have been. They should have noted the difference in the blond guy's behavior inside the back room and then in the corridors.

On the visuals, Soseki's bodyguards came out of the door, with Soseki in the middle. Romey frowned. She hadn't realized just how obviously a bodyguard's stance told an attacker exactly where the victim was.

The blond guy moved just a little to the side—not much—adjusting his own position so that he could get close to Soseki.

Then all the blond guy did was brush casually against Soseki's arm.

Soseki didn't notice. Neither did the bodyguards.

The blond guy scurried away, as if he were afraid the crowd would catch up to him, and as he did, Soseki froze in place.

“What the hell happened?” Romey asked.

Tyr was prepared for the question. He let the wide image dim and focused on that moment when the blond guy brushed against Soseki. Tyr magnified the image until all that was visible were the sides of both men's sleeves.

The fabrics touched so lightly that they didn't even indent. Soseki wouldn't have felt anything at all. But as those two bits of fabric touched, a small needlelike object emerged from the weave in the blond guy's sleeve.

“That needle thing,” Tyr said as they watched, “is so tiny that the naked eye can't see it. I've had to magnify this . . .”

But Romey stopped listening after “naked eye.” She watched the needle thing slide into Soseki's sleeve. Then the needle thing disintegrated, and the sleeves separated.

“Will we find trace elements of that thing on Soseki's sleeve?” she asked.

“How would I know?” Tyr asked. “I don't think so, but I don't specialize in that kind of thing. I've gone over this a few times, and even at an even greater level of magnification, I don't see anything left on the Mayor's sleeve. But that doesn't mean it's not there.”

“Right.” She knew it mattered, but not to her investigation at the moment. It would matter when they had the blond guy in custody. When they prosecuted him. But it didn't matter at the moment, unless that trace amount of whatever told her what exactly caused Soseki's death.

Although it was pretty obvious. Tyr zoomed back out. A second or less after the needle went in, Soseki froze in place. Then the gray color started spreading over him.

“That's enough,” Romey said. “I don't need to see that again. I need some good images of this man, holo images as well as 2D.”

“Already got it,” he said and sent it to her via her links. She let the flat images whiz past her left eye, and did not even look at the holoimages because she knew what they would show. They'd show the blond guy in motion, so that the officers would see his gait, his height, his gestures. The officers would know exactly how this guy moved and got around. They might even be able to track him just from the image.

She forwarded all of the images to the entire Armstrong PD with a notice that this was the guy they wanted—"for questioning,” of course. She did want him for questioning. She wanted to know what the hell was going on.

Romey also sent it to DeRicci. And then, because Romey promised, she also sent it to the investigators in Moscow Dome.

Immediately, she got a scrambled text response from Moscow Dome:

You're kidding, right?

She moved away from her team and answered on the same encrypted link. No. You recognize this guy?

Hell, yeah. We're looking for the same guy.

Romey frowned. I thought the attacks happened at the same time.

They did. The liaison from Moscow Dome sent her a series of images. It looked like the same guy, only he was getting close to Moscow Dome's mayor.

Romey cursed. Clones? she asked. They're using clones?

What else would it be? The liaison sent back.

It made no sense. Clones were obvious. They got noticed. They were easy to track, particularly if—like most clones on the Moon—they were registered.

Anyone claimed responsibility for yours yet? she sent.

DeRicci was the one who responded. Clearly she'd been monitoring the communication. No one's claiming responsibility for any of it, she sent. But, clearly from these images, it's only a matter of time.

* * * *

Four Years Ago

Alvina was still unconscious when Nyquist got to her. She hadn't moved at all, and he didn't think anyone could be that motionless for that long if they were faking. To be safe though, he checked her hands. They held nothing, the wrists still tight in the cuffs.

He took a deep breath. He was lightheaded—probably from that smell—and his eyes still burned. No air was on in this place, so nothing got scrubbed. He wasn't used to toxins in the air at all. The Dome usually protected everyone from things like that.

As he crouched, his clothes stuck to him. He was covered in all kinds of stuff, most likely Palmette's blood.

He didn't want to think about that. Instead he considered his options.

No one would blame him if he left Alvina and she died. She had killed the man in the next room. She attacked Palmette. If Alvina didn't make it out alive, not even a murmur would follow him.

But he could see her breathe. And as long as Alvina was alive, she was a danger. If someone else came back in here—rescue crew, other officers—and Alvina attacked that someone, injuring or even killing them, then Nyquist would get blamed.

His third option, one no one would blame him for, was simple:

He could kill her.

He watched her back rise and fall. She was crazy; she was dangerous; and keeping her in custody would be hard—especially right now, with everything falling apart around him.

The logical choice, the smart choice, was to slam her head until she stopped breathing. No one would look at the head injury. The coroner would think she died in the collapse of the house.

No one would think twice about it.

Except him.

He let out a small breath. This stupid woman's death would haunt him for the rest of his life. He would think about her and think about the moment he decided to kill her and he would remember the action, he would remember how it felt to bring that weapon—whatever he chose—down on her head repeatedly.

And he would feel like a damn hypocrite, arresting others for killing. Or he would have to drop off the force because he couldn't do his job, and then what would he become? A Tracker, finding Disappeareds for money? Some kind of private detective, beholden to the corporations? He already had only a fragment of a soul left. He really didn't want to lose the last of it.

He swore, then checked her again, saw no weapons within grabbing distance. He couldn't bind her feet, not without taking off his suit coat and using that, and he wasn't about to. Even though the damn thing was sticking to him, it felt like armor. He knew that was irrational, but he deserved at least one private irrational moment on this totally irrational day.

He wasn't going to pick Alvina up, not like he picked up Palmette. That left him too vulnerable. If Alvina woke up, she would start kicking and pounding him, and he wasn't sure he was up to the onslaught.

So he grabbed her feet and pulled her away from the table. Then when he could get around her, he dropped her feet, went to the side, and grabbed her bound hands.

He yanked them over her head, and pulled her in a circle, turning her around so that he could drag her to the door.

She didn't wake up. Her head lolled. Blood dripped down the side of her skull into her eyes and alongside her mouth.

He'd really hurt her. He probably gave her a serious head injury, one that he was now compounding. But he didn't care. He was getting her out of this house, where she would become someone else's problem.

When he got to the door, he pulled it open with one hand. The emergency workers were still there. The second one had come back. He looked at Nyquist.

“You want me to take her?” the emergency worker asked.

Nyquist shook his head. “She can't go in the ambulance.”

“She clearly needs to,” the worker said.

“She's dangerous.”

“We'll strap her down. We have one more bed left.”

“Save it for this guy,” Nyquist said, nodding at the officer.

The other worker stood, pulling off his gloves. “There's no point.” He looked tired. There were tubes and multicolored AutoBandages all over the officer's skin, but none of that seemed to make a difference. His features were lax, his eyes fixed.

Nyquist knew what that meant. He'd seen dead people too many times not to recognize another one.

“We'll take her,” the first emergency worker said.

“She'll try to kill you if she wakes up,” Nyquist said.

“Yeah, we got that,” the worker said.

“Keep her away from Palmette,” Nyquist said.

“We'll put this one on the street,” the worker said. “If they ever find us here, we'll send her on the second ambulance.”

“Thanks.”

The second emergency worker gently took Alvina's hands from Nyquist. Then the worker eased her to the ground to examine her wounds before he moved her again.

Nyquist staggered away from them and went to sit on the fake yard, with the crime scene lasers pointing at the sky. The Dome above him was black, not because it was Dome Night, but because of some substance coating the inside. Whatever that substance was, he had been breathing it.

He wiped his face, then wished he hadn't because of the goo on his hands. He looked around. The Dome had sectioned, and clearly the problem wasn't near here.

He wondered if he could walk out.

He wondered if he had enough energy for it.

Then his links whispered, and crackled, and suddenly the emergency channels were back online, filled with panicked talk and shouting and messages and warnings.

A bomb had exploded inside the Dome, damaging a section. A fire was sweeping through that section, but the emergency protocols had worked; the other sections were protected.

People should sit tight: If they needed help someone would reach them. If they were emergency personnel and they were all right, they needed to use their own personal codes to report the situation in their areas.

Dispatch would triage.

Nyquist listened to the noise in his head, never thinking he would be grateful for it. He didn't send his personal code. He figured the ambulance workers would do that—and sure enough, just as he had that thought, he heard the codes for this section go through clearly, with mention of life-threatening injuries. Needed to get the ambulance through a protected section of the Dome to a hospital. One of the workers swore about the fact that there was no hospital in this section.

Nyquist listened even though he normally would have tuned out. Then he mustered the last of his strength, stood, and headed to the ambulance. If they let him, he would go with Palmette, make sure she got the right kind of care in this situation, before he cleaned up and went back into this mess.

He would also keep Alvina away from her.

He should go with the prisoner, he knew, but he wasn't going to. They would strap her down. She was cuffed. The hospital would figure it out.

He reached the ambulance door. Palmette had some color in her face. The attendant had wiped off the blood.

Nyquist sat on the bumper, not talking to anyone, and listened to the sound of his city, coming back to life.

* * * *

Now

DeRicci stared at the gigantic screen in her office, feeling cold. Images from the attempts on the mayor of Moscow Dome and on the governor-general showed men who looked exactly alike, dressed exactly alike, and followed similar maneuvers.

At first, DeRicci worried that these men were fast-grow clones, specially bred for this. Fast-grow clones didn't grow in a day or two. It took a few years for them to reach their adult height and weight, but emotionally, they were little more than children.

If these were fast-grow, they wouldn't have been able to carry out such a complex maneuver. The attacks would have had to be simpler, something straightforward, like the firing of a laser pistol or the hurling of a bomb.

But these were complicated attacks, attacks that took timing, thought, and a bit of guile. No one with a child's intellectual and emotional development could pull such a thing off.

Which led to an even creepier thought. These men, these clones, were either recruited for this task (which DeRicci hoped was the case) or they were grown specifically for this, and the attack had been in the planning for decades.

She had sent a message to Popova. DeRicci needed more information on the other attacks, but Popova hadn't answered, which was unlike her.

DeRicci finally sighed and decided to do things the hard way. She went through the door into Popova's office.

Popova was sitting at her desk, head bent, long black hair masking her face. Her shoulders were shaking.

It took DeRicci a moment to realize that Popova was sobbing. DeRicci's strong, unflappable assistant, who had helped her through emergencies even more dire than this, had dissolved into tears.

“Rudra,” DeRicci said.

Popova took a deep breath, raised her head, but didn't move her hair.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” DeRicci asked.

“I'm all right,” Popova said, her voice thick with tears.

“You're not, and I need to know why. What is it about Arek?” DeRicci deliberately used Soseki's first name, because she had a hunch.

“I didn't mean to,” Popova said, her voice rising. “It's just he was so wonderful and we liked each other so much and it wasn't like he was married or I was but we had our jobs, and we weren't sure if there was a conflict of interest and . . .”

She strangled on another sob. DeRicci, who prided herself on her own detecting abilities, felt stupid for not noticing this one. Popova's willingness to be the liaison with the City of Armstrong. Popova's ability to find a way to have business take her near the city offices around eight p.m. Popova's mood. It had been lighter of late.

“I'm sorry,” DeRicci said. “I'm so sorry.”

“I'll be all right,” Popova said, face still covered by her long hair.

“No, you won't,” DeRicci said. “I'm going to have to send you home.”

“No, please,” Popova said, and this time, she turned toward DeRicci. Popova's perfect skin was blotchy and her eyes were swollen. “I'll do what I can.”

DeRicci sighed. She knew that Popova wouldn't perform to one tenth her normal standards. But she also knew Popova was probably better off here. Like so many in DeRicci's high-powered staff, Popova lived alone, and she didn't need to be on her own right now.

Besides, Popova loved information, and sending her home would cut her off from information on the greatest crisis of her life.

“You stay then,” DeRicci said, “but I need someone to act as my assistant. Someone who can process a lot of information quickly and already has access to some of the higher levels.”

“Yes, sir,” Popova said. “I should have thought of that. I'm sorry.”

She should have thought of a lot of things, but she wouldn't, not when she was in this condition. Which was why DeRicci couldn't use her as her main assistant at the moment.

“I need this person now,” DeRicci said. Then she sighed, knowing how harsh she sounded. “I really am sorry, Rudra.”

“I know,” Popova said, then put a hand to her ear, shades of the old Popova, and set about getting DeRicci a new assistant.

As DeRicci went back into her own office, an urgent message came across her links. Two more failed attacks—one in Gagarin Dome, one in Tycho Crater. The failure was due to the warnings she had sent. Images came with the message, and DeRicci accessed those on the large screen.

Two more clones. Exactly the same from looks to clothing. Authorities in Tycho Crater were zeroing in on theirs now. They'd have more information in a few minutes.

Maybe by then, they'd have actual answers.

* * * *

Now

By the time the coroner told Bartholomew Nyquist exactly what substance had killed Soseki, Nyquist had already isolated the information. Nyquist had taken a table in the back of the restaurant and had gone through the list of possible substances that Romey had given him—looking at symptoms if those substances made contact with a human.

The physical investigation continued around Nyquist. Crime scene techs scattered throughout the restaurant. Romey had taken a team somewhere in a huge hurry, leaving only the images expert, Tyr, sitting in that wall of screens off to the side.

Only one substance worked as quickly, moved from point of impact across a victim's body, and turned the victim various shades of gray. Banned by the Earth Alliance as one of the most toxic substances ever developed, the substance's scientific name was so hard to pronounce Nyquist didn't even try. Instead, he used the substance's nickname: zoodeh.

A long-defunct corporation named Giitel developed zoodeh as a quick-drying, sturdy building material for colonists and travelers planning to build temporary housing in new places. Soon Giitel realized that zoodeh wasn't stable enough to work with. Researchers got ill and died within a few minutes of touching the material. At times, the deaths seemed inexplicable because the researcher had used all proper precautions—gloves, suits, masks. Finally, someone realized that all it took was a single touch against skin before zoodeh entered the human body and completely transformed it, destroying the interior, using the skin and bones as a foundation, and then solidifying as if the human being was actually a wall of a house.

Research on zoodeh stopped until Giitel got sold, its patents sold with it. Someone found zoodeh and realized it would be a fantastic weapon. The Earth Alliance banned the substance after assassins used it to target heads of state (that sounded familiar, Nyquist noted), and the zoodeh moved to some of the unaffiliated countries and planets at the edge of the known universe. Because zoodeh was hard to transport and easy to detect, it hadn't come back into the Alliance.

Until now.

The question was: How did zoodeh get so deep into the Earth Alliance? How did it end up all over the Moon? Zoodeh should have been flagged as it came into any port.

Nyquist slipped into Space Traffic's database, looking to see how recently ships got flagged for carrying zoodeh.

He found nothing recent—not within this year, last, or even the past ten. Half a dozen ships had come in carrying zoodeh in trace amounts, but all of those ships had come in thirty, forty, fifty years before.

And gotten quarantined.

Quarantined. He tapped a finger against his lips, thinking. He had dealt with quarantined ships on more than one investigation. Quarantined vessels usually went to Terminal 81, where the Traffic Quarantine Squad or robotic units dealt with the ships. Most of the ships got destroyed.

Then he stopped tapping his lips and moved his finger sideways, touching his too-smooth cheek. In the investigation that nearly killed him, he learned about ships that were quarantined that had never made it to Terminal 81. Some of the ships’ owners paid off port authorities. Sometimes the ships landed and then the toxic substances were discovered.

Sometimes the quarantine was a ruse to keep the owner from the ship itself.

Nyquist had revealed this to DeRicci and she had been appalled. The responsibility for the quarantined ships had initially resided with Space Traffic Control. It still did for the ships that went to Terminal 81. Every once in a while, Space Traffic contacted DeRicci's Security office to have that deal with whatever had tried to come into the City of Armstrong.

But the ships that had made it to Armstrong's port but did not land in Terminal 81 now fell under the United Domes of the Moon Security Department.

And a special administrator had gotten hired to take care of the ships one by one. To investigate them, to determine the reason for the quarantine, and then to either make the ship go away, destroy it, or to release it from quarantine.

Nyquist looked up the name of the administrator and then smiled. He had gotten his second break in this case. He wouldn't have to go through piles of rules and regulations to talk to some bureaucrat. He knew the bureaucrat.

He had saved her life once.

It was Ursula Palmette.

* * * *

Now

Romey shoved her way through the crowd of cops outside the little coffee shop four blocks from the original crime scene. She could tell by the cops’ posture that no one had followed orders.

Her temper was boiling even before she got to the door, even before she smelled the scent of burnt skin mixing with the aroma of freshly brewed real coffee.

She peered inside. There were no cops, of course. Just the body of the man who had killed Arek Soseki, slumped against the wall, clearly the victim of a laser pistol shot, an overturned chair the only other sign of any sort of struggle.

There also wasn't any sign of other customers. No half-full cups sitting on tables, nothing dropped near the service desk. This place was automated, and had servo trays, and none of them had been overturned either.

The assassin had been sitting alone here, near the exterior window, waiting to get caught. In Romey's experience, criminals who wanted to get caught did not struggle or fight back. They had an agenda, a speech to give, something they wanted to say—something urgent.

She whirled. “Who the hell shot him?”

“I did.” The man next to her spoke quietly. He was tall and thin with a rugged face. He looked like he'd been a street cop for a long time, the kind who loved the ever-changing life, the quick calls, the kind who would turn down a promotion to detective or some other unit because he missed the day-to-day action of the street.

“Didn't you understand my orders?” She put enough sarcasm in her voice to let him know that she assumed anyone who didn't understand her orders was the stupidest person alive.

“I did,” he said sadly. “I know how important getting him alive was.”

“And you shot him anyway? Were you that close to the mayor?”

The cop looked at her. She thought she saw reproach in his eyes.

“Look at the body,” he said.

“I'm looking at you,” she snapped.

He nodded, then stared forward as if he expected her to take his badge and his weapon right then and there.

“He shot at us,” one of the other cops said.

“So you wound him. You don't kill him,” she said. Her lost opportunity hadn't moved. There was no hope that he was alive.

“I know,” the first cop said. “I tried.”

“You need marksman practice.”

“No, sir,” the second cop said. “He wore something, something that made the shot move.”

“Move?” she asked, now intrigued.

“It hit his knee. We all saw it hit. Then the shot radiated upwards and hit his heart. Look at him.”

She turned. The other cops were watching her closely, as if it all rested on her.

She supposed it did.

She walked over to the body and crouched. A laser shot had burned through the knee. Then there was something she had never seen. A small burn trail that led to another wound on the assassin's chest. The burn trail had gone up something that looked like a protective vest.

Nothing her people carried could have made that burn trail or that chest wound.

And it made sense. A shooter who sat near a window and waited for the police to arrive did not want to live to the next kill.

She stood, careful not to touch anything, and walked back to the door.

“Looks like I owe you an apology, Officer,” she said to the first cop. His gaze met hers, his eyes still sad. Despite what happened, he clearly blamed himself.

“I didn't expect it, sir,” he said. “I was just following procedure.”

She nodded, frowning. Most suicides—particularly dramatic public suicides—had a message.

“Did he say anything before he died?” she asked.

“Yeah.” The cop ran a hand over his mouth, almost as if he didn't want to repeat the message. “He said, ‘We've only just begun.'”

* * * *

Now

Ursula Palmette had a desk in Space Traffic Control. A desk behind a cubicle in a far corner, with no view of anything. Quite a demotion for a young detective who had once been on the fast track.

Nyquist said Palmette's name, then stepped around the cubicle. It was undecorated—no mementos, no personal images running along the desk screen. Not even a coffee mug half used in the corner.

The chair had been pushed forward, and the screen was off, which it shouldn't be. Palmette's location notice, on her links, stated that she was at her desk, engulfed in work, and would answer any non-emergency summons as soon as she got a moment.

He hadn't sent a message along her emergency links because he wanted to come to the Port of Armstrong. He didn't want Palmette to investigate the ships; he wanted to investigate them himself. He figured he needed her help to avoid all of the regulations.

But something wasn't right here.

He sent a message along her emergency links and got nothing. Not an automated acknowledgement, not a notice that she wasn't picking up messages, or a response from her.

Nyquist immediately contacted Murray Atherton, the man who coordinated everything going on at Space Traffic Control, asking him to find out when Palmette left her desk.

She hasn't left her desk, Murray sent.

Oh, yes, she has, Nyquist sent. I'm right here beside it. Her links are inaccurate, and I think her emergency links have been deactivated.

If she's here, I'll find her, Murray sent.

Nyquist tapped the desk screen, starting it up. No message, no information, no hint at the last time Palmette had even used it. Not everyone used a flat screen, sometimes preferring to see information dancing unencumbered across their vision.

Then Murray contacted him. She's in Terminal 81.

Where the quarantined vessels were stored until they got destroyed or sent back to where they came from.

Doing what? Nyquist asked.

Going through the webs of protection around one of the ships, Murray sent.

Webs of protection were designed so that no one, not even anyone authorized, could get into a ship without moving slowly and cautiously. All the way along, the webs asked if the person wanted to go farther and sent out all kinds of warnings.

Only Murray should have been notified of those warnings. Apparently he hadn't been.

She's not wearing hazmat gear, he sent.

This was getting better and better.

Give me clearance, Nyquist said. I'm heading down there.

Not without protection, Murray sent. I'm sending a team.

I don't want a team, Nyquist sent.

I don't care what you want, Murray sent. I'm following protocol.

And then he signed off. Nyquist started to run. He wasn't sure what was going on here.

He just knew he had to go into Terminal 81 with that team.

* * * *

Now

Detective Romey had sent warnings to the team in Moscow Dome and the team investigating the governor-general's near-assassination, warning them that the killers might attempt suicide shortly after they were found.

DeRicci also sent the same information to every law enforcement agency in the United Domes of the Moon. She wondered if she should send the same information to the law enforcement branches of the Earth Alliance.

She threaded her hands together and paced around her huge office, feeling very alone. Normally, she would discuss something like this with Popova—one of those brief conversations that would take no more than a minute or two. Popova would make an insightful comment, and DeRicci would be able to figure out what to do.

But Popova was in no shape to make an insightful comment. She kept to her desk and coordinated what she could on the Soseki murder, but that kept reducing her to tears. Ephraim Hansel, the man Popova had brought up to the office to assist her (and who was surprisingly, heartbreakingly young) had no idea what to do about Popova. Occasionally, he would just touch her shoulder until she shook him off and snapped at him.

He told DeRicci that, and DeRicci told him to let Popova be. She needed Hansel to concentrate. She half toyed with asking his advice, then decided that wouldn't work.

Instead, she would just send notice to the Earth Alliance as well, and let them disseminate the information. At least then, someone might recognize those clones. All the searches her people had done had so far turned up nothing, but there were a million cloning companies throughout the sector, and it would take a long time to search all of them. Considering how old these clones were, and considering that they weren't fast-grown, her people would have to look at older cloning companies as well, even those that had shut down.

No sooner had she sent information to the other law enforcement agencies in the United Domes, than she got back message after message:

Too late.

The other clones had committed suicide as well. Usually suicide by cop, some without speaking at all.

DeRicci sank into a comfortable chair near her floor-to-ceiling windows. She used to think—after the bombing—that she could handle the unknown.

But the events of this day had challenged that belief.

* * * *

Now

Nyquist hated hazmat suits. They made him think of the worst investigations he had participated in, the ones that ended badly, the ones that had led him to question his job.

The rest of the Traffic Quarantine Squad that Murray had ordered circled around Nyquist. Murray had made certain that Nyquist was in charge—unless his refusal to follow a protocol would endanger everyone. The entrance to Terminal 81 was only a few meters away, but it might have been across the Dome, considering how slowly everyone moved.

Nyquist pulled on the suit's helmet. He had asked for a face-hugging helmet even though it meant that he wasn't as protected as he would have been in a larger one. He wanted Palmette to see him.

The helmet made him even more aware of the suit.

Oddly, the cases where he needed a hazmat suit and hadn't had one—the day he saved Palmette's life came to mind—had given him a kind of inner strength that he hadn't had before. That afternoon, as he waited for the Dome section to open, he thought about the murder, about Alvina, about Palmette—about his terrible life—and he had a realization.

Instead of making him want to quit his job, that dark day had made him realize how much he loved his work—and how frightened he was of losing it. He had been afraid that everything would change after that, and many things did. But not his job, not investigation, not police work in general.

He had. He knew he was strong enough to face all kinds of terrible odds—which helped him later when he found himself alone with Bixian assassins. It helped him now, because he knew the city would get through this.

The Squad had to go through fifteen webs of protection just to get to the doors of Terminal 81. The webs of protection didn't have much meaning for someone entering the terminal. The webs were there to shut down anything horrible leaving the terminal.

But going through them would still take time.

Time that Nyquist wasn't sure they had.

* * * *

Now

No information as to the identity of the group attacking the leaders of the Moon communities. No one claimed knowledge, no one took responsibility.

It was driving DeRicci crazy.

Someone clearly wanted something. They were coordinating an attack, with attackers so visible that they would have been impossible to miss, even for the worst investigator.

DeRicci leaned out of the door of her office. She felt uncomfortable giving poor Hansel commands over her links. She didn't really want to alienate him with her brusque behavior on his first day.

Popova looked up, her face blotchy. Hansel glanced at DeRicci as well, his eyes filled with barely controlled panic.

DeRicci sighed. Neither of her assistants was in great shape.

“Rudra,” DeRicci said, changing her mind about who would handle this task, “take images of those clones and see if any of them were present on the day of the Dome bombing.”

“Sir?” she asked with surprise. “You have information?”

DeRicci shook her head. “I have a hunch. There's a tie to the Dome bombing. I'm just not sure what it is.”

Then she let herself back into her own office. She might have just sent Popova to chase phantoms. Hunches often had nothing to do with investigations.

There had been a number of assassinations and assassination attempts in the long history of Armstrong. But never before had anyone tried to assassinate Moon leaders all at once (or even in the same month).

People didn't plan things like this overnight. It took years of organization, of study, of figuring out who would be where and why. It took someone with a long view.

And DeRicci wanted to know who that was.

* * * *

Now

The interior of Terminal 81 looked very different from the interior of all the other terminals. There were no floating signs to point to important sections of the terminal, no announcements drifting along the bottom of one eye offering an audio tour, no colored lights leading to a particular ship.

Instead, warnings assaulted Nyquist from the moment he stepped inside: Make sure your hazmat suit is sealed; Do not approach any ship without authorization; Touch nothing with your bare hands.

And on and on and on.

If he hadn't been here before, he would have been frightened. Most cops let the Traffic Quarantine Squad handle problems inside Terminal 81. Most cops could not bear to go in here more than once.

Nyquist had been here at least seven times in his career. The place felt almost familiar.

Still, he didn't like the visible webs around the ships, the rust and age that many of the ships displayed. That looked dangerous all by itself.

But he said nothing. He let the squad lead, following them as they hurried along the suggested path, their weapons already drawn.

Any unauthorized person inside Terminal 81, disabling webs of protection without permission, was automatically considered a danger to the city and could be shot on sight.

Palmette had permission to come inside because of her job. But she had to follow procedure: She had to wear her own hazmat suit, and she had to have backup ready in case something went wrong.

But she did not have permission to undo webs of protection. The squad did that. If she needed to examine the interior of a ship, she was supposed to do so remotely while one of the experts went inside and investigated.

She hadn't done that in months.

The last time she had done so, however, she had gone to a different ship, one quarantined nearly 100 years ago. It had come from a Giitel subsidiary just before the corporation disbanded.

That discovery had turned Nyquist cold.

The squad turned down a narrow path between ships so large that Nyquist couldn't see around them. The webs of protection brushed against his suit, warning him that he was too close. The paths got narrower and narrower the older the ships were. Old ships were slated for destruction, but the Port had gotten behind. Mostly because no one knew exactly how to dispose of these ships. Launching them derelict into space was no longer an option, and destroying hazardous material—even outside the protection of the Dome—had been banned by most of the Moon's domes, except outside of a 100-kilometer radius. The problem was that so many companies had applied for extensions of that radius, that 99 percent of the Moon's surface was in a protected zone.

Finally, the squad turned a corner, into a pile of haphazardly parked old ships. The system from 100 years ago was much less organized than the system now. And the ships were bulkier, less sleek, more dangerous, their webs of protection larger.

The tiny map in the corner of Nyquist's right eye lit up. They had arrived at the ship.

He sent a non-verbal order, reminding the squad that he got to go first. Then he pushed his way to the front of the group.

Palmette stood in front of an active web. It flashed red, sending warning notices to anyone within range. Three other webs glowed green in front of her, and one—the exterior web—actually collapsed. It didn't light up at all and the actual physical part of the web—a microfiber that would brush against a suit warning the wearer of the danger—was black and shriveled.

She had cut the first web, and somehow managed not to sound the alarms. Probably because of her high clearance level.

She wasn't wearing a suit. She stood, hands out, looking like a child caught breaking into a cookie jar. Still tiny, she still wore her brown hair in a cap around her face. But her face was very different.

No longer young, no longer eager. Even though she had had enhancements to smooth her skin, her eyes looked old. She had seen too much. She would never again be the woman he had met on that long-ago morning.

“Ursula,” he said softly. “It's Bartholomew Nyquist.”

She held up a small penlike device in her right hand. At first he thought it was something she used to open the webs. Then he realized it was some kind of lighter.

The head of the squad sent Nyquist a private message: If she goes into that ship and lights the cargo, the explosion will blow open the port and send toxic gas into the City.

Nyquist knew that. He had known what was in the ship since he discovered she was trying to get inside. It wasn't zoodeh. It was a different substance, much more volatile. He hadn't known why she was trying to get in then. He had hoped she was looking for some kind of clue.

Standing orders, the leader sent. We shoot to kill if she goes any farther.

You'll wait for my order, Nyquist sent. And before the leader could argue, he added, And I'll take the heat if things go wrong.

Not that he would live through it.

He couldn't think about that.

“Ursula,” Nyquist said. “What's going on?”

“You think you're so important,” she snapped. “You work for the city and you believe in law and justice. Have you ever looked at what you do in the name of law and justice?”

Normally, he wouldn't answer her. He didn't like a lot of the laws he enforced. Which was why he was primarily a detective, not a street cop. He often went in after the crimes had been committed, so that he could find the perpetrator. He didn't have to make quick judgments at the scene; he could decide how to handle a case at his leisure.

“I look all the time,” he said.

“And you can accept that?” Her hand was shaking.

“Not always,” he said truthfully. “But I have good days. I saved you on a good day.”

“That bombing was not a good day.”

“But if you go inside this ship, you'll set off a bomb just like that person did four years ago. You'll kill and maim and ruin countless innocent people.”

“I don't care,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked. “You know what it feels like.”

“We're worthless,” she said. “We're worthless to the city, we're worthless to the corporations, we're worthless to the Earth Alliance.”

“You're not worthless to me,” he said softly.

She gave him a bitter smile. “You're just saying that so I won't go into the ship.”

He shook his head ever so slightly. “I didn't have to go back for you that day. I could have left you to bleed out. I may have treated you badly that morning, but I valued you. I still do.”

She stared at him, and he thought he had her.

Then she whirled and grabbed the next web. Around Nyquist, laser rifles rose.

That's what she wants, he sent to the squad. Don't do it.

He didn't ask her if the group she was working for valued her. He knew how such organizations worked, even if he didn't know which one she was affiliated with. They took a disaffected person and made her believe she had value. And she did, just not the value she thought she had. Her real value was in her access, of course. Her real value was in her ability to create the most mayhem for the least amount of effort on the organization's part.

Of course, the organization wouldn't say that. Instead, they would soothe a bruised ego, making her feel important for the first time in a long time.

Some organization had done that to Palmette. He had no idea who. But he did know—through all of his experience as a detective—that they had already hooked her emotionally.

He couldn't undo that with a few simple sentences.

She opened the fourth web. There was only one more before she got access to the ship.

“I'm going to let the squad go,” he said to her. “I'm going to stay here with you. I'm not going to live through another bombing.”

“They won't leave,” she said. “They have orders.”

So he was right. She was counting on them to kill her.

“They'll leave,” he said, hoping he was right.

Stand down, he sent. If I tell you to leave, please go.

She can't be allowed to get on that ship, the leader sent.

She won't be, Nyquist sent. Or, he privately corrected, she wouldn't be allowed to ignite the cargo. He would stop her no matter what. He hoped she didn't realize that.

The laser rifles went down.

She looked at Nyquist in surprise. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Keeping my promise to you,” he said.

“You promised they'd leave.”

Nyquist swallowed hard. He looked at the leader. The leader didn't move for a long moment. Then the squad turned around and walked away. Nyquist had no idea how far away they went, but he did know that he couldn't see them any longer—and if he couldn't, she couldn't either.

“Don't go through with this,” he said to Palmette.

“Why not?” she asked. “I've already come this far.”

“You have,” he said. “Don't you think that's far enough?”

He wasn't good at this. He didn't have the training. He was working off instinct and his instinct with people wasn't the best.

She didn't move.

“Logically,” she said after a moment, “it's better if I die.”

He didn't ask why. On some level, she was right. She had helped in at least one murder, and would be an accessory in at least two others.

“Are you saying I shouldn't have saved you?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding her.

“No,” she said quickly. “It's just different now.”

“Why?” he asked.

She shook her head. “They took me off detective detail. They put me here.”

“At one of the most important jobs in the city,” he said. “That's what you've been doing, right? Finding the holes in the quarantines? Seeing how terrorists could exploit them? You've made your point, Ursula. Now it's time to tell the city what you've found.”

She turned around slowly. He had given her a way out. Hell, he had given her a legal argument. He would wager there was little to disprove it.

Except, of course, Soseki's death.

But he was gambling that she wasn't thinking clearly.

“You believe that?” she asked.

“I know how eager you were to solve crimes,” he said. “Sometimes that leads to some risks. I know that. I've taken a few bad risks myself.”

She bit her lower lip.

Then she stepped forward.

One step. Two. Past the green webs, to the cable.

He was shaking, but he still managed to meet her. He took the lighter from her.

“I have to cuff you,” he said. “It'll keep the squad from attacking you.”

She nodded. She knew that was a lie, and she didn't care. She was smart; she probably knew everything he said was a lie, and she didn't care about that either. She just hadn't seen a way out, and he had given her a tiny one.

Not that her life would be any better. It would be worse.

Her bitterness from the bombing, from the loss of her dreams, had brought her here, blaming the city instead of blaming the terrorist who bombed the Dome.

He gently took her hands and cuffed them behind her back. Then he sent a message to the squad as well as Noelle DeRicci.

Got her, was all he sent.

* * * *

Now

She talked. Of course she talked. But she only talked to Bartholomew Nyquist, who would end up a hero because of this. Not that he wanted to be.

DeRicci knew that. She knew he hated being the focus of anything. But she also knew he would do his job and do it well.

DeRicci stood in front of her floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the City of Armstrong stretching before her. Once she had seen it blackened and dark, holes remaining in the Dome and in neighborhoods from the bombing. Now the Dome had been repaired and those neighborhoods rebuilt. The scar wasn't visible, but it was there.

She had noted that as she reported the mayor's assassination to the media. The questions she got had a bit of hysteria—and it was her job, a job she felt that she did just fine—to make sure everyone remained calm.

She was calm now. She knew that she would have names, she would have people to investigate, she would be able to track this conspiracy to its source.

Not that she had the source at the moment. Ursula Palmette only knew the names of the people one rung above her. This was, as DeRicci figured, a very organized operation, and information was mostly on a need-to-know basis.

Although, Palmette had known that the zoodeh would be used to attack leaders in order to destabilize the United Domes of the Moon. Someone—or something—wanted the entire Moon in chaos, and they had nearly achieved it.

DeRicci would catch them. She had no doubt of that now. Sometimes patience was the thing that solved cases. Patience, hard work, and good people like Nyquist.

She needed to treat him better. Rudra Popova had taught her that. DeRicci had taken one look at her excellent, efficient assistant, and realized that an emotional blow could take anyone down.

And Nyquist's sudden death would be an emotional blow. DeRicci would be lost without him.

She had to tell him that—in a way that wouldn't scare him off.

She smiled, for the first time since the crisis began. She would talk to him. Later. When he was complaining about being called a hero. When he had to accept some awards and medals he wouldn't want.

He would say, I was just doing my job, Noelle.

And she would say, I know.

Because she did. She'd been through something similar and survived. So would he.

She returned to her desk to go through all of the information piling up about this investigation. She had a lot of work ahead.

But it was work she enjoyed, work she was good at.

She had a lot more leads than she'd had on the Dome bombing.

She had enough to eventually solve this case.

* * * *

Now

Nyquist stepped out of the interview room and into the narrow hallway. He leaned against the grimy wall for a brief moment before he went to get the crap coffee just inside the squad room.

Palmette's bleakness depressed him, mostly because he understood it. She was cooperating. The kind of prison, the kind of sentence, would depend on how much of her information checked out—and she knew that. She had faced her own death in Terminal 81 and realized she didn't want to die as badly as she thought she had.

But that wasn't what bothered him. He had dealt with bleak suspects before. He had dealt with people who made terrible choices for all the wrong reasons, just like Palmette. She had been a victim of a terror attack, and because no perpetrator had ever been located, she focused her considerable anger on the people who were supposed to solve the crime. Eventually that anger twisted into hatred, and that hatred into a need for action.

He understood it all.

Better than he wanted to.

Because he had felt bleak on the way to work that morning of the bombing. He had hated his job, hated the people around him, hated his life. Everything Palmette said he had felt, including the horrible, horrible frustration at doing a job that required him to act against his conscience just to make a case or to enforce a law. He got to do good things as well, but they were few and far between, and the rewards never equaled the frustrations.

He had known that.

And he had had a choice that morning: He could have walked away from that house. He could have left Alvina to die. He probably should have left her to die, considering all the trouble she caused in the cases against her, all the money she had cost the city while they tried to prosecute her. She was in prison now, but it had been a tortuous path. Better, sometimes, to take out people like her than to let them live.

He had known that, and he had saved her anyway. Because letting her die would have made him as bad as she was. No—that wasn't accurate. He wasn't crazy.

Letting her die would have made him like the people who set off that bomb.

Palmette had looked at the same options and picked a different one. And the fact that he had been a whisker away from the same choice scared the crap out of him.

He pushed away from the wall. The thought of crap made him think of the coffee, which he needed to get through this interview.

The bottom line was that he wasn't Palmette. He never would be. And the fact that he understood her only made him a more effective interrogator.

He knew that too.

He didn't like it, but he knew it.

Just like he knew that if he had let Palmette bleed out that morning, the mayor would still be alive.

But Nyquist was only going to allow himself that thought once. And he'd had it. Now he was done with it.

He couldn't predict the future, so he couldn't have made any other choice.

Besides, if Palmette had died that morning, the organizers of this attack would have found someone else to get their weapon. And Nyquist wouldn't have been able to talk to that person. He wouldn't have had an in.

And as an investigator, he knew, one in was all it took to solve a crime. No matter how complicated the crime was.

He headed to the coffee. A short break was all he needed—and then he would return.

To get his answers.

Copyright © 2011 Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

Our September issue offers an uncommonly wide variety of stories, including two unusual novelettes: one by a well-established Analog favorite; and one by a writer new to these pages and almost new to science fiction writing, but promising to attract plenty of attention. You already know you can count on Carl Frederick to come up with some of the strangest, most original ideas around, and he's certainly done it again in “Helix of Friends.” (I'll leave you to speculate on what the title means.) Gray Rinehart isn't really new to SF—he's worked for Baen Books in an editorial capacity for some time—but I believe he'd published just one story of his own before ours, a mere few months earlier. And he's managed to overcome one of my standing biases: “psi” stories were so overworked in past years that our readers tend to resist new ones unless they bring something very fresh and unique to the concept—and “Therapeutic Mathematics and the Physics of Curve Balls” does just that.

In the science fact area, we all know about the “Ring of Fire,” the band of frequent seismic activity surrounding the Pacific Ocean—but once in a while we hear disturbing references to the threat of a massively destructive earthquake in an area not normally associated with them. After all there was a dilly 200 years ago, centered near New Madrid, Missouri. Are we due for another? Richard A. Lovett takes a critical look at the prospects.

And, of course, we'll have several short stories and Part 3 of Edward M. Lerner's all too timely serial Energized.

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Science Fact: BEFORE YOU GET TO STRING THEORY
by C. W. Johnson

People ask me about string theory.

It's not surprising, given I'm a professor of nuclear physics. So my neighbor asks me. Science fiction writers ask me. Students ask me.

The questions have been spurred by recent popular books and television programs, proclaiming string theory as the best avenue to a “theory of everything.”

But a Theory of Everything isn't everything. As a scientist, I prefer process over product, and am more interested in the logic and experimental evidence behind a theory than in the final equations. I am always taken aback when I meet students who profess a desire to be String Theorists and yet exude indifference with the story behind string theory. “There's a lot of interesting physics on the road to string theory,” I tell them, but they look at me with incomprehension, or maybe pity, thinking I do not have the drive they do to be the next Einstein.

I'm not sure I can do much about my students. But maybe I can help you, O Reader, to understand the context of string theory: What happens before you get to string theory?

* * * *

Einstein and Bent Space-Time

The two great theories of mechanics—objects in motion—of the early twentieth century are relativity and quantum mechanics. These theories both overlap with, and deviate from, Newtonian mechanics.

Special relativity, of course, describes objects moving at high velocity, and deviates perceptibly from Newtonian mechanics only when the relative velocity approaches the speed of light. Special relativity is “special” because it considers only objects moving at constant velocity. To include acceleration, one needs general relativity, Einstein's crowning achievement.

The basic paradigm of general relativity is curved space-time: Gravity is not a force at all, but a warping of the fabric of the universe in the presence of mass-energy.

General relativity predicts different phenomena from Newtonian mechanics and Newtonian gravity in several important, verifiable ways: the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, bending of light by gravity, gravitational redshift, gravity waves, and so on. In fact, one can express the difference between Newtonian theory and general relativity by “parametrized post-Newtonian” theory, which allows one to dial an infinite number of theories between Newton and Einstein. The values of the parameters can be experimentally measured, and to date all the post-Newtonian parameters as measured are completely consistent with general relativity, to an accuracy as small as one part in 1020.

Given the success of this paradigm, it was natural to try to extend its reach to other forces. In the 1920s Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein discovered if they introduced an extra dimension, which had to be hidden or “compactified,” electromagnetism could be described using the same framework as general relativity. Unfortunately, unlike general relativity, Kaluza-Klein theory of electromagnetism is experimentally indistinguishable from Maxwell's equations of electrodynamics.

It is important to pause here and emphasize that physics is fundamentally an empirical, experimentally based science. Theoretical physicists like Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking get the most press; and more than other disciplines, physics uses math to guide experiment. But without experiment, there is no physics. Physicists don't believe something just because Grandma said so, but because of enormously hard work invested into careful investigation. Even basic principles such as conservation of energy have been painstakingly tested time and again, and a small cadre of physicists continue to test assumptions and principles to more and more decimal places.

General relativity and quantum mechanics both won out over Newtonian physics because they empirically describe observations better. Not only that, they suggested new experiments and predicted new and surprising phenomena.

But Kaluza-Klein theory, while appealing as a further generalization of relativity, offered none of that. With no value added and no way to distinguish which theory was right, physicists lost interest in extending the paradigm of warped space-time to other forces. Einstein kept at it until the end of his days, drifting farther and farther from the main current of physics.

* * * *

Adrift in the Quantum Sea

Although he ultimately rejected it, Einstein also helped to found quantum mechanics, and it was in this direction that more progress was made.

Quantum mechanics is the theory of the very small. (The measure of “small” is in units of action, which is momentum times distance, or energy times time. Action much greater than Planck's constant can be treated with Newton's laws, but action near or less than[1] Planck's constant must be treated quantum mechanically.) Perfected in the 1920s by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Born, and others, quantum mechanics found great success in describing the properties of atoms and nuclei.

[1 In fact, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle implies the action can never be less than Planck's constant divided by 4 p.]

But while the particles were “quantized” (meaning described by a probabilistic wavefunction), the interactions between them were not. Indeed, the potential felt by an electron was exactly the same as in Newtonian mechanics. Logically, one ought to treat the potential, the force between particles, with quantum mechanics as well. But how?

The answer was born out of a marriage between special relativity and quantum mechanics.

Schrodinger's quantum wave equation describes the motion of subatomic particles, but in it space and time are separate and unequal. Paul Dirac, a brilliant mathematical physicist so taciturn some speculated he was autistic, modified Schrodinger's equation to match the space-time symmetries of special relativity.

His resulting eponymous equation predicts that for every particle there ought to exist a particle with opposite properties. So, for example, for the negatively charged electron there should exist a matching positively charged particle. Dirac supposed this was the proton, despite the fact that a proton has two thousand times the mass of an electron, but in 1931 Carl Anderson discovered the positron in a cosmic-ray track. Eventually experiments found for every particle a matching antiparticle, as predicted by the Dirac equation.

* * * *

* * * *

FIGURE 1: Creation of a particle-antiparticle pair. (1) The Dirac Sea is filled with electrons (and other particles, not shown). (2) A photon hits an electron in the Dirac Sea, (3) knocking it out and leaving behind a hole, which we see as (4) an electron and a positron (anti-electron).

* * * *

I've simplified the description of antimatter as predicted by the Dirac equation. Subatomic particles are lazy: They tend to fall into states of lowest energy. But the peculiar mathematics of the Dirac equation predict an infinite number of negative energy states, which means any particle would keep falling to a lower and lower energy state, forever. So Dirac hypothesized the existence of a filled “sea” of particles, and as these are fermions obeying the Pauli exclusion principle, no two particles can occupy the same state.

In this picture, antimatter is not a particle, but a bubble or “hole” in the Dirac sea, the absence of a particle. What we see as matter and antimatter annihilation is nothing more than a particle falling into and filling up a hole in the Dirac sea and releasing energy. Similarly, one can create a particle-antiparticle pair by kicking an electron out of the Dirac sea and leaving behind a hole.

The upshot of Dirac's equation is that the number of particles and antiparticles is not fixed but fluid, as they are created and annihilated in an ever-changing dance.

* * * *

* * * *

FIGURE 2: Quantum picture of forces

* * * *

The mathematical tools to handle particle creation and annihilation turned out to be useful to describe quantum mechanical interactions between particles, such as electromagnetic fields, and the result is called quantum field theory. Ordinary quantum mechanics is a theory of only one, two, or three degrees of freedom, such as the x, y, z coordinates of an electron. Because quantum field theory has no fixed number of particles, and may include up to an infinite number of particles, it is the quantum mechanics of an infinite number of degrees of freedom. And yes, it is just as hard as it sounds. While one can solve exactly with pencil and paper the quantum mechanics of the hydrogen atom, for example, there are no exactly solvable quantum field theories for realistic systems.

* * * *

Nasty Infinities

The Einstein-Kaluza-Klein picture of forces is the warping of space and time. In quantum field theory, the force between two particles is not a static potential, an action at a distance, but is mediated by tossing back and forth fleeting “virtual” particles that do not exist for long. For the electromagnetic force these particles are photons.

Because quantum field theories cannot be solved exactly, one must resort to various approximation methods, usually a well-tried technique called perturbation theory. When one applies perturbation theory to quantum field theory, however, the result is almost gibberish.

The Dirac equation has pairs of particles and antiparticles continually winking in and out of existence. But whence comes the energy and momentum for these particle-antiparticle pairs? The Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows Nature to blink, so that on short time scales and short length scales particle- antiparticle pairs can take loans from the Bank of Energy and Momentum.

Nature is ultimately conservative, so after a few femtoseconds, the borrowed energy and momenta are paid back. But the mathematics of quantum field theory require accounting for all allowed energy and momenta.[2] As the length scale grows infinitely small (which it must, as the electron seems to be a point particle) the allowed loan of momentum grows infinitely large, and the answer is infinity.

[2 Quantum particles are comparison shoppers: They compulsively sample all possible scenarios, including all allowed “loans.” In the mathematics of quantum field theory, this becomes a literal sum (or integral) over allowed momenta and energies.]

During the 1940s Richard Feynman, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, and Julian Schwinger began to develop mathematical tricks for eliminating the nasty infinities. Essentially what they did was to introduce, artificially, an infinity that cancels the unwanted infinity. Mathematically you would expect that infinity minus infinity would yield any answer you cared for, and you'd be right, but Feynman et al showed how one could still extract physically meaningful results, turning gibberish into theoretical gold.

The mathematical difficulties are worth putting up with, as the quantum field theory of photons and electrons, or quantum electrodynamics (QED), makes verifiably different predictions from classical theory (unlike poor vilified Kaluza-Klein theory), including new phenomena: the Lamb shift in the hydrogen spectrum, the Casimir effect, the scattering of light by light.

In a tour de force effort physicists have calculated from first principles the magnetic dipole moment of the electron to a part in a trillion, in agreement with experiment. Despite the weirdness of the paradigm, of particles and antiparticles flicking in and out of existence, this was a great triumph of physics in the latter half of the twentieth century. Quantum field theory is an important stop on the way to string theory.

* * * *

Only One Miracle Allowed

But what about the infinities? The bothersome subtraction of infinity from infinity to get a sensible, finite result (a process called renormalization) sounds like invoking a miracle. On the other hand, science fiction writers regularly invoke miracles without causing their readers to blink: faster-than-light travel, teleportation from orbit to the surface, transferring memories into a cloned body, robot intelligences that fall in love. One's credulity is stretched only when you have too many miracles.

The problem of too many miracles in renormalization was rigorous addressed by Gerard ‘t Hooft, who showed one could cancel infinity consistently for a class of quantum field theories known as gauge field theories. By consistently I mean that one only had to introduce a single cancellation of infinity—a single miracle if you like—but that one miracle, once assumed, would forever and consistently eliminate any future infinities in the gauge field theory, much as an SF reader will accept one technological miracle as long as the rest is worked out consistently.

Describing gauge field theories in detail would take us too far afield, but in brief: Most of modern physics is built around ideas of invariance. Newton himself kicked off the idea by assuming that the laws of nature are invariant with respect to position; they apply equally to the motion of the moon around the Earth and to an apple falling to the ground. (Here he differed from Aristotle, who assumed the laws of the heavens were in fact quite different from those on Earth.) Einstein extended this concept to assuming the laws of nature are invariant with respect to relative velocity, whether constant (special) or changing (general), and it was applying this kind of invariance to quantum mechanics that yielded Dirac's equation.

Gauge theories also assume invariance, but under an abstract application of arbitrary N by N matrices. For electromagnetism, N = 1, for the weak nuclear force N = 2, and for the strong nuclear force N = 3. Not what one might dream up at first when designing a theory of forces, but for each independent matrix element one gets a force particle: the photon for electromagnetism, the Z0, W+, and W- heavy vector bosons for the weak nuclear force, and eight varieties of colorful gluons for quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong nuclear force. I'm leaving out details, of course.

While the methodology is abstract, the results are not. The weak interaction Z0, W+, and W- particles have been produced experimentally at accelerators, and we have amassed considerable evidence for gluons as well.

Gauge field theory is another important stop on the way to string theory. Not only are gauge theories renormalizable, and therefore mathematically tractable, and not only have gauge theories made experimentally verified predictions of new phenomena, they also point the way to grander things.

For example, Maxwell's equations, a unification of electric and magnetic fields, arise out of gauge theories. The quantum field theory of the weak nuclear force is actually a unification of the weak force with electromagnetism.

And so it becomes easy (if your definition of easy includes mathematics that makes calculus look like preschool) to create larger theories, for example, to combine electromagnetism and the weak and the strong nuclear forces into a single Grand Unified Theory (GUT).

* * * *

Grand But Unproven Theories

The unification of electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force was another great triumph of theory and experiment. But it was also the last.

To date, all proposed GUTs have failed, for a simple reason: None have successfully predicted new experimental results. The simplest GUT, built using five-by-five matrices, predicts protons will decay with a lifetime of the order of 1031 years. That sounds enormously long, but if you have 1031 protons (about 30 tons of water), in one year one proton should decay. Unfortunately that particular prediction has already been falsified. The proton lifetime must be greater than at least 1033 years, so theorists have gone on to larger, or more subtly built, matrices.

Physicists believe there should be some sort of theory that unifies electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces. The Nobel prize-winning question is, what is the gauge group (the size and form of the matrices), and what are the experimental evidences?

Alas, physicists are victims of the success of the Standard Model developed in the 1970s and 1980s, which accurately describes known phenomena. Conflicts between theory and experiment are the physicist's best friend, because conflicts point the way to new insights.

(This is the reason for all the hubbub about the Higgs boson expected to be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. The last unconfirmed component of the Standard Model, the Higgs is expected to be found . . . though some secretly hope it to be missing, or have some unexpected twist.)

What about gravity? We seem to have forgotten about it. And indeed, gravity languished for decades, in part because the equations of general relativity are so hard to solve. But in the 1960s, around the same time gauge field theories were being developed, gravity became a hot topic again due to new astrophysical evidence for collapsed stars and the Big Bang and new theoretical advances such as Roy Kerr's exact solution for rotating black holes.

Alas, gravity is not describable, or at least not easily describable, as a gauge field theory. Recall that in renormalizing a gauge field theory, one has only to invoke a miracle once in order to eliminate infinity, and all the rest of the calculations are finite. But if you try to apply quantum field theory to gravity, one needs an infinite number of miracles.

A hand-waving explanation is this: In quantum field theories, one quantizes not only the particles but also the fields between particles, adding a degree of freedom at every point in space and time. To have a quantum theory of gravity that is compatible with general relativity, remember that general relativity arises from a dynamic picture of space and time. So spatial and temporal coordinates themselves must be quantized, adding yet another infinity of degrees of freedom. A single mathematical miracle will not suffice.

It's enough to make one despair, and desperate enough to leap to string theory at last.

* * * *

Tangled up in String Theory

String theory arose in the quest to get around the problem of renormalizing quantum gravity. It does this in two ways.

First, the fundamental constituents of the Universe are imagined to be not zero-dimensional point particles, but tiny wriggling strings. Recall that infinity arose in quantum field theory by allowing the momentum and energy of fluctuating particle-antiparticle pairs to become arbitrarily, if temporarily, large. But strings, having finite size, no longer have completely arbitrary momenta; thanks to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, finite size roughly means finite momenta. To make the math work, however, the strings must move in 10 or 11 spatial dimensions. Shades of Kaluza and Klein! These extra dimensions must also be compactified.

Second, invoking supersymmetry (more about this in a moment) leaves the final theory free of the heartache of unwanted infinities.

But the result is so immensely abstract and complicated that after three decades of work no one knows if it is right. It is a problem both of postdiction and prediction.

Relativity and quantum mechanics can each be mathematically approximated, in a straightforward way, by Newtonian physics, and quantum field theory approximated by quantum mechanics. So, thankfully, the fact that Newton's equations work very well for most of the solar system can be gracefully shouldered by general relativity as well.

String theory does reduce to general relativity, so as a quantum theory of gravity it is satisfactory. But all the rest is hazy; it is not clear string theory reduces down cleanly to experimentally verified quantum field theories such as QED or QCD.

This is a problem.

Not only should string theory postdict well-tested theories such as QED and general relativity, it ought to predict new phenomena. For example, what about those extra dimensions? People are looking for them, but no luck yet.

The best hope is supersymmetry.

All particles fall into two classes, fermions and bosons. Supersymmetry postulates that for all known fermions, such as electrons, neutrinos, and quarks, there are superpartner bosons, called selectrons, sneutrinos, and squarks, respectively, and for every known bosons, such as photons, gluons, and the W and Z bosons, there are fermionic superpartners, called photinos, gluinos, winos and zinos. A theory is supersymmetric if at a high energy scale the theory is invariant under swapping fermions for bosons and vice versa.

In of itself supersymmetry, or SUSY, is not unreasonable. Dirac forced quantum mechanics to respect the space-time symmetry of relativity, and correctly predicted the existence of antimatter, doubling the number of known particles. SUSY predicts yet another doubling of the subatomic zoo.

Alas! We haven't seen any SUSY particles, despite decades of searches at particle accelerators. There's still wiggle room; when an accelerator experiment fails to find a SUSY particle, theorists typically shrug and suggest that if the accelerator were made just a wee bit more powerful, we would finally see SUSY.

There is one arena where we may have indirect evidence for SUSY particles: dark matter.

The last decade has seen tremendous increase in precision cosmology. From measuring the expansion of the Universe via distant supernovas, checking the isotopic composition of matter shortly after the Big Bang, and looking at the early life of the Universe through fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), we have a strong picture of its composition.

Only about 5% of the Universe is “baryonic” matter, matter made of protons and neutrons. One percent of baryonic matter is luminous—what we see in stars and galaxies—and the rest is called “baryonic dark matter” which sounds ominous, but is mostly contained in mundane intergalactic gas. Roughly 25% of the universe is non-baryonic dark matter, and the final 70% or so is the dark energy behind the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

We don't know what the non-baryonic dark matter is, although we are rapidly eliminating most possibilities. One bet for non-baryonic dark matter may be a SUSY particle, such as the photino. (Steve Baxter wrote a series of stories and a novel, Ring, wherein photino lifeforms parasitize our sun and other stars.)

But there are other problems. First and foremost is dark energy, which we understand even less than non-baryonic dark matter; “theories” of dark energy are little more than suggestions and flailing guesses.

Dark energy might even be a theory-driven phantom. Interpretations of observations of distant supernovas and fluctuations in the CMB are made in light of general relativity. As I mentioned, general relativity is supported by tremendous empirical evidence, but some theorists have proposed modifications to general relativity at large distance scales that would not violate the experimental evidence but that would change interpretations of astrophysical data, and might even eliminate dark matter and dark energy. On the other hand, these theories are considerably clunkier than general relativity, and trying to formulate a quantum mechanical version is equally nightmarish.

Still, I expect the next decade to solve the riddle of non-baryonic dark matter, either through direct detection or via production in accelerators, or both. The results will weigh heavily on string theory.

* * * *

Money Talks

String theory advocates claim it is the “only game in town,” which isn't quite true. String theory critics respond with “show me the experiment.” The sometimes open battles over string theory leave the public with the impression that string theory dominates modern physics.

Let's put this in perspective.

Particle physics is only one branch of physics; there is also condensed matter physics, atomic and molecular physics, nuclear physics, optics, biophysics, astrophysics, and cosmology. . . . Even within particle physics, experiments dominate theory both in terms of positions and funding.

To be specific, in 2009 the total budget of the National Science Foundation (NSF) was around $6.5 billion. Of that, basic physics received about $275 million, the rest going to biology, chemistry, mathematics, et cetera Of that, $140 million was apportioned to particle physics. But of that amount, only $2.3 million went to theoretical particle physics (divided up among 24 groups), with half of that to string theory. String theory, while indeed dominating theoretical particle physics, accounted for less than 0.5% of the NSF physics budget.

Hardly an eight-hundred-pound gorilla.

* * * *

The End or Just the Beginning?

String theory is found at the end of a line of reasoning that began with quantum mechanics, developed into quantum field theory, and flowered in the successes of gauge field theories, before coming to the intricate mathematical marriage of gravity and quantum mechanics. There is no guarantee this path is correct. There are still important problems to be solved even in other areas. Quantum chromodynamics is a very difficult theory to solve. Furthermore, the question of a grand unified theory wedding QCD to electroweak theory is still an open and very important question.

What we really need is not more theory but more experiments and observations. Experimental discrepancies led to the blooming of general relativity and quantum mechanics. The clues to the Next Big Theory likely lie hidden in the experimental topics of the Higgs boson, proton decay, neutrino masses, and non-baryonic dark matter.

String theory may be the dead end of the quantum-particle-exchange paradigm. Or it may indeed be the fabled theory of everything. But for physicists it's not the Final Theory that matters, but every step of the puzzling, frustrating, and thrilling journey, wherever it may lead us.

* * * *

For Further Reading:

(Greene is the best-known popularizer of string theory; Smolin and Woit are two of the most public critics of string theory.)

The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene (2000)

The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene (2005)

Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin (2002)

The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin (2007)

Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit (2007) (see also Woit's blog: www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/)

* * * *

About the Author:

C. W. Johnson obtained his Ph.D in theoretical nuclear physics at the University of Washington, where he met Alternate View columnist Professor John Cramer. Following further stints at Caltech and and Los Alamos National Laboratory, he is now a Professor of Physics somewhere in California. He is also an occasional science fiction author, including “Icarus Beach” (Analog, May 2007), and a contributor to the “Science In My Fiction” blog (crossedgenres.com/simf/).

Copyright © 2011 C. W. Johnson

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: JAK AND THE BEANSTALK
by Richard A. Lovett

Rock bottom may sometimes be way up. But from there, there's only one way. . . .

* * * *

Art By Vincent DiFate

* * * *

His parents should never have named him Jak. Not in the year of the Beanstalk. That at least was what he told everyone when they asked him why. Named for the adventure, he'd been obsessed with it from childhood, watching the crawlers go up and down and reading stories of Mallory and Shackleton and Burton and Tensing and all the others who'd dedicated their lives to going places people weren't supposed to go.

It was impossible, everyone said. It would take a lifetime.

No, he replied. Only part of one.

How big a part was the question. The top of the Beanstalk, where they launched the Mars shuttles, was 65,000 kilometers up. But with the centrifugal gees, that was equivalent to going up one side of a mountain and down the other. It was enough simply to go to High-Base Station. Geostationary orbit, a mere 35,786 kilometers.

How long would it take to climb 35,786 kilometers? A lifetime for sure, if you had to do it like some kind of space fly, from handhold to handhold. Probably still a lifetime if you had to haul yourself up an endless ladder, like the radio tower he'd done in sixth grade. Eight hundred feet of you-slip-you-die, followed by an evening of police threatening him with arrest once he got back down. Luckily, all kids that age do weird things. And who, he asked, could resist a dare? They'd never asked who dared him, so he'd never had to make up a name other than his own. He merely promised never to do it again, mowed a summer's worth of lawns to pay the fine they'd levied on his parents, and didn't bother to say that the “it” covered by his promise was merely the tower. Climbing other things? They really shouldn't have named him Jak.

Still, the Beanstalk didn't become a real possibility until he learned that only the first three kilometers would be hand-over-hand. Above that, there were stairs.

They'd been put in during construction, as emergency escape routes in case something went wrong with a construction crawler. In the history of the Stalk, only two crawlers had ever broken down and both had been repaired within hours, but early on, it had all been experimental technology. Stranded workers would be easier to rescue at the supply docks used to deliver materials for each new segment, and stairs were the quickest way to reach them.

No longer needed, and forgotten by all but the deepest web searches, the stairs remained: part of the mass-balance equations, difficult to remove even if you wanted to. Better yet, there were emergency shelters at each supply dock. Every five kilometers, capable of holding eight—though Jak had been in places like that, on a practice trek in Iceland, and knew that “capable of holding eight” meant packed like lutefisk in a barrel. Even for one person, they'd be cozy.

Still, 35,786 kilometers is a lot of stairs. At five kilometers a day—the equivalent of climbing the Matterhorn every day . . . from below sea level—it's a little over seven thousand days. Not a lifetime, but a goodly fraction of one.

Then he read about the race up the Empire State Building. One-fifth of a mile vertically, and the winners got to the observation deck in ten minutes. At that pace, you could do five kilometers in two and a half hours. Not that this would be possible, but surely you could go one-third as fast, or close to it. That would allow ten kilometers in a not-unreasonable day, especially if he went on a twenty-five or thirty-hour rotation.

He was now down to less than a tenth of a lifespan. Not much more than a few round trips to Mars. Shuttle pilots routinely spent that much of their lives drifting between planets.

In fact, he realized, it was even easier than that. Climbing, gravity dropped. Rapidly enough that by the time you reached 6,400 kilometers, you'd be down to one-quarter gee. An effort that would get ten kilometers down low would now net forty. Not to mention that centrifugal force was also working in your favor, as the Earth's spin twirled the Beanstalk like a giant ball on a string. Which was why, once you reached High-Base Station, you were in zero gee, and why, even farther out, you reached the point where the Mars shuttles were flung into interplanetary space. I bet High-Base Station can be done in two years, he thought.

* * * *

It's amazingly easy to whip your body into condition to climb 35,786 kilometers. Easier, in fact, than training to race up the Empire State Building. For the most part, it's the type of expedition on which you can get in shape as you go. So what, if for the first few weeks you're still toughening up? You might as well be climbing while you do it.

What does take time is figuring out how to get permission.

It would have helped if Jak were a famous mountaineer, with death-defying ascents in the Himalayas, Andes, or Transantarctics. But he was a rather ordinary guy with a not-so- ordinary obsession. So he started the old-fashioned way, making the circuit of book publishers and equipment manufacturers, trying to convince them that if they could just find it in their hearts to keep him alive for two years—three tops—it would be worth their while. Then it would be their problem to wrangle permission from the Beanstalk folks.

It didn't work. If a publisher answered at all, it was on the order of, “Do the climb, then talk to us.” The unspoken subtext: You'll never make it. In a week, a month, a year, you'll be hitching down on a crawler. Even if it's possible, you don't have what it takes.

The logistics were equally daunting. A sedentary human needs about five kilos of food, water, and oxygen a day. An active one might need twice as much. Multiply that by years, and you were talking tonnes. He was going to need equipment drops, and lots of them. With a sponsor, it would have been easy. Just send a few kilos up each week and leave them at the supply docks. Without, it was not only going to cost a fortune, but there'd be nobody on the ground to make sure everything got done on schedule.

Thinking of the docks, though, got him thinking again about the shelters. Beanstalk Corporation really had had an exemplary safety record. Most of the shelters had never been used, must still be fully stocked. For eight people. For up to a month. Not only would there be food, water, canned air, but there would be suit-repair kits, medical supplies, and other essentials. The only thing missing would be wine to go with his dinners. And possibly reading material, but that just meant ensuring his reader was stocked before he left home. War and Peace. For once he'd have the time to give it a go.

Of course, Jak was going to have to “borrow” the supplies. He supposed he should feel guilty, but the reality was that if nobody had used them yet, nobody was ever likely to. Not to mention that there was just one of him, passing through. A mouse could make a bigger dent in any given cache. Jak the space-mouse. He could live with that.

A bigger problem was that he was going to need some specialized equipment and was going to have to buy it himself. He was also going to have to get access to the Beanstalk . . . and far enough up before they caught him that he'd have the media on his side when they did.

He decided to work on the equipment problem first.

In college, he sublet his apartment. All but the closet. For four years, he slept, studied, ate, and—to the extent anyone wanted anything to do with him—entertained girlfriends in a walk-in closet. People thought him odd.

Fame, fortune, and friends could come later. He wondered which actor would play him, when the book became a vid. Some up-and-coming stud, he decided. Though that would mean the guy would need a love interest, which meant there'd be a girl climbing with him, or maybe marooned on a crawler, held hostage by terrorists. A beautiful girl, in an impossibly shapely spacesuit, almost-but-not-quite transparent. Something to tempt even a guy who'd spent his life living in a closet. Tempt him into revealing the secrets of . . .

He woke with a start. He wasn't doing this for fame, fortune, or friends. Okay, a girl would be nice. But the real reason was Mallory's. Because it is there. Because it could be done . . . maybe . . . Because nobody before had even tried.

Because if he didn't try, he'd always regret it.

Vacuum suits could be had for a few thousand dollars. But the dream of the shapely vid-girl told him what he really needed: a Mars-certified skinsuit—tight-fitting but flexible, puncture-proof and radiation-resistant, but light. Four years of living in a closet only saved up a quarter of what one of those would cost. He needed a job.

* * * *

Starting college, he'd wondered what would be the best major. Space-elevator climbing wasn't in the catalog. Physical education could help build needed skills. But he also had to have access.

Eventually he decided to put all of his eggs in one basket. He double-majored in criminology and Spanish literature, hoping he wouldn't look too obvious when he tried to get a job with Beanstalk security, in Ecuador.

His only mistake turned out to be doing it too well.

“Why aren't you applying to a major police force?” the interviewer asked. “Or the FBI?”

Jak opted for partial honesty. “It's the closest I'll get to Mars.”

The interviewer laughed, but Jak got the job. “You'd be surprised at the number of our people who've actually pulled stakes and gone out,” he said. “If you watch expenses, you could save enough in five or ten years.”

* * * *

Guard service didn't actually pay all that badly. And if you were trying to save money, it was easy to live a monastic existence. He didn't even need to hide his more exotic purchases. Much of it was stuff he'd have needed for emigration to Mars.

When Jak was discovering his dream, Beanstalk security had been intense. As the most expensive structure on the planet, the Stalk was an obvious target. But decades passed, and after a few poorly organized terrorist plots, nothing new had happened.

Untested security is weak security. Within months, Jak found a dozen loopholes. Partly, it was because security wasn't designed to keep people from climbing the Stalk; it was designed to keep them from destroying it.

For 35,786 kilometers, the Stalk was shaped like an elongated carrot, thinning as it descended. The central shaft—which held the framework used by the crawlers—came all the way down. But three kilometers above the Ecuadorian plain, right at the base of the stairs, the carrot split into dozens of rootlet-like tethers fanning over an area half the size of Manhattan. Any of these offered a route up . . . and most were lightly guarded.

Too bad they didn't have stairs.

* * * *

It took Jak a year to figure out how to get up to the start of the stairway. The central shaft was the shortest route, but he wouldn't get fifty meters without being spotted. Not to mention that it was made of reinforced nanospun filament. Strong, and smooth as silk. The only way up was suction cups, and while those might work low down, they weren't going to work when the air pressure thinned. Plus, 3,000 meters on suction cups was one hell of a fly-climb. He wasn't sure anyone had the strength to do it. He certainly didn't.

That left the perimeter cables. Their purpose was to ensure that no single event—airplane crash, earthquake, bomb, world-record lightning strike—could take out the entire stalk. Access was easy. Getting up? That was a different matter.

The first problem was that they were small enough to be distinctly curved. Even if he was willing to risk suction cups, the curvature would probably break the suction even before he ran out of air pressure. Hello, quick return to Earth.

Worse, they rose at a slant. The only other option he could think of, tree-climbing spikes, would not only damage the cable (if they worked at all), he'd wind up underneath, like a man inching across a gorge. It would be unbelievably awkward. He'd still be dangling there, nowhere close to his goal, when dawn came and some trigger-happy idiot spotted him.

What he needed was a balloon. A good one could easily go high enough. But to plot a trajectory that went close enough to the stairs that he could hop onto them? Yeah, right. Not to mention that balloons and all the crap that went with them are big, bulky, and stood out on radar like giant what-the-hell signals.

When the insight came, it was one of those ideas that was unthought-of one moment, full-blown the next. He was sitting on his apartment deck in a lawn chair (no closets now, when it was important to act normal), staring at the distant cable and pondering his problem over a pack of Bolivian pilsner. And then he had it.

It was the beer that did it. And the lawn chair. There'd been this guy who'd secured Internet immortality by trying to fly a lawn chair with a bevy of helium balloons. Jak had no idea if he'd made it aloft. Or even really existed, for that matter. What mattered was that Jak realized he didn't need a balloon big enough to lift a gondola. All he needed was to lift himself.

Nor did he need to worry about piloting the balloon to a pinpoint rendezvous. He could loop a rope around the cable and let the cable guide him.

In the morning, sober, the idea still looked good, though he'd need hydrogen, not helium: He wanted every bit of lift he could get. And while the balloon would still be a radar target, he could make it long and skinny, then tether both its upper and lower ends so it never extended far from the cable. Even if someone noticed the bulge sliding along the cable like a snake's dinner, he'd probably just think it some oddball radar echo.

Hell, he thought. It might work.

Or kill him.

He'd know which, soon enough.

* * * *

When the big day came, it was just a day. Or an evening, to be precise.

He'd been ready for weeks, but they'd moved him first to day shift, then graveyard. He might have been able to make it work on graveyard, but swing was better. Yes, he'd have to wait for it to get dark, and by shift change they'd know he was missing. But dawn would still be hours away, and so long as he was high enough not to be spotted by accident, there was no reason for them to be shining spotlights upward. Especially if he left an empty bottle of tequila somewhere easy to find, like the seat of his truck. Or better, the remnants of a twelve-pack of beer. Leave the car door open, and they'd figure he'd staggered off to piss and was passed out somewhere. With luck, they'd make a cursory search, shrug, and figure they'd fire his ass in the morning.

Unfortunately, guard assignments were posted on-shift, and were pretty much random. Probably someone's idea of how to keep baddies from bribing guards. If you didn't know where your pet guard was going to be, the theory seemed to be, it would be harder to coordinate an attack.

Nor were the balloon and spacesuit things he could carry to work. He had to stash them near a suitable cable—something he could only do if he was the only guard assigned to the vicinity—then wait until he rotated back to the same area. He was lucky it was weeks, rather than months.

If he'd had a life, he supposed he might have had misgivings. As it was, he just waited. When it finally happened, the evening was as ordinary as could ever be hoped for. No windstorms, no super-bright full moon. In fact, the moon was a waning crescent, rising so late that if he was still low enough to be seen by its languid glow, he wasn't going to make the stairs by daylight, anyway.

* * * *

It began without a hitch. He'd gone out in the desert alone several times on days off and practiced inflating the balloon. He knew exactly how to clip into it; had practiced, tethered to the ground, adding and bleeding off hydrogen to control his lift. He'd run the calculations a hundred times to make sure he really did have enough lift—and enough hydrogen. The only thing he'd not really thought of was that the damn balloon wanted to swing around to the top of the cable, while he himself tended to dangle below it. This caused his sling to bind, slowing his ascent, especially as thinning air reduced his lift.

The solution, once he figured it out, was simple but tedious. One of the things he'd brought with him was a climbing harness, plus every type of webbing that seemed even potentially useful—the type of stuff he could always discard if he didn't need it. Now, he fished a piece of webbing out of his pack, tossed it over the cable, and (after a half-dozen botched attempts) snagged the loose end as it fell back. With the webbing secure in both hands, he could now brace his legs on the cable, yank his upper body toward it, and progress upward in a series of upside-down hops. It really was like tree climbing but without the spikes.

It was also grueling.

The first few times, he tried to measure his progress with each lurch, but in the dark it was hard to do. All he really knew was that he had a long way to go. Nothing to do about that.

One of the things he'd not brought was an altimeter. Even if it only weighed an ounce or two, it was useless weight. He'd either make it before dawn . . . or not.

* * * *

He did have a watch. Shortly before midnight he saw his replacement's headlights track across the desert toward the station where he'd left his car. He wondered who it was. Whoever, he or she must have quickly found the twelve-pack because shortly after the headlights shut off, there was a waving beam of light that could only be a flashlight, off on the beer trail.

Another thing Jak had brought was his security-guard radio, figuring the time might come when he'd need to communicate. He'd even rigged an adaptor, so he could use it via his suit's short-range com. But there was no percentage in switching it on now. Whatever they were saying about him would be interesting but not useful. And the battery held limited charge. If something went wrong, he might need it for rescue.

But nothing went wrong. The biggest hitch was one he'd anticipated: getting from the cable to the ladder, once he reached it.

The problem was that the top of the balloon would stop when it hit the central cable, leaving him an impossible balloon-length away. But with a yank on a special rope, a hundred meters before he reached the junction, he released the tether holding the top of the balloon to the cable. The top swung upward—a nasty radar target but hopefully not all that noticeable this close to the center—and then, with a few more lurch-hops, he was close enough to the nearest crawler-track that he could almost touch it.

At that moment, a passing crawler could have sliced a giant rip in his balloon and ended his quest in a hurry. But the chances of that were slim, and he'd been watching for lights all night and none were close. He hop-walked closer and closer to the central cable, until he was close enough to throw a strap of webbing over a convenient railing. It took a dozen attempts, but eventually he snagged it, and a minute later he was close enough to actually grab the ladder in spacesuited hands. A few seconds after that, he'd swarmed across the rail and the balloon was a rapidly deflating piece of fabric, blowing away in the wind.

Jak was officially on the Beanstalk.

Somewhere above was the first emergency shelter. Earth was a dim blur. Space beckoned.

* * * *

The next few days were like a tree in a forest. If nobody hears/sees you fall/climb . . . ?

At first, once he'd reached the stairs and knew he no longer needed his radio for emergencies, he monitored it continually. But if anyone ever talked about him, it must have been after he'd reached the first shelter and collapsed onto a bunk, without the energy even to strip off his suit. A mistake, he realized when he woke. Skinsuits were designed for long-term use, but that didn't mean you wouldn't be longing for the breath of air against skin.

It didn't help that his entire body hurt. All of those arm-jerking hops, then five kilometers of stairs . . . He'd barely had the energy to pressurize the shelter and twist off his helmet. Even then, he forgot to check the ambient temperature, so the first breath made him gasp in shock. Higher up, the insulation assured that the interiors would be at least semi-temperate: a mix of baking in the Sun and radiating into vacuum. But here, at the edge of the stratosphere, the temperature was lowered by the outside air, an arctic fifty or sixty degrees below zero.

Luckily, the inside wasn't that cold. But it was cold enough. One breath and he put his helmet back on. Then he fell asleep in it, adding a crick in the neck to his woes come morning. But he'd started his dream, and gotten away with nobody the wiser. Was it only because he was so tired that he wasn't more elated?

* * * *

From the time he'd hit the ladder, the climb had been a blur. Back-and-forth, back and forth, back and forth. Nine steps per flight, twenty centimeters per step, the tiniest of landings between flights. Hide on the far side of the cable when a crawler sped by, just in case someone was looking out a window.

Higher up, the cable would widen and the flights would lengthen. Here it was a little less than two meters’ climb per flight. A bit more than 555 flights per kilometer. Nearly 2,800 flights—25,000 steps—to the first shelter. Stupidly, he'd calculated all of that, years ago. More stupidly, he now couldn't resist counting steps, even when he was so tired he was almost ready just to tie himself to a railing with his climbing harness and fall asleep, right there.

The webbing was the only piece of climbing gear he'd retained: light and potentially useful. Or not. Anything he didn't need he could always jettison. Or leave behind in an emergency shelter. He was suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the irrevocability of every decision. Especially since nobody seemed to know he was here. Even the radio would eventually go overboard, once he'd gotten beyond the range of his one-time colleagues.

The lack of radio speculation surprised him. Perhaps his loner routine had been better than he'd realized. It was disconcerting that he'd trodden so lightly in the friends department that nobody was making a serious search, that drunk-and-wandered-off seemed to have satisfied so easily. He'd thought he'd be up here laughing, but instead, he felt abandoned.

* * * *

Day two he spent in the shelter, pretending to recover. Day three was another 25,000 steps, each more memorable—in a bad way—than the one before. Day four, more recovery, although this time he remembered to preheat the shelter. Maybe train-as-you-go wasn't as good an idea as he'd initially thought. Though it would have helped if the shelters weren't an inexorable 25,000 steps apart.

By day five, though, he was coming out the other side of it. By day seven, he was wondering if he could make 50,000 steps. On day ten, he tried it.

By now, he was so high the sky was somewhere between indigo and midnight, and the Earth was starting to curve away beneath him. The border of space, he'd once read, was 100 kilometers. Soon enough he'd be beyond that, higher than the first orbiting astronauts, higher than the first space station.

Less than three-tenths of a percent of the way to his goal.

And still there was no hue and cry. He'd made it. He could radio down and tell them he'd climbed into space, and nobody would try to stop him. He'd be a celebrity and the hot young stud with the nubile babe would play him in the movie.

He didn't place the call.

* * * *

He measured progress by shifts in routine. One day, nine steps per flight became ten. Shelters were now an even 2,500 flights apart.

Existence was measured in effort. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. Life stripped to basics. Should he do one shelter, or go for two?

Once a week he took a Sabbath and held his progress to no more than a single shelter. Not that he'd ever been religious, but “on the seventh day he rested” wasn't a bad idea.

Another time he got his first solar storm. Lots of warning: Keeping his SatLink charged and tuned to the proper bands had been a priority because he knew solar flares would be an increasing danger. When the alarm sounded, he knew what to do: scoot to the nearest shelter above—always climb, never descend—and figure that the next day would be a Sabbath, regardless of the calendar.

At first, he was thrilled to be alone and moving. He'd always been alone, but seldom moving. Dreaming of moving, but not doing it. Now he was doing both, and the dream trumped all doubts . . . except when, alone in a dark shelter, in his sleep, he saw the questing flashlight. Wandering briefly, then winking out. Forever.

Kilometer followed kilometer until one day he pushed from two shelters to three. Too far. Gravity had to be dropping, but not by that much. Not yet. The next day was an unscheduled Sabbath.

Every shelter was the same as the one before. They'd made these things from a cookie-cutter mold because nobody had ever been expected to see more than one. Even the supplies were laid out in the same inexorable pattern. Freeze-dried bean curd here. Insta-coffee beside it. Why? Because the packets nestled nicely and took minimum space. Powdered omelet in a cabinet on the opposite side of the room. By the end of a month, he was ready to kill for variety. Not that there was anyone to kill but himself.

He wondered how a truly suicidal person might succumb. Step onto the handrail . . . leap . . . and have a very, very long time to contemplate the finality of your decision? He had never, ever been suicidal—never would be, he was sure—but the idea made him shudder. Once, when he'd made the mistake of telling a college classmate about the radio tower, the never-truly-was girlfriend had panicked just as the story should have been getting interesting. “Stop!” she'd said. “When I'm on a high point, I have this urge to throw myself off.”

She'd spent one night with him in his closet, never came back. “You're just too weird,” she'd said. But it wasn't the closet she was talking about, it was climbing.

Later, Jak looked it up on the web, but if there was a name for her reaction, he couldn't find it. “Normal” was what everyone said.

Luckily, Jak wasn't normal. No weird urges, no sudden acrophobia, no vertigo. The view was airy (well, that wasn't technically the right term, but the idea was the same) and the reality was that a simple misstep wasn't going to send him on a meteoric plunge back to Ecuador, or wherever the rotational ballistics would end up. For that, you actually had to jump. The rail was there for a reason. It was protection plenty, which meant he was perfectly safe zoning out on the rhythm. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn.

* * * *

Somewhere along the line, he quit listening as much to the radio and began fantasizing his reception at High-Base Station. “Who the hell are you?” they'd ask. Then someone would do a web search on his name, dig up a report of the car with the case of beer on the seat. He'd be an overnight sensation.

But the farther he climbed, the more he wondered if that was what he wanted. Climbing had always been a solo obsession. The book, vid, babe-magnet movie star had merely been means to the end, not the end itself.

But if so, what really was the intended end?

* * * *

Time passed. Stairs mounted. He'd lost count, and there was no way to gauge progress other than by the numbers on the shelter doors. Counting from High-Base down. The first had been 14,311. Odd numbers only. Evens must go the other way, toward the Mars launch platform. An incomprehensibly big number. A thousand kilometers of climbing, and it would decrease by only 400. Go the equivalent of all the way across the U.S.—vertically—and it would decrease by about 2,000. Seven Americas. One-and-a half times around the globe. Vertically.

Years ago, he'd run a marathon. Not because he liked to run; actually he detested the incessant pounding, the effort that was always higher than his comfort zone. But what he'd learned was invaluable. You don't think about the finish. You think about the next road crossing. The next telephone pole. The next crack in the pavement. Whatever it took. Until eventually you arrived.

He willed himself to forget what the numbers meant, to exist only in the here and now. Where the will-be didn't matter, nor the then-and-was. Where the only realities were stairs and shelters. And the endless, always-the-same meal choices. Should tonight be pasta primavera with cheese and broccoli? Chili mac and beans with a side of carrots, or twenty-eight others, always the same.

Religiously, he cycled through them, making sure to take two multivitamins a day in case he was missing some essential nutrient. Though increasingly, it was hard to remember what he'd eaten the night before, and the choices became more and more random. Or perhaps not random. Perhaps his subconscious was craving things his conscious mind didn't recognize.

* * * *

The loneliness didn't bother him. He was used to that. As the atmosphere dropped away, he had stars, even beneath the actinic light of the noonday Sun. Stars above, stars to the sides, stars to the blurry blue limb of the Earth, where space met atmosphere until the interstellar void dimmed, twinkled, vanished.

There was also the Earth. At first, it had been familiar; the world as viewed from an airplane. Then came the weather-satellite globe, followed by the giant blue-and-white marble that had awed the earliest astronauts.

He thought he'd never tire of it. But the view never changed. Below was Ecuador. On one horizon, the edge of Africa. On the other, nothing but the endless Pacific. No matter how high he climbed, the scene remained the same as every person he'd chosen not to know inexorably receded.

And still, nobody missed him. He had walked the Earth for twenty-seven-years, but left no lasting footprints. They thought he'd wandered off into the desert, drunk. Tripped or had a heart attack, got bitten by a snake. And nobody had cared enough to mount even a half-hearted search. When he got to High-Base Station . . . then he'd show them. Though the farther he climbed, the less clear he was about exactly what he'd show them.

He no longer knew why he climbed. He only knew it wasn't for fame. Nor the hot babe at the end of the rainbow. Once, he'd thought he was climbing because he had to, because he'd been born to it. Because it was who he was—or who he'd made himself to be. Now he climbed because up was the way out. Until he finished the up, he wouldn't know why he'd never been happy with the down.

* * * *

He'd never been much of a newshound. If you're planning on dropping off the planet for a couple of years—or climbing off, as the case might be—you're not the type to make current events a priority. But now, the only other choices were to watch the unchanging globe below, cycle through the same repetitive thoughts, listen to music, count stairs, or try to figure out which was the best voice for his book reader: the sexy contralto that made him wonder about the things he'd passed up, or the cultured Shakespearean actor . . . who also made him think of the life he'd chosen not to have.

Initially, he rotated through these as religiously as his meals. But his life was now one repetition after another. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. Eleven per flight, now. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. Rhythms superimposed on rhythms. Flights, shelters, days, meals, Sabbaths.

And so, eventually, he tuned into the WebNet.

The talk sites had no rhythm. Sometimes it was soccer. Sometimes pop singer du jour, or a celebrity divorce involving twelve poodles and a duck. Sometimes it was South American politics. Increasingly so, in fact.

Argentina and Chile had never really liked each other. On at least three occasions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they'd nearly come to war. But for generations, nothing much had come of it. Then, suddenly, each president was accusing the other of secretly converting her country's fast-breeder nuclear plants into weapons facilities.

As far as Jak could tell there was no real evidence, but both countries had the technology to crank out bombs, and that type of distrust is mind-poison. Borders closed. Embargoes were threatened. Soon others were involved. Iran/Iraq. India/Pakistan. India/China. Old enemies and new rivals. Until, eventually, Jak got tired of it. There wasn't any news, just accusations, and he really hadn't been the type to make current events a priority. He went back to comparing contraltos and Shakespeareans.

* * * *

If he'd been climbing when it happened, he might have lost his vision. As it was, he was fixing dinner when the alarm went off.

The shelter's sensors interpreted it as a solar storm, but there'd been no warning, and previously, even the most minor flare had been predicted at least twenty hours in advance.

Then, unlike a storm, the radiation spiked and faded, spiked and faded, dozens of times in a few hours. When he risked a peek outside, it took him a moment to realize that the direction he needed to look was down.

Earth was ablaze. Giant pyres of smoke rose from both coasts of South America. Rio? Santiago? One of the reasons he'd dropped off the WebNet was because the signals were becoming increasingly noisy, never intended to be beamed this far into space. But when he tuned back in, he found more static than the distance alone accounted for. News reports were scattered, horrifying. Karachi had been hit. Mumbai. Shanghai too. The Five-Hour War, they were calling it. Five hours that had killed 100 million. Maybe a quarter billion.

Nobody knew who started it. A bomb went off somewhere, and tit followed tat until, miraculously, it had stopped. Now, a terrorist group called Return to Eden was claiming credit. Too many people, too much technology, they claimed. Nothing like a bit of nuclear winter to return the world to basics.

A real terrorist group or a scapegoat invented by desperate leaders as a way to halt the war? Who knew? At one level, who cared? It had worked. The world wasn't dead. But it was severely wounded.

Jak took a Sabbath, though it didn't feel restful. Then five more, just in case. He could stay in the shelter for the better part of a year if he wanted. But movement was his life. Movement was all he had. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Twelve now. Turn.

Sometime in the past weeks Earth had changed from a spreading vista into a globe. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. A globe that was visibly smaller than two months before. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. A globe that was still burning. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. No longer blue and white. More and more, it was a curdled brown, as smoke circled the lower atmosphere and dark haze spread higher.

It was a globe that could no longer afford a Beanstalk. There hadn't been a crawler in weeks.

* * * *

One day, the Beanstalk trembled.

Looking down, Jak saw long, shallow waves rippling from below, like someone shaking the distant end of a rope. Return to Eden was real. Someone had attacked the Beanstalk. The tethers were no longer attached.

* * * *

When the worst happens, there is often one good thing: Choices become simple.

Hundreds of millions had died—hundreds of millions more soon would. Some would be people Jak had met, but none would be people he knew. Adrift in space, he was no more adrift than he'd been at home.

Meanwhile, the Beanstalk wasn't going anywhere. Even without its tether, the giant carrot would continue dangling until random forces slowly pushed it off station. Other than the ripples, which damped out soon enough, nothing in Jak's life had really changed. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. It was only the Earth that had changed. Step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step-step. Turn. Thirteen steps now. Rhythm followed rhythm. Gravity fell.

On a hiking trip, practicing his solo skills, Jak once watched fire devour the sagebrush of a Nevada valley. In daytime it seemed nothing more than a giant smudge, blotting out the horizon. But at night, it came alive with an evil intensity, as flames lit the smoke like the mouth of Hell. It had been all he could do not to flee, even though he was on a 3,000-meter ridgeline, kilometers away.

Here, for weeks after the bombs, it was the same. In the day, smoke blotted out the Andes, wafted thick across the Pacific. Even where ocean and shore were still visible, the blue-and-white marble had become dingy, sullied.

But at night it was Nevada revisited. He was protected from the hellmouth by thousands of kilometers of vacuum, but it was impossible not to imagine the heat, searing through his skinsuit, blistering him, melting holes—demanding that he, he who had never done anything useful in his life, should not be the only one to escape humanity's fate.

Nights in space were getting shorter as the Earth receded, blocking less and less of the Sun's path. But below, nights were as long as ever. Twelve hours in the tropics, where the worst of the fires raged. Two or three hours’ more rest than Jak really needed. But there was no need to rush to the top. Climbing was his life. Getting there had become meaningless.

When possible he climbed in daytime.

* * * *

The WebNet no longer chattered. It whined, railed. Panicked, showed surprising bravery. But more and more, the voices settled into the serious business of survival. The consensus was ten years of crop failures, a generation before the atmosphere would fully clear. Then, voices started dropping out. People who thought they'd found survival tricks weren't sharing.

Eventually, Jak shut off his receiver for the last time. The war had stopped before humanity exterminated itself, but there would be nothing but bare-bones survival down there for many years. He himself had 35,781 kilometers of Beanstalk, with a month's supply of food, air, and water every five kilometers. Enough for hundreds of lifetimes, so long as he kept moving. He chucked the WebNet receiver overboard. A symbolic gesture—the thing was merely a chip, weighing a few grams—but also a watershed.

* * * *

Monotony was now the enemy. But it was also his friend. Day, rhythm. Day, rhythm. He was climbing twenty kilometers a day. Then twenty-five, thirty. Sabbaths became total rest days. He had no idea what reception awaited him at the top, so there was no need to hurry. If they didn't want him, he could turn around and descend as far as he dared . . . then climb back, years later, to see if they'd changed their minds.

Australian aboriginals had once gone on walkabout. Jak was on climbabout. Once, his life had been focused on a destination. Now, the destination was merely a holdover, a substitute for . . . he had no idea what. There were only two directions in which to go. Long ago, he'd picked one. Might as well keep going.

* * * *

He had no idea how long it took him to reach High-Base Station. Once he'd dumped the WebNet chip he'd quit counting anything but his own rhythms, each of which was sufficient, ultimately, unto itself. Fifty weeks? One hundred? Two hundred? The body ages—enough that he'd have known if it had been five hundred. But in space, there are no seasons, no years. Lunar months, if he'd wanted to count them, but he preferred just to ogle the Moon and not track its progress. Living step-by-step, week-by-week, that was enough. Especially when the Earth, below, was an unchanging smog-ball. The fires had long burned out, but the haze was now uniformly dispersed, the nuclear autumn deep into November. Fifty weeks or a thousand . . . even if he could get down, there was nothing for him there.

Not that there ever really had been. Jak had sacrificed his life for the climb. Ironically, it had made him one of the few for whom food and shelter would never be a problem until he got hurt or climbed until he was so old that even the lowest-gee kilometers were beyond his range.

One day, he noticed a swelling beyond the visible edge of the cable, above. He was up to thirty steps per flight now, soon to become thirty-one. High-Base Station was nearing, home to nearly a thousand people. He wondered if they'd welcome a thousand and one. He wondered if he'd remember how to deal with others, how to live with their rhythms.

He nearly turned around. What stopped him wasn't that there was nothing for him below. It was that he'd never given anything a chance to hold him. All those years of nothing were themselves a rhythm that so far had extended for only a single, slow beat.

* * * *

If Jak had been more of a people person, he might have spent more time rehearsing his entry. As it was, his arrival was initially anticlimactic.

For months, the flights had become longer and longer, not because the cable was widening, but because he was now in microgravity. Stairs were no longer necessary. Rather, each “flight” was simply a wire tube through which a single, well-aimed leap could launch him all the way to the next platform, a hundred meters above. Aim was more important than muscle—though when needed, the wire made mid-flight corrections easy enough. By the end, five kilometers was a mere fifty leaps . . . though the spacing between emergency shelters remained metronomic. Perhaps, given the overall cost of the Beanstalk, they were trivial. Or perhaps the designers figured that the average person would have enough trouble in near-zero gravity that five kilometers was still a long way.

Jak was no longer average. By the end, he was flying. Leap-float. Leap-float. An occasional brush against the wire mesh when he lost concentration. Fifty kilometers a day. A hundred if he felt like it.

And then, suddenly, he ran out of up.

Or, more precisely, he ran into an airlock.

It actually took him a moment to figure out what to do. He was used to doors, but they had always been to the side. This one was above. He nearly bounced off it, back down the screened-in tube from which he'd ascended, before he grabbed a handhold.

He had arrived.

For a long moment, he looked around. Earth below. Cable stretching toward it, vanishing into near-infinity. No Sun, even though it was high noon on the globe below him. For the first time in . . . how long? . . . the Sun was behind something not-Earth, not-cable. Something big, whose outer edges were sedately rotating, though the portion above him was still. Something dark and foreboding? No. Just . . . new. It had been a long time since he'd allowed himself to think about new.

Five crawler bays were arrayed around the non-rotating core. Weren't pentagons bad things? And there weren't any crawlers. He wondered where they were. Up, down, or inside? He'd studied many things about the Stalk, but never a plan of High-Base Station. Always, it had been getting there that was the dream. Now that he'd arrived, he felt vaguely diminished. The rhythms had ended and he had no real idea what to do next.

Space stations don't lock their doors. There was a button next to the airlock. A dozen languages announced its purpose, but Jak didn't need them. Suddenly nervous, he pushed it.

* * * *

What he found was a storeroom. Cavernous by the standards of any room he'd seen since leaving Earth, though probably only twenty-five meters across. It was like being inside a giant tuna can. Crates were stacked in loose array, tied down by flimsy webbing. No need for anything sturdier, here at the zero-point.

Most of the crates were marked “commissary,” and for a moment, Jak felt a pang sharper than any he'd felt watching the Earth burn. His grandmother had kept canned food in her basement, rigorously alphabetized rather than grouped by category, with tuna next to tomatoes, chili intruding between corn and beans. Food for months, “in case of an earthquake,” even though she'd lived in Indiana.

He wondered what had happened to all that food, after her death, decades ago. Maybe it was still there, waiting for some desperate gleaner to find it.

This treasure, however, was already well harvested. Most of the crates were open, empty.

Ahead, a makeshift aisle stretched toward a door, big enough to admit the largest crates. The obvious place to go, but for a long moment, Jak froze. He was used to zero-gee leaps; hitting a target from twenty-five meters was nothing. But always before he'd had the safety of screen mesh. For 35,781 kilometers, he'd lived with the reality of an enormous fall, should he somehow become detached from the Beanstalk. Now, the only way to get anywhere was by detaching . . . and it took several seconds to convince his hindbrain that the farthest he could possibly go was the most distant wall.

Finally, he took a deep breath and shoved off, harder than needed, wanting to minimize transit time through that unprotected space.

And immediately, almost as though on cue, someone glided from behind a crate. Jak tried to yell a warning, but he was still wearing his helmet, and the sound would have been muffled, incomprehensible. Still, at the last moment, she looked up.

Asian, petite, black hair pulled up and held with something that looked like chopsticks. Mouth forming into an “O.” No way for either to change course until he of the greater mass bowled her into a tangle of arms and legs.

She was screaming now, loud enough he could sort of hear it, pummeling his suit with her fists. A kick landed in his chest, just as he was trying to shove her away, and they recoiled, spinning, until he hit a crate and bounced back, flailing as though in a slow-motion nightmare.

She'd been luckier and had grabbed a strap. She yanked one of the chopstick things out of her hair, brandishing it like a knife. Her mouth was working, but if the words were in English, he couldn't catch them.

Then, just before they collided again, she shoved away sideways, kicked off another crate, and angled away in the direction Jak's brain insisted on registering as the ceiling, where she grabbed a handful of webbing and waited again, panting. Belatedly, he realized he'd probably had the same effect on her as a little green man walking out of his apartment-closet woodwork.

In the endless rhythm of stairs, shelters, days, and Sabbaths that he'd been climbing, he'd never rehearsed this moment. Probably never really believed he'd get here. He let go of his strap and twisted off his helmet.

“Hi,” he said, his voice a rusty-sounding croak. Hell, he knew he could speak. It wasn't like, on the long climb, he'd never talked to himself. Sometimes he'd even sung along with the tunes on his pod.

He tried again. “Hi.” It was an explosion, almost an assault, but at least it paved the way for comprehensible speech. “Sorry to startle you.”

She tightened her grip, bracing for another launch. With his helmet off, the chopstick thing was now a viable weapon. “Who the hell are you?”

He almost laughed, remembering how his long-ago fantasy had begun with exactly this line. “I'm Jak.” He probably should have resisted the next line but couldn't. “I climbed the Beanstalk.”

Her mouth was making the “O” again, but this time no words came out. Her hair, unpinned, formed a cloud of black, surrounding a perfect oval of a face: his vid-dream come to life. Except the dream had been Scandinavian blond. Sometimes reality is better than the dream.

He reminded himself he was the geek to end all geeks. Closet Jak. Not anything to draw the fancy of dream women of any type.

It was the hair that had turned his brain to mush, he decided. Or maybe the years without company. For all he could tell, maybe she was a crone.

Yeah, right.

He forced his gaze away. Remembered that he was also Jak the jock. Mallory, Shackleton, Tensing, Burton combined. The doer of undone feats.

He pointed to the door. “That goes to Earth.”

Or did, once upon a time. Now it led to whatever was below. Drifting tendrils over the Atlantic? It had been a long time since he'd paid attention to the landforms below. Earth was still a dirty smudge. Only the stars had shone clean—hard and bright.

Earth was also the past. Climbing had been the present. And now, unprepared, he was in the future.

* * * *

Her name was Miranda. A shattered moon of Uranus. Warnings to suspected criminals. Shakespeare's heroine in The Tempest. Jak had spent too much time listening to his bookreader. Besides, none of those Mirandas carried the surname Phan.

She took him in a direction she called northwest: up and then out.

Into a realm of spin, and gravity.

* * * *

Along the way, they met nobody else. Jak wasn't sure what he'd expected, but this wasn't it. Beanstalk Corporation had once had ambitious plans for High Base Station. Resort hotel, university to the rich and famous, geriatric care facility. Not all had panned out: By the time you brought employees all the way out here, fed them, housed them, recycled after them, there was no such thing as cheap labor. Not to mention that it was hard to find people who were willing to go to space to clean bedpans, tutor space tourists, or scrape for tips. But the richest of the hotels and geriatric centers had made money, and there'd also been Mars, plus zero-gee industries that ate raw material and spat out nano-miracles.

By any standard, the station was large, fashioned from the remnants of asteroids that had supplied materials for the cables. Nearly empty, it was just plain huge, and not merely in comparison to two years of shelters.

“Where is everybody?” Jak asked.

Miranda paused, glanced at him. “They went home.” She turned away. “For all the good it did them.”

“Why didn't you?”

She stopped again. Hesitated, then shrugged. There was now enough gravity that her hair was a tangled mess. “Why didn't you stay?”

He started to say the obvious. Because when he left, Earth had been stable. But the signs had probably been there. Wars don't erupt from nothing.

Actually, he'd paid very little attention. No attachments. Nothing to lose because he'd never connected to anything worth losing. Because he'd had a dream—a dream from which he'd had no real vision of what came next because he'd never dared think of it. “Because . . .” There were no words other than Mallory's, too much a cliché to speak. “Just because.” Because he'd given everything to the dream to ensure there was nothing to hold him back.

She was staring at him and suddenly he was aware of how he probably looked. The hair he'd only been able to cut with a pocketknife. The beard he'd trimmed equally infrequently.

But that wasn't what she was seeing. “Good decision,” she said. She turned and led on. Up and out. “They're probably all dead.”

* * * *

When Jak's mother had died, he'd found among her belongings a family history, prepared two generations before, when his clan had been more numerous and close-knit. It hadn't been updated in fifty-five years, which meant most of the names and stories were unfamiliar, but he'd dutifully uploaded it to his book reader . . . and forgotten it until after the world exploded. Later, in a string of emergency shelters, he'd plowed through it, wondering what, if anything, he'd learn by understanding his roots.

Precious little, it seemed. His ancestors had been in North America since the 1720s, which meant there'd been a lot of them. The history was full of folks with names like Jonathan Bartholomew Belkin: born 1826 in Silver Springs, Pennsylvania; married, 1847, to seventeen-year-old Grace Marie Ornistead; migrated to Kansas, 1849, where he sired Titus, Almira, Theodocia, Benjamin, Timothy, Lucinda, Rhoda, and Dexter. Timothy had died in childhood, age three. The others apparently hadn't, but about them, the family historian dryly reported, “nothing else is known.”

What, Jak had wondered, would his own life look like, so distilled? Born; college; climbed. Or more likely just disappeared.

In 1849, when Jonathan Bartholomew had gone to Kansas, he'd probably walked. A serious adventure, now lost to time. What more adventures had his children had before vanishing even more thoroughly into the mists?

Nothing else is known. That would be all there would be of Jak and his dream—if anyone back on Earth even cared to record him, when, or if, civilization recovered.

* * * *

There were indeed others. Seventy-five, he eventually learned. But at the time, the dozen or so Miranda pulled together to meet him might as well have been a million.

For most of Jak's life, people were simply things that passed through. Things he might eventually want to understand . . . when he could afford to. When dreams didn't stand in his way. Now, he didn't know what to do. The people Miranda introduced him to had contemporary names: Amanda and Randy; Anatoly and Yolanda. Riana, Kathryn, and Jacquin. But they might as well have been Almiras, Theodocias, Dexters, and Tituses.

* * * *

They put him on logistical support, a fancy term for lugging things around. Brawn, not brain, was the unspoken message.

Even that first day, one thing had been clear: There were no fat people on High-Base Station. None even remotely overweight. Food was the overwhelming need. The biologists and engineers were scrambling to create a self-sustaining ecology, but the station had never been designed for that. Power was plentiful but food had come from Earth—until suddenly they had to grow their own . . . and recycle everything.

Anatoly was the leader.

“If we can close the system tightly enough, we can survive forever,” he said. “We have all the energy anyone will ever need. For volatiles, we can scoop ions out of the solar wind or build new crawlers and descend to where the atmosphere is thick enough to be useful. But first, we have to eat. For that we need functioning tissue vats, and lots of them. We've got the genestock—even that freeze-dried carrot has enough DNA to clone more, just like it. What we need is time.”

But the biologics were coming on slowly, and a horrible, deadly lottery loomed. A lottery nobody wanted to talk about, but from which none saw any alternative.

Nothing overt was said, but Jak got the message. The last thing they needed was another mouth to feed. Until he told them about the long-forgotten emergency shelters. More than seven thousand between here and Earth. Seven thousand times eight people for one month each. Enough to carry seventy-five people sixty years into the future. Not to mention 1.7 million kilos of recyclable biomass—with even more on the outward arm of the Stalk, between the station and the Mars shuttles.

Not that all or even most of it was accessible. The crawlers, Miranda had told him, had all gone back to Earth. But within easy reach was enough food to buy time, and Jak had the experience to go get it.

* * * *

Miranda volunteered to go with him.

In near zero gee, bulk was the limiting factor to how much they could carry, so they made enormous Santa's sacks, capable of holding 200 kilos each.

The first trips were easy. Shove off and float from one landing to the next, taking each in a single bound.

But the sacks were unwieldy.

It happened on the third trip, thirty kilometers deep, about as far as they could get on a single-day out-and-back. On the return, Miranda, despite her diminutive build, was consistently outpacing him, maneuvering her sack as effortlessly as if she'd been born with it. Tired, frustrated, and feeling distinctly unmanly, Jak shoved off hard, yanking his sack behind him. At the next landing, still trailing, he shoved off again, harder yet.

Whatever the gravity, two hundred kilos has full momentum. He barely got a meter before the recoil caught him and he found himself spinning, flailing for a handhold as the bag tore free, spinning the opposite direction, contents spewing in a cloud of ready-to-heat meals.

Miranda thought it funny.

Jak didn't.

Two hundred kilos is a lot of food packs. Half of the sack's contents had spilled before he could grab it, kill its spin, and pull the drawstring closed. He managed to snag a few of the escaping meals, but most were already drifting through screening designed to keep humans, not freeze-dried dinners, from falling into space, not freeze-dried dinners. Then they were out of reach, hundreds of tiny new satellites, gleaming in the Sun.

Miranda moved to his side, hand resting on his arm, lightly enough he could barely feel it though the suit. “I've been doing this for years,” she said. “How do you think all those crates got into the storeroom?” Her face was invisible beneath her Sun-silvered helmet. “You know about the hotel and retirement center? Well, that was me.” The helmet swiveled, toward the stars. Or maybe not toward anything. “All those folks with Ph.D.s . . . All I've got is a Master's degree. In oceanography. The only way up here was as a maid.” The helmet turned again. “Or lugging crates.”

* * * *

Two weeks later, they set off on their first extended mission, dropping five hundred kilometers, then sweeping supplies upward in a systematic effort to clean out a hundred shelters in a series of leapfrogs. More than twenty tonnes of food, minus the kilos they'd leave in each shelter in case future residents needed to pass through, en route to food even farther remote. Nearly a year's rations for everyone on the station, with an equal amount waiting just as easily on the Stalk's outbound wing.

They should have been heroes. But anyone can carry sacks. Instead, they were outsiders, living in shelters the size of closets.

“Might as well be a maid,” Miranda muttered as they jammed their bags into a shelter after a seventy-kilometer day. “Nobody ever notices unless you screw up.”

Jak paused before stepping inside, staring first at the stars, then at the Earth. It was hard to tell, but maybe the oceans looked a little bluer, the clouds closer to white. Back in the station, he could have gotten a new WebNet link to listen in on whatever was going on down there, but he hadn't bothered.

He turned from the door. “We're both good at being invisible.” He pulled his own bag inside. “We've practiced.”

Miranda maneuvered her bag into position, braced, and shoved it into a bunk space. Two other bags already crammed what little free space the shelter once had. Soon enough, they were going to have to start carrying bags all the way up, if only because they were running out of empties.

Miranda grunted, pushed harder, until her bag wedged in place. “I bet it was lonely.”

Jak hadn't told her about the closet or the flashlight that had so quickly given up the search. He'd never thought he would tell anyone. But he'd been wrong. It was too much a part of who he'd been. Of what had made him into whoever he'd become. Like the ancestors who'd walked a continent only to vanish into “nothing more is known.”

But now wasn't the time.

“Did you come up here alone?” he asked.

For a long moment, he thought he'd stepped over a line, driven her away. Would they end up dodging each other, working different parts of the Stalk, hiding in the huge, nearly empty station? There was certainly enough room to disappear . . . but there was nowhere to disappear to. No new station at the top of a new Stalk. This was it. Flashlight winking in the dark . . . or something else. Something new. “Or,” he pressed, “did you come up with someone else?”

She took his bag and shoved it into another bunk slot. “No.” She shoved again, even though it was obviously not going to drift anywhere. “But I did meet someone. He was a zero-gee metallurgist. Had a lab just two levels up from the hotel.” She paused. “But he had family Below. When the troubles began, he went back.” She hit the light switch, squeezed past Jak, and pulled the door shut with a bang he could feel through the floor. “I didn't love him enough for that.”

She pushed off. Found the air and turned it on. “It's not as though we didn't know what was going to happen. Those of us who stayed? We're the ones who had no reason to go back. Nobody we cared enough about to try to save.” She punched at the environmental controls. Maximum heat. ASAP. “Maybe that's why we buried ourselves in ignoring each other. We're the people who had nowhere better to go.”

“Like me.”

Her headshake was surprisingly violent. “No. We stayed. You chose something else.”

* * * *

She came to his bunk that night. He'd been nearly asleep when he heard motion, felt skin next to his. In the dim light of the instrument panel, her hair was a dark starburst.

A finger touched his lips. “Don't say anything. This is just what it is.”

But this wasn't his long-ago closet. Whatever it was, it was a lot more.

* * * *

It took four months to finish the inbound sweep. Another four to sweep an equal distance on the opposite side. Two years’ food for everyone on board, of which five months’ worth had been eaten. Forty tonnes of biomass that could eventually wind up in the recyclers. A drop in the bucket compared to what could be gleaned by a determined effort.

For eight months, Jak and Miranda had discussed the future. Babies. In an ecology that didn't require someone to die first. A world that didn't have to be endlessly static.

“We're done,” Jak told Anatoly after the last two hundred kilos had been stashed in the storeroom where he and Miranda had first met. They were standing in his office, holding hands. A couple. Defiant.

Anatoly blew out a puff of air. Half snort, half laugh. Total dismissal. “An oceanographer and a security guard. Unless you want to carry up a whole bunch of water, I'm not sure what else you can do. Protect us from space aliens?”

Miranda's grip tightened, but her voice was calm. “We're leaving. That's two less mouths to feed. You might see if anyone wants to go with us.”

Anatoly stared. “Where to?”

Jak's turn. “Mars.”

They'd been talking about it ever since they'd started on the outbound shelters. There was a shuttle out there, ready and waiting to go. Well, not all that ready, but waiting. Like almost everyone else, the crew had gone back to Earth. The passengers had never arrived. Even the crawlers were gone, lost back to Earth. But most of its equipment was automated, and they'd had months to study the manuals.

“How are you going to get to the shuttle without a crawler?” Anatoly asked.

Miranda grinned. “Guess.”

* * * *

Not surprisingly, nobody wanted to join them. But there was nothing to hold them, and they were, indeed, two less mouths to feed.

When the big day came, it was just a day. Or a morning, to be precise. “Do you have anything you want to bring with you?” Jak asked.

Miranda shook her head.

“Me neither.”

They climbed in silence through the station, to the port on the outbound end of the cable. This time, there wasn't even a flashlight looking for him. He'd been too busy carrying supplies to make friends. Everyone else was too busy with more important matters.

This time, he didn't care. Even though he was again heading for the land of “nothing more is known.”

Maybe when they got there, he and Miranda would be the first to climb Olympus Mons. Or not.

Maybe it didn't matter.

Copyright © 2011 Richard A. Lovett

[Back to Table of Contents]

Special Feature: MORE THAN PLOT AND CHARACTER: THE STORY-TELLING SECRETS OF NARRATIVE VOICE
by Richard A. Lovett

At science fiction conventions, there's almost guaranteed to be at least one panel discussion that goes something like this:

Award-Winning Author: So, part of the art of telling a story—

Member of the Audience: Whoa, that's not right.

AWA: Huh?

MOA (gleefully): You're supposed to show, not tell.

* * * *

Writing guides galore support MOA. The mantra “show, don't tell” is so ingrained in workshops, critique groups, and basic writing courses that it's acquired the status of an Eleventh Commandment. Higher, perhaps, because the consequences of violating it are particularly dire: “—or thou shalt not get published.”

But actually, AWA is right. When was the last time you heard a writer described as a great story-shower? Showing is important but it's only part of good writing. Consider the following:

Joe stood before an inclined passageway composed of two dozen flat ledges, each six inches above the one below. He lifted his right foot and put it on the first ledge, then raised his left foot and put it on the next. Ten more repetitions brought him to a larger flat area, where he faced a wooden rectangle with a shiny, brass-colored knob protruding at about the height of his waist. Nearby was a smaller round object on the vertical surface adjacent to the rectangle. He used the index finger of his right hand to press on the smaller object and heard a buzzing noise emanating from behind the rectangle. He heard no other sounds other than the passage of traffic on the street and a series of chirping sounds from a nearby tree. He grasped the shiny knob, twisted in a clockwise direction, and shoved inward. “Hello,” he said. “It's me."

Now compare it to this:

Joe climbed the stairs and rang the doorbell. Hearing no response, he tested the door. Unlocked. “Hello,” he said, pushing it open. “It's me."

That's an extreme case, but the point is simple: Nobody wants an extended description of climbing a stairway and opening a door. As my younger friends would say: bo-ring.

Or is it? The first version is 152 words, dull as your least-favorite cliché. This version is exactly the same length, but a lot livelier:

Joe put a foot on the first stair and paused. Behind, an electric car hissed by, uncannily quiet compared to the muscle cars that had once prowled the neighborhood.
A bird twittered in the neighbors’ willow. In the era of the muscle cars, the tree had barely topped the roof. Now it was twice as high, its swollen trunk peering from between branches that dangled like the old hag's unkempt bangs.
He climbed one stair at a time, listening to them creak, wondering if he'd plunge through. Like the tree, the building had grown old. Soon, both would rot. Like the old hag he was about to visit.
The doorbell worked, but nobody answered. He turned the knob, feeling it open without resistance. She was home, as he'd known she would be. She was always home. She'd never left, never would, not until everything collapsed in rot.
"Hello,” he said. “It's me."

What's the difference? The first version is clinical, dull. Such an approach might work (with a lot of polishing) if Joe were a visiting alien. The second is serviceable, just what's needed for certain types of stories. Joe climbs the stairs, opens the door, and goes inside. Get on with it; the story's in there. The third version is the interesting one. The actions haven't changed, but everything feels different. We've got things that prowl and an aging, swollen tree, hiding like the old woman upstairs. Joe's mother? We don't know. But she's something important, something from his past. Something not entirely good.

One can argue that the difference is still about “showing.” In the third version, I've merely chosen a more interesting set of things to show: the willow, the eerily quiet electric car. But I've also told a lot: that the “hag” has unkempt bangs, that Joe might be afraid of the people who once prowled in muscle cars, that his mother/childhood-tormenter/nemesis never goes outside.

The real difference lies in the story's tone: part of an amorphous concept sometimes referred to as narrative voice.

To some people, narrative voice is the same thing as authorial style: the differences in prose that instantly distinguish Hemingway from Faulkner, Asimov from Ellison. Style, I realize, is a bad word to some science fiction readers. It conjures up images of experimental storytelling that demands a lot from the reader and may or may not pay much back in return. “I just want a story,” these readers complain. “Forget all that fancy stuff!”

But without style there is no story.

Style is the manner in which authors arrange words. It helps tell the story by establishing the manner in which it flows. My first book, Freewheelin': A Solo Journey Across America (the memoir of a solo cross-continent bicycle trip), was strongly influenced by nature writing, in particular Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. That produced sections like this one, ruminating about Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains:

Viewed from the lakeshore, these mountains were the essence of what mountains ought to be, their crags rising like flying buttresses on Medieval cathedrals, culminating in spires 3,500 feet above me.
Mountains are best viewed from these lower levels, where their rocky splendor contrasts with the lowlands. They need room to breathe, room to survey vast regions with the isolation of mythical gods. For this reason, I'd never been a great fan of California's High Sierra, where jumbles of granite are piled claustrophobically and harsh, narrow valleys hem you in until you finally scale the highest peak, with no place between the valley floor and the summit to step back and absorb the vista. In mountains like the Sawtooth, I find room to appreciate the scale of the world and to wonder that the creator of all this majesty cares for me, infinitesimal speck that I am, that he is not merely like the peaks, remote in holy grandeur, but also personal and intimate like the alpine lake lapping at my feet.
Give me a well-glaciated mountain range and I will find these things in it. And then the irony will set in. I will want to shoulder a pack and hike, along the ridge beside the lake, up to the ragged edge where trees meet talus, and beyond to the high lakes and pocket meadows of the hanging valleys. For now that I have the big picture, I will not feel claustrophobic. Now, I am ready to explore the intimate nooks and crannies, to scale the very summits if possible, or stand at their base and gaze in awe on their highest ramparts.

That's only ten sentences, one of which is fifty-eight words. It's a style that gives a sense of motion, as the words flow from phrase to phrase, with a feeling—when desired—of fated inevitability. It's also perfect for establishing introspective or meditative moods, in fiction as in nonfiction. You may or may not share my spiritual reaction to these mountains, but you should understand how I felt—and the voice is part of what conveys that.

Freewheelin' is nonfiction, but I've used the same methods in fiction, particularly when describing a natural setting, whether on Earth or in outer space.[1]

[1 I thought about trying to include an excerpt here, but the ones I could think of all required too much explanation of context to make good stand-alone examples.]

* * * *

Years later, I discovered mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman. Kellerman is the opposite, famous for sentence fragments. Sentences that highlight details. In my first attempt at a mystery ("Numismatist,” Analog, April 2006), I found myself trying something similar. In the following excerpt, the longest sentence is thirty-two words, and even that is an illusion. It's really four sentences: an introduction, followed by three Kellerman-fragments strung behind a colon. Later, there are even two real fragments. The result feels very different from the excerpt Freewheelin':

The computer was in a back room that looked as thoroughly lived-in as the rest of the apartment. A bicycle rested against a wall; telemark skis stood in a niche between two bookcases. Backpacking gear peeked out of an overstuffed closet, and cheerful photos decorated what little wall space wasn't blocked by something else. I studied the pictures, but couldn't find any themes that weren't obvious from the rest of the room: bicyclists on a windy headland, skiers in parkas, cold-looking hikers on a snowy summit. A disproportionate number of kids. Happy kids. If they were any more wholesome-looking they could have modeled for Norman Rockwell.

Here, the average sentence length is fifteen words—and it would have been eleven had I split that colon sentence into its separate parts.

This is carried even farther in “Snowflake Kisses,” (Analog, April 2010) which I wrote in collaboration with Holly Hight. Holly (one of the best natural stylists I've ever encountered) likes snappy, staccato dialog and short, strong sentences. She also likes troubled characters and first-person present tense. The result: Kellerman dark. Very powerful when done right. Here's an example:

My mother's face is gilded in candlelight. She's trying not to cry. “Daddy wanted me to tell you how much he loves you.” Her voice breaks and I feel her arms around me. Too tight. “He had to go away, you know . . .”
I look up, into her face. “Where?”
"Far away.”
"But where?”
She looks at me. “Europe.”
"Where's that?”
"Across the world.”
I try to imagine it. Fanciful birds and exotic animals. Fantastic buildings. Tall people. “Why'd he leave?”
"He had something important to do.”
I go to bed dreaming of Europe. Does it smell different? Is the grass a different color? What about the sky? I can't sleep. I peer through the skinny crack in the door, watch as my mother cries at the kitchen table, the tiny flame dancing with her breath. I wonder why she's so sad; Dad's doing something important. She must miss him. I feel a pang. I miss him, too.

That's powerful stuff. But first, let's look at the building blocks. The average sentence is five words, the longest, twenty-five. It's important that they're not all the same. Part of creating voice is varying the sentence length. Short builds tension. Longer creates the sense of flow we discussed earlier. Do the change-ups right, and the prose is a brook, leaping from pool to pool . . . or, if you play up the tension more strongly, a mountain stream, plunging from waterfall to rapid. Do it wrong and you either hypnotize your readers with repeated long sentences or pummel them with drumbeats.

The minority-length sentences are often the ones that carry the strongest effect. If short ones are relatively rare, they grab attention, saying, “Listen up! This is important!"[2] If the long ones are the uncommon ones, they slow the pace and let the reader think.

[2 If you look back at the excerpt from Freewheelin', you'll find that I did the same thing there, with sentences as short as seven words.]

Well-chosen narrative voice can also become the epitome of showing. In the excerpt from “Snowflake Kisses,” the little-girl protagonist doesn't understand what's happened, but the reader does. Holly's simple line (in this section of the collaboration, I did little but edit), “Too tight,” is perfect. So is the litany of things the little girl thinks of when she tries to imagine Europe. The result is heartbreaking, underscored by the use of present tense. We see the world through this little girl's naive eye, with just enough information to understand what she doesn't.

This takes us to a deeper aspect of narrative voice: The voice isn't just that of the author—it's also that of the character. “For me, narrative voice comes down to knowing my character's attitude,” says 2008 Campbell Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal. “How does that character feel at that moment?” Novelist and artist Kevin Radthorne agrees. “If something bad happens, your character's got to feel it,” he has said.[3] “What people remember from a story is the character.”

[3 Remarks made on a panel at Radcon, Pasco, Washington, February 2010.]

Each character also has a distinctive way of viewing the world. Understanding that is part of understanding the character, the story, and ultimately the character's world. Consider the following introduction to a story I may someday finish:

I'll never forget my mother's tattoos. She had this multicolored starburst on her shoulder that she only showed in summer, when long sleeves gave way to short and then to sleeveless. And there was a delicate gold watch on her wrist reading 5:45.
"Happy hour,” she said when I was old enough to ask. “Because I always wanted to be at least forty-five minutes happy.” Then she'd hug me and add, in words I knew were good but whose subtext eluded me at the time, “but it wasn't until you came around that I realized there was a better way.”
I liked the watch best when I was young, before the dial started to move, long before it turned digital. Even then, I was a retro-geek. Simpler is better. Though I did like the colors on her shoulder. Those were happy too. The right kind of happy. Though I didn't figure that out for a long time, either.

Less than two hundred words, but there's already a sense of the protagonist's intellect, background, and psychological condition. We know quite a bit about this person, simply from his or her way of saying things.

At the opposite extreme is what I think of as “fable” voice. Here, the voice is that of the author, not the character. Such writing is out of vogue because writing classes tend to emphasize tight point of view, and fables generally require looser POV, often to the extent of an omniscient authorial viewpoint. But a lot of classic stories are written that way. Tolkein used it in parts of “The Hobbit.” The relatively detached voice allows us to watch Bilbo Baggins on his adventures and smile, rather than fret on his behalf. Not every adventure has to be life-and-death. Some are just fun, and the fable voice allows the author to accentuate the fun. It's also useful for stories that require a more global view than is available to any individual character. Again, classic literature used it a lot. Here is part of a very old example:

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

God points Job out to Satan as one of his best followers. Satan says (more or less), “Yeah, but he's got everything. Why shouldn't he love you? He's just a fair-weather friend.” That leads to the ensuing litany of woe:

One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"[4]

[4 Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (R). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.]

Note the repetitive language: “while he was still speaking” and “I am the only one who escaped.” The writer wasn't trying for tight, realistic POV. He was trying for something more akin to the feel of a song: verse-chorus; verse-chorus. Nearly 2,500 years later, the Book of Job inspired the 2009 Coen brothers movie, “A Serious Man,” and has been described as “the most profound and literary work of the entire Old Testament,"[5] Not bad for a style currently out of vogue.

[5 John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, 1965, p. 440.]

* * * *

How does a writer achieve a strong narrative voice? My own approach is theatrical. Like an actor, I try to don the character, almost like a garment. Then I wind the character up like an old-fashioned mechanical toy, point him or her in the desired direction, and sit back to see what happens.

That's the “art” part of the process. But there's also “craft.” That comes from reading, rereading, and re-rereading every word, every sentence, trying to figure out if they're doing what you want them to do. Is that the word the character would use? Is it how she'd think? Does it convey the emotion I want? Fit my theme?

Let's look again at that excerpt from “Snowflake Kisses.” Here's an earlier version, with subsequent changes marked.

[—"Julie?"—]
[—I'm caught in a memory. I'm six years old.—]
My mother's face is gilded in candlelight. She's trying not to cry. “Daddy wanted me to tell you how much he loves you.” Her voice breaks and I feel her arms around me. Too tight. “He had to go away, you know . . .”
I look up, into her face. “Where?”
"Far away.”
"But where?”
She looks at me. “Europe.”
[—I imagine it. Europe. Fanciful birds and exotic animals. Fantastic buildings. Tall people.—] “Where's that?”
"Across the world.”
I try to imagine it. Fanciful birds and exotic animals. Fantastic buildings. Tall people. “Why'd he leave?”
"He had something important to do.”
[—I imagine him walking fast, his hat and coat on, his shoes, newly shined, clicking on the pavement. Movement with purpose, quickly, to do something important. I think of Superman. But I can't imagine Dad in a cape. “Does he fly?” I whisper it, cupping a palm over my mouth just in case it's a secret.—]
[—My mother's face falters. She tries to smile. “Maybe."—]
I go to bed that night dreaming of Europe. Where is it, exactly? What's it look like? Does it smell different? Is the grass a different color? What about the sky? Is it still blue? I can't sleep. I get up. IpPeer through the skinny crack in the door, watch as my mother cries at the kitchen table, the tiny flame dancing with her breath. I wonder why she's so sad; Dad's doing something important. She must miss him. I feel a pang. I miss him, too.

Could we have sold the original version? Sure. And it was painful to cut the Superman reference. But this is a flashback, and flashbacks need to be short. In the condensed version, each word carries more freight.

P.G. Wodehouse, the creator of Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, famously took the pages of his manuscripts and taped them to the walls of his study, with each page's elevation based on his assessment of how good its prose was. Then he took the low-elevation pages and attacked the prose, until all pages reached the same height.[6] It's no accident that Wodehouse is regarded as one of the English language's finest stylists. Style takes work.

[6 I read this in the foreword to one of the Jeeves novels, but there are innumerable other sources, including a quote from Douglas Adams widely cited on the Internet.]

Unfortunately, most writers hate to self-edit. Personally, I've never understood this. The initial creation is the uncontrollable bit, subject to the whims of the muse, where it's always possible to hit writer's block. Editing is simply craft. You don't need to be inspired; you simply need to read, reread, and re-reread. It's a good thing to do on days when you don't feel inspired.

So take a cue from Wodehouse. Find those low-hanging pages and compare them to the best. Figure out the source of the difference and do something about it.

Then do it all over again. And again. And again.

* * * *

About the Author:

Richard A. Lovett has written more than 90 stories and articles for Analog. He's also written more than 3,000 works of nonfiction for other publications, including essays, humor, sports, adventure travel, and profiles, fields in which narrative voice can be as important as in fiction.

Copyright © 2011 Richard A. Lovett

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Probability Zero: PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE
by Arlan Andrews, Sr.

“We are gathered here for an historic occasion,” the blond announcer whispered knowingly, intoning a profundity that his bleached appearance belied, “the first contest of the world's amateur matter transmitter operators. They will attempt to ‘mattermit'—or ‘chop,’ in their vernacular—the most complex structures that their machines can achieve. The object judged to be the most complex, most original, arriving here in New World Orders in Brussels, will determine the winner of this test of the amateur competitors.”

Blondie then called up stock videos of the earlier mattermitting machines of Hieronymous, Bigelow, Gallimore, and the other pioneers who had developed the near-magical devices that now powered most manufacturing economies in the mid-twenty-first century. The 3D TV showed the usual hilarious outtakes from early serious experiments that went awry—golf balls embedded in stones, beer cans morphed into Klein bottles through weird 4D transmission errors, left-handed sculptures made dexter by faulty ‘mitters.

Blondie's narration did not follow some of the mattermitter trials that resulted in grotesque death and dismemberment, though those were easily accessible on any of the competing world webs. And he mentioned none of the game-changing military applications, those that had made the world safer from terrorists than ever before. Even the Pentagonal building wouldn't say where those terrorists had gone when involuntarily mattermitted by Special Forces teams. That nebulous revelation had been fearsome enough to overcome almost all fanatical fervor for a couple of decades now. And had effectively ended all attempts to mattermit living organisms. “You can't chop meat!” the saying went.

Blondie's next segment featured Weird Hal, the world's best known (if most notorious) “chopper.” In years past, the extremely obese amateur mattermitter had been caught sending real fossils to the Moon and Mars, there for the CHindi walker-bots to pick up, causing either momentary panic or elation among spacenuts and scientificos. But amateur mattermitting was still in its infancy, with most choppers content to send and receive trivial toys and trinkets, as their grandcestors had exchanged DX cards.

At the moment, on all competing world webs, Weird Hal was happily singing at his chopping console: “My daddy was a hacker/my Grandpa was a ham/When it comes to choppin’ matter/I'm the best there am, by damn!” Off key and off base, his voice grated like the stripped gears of an ancient machine tool.

“Our probability AIs give Weird Hal the edge today,” the announcer continued as Hal's grating voice and grossly overweight image faded. “As probably the world's most successful ‘chopper,’ we eagerly anticipate what surprises he may have in store.

“But today"—a pregnant pause—"Hal is also up against newcomer choppers from the UK, the PRC, and the USA.” Scenes flashed on and off, spiraling in, fading in and out, a maelstrom of unknown competitors from undistinguished or faded nations: Unified Korea, Patriotically Reconstituted Chinas, and the Union of Socialist Americas. Video close-ups showed Hal surrounded by his quoit-shaped chopping console, the man-mountain guzzling one beer after another, singing verse after ever more obscene verse of his Chopper's Anthem. With his massive frame blocking the camera view, Hal quickly opened a shoebox-sized device, shoving his entry into the transmitting chamber, ready to chop.

“And now the final entries,” Blondie said. The scene shifted to a one meter nano-crystalline cube on a small table. “Each contestant is required to mattermit their entry into this receiver. Instruments will determine the safety of the object; then the judges can dissolve the cube to inspect each entry closely.

“And now we begin. Entry one, from Shakaville, Sudafrica.” The crystal cube fogged with swirling clouds, colorful mini-storms, finally clearing to reveal a dark, contoured object about half a meter square. The cube wisped away and the four judges held up a delicately carved artifact. “And the entry is a ceremonial tribal mask.” The announcer was less than enthusiastic.

For nearly an hour, entry after entry materialized inside the receiving cube: a miniature da Vinci sculpture from New Rome, an intricate series of matroshka dolls from Noyava Moskva, and more, but nothing truly spectacular. For that, the world waited on its weird anti-hero.

“All eyes are now on Hal,” the announcer said breathlessly, as the famous chopper ostentatiously typed his transmission sequence on an ancient touchscreen.

“But, wait, I am told that an unauthorized mattermitter is attempting to send in something.” On the screen, the receiving cube seemed to burp. Blondie's voice was almost a scream: “Someone is trying to upstage the world's most famous chopper!”

Billions of viewers stared as the crystal cube seemed to experience a mini-war inside itself: boiling, roiling luminescent clouds appeared, then vanished; chaos fighting chaos. “Who could be interfering with Weird Hal this way? What's happening?”

Suddenly the cube cleared, revealing a small rectangular blocklike object in the chamber. Just inches in dimension, tiny in its comparison to the previous entries, it was predominantly blue and gold, with bold yellow lettering. One of the judges gave a hand signal and the receiving cube vanished. Quickly, all the judges surrounded the receiver, handling the strange object. They called for an assistant, who shortly returned and handed one a small metal device. Within minutes, the judges began laughing and nodding.

One judge held up a metal can, now opened, showing pinkish material inside. “We have a winner,” the judge said with a nervous smile. “Not only was our so-far-anonymous victor able to override Hal, but sent us a metal can containing animal tissue and other materials—a double victory, of both complexity and originality.

“This unexpected, unauthorized entry represents the next stage in amateur mattermitting.” He shook his head, the smile gone. “It was inevitable, of course.”

As the camera zoomed in closer, Blondie read the yellow lettering on the exterior of the gold-topped, rectangular can.

Puzzled, he said, “It reads—Spam.”

Copyright © 2011 Arlan Andrews, Sr.

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Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: THE DEFICIENCY OF BLACK HOLES AT THE LHC
by John G. Cramer

The Large Hadronic Collider (LHC) at the CERN Laboratory located at the eastern edge of Geneva, Switzerland, went into operation in late 2008, with dual proton beams circulated in the main ring for the first time on September 10, 2008. Nine days later, a disaster occurred. A slip-joint providing current to the superconducting magnets ceased to be superconducting, dumping large quantities of energy into the liquid helium cooling system, and six tons of liquid helium boiled away to become a high-pressure gas. The LHC monitoring mechanisms designed to limit damage in case of accidents initially failed to detect the event, with the result that a wave of high-pressure helium gas destroyed a string of about 53 of the LHC's superconducting magnets and damaged many others.

After more than a year of shutdown, the LHC limped back into operation on November 20, 2009. On March 30, 2010, the first 7.0-trillion-electron-volt (TeV) collisions, half of the original design collision energy, took place. The facility has continued normal scheduled operation with 7.0-TeV proton-proton collisions since that time, and has also spent a month running lead-lead collisions at 574 TeV. It is currently scheduled to run at the 7.0-TeV proton-proton collision energy through the end of 2012.

In 2008, when the machine was preparing for operation, the big story in the media was not that the LHC was about to operate, but that it was possible that the Earth was about to be devoured by black holes produced at the LHC. I perhaps contributed to that hysteria with my May 2003 AV column “The CERN LHC: A Black Hole Factory?” In that column, I discussed the possibility that the LHC might produce small black holes in some of its high energy proton-proton collisions. This was based on theoretical papers in the physics literature (see the references below) involving the hypothesis that gravity is such a weak force because it extends into several extra dimensions, while the other three forces do not. These theories predicted that the proton-proton collisions at the LHC might produce tiny black holes with masses of 1 TeV or so. The same theories also predicted that, if created, the microscopic black holes would be super-hot objects that would almost instantaneously dissipate themselves into a thermal cloud of lighter particles, quarks, gluons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, and photons.

Reporters, bloggers, and others seized on the idea that the LHC might produce black holes and ignored the predictions of their super-brief lifetime. Instead, they imagined a scenario in which LHC-produced black holes would begin to suck in nearby matter, growing larger, and ultimately devouring the Earth. Lawsuits, ultimately unsuccessful, were filed to prevent the LHC from beginning its operation.

* * * *

The LHC has now been operating at 7.0 TeV for about a year. Therefore, it's time for an update on black hole production, or the lack thereof. First, however, let me review the physics ideas that led some theorists to predict that the LHC might produce microscopic black holes.

A black hole is an object that has acquired enough mass for its size to be completely confined by the force of gravity. The velocity of escape from its surface exceeds the speed of light. To put it another way, the gravitational force at its surface is so strong that energy cost of moving a lump of mass from its surface to some distance away exceeds the total mass-energy (E = mc2) of the mass lump. There is good astrophysical evidence for the existence of super-dense objects assumed to be black holes, because mass falling into such objects produces lots of energy. The energy-squandering behavior of quasars and active galactic nuclei, the x-rays emitted from certain binary star systems, and the high velocities of stars near the center of our own galaxy all suggest the presence of a black hole energy source. It is also well established from theoretical modeling that a star with sufficient mass, after it burns through its supply of hydrogen, should collapse to a black hole following a supernova explosion.

There's no upper limit to the mass and size of a black hole. In a certain sense, our entire universe can be considered to be a black hole, with us inside. On the other end of the size scale, the mass of a black hole can be no smaller than a Planck mass, which is (hc/2pG) 1/2. Here, h is Planck's constant, c is the speed of light, and G is Newton's gravitational constant. The small value of G makes the Planck mass fairly large (22 micrograms or 1.22 x 10 16 TeV) compared to fundamental particles. As mentioned above, these small black holes should have a very short lifetime and should “evaporate” in a cloud of light particles due to the Hawking radiation process.

New theoretical ideas suggest that gravity, the weakest of the four forces, could become stronger and more comparable in strength to the other forces at small distances, because of the effects of hypothetical extra dimensions used only by gravity. In this scenario, as the effective value of G grows larger, the Planck mass drops, minimum-size black holes become less massive, and the energy required to produce black holes can decrease many orders of magnitude, to around 1 TeV. This is well within range of LHC collision energies. In this scenario the LHC would be a “black hole factory,” an accelerator that makes large quantities of microscopic black holes. The mass and production probability of such black holes depends in part on how many extra dimensions gravity is allowed to expand into, and calculations usually consider between two to six such extra dimensions.

As Steven Hawking showed in the 1970s, a black hole should have a surface temperature that depends on the curvature of its surface. A star-mass black hole has a large radius, a very small curvature, and a temperature of only a few degrees Kelvin. On the other hand, a mini black hole like those that the LHC might produce would be extremely hot, because its very small radius (millimeters or less) would produce a correspondingly large temperature, up to 1.5 x 1014 K or 80 GeV. At such a high surface temperature, the black hole would evaporate very rapidly into lighter particles: photons, electrons, and quarks, with energies ranging from 80 GeV down.

* * * *

So the question is, after one year of LHC operation is there any evidence that the LHC is producing mini black holes? One of the three large detectors located at the collision points of the LHC is the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. On December 15, 2010, the CMS Collaboration released a paper in which they considered the evidence for black hole production from ten-trillion-7.0-TeV proton-proton collisions tracked by their detector at the LHC. The format of their 26-page paper is itself interesting, because it includes nine pages of physics discussion, three pages of references, and 14 pages listing the authors and institutions that are participants in the CMS Collaboration. Such is the labor-intensive state of experimental high energy physics.

What would a black hole look like, as seen by the CMS detector? It is estimated that if a black hole with a mass of around 1 TeV were produced, about 75% of its mass-energy would immediately evaporate into quarks and gluons, because these particles have many color degrees of freedom, making their Hawking evaporation more probable. The resulting quarks and gluons would produce jets of strongly interacting particles tracked by the detector. The remainder of the mass-energy would show up as photons and weakly-interacting particles (positive and negative tauons, muons, and electrons, as well as neutrinos, and Z and W bosons). Some scenarios also predict energy loss as gravitational shock waves and stable non-interacting and non-accreting remnants. The production of black holes at the LHC would be show up as “democratic” many-particle decays showing no preferred direction, with the final-state particles carrying many GeV of kinetic energy. The CMS Collaboration has searched for such events in their data.

Of course, random events that have nothing to do with black hole production can show characteristics similar to the “signal” that is the subject of the black hole search. This event background is simulated with calculations using the Monte Carlo technique and is compared with the observed data. Similar calculations based on theoretical models are also used to predict deviations from the background that would result from black hole production. These show up as excess events at transverse energies beginning at 1.5 TeV and ending at 2.5 TeV, where the highest energy CMS data points are measured.

The net result of this investigation is that up to the end of 2010, no evidence for the production of black holes at the LHC has been observed. The authors conclude that if there are six extra gravitational dimensions, the minimum black hole mass must be greater than 4.0 to 4.5 TeV. If there are four extra gravitational dimensions, the minimum black hole mass must be greater than 3.8 to 4.4 TeV. If there are only two extra gravitational dimensions, the minimum black hole mass must be greater than 3.4 to 4.0 TeV.

Of course, these results are somewhat limited by statistics and are greatly limited by the collision energies currently available at the LHC, which are only half of the design collision energy. There could be black hole production that only shows up at higher collision energies.

The current plan at CERN is to operate the LHC at the present proton-proton collision energy of 7 TeV until the end of 2012. Then there will be a one-year shutdown to replace suspicious current joints and make other improvements, and in about 2014 the LHC will resume operation with proton-proton collision energies of 14 TeV. In that operating range, a new search for black hole production will be done, looking for black holes in the mass range up to around 9 or 10 TeV.

Watch this column for further results.

* * * *

AV Columns Online: Electronic reprints of over 150 “The Alternate View” columns by John G. Cramer, previously published in Analog, are available online at: www.npl.washington.edu/av.

* * * *

References:

“Search for Microscopic Black Hole Signatures at the Large Hadronic Collider", The SMC Collaboration, submitted to Physics Letters B, preprint ArXiv: 1012.3375v1 [hep-ex], December 15, 2010.

“Black Holes at the LHC", Physical Review Letters 87, 161602 (2001); preprint ArXiv: 0106295v1 [hep-ph], June 27, 2001.

Copyright © 2011 John G. Cramer

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Short Story: A WITNESS TO ALL THAT WAS
by Scott William Carter

Some tools are much more than tools. . . .

It was just another dead planet, as useless and wasted as their marriage. That was what Marco thought when he saw the brown smudge of a world for the first time—and of course he felt an immediate pang of guilt for thinking it.

“Any signs of life?” he said.

He didn't look at Kelsie when he said this. He was afraid to look at her. He was afraid that if she saw his eyes, she'd know what he'd been thinking. She'd always been so good at that—reading him, knowing exactly what was on his mind. After ten years together, most of it spent almost exclusively in each other's company as they scoured the galaxies looking for treasures in the aftermath of a war that desolated 98 percent of the colonized Universe, you'd think he would have gotten good at reading her too. But he hadn't. He'd never been. And it had only gotten worse since they'd lost Trevor. More and more, he didn't think he knew her at all.

“No,” she said.

She sounded mildly irritated, and he thought maybe she was on to him, but of course she usually sounded mildly irritated. Sometimes not so mildly. Sometimes she sounded like she outright hated him. And who could blame her?

He stole a glance at her. In the cramped cockpit of the Buggywhip, wires dangling everywhere as he kept patching their poor ship to keep it running, and half the control panel circuitry exposed, Kelsie was almost invisible. Gray uniform, gray skin, gray hollowed-out eyes—even her hair looked more gray than blond these days. All that gray blended into the circuit boards and the panel doors and the bulkheads. God, she wasn't even forty yet and she looked like a cadaver.

“Any energy signatures?” he asked. The planet really did look awful—like a sweaty fingerprint on the thick glass of their cockpit window.

“No.”

“Well,” he said, “I guess we'll start on that southern continent. That's likely where there was the most life, near the equator.”

She didn't say anything. She didn't even bow her head—just went on staring ahead like some kind of zombie. Or a ghost. That's what she'd become to him, really—a living, breathing ghost. Suddenly he hated her for not looking at him. He'd looked at her, hadn't he? He'd been able to do that much.

“Okay,” he said tersely, “I'll set the coordinates—”

“Wait,” she said.

“What?”

“There is something,” she said, finally a little bit of life in her voice. “It's very faint—but yes, there's something down there. Something running on artificial power.”

* * * *

She woke in the forest. The first things she noticed were the smells—the crispness of the morning air, the moldy wet leaves, the eye-watering scent of the flowering koona trees. These were all smells that were familiar to her, but when she opened her eyes and saw the man staring down at her, she didn't know him.

“Who are you?” she said.

He was tall and gangly, all knobby elbows and blocky knees in his sweat-stained shirt and blue running shorts. He was breathing heavily, hands on those ugly knees, beads of sweat trickling down his long brown sideburns. She saw a hint of gray in the sideburns, but he could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty—he had that kind of face. He wore some type of video visor, the tinted lenses flipped up; on the visor's tiny twin screens a woman in a finned dress was pointing at a chart.

He removed a black receiver from his ear and said, “I think the better question is, who are you?"

She opened her mouth to tell him, but when she grasped for it, the information wasn't there. It felt like it was just out of reach, like a horga bug fluttering just beyond her fingertips. She'd had it just a moment ago, but now it was gone. Of course, she knew what a horga bug was. She obviously hadn't forgotten everything.

“I—I don't know,” she said.

“Really?” he said. “This isn't some kind of joke, is it?”

“No.” And it wasn't. She was also starting to get afraid. It was as if someone had just turned out the light in part of her brain, and the darkness pressed in from all sides.

“Hey, hey now,” he said, extending a hand to her. “Don't be worried. It's probably something to do with that nasty bruise on your head. It'll come back to you in a second.”

Since she was already taking his hand with her right—him pulling her up, having to huff a little to do it—she touched her forehead with her left. At the same time as she felt the puffy mound over her left eye, she also felt a throbbing pain.

“Ow,” she said.

“Ow is right. You could get that thing declared the second largest mountain in New Hyron. You do know you're in New Hyron, don't you?”

She didn't, and he must have seen that right away by her eyes, because his jocular expression quickly shifted to concern. Or was it pity? She checked herself over; her loose-fitting gray clothes were disheveled and speckled with leaves and dirt. Had she been raped? She didn't feel like she'd been raped. The clothes were a kind of uniform, but crudely made. She saw a matching bonnet half buried in leaves and she snatched it up. It looked like cloth, but it had the hardness of a stone bowl.

“Hmm,” the man said. He took a couple of paces away and picked up a thick branch about the length of his arm. He brought it to her and pointed at a place where the bark had been chipped to the paler wood beneath. There was a tiny spot of blood. “I'm at heart a scientist,” he said, “and I'm going to venture a hypothesis that this is your blood.”

“Maybe it fell from the tree and hit me,” she said.

He looked up at the trees, then grimaced. She followed his gaze and saw what he saw—no tree limbs anywhere close to above where she'd been lying.

“I think it did hit you,” he said, “but it wasn't because it fell.”

* * * *

They found the energy signature in the eastern hemisphere, in the shadows of a jagged mountain range that resembled bloodied teeth. It was a gray basin with no trees, no bushes, no water of any kind—just chalky black and crimson rock. When they drifted down through the smog in the lander and Marco saw what awaited below, he thought it was the most desolate place he had ever seen. If there was a hell, then it would look like this. If it was hell, then this is where he would go when he died.

“Are you sure about that reading?” he said.

She was leaning close to the monitor, and when she looked up at him, her face glowed green. She gave him a cold look. “Do you want to check it yourself?”

He swallowed and focused on the landing controls, firing the rotationals, banking to the left as he brought them down in the smoothest area he could see. That look from Kelsie—it was worse than hate. It was murderous. It was the way she'd looked at him several weeks after the accident, when he'd dared to touch her shoulder in bed, thinking maybe she'd have him again, maybe they could strive for something between them even though it would never be the same—and the naked rage she'd flashed him had pierced his heart like a blade. He'd known at that moment she'd never have him again, never touch him again. And he'd been right.

Setting the ship down, feeling the gangplanks shudder beneath his boots, he wondered how many more of these trips they had in them. Five? Two? She'd never asked to stop, never asked for a divorce, never asked for anything, really, which was the problem, but the end it had to be coming. It'd been nearly a year. He figured they'd just kept on, not because either of them wanted it, but out of habit. Maybe she wouldn't ask for a divorce. Maybe one of these days, when his back was turned, she'd just leave him marooned on a world like this. Who would ever know? She could make up whatever story she wanted.

As usual, she had her suit on first, and as usual, she made no attempt to help him. It was the little things like that he missed the most—how she used to help him with his suit, how she used to put the coffee out for him when he was in the hydro, how she used to touch the back of his neck when she entered the cockpit. When he joined her at the hatch, she was standing there with her gloved white hand on the panel, the glare of the overhead light on her helmet obscuring her face.

“Ready?” she said, her voice crackling over his helmet's speakers.

His suit smelled like old sweat and musty leather—smells he used to love because they kindled his sense of adventure, but now despised because they made him remember better times. “Sure,” he said. But what he wanted to say was, He was tethered, Kelsie! I swear to God he was tethered!

Of course he didn't say that. He'd never once said it, even the day it happened. It was something she obviously knew. Why should he have to say it?

The last thing he did was make sure the laser pistol holstered on his hip was fully charged. It probably wasn't necessary, but it was always better to be safe. As soon as the hatch clanked open, pale orange dust swirled into the compartment. It fogged the air, made it impossible to see. Out of instinct, he reached for her hand, but she was already clomping down the gangplank with her handheld in front of her. He followed, her nothing but a blurry shape. Out of the ship's antigrav, he felt the planet tugging him, giving him weight.

The red and black ground was as hard as metal; it made him think of a crusty scab. There were boulders everywhere, and the spires loomed through the haze like wraiths. He couldn't see her anymore. Panicking, he started to run and immediately bumped into her bulky air supply. She'd stopped in a ring of boulders, the large misshapen one directly in front of her about half her height.

“Here it is,” she said

He studied at the boulder, leaning in to squint at it through the dust. “It's a rock,” he said.

“I'm telling you this is it.”

“It's a rock.”

“Marco, I'm telling you—”

“All the places we could look for treasure and you brought us to a rock.”

She thrust the handheld at him, blue lights flickering through the protective sheath. “You look at it!”

Disgusted, he pushed her arm away and reached for the boulder. The swirling dust chose that moment to calm, the air partially clearing. As he leaned, he saw that the boulder did have a very unusual shape, with strange bumps and odd ridges. Still, it was a rock, nothing but a damn rock, so when his hand was nearly touching it and the rock grabbed his wrist, he was so surprised that he let out a startled cry.

* * * *

His name was Jahn Klonburr. He'd introduced himself on the way back to his pod, where he quickly flew her to the top of a towering glass building on the edge of a glistening emerald lake that bordered the forest. When they landed, an older fellow with white hair escorted her to the infirmary, where a sleek robot nurse tended to her wounds, its spindly arms humming softly when they moved. The way everyone talked to Jahn, she realized two things: one, he was definitely in charge, and two, he was a very powerful man.

While the bandage was being affixed to her forehead, Jahn disappeared for ten minutes. When he returned, he took her hands in his. She expected soft hands, the kind of hands of a man who'd spent most of his life earning his keep with his brains and not his brawn, and was surprised when they were rough and calloused. He was still dressed in his running clothes, though he no longer wore the visor. He must have also put on some kind of deodorant, because she could smell it—a powerful scent, like the ocean before the storm.

“I've got good news and bad news,” he said.

She sat up straighter on the wall-mounted cot. “Tell me the good news first. It'll help cushion the blow.”

He smiled kindly. He wasn't all that handsome, but she loved his smile. It was not only warm but slightly bashful as well. “The good news is that your genetic scan was in the system. Your name is Derra Verne. Ring any bells?”

“No.”

“Ah,” he said, sounding mildly disappointed. “Well, maybe the bad news will. Unfortunately, it looks like you were a member of The Family of Jorf.” He raised his rather thick eyebrows.

“Sorry,” she said. “Still nothing. Who are they?”

“A very conservative religious cult—anti-science, anti-technology. Anti-sanity, if you ask me. Their city, Jorf, is a long way from here—half a continent, practically. They are very strict when it comes to their dogma, and if one of their members is found in violation they are summarily expelled. And usually abandoned far from Jorf—which is the case with you.”

“Oh, so I'm a rebel, then?”

“Actually, you might have been hysterical at being left behind. From what I've read, they only strike the ones who keep trying to return.”

“Oh,” she said.

“You sound disappointed.”

“I guess I am. I don't feel like some sort of blind follower.”

He squeezed her hands. “You don't have to be. You can be whoever you want to be.”

She laughed—a nervous laugh, too high and strained. “What you mean is, I can be whoever I want to be because I don't remember who I am?”

“No,” he said, “it's true especially if you remember who you are.”

He smiled that warm, bashful smile again, and she knew at that moment she was falling in love with him.

* * * *

It wasn't until the rock stood, still gripping his hand tightly, that he realized the misshapen thing was not actually a rock at all.

It was a robot.

The dust swirled and undulated around them, the thicker orange vapors rippling like silk scarves. The dust was so thick and clumpy on the robot's body that it was easy to mistake it for a boulder, especially with visibility so poor. The way it had been sitting, with its knees drawn to its concaved chest, arms wrapped around the legs, and head bowed to its knees, had made it nearly impossible to recognize it for what it was until it moved.

“Hey!” Marco cried, pulling at the metallic fingers clamping onto his wrist. “Let me go!”

Slowly, as if it required immense effort, the robot lifted its head. For the first time they saw its true color—white, but dull and faded like old wax. Since its face had been shielded, the metal there was smooth and clear, and the ring of dust along its scalp looked like a bad haircut. It had dainty features, its face narrowing to a point, like a downward-pointing triangle. The big hinged jaw, the lack of a nose, and the recessed eye sockets made him think of a skull. The ridged fingers were as small as a child's, but they were damn strong.

“Come on!” Marco said.

It went on holding fast, staring up at him with shadowed eyes. He thought about going for his laser pistol, but it was on the same side as his clamped arm—and really, he didn't want to shoot it unless it was absolutely necessary. Then Kelsie did something unexpected. She laughed. His blood was already flowing, his heart pounding, and he couldn't help his reaction—he wanted to kill her. He might have killed her, if the blasted thing didn't have a death grip on him.

“You're not helping!” he shouted at her.

This only made her laugh harder, her giggles and squeals ringing inside his helmet. She doubled over and he thought, this is it, it really is finished.

“Verna-saff, rik rik?” the robot said.

It broke the spell of Marco's rage, and seemed to take the air out of Kelsie's fits too. He looked down at it.

“What?” he said.

“Verna-saff, rik rik?” the robot again.

“We don't speak your language!”

“Speak language,” the robot said, with amazingly clear enunciation even though it had only heard the words once.

“That's right!” Marco said, irritated it was parroting him. “We don't! Now let go of my hand!"

The robot let go of his hand. In fact, it happened so promptly that Marco stumbled, backpedaling, finally coming down hard on his rear. He narrowly missed sitting on a boulder, but his flailing left elbow wasn't so lucky—it flung into the rock, striking a nerve that brought tears to his eyes. The first thing he heard was Kelsie's laughter. Her response was worse than the falling, and he hated her more in that moment than he'd ever hated anyone or anything in his entire life.

It wasn't just the laughter. It was the contempt in the laughter.

"Kelsie!" he screamed.

“Speak language,” the robot said again. “That's right. Now speak language.”

When he glared at it, he saw that the robot was rising. Its legs were as thin as stilts, and when the billowing dust thickened around it, sometimes it looked like it wasn't standing on anything larger than a pair of taut strings. Despite its child-sized features, it was about Kelsie's height.

“I told you—” Marco started to tell it.

“Wait,” Kelsie said, not laughing now, quickly sobering. “I think it's asking us to speak. It's trying to learn our language.”

“That's crazy,” Marco said, painfully getting off the hard ground, his tailbone smarting. He was lucky he hadn't punctured a hole in the suit. “It can't possibly already—”

“Learn, learn,” the robot said. “You speak language. I learn it. I understand it. Now, speak.”

Then Marco was a believer. He realized that every word the robot had spoken so far had been one they had already spoken to it—and not only that, but the robot seemed to comprehend the meaning behind those words instantly. Whether by context or some powerful analysis of structure and sound, he didn't know, but it was certainly beyond any technology he'd seen before.

“I'm Kelsie,” Kelsie said, touching her chest. “This is Marco. He's my—husband.” It might have been his imagination, but he was sure there was a pause between the words “my” and “husband,” one that struck a nerve even deeper than her laughter. “We're treasure hunters,” she continued. “Or war scavengers—that's the not-so-polite way of putting it. We travel around the Universe in a ship visiting worlds ravaged by the Dulnari, looking for rare artifacts and other finds. To sell them. It's not noble work or anything. It's just, you know, a way to make a living.”

With the dust wrapping around its legs like a cape, its upper body momentarily in the clear, the robot listened attentively. Kelsie hesitated, and Marco kept waiting for her to add a few more lines of biography: We had a son named Trevor. He was two years old. One time, on a dead planet very much like this one, we stopped to make some repairs. I was sick as a dog with some Povian virus we'd picked up at our last stop, so Marco brought Trevor outside with him. There were deep canyons everywhere, but Trevor was on a short tether attached to the ship. Marco says Trevor must have undone it. He only turned his back on him for a second. That's what Marco says happened, anyway.

But to Marco's great relief, she simply shrugged her shoulders and said, “That's really all I can think to tell you.”

“Where is ship?” the robot asked.

Kelsie pointed. “Well, it's right over—”

Before she finished, the robot abruptly started walking in the direction of the ship.

* * * *

They'd been together less than three weeks when Jahn proposed. Derra was shocked, of course, but not so shocked that she didn't immediately say yes. It might have taken him three weeks, but deep down she'd known in less than three hours that she was going to marry him eventually. It had only been a question of when.

Her memory of her time pre-Jahn—which was how she'd almost immediately begun to classify the events of her life, as pre-Jahn and post-Jahn—never did return. He brought in dozens of specialists, but there was nothing they could do. The great gaping hole in her past bothered her tremendously in the beginning, but over time the love she felt for Jahn made the memory loss more bearable. In fact, she began to feel grateful for her amnesia. If what Jahn said was true, she might have been a completely different person with her full memories intact, a cultlike lamb whose only desire would be to try to get back to the Family. She didn't want to be that person anymore. She liked who she was when she was with Jahn.

They had the best of marriages—lovers, friends, the closest of confidants. His company—a technology firm that developed everything from artificial organs to hologaming consoles—took him all over the world, and he always took her with him. They dined in fine restaurants with powerful people. She was no wilting wallflower either; he insisted she learn all aspects of his business, and it wasn't long before she was attending the management meetings. It wasn't long after that when her voice carried just as much weight as his.

He wasn't all about making money, either. It was a trying time for the planet, beset by the dangers of a rapidly expanding population, determined to exhaust all of its natural resources despite the cost. It wasn't long before he was dedicating the majority of his time to trying to solve the world's problems. And where was she? At his side, of course.

More than eighty years they spent like this, Derra treasuring every minute of it, until even the best biological enhancements and improvements in medicine could not extend the vitality of their bodies. They retired to the very same forest where they had met so many years before—Jahn had built a castle for her in the center of the forest, where a bevy of robot servants would see to their every need and desire.

Then Jahn got sick—withering away, his body hardly more than a patchwork of bones. She sat by his beside, holding his hand while he was wracked with terrible coughs. Finally, when one of these fits passed, he slumped into the bed and told all the doctors and robots to leave them.

Even in his shrunken state, he looked up at her with the same warm eyes, smiled up at her with the same kind smile. “I'm dying, Derra,” he said.

“No, no,” she said. “You just need rest.”

“We both know it's my time.”

“Jahn—”

“No, listen. I've waited too long as it is. I have something to tell you. It's important that you know before I die.”

* * * *

Despite constant entreaties, the robot did not stop as it marched to their ship through the pluming dust. By the time they caught up to it, the robot was already ascending the ramp.

“Hold on there!” Marco cried.

But the robot didn't heed his warning. Marco grabbed its shoulder, but the robot pulled him right into the air lock, his boots skidding over the ramp's ridges. When they were all inside, Kelsie closed the air lock door.

“What're you doing?” Marco said to her. “I don't want—hey!"

Before the outside door was even closed, the robot was already working the controls to the inner hatch. As soon as the outside door beeped that it was closed, the inner hatch whirred and spun open. The robot plunged into their inner sanctum. Marco pursued, working at the latches of his helmet. He was already thinking about his laser pistol. He certainly didn't want to fire it inside the lander, but he would if it came to that.

Out of the dust, it was their first good look at the robot. Its head, which really wasn't all that large, looked enormous on top of its skeletal body; it made him think of the sort of stick figure a child might draw, with a big head and pencil-thin body. The orange stains looked like a funky sunburn—the metal white in some areas, stained in others.

Marco dropped his helmet with a clank on the metal floor, and behind him he heard Kelsie do the same. The lander was much smaller than the Buggywhip, so the robot didn't have far to go before it reached the cockpit. There was barely room for the three of them inside, poorly lit by a strip of amber lighting, made darker still because their bodies cast shadows everywhere. The robot quickly surveyed the room, then opened an access panel and yanked out a yellow wire.

“Stop that!” Marco said.

Then the robot did something even more outlandish—it put the exposed wire inside its mouth. Marco, expecting some type of sabotage, lunged for the wire, but the robot held him at bay with a hand squarely in the middle his chest.

“I won't—let you—” Marco cried.

“Marco, stop,” Kelsie pleaded.

Struggling against the robot, finding it futile because of its superior strength, he couldn't understand why Kelsie was being so calm. Of course—she probably really did want to be marooned on this hellhole. But not him. He didn't know it until this moment, but he still wanted to live.

Giving up on using his brute strength, he sprang away from the robot and yanked his laser pistol out of its holster. It was huge and heavy in his gloved hand. He aimed it directly at the robot's head.

“Marco!” Kelsie screamed.

“I'm going to count to three,” Marco warned.

“Marco, no!”

“If you don't put down that wire, I'll blast your head off. One . . .”

“Marco! It's not trying to hurt us—”

“Two . . .”

She grabbed his arm. He couldn't believe it. They struggled briefly, and then he pushed her and she toppled against the bulkhead, thudding to the gangplank. He was so surprised at what he'd done that he briefly forgot the robot, and by the time he looked at it again the robot was lowering the wire from its mouth. It cocked its head slightly to the side, holding up the yellow wire as if it was a candle waiting to be lit.

“The weapon is unnecessary,” the robot said, now speaking in perfect Prime. “I have finished interfacing with your ship's computer. I mean you no harm.”

Rising to her feet, Kelsie glared at Marco. “I told you!” she said.

“What did you do?” he said to the robot, ignoring her. He aimed the pistol at its head again. “Are you trying to take over my ship?”

“Of course not,” the robot said.

“Then what?”

The robot returned the wire to the compartment, fixed it in its original location, then closed the panel. It looked at the weapon in Marco's hand. “Please,” it said, “it would be quite unfortunate if you damaged your ship with an errant shot.”

Kelsie's hand was on his arm again, lowering it, and this time he let her. He still wasn't sure what was going on, but he still had the gun. He could still use it. “Who are you?” he said to the robot.

It did not answer at first, though it did stiffen. With no cheek muscles to tighten, no lips to part or compress, no eyebrows to raise or lower, it was impossible to get any sort of read on the robot's reaction. But when it spoke, he was quite certain he heard sorrow in its voice.

“I am a witness to all that was,” it said.

* * * *

There were dozens of things Jahn could have said that would have surprised her—after all, she'd chosen not to learn much about her past—but nothing could have shocked her as much as what he actually said. It didn't seem real. It hung in the air between them like just another mote of dust in the light slanting in from the window, the silence stretching out so long that she started to wonder if he'd said it all. So she finally had to say it herself, just to test the reality of the word on her own lips.

“A robot?” she said.

“That's right,” he said.

He started coughing again, his body wracked with convulsions so severe he looked like he was having a seizure. She stared at him, trying to comprehend.

“I'm a robot?” she said.

He cleared his throat into his fist. When he'd finally gotten some air in his lungs, he said, “But more, too. Obviously a lot more.”

“I don't feel like a robot,” she said.

“No, of course you wouldn't. That's the way I made you—so that you would think you were alive.”

“Jahn,” she said sternly, “if this is some sort of joke—”

“No, Derra. You need to know the truth. Once I'm gone, you were bound to find out anyway.”

She wiped away a tear in her eye, and she wondered if she was really crying or if it was just an automated response to a certain external stimulus. “So my whole life is a lie?”

“Not a lie,” he said. “A necessary myth.”

“So all that about the Family of Jorf, finding me in the forest—”

“All part of the illusion.”

“But why?”

He started to answer, but on the first word his throat seized up on him. The anguish on his face was terrible—it made him seem so sickly and old. He turned toward the window.

“I wanted a witness,” he said quietly.

“A what?”

He didn't look at her. “It wasn't for me. At least not at first. I just—well, you've been there with me, Derra. You know how fragile life is on this planet. If we don't destroy ourselves, and there's still a good chance of that happening, then something else might—an asteroid with our name on it, a series of volcanic eruptions that black out the sun, something else. Someday we'll all be gone. It's inevitable. The odds aren't on our side.”

“Jahn—”

“I wanted there to be a witness,” he said. “Someone made to last. Someone who would survive, who would be able to tell others about who we were, what we lived for, what we were like.”

“But there are robots everywhere,” she said. “Any of them might—”

“No!” he said fiercely, turning to look at her. “You're different! You lived as one of us. You are one of us. I have given you everything that we have—pain, emotion, at least the illusion of age and disease. Though you won't die. And you will shed this outward form soon enough. What's inside was built to last forever.”

It was an absurdity, all of it, but she knew instantly that it was true. She wondered bitterly if it was because he had programmed her to accept the truth when he finally told her. “So what we had between us,” she said, “that was a ‘myth’ too?”

“No! I didn't expect to love you, Derra, but I do. You mean everything to me. You are my witness too. And now, as I lay here at the end of my life, I wonder if that's all I ever wanted. Maybe my motive was never pure. What are we if we have no witness, no one to be there with us through all of life's travails? Everything that we are fades to nothing—except the memories that other people have of us. Your memories, Derra. You will carry them inside you, forever.”

He squeezed her hand. They had held hands the entire time. Even in her confusion, even in her anger, she had not let his hand go.

* * * *

When the robot was finished with its story, Kelsie was crying. Marco stood mute. The wind whistled against the cockpit window, and the jagged mountains appeared and disappeared in the sheaths of crimson fog billowing past the cockpit window.

“How long have you been out there?” Marco said.

“A long time,” the robot said.

“Did the Dulnari—”

“Oh no. We had destroyed ourselves long before they arrived. There have been at least a thousand winters since I last spoke to another living being. The Dulnari did not even stop. There was nothing for them here.”

“A thousand,” Kelsie said. She wiped her cheeks on her suit's sleeve. “You've been alone for a thousand years?”

Instead of answering, the robot motioned to the control panel. “Everything that I am, all of my memories, and all of the collected knowledge and wisdom of my people—it has been downloaded into your ship's computer. I ask that you make sure that it is distributed to any and all who would appreciate it.”

“Wait,” Kelsie said. “You're not going with us?”

“No,” the robot said. “I must return to where you found me.”

The robot stepped past them, heading to the air lock. Kelsie followed. Marco holstered his gun, trailing both of them.

“But there's nothing out there,” Kelsie pleaded.

“On the contrary,” the robot replied, "everything is out there.”

“It's a wasteland!”

At the hatch, its hand on the handle, the robot faced them. It may have just been the angle of the light, but Marco finally got a good look at the robot's eyes—and he was startled to see that they did not look like robot eyes. They were a rich, expressive blue, oval in shape, with widening dark pupils. They were deeply recessed, nearly hidden behind tiny gears and tightly-packed wires, and must have still been artificial, but to him they seemed every bit as alive as his own.

“That wasteland,” the robot said, “was once a lush forest. Where you found me was once my home. You may see nothing but dead rock, but I see a world alive with memories—my memories, everything that ever mattered to me.”

It turned to go, but Kelsie grabbed its narrow arm. “We can't just leave you alone out there!” she said.

The robot placed its metallic hand over Kelsie's glove, and it spoke to her as a mother might speak to a troubled child. “I will not be alone,” it said.

Then it opened the hatch. Marco reached for Kelsie, thinking he might have to hold her back, but Kelsie did not resist when the robot pulled away. The robot stepped through, then turned to face them,.

“Wait,” Kelsie said. “I'll get my helmet—”

“No,” the robot said, peering at them through the crack. Marco stood slightly behind his wife, looking at the robot over her shoulder. It stood that way for quite a while, frozen like a photographer trying to capture the perfect shot. Another moment. Another memory. “Remember,” it said, “no matter what happens, it is good to have a witness. It is good to be a witness.”

With that, it clanged the door shut. Kelsie let out a little whimper and continued to stand there. They heard the air whooshing into the compartment on the other side. Marco felt numb—not so much from the robot's story, but from what Kelsie had just said. I'll get my helmet. Had she been she offering to accompany the robot to where they'd found it, to say good-bye to it there—or had that been her way of saying good-bye to him?

It was then that Marco realized he didn't want Kelsie to say good-bye. He wanted her to forgive him. He didn't know if it was possible, but he wanted to try. What had happened with Trevor, it was an awful thing, but it was something they shared. They were a witness to it, just like they were a witness to each other's lives. If they went their separate ways, it might be easier to forget the pain, but it would be easier to forget everything else too.

They heard the robot clanging down the gangplank. Kelsie's shoulders slumped. He was looking at the back of her blond head for a time, but then he found his gaze drawn to her right hand, still gloved, hanging limply at her side. If he reached with his left, he could take it. He could not turn and go back to that cockpit and leave this planet until he reached for that hand. She might spurn him, she might reject him, and if she did, it would probably be for the last time.

But he had to reach.

He had to try.

* * * *

From her window, gazing out at the lush forest that surrounded her home, Derra watched the tiny ship lift into the sky. The sun was bright and warm on her face. She shielded her eyes, watching the ship go, rising into the blue heavens over their precious planet, the ship now as small as a bird, now a black dot vanishing into the white clouds. She watched until she could no longer hear the thunder of the ship's engines, until she once again heard the chirping of the birds and the whisper of the breeze.

“They're good people,” she said. “There's pain there—I could see it. But there's hope for them too. There's hope for all of us.”

Standing behind her, his breath warm on her neck, her beloved husband said, “I think so too.”

Copyright © 2011 Scott William Carter

[Back to Table of Contents]

Special Feature: SCIENCE FICTION IMAGINES THE DIGITAL FUTURE
by James Gunn

For those of us born before the Great Depression, a typewriter was as transformative an experience as an iPad; it was like giving a teenager not just the means but also the authorization to become a writer. For me it was a portable Smith-Corona that I replaced with an office-sized L. C. Smith when I became a serious author, then many years later an IBM electric (I had several; my last was a beautiful model with 14-point Academic Bookface that looked like real printing), and finally a series of IBM Selectrics. Each of these represented an escalation in speed of performance and volume of production. More important was their unanticipated consequence, a change in my relationship to the world of letters and even my relationship to the process of creation. Isaac Asimov commented that when he got an electric typewriter he was at first apprehensive, but when he got used to it he discovered that he could type twelve hours a day without getting tired. The smoothing of the path between the concept in the head and the words on the page is a kind of magic that changes the paradigm, akin to the process initiated by sending a manuscript off to a stranger in a far-off editorial office, whose only means of evaluation is by reading words on a page.

The computer completed the process of making the translation almost effortless. Robert Silverberg, who came to the computer late in his career, joked that the rest of us could retire because now he could create all the science fiction necessary. Jerry Pournelle brought a computer to the 1983 meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association and told everyone that it would double a writer's production, if he didn't spend so much time playing with the computer; today one could say the same thing about the seduction of e-mail and the internet.

But we're discussing digital media here, and for this the computer is a means, not an end. Science fiction has been considering the social implications of the computer almost since its magazine beginnings in 1926. Readers often think of science fiction as being a medium of prediction, but it is more accurately a medium of speculation, the creation of scenarios about possible outcomes that gains strength and credibility by incorporating observable trends, and validity by becoming part of a continuing dialogue among writers and sometimes readers.

Only the simplest speculations offer straight-line extrapolations. That's easy enough. Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth did a straight-line extrapolation in their novel The Space Merchants in which they depicted a world of the near future when advertising agencies would control everything instead of “ninety per cent of everything,” as Pohl once commented. Less predictable consequences were the shortages in natural resources created by all-out emphasis on consumption, such as valuable rings made of oak and a fresh-water tap in bathrooms, and the Panglossian tendency to accept current conditions as optimal. In a film he did for me, Pohl compared the extrapolations of a futurist to that of a science-fiction writer: “The futurist might extrapolate from the Sermon on the Mount the martyrdom of Christians in the arena, the donation of Constantine, perhaps even as far as the Crusades. But it would be only the science-fiction writer who might be able to imagine the Basilica of St. Peter, or the Spanish Inquisition, or Thursday-night bingo at your neighborhood church.” In a recent blog, Pohl referenced science fiction's early failures to recognize technological consequences: “. . . not even science fiction was telling us much about the price tag on progress. It told us about the future of the automobile; it didn't tell us that sulphur-dioxide pollution would crumble the stone in the buildings that lined the streets. It told us about high-speed aircraft, but not about sonic boom; about atomic energy, but not about fallout; about organ transplants and life prolongation, but not about the dreary agony of overpopulation.”

In an essay titled “Futuristics,” Isaac Asimov pointed out that the obvious prediction is not the most interesting one. It was easy to predict the automobile; what was difficult to predict was the traffic jam. It was easy to predict radio; what was difficult was the soap opera. It was easy to predict the income tax; what was difficult was the expense account. Equally, it was easy to predict the cell phone—Dick Tracy had his wrist radio back in the 1930s—but what was difficult to predict is that users would become so attached to them that they would step into traffic or allow their cars to drift out of control.

Science fiction might well be considered the literature of unanticipated consequences. Jules Verne, for instance, wrote mostly about the possibilities of discovery created by improved technologies of transportation, but his Nautilus made a surprising entrance as a battering ram. H. G. Wells, who became the father of modern science fiction, dealt mostly in the unanticipated consequence: invisibility, for instance, has to cope with the rigors of the English winter or the difficulties of obtaining shelter or remaining invisible after eating. The invincible Martians in The War of the Worlds became the victims of Earth's bacteria; the Sleeper in The Sleeper Wakes finds that his fortune created by compound interest has been used to finance a tyranny.

The same concern about unanticipated consequences can be traced through the history of science fiction that followed Verne and Wells. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World showed how the assembly line could produce a populace adapted to their station in life and reconciled to it with drugs and orgies. George Orwell in 1984 showed how television could be used to enable a ubiquitous tyranny. Isaac Asimov in The Foundation Trilogy calculated that mathematics might some day make possible predictions of large-scale future change but could not account for the actions of an individual with unique abilities. Frank Herbert in Dune took the problems of prediction a step farther by considering the human problems of visions and visionaries. My own novel The Immortals says that the problem with immortality is that the people who want it and have the power to acquire it will destroy it.

In fact, to write an effective science-fiction story, all you need is something that the world thinks is an unmitigated boon and to focus on the unforeseen problems that it might create. As Anthony Burgess pointed out in A Clockwork Orange, if you want to prohibit violence, you have to be willing to sacrifice free will. Or as Spencer Tracy said to the jury in Inherit the Wind, you can have the telephone but you have to give up your privacy.

So how can we apply this to the social implications of digital media? My science-fiction writer's instinct tells me that the first unanticipated consequence will be a change in the way that people look at the world and their place in it. Galileo's displacement of humans from the center of the Universe, when it finally seeped into the public consciousness, changed not only people's understanding of the Universe but their concept of who they were and the purpose (or purposelessness) of their existence; perhaps the unanticipated consequence was existentialism. The Industrial Revolution liberated people from the tyranny of limited biological energy and their attachment to a particular piece of land and their need to survive by what they could induce it to produce; what was difficult to predict was alcoholism and the orphanage. The airplane shrank the world into reachable destinations and reduced the distance between people's understandings of each other. What made Social Security problematic in our times was the unanticipated increase in life expectancies.

In a recent New York Times blog Ross Douthat mentioned the unanticipated consequences of the cotton gin and the birth-control pill: “The cotton gin launched a thousand pro-slavery polemics. The birth control pill convinced millions of people that the old moral consensus on sex and marriage was outdated and even absurd.” One might also mention that the cotton gin made slavery uneconomical and the invention of the Model-T brought the price of automobiles within the incomes of the men who built them and not only made possible the suburbs and the hollowing out of the inner city but also transferred courting from the parlor to the back seat.

So, it seems to me, young people growing up with the internet will consider the world a smaller place than my generation thought it. Interactions that require seconds, not days, mean that someone on the other side of the world is for many purposes next door. Other digital media will have similar effects in how we define ourselves and our place in the Universe.

Some authors are speculating about the post-human, that is, the transformation of human existence by new technologies into something different. Vernor Vinge anticipates the “Singularity"—that moment in the near future when artificial intelligence will surpass our ability to control it, or compete with it, or even understand it. Arthur C. Clarke suggested in 1966, at K.U.'s own Inter-Century Seminar, that humanity may be the necessary bridge between inanimate matter and artificial intelligence. And Gregory Benford, in six novels called the Galactic Center series, suggested a natural rivalry between carbon-based life and metal-based life that would result in the near-destruction of humans and other carbon-based sentient beings. In my novel Gift from the Stars, I described the natural opposition of life and matter typified by the fact that matter progresses toward greater disorder and life toward greater order.

Other writers, most notably Australia's Greg Egan, imagine the uploading of minds into giant computers and the kind of artificial existence, with its own characteristic issues and opportunities, this transfer would make possible. But always with unanticipated consequences. The key to a good story is making it come out differently than the reader expects, but believably. As Poul Anderson once said, what the reader wants are the twin pleasures of surprise and rightness. Of course some scientists have already speculated that the Universe may be a gigantic computer and we exist only as programs within it, or, at least, that we cannot prove that this is not the case. The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno anticipated that possibility many years ago when he speculated that we are the dreams of God and our prayers supplications to keep Him from waking.

New York Times writer Robert Wright, in a recent (July 6, 2010) column speculated that “technology is weaving humans into electronic webs that resemble big brains—corporations, online hobby groups, far-flung N.G.Os.” He continued: “I personally don't think it's outlandish to talk about us being, increasingly, neurons in a giant superorganism.”

One can imagine world-building participation games such as “Second Life” as paving the way for the uploading of consciousness, or at least as a model for what that kind of existence might be like. Certainly those kinds of games have already been accused of absorbing people's conscious lives. And those that involve financial transactions already have spilled over into the real world. Films that explore the possibilities of transferring one's consciousness into digital bodies always add to the suspense by the admonition that death in the digital world may mean death in the real world. And in a Philip K. Dick scenario the distinction between the imaginary world and the real world was always difficult to determine and questioned the existence of anything we think is reality. David Gerrold suggested, in “With a Finger in My I,” that reality may be only a consensus.

William Gibson anticipated today's computer-important world in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, in which he invented the word “cyberspace” and defined it as “a consensual hallucination . . . a graphic representation of data abstracted from every computer in the human system.” He wrote that before he even had a computer, but he had thought a lot about them—as a profile in Time magazine noted, “not so much how they worked as how they changed the people who used them.” He also admitted the failure of his imagination: In Neuromancer nobody has a cell phone. The world has produced a cell phone but not yet the total dominance of international corporations or artificial intelligences or the street-smart underclass that gave rise to the term “cyberpunk,” or even the realization of that “consensual hallucination.” But the computer has changed people in the way that all technology changes people. “It's a basic tenet of science fiction that our tools shape us as much as we shape them,” Gibson said to the Time reporter, and Marshall McLuhan said famously, “The medium is the message.” But any creative act shapes us too. Gibson wrote about his heroine in Spook Country, “When she wrote about things, her sense of them changed, and with it, her sense of herself.”

When writers began to consider the possibilities of computers developing sentience—before the term “artificial intelligence” came into use—the potential for their taking over the world was the initial concern. They would start a war to end all wars and end up enslaving humanity, or destroying it, along the lines of Colossus: The Forbin Project or, much later, Terminator. Even worse, computers that are built to wage war could end up turning on humanity in a fit of guilt, as in Harlan Ellison's “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” It is only after this first paroxysm of fear that cooler heads suggest benefits. Isaac Asimov rebelled against what he called the “Frankenstein's monster reaction” by pointing out that when engineers create something they build in safeguards, like hilts for knives, railings for stairs, and safety valves for steam engines. With the help of editor John Campbell, Asimov came up with the three laws of robotics that protect humanity from harm by their creations.

So it is likely to be in our consideration of digital media—first the danger, then the possible blessings. Sometimes it's the blessings and then the danger. Galaxy editor Horace Gold kept pushing Fred Pohl to write a story in which wealth and poverty were reversed. Pohl thought it was the most ridiculous idea he ever heard but finally succumbed and wrote “The Midas Plague.” The unanticipated consequence in which he found a narrative was in robot manufacturing and its plenty; production, he wrote, means that someone must consume, and the requirement to consume means that only the poor will be forced to do so while the rich can live frugally. The protagonist's sheltered bride solves the problem by putting the household robots to the job of consuming. I read that story and wrote a response I called “Little Orphan Android” in which the unanticipated consequence of having robots produce and consume is that humans become unnecessary.

Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash focused on the fragility of the digital world and its attack on the political and social organization of the real world. Stephenson explained the title of the novel in his 1999 essay In the Beginning . . . was the Command Line as his term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer. Stephenson wrote about the Macintosh that, “When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set—a ‘snow crash.'”

Of course E. M. Forster had already imagined that outcome in the 1909 story “The Machine Stops,” with its depiction of people living in beelike cells underground, served by machines, entertained by something like a combination between a television and the internet, and ultimately destroyed by the machine when it stops.

In that Time magazine article about William Gibson's new book Zero History, he said, “I don't think we're actually seeing the surface of things, I think we're seeing cultural code.” He also addressed his use of Twitter: “What I'd miss most about Twitter is its astonishing power as an aggregator of novelty. It does in a few hours what one hundred professionally produced magazines could scarcely do in a month, skimming the world's weirdest, most wonderful things and depositing it on your desktop to be snacked on.” In Spook Country, his heroine wrote to a friend, “The world is already weirder and stupider than you could ever have guessed.”

All these aspects of digital media add up to a bewildering array of social implications—redefining privacy, for instance. People, particularly young people, are putting all sorts of personal information, including revealing photographs, on Facebook or in e-mails. Does this encourage individuality or a kind of communal personality? Does the sharing of the unstructured observation, or the mundane experience, on Twitter, allow people a broader ability to explore the world, or does it homogenize the people who share it? I could write, of course, about the ability of the digital media to construct individual realities that would allow every user to retire to his or her hermetic existence. But I would be more likely to look for the unanticipated consequence—I'd postulate a new kind of shared persona, much like the conformity of teenage fashion and behavior but with far more sanctions against deviancy, and then confront that conformity with a broad need for individuality—either an external or internal threat—as in my story “Tsylana,” which is “analyst” spelled backwards and referred to a need for reverse psychoanalysis that would create neuroses rather than treat them. But pursuing a more radical unanticipated consequence, I might deal with the conforming society as the natural evolution of the human species to enable it to cope with emerging crises that society recognizes at an unconscious level and for which it produces appropriate answers, in the same way that A. E. van Vogt's null-A individuals, in The World of Null-A, developed in order to repel an imminent alien invasion, or Greg Bear's characters in Darwin's Radio call upon “junk DNA” to produce children capable of coping with new challenges. In The World of Null-A, two million individuals arose as one to take appropriate action—because they had been trained in null-A thought processes. So—the first response is the threat of change; the second is the potential for something new and wonderful that might emerge, like the butterfly from the cocoon, as Bear imagined in Blood Music, in which an accident with a biological computer transforms humanity into something transcendent.

On a more pragmatic level, one can imagine the increasing complexity of digital technology creating a kind of Darwinian selection for those kinds of minds and personalities that are good at digital skills, favoring nerds and geeks over people who find face-to-face interactions more satisfying. Just as natural selection not only favored early humans who had better hunting skills and better resistance to disease, it also favored those with greater social skills that enabled them to create self-supporting groups as well as better mating opportunities. A mastery of and even a preference for digital communication may provide a similar sorting operation.

Another digital medium, Facebook, could provide similar Darwinian selectivity. Don Anderson of Cambridge University commented recently that “Facebook might lock in its users even more tightly than Microsoft. People want to use the sites their friends use. As one of my students put it, ‘All the party invitations in Cambridge come through Facebook. If you don't use Facebook you don't get to any parties, so you'll never meet any girls, you won't have any kids and your genes will die out.'

“In the face of such Darwinian pressures, what can anyone hope to do?”

Two issues arise from the almost instantaneous availability of data and its unreliability. Its availability may mean that information no longer is either to be cherished or to be honored. That means a challenge to the concept of creation and creativity, raising questions about copyright and originality embodied in the catchphrase “information wants to be free.” I have had my own experiences with copyrighted material being posted on websites.

Jaron Lanier commented in a New York Times opinion piece, “We see the embedded philosophy bloom when students assemble papers as mash-ups from online snippets instead of thinking and composing on a blank piece of screen. What is wrong with this is not that students are any lazier now or learning less. (It is probably even true, I admit reluctantly, that in the presence of the ambient Internet, maybe it is not so important anymore to hold an archive of certain kinds of academic trivia in your head.) The problem is that students could come to conceive of themselves as relays in a transpersonal digital structure. Their job is then to copy and transfer data around, to be a source of statistics, whether to be processed by tests at school or by advertising schemes elsewhere.

“What is really lost when this happens is the self-invention of a human brain. If students don't learn to think, then no amount of access to information will do them any good.”

I would add that if students confuse the assembly of information with creativity—acknowledging that all creativity has a major element of assembly—then the nature and maybe the impetus for creativity is likely to undergo significant transformation. Authors are already experiencing that kind of change, with some safeguarding their copyrighted materials with threats and legal action while others adapt by posting their creations for anyone to sample and prospering from increased popularity (and sometimes actual sales) and speaking gigs. I sense a feeling of inevitability about change in this area that converts resistance to a kind of melancholy holding action. But what will be the result? Authors such as Cory Doctorow are dealing with that changed world in novels such as Little Brother, Makers, and For the Win, all released on Creative Commons and aimed at portraying the transformed youth culture and sometimes written for it as young-adult fiction.

The question of reliability of digital media is another transformative issue. Studies tell us that our standard sources of information—newspapers, reference books, television news—are losing ground (and income) to digital media—Wikipedia, Google, blogs—that may be useful, but have no built-in check mechanism. The unanticipated consequence may be the diminution of the hierarchical system of knowledge and the increase of something that might be called a pure democracy of information or anarchy, depending on your viewpoint. Some of us saw that coming in the 1960s when students began looking upon themselves as consumers of education entitled to all the protections and privileges of the consumers of other products such as “the consumer is always right,” and an elevation of student opinion to the same status as teacher's knowledge. Maybe salutary, maybe self-defeating.

Finally, we ought to recognize that anticipating unanticipated consequences is an oxymoron. Unanticipated consequences will remain unanticipated until they arrive. But we can anticipate that some consequences will always be unanticipated, and the realization of that fact is part of the openness to our own limitations that inoculates us against hubris and tunnel vision. The exercise of trying to imagine the unanticipated consequence can be useful, nevertheless. What we may come up with is the less-obvious consequence, and remind ourselves, in the science-fictional frame of mind, that all actions have unanticipated consequences and the need to think broadly, bravely, imaginatively. The exercise will stretch the imagination, producing, at the end, what I consider a science-fiction perspective: The future is wide open, our minds should be open to all its possibilities, and we can make it a livable future if we can think clearly and boldly enough.

When we talk about “social implications,” we are talking about the future—that nebulous state of affairs that is always a day or a generation away. Speculations about it are just that, speculations, though the more thought we apply to the future, the more it becomes, in the words of Hubertus Bigend, the mysterious Belgian entrepreneur in Gibson's Spook Country, “quasi-factual.” The MacGuffin in Spook Country is a mysterious shipping container that we can use, in our present circumstances, as a metaphor for the future. Nobody knows where it is, who owns it, or most importantly what's in it. But we're all going to chase it around until we open it up and discover, well, that all it contains is a veiled reference to another container yet to be discovered.

Copyright © 2011 James Gunn

[Back to Table of Contents]

Short Story: DEATH AND DANCING IN NEW LAS VEGAS
by Ernest Hogan

What terraforming means depends a lot on your view of Terra. . . .

Everyone else slept while I drove the Rolling Serpent along the Tharsis Highway, where it runs parallel to the steaming Marineris Canal, through the predawn darkness toward the distant lights of New Las Vegas. Then a black bug kamikazed right between my eyes. I blinked hard, expecting it to splatter against the windshield. But no, that didn't happen.

The insect stopped just short of impact and hovered, flying backward, staring me down.

It seemed to be what we call, back in the varrios, a ninja bug. I had thought they were a NeoMartian folktale. I had even written a song about them:

If the corpos don't like you
They'd send ninja bugs at you
So don't go boo-hoo-hoo
Be a nice little you

And there it was, the black bug with the red glowing eyes.

Then it was gone—replaced by the new, improved, state-of-the-art version of Nuzoom's living logo. It had come a long way from being just a line-drawn cartoon. Now it was fully 3D, with cast shadows. The speed lines that had indicated constant movement were now effective blurs.

The logo glared at me with bulbous eyes.

I said something obscene and blasphemous.

The eyes got real big, then narrowed in a squint—and the autonomous public image of the Nuzoom Interplanetary Development Corporation disappeared.

“What?” asked Doc Burandanga, my percussionist and frankentech wizard. “You gonna wreck this bus after I worked so hard on it?” He raised his head but hadn't gotten his eyes open yet.

“Yeah.” I pulled over to the side of the road. “You better drive a while. I need some sleep. I'm beginning to see things.”

He pried himself out of the arms of Yumi Das, the band's tuba player and resident jujuista.

“I suppose so. Yumi's starting to think I belong to her or something.”

“I heard that,” Yumi said with her eyes still closed.

Doc settled into the driver's seat as I made my way back to the seat where my wife Jumana and Xe-Xe, my “naturally” purple-haired daughter, snoozed. Beyond them, in the bus's back seat, was Popo Patel, my trumpeter, snoring away and dreaming of all the women he hoped to conquer in New Las Vegas. Out the rear window, Phobos glowed.

I slid in next to Jumana. She wiggled me some room and said, “Ya shouldn't use dem kinda words in front of Xe-Xe.”

When I patted our daughter's head, she did not respond.

“She's sound asleep.”

“Oh, mani, she can still hear ya. She's so supersensitive.”

* * * *

Soon I was dreaming of that time when I was known as Paco Cohen instead of Teo Arango. I liked the Flying Serpents better than the Mariachis of Mars. I seemed to remember another band, back in Texas—Los Freetails. Guess I never learn.

I dreamed I was trying to play a great new song, “You Never Know What Nanohudu's Gonna Do,” but Nuzoom had come and made me put on a straightjacket. I tried to play, but couldn't. The words came, but my voice was weak:

"You never know what nanohudu's gonna do
if you're purp, it's inside of you
and make your DNA into something new.
You never know what nanohudu's gonna do."

The Mariachis didn't care that my voice wasn't up to snuff. Neither did the audience, which was mostly unpurps.

Then I noticed the others in the crowd. Big folks covered in purple fur, the “yetis” that people see around Olympus Mons, which were probably dreamed up by advertising people. There were mermaids, too, purple ones, dripping violet-green canal water all over the place. And canal squids, their tentacles reaching toward me. . . .

* * * *

“Teo?”

Something had me. Not tentacles; soft, warm arms. Arms I knew intimately.

“Teo. Ya were whimpering.”

“Aw, it's a lotta nada. I was just dreaming about something coming to get me again.”

“Like your past?”

I laughed.

“Are ya sure ya wanna do this?” She looked toward the distant lights of New Las Vegas.

The lights beyond the volcanoes looked so pretty. “I guess I have to. To sort out who the hell I am.”

She leaned on me. “Ya also wanna hear dat symphony of yours on state-of-the-art software.”

“Destiny, I guess.”

“I hate destiny,” she said.

“You can't just sit around kvetching about the chingadas all the time. You gotta get up. You gotta live your life.”

“Sometimes I wish ya weren't so complicated, Teo.”

“No, you don't, Jumana.”

I kissed her, like she wanted.

The Maya called it the Burden of Time. The rest of us poor schlemiels call it history. I had happily put it down, along with the baggage of any old lives I may have had. Life was good in the varrios of Greater Purpazona. I was a dustgrabber by day and a mariachi by night, with a wonderful dancing wife and a fantastic daughter who sang songs in a language of her own.

Maybe I should have just deleted that invitation to the First Nuzoom NeoMartian Culture Festival. But then, I had finally finished that symphony I had been working on for most of my life. It would be nice to hear it played on some of the latest software, and I heard that Orchestronia 4.5 was going be available at the festival. I can be such a yutz.

Or as Jumana often says, “Teo, mani, ya got da music in ya, so ya gotta let it out.”

And when I asked Xe-Xe if we should go, she said, “Yes, I want to sing with the mermaid.”

Her purple eyes sparkled.

I was doomed.

* * * *

The Sun rose as we approached a printed colony. By the time we had reached its other end, the buildings had grown another level. When I arrived on Mars, nanohudu was just beginning to work its mojo. Now it was a runaway train.

Xe-Xe woke up in time to see some kowboys on ostrumels rounding up some kow-kows with really fat tails, ready for harvesting.

“Pada, does it hurt when their tails pop off?”

“No, mija. The kows are actually glad to get rid of their tails when they get too fat. Then they grow back.”

“Ooh!” She spotted the steaming canal. “Is that where the mermaids live?”

“People say they've seen them there,” said Jumana.

Xe-Xe cocked her head, “Yes. I hear them. I'd like to see them.”

“They say that they're scary and eat people.” I warned.

She beamed. “They wouldn't dare eat me.”

“How do you know that?” Jumana asked.

“I've heard it in their songs.”

“Their songs?” I asked.

She hummed a strange melody. I'd heard her sing it before, with words I couldn't recognize.

“Those are your play songs,” said Jumana.

“No, they're the mermaids’ songs.”

“The yetis are supposed to sing, too,” Popo piped in. “So you ever hear them?”

“Yes, I heard some yeti as we went between the volcanoes.”

“Mija, do they sing like the mermaids?” asked Jumana.

“Yes, but they have a different language.”

She has such an imagination. The varrio-published komiks about kowboys, mermaids, and yetis she's been reading just fuel that fire. That and the occasional real feathered serpent that flies overhead.

Soon the dome of New Las Vegas at the rim of the Valle Marineris loomed before us.

“Ooh, pretty!” Xe-Xe said. “But why is it all closed up?”

“The Sun hurts the non-purple people.” Jumana explained.

“There are real people who aren't purple?”

“Yes, bebe.”

“So they live inside all the time? They can't see the mountains or the sky. How sad. Why aren't they purple?”

“They're afraid of nanoblock, mija.”

Xe-Xe looked at the skin on her own arm. “But it's so pretty.”

“Sometimes people disagree about what's pretty.” By this time I was driving, and Doc was snoozing on one of the seats.

Xe-Xe screwed up her face. It was adorable. “Some people don't know what pretty is.”

“Something like that.”

My remark bought me a disapproving look from Jumana. She doesn't think that playing Zen master is good parenting.

The glittering light from a holographic sign gave the Sun some serious competition. This sign was so important that it talked too:

“WELCOME TO NEW LAS VEGAS. PREPARE FOR STERILIZATION.”

I made sure all the Rolling Serpent's windows were sealed.

A huge truck from a mining town was just ahead of us. It pulled into the space under the huge arch that marked the entrance to the New Las Vegas overstructure.

Suddenly, a blast of heavy spray engulfed the truck.

Xe-Xe screamed. Jumana held her.

“It's okay, mija,” I leaned over, patted her shoulder. “They're just cleaning the truck.”

“It didn't look dirty to me.” Xe-Xe gathered the courage to look at the spray.

“They're washing away dirt that's too small to see,” Jumana tried to explain.

“It you can't see it, why wash it?”

“The people who live underground are afraid of it.”

“I think I'm afraid of them.”

“Don't be,” I added. “They can't help it.”

How do you explain something like nanohudu and terraforming to a child? It all sounds like magic. Life ends up being a strange fairytale. Can't have that.

The spray stopped. The truck moved inside. I moved the Rolling Serpent into the place of honor.

Xe-Xe stiffened and squealed. Jumana held her tighter.

“It's okay, bebe! It'll be pretty.”

That seemed to relax Xe-Xe. “How can it be pretty?”

“Just watch.”

The spray blasted our windows. The world went away. All that was left was the spray dancing on the windows, building up, dripping.

“Ooh!” said Xe-Xe.

Jumana shot me a look that warned me to keep my mouth shut. Let our daughter enjoy the beauty of mist colliding with hypaglas. Don't tell her about smart chemicals doing battle with any nanohudu that may be hiding in the dust on the bus's skin.

I also figured I'd better not tell her about what was going to happen next.

When the spray stopped, I pulled us over to the next spot, following the sign that said, PURPLES THIS WAY.

Figures in suits that were both radiation—and nanohudu-proof directed us to a special parking place. Soon they were motioning for us to get out.

“I don't think I like them,” said Xe-Xe.

“They ain't so bad,” said Yumi.

“Yeah, as long as you don't turn your back on them,” said Doc.

“Especially you, Xe,” said Popo. “Sometimes they eat children.”

Xe-Xe squealed.

“Don't tell her things like that!” Jumana patted Xe-Xe. “Besides, it's not true.”

“Is it, Pada?” The fear in those violet eyes got to me.

“No, mija. They don't eat children.”

“But they do bite,” said Popo.

“I can't argue with that.”

Outside the Rolling Serpent, Jumana and I held Xe-Xe's hand as suits lined us up and doused us with anti-nanohudu spray.

“It's okay, mija,” Jumana told Xe-Xe. “It just tickles a little.”

They also sprayed the interior of the Rolling Serpent. And checked our IDs.

They took a long, hard look at mine.

* * * *

Everything checked out—soon, I was relaxing and Yumi was driving us down the palm-lined street of New Las Vegas.

“Pada, what are these strange trees?” asked Xe-Xe.

“They're trees from Earth.”

“Why don't they sparkle like normal plants?”

Jumana stepped in. “They don't have nanohudu to protect them from the Sun and cosmic rays. That's why the entire city has a roof.”

“They never see the sky.” Xe-Xe looked sad. “I feel sorry for these inside-underground-Earth people. Are they called Earth people because they live underground?”

I said yes, just to keep things simple.

Then a topless tour bus pulled up next to us. Tourists flashed away, taking pictures of us. They probably never saw anything like the Rolling Serpent—frankenteched out of discarded parts, painted like a nanohudu-bred feathered serpent. Add the fact that it was full of purple-skinned “natives” and you had a picture that would wow the folks back home or on your network.

At a stop light I rolled down my window and shouted in my best drown-out-the-band voice: “LIKE OUR BUS? I'M PACO COHEN! MY BAND, THE FLYING SERPENTS, AND I ARE GOING TO PLAY AT THE FIRST NUZOOM NEOMARTIAN CULTURAL FESTIVAL! COME ON DOWN!”

The architectural madness of New Las Vegas flowed around us. I had seen it all before, but Xe-Xe was dazzled. All these bits and pieces of Earth culture, that she only saw in smaller fragments through the media, loomed all around: Castles, pyramids, cathedrals, faux-grass huts, fairytale villages, art deco suburbs, and things that simply couldn't be sorted out rationally. Those violet eyes of hers were as wide as they could be.

Then she blinked, shook her head, put her hands up to her ears.

“What's wrong, mija?” asked Jumana.

“Mermaids,” Xe-Xe said. “And something else.”

Sure enough, we weren't far from the canals, and not the nice parts all prettied up for the tourists. Our hotel was a squat thing left over from the early days of New Las Vegas. I was wondering why it wasn't torn down in favor of something bigger and glitzier when a tentacle shot out of the water and snatched a wing-eared glabbit that was scavenging the bushes for edible leaves and berries.

“If I were a tourist, I'd consider that worth my money,” said Popo.

“What?” asked Xe-Xe.

“Nothing,” said Jumana, glad that our daughter missed the sight.

* * * *

I mentioned my name to the desk clerk, who got a strange look on his unpurp face. The customer service smile melted. It didn't quite become a frown, just blank, like a zombie. He took a step backward and said something to his lapel.

Paranoia flooded me. I looked around. The place was a technological rat's nest. No telling where some infernal devices were hidden.

“Does it tickle?” Xe-Xe asked.

“What, mija?”

“The light.” She moved her fingers, mimicking its motion.

“I was being scanned?” To most people, the light from scanners would be invisible. But our curandero told us that my daughter sees a wider spectrum than most of us.

A giant muscled up to me. He must have been over two meters tall. His loose outfit was perfect for concealing weapons. He was hooded and mirror-shaded. Not taking any chances with getting gamma-zapped or nanohudued, even under the New Las dome.

“Mr. Arango,” he informed me, “there is someone who wants to talk to you.”

* * * *

Whoever it was didn't want to see anybody else. I scanned the halls for ninja bugs as the big guy led me to a door. I held my breath as I walked through into near-darkness.

For a split second, I was face to face with Nuzoom. Then he disappeared.

The next face I saw was that of Coreena, my main meydl from my pre-Mariachis-of-Mars days. She was still probably the smartest person I ever knew, but I'm glad I figured out that being smart wasn't everything.

There was something different about her. It was hard to tell in the room's dim light. I looked hard.

“Your eyes—they're green!”

“They always were.”

“But no . . .”

“Purple. Yes, I've flushed all the nanoblock out of me . . .” she stood back, showing that she was in a slinky dress, “. . . out of my skin . . . and hopefully, my genes.”

“I didn't think it was possible.”

“They used to say that about purple children, like your daughter.”

“Isn't it expensive?”

“Yes, and risky, but worth it. Progress—isn't it wonderful?”

“What if you have to go out on the surface?”

“I prefer a . . . civilized environment. Besides they tell me one of these days they'll put in a new magnetic field. Cosmic radiation won't be a problem. Nanohudu and its mutations will be obsolete.”

I held up my purple hand. “Guess I should just give it up and go home then.”

She took my hand in both of hers. “Nanohudu may become obsolete. But we still have a use for Paco Cohen.”

“The name's Teodoro Arango now. Don't you remember?” I pointed to the scars on my face. “You and Nuzoom killed Paco.”

She caressed my scars. “You're still handsome. We could make you look the way you used to.”

She brought her face, her mouth, close to mine.

I pushed her away. “So you married William Aute. What's he doing these days?”

“I'm afraid he died a few years ago.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

“It was his heart. This business. It takes its toll.”

“So how's your heart?”

She frowned and backed off. “Oh—where're my manners? Would you like a drink? I have some of this new vampire cactus tequila—we're marketing it as Nuzoom Joox.” She pivoted like a dancer and went to a cabinet made of polished agate.

“I usually drink the rawer pulque version we make in Purpazona,” I said.

She poured sparkling liquid from a cut-glass decanter into glasses. “This is much better—more refined than that varrio swill. Here.”

I accepted a glass. “Aren't you afraid of traces of nanohudu?”

“We've refined that away completely. It's guaranteed to be one hundred percent nanohudu free—just as the ads say.” She held up the bottle to show where that was printed, looking like a commercial.

Trying not to laugh, I took a sip. “What the varrios say is true. It does lose something when it's overrefined like this.”

“Not as much alcohol?”

“I don't mean the alcohol. The magic is gone.”

She sat on a plush couch, and pulled me next to her. “The whole ‘native’ NeoMartian thing is incredibly marketable. People on Earth are eating it up. They like Paco Cohen, but he's dead, and there hasn't been anything new from him. Some sophisticates have discovered Teo el Neo and have noted the similarities. Investigative reporters are looking for you. I've been having my reps distract them.”

“So that's where those stories about unpurps getting beat up come from.”

“Paco—”

“Teo.”

She gave me a limp slap that turned into a slow squeeze of my arm. “Whatever. You are immensely talented. You are a resource that Nuzoom would like to exploit.”

I touched the scars on my face. “I've had me enough of that kind of exploitation.”

“You could be Paco Cohen again, and play with the Mariachis of Mars!”

“Don't they prefer the hologram that replaced me?”

Coreena took another sip, put down her glass, and laughed. “I guess you wouldn't know. We've done our best to keep it a secret.”

I just stared at her.

“The Mariachis. They're dead.”

“You bastards!”

“No! We didn't kill them. They killed themselves actually. Drugs. Wild living. They reached the usual lifespan of self-destructive entertainers, and started dying off. At first we were horrified, but then I realized—why not do what we did with you? And today's holograms are more advanced. No one even suspects. Besides, it's you—Paco Cohen—that everyone really wants.”

She accidentally/on purpose leaned and fell so she was draped against me.

“So what do you want me for?”

“You're the Great NeoMartian Legend. Like Elvis, or Michael Jackson. And you are needed in the flesh.” She touched me to emphasize. “Don't you know what we're selling here? Not some minerals we dig up that cost a fortune once you ship them to Earth. Not the nano-huduized stuff that corporate scientists can study to make into new products. We're selling Mars! Not Mars as it is, but the magical, mythical planet where the human race has been projecting its fantasies for centuries! If there are no canals, we build them! If there are no weird Martian creatures, we generate them!”

She stood and slipped out of her dress like a snake shedding its skin.

“Right now,” she said, “the purples are a marketable curiosity for the tourists, but they will no longer be necessary. Besides, for our décor, fake purples do as well as the real thing and are less of a nuisance.”

She wrapped herself around me like a Venus flytrap. She had always been amazingly strong.

I struggled to get free. “You're wrong. Nanohudu'd lifeforms tend to do well in deep space, in heavy radiation environments. Nanohudu has its own ideas about things.”

She fought to maintain her grip on me. “The problem is, the more it's all developed—Mars, Martian culture, terraforming—the more we lose control over it! We can't let that happen, Paco. We've invested too much! We made this world!”

I shrugged her off and stood up. “Like it has a life of its own.”

“We know that,” she said impatiently. “Even Nuzoom and the other corporate logo/entities have a life of their own. They're all developing dysfunctional tendencies—acting . . .”

I stepped away. “Crazy. Like they're coming alive.”

She jumped to her feet and followed me. “There's got to be a way that we can hypermanage it all.”

“This is life you're talking about. Life is always doing something new and unexpected. It's the way living things adapt to challenges. You would know that if you had ever really taken the long view—some things take decades to get done, and even longer if you want to do them right. I guess there's something to carrying the Burden of Time.”

“What?” she screwed up her face.

“Ask a Mayan.”

“Do we have any of those on Mars?”

“Look hard. You'll see us.”

“Paco—” She pouted. “I need you as much as Nuzoom and Mars needs you.”

“Mars and me are getting along just fine without you, thanks.”

She got kissing-close and looked deep into my eyes. I had seen that look before. But then I saw something more.

“In the green, there's some tiny flecks of purple!”

She flipped on the lights and rushed to the nearest mirror. “No! The damned nanoblock is creeping back! It's going to cost me more to go through the process again, and it's risky—but what else can I do?”

“You never know what nanohudu is gonna do to you,” I sang.

“Get out of here!”

I got out just before a lamp crashed against the door.

Nuzoom appeared before me, eyes glaring. I walked right through him.

* * * *

I wasn't in the mood for the festival after that, but Doc, Yumi, Popo, and even Jumana and Xe-Xe were all fired up for it.

“I want to see the mermaid,” Xe-Xe said.

I was worried about that. I wasn't sure there was going to be a mermaid. Xe-Xe was the only one who mentioned it. That imagination of hers.

There were plenty of strange sights to see on the long Nuzoom Boulevard, located near a section of the dome that was rendered transparent so the canyons of the Valle Marineris could be seen. But most of the people weren't looking at the canyons, and it was too bad, because as Xe-Xe said, they were “pretty.”

It was a gaudy, bubbling NeoMartian theme park as far as the eye could see. Oversized, cartoony robots of tigotes, dragon mosquitoes, glabbits, kow-kows, ostrumels, feathered serpents, canal squid, even vampire cactus and razorweeds, walked the crowded streets, beckoning tourists to join the party. Robot versions of the rumored yeti and mermaids were also there.

“Look, a mermaid!” Jumana told Xe-Xe.

“That's not a real one,” said Xe-Xe. “Not the one I'm looking for.”

Indoor kowboys and unpurps, with prosthetics and makeup to make them look like antediluvian sci-fi Martians, sold purple rice and tortillas, and varrio chili.

“Just like the purples in the varrios eat! Roast kow-kow tail chunks! Zebra beans! And Labyrinthus chili! All anti-nanohudu processed! Guaranteed not to cause any genetic alterations!”

Tourists were hesitant, but the delicious smell and a little taste won them over.

These were folks on three-year vacations that they either won in bogus contests or charged themselves into serious debt for. They were having the time of their lives. I watched them go into the casinos with smiles on their faces. Did they know that most of them would owe their asses to Nuzoom in a few weeks, end up slaving away in this artificial paradise? Some of them would go home eventually, others would even opt for nanoblock and stay.

I came to Mars on a one-way ticket, nanoblock included. I made my choice, after escaping from Texas back in the nationalista crisis. I felt sorry for them.

Then one of the musics battling for our ears along the Boulevard caught my attention. It was familiar, like something that was once part of me, but cast off long ago.

It was Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars singing “Razorweed Boogie.”

My music. My voice. From a life I used to have.

They were up on a stage high enough to be seen far down the Boulevard. Paco—I didn't really see him as me—was larger than life. He sputtered and crackled like an old-fashioned hologram. The rest of the Mariachis were of a more advanced technology, life-sized, solid, interacting with their environment.

They sure looked real, alive, whatever.

I waved at them. “Hey! Jorge! Chonchita! Pepe!” They waved back.

But they didn't recognize me.

They were just hypermanaged electronic zombies, doing what Nuzoom required of them. They were dead—slaves to the corporate organism. Paco was alive.

No. I was alive, but Paco Cohen was dead.

“I still think that you look like him!” Doc said.

“I've never seen the resemblance,” I said, and pulled Jumana and Xe-Xe down the sidewalk.

Then Xe-Xe became a dead weight, refusing to go along.

“Come on, mija,” Jumana coaxed her.

“No!” Xe-Xe shook her purple hair. “The mermaid! I found her! She's here!”

She pointed to a tent with a painting of a mermaid in a desert, next to a cactus. Except for the purple, it could have been one of the many Mexican folk-art desert mermaids I saw in Texas tourist shops as a child. A woman in big-head drag beckoned:

“A rare Martian mermaid! Found in the snowy foothills of Olympus Mons! Only ten bux!”

“It's a fake,” I said.

“No, Pada.” Xe-Xe pointed to a robot mermaid dancing with a robot river squid across the boulevard. “She's fake. This one is real.”

Jumana gave me a look, and I was soon handing thirty bux to the big-head woman.

The mermaid was a mummified thing, like the body of a shaved monkey sewn to the tail of a big fish. Centuries ago they were sideshow attractions on Earth. I guess they were now becoming profitable on Mars.

“Fake,” I said, “and dead.”

Xe-Xe got as close to the mermaid as she could and sang a few notes from one of her play songs.

“She's alive, Pada.” Xe-Xe didn't sound like a child. “And she needs our help.”

* * * *

When it was finally time for us to play, I realized that in New Las Vegas there was no getting away from Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars. Even away from Nuzoom Boulevard and the venues dolled up for the festival, there they were—singing their hits, in background audio and holoclips, big and small. Their images, with an emphasis on me—I mean him—appeared on walls, clothing, gadgets . . . anything that could be stickered or flashprinted.

I felt like suddenly I had something to prove. It was a regular battle of the bands.

Luckily, Doc and Yumi managed to tear Popo away from an unpurp lovely that he was pursuing, and we were costumed—a little more elaborately than usual, this being New Las—and ready to take a stage on the boulevard across from a vendor of purple hot dogs—"non-nanohudu pigments, folks!"—and a miniature Paco and his Mariachis, ready to drown us out. Okay, cabranes, I almost said aloud. I was ready to go. I counted out the classic, “Uno, dos—one, two, tres, cuatro!” And we went blasted out a little ditty I wrote just for the festival, titled, “Meshuge Martian Fiesta.” It has a long, bouncy instrumental intro, the kind that gets under the skin and sets the nerves a sizzling:

"Mars is having a fiesta!
Nanohudu is playing the tunes!"

Jumana and Xe-Xe got to dancing right away. Then other people started moving, twitching, following their lead.

"We got tigotes, and kow-kows,
flying serpents, and glabbits,
ostrumels, and canal squids too!"

Then Nuzoom appeared, right in front of me, glaring with those big, cartoon eyes.

"Razorweeds and vampire cactus
reach out and put Mars in you!"

Then, gods love them—people danced.

"If you don't like nanoblock,
nanohudu will purple you,
and you'll fiesta like the
mermaids and yeti do!"

I stuck my tongue out at Nuzoom.

He said, “Nanoblock is not a suitable subject for a song at this festival.”

I screamed, “BOOGIE ON, NUZOOM!”

The crowd went wild. I signaled the Serpents to stretch it, and we improvised a lengthy, danceable extension of the song. And the people danced—purps, unpurps. I swear even a few robots got down and funky.

Nuzoom hovered in front of my face, frowning.

I mimed him a kiss.

He vanished.

We got a standing ovation.

After the song, party buzz and chaos reigned. Jumana and Xe-Xe jumped on the stage to hug me. Doc and Yumi did a crowd-pleasing liplock. Popo intercepted a group of young women who rushed us.

Then, something buzzed my ear.

And there it was, red eyes glowing, a ninja bug.

High above us, like a disapproving god, hovered Nuzoom. I had never seen him smile like that before. I didn't like it.

Xe-Xe grabbed her ears and looked around.

“Ya okay, mija?” Jumana asked.

“The mermaid—she needs me!” Xe-Xe looked scared. She ran into the crowd. Jumana and I followed.

The ninja bug followed me.

Xe-Xe made a noise that hurt, though it was almost in the inaudible range. She scared the people in front of the mermaid display and ran right past them. Jumana and I looked apologetic as we followed. They didn't want to interfere.

The ninja bug stuck close to me.

Inside, Xe-Xe rushed up to the mermaid and talked to her in that strange language she uses when playing all by herself. Then she switched to singing.

This was totally beyond the range of human hearing. It still hurt. I expected to bleed, inside and out. Somehow, I didn't.

The mermaid twitched and quivered. Her dry skin cracked. Dust sprayed and fell. Her eyes opened.

“She's alive!” I said.

“Of course,” said Xe-Xe.

“Ay, mija,” said Jumana.

The mermaid's eyes were full of pain. She struggled to get free of her perch.

“We gotta help her!” said Xe-Xe.

Jumana gave me a look. I reached over and picked up the crumbling mermaid.

Then the ninja bug landed on my arm. Red eyes glared at me as it aimed its stinger at my skin.

Xe-Xe screamed. Or maybe it was more of the weird singing. I couldn't hear it as much as feel it blast through me.

The mermaid opened her mouth and joined in.

Imagine an electric earthquake ripping through your nerves.

The effect was even worse for Nuzoom. He sparked up, blurred, Picasso-ized, and disappeared. I could feel him disintegrating.

And where the ninja bug had been stinging me, just a smoky, smoldering crater was left. It hurt, but I was still alive.

In my arms, the mermaid cried. There were skimpy tears coming our of her dry eyes.

“She needs water,” said Xe-Xe.

“The canal,” suggested Jumana.

I agreed.

We scrambled through the chaos, which was more like a big, rowdy party that had broken out than a riot. People were running around, laughing, dancing. Uniformed security officers struggled with communications devices that weren't working and brandishing weapons, looking nervous.

There was no sign of Nuzoom, or any other holograms.

No ninja bugs either.

By the time we got to the canal, the mermaid was moving, eager to get to the water. She leaped out of my arms and made a big splash as soon as she was close enough.

The water boiled and steamed when she hit. She dove and gave off a strange light. Then she shot up and broke the thrashing surface.

She was no longer a dry, cracked mummy. She was healed. Skin and scales were shiny and new.

She looked at us, smiled and waved, made an earsplitting tweet, and swam away.

Xe-Xe made a similar tweet, then turned to us and said, “It's okay, she's going to sing with the other mermaids and the yetis.”

Not far away, some security officers had managed to make their communications devices work.

“We'll,” I said, “it's been fun, but I think we should be getting out of here.”

“The festival?” asked Doc. “Or New Las Vegas?”

“Maybe even farther out than that.” I grabbed Jumana and Xe-Xe and we all headed for the hotel.

Popo didn't want to leave some eager unpurp gals. “Don't be afraid of going out into the varrios!” he told them as Doc and Yumi practically dragged him away. “If you're ever in Purpazona, look me up at Jojo's Juju Joint!”

We passed a booth selling Orchestronia 4.5. Oh, well.

* * * *

Looking over my shoulder for Nuzoom, more ninja bugs, Coreena, or her pet thug, I hustled us all out of the hotel, into the Rolling Serpent, and toward the nearest exit out from under the dome. Getting out wasn't as big a hassle as getting in. They wave at you as you pass through the pressure barrier that keeps any nasty old nanohudu-infested Mars dust in as you go out.

“What do you think happened there?” asked Doc.

Without a beat, Xe-Xe spoke: “The . . . nanohudu . . . is that right? It woke something up. Something old. In the ground.”

“NeoMartain nanohudu waking up PaleoMartian—whatever?” asked Popo, looking like thinking about it was giving him a headache.

I figured I'd better change the subject. “It would have been nice to have heard my symphony—”

Before I could finish, Doc held up a Orchestronia 4.5 clipchip. “I grabbed this on the way out.”

He plugged it into the Roller's sound system. My symphony began playing. It sounded pretty good. I need to tweak it here and there, but . . .

Doc, Yumi, and Popo looked at me like I owed them an explanation. Jumana urged me to spill my guts, so I did. Xe-Xe just watched the steam rise from the canal and sang to herself.

“You mean you're really Paco Cohen?” Popo asked, even though I had just told him.

“Of course he is!” Doc grinned. “Like I always said. Now pay up!”

“Did I have anyone fooled?” I asked.

“Maybe yourself,” said Jumana.

“So, what are you going to do now?” asked Yumi.

“I don't know.” I kept my eyes on the road. “If we go back to Purpazona, ninja bugs may show up. Xe-Xe, Jumana, and me may need to take off.”

“For where?” asked Popo.

“There are lots of varrios popping up around developments.”

“What about your house, and Jumana's garden?” asked Yumi.

Jumana winked at me. “Summer's coming. The big die-off. I think I can plant stuff wherever we end up.”

Yumi said, “If Doc and me move in, I can work my jujuismo on it, keep nectar flowing for the purple bats.”

“Uh.” I paused. “Think you guys will be okay at JoJo's Juju Joint? Without me?”

“We'll think up something,” Doc said. “Maybe I'll rig up a hologram.”

We all laughed.

Xe-Xe pointed toward Olympus Mons. “I think we should go that way, Pada. I hear some pretty music coming from the big mountain.”

[Editor's Note: This story is a sequel to “The Rise and Fall of Paco Cohen and the Mariachis of Mars” from the April 2001 issue of Analog.]

Copyright © 2011 Ernest Hogan

[Back to Table of Contents]

Science Fact: SO LONG, PROXIMA CENTAURI
by Kevin Walsh

Everyone knows that Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun, and so it has been the answer to a trivia question ever since its distance was first accurately measured in 1928. This small, M-type flare star is very slightly closer to us than the larger, more sunlike stars of Alpha Centauri A and B, but its reign as our closest stellar neighbor is now in serious jeopardy. Sometime in the next couple of years, observations from a new astronomical observatory may well discover other stars that are closer.

This would seem like a bold prediction except that this is what just about everyone in the astronomical community is saying. NASA's WISE orbiting infrared telescope, its observing mission now finished but with analysis of its data barely begun, may find at least one small, cool star living within a parsec or so of us. When that happens, Proxima Centauri will bid farewell to its brief period of world fame and fade back into obscurity once more—unless, of course, we later find planets around it.

In this context, when talking about small stellar objects, the term “star” is often used quite loosely. Astronomers conventionally define a star as an object that is massive enough to sustain thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen within its interior. This definition is chosen to distinguish stars that shine steadily for billions of years from smaller bodies that only undergo fusion for a short period of time, or not at all. These smaller objects could be called failed stars, but many of our readers will know them as brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs often start off as hot as stars, but because they quickly lose the ability to generate thermonuclear fusion, they gradually cool off over billions of years. Because brown dwarfs are likely more numerous than fusion-driven stars, the new closest “star” will likely be a brown dwarf, not an M-star like Proxima Centauri—although given how hard it is to find small, dim stars, it could be a real star instead.

* * * *

Brown Dwarf Menagerie

Brown dwarfs are small by galactic standards but are impressive objects nonetheless. With masses up to about 80 times that of Jupiter, any brown dwarfs discovered close to our solar system could easily have small planetary systems of their own, since there have already been several big brown dwarfs discovered elsewhere that have their own planet-sized companions. Big brown dwarfs are difficult to distinguish from small stars because the classification of stars and brown dwarfs is done on the basis of their spectra and temperature. Similar to the method used to classify stars, the observed spectrum of a newly discovered brown dwarf is compared with a spectrum generated by a numerical model and an estimated surface temperature is assigned on that basis. For most stars, this procedure works very well, as models of stellar evolution are quite accurate. For brown dwarfs this works less well, as the spectra of brown dwarfs are quite complex due to the metal compounds and dust that condense in their atmospheres as they become cooler. In addition, a young, large brown dwarf may still be undergoing some thermonuclear fusion and thus may be hot enough for its spectrum to resemble that of an older, fusion-burning M-star. A massive, old brown dwarf may be cooler than a young, less massive one, and so there is often some uncertainty in assigning masses to brown dwarfs solely from analysis of their spectra, unless there is other information that can be used to constrain their ages. For instance, some brown dwarfs orbit stars whose ages can be well estimated from models of stellar evolution, thus giving an age for the dwarf as well. Another useful test is the presence of lithium in a spectrum: Stars and the very largest brown dwarfs burn up their original supply of lithium, whereas objects smaller than about 60 Jupiter masses burn little lithium and so it hangs around in their atmospheres, providing a clear indication in their spectra of brown dwarfdom.

Like stars, brown dwarfs consist of different types that are classified based on their temperatures. Stars are classified using the Hertzsprung-Russell system, with O stars the hottest, G stars like the Sun in the middle, and M stars like Proxima Centauri the coolest. The discovery of numerous brown dwarfs has required the extension of this system to lower temperatures, so now we also talk about L, T, and Y dwarfs.

Just to confuse the issue, some very large, young brown dwarfs have spectral class M, so this spectral class consists of a mixture of small stars and a few big brown dwarfs. While brown dwarfs in this class have similar temperatures to the smallest M stars, the dwarfs contain different absorption lines in their spectra, in particular those for lithium, although as mentioned earlier this test is not perfect as very large brown dwarfs can burn off lithium. For example, the first brown dwarf to be verified, Teide 1, is located in the Pleiades cluster about 120 parsecs away and has spectral classification M8. It was confirmed as a brown dwarf rather than an M-star because of the presence of lithium in its spectrum. It appears to be an isolated object and is estimated to be only about 120 million years old, so it still has a lot of cooling off to do.

The next coolest class consists of the L dwarfs, with temperatures between about 1,350 and 2,200 K. As for spectral type M, there is some overlap between stars and brown dwarfs in this class: There are some stars that are cool enough to be classified as L-type, but unlike for spectral class M, in class L brown dwarfs predominate. Even so, these dwarfs are still quite hot, and if seen close up most of them would appear to glow a very bright red. For the hottest objects of this class their luminosity would be so large that the eye would interpret their starshine as a kind of intense reddish white. The main difference in the spectrum of these objects from class M is that class L objects have atmospheres cool enough to be full of clouds, caused by the condensation of metals that occurs at these lower temperatures. One bizarre consequence of an atmosphere with metal clouds is metal rain, in particular iron rain. Iron is a common although minor constituent in stellar atmospheres, but in stars it is a gas. In the cooler L-dwarfs, it condenses to form iron clouds and storms—thus giving new meaning to the term “heavy precipitation.”

At temperatures below about 1,350 K, the dwarfs become cool enough so that the metal cloud layers start to condense out of their upper atmospheres altogether and fall down to deeper, warmer layers inside the dwarf, leaving the upper atmosphere cloud free. They also become cool enough for methane to form, which does not occur at higher temperatures because the bonds between the constituent carbon and hydrogen atoms of this molecule are broken at higher energies. These “methane dwarfs,” or T-dwarfs, glow with a kind of red-magenta light and are believed to be more numerous than their larger L-dwarf cousins. A typical example is Gliese 229B, a T6.5 dwarf circling the M-star Gliese 229, only about six parsecs away and a little south-east of Sirius in the night sky. Gliese 229B is presently about 40 A.U. from Gliese 229, or somewhat more distant than Neptune is from the Sun. Another example close to our solar system is the twin brown dwarf system of Epsilon Indi B, which consists of two T-type dwarfs circling each other at a distance of about two A.U. Because they orbit each other quite closely, their orbital period about each other is only about 15 years and thus will be easy to measure accurately over time, so their masses will then be well estimated using Newton's laws. About 1,500 A.U. away from them is the K-star Epsilon Indi, one of the prime candidates in our region for the presence of habitable planets, although planetary searches around that star have so far been inconclusive.

Brown dwarfs with even cooler temperatures of less than 700 K are expected to have absorption bands for ammonia in their spectra, and this may be a signature of a transition to the Y class. To date, though, there have been only a few tentative identifications of the very largest Y class objects, so it is hard to describe the characteristics of this class from so few examples. The bigger Y dwarfs will glow a morose dull red, but the smallest ones will not glow visibly at all and will be seen only at infrared or longer wavelengths. These cool dwarfs are thus quite dim and hard to find. The WISE spacecraft, though, will be able to see brown dwarfs with temperatures of only 450 K out to a distance of 75 light-years (23 parsecs), 300 K brown dwarfs out to 20 light-years (six parsecs), and 150 K brown dwarfs out to 10 light-years (three parsecs).

Now this is a curious way of describing the ability of this observatory to detect brown dwarfs, in more ways than one. Brown dwarfs are detectable because they emit infrared radiation all by themselves. But so do Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune: All three of these planets emit significantly more radiation than they receive from the Sun, a result of their slow contraction over the aeons. This enables the WISE team to also say that they could find a Jupiter-sized object out to about one light-year (63,000 A.U.) and a Neptune-sized object out to 700 A.U. So detecting Jupiter-sized objects with this spacecraft will use the same methods as detecting brown dwarfs. Therefore, what actually distinguishes one of these large planets from a cold brown dwarf?

* * * *

Brown Dwarfs, White Planets

At present, there is no official International Astronomical Union definition that separates the two categories. An unofficial distinction between the two relies upon differences between the evolution of large planets and small brown dwarfs. An upper limit for planetary mass could be set at about 13 Jupiter masses, the minimum mass for an object ever to be able to support deuterium (not hydrogen) fusion early in its life, but this limit has not been officially adopted. Also, old, cool brown dwarfs that are more massive than this limit can still have the same temperatures as big planets, making it difficult to distinguish between the two classes of objects, unless some independent estimate of their masses is obtained. This lack of a clear-cut distinction has led astronomers to compare the spectrum of Jupiter to those of the smallest known brown dwarfs, to try to get an insight into their similarities and differences. There are significant similarities between their spectra, but the main differences are likely due to considerably more ammonia absorption in Jupiter's atmosphere than is typical for small T or large Y dwarfs. There are other differences also. T dwarfs have few clouds in their upper atmosphere whereas Jupiter is a cloudy place, possessing vast ammonia clouds and, lower in its atmosphere, water clouds that are responsible for the largest thunderstorms in the solar system. Water clouds should form in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs at temperatures less than about 400 K, thus causing substantial changes in their spectra analogous to those that occur at the boundary between L and T dwarfs. This might then represent an appropriate boundary between the T dwarfs and the proposed Y class, but this has not been decided yet. Below 200 K, ammonia clouds will form, just like Jupiter's. In fact, old, cold brown dwarfs with several times the mass of Jupiter will look rather like Jupiter itself, as one of the peculiarities of brown dwarfs is that, unlike stars, even though their masses vary considerably, they are all pretty much about the same size—the size of Jupiter. At the current age of the Universe, only old brown dwarfs of less than about five Jupiter masses have had enough time to cool off to Jupiter's current temperature; larger ones will still be warmer. Further insights into the characteristics of objects in the transition zone between small dwarfs and large planets will only come when a large population of such objects has been discovered and described—which, thanks to WISE, is likely to happen soon.

Another distinction between the two types of objects is terminological. The current official definition of a “planet” requires that it orbit a star. Nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that all planetary-mass bodies have to orbit stars. The theoretical minimum mass for a planet to be able to form all by itself between the stars has been estimated to be as low as one Jupiter mass, although the exact lower limit is not known. So some of the new objects that we find between here and Proxima Centauri could actually be free-floating planets instead of brown dwarfs, planets that did not originate within our solar system but ones that have been captured by the Sun at some time in the past and now circle it in slow, possibly irregular orbits somewhere in the far outer reaches of the solar system.

The idea of an unseen, massive companion to the Sun orbiting in the outer solar system is certainly not new. Percival Lowell, the originator of the notorious Martian canal hypothesis, searched for years for “Planet X,” a distant, massive world whose gravitational attraction was apparently needed to explain small differences in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune from what might be expected solely on the basis of Newton's Laws. When Pluto was found in 1931, in a region close to where Lowell predicted Planet X might be, it seemed like the search was over. But Pluto was soon discovered to be too small to account for any gravitationally caused irregularities in the orbits of the much larger Uranus and Neptune. More recent work has found that these irregularities don't really exist and were due to a slight error in the estimation of the mass of Neptune. When this estimate was corrected in the early ‘90s—thanks to the flyby of Neptune by Voyager 2 in 1989—the irregularities disappeared. Lowell's Planet X does not exist, but the term is still used for the idea of an undiscovered, large object somewhere in the outer solar system.

Based on that definition, though, Planet X almost certainly does exist, and there is likely more than one Planet X, if we understand how the solar system formed. During the formation of the solar system, many bodies the size of the Moon or even of Mars should have been ejected from the inner solar system, and so now should either be wandering interstellar space or orbiting somewhere in the outer solar system more than 1,000 AU from the Sun. But these bodies will be too small for WISE to see. If there is a larger object lurking out there, though, WISE should find it. In particular, WISE could resolve the debate about the existence of Nemesis, the proposed dwarf companion to the Sun that explains anomalies in the typical orbits of long-period comets in the solar system. Different configurations for this object have been proposed, from an actual M-star orbiting about 1.5 light-years away to an object of a few Jupiter masses orbiting much closer, perhaps about 25,000 A.U. distant. Either way, according to the scientists working on the WISE project, if Nemesis exists, WISE will see it easily, but the data analysis and follow-up observations required to identify it conclusively will probably not be completed until 2013.

Even if Nemesis is not found, other nearby, massive objects likely will be. More likely than not, they will also be accompanied by their own retinue of small planetary bodies. This raises the inevitable question: Could life exist on such planets? And does this mean that such worlds could be preferred locations for the study of extrasolar planetary environments, rather than planets orbiting the more distant nearby stars?

* * * *

Life Under The Ice

There are a few significant obstacles for life trying to exist on planets circling brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs start off hot but then gradually cool. This cooling is slow, but it does mean that any worlds orbiting brown dwarfs will not have stable climates over geologic time. For example, between the ages of one billion and five billion years, a typical brown dwarf of 20 Jupiter masses will decrease in luminosity by about a factor of five. This is a very large change and would cause major disruption to the climatic system of any orbiting planet: This drop in incoming radiation would be large enough to change a hot, steamy ocean planet into an iceball. It is not clear that life would be able to adapt to such extreme cooling, even if organisms had billions of years to do so.

Secondly, most of the radiation emitted by brown dwarfs is in the infrared, and thus is useless for photosynthesis. Some brown dwarfs experience flares that emit damaging amounts of ultraviolet radiation, and this could be a serious issue for habitability if the flares are large, as they are in some brown dwarfs. Finally, even though brown dwarfs emit a fair amount of warming radiation, habitable planets circling them would have to huddle quite close to them in order to receive enough radiation to maintain a decent temperature in their equatorial regions. There are two problems with this. If the planet were too close to the dwarf, it could be within the dwarf's Roche limit, the distance threshold within which non-rigid bodies may be torn apart by the pushing and pulling of the gravitation forces of the larger body. Certainly, a large planet could not form within the Roche limit, although it could migrate there from an orbit further out, and we know that this process does occur in many extrasolar planetary systems. Even if the planet were not within the Roche limit, it would be close enough for the dwarf to exert large tidal forces on it, causing internal tidal heating. Tidal heating occurs because the gravitational attraction of the larger body on the smaller causes a bulge on the smaller body, and if the orbit of the smaller body is not perfectly circular, the location of this bulge will move, causing internal strains and stresses within the smaller body. Paradoxically, this may be good for habitability: The internal warming might be large enough to generate a sub-surface ocean even if the surface temperatures were well below freezing—as on Saturn's moon Enceladus, for instance, where geysers of water regularly erupt through its solid surface. This is why Enceladus is a prime target in searches for extraterrestrial life in our solar system. Too much internal heat, though, could cause the surface to become molten and unstable, like Jupiter's moon Io. This would not be good for life, except for organisms that like to live in hot springs.

It is thought that some internal heat source is necessary to help maintain and stabilize the atmosphere of a habitable planet. Internal heat initiates plate tectonic processes, the floating around of pieces of the surface crust on a molten subsurface layer. The absorption of atmospheric gases by surface rocks and subsequent subsurface recycling of those rocks by plate tectonic processes is thought to be one way that the planet maintains a relatively constant climate, as a balance is thereby maintained between the carbon dioxide content of the rocks and that of the atmosphere, thus maintaining a relatively constant greenhouse effect over geologic time. The internal heat source that keeps Earth's interior molten is due to the decay of radioactive elements and when measured at the surface is about 0.1 watts per square meter. For comparison, Io's surface heat flux from the interior is on average about two to three watts per square meter, with much larger values over hot spots.

It is not known precisely how much internal heating is required to maintain plate tectonics, but it is probably at least 0.04 watts per square meter, whether the heat comes from radioactive decay or tides. Brian Jackson and coworkers at the University of Arizona have recently quantified tidal heating rates for various configurations of hypothetical extrasolar planets orbiting M-stars. For instance, for a small M-star one-tenth the mass of the Sun, a planet the size of Earth orbiting within that star's habitable zone on an orbit of initially small eccentricity will experience a gradual decline in tidal heating, as the interaction between the tides and the planetary orbit gradually acts to circularize the orbit over geological time, thus reducing the amount of movement of the tidal bulge and so also the heating rate. Such a planet will have enough tidal heating to maintain plate tectonic processes for more than five billion years, however, more than enough time for sophisticated life forms to develop.

Using this as a benchmark, simple calculations extend the work of Jackson et al to the mass range of brown dwarfs. For a typical 20 Jupiter mass brown dwarf, there are numerous realistic combinations of orbital distances and planetary size that give reasonable tidal heating rates within the hypothetical habitable range of 0.04-2 Wm-2. These orbits are mostly quite distant from the dwarf, however, so far away that incident radiation from the dwarf throughout most of the lifetime of the planet would be small compared to the solar radiation received by Earth. This might be a good thing, though, given how much this incident radiation would decrease over geologic time due to the cooling of the dwarf, and how disruptive this would be to planetary habitability. So therefore the likeliest habitable environment in a planetary object around a brown dwarf is beneath the frozen surface of an icy world, inside a global, tidally warmed ocean—just like on Enceladus. Since it is likely that there are several worlds in our solar system with subsurface water oceans, such places will be common in the galaxy and may well be present circling any nearby brown dwarfs that are found. They are even more likely to be present in the larger planetary systems that would accompany a nearby small star, if this were to be found instead.

Of course, the question then becomes what this new closest star will be called. Here, the incurable romantics among us are likely to be disappointed: The new object will certainly be designated according to the standard International Astronomical Union specification for objects discovered outside of the solar system, at least at first. So by about 2015, the new answer to the question “What is the closest star to Earth, apart from the Sun?” may be something like “WISEPC J083322.70+220510.8.” Now that's an answer to a trivia question.

* * * *

Further Reading and Reference

In addition to the following journal articles, the Wikipedia entry on brown dwarfs provides a concise, up-to-date summary of these objects. For more information on the WISE mission, see wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/.

Burningham, B., et al., 2008: Exploring the substellar temperature regime down to 500K. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 391, 320-333.

Jackson, B., R. Barnes and R.Greenberg, 2008: Tidal heating of extrasolar planets and implications for their habitability. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 391, 237-245.

Lucas, P.W. et al., 2010: The discovery of a very cool, very nearby brown dwarf in the Galactic plane. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 408, L56-L60.

Leggett, S.K. et al., 2009: The physical properties of four ~600K brown dwarfs. The Astrophysical Journal, 695, 1517.

* * * *

About the author

Kevin Walsh is an associate professor in the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne. He has interests in climate change, climate variability, and planetary science.

Copyright © 2011 Kevin Walsh

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: ONE OUT OF MANY
by Kyle Kirkland

New knowledge isn't always comfortable, but you have to learn to live with it. . . .

I could spot NeuroFac users without a second glance. Etched into their faces was an unmistakable look of confusion, somehow combined with remarkable serenity, or so I was told. I didn't know what it actually felt like since lifestyle drugs weren't my thing, but like most people I gave NeuroFackers the same smile you'd give to small dogs, children, and harmlessly befuddled adults. Except when one was holding a brain neutralizer and pointing it straight at my nose.

“You Tad Bruler?” The man was of medium height, slender, and looked as if he might be of mixed Asian and American ancestry. But my attention focused on the electrode. It was painted black except for two gold-plated tips that would arc and emit a lot of nasty, neuron-scrambling radiation if and when the man pulled the trigger. “You Tad Bruler? Of the Sci-Reg Bureau?”

Acknowledging you're a regulator to a man who's pointing a weapon at you wasn't usually a good idea. But I didn't think I was going to fool him, so I nodded.

I wasn't worried yet. He'd accosted me in a corridor connecting a trans station with a mall, where I planned to buy a gift for someone before going to work. And at Sci-Reg we'd held a meeting just last month on NeuroFac—the one-year anniversary of its approval for the nonprescription market. Although some regulators had raised issues of long-term tolerance and withdrawal symptoms, I recalled what Heath Jonson, one of our statisticians, had said. “People who take NeuroFac are stable and almost never hurt anyone.”

The word almost began to worry me.

“You are . . . ?” I said.

He ignored the question. “A man wants to see you.” He nodded his head in the direction of an eerily dark hallway. It was the kind of place that only extraneous characters in horror movies ever enter.

I didn't move. “He couldn't make an appointment with my office in the normal way?”

No answer.

“Does this man have a name?”

“Yeah. Joko Trajan.”

I smiled. “Really? I've always wanted to meet him.”

“Mr. Bruler, I love you, man, but if you don't start moving I'm gonna have to zap you, pick you up, and carry you off. And I don't want to do that. You look kind of heavy.”

“Some of it is muscle,” I warned.

He wasn't impressed—the neutralizer gave him a distinct advantage. “Last chance.”

I glanced around. Nobody. It seemed impossible that no one else would come along this time of morning. Had someone tinkered with the entry and exit doors? That could have only been done by a person with a lot of moxie; someone like, say, a legendary bandit.

Or maybe I just got unlucky. I started moving.

* * * *

Ten minutes later, after several winding, musty corridors and damp stairways, we ended up in the bowels of some maintenance or control facility. My escort—who had pocketed the neutralizer—waved me into a 20-by-40 foot room filled with dials, meters, and vid screens. Two overhead fluorescents provided dim lighting. I heard the sound of running water, which might have been due to the proximity of a pipe, a sewer, or one of the underground canal transports.

Standing at one end of the room was a short man with thinning hair and a grim expression. A man and a woman sat in two folding chairs along the wall. An empty third chair was between them. The seated man had white hair and looked about sixty, and the woman was about half that age, dark skinned with pale golden hair. I tried not to stare at the woman although I knew I had seen her somewhere before.

“Thank you, Nolan,” said the man who was standing. “You may be seated.”

The NeuroFacker walked past me and sat down in the center chair.

“Mr. Tad Bruler,” continued the man, “my name is Joko Trajan, although I'm sure you don't believe me, and I frankly don't care very much if you do or don't.” He gestured toward the chairs. “These are two highly qualified scientists, Jack and Jill. You do not need to know anything further about them, although I invite you to test their scientific knowledge and acumen—you'll not find them wanting. And Nolan you've already met.”

I nodded. “I suppose you're all wondering why I called this meeting.”

Jack coughed. “Young man, this is no time for fun and games.”

“Then what is it time for?”

“You're familiar with NeuroFac?” asked the short man who called himself Joko Trajan.

“If you know who I am and where I work, then you must know I'm familiar with it.”

“And you have some questions, let us say, about its characteristics?”

I stared at him. He had dropped his gaze and was waiting patiently for my response.

Our investigation of NeuroFac was supposed to have been top secret. Of the twenty-four agents in the neuroscience branch of Sci-Reg, three had voiced doubts about NeuroFac's over-the-counter status. Not me, but pharmware wasn't my specialty. Since NeuroFac was a Grade B lifestyle enhancer we didn't have any sense of urgency, but the study we commissioned had been labeled “in-house only.” Apparently, there had been leaks.

“Should we have some questions about NeuroFac?”

The man continued to gaze at the floor. “What do you think of Nolan, Mr. Bruler?”

“Hard to make an informed judgment in so short a time. But I can't say I like his manners—or his neutralizer.”

“You can blame me for the neutralizer. Other than that, you find him typical?”

“For a NeuroFac user?” I looked at Nolan and his bewildered expression and unperturbed posture. “I guess he's typical.”

“Jill, show Mr. Bruler the scan you took of Nolan.”

A vid screen flickered on. I would have thought it was for visualizing flow rate or gate switching or something like that, but instead a pseudo-colored image of a brain appeared. These guys came prepared—maybe they had temporarily gotten control of the facility. Jill operated a joystick, and the image zoomed into the frontal lobes. Flashes of red dotted the screen in a circuit of synaptically connected neurons that I recognized as the cerebral cortex—a thin, multi-layered group of interconnected neurons covering the surface of the brain.

“This must be a simulation,” I said. “Nobody can scan a brain in vivo with this kind of precision.”

“It's real,” said Jack. “We can do it.”

“How?”

“That's not important,” said Jill. “Accept, for the moment, that we can. Look at the activity, the pattern. The red color represents the firing activity of single neurons. You see the pattern?”

The pattern involved the different layers of the cortex, which consisted of distinct populations of neurons. The image showed neurons connecting within and between layers in an arrangement that formed columns—vertical cylinders spanning the layers of the cortex. Input from other parts of the cortex projected onto neurons in the upper layers, and the information trickled down to the lower layers. Neurons in the lowest layer projected to other parts of the cortex—this was the output of the column. These output neurons also sent signals back to the middle layers of the column, forming a feedback circuit.

One of the most controversial ideas I'd analyzed as a student was Leguer's theory of consciousness. According to this theory, consciousness arose when certain signals got amplified by activity within or between certain cortical columns. The circuit reverberated with activity, spreading to other columns and synchronizing a number of them to “beat” or oscillate as one.

That was exactly the pattern that Jill pointed out on the screen.

“Nice simulation,” I said. “It's precisely what Leguer claimed happens when a thought or perception enters consciousness.”

“No,” said Jill, “it's precisely what you claimed happens.”

She was right—I'd forgotten. It hadn't been that long ago, yet I'd put all of those years of study and thinking behind me. The end result had been so disappointing.

Leguer's ideas were hazy, theoretical. In my thesis, which had been rejected, I hypothesized a more precise mechanism by which Leguer's circuit could work. I proposed that the feedback within a column—from the lower layer to the middle layers—might be instrumental in setting up the oscillation. Too hypothetical and speculative, the committee decided. Not good enough to get into the guild.

“It's not a simulation,” said Jack. “And this activity corresponds to Nolan's self-reported conscious thoughts—at least within a few tens of milliseconds, well within experimental error.”

With one arm I pointed to Nolan—who gave me a beatific smile—and with the other I pointed to the screen. “He reports a conscious thought, and simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, this activity appears. That's what you're telling me?”

Jill nodded.

“Uh-huh.” I looked at her. “Can you read the activity? Read his mind, so to speak? Can you guess what he was thinking without him telling you?”

Jack answered. “No. The brain's code is too complex for a simple analysis. You should have expected as much. That's what you hypothesized, wasn't it?”

So they had dug up my old thesis. “Yeah, but I got rejected.”

“Everybody makes mistakes,” said Jill. “Even the Sci-Eval Bureau.”

“All this is interesting,” I said, “but it's not possible to record the activity of intact neural tissue with such precision using any technique I'm familiar with.”

The little man who called himself Joko Trajan stirred restlessly. “We're straying from the point at hand.”

“I'm coming to that,” said Jill. She clicked a button on the controller and a new series of images began playing. The sequence looked a lot like the previous one, but there were subtle differences in intensity and geometry, and it was clear that the activity took place in a different area of the cortex.

“This activity followed the scan we showed you earlier, by about half a second, and is located a few millimeters rostrally,” she said. “It looks like a new conscious thought, doesn't it?”

I shrugged. “Did it correspond with the subject's report?”

Jill shook her head. “We hypothesized it was some kind of memory triggered by the initial thought. But our hypothesis didn't explain the results. This new pattern isn't directly related to the first one, and has a different source. It's clearly a new thought.”

“But you said the subject didn't report another thought.”

“Correct.”

I chuckled. “Then this data shoots down the theory. You have activity that theoretically is associated with consciousness, yet no conscious event occurs.”

The little man stirred again. “Or it is a suggestion, at least to an open-minded and innovative theorist, of something else.”

I waited for him to continue, but he stayed quiet, as did the two scientists. So they wanted me to guess. But I wasn't in the mood. “What else?”

“Remember,” said the little man, “the subject in this case is not a typical person. He is a typical NeuroFac user.”

“And you think the drug is responsible for the anomaly? Do you see it in other subjects?”

“No.”

“But what's the big deal? It doesn't seem particularly dangerous.”

The little man retrieved a neutralizer from behind a cabinet. I didn't know if it was the same one Nolan had used or a new one. He handed it to Nolan and said, “Kill Mr. Bruler.”

This was obviously part of the demonstration, and I didn't think it was going to be impressive. Nolan carefully adjusted the neutralizer—good theater, but not convincing. The weapon made a clicking sound as he ratcheted up the power and widened the shield that would protect him from the rays and deflect them toward the target. Then he pointed it straight at my head, smiled, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. My knees went a little weak, but that probably came from a tiny bit of uncertainty that this wasn't an act.

But as I continued to stare at Nolan, I began to think it might not have been so phony—at least for Nolan. The serene portion of his demeanor decreased and the confusion increased until his entire body showed full-blown agitation. He examined the neutralizer, then shook it and tapped it against a palm. Unless Nolan possessed Oscar-worthy acting talents, he had really expected me to drop dead.

My knees got a little weaker.

“That was uncalled for,” said Jill sharply. She put a hand on my shoulder. “I didn't know he was going to do that. Are you okay?”

I rallied. “No harm done.”

The little man took the neutralizer away from Nolan and patted him on the back. “It's all right, my friend. Sit down and relax.”

Nolan looked at me. “You're still with us, man. I love that.”

“I love that too,” I said.

The self-proclaimed Joko Trajan stared at me. “I think you'll agree that if this weapon had been real, you would be dead.”

“Even if I agree, it doesn't prove your point about NeuroFac.”

“Granted. But it makes you think, does it not?”

It did. The little man could see from my expression that he'd scored a victory. This was a drastic kind of behavioral test that no one had thought about doing in the lab. Nolan might be an exceptional case—or maybe we'd missed something important.

“What do you want out of this?” I asked. “Why didn't you go through normal channels?”

The little man smiled. “That's of no concern to you. All I wanted is to get the message across. You and your regulatory colleagues have abundant resources. Use them wisely. Nolan, please escort our friend back to the main corridor.”

I glanced at Jill, but she wasn't looking in my direction. With arms folded she stood facing the little man. Jack appeared a little embarrassed and rose unsteadily from his chair.

Nolan tugged on my sleeve. “Get with the program, man. Come on.”

He led me through serpentine passages until we emerged into the connecting corridor. After a not so gentle hug and a profession of undying adoration, he left me.

I wondered what Sci-Reg's neuroscience chair would say if I reported meeting a legendary outlaw and two scientists called Jack and Jill.

But as I walked to the trans station, I suddenly remembered where I'd seen Jill before.

What did “Joko Trajan” really want? Was the data they showed me from an actual experiment, and if so, how? What did the cortical activity represent, if anything? Did NeuroFac pose a more serious hazard than anybody had suspected? Was Trajan trying to show me that NeuroFac made people susceptible to mind control or brainwashing? Questions tumbled about in my mind, and just as I drew a bead on one, another popped up.

I could have checked to see if I could find the room again, but I figured it would now be what it looked like—a control room for the transportation system.

I decided to call the department. After stepping into a curtained booth, I palmed payment and the OLED pasted to the wall flickered to life. Heath's flaming red hair and angular face appeared on the OLED.

“Anything going on?” I asked.

Heath shook his head as he squinted. “Where are you?”

“Near a trans station. Any recent news about NeuroFac?”

“The study group hasn't finished yet. Why do you ask?”

“Before I tell you, let me ask about something else. Do you think I'm crazy?”

“I'm a neural statistician, not a psychiatrist,” Heath deadpanned. “But I've heard rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“They say you're too dedicated to the job.” Heath smiled. “But I don't believe you're crazy. Few people are more dedicated to regulation than those who've been rejected by the guild.”

I let the barb pass. “What do you know about Joko Trajan?”

“As much as I do about Professor Moriarty. Why on earth do you ask?”

I might as well have told him I met Sherlock Holmes or his nemesis. “Any connection with NeuroFac?”

“I repeat: Why do you ask?”

“Because I just met a man who called himself Joko Trajan and two scientists named Jack and Jill. We had an interesting discussion about NeuroFac.”

Heath smiled again.

I gave him a summary of the strange meeting. Heath listened politely.

“Do me a favor,” I said, “and check on NeuroFac's manufacturer. And especially their competitors. Maybe all of that stuff about Nolan was a ploy—maybe somebody has a new drug and is hoping to muscle in on NeuroFac's market.”

“It's an idea, but doesn't sound right—NeuroFac isn't a big money maker because it appeals to such a small group. I'll also query the FDA, since they have the final say over drug classification. Maybe they've heard something we haven't.”

I cut the connection and exited the booth. The next thing to do was to see one of my contestants.

* * * *

Amelia lived near the 270 degree radial. I opted for a concentric canal rather than going through the hub—too busy this time of day. The log sloshed into the station a few minutes later, and I got a good seat near the transmitter outlet. Although transmission could be intermittent—I wasn't sure what kind of links they used to get signals up and down a hundred feet of earth—I inserted my comm's hard-link connector and dialed the encyclopedia. Since a few people were sitting nearby, I used the earpiece and throat mike.

Once the comm established a connection, I whispered, “Joko Trajan.”

The encyclopedia began reading the entire entry. “Jozef Korella Trajan. Shrouded in mystery and legend, no indisputable government record or eyewitness sighting of this apocryphal outlaw exists. His name is widely attached to a broad assortment of felonious enterprises and is occasionally used as a synonym for such. The first public reference to Trajan appeared twenty-five years ago in the Eastern European Coalition, then part of the EAC. Authorities reported that Trajan was involved in a series of thefts of agricultural equipment and supplies. Subsequently this name, usually given as Joko Trajan, was associated throughout Eurasia and later the rest of the world with a lengthy list of criminal activities, including but not limited to extortion, usury, fraud—”

“Manifestations,” I said.

“Eyewitness accounts of Jozef Korella Trajan number in the thousands, but Trajan's reported age, appearance, speech prosody, and other characteristics vary widely. Since no authoritative identification exists, public officials cannot be certain which, if any, of these reports actually describe the real person, assuming that any such person exists.”

“Trajan and NeuroFac.”

“No data,” replied the encyclopedia.

I expected as much. It's never that easy.

“Trajan and brain.”

“According to a report given little credence by any investigative or regulatory body, Trajan has received a number of brain transplants.”

Not many people remembered that old fad, and it was before my time as well, but I had good reason to know something about it—those brain transplant operations, and the furor that arose afterward, gave rise to the Scientific Regulation Bureau. Adding tissue to your brain seemed like such a good idea—more neurons meant a greater information processing capacity. Some surgeons formed a maverick guild to put the theory into practice. They acquired neurons from aborted embryos and inserted them into patients, after first suctioning out enough space by removing “dispensable” structures composed of glial cells and connective tissue. A few Hollywood A- listers extolled “new vistas of clarity” achievable with the extra brain power, but no intelligence tests supported the claim. Instead, seizures and necrosis—cell death—became common in transplant patients. The people who had been seeking bigger brains ended up with smaller ones, and politicians and activists pushed for the establishment of the Sci-Reg Bureau. Bad science does more harm than just misinform.

After the log coasted into the station dock and the crew lowered the gangway, I took the stairs to street level and walked to Amelia's apartment.

Her door opened as I approached the sensors. I walked through the den and into her home office. She was on the comm—no surprise. She hung up in a few minutes.

“What brings you here?” she asked, rising from her chair and extending an arm. We hugged. She smelled like lilacs today.

“I wanted to—”

The comm buzzed. Amelia glanced at the ID and said, “Sorry, I have to take this.”

I wandered into the den. The 3D viewers cycled through images of Amelia posing with some of her many clients. She represented a lot of successful scientists, especially in the biological sciences.

“Tad?”

I would have to make this short. “You remember a picture of a group at a party—”

The comm buzzed. Amelia rolled her eyes. “A big-time lab wants a neuroscientist ASAP. I've got a client that's interested, but you wouldn't believe the negotiation involved.” She answered the comm and I wandered back into the den.

She came in few minutes later. “Okay, ten-minute break. Now, what can I do for you, hon? Something about a picture?”

“You and a bunch of other people at a party. I saw it last week.”

Amelia hesitated, and I knew why. Some of her other contestants were in that picture. Not that Amelia shied away from admitting she had plenty; I was one of six contestants that I knew about, and she might have had others. She didn't have much time to spend on any one of us, but if I knew Amelia, she'd probably be thorough about making a decision, which meant she'd be a long while deciding. Although sometimes it seemed unlikely that I would win, I thought I had a decent shot—Amelia kept telling me “regulators are so sexy.” But if I won, I'd have to hire a lawyer because Amelia was a tough negotiator for her clients, and she'd be even tougher when negotiating a life partnership for herself.

I had only one other contestant besides Amelia. She was an insurance broker.

“There's someone in the picture,” I told her, “I'm hoping you can identify.”

She thumbed through some pictures before finding a poster-sized print. “This one?”

I nodded after spotting the woman who looked like Jill. “How long ago was this taken?”

“About a month. Why? A couple of my prospects were at the party. Checking out your competition?”

Amelia's tone sounded casual, but when she used a politically correct term such as “prospects” I knew she was uptight. Job pressure, I figured.

I pointed to the woman who looked like Jill. “Know her?”

“Just met her at the party.” She frowned in concentration. “Sara . . . Sara . . . oh, Sara somebody. Neuroscientist.”

“Where does she work?”

Amelia frowned again. Then she groaned as the comm buzzed.

“Take it,” I suggested. “I'll scan this, if you don't mind.” I went to the study room and digitized the photograph. Amelia had an old but useful photo editor and I snipped out the image of Jill/Sara.

Amelia walked in. “Trying to make me jealous?”

“Sure you don't remember anything else?”

“Only that she's a neuroscientist, she already has competent representation, and she's a retro. I can ask around, if you'd like.”

“I can handle it from here.” I transferred the image to my comm and printed a high-resolution close-up of the woman. “She told you she was a retro?”

“Not exactly. We chatted briefly. More than one of my prospects were at the party and they got a little chippy. When I asked how she handled that kind of situation, she told me she just broke up with her ‘boyfriend'—that's the word she used—and that she wasn't currently dating anybody.”

“Dating? You mean she goes through them serially, one at a time?”

“Inefficient, I know, but you meet all kinds of people at parties. Really, Tad, you ought to get out more. Why are you so interested in this woman?”

The comm buzzed.

“See ya,” I said, and left.

I'd need to visit the Data Center to ID the woman. I took a concentric canal to the zero radial and waited for a log to the hub. Because the station was near the geothermal pumps that lifted the water, it got a little hot at the terminal. I drifted to the lobby and glanced at the wall-length screen showing the news channel. Suddenly an image of a familiar face caught my attention. I raced to the viewing area and clamped a speaker around my ear.

“. . . no witnesses. Authorities have not made a ruling on the case pending an autopsy, but officials indicate that it was likely an accidental drowning. The deceased, Akiru N. Reece, an artist and writer, had been employed periodically at an advertising agency located in the southeast quadrant. In other news . . .”

Not long after we had met under such strange circumstances, Nolan fell into a canal and drowned.

* * * *

I hurried to the Data Center and got into line. After a body scan and government ID check, a security guard took my comm and notebook. I entered the queue and waited; most people in front of me seemed to use all their allotted minutes. I saw an acquaintance who worked for Sci-Reg's physics department coming out looking angry, as if her search had been unsuccessful. Sci-Reg's low priority meant that we were limited to one search per day.

Waiting around gave me time to think about Nolan. His death could have been accident. According to Heath's statistical analysis, NeuroFac altered enough motor neurons to affect balance. But another, more sinister hypothesis came to mind.

I ordered lunch from a cart and ate standing up. My turn rolled around at two o'clock.

The terminal's input accepted the picture. A conversion algorithm calculated twenty-one facial measurements and began searching for matches in the official census file.

“Area of search?”

A global search would have required more than thirty minutes, and I would have had to come back the following day. But I didn't think I needed to go beyond NAC.

“North American Commonwealth,” I said.

Twelve minutes later I got the results. The search algorithm flagged 155,000 IDs. The picture I inputted wasn't a good one, so the computer found an enormous number of possible matches.

“Limit. Name tag: Sara.” If that wasn't right I was in trouble.

The computer said, “Limit results: 684.”

“Limit, current set. Occupation tag: Science.”

“Limit results: 17.”

“Display ID pictures serially, five seconds per image.”

On the eleventh picture I found her. Sara Mordova, age twenty-eight, freelance scientist. She didn't live in the city, but she'd been at a party here a month ago and I'd seen her this morning, so she probably maintained an office somewhere in the vicinity. Some freelancers bounced around, taking temporary jobs and renting lab equipment and space until they found full-time positions, although others remained independent and made a career of freelancing.

Problem: I didn't know where she was staying in the city. But now I had her comm link.

From my pocket I took out a package of salve. The guards rarely confiscated it, even though by now some of them must know that it forms an ink when mixed with saliva. I rolled up my sleeve. With a fingernail I wrote Sara's twenty-digit comm code on the inner portion of my upper arm.

Would she talk to me? I was anxious to find out.

* * * *

“You remembered me from a picture you glanced at a week ago?”

Sara didn't sound convinced. The first thing she asked after I reached her on the audio-only link was how I'd found her.

“I have a good memory,” I told her.

“It's not just good, it's eidetic.”

I didn't mention my need to write her comm code on my arm.

“But,” she continued, “I'm not at liberty to say very much. And frankly, I don't know much more than what you learned at the meeting.”

“Your client was this Trajan character?”

“I can't be more specific than that. Sometimes clients insist on anonymity, and I have to respect that. But once again I apologize for the scare with the neutralizer.”

“What was the purpose of the experiments?”

“I'm afraid I can't—”

“You can at least tell me why I was the one he called.”

“Your analysis became relevant to the project after the initial tests,” she said. “I found your old thesis in the archives.”

“You still claim that the data you showed me was real?”

“That much I can guarantee you.”

“And there was nothing special or unusual about Nolan, except for his use of NeuroFac?”

“As far as I can tell, he was otherwise normal.”

“But how did you get such high-resolution scans of a living brain?”

Sara hesitated. I knew why.

“I can't tell you right now,” she finally said.

As a regulator it was my job to investigate innovations and new developments to ensure standards of accuracy and rigor. Guild members kept secrets from their competitors until they could assure ample credit and royalties, and scientists were also reluctant to confide with regulators, although they had no right to refuse formal requests. Sometimes valuable information leaked during regulatory processes.

She knew I could apply pressure unless she cooperated, yet she stood her ground. I admired that. Admired, but not appreciated. “Ms. Mordova, if you don't start talking I'll initiate formal proceedings.”

Sara said, “You have all the information concerning NeuroFac.”

“But I can't evaluate that information.”

“I think you're being heavy-handed. Most regulators accept claims of a reputable scientist unless something sounds fishy. You're putting me in an awkward position. It's not my technique!”

“I think you're already in an awkward position.” I told her about Nolan.

She sounded surprised. “I hadn't heard. I . . . that's terrible. It was an accident, you said?”

“That's the official version of the story, as of now.”

“You sound suspicious.”

“I am. How well do you know Jack, or whatever his name is?”

“Not well. I haven't worked with him before. He's a friend of a friend.”

“Have you talked with Jack since the meeting?”

“No. The meeting with you concluded my contractual obligations for this project. And as far as I know, his as well.”

“Do me a favor and call Jack.”

“Why?”

“To see if he's had any accidents lately.”

She gave a laugh—but it sounded like a nervous one to me, and she agreed to call him. After a few minutes she came back on the line. Her voice was shaky. “I reached one of his assistants. She said he disappeared around lunchtime and hasn't been seen since. She's beginning to get worried.”

So was I.

* * * *

Flex time leveled out the peak in peak hour, but traffic usually picked up during the late afternoon and early evening. I entered an underground station and a log coasted up to the dock; I got one of the last seats.

Sara had told me she rented an apartment office in the city, but she hadn't returned after the conference at which I'd been a reluctant participant. Instead, she'd visited her agent and began the search for her next gig. I figured she'd been lucky not to go back to the office and told her so. She agreed to meet me at The Light Bulb, a popular hangout for scientists near the hub.

I arrived and checked in. The building was in the shape of an old, horrendously inefficient incandescent bulb—the ones that converted a few percent of electrical energy into light and the rest into heat. The first floor of the building consisted of tables arranged in concentric circles. Upper floors contained private rooms, also situated concentrically. The central axis of the building was open from floor to ceiling, with a bright chandelier suspended over the center. Since the chandelier looked like an incandescent light bulb, it formed the cartoonish representation of inspiration, and hovered over your head if you stood in the center of the first floor.

Sometimes I was glad I hadn't gotten into the science guild. Scientists could be incredibly hokey.

Reserving a room on the fourth floor, I climbed the spiral staircase. Once I reached the room I hit the “advertise yourself!” button, which sent my name and room number to the message board. Sara would easily find me. I left the door open and watched a group of young people file into a room on the other side of the central axis. A geeky-looking guy stared at them, then slipped into an adjacent room. I sadly shook my head. Science wasn't the right career for shy people who didn't know how to promote themselves.

In my room, a table extended from the wall opposite the doorway. Mounted on this wall was a screen, currently displaying a science documentary. I switched the screen to comm mode and called my office. The AI routed me to my inbox at once because of an urgent message that the department chair had left for me earlier. “Bruler, drop what you're doing and read this report.” The name of a file appeared on the screen. I opened it and scrolled down the first few pages. It involved neurostimulation—my specialty.

I dialed Heath's code and was surprised to find him still at work. “What's up?”

“TD.”

“I glanced at the report. Seems kind of routine.”

“But more than a million people use this model.”

“Yeah.” Interesting timing.

“You don't sound enthused.” He appeared to gaze over my shoulder. “You're at the Bulb?”

“Yeah, so?”

He kept looking over my shoulder. “It seems you're making friends.”

“I'm trying to get out more, like you guys keep telling me.”

Sara walked through the doorway, and I quickly said good-bye to Heath. She sat down at the table. I got up and closed the door, then sat back down. She eyed me warily.

“I'd like a little privacy,” I told her.

“There's not much more I can say, Mr. Bruler,” she said. She kept glancing at the door.

Amelia had been right—this lady was super old-fashioned. Maybe she thought we needed a chaperone. “Call me Tad. I'm only a year older than you are and a little less formality might help us work together.”

She gave me another distinctly nervous look.

I gave in. “Okay, Mr. Bruler it is. When did this project begin, Ms. Mordova?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Anything especially unusual about it?”

“Nothing except that the client didn't go through my agent. But I submitted the contract for my agent to look over anyway. He didn't really earn his 15 percent, but we have a deal.”

“And you stick to a deal, don't you?”

She nodded.

“I'm beginning to see why you were hired. Or at least one of the reasons. You did the brain scans of Nolan using this innovative technique, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“The scans involved some sort of new equipment or formula or chemical?”

She nodded.

“And you didn't make a copy or keep a sample for yourself, did you?”

“That would have been unethical.”

“Uh-huh.” Sara Mordova was certainly trustworthy. Naive, but trustworthy.

“I know what you're thinking,” she said. “But I'm not like that. I realize that many scientists would surrender to temptation, but I'm different.”

“Oh, I know. I'm not suggesting otherwise. Now you said you got a copy of my thesis. Did you give Jack one too?”

“Yes. He mentioned it, and we talked about it. I must say, I'm impressed. We performed the experiment almost exactly the way you theorized it should be done. You were right. And although I didn't save the data—it didn't belong to me, as specified by the contract—I'm going to inform the guild that your work deserves another evaluation. If it was up to me, Mr. Bruler, your rejection would be voided.”

“Maybe I don't want to join the guild.”

“I wouldn't blame you. You've got every right to be angry—”

I shouted, “Who says I'm angry?” Sara gave me a look. “Okay, okay,” I admitted. “I'm angry. Was angry. But you know what they say: ‘Those who can, do, and those who can't, regulate.’ It still bothers me when I hear that.”

“The people who say that aren't very smart. Regulation is one of the toughest jobs—you have to enforce standards without stifling innovation.”

“It's not so tough. Even a washout can do it.”

“Wrong,” said Sara firmly. “You might not know this, but many of us push hard to get creative people into regulatory bureaus. We'll even lobby for Sci-Reg candidates who've been rejected because some cranky old fossilized judges ruled that they were ‘too creative.’ We do this despite the risk that such people will have hard feelings toward the guild.”

“I guess some people must be disappointed that I turned into a fossilized regulator.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“Never mind,” I said. “What was Jack's role in the project?”

“Supervisory. The client asked me to do much of the work, but, well, I guess he wanted somebody a little more experienced to provide advice. My C.V. is still a bit thin.”

“But you're skilled and trustworthy. You handled the materials and equipment while the old guy kibitzed. I get the picture. You two were the only scientists on the project?”

“As far as I know.”

“What did the client want to accomplish? What did he expect me to do?”

“Investigate NeuroFac, I assume.” She glanced at her watch. “Look, Mr. Bruler, I appreciate your concern. I'm worried a little bit too, but I don't think we should panic.”

“I think you're in danger. And me too.” I told her about Sci-Reg's TD.

“TD?”

“Total devotion of resources. This regulatory emergency might be nothing more than a smokescreen to keep me busy.”

“But if that's true . . .”

I nodded. If that was true, then we were dealing with people who had enough power to pull Sci-Reg's strings.

She gave a nervous laugh. “I'd say your hypothesis is unsupported by the facts. But I promise I'll be careful and report any further developments.” She rose and walked to the door.

I got up too. “Wait a minute.”

Something was bothering me. It happened that way, sometimes. It's like a little pebble that gets in your shoe and, after a while, you feel like you're carrying around a boulder. My mind worked like that—something inconspicuous escaped my attention at first, but then, after a while, the significance hit me like a brick, as if parts of my brain had been silently mulling it over and suddenly reached a conclusion.

What had Heath meant when he said that I was making friends? The comm's cameras that had transmitted my picture were situated above and perpendicular to the screen. When he seemed to look over my shoulder he would have really been looking over my shoulder. And right out the doorway.

Sara opened the door. I raced toward her and glanced out.

That geeky-looking guy didn't look so geeky anymore. He held some kind of weapon and pointed it straight at Sara and me.

I grabbed her and dived to the floor. A sharp pain seared through my ribs.

* * * *

It took some effort to clear my head. The pain gradually went from excruciating agony to a dull throb that merely made me grit my teeth. I held my left side. The cause of my distress became abundantly clear as I saw Sara Mordova standing over me, seething with anger. “You animal!”

I managed to get up and take a peek through the doorway. The geek with the gun was gone.

“Is that why you wanted to get me alone?” she cried.

It was hard for me to get out any words through clenched teeth. “I saw something. . . .”

“You felt something, too, didn't you? Or tried to!”

“I felt your elbow in my ribs.”

“And you deserved it!”

“I wouldn't think of violating the sanctity of your temple, Ms. Purity. Somebody just tried to shoot at us, and I got a silly idea that maybe you wouldn't like it.”

She obviously hadn't seen anything and wasn't about to buy it.

I took a longer look outside. Nothing. Apparently nobody had heard or seen anything exciting, nothing looked out of the ordinary, no sign of the would-be assassin. He'd been well hidden in his room, directly across the central axis from ours. There'd be no way to convince Sara I'd seen anything.

“I don't expect you to believe me,” I told her, “but I know what I saw. I don't know who was the target—you or me—or maybe both of us.”

Her expression softened. “Maybe somebody's idea of a practical joke.”

“I saw his face. He wasn't playing around.”

“Well, I didn't—” Suddenly her eyes grew wide. She walked slowly to the comm screen.

I followed her gaze. Buried in that megabuck, high-resolution, gigapixel screen was something that most certainly didn't belong there—a wicked, three-inch-long needle.

“Was that there earlier?” she asked weakly.

* * * *

The police officer who carefully extracted the needle from the screen said the tip had been dipped with some kind of sticky substance. “A toxin, probably.”

“Or some other kind of drug,” I said. “You'll run tests on it?”

He nodded.

“What kind of gun shoots needles?” asked Sara.

“The dangerous kind,” answered one of the officers. “Most of them are pneumatic. They operate on high-pressure gases that eject a dart at tremendous speed.”

I could tell Sara didn't know much about weapons. But neither did I.

The officers interviewed the Light Bulb's manager and other employees, along with a number of patrons, particularly on the fourth floor, but nobody knew anything useful about the young man I'd seen shooting toward us. He'd given a phony name when he checked in.

I asked if the police could provide us with some protection, hinting that I was working on a sensitive case for Sci-Reg. The police were sympathetic but said they didn't have the manpower. “We can take you into protective custody if you want.”

Sara and I exchanged glances. “No, thanks,” I told the officer.

Before the officers left, Sara told them about Calvin Bulloch—that was Jack's real name. He was a neuroscience professor at Graydon University in the city. “He might be in trouble. He's been missing since lunch.”

The police promised to file a report.

After they left, Sara and I sat in our room at the Light Bulb and looked at each other. “I suggest we don't go home,” I said.

“Doesn't Sci-Reg provide quarters when one of their regulators is threatened?”

“Yes, when the threat involves official business. As of right now, the only official business I should be working on is a complaint about a neurostimulation device.”

“Just tell them someone took a shot at you. I'm sure they'll protect you.”

“How about you?”

“Don't worry about me. I'll lay low.”

I shook my head. “Let's come up with a better plan.”

She smiled at me. “I know a place we could go. But you won't like it.”

“Is it safe?”

“I think so.”

“Then I'll like it.”

We walked outside. Night had fallen and the darkness gave us ample cover as long as we avoided the pale yellow light of the solar- battery lamps. The city was quiet; the air crisp and clean, with a gentle breeze. You could smell your way to a canal station on a night like this—just follow the trail of moist, tangy air rising from the tunnel.

Sara led me to the 35 degree radial station. Both of us kept looking over our shoulders as we waited for a log. Unless the shooter had somehow intercepted my invitation to Sara, which was unlikely, he must have followed me to the Bulb.

We took the exit after a long ride out past the eighth concentric. The streetlights were more widely spaced in the outer circles, and we stayed in the shadow until we reached a plain, three-story rectangular building. The sign, lit by some sort of glowing tubes, formed an arc of letters above the door that spelled out “Throwback.”

“This is for retros,” I said.

Sara nodded and started to enter.

I stopped her. “Will they allow us in unescorted?”

She leaned toward my ear. “Watch,” she whispered conspiratorially.

It was kind of like a hostel. According to Sara, retros went to the Throwback to escape modern life. We managed to get adjoining rooms. The manager made us sign a form—pen and paper, no less—and gave us each a small metal object, shaped unlike anything I had ever seen before.

“The key,” Sara said.

“The key to what?”

“Your room.”

I followed her up the stairs to the third floor. “This is the coed floor,” said Sara. Her voice had a trace of sarcasm.

She showed me how to unlock my room door using the key, then she went next door. I entered my room. Bed, chair, dresser, bath, circulation vent, fluorescent lamp, fridge, four walls, a window that looked out on a dark alley, and an interior door that I thought was a closet until somebody knocked on it.

“It's me,” said Sara.

The door wouldn't budge until I discovered the latch. They lock interior doors here?

“Hungry?” she asked. “We can call room service.”

I beckoned her inside. “I'd like to talk first.” I went to the chair and sat down painfully, favoring my left side, and gestured for her to take the bed. “You were right about this place. Nobody will ever find us here. Pen and paper registration forms!”

She gave me a compassionate look. “Lie down in the bed and let's see about those ribs.”

One touch from her hand sent another wave of pain down my side.

“I'm sorry I elbowed you,” she said. “Unbutton your shirt and let me take a closer look.”

“I'll be all right.”

“What's the matter? Too shy?”

I unbuttoned my shirt. While she felt my ribs, I patted the few extra pounds in my midsection. “You know what they call this? A regulator's muscle.”

She didn't smile. “I don't think anything's broken, but why is my comm number painted on your arm?”

I told her about the census database restrictions. “It's a trade-off. The government needs information, but citizens worry about privacy issues. So the databases are allowed to exist, but we have strict limits on access and retrieval.”

“I thought you had an eidetic memory.”

I shrugged. “It only works for faces.”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door. I looked at Sara. “Room service, I hope?”

She shook her head. “I didn't call them.”

* * * *

As I was searching in vain for a spy cam, Sara put her eye up to the door as if she could see through it. “Tall, blond, and skinny,” she said.

“Very funny. Where's the screen for the spy cam?”

She pointed toward a tiny bubble on the door at about eye level. “Peep hole.”

I put my eye up to it. A lens distorted the view but provided a wide angle. I saw Derrick Vinny and swung open the door. “How did you find me?”

“Pinged your comm's power pack,” he said. He peeked inside. “You should switch it on once in a while. The boss is furious. Can I come in?”

I introduced Sara and summarized what had happened to us. Derrick goggled.

Along with Heath, Derrick Vinny was among my closest associates at Sci-Reg. We were all about the same age, belonged to the same coterie. An additional connection I had with Derrick was that he had also tried but failed to qualify for the Science Guild, and his failure was for the same reason—"too creative.” Only he and Heath knew my comm's serial number, which he would have needed to wake it up briefly and get a response, along with GPS coordinates. It was the manufacturer's way of letting the owner track a missing or stolen comm, but it was also a way for your friends to check up on you. I'd forgotten about it.

“So what you're telling me,” said Derrick, “is that you think this electroware TD is bogus?” His disbelief was palpable.

“I'm suspicious.”

Derrick sat down on the bed, lost in thought. Sara, who was also sitting on the bed, quietly scooted toward the other end.

“But why?” he asked. “And who?”

“Joko Trajan, perhaps. He has a lot of pull.”

We talked about the possibility. Then Derrick mentioned how busy everyone was at the office and that he hadn't gotten a chance to eat all day.

“I'll phone the front desk,” said Sara. She picked up an oversized comm, attached by a coiled line to some kind of box with a rotary dial on top. She dialed a number and asked for three “dinner specials.”

Derrick made a face. “Raw meat and goat's milk, I presume.”

“At least they serve real food,” said Sara.

I changed the subject. “Derrick, what about mind control and brainwashing?”

“Mind control? You think that's involved?”

“I don't know, but the answer is somewhere in that bizarre meeting I had with the Trajan character. Maybe it wasn't so much about NeuroFac as the demonstration with Nolan.”

“So you're convinced this dude really meant to fry you?”

I nodded. “Maybe Trajan was trying to show me the brainwashing power of certain lifestyle drugs. This sort of thing has come up before.”

“I know, but there's never been anything to it. And mind control techniques date back a hundred years, even longer. Most of them have had nothing to do with drugs. Spooks tried out a lot of so-called truth drugs—barbiturates, LSD, scopolamine. They relaxed nerves and loosened tongues, but they didn't really work. Most techniques involved hypnosis. Government agents probably used hypnosis or similar techniques on defendants in the old USSR and their show trials, and later in the old United States. It only works to a certain extent, and then only on a willing or dispirited person. But that's just like playing mind games, doing a bit of psychology. As far as I know, there isn't any method of making people do things they don't want to do just by manipulating their actual brain states.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” observed Sara.

“It's his specialty,” I said.

“Who's shooting needles at you?” asked Derrick. “Could it be this Trajan guy?”

“I don't think it's Trajan,” said Sara. “If he wanted to hurt us, why would he sponsor my research and set up the meeting with Tad?”

“Besides,” I added, “he had ample opportunity to get rid of us at the meeting if that's what he had in mind. Maybe he wanted to see what we'd do first before he attacked us, but if so, he didn't give us very long to do it. I think we can rule out Trajan for now. He's involved, and he might be manipulating Sci-Reg, but I don't think he's the one who's after us. Maybe one of his enemies. Maybe he told us something that someone didn't want us to know. But what?”

The food came. We each got a Styrofoam container. The meal wasn't bad—three strips of lean ham, a roll, mashed potatoes, and corn. Simple but palatable.

While we were eating, Derrick asked, “How were these brain scans done?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. I'd forgotten to ask Sara.

“I suppose it doesn't make any sense for me to maintain my confidentiality agreements any longer,” she said. “I used smart probes.”

“I've heard rumors,” said Derrick, nodding. “They're molecules that sense and respond to changes in their environment.”

“Right,” said Sara. “The smart probes sense changes in voltage. They have an affinity for the membranes of neurons.”

“So they detect when neurons are active?”

Sara nodded. “They respond to the change in voltage with a rearrangement that affects their magnetic parameters, and they emit a brief pulse of radiation. A machine that measures these responses can map neural activity down to a single neuron if the scanner has enough elements.”

“Incredible,” said Derrick. “I can't wait to get a look. Where are your samples?”

“My contract specifically prohibited retention of any samples.”

Derrick gaped. “You didn't save any? Does retro mean retarded as well?”

“We'll just have to deal with not having any,” I said. “Too late to worry about it now. The things we need to investigate are NeuroFac and Trajan. What exactly does NeuroFac do? And what point was this Trajan character trying to make?”

“Whatever it is, you've made a great discovery,” said Derrick. “Congrats, Tad—you've become scientifically relevant.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I agree that my thesis is what dragged me into this.” I looked at Derrick. “I think we can assume that Nolan's death was no accident. For your own safety, you shouldn't get involved. Just tell the boss I'm indisposed.”

“Got it. And I can work on this problem from the office while you're out in the field. I'll see if this electroware thing is legit. If it's bogus, we can track the source of the complaint.”

“Thanks.” I finished eating and looked around. “Where are the recycle chutes?”

“Let me guess,” said Derrick. “There aren't any.” He rounded up the three Styrofoam containers. “I'll sort and deposit the leftovers when I get back to civilization.”

“Thanks for your help,” I said as he left.

I glanced at Sara but she stared at the floor and said nothing. “He's a good guy to have on your side,” I said.

“Fine.” She looked up at me. “But are you sure you want to work with someone who's retarded?”

For the first time I realized she could have been offended by Derrick's offhand remark. “Oh, come on, he didn't mean it.”

“Maybe. But everybody uses the term ‘retro,’ and that's probably a name that's just as bad these days. Did you know that ‘retro’ used to mean ‘fashionably old-fashioned'? It wasn't until people started using it to refer to us that it acquired a negative connotation.”

“It's not negative. It's just a way of categorizing people. . . .”

“Never mind.” She got up and unrolled a blind on the wall. “Here are the recycle chutes. Hidden but present. They're required by law.”

“Sorry, I didn't know. Anything else we missed that you didn't call our attention to?”

“One other thing,” she said. “You remember reading about split-brain experiments?”

“Vaguely.”

“A long time ago, researchers treated some cases of intractable epilepsy by cutting the corpus callosum. Cutting the fibers that connected the two hemispheres of the brain was a drastic measure, but it prevented seizures that develop on one side of the brain from reaching the other. But the researchers documented an unintended consequence—many of the patients acted as if they had two distinct minds. They would become confused when one of the hemispheres received information the other didn't get, and the patients sometimes made decisions or behaved in ways they couldn't quite explain. The split-brain operations became obsolete as pharmacists developed better drugs to fight epilepsy, so only a few patients were treated this way.”

“What's the relevance?” I asked.

“What if the drug does something equivalent to it?”

“Did you see anything like that on the brain scans?”

“No,” she admitted, “but I observed Nolan's behavior during the project. Those disparate emotions reminded me of the reports of split-brain patients.”

“It's worth thinking about,” I agreed. I smacked my lips. “Does this place have a washcloth in the bathroom or do we have to use our hands? That sauce tasted funny.”

“Only to someone used to eating nothing but synthetics.” Sara went into the bathroom and came out with a towel.

But no matter how much I wiped my mouth or how much water I drank, I still felt out of sorts.

* * * *

I woke up in a strange bed, and it took me a minute to figure out where I was. At first I thought I'd entered Sci-Reg's security quarters. Then I remembered.

Sara was right about Sci-Reg—they maintained a safe haven to protect staff who'd received credible threats. But Sara would have been left out on her own.

She seemed antsy this morning. We ordered breakfast, but she wasn't interested in food. I wondered if she was still angry about what Derrick had said last night.

“I'm sorry about Derrick's remark,” I said. “Sometimes he says things without thinking.”

“He was just speaking for the majority.”

Her implication—that I tacitly agreed with him—was obvious. “I don't understand retros,” I told her, “or whatever name your group wants to call itself. But that doesn't mean I want to insult anybody.”

“And yet you do. Everybody does. ‘Retro.’ Hasn't that name become a synonym for backwardness?”

I shrugged but she was probably right. “Maybe you're slightly too sensitive,” I suggested. I smiled to take the edge off it.

“Maybe. But maybe the rest of you are hypocrites. Why do people put down some old-fashioned ideas while other old-fashioned ideas have become popular?”

“Popular?”

“Yes, popular. How are you going to get around town today? You're going to ride a boat—which many people quaintly call a log—that glides along a canal. If you want to leave town you'd take a balloon and, if you wanted to cross the ocean, you'd book passage on a sailboat. Not exactly modern technology.”

“We're making use of renewable energy sources for the sake of economics and ecology.”

“You'll agree that these means of transport have been around a long time?”

“Sure, but we had good reasons to adopt them again.”

“Maybe some people think we've got good reasons to adopt other old-fashioned ideas.”

I shook my head. “Some people just have nostalgia. That's fine, but you can't let it slow progress. I agree that some of our technology has regressed, but that just means we have to become more efficient at everything else.”

“Such as finding a life partner by simultaneously romancing different girlfriends? Or contestants, as you call them. Do they like competing? Do you like it?”

“It's efficient,” I countered. “And everybody does it. Or almost everybody.”

I avoided further arguments and finished breakfast with plenty left on the plate, which I recycled in the appropriate slots.

“What's the plan for today?” Sara asked. “Won't you need to go to the office?”

“I'll stay away again today. Since tomorrow is mid-week break, that gives me two days free. I suggest you also stay away from your office.”

“We can't keep hiding forever.”

“True, but I'd like to learn more about what we're dealing with before returning.”

“How?”

“I'm going to dig up as much data as I can find on NeuroFac. What I'd like you to do is to hunt for clues about your client—go through your message box and the contract you signed, call your agent, and so on. I assume you can do this remotely.”

She nodded.

“See you later,” I said.

“Be careful,” she called out as I left.

I returned to the room a few minutes later—Sara had left, either to go out or to spend some time in her own room. For some reason that I couldn't quite explain, I took the power pack out of my comm, leaving the unusable comm in the hotel room. I stored the power pack in my safety deposit box at the bank.

For the rest of the morning I settled into a booth at a public link center. Full screens, full search options, with all public databases available. I retrieved a ton of data on NeuroFac.

Scientists knew that NeuroFac exerted its effects by stimulating neural networks in the brain. These networks became active and spewed out signals like little factories, hence the name of the drug. Although researchers still didn't know the function of these signals or what they code for, the behavioral effects on the user included what many people called a “broadening horizon.” It was apparently similar to an LSD “trip,” but NeuroFac didn't just activate receptors for a single neurotransmitter like serotonin. Instead, the networks or factories stimulated by NeuroFac created a tendency for thoughts to be more inclusive. The factories generated more and different kinds of thoughts, which users reported to be relaxing, especially pessimists who had a habit of concentrating on the downside to the exclusion of all else.

I remembered what Sara had said about the split-brain experiments, and I began looking for something to support her idea. Some of the data suggested NeuroFac involved a kind of dissociation, as if the factories drowned out other types of signals. Dissociation could lead to a split because it involved blocking certain signals from reaching consciousness, like the effects of dissociative anesthetics such as ketamine. In some cases dissociation could result in a fragmented mind, with trains of thought failing to link up.

But that didn't make much sense in the case of NeuroFac. The psychological effects of this drug appeared to be just the opposite.

I wanted to check Sci-Reg's restricted databases, but to do that I had to log in. I decided to do that job last and then leave quickly. First I used the booth comm to call Sara. She answered at the hotel.

“Where have you been?” she said. She looked flustered. “I've been trying to reach you all morning.”

“Problem with my comm. What's up?”

“The police called. They wanted to tell us about the toxicology tests on the needle.”

“Was it NeuroFac?”

She paused. “Why did you say that?”

“I'm not sure. But am I right?”

“No. The police said it was a rare molecule that causes instant and irreversible blockage of sodium ion channels in the heart.”

“In other words, it kills quickly.”

Sara nodded. Fear drained some of the color in her face. “And it was a massive dose, Tad. Enough to kill a blue whale.”

“Isn't that interesting.” Despite the rising tension in my thoughts, I managed to note her use of my first name.

“Interesting? Somebody wanted to make awfully sure that one or both of us are dead.”

“Didn't you say that Jack—Calvin Bulloch—was a friend of a friend?”

It took a few seconds for her mind to shift gears. “Yes.”

“Could you find out his comm's serial number?”

“Maybe. You think we could use it to find him?”

“We can give it a try if we get the serial number. But I'm wondering if somebody might have already tried it. Does he have a partner?”

“I don't think so. Or at least not anymore—they nulled the contract some time ago.”

“Then it's possible nobody's made the attempt.”

“Wouldn't the police have done that?”

I shook my head. “Not until he's been missing at least seventy-two hours. Privacy thing.”

“I'll call some people, see if I can get it.”

“Fine. Can anybody locate you by tracking your comm?”

She hesitated. “No. No, I don't think so.”

“Great. Let me know what you turn up. In the meantime I'll do some more digging. I haven't learned much yet that'll help us.”

We said good-bye, and Sara added, “Be safe.”

I decided to skip logging onto the Sci-Reg network. Something else began to bother me.

And I was getting a headache. I stopped at an exchange and picked up a pain reliever.

Then I went to the Data Center for a quick search of Calvin Bulloch's file.

* * * *

The queue didn't extend much beyond a two-hour wait. I grabbed some snacks, watched the news, and browsed some journals until my turn approached, then I entered the line.

I learned that Calvin Bulloch's specialty was neural statistics and data analysis, so he was good at spotting patterns. He joined Graydon University as an associate professor about twenty years ago. He'd left an Ivy League school after gaining tenure—an unusual move. Graydon didn't have the endowment of a Harvard or Yale, but it had prestige and a reputation for welcoming innovative scientists who frequently think outside of the box.

Perfect cover for a retro.

It was just as I'd thought. Near the end of the file I scored a bull's-eye. “Personal affairs & Psychology, item 44. Bulloch has been reported to associate with people who are known to belong to the sect OF, also known as ‘retros’ or ‘pasters.’ Activity within this sect suggests that Bulloch may be a leading figure, though he has made no public statement confirming his role or even his membership in the group. Supporting data as follows. . . .”

I went straight to the hotel.

Sara didn't answer when I knocked on the door between our rooms. I sat down to wait. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Twenty minutes later I heard someone enter Sara's room. I knocked again and she answered.

“Why didn't you tell me about Calvin Bulloch?” I shouted.

She shrank back. “Calm down, Tad. What are you talking about? I couldn't discover his comm's serial number—”

Then her face registered understanding.

“You checked his file,” she said.

“You knew he was a retro and you didn't tell me.”

“I didn't think—”

That's as far as she got, which was surprising. I would have thought she'd have enough time to finish her sentence as well as duck, considering how slowly my palm was arcing toward her face. The impact produced a soft, scarcely audibly thud, like a fly landing on a leaf. She should have barely felt it, which is why I watched with astonishment as Sara flew backward, golden hair billowing. She landed awkwardly against the wall and crumbled onto the floor.

* * * *

I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Islands of fluorescent light shone in a sea of cheap, perforated cardboard, painted white—the kind of ceiling you'd expect in a hospital or a research laboratory. Periodically I woke and fell asleep.

One time when I awoke Sara was standing over me. She tapped a tube, which I traced by moving my eyes to follow its snaking path into my arm—an IV line. Another person was in the room, talking to her. I was groggy and could only pick up a few words of the conversation. I'm pretty sure I heard Sara say the name “Jozef.” I tried to raise my head to get a glimpse of the other person, but I couldn't lift it off the pillow. Sara looked at me. She mouthed a word: “Sleep.”

I closed my eyes.

When I awoke again, I looked around for Sara, but the room was empty. I remembered Sara had told me to sleep. And I remembered her face—it looked funny because her cheek was slightly swollen and she had a fat lip.

I remembered who had done that.

What had happened afterward? I recalled helping Sara to the bed. I'd gotten some ice. I was wrapping the ice in a towel when they'd come in.

Who had come in, though? I couldn't remember anything after that. Were they cops? Sci-Reg security? Feds? I didn't have any idea.

I must have fallen asleep again because the next thing I knew I was on a gurney with a squeaky wheel. It went wheet, wheet, wheet all the way down the hall.

Then I was in the room again. Sara was standing over my bed.

“Well,” she said, “look who's back with us.”

“NeuroFac,” I said. It'd come to me in a flash. “I've been drugged, haven't I?”

Sara looked concerned. She turned to face someone else in the room. “Is it possible?”

I tried to follow her gaze but my neck felt sore and stiff when I moved my head.

“It's possible,” said a man's voice. “We should check.” He moved within my vision. It was the Joko Trajan character.

“Do we need to take another blood sample?” asked Sara.

Trajan shrugged. “I'll see.” He walked out of the room.

“Where am I?” I asked weakly.

“A research hospital,” said Sara. “Jozef is a major benefactor, so he was able to keep things quiet. Nobody knows you're here except a few reliable members of the staff.”

I tried to move but my muscles ached with stiffness. “What happened?”

“You had a convulsion.” She patted my shoulder. “But you'll be all right.”

“A seizure? Grand mal?”

She nodded.

“I've never had one. I'm not . . . The drug! That's got to be it.” I looked at Sara. The swelling had gone down, but her face remained puffy. “I slapped you.”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. You got your revenge for the elbow in the ribs.” She wasn't smiling, although her voice sounded playful.

Trajan returned. “They still have enough from the last sample. They'll test for NeuroFac metabolites.” He looked at me. “So how do you feel, Mr. Bruler?”

“Rotten.”

“I know. And I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry? Did you have something to do with the drug I've been given?”

“We don't know for sure that you've been drugged.”

“Something sure got to me.”

“Yes, I'm aware of that. And I know now what it was.” He pulled a neutralizer out of his pocket and held it up, barrel pointed downward. “It was this.”

It looked like the one Nolan had aimed at me.

Trajan put it away. “It was supposed to be disabled. I removed the crystal myself. But after the trouble started, I inspected the weapon and discovered to my dismay that a crystal had been reinserted. A different one, with different effects, but quite powerful.”

“Did Nolan do it? Or someone else?”

“Most assuredly someone else.”

“The person who killed Nolan.”

Trajan nodded. “I failed in my due diligence, you might say.”

“You think it was Calvin Bulloch?” I asked.

“I know it was Mr. Bulloch,” said Trajan forcefully.

My head began to clear. “I remember discovering that Bulloch was a retro. For some reason this made me angry, but his being a retro doesn't seem important. What have you got against Bulloch?”

I glanced at Sara's pained expression. “What?” I asked her. “What's eating you?”

She let her head drop and didn't answer.

“It seems,” said Trajan, “that Mr. Bulloch belongs to a small splinter group within the OF. They've formed a secret maverick guild.” He frowned. “Linked to violence.”

I looked at Sara. “You knew? Or suspected?”

She kept staring at the floor. “I began to suspect while I was working with him on this project. He dropped some subtle hints. I think he was trying to recruit me. He stopped when he realized I had no interest in it.”

“So you see, Mr. Bruler,” said Trajan, “I screwed up.”

* * * *

I'd wanted to ask Trajan a lot more questions, but a nurse entered the room with some medication. Then she ordered everybody out of the room so that I could rest. “We don't want you to have another seizure,” she said, overruling my protests.

That was Wednesday evening. Over the course of the next day I managed to get at least some of my questions answered.

What had the neutralizer done to me? The radiation had stimulated certain neural networks, similar to the effects of NeuroFac. But unlike the drug's effects, the network activity became stronger over time rather than settling into a steady state. The activity gradually became synchronized across my entire brain—a seizure. Without the intervention of counteracting depressants, I would have eventually stopped breathing.

“The crystal and its radiation were meant to kill you,” said Trajan, “but only later, after you left, so I wouldn't get suspicious. Perhaps they were hoping to get me, too, if they could catch me off guard. But they made a mistake. They allowed Nolan's body to float and it was found quickly, instead of being filtered out and discarded with the silt and debris when the canals are cleaned.”

This meant the assassin at the Bulb had probably been after Sara. They figured I was already a goner with that ticking timebomb in my brain. That would have finished off three of us—Nolan, Sara, and me.

How did Joko Trajan's men find us?

“Patience,” said Trajan. “I was quite certain that at some point you would consult the government databases. So I stationed some people to watch the Data Center. You showed up and they followed when you left. We made sure, by the way, that nobody else followed you. I didn't think you would cooperate with me, but I hoped you would lead us to Sara so that we could find both of you at the same time. Fortunately she showed up soon after you arrived at the hotel. I couldn't have waited much longer because I wasn't sure what the neutralizer had done to you, and I didn't know how much time you had left. As it was, I cut it pretty fine.”

I asked Trajan's motivation in all of this. “And who are you, really?”

“My name is Jozef Korella Trajan.”

“So you really exist,” I said skeptically.

“Yes, but my past has been greatly exaggerated.”

“You're not an outlaw?”

“That's a long story, Mr. Bruler. You should rest and regain your strength.”

I wasn't going to let him off that easy. “You owe me.”

“Perhaps,” he admitted. “I'll give you an abridged version. I was young when some parts of the Eurasian Coalition went bankrupt. Like somebody once said, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend. Anyway, in their desperation they turned to the Eastern European Coalition, which at the time belonged to the EAC. They took advantage of our nomadic heritage. It was easy for the government to slash population records, striking names from the rolls. Mine, for instance. That saved resources that would have otherwise been allotted to us. And what did the government do with all of these nonpersons? Nothing sinister, I grant you, but they worked us hard. Businessmen established much agriculture in our region, which made sense since it was so ‘thinly’ populated. It was difficult for us to adapt, but we succeeded, although we maintained as many of our traditions as possible.”

Trajan admitted that he began pilfering seed, food, and equipment, and selling them on the black market. “When you're oppressed it isn't hard to justify such actions, even if you have a strong conscience. I quickly gained a reputation and was successful at hiding. I fought against injustice—or so I would like to believe—but I continued to operate outside of the law even after government policies began to improve.” He shrugged. “It's hard to stop once you've acquired the habit. But I assure you my reputation has been inflated. People started using my name even though I had nothing to do with them or their activities.”

“At some point,” I observed, “you acquired an excellent education.”

He bowed. “Self-educated, actually. I studied in my spare time, and I had plenty, since I spent so many days in hiding.”

“You had plenty of money, too, didn't you?”

Trajan nodded, his face slightly red. “Unlike Robin Hood, I failed to distribute all of my income to the poor. When you've been deprived for so—”

“I'm not interested in your business decisions,” I said, holding up a hand. “The rumor about the brain transplants reflects nothing but a distortion of your interest in neuroscience?”

“Yes. Well, psychology, anyway. The study of behavior. Why does one man feel he has the right to oppress another? And why does one man accept such oppression, while another man fights it even though he must become a fugitive?”

“What was your interest in NeuroFac?”

“Nothing, at first. But then I heard rumblings. You hear such things when you are ‘underground.’ And since I've sponsored research and hired scientists, I hear a lot of scientific news. I heard whispers about mind control, and I'm sensitive about its potential use for oppression. I borrowed smart probes from a scientist I've supported in the past—the probes have yet to be patented so the inventor is reluctant to distribute them—and hired scientists I felt I could trust.”

“How come you didn't go to Sci-Reg?”

“Would Sci-Reg have listened?”

He had a point. Regulators ignore complaints all the time, especially from people who seem to be pushing an agenda. And Trajan had the additional burden of his reputation.

“You, I felt,” said Trajan, gesturing to me, “were different. A creative person who had already done credible research in this field, despite the guild's rejection of your work. I know about guilds, you see. Guilds, countries, governments. They can be mistaken and unfair.”

Trajan seemed a lot like some of my favorite professors in school, who taught me well but allowed me to draw my own conclusions. They wanted to get me to think for myself.

Sara interrupted us with the results of my blood sample analysis. “Definite evidence of a NeuroFac-like substance,” she said. “It acted synergistically with the radiation to kindle a seizure.”

“You survived for too long,” said Trajan. “Somebody got impatient.”

“I think I know who,” I said.

* * * *

On Saturday I felt better. The good thing about this whole mess was that I dropped some weight. Not quite trim yet but close.

I'd contacted Heath at Sci-Reg, but didn't tell him where I was or what had happened. He told me the electroware complaint had been downgraded. Interesting. The boss no longer seethed when someone mentioned my name, but I remained AWOL, and when I returned I would have some explaining to do. Which I figured I could do, provided I lived long enough.

One thing I couldn't understand: What was the motivation for Bulloch and his group? Why had they gone ballistic over NeuroFac and Trajan's interest in the drug?

We couldn't prove anything against Bulloch yet, so we couldn't convince the police to question him. And Bulloch was no longer missing—he'd left a message with the university to say that he was sick and would work from home for a while. But we knew he wasn't at home—Trajan's men had checked.

Trajan also found Bulloch's behavior mystifying. “I've no idea what set him off,” he said. “I expected retros to feel the same way that I do about mind control. I would have thought they'd welcome this research. Even the splinter group. Perhaps their beliefs are drastically different.”

“But they draw their members from retros, don't they?” I said.

Trajan and I looked at Sara.

“Yes, but only a small number of us belong to this group,” she said defensively. “I can only tell you what I've heard. They're an extremist group. Most of us in the OF believe that society has progressed in the wrong direction, but this group thinks that something must be done about it, whereas the rest of us simply try to maintain our own standards.”

“I still fail to comprehend their aggression,” said Trajan. “I wasn't proposing mind control—just the opposite! And research into NeuroFac, should the drug prove useful in mind control, would be imperative to counteract its potential misuse. We can't allow this to remain a secret. I clearly stated I wanted the results of this project to become public.”

That got me to thinking.

I was pretty sure Derrick was involved. He didn't act like a retro, but that didn't mean he wasn't one. And even if he wasn't, somebody might have paid him on their behalf. Regulator salaries don't buy the finer things in life.

But if Derrick had slipped me the NeuroFac derivative when he visited us at the hotel, why did he ignore Sara? Sara was drug-free—I'd asked her to submit a blood sample for analysis, which she did. And why had they left us alone for a while even though they knew where we were?

Maybe Bulloch and company had stopped worrying about Sara and Trajan. And maybe the reason they had stopped worrying was that they discovered we were pretty far off base. Why do something risky when the enemy was getting colder instead of warmer?

But if so, why had they tried to finish me off?

Perhaps it was just on general principles. As a regulator, I theoretically had more power than Sara to make trouble, should I be so inclined.

Or perhaps there was another reason why I worried them.

When I talked this over with Sara, she suggested it might have something to do with my old thesis. “Calvin seemed impressed, especially after the scans showed that your ideas were on the right track.” She revisited the split-brain idea that she'd brought up before. As she talked—more or less thinking out loud—you could tell that Sara was a clever and innovative scientist, which probably explained why she hadn't settled for a routine position at some research lab.

“Maybe we're dealing with a situation in which consciousness exists in a unique state under NeuroFac,” she hypothesized. “A divided state, where different networks operate independently for a while. Perhaps it's easier to control or influence part of a mind than the whole thing. If you eliminate inhibitions, or separate them so that some networks function without constraints, maybe you can coax a person to do things he or she would ordinarily avoid.”

“Divide and conquer,” I said.

“Something like that.” She gazed at me.

“You're suggesting that someone—me, for instance—could commit an act that he'd never consider doing when all of his networks are active and communicating.”

I suspected that Sara might have been searching for some way to explain away the slap I'd given her. I would have liked to explain it away, too, but I wasn't so sure.

And yet her ideas made sense. I certainly did some inexplicable things while under the influence of radiation kindling and, later, the NeuroFac derivative. I wasn't aware of having any sort of unusual or unnatural feeling, but I made decisions that didn't seem reasonable to me, now or then. To explain them I'd searched for justifications that apparently weren't there. I guess I made up excuses, such as thinking I'd been angry with Sara for withholding information, even though I couldn't have possibly explained why it was important.

“Interesting hypothesis,” I muttered.

“Let's test it,” said Sara. She sounded excited. “I'll bet Jozef can get us some smart probes, and we can adapt the hospital scanners to make the measurements.”

I was skeptical, but Trajan agreed. Even after the initial dosages, some of the NeuroFac derivative remained in my system, and the potentiation of the neutralizer also lingered, so the tests would be useful.

Sara got busy. She was a person who rolled up her sleeves and got to work instead of whining about problems. I realized I'd begun to like her a lot.

By Sunday afternoon we had the materials and a room set up in the hospital's neurology wing. Trajan had a lot of pull with the hospital administrators; I gather he'd donated considerable sums of money—one of his more worthy gestures. I wondered if the hospital knew who he really was.

We conducted a variety of experiments, most of which were some version of the ideas around which I'd built my thesis. I came up with several modifications—it'd been a long time since I'd thought deeply about the nature of consciousness, so I approached the subject from a fresh perspective. We spent a lot of time gathering data on my brain processes as I made decisions and value judgments. Sara presented me with a dilemma or a forced-choice quiz—where I had to select one answer from a list that did not necessarily contain a “correct” or clear-cut response—and she also described emotionally charged or complex court cases in which I presided as judge or jury. Sara concocted some of these questions and cases on her own, and the rest she lifted out of a psychiatry exam book she'd borrowed from one of the staff. By the end of the tests, I was exhausted and irritable.

“Just one more,” said Sara, glancing at the monitor.

“Enough!” I cried.

I got some measure of revenge when I insisted that we use Sara as a control. She reluctantly agreed, since we'd need to compare the data from my brain with data from a brain that hadn't been subjected to drugs or radiation. I grilled her with a similar set of tests.

Then I cobbled together a small network of computers in the imaging room and retrieved some analysis routines from the databases. Sara and I monopolized a corner of the room over the faint protests of one of the interns. We promised to yield our spot in an emergency.

By Sunday night Sara had convinced herself that she could explain the data. By early Monday morning she had convinced me as well.

The radiation kindling and the NeuroFac derivative, singly or in combination, had fragmented my brain. We gazed at the activity of my cerebral cortex. “There, there, and there,” said Sara, highlighting the circuit diagrams with a cursor. “That's at least three. And there's probably more in areas we didn't scan.”

We didn't have the processing software that Sara and Calvin Bulloch had used to study Nolan's brain, but I could tell that Leguer's theory fit the data. All three circuits displayed the intracolumnar feedback that was the hallmark of the theory of consciousness I had adapted from Leguer. What's more, all three circuits showed a certain degree of independence. They had become active while I'd been mulling over the questions and situations Sara presented, but their activities failed to synchronize. We saw no signs of that in Sara's scans. Her data seemed to show a single though widely dispersed network underlying conscious deliberations and judgments, exactly as you would expect for a normal, single mind. My data clearly showed a strange fragmentation into multiple “consciousnesses"—or at least multiple networks, each of which seemed able to support an independent mind.

“But is each of these separate networks functional?” I asked.

“Look,” said Sara. She spotlighted a single circuit and correlated its activity with each of the tests. In some cases, the feedback of this circuit became so pronounced that it spilled over into the surrounding neurons. All of these cases involved decisions or judgments in which I'd been forced to accept some sort of compromise.

“There are an amazing number of minds rattling around in your head right now,” said Sara. “No wonder you did things you couldn't explain.”

* * * *

Monday morning I called the chair of Sci-Reg's neuroscience department. My chat with the boss didn't go as badly as I'd feared.

I summarized what had happened. He asked for a few details I didn't yet want to divulge, but seemed satisfied with what I told him. Although he didn't explicitly say so, he had already begun to believe that the electroware complaint was overplayed. For what purpose he didn't know, but he wasn't amused, and the department had dropped the urgency. “I'll deduct the missed days from your vacation time,” he told me. And after I hinted I might be able to find out who had been behind the spurious complaint, he gave me two free days to investigate.

The pressure continued to wind down. Bulloch and his friends seem to have decided we offered little if any threat. I wondered if that meant I was safe. Or did I still have a target painted on my back?

“I'm wondering if you should stay here,” Sara said, as we sat in my hospital room.

“I've got to come up for air at some point.”

“But not until we know if the coast is clear. Give Trajan time to find out.”

“I don't know,” I said, shaking my head. It didn't make much sense. “Did we figure out the big secret? If so, we could publish it and be done with it—that's what I think Bulloch was worried about. He didn't want this thing to get out into the public. Once it's out, we don't matter anymore. But what's the big deal about what we discovered?”

“Maybe we don't know the whole story. Maybe there's some way to influence a person who's on NeuroFac. What if you could appeal to only one of the consciousnesses, and it could somehow take control of the person's behavior?”

Embedded in her assumption was that the consciousnesses had varying perspectives.

I still didn't think too much of the evil twin theory, and I never put much faith in similar ideas, such as the right brain/left brain dichotomies that periodically emerged and re-emerged in neuroscience. The left hemisphere is for logic, the right for creativity—or so the idea went. But there had never been convincing evidence that simple categories or personality characteristics were the sole province of one or the other hemisphere. The brain is more complex than that.

But Sara's multiple consciousness hypothesis explained my recent behavior better than anything else. At no point did I ever feel any differently, but I certainly did things and thought things that seemed to come from nowhere—as if I hadn't been in control, as if someone else had been pulling the strings. I'd always been a skeptic of the psychiatric disorder known as multiple personality, and I continued to doubt it; people who supposedly exhibited several entirely different personalities—and even talked in different voices—seemed fake to me. Yet perhaps there was something to it, something deeper than middle-aged men talking in falsettos and claiming to be six-year-old girls.

I'd made decisions recently that hadn't been my own. I'd never hit anybody before—not unless you counted my four-year-old cousin who once tried to abscond with my ice cream cone, and that was when I was five. Somebody slapped Sara, but it wasn't me.

And then I got an idea.

When Sara came back into my room, I said, “You tested some controls in the earlier experiments with Nolan? Subjects that didn't receive NeuroFac?”

She nodded.

“Can you retrieve the data easily?”

“Yes,” said Sara, “now that Jozef has made it available. But why?”

“I want to pass along that data as well as the scans we took of you yesterday. I'm going to send the data to Heath, a friend of mine at Sci-Reg.”

“What do you think he'll find that we missed?”

“Heath's a neural statistician. He's good at finding patterns or signals that have been buried in noisy data.

“But . . .” Sara looked thoughtful. “Calvin is a neural statistician.”

“Precisely.”

“And you think—”

“I think that all along we've been lifting our leg to the wrong fire hydrant. When Bulloch and his clique realized we were focusing on NeuroFac, they relaxed.”

“But it was NeuroFac that worried Trajan—that's why he sponsored the research project in the first place. Are you suggesting that Calvin found something in the data from the smart probes? Something that nobody knew about?”

I nodded. “Something that scared the hell out of him and his ultra-retro friends.”

* * * *

After spending the remainder of Monday pacing my room like a caged animal, I heard back from Heath Tuesday morning. I'd been deliberately vague in my instructions, except for announcing an emergency to which he should devote every second of his time. Although I hadn't told him what to look for, he'd found exactly what I thought he would.

I told him to proceed directly into the custody of Sci-Reg's security operations. At first he objected, but conceded once I reminded him of the length to which certain people had gone to squash this project.

All that remained was to publish the results. Sara began writing up the paper and insisted my name should appear as an author. “You've made it as a scientist,” she said. “This will get you into the guild.”

I told Trajan, and he offered his congratulations. “So I may have been worried for nothing about NeuroFac. But something interesting came out of the project, and I'm glad. That's the way science works, I guess. You never know what to expect.”

“And what about Calvin Bulloch?” I asked.

Trajan shrugged. “I'm not worried about myself—as Mr. Bulloch has already discovered, I have plenty of associates, and I'm not an easy man to catch or intimidate. But will he continue to threaten you, and perhaps also your colleagues? That I don't know. But I don't think he will. The horse has fled the barn, as they say, and there's no longer any reason to worry about the door. Why would he harm you at this point? Nonetheless, it's possible. And I blame myself for putting you and Ms. Mordova in harm's way. I'll keep an eye open for anything suspicious. I'm well connected in that regard, you know!”

But before we submitted the paper, I had one last thing to do.

I left the hospital Tuesday afternoon and canalled to Sci-Reg. A couple of people nonchalantly followed me, but I wasn't worried. They worked for Trajan.

Everybody looked surprised to see me and asked a ton of questions. I brushed them off, promising a full story later. But I took Derrick aside. We went into his office for a chat.

“I know what you did,” I said.

He stared at me coolly. “And what is it that I'm supposed to have done?”

“Don't worry because I can't prove anything. I can't prove anything against Calvin Bulloch either, so he also needn't worry. But I want to talk to him.” I told him what Heath had found. I told him Sara had almost finished writing the paper for publication. And I told him one more thing.

“I want to talk to Bulloch before we publish the findings.”

“Why would—”

“Yeah, I know, you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about. Fine, Derrick. But I'd appreciate it if you would spread the word.”

“And why would this Bulloch fellow, whoever he is, want to talk to you?”

“Because he doesn't want me to publish the paper. And he has a chance of convincing me not to do it.”

* * * *

“Have you lost your mind?” asked Trajan. “This man is dangerous!”

I'd heard from Bulloch late Tuesday night. He rang my comm, and we engaged in a frivolous discussion for a few minutes, then he requested a meeting. “We need to talk most urgently,” he'd said.

I agreed. But Trajan didn't like it when I told him.

“I think I set it up right,” I said. “Sci-Reg has access to a police facility for interrogating suspects. Bulloch and I won't meet face-to-face but through a transparent, nanotube-laced glass that can stop a charging rhino. And since the building is heavily guarded I don't think his hired help can infiltrate it. He agreed to meet me there and to come alone.”

“Are you forgetting that you have to get to and from this building?”

“I've got to take that chance. I think he only wants to talk.”

Trajan gave me a disbelieving look. Although he didn't say anything, I knew he'd have me followed and protected as best he could.

Maybe it was a chance I shouldn't take. But in addition to being a bad guy, Calvin Bulloch was a smart, gifted scientist. And maybe he wasn't such a bad guy—maybe he thought he had an awfully good reason for suppressing what Sara and I were getting ready to publish.

Heath's statistical analysis revealed that the multiplicity of consciousness networks appeared in everybody we had tested thus far, not just NeuroFac users. You couldn't see the signals just by looking at the scans because other activity swamped the disconnected patterns. But when you used subtraction procedures to reduce unrelated neural activity, the same pattern displayed by NeuroFac users showed up in everybody else as well. NeuroFac didn't create this pattern, it merely amplified it. Bulloch must have seen the same thing, but he didn't tell anybody. Instead he took violent measures to scuttle the project. He probably wanted badly to block my initial meeting with Trajan, but Trajan had been too strong and well connected for Bulloch to tackle on such short notice. Fortunately for us, Bulloch's clique evidently had limitations, though they could pull plenty of strings, including some at Sci-Reg.

So what did it mean that multiple networks underlie conscious neural processes? You could interpret the data in any number of ways. Perhaps, as Sara suggested, it made people vulnerable to knowledgeable manipulators. Maybe it meant that our perception that we're a single person, with a single mind, was wrong. Although it sounded bizarre, it could be that our brains are composed of multiple “consciousnesses” that the brain wraps tightly into a single package. If so, our perception of our minds as a single entity is an illusion. But neuroscientists have shown time and again that the brain fools us in many ways.

Perhaps this hypothesis could explain something like intuition. Ever put a problem on the backburner, and the solution suddenly pops into your mind when you least expect it? It happened often enough to me. Perhaps the answer comes from an entirely different part of the mind, one that has a different perspective and a different interpretation of the sensory data that all of these “consciousnesses” share. Perhaps you could even call it a different “mind.”

If true, this discovery might trouble a lot of people, particularly those with traditional viewpoints.

* * * *

I left for the meeting an hour early and arrived safely. But Bulloch must have been watching because he showed up right after I did. We settled into our chairs on different sides of the transparent partition and stared at each other for a moment.

“I don't expect you to believe me,” I began, “but I've disabled all recording devices. I don't want any barriers to a free and open discussion.”

Bulloch tapped on the glass. “Other than this?”

“It's no barrier to a conversation, it's only for my protection. You'll admit that—” I stopped before Bulloch could get the idea I was trying to get him to incriminate himself.

He smiled. It was a sad kind of smile, like a man resigned to an unenviable fate. That should have warned me, I suppose, and maybe it did—in a certain part of my brain—but I wasn't aware of it at the time.

I explained what Sara, Heath, and I had found. “Tell me why we shouldn't publish it.”

“A fascinating discovery,” said Bulloch, leaning back and putting his right leg over his left. It looked like he'd gone into professor mode.

“The brain has all kinds of disparate facilities,” he said. “Consider perception, for example. Let's say you see a brown dog running across the street. Light reflecting from this object impinges upon your retina, invoking neural activity that goes from the eye to the cerebral cortex, which processes the information. There are separate information processing networks for each of the attributes of this object. One network analyzes color, and you see brown. Another entirely distinct network extracts shape information from the visual input, and you see a dog. Another network detects motion. All of this processing happens in widely separated areas, but you see one unified object, don't you? You don't see the dog as distinct from its color or vice versa. You're not aware of motion separate from the object moving. Yet these attributes get processed in different networks that exist in entirely separated parts of the cortex which are precisely constructed to extract specific information. An efficient delegation of duties, like an assembly line in a factory. And these networks don't all project to a single center or central ‘command post.’ The networks and their outputs aren't connected.”

“Neuroscientists have known about this for years.” I paused, trying to gauge the relevance of Bulloch's remarks. “You're suggesting that the same thing may hold true for these disconnected ‘consciousness’ networks that NeuroFac amplifies?”

Bulloch nodded. “Multiple consciousnesses. Our notions of a single mind, a unified thinking consciousness—what we refer to as ‘I’ when we say ‘I think'—is a myth.”

“May be a myth.”

“The data fits your elaboration of Leguer's theory perfectly. I see no alternative. Each one is a mind, undoubtedly with its own unique perspective.” He smiled another sad smile. “The old editorial ‘we’ is proper for more reasons than anybody could have ever imagined.”

“But I don't understand how it could work. Presumably only one of these networks has control over behavioral output at any given time. They can't all talk at once, or all move the same set of muscles to do whatever they want to do. How do they share resources?”

“Good question. There's still a lot we don't know about how the brain works. We also still don't know how visual perception unifies the separate attributes of color, shape, and motion either.”

“I don't . . .” I paused. I still hadn't asked the most important question. “Supposing, for the sake of argument, that you're right. Why would you—I mean, why would anyone be afraid of this theory? So afraid that they would go to great lengths to suppress the data?”

Bulloch uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “What do you know about determinism, young man?”

“You mean the philosophy? Or—”

“I mean the idea that we're just machines. Automatons with no free will.”

I shrugged. “I haven't thought very much about it.”

“What if a scientific discovery proved it? What would be the implications?”

“You mean to society? I don't know. Maybe none. Society has absorbed a lot of discoveries in the past that were surprising. Earth isn't the center of the Universe. Species evolve, including humans. And biological determinism hasn't made much of an impact either. Genetic determinism, I mean. Genes strongly influence most traits, but only to a certain extent. Nobody's run screaming into the night because of genetic discoveries.”

“A few people have,” said Bulloch. He waved his hand angrily. “But those discoveries didn't attack our way of life, they merely changed certain viewpoints. And genes aren't deterministic except for simple traits. You have such and such an enzyme because of your genes. For complex traits and behaviors—the ones we really care about—genes only account for tendencies. There's still room for responsibility and free will.”

“Responsibility?”

“What if someone proves that when a certain neuron in one of these networks fires, 99.9% of people commit such and such crime? How can you convict and punish somebody when he has no free will? He didn't make the choice—it was made for him, by this or that ‘consciousness.’ And that's the end of our justice system. Our justice system, which we adopted from the Romans, is based on responsibility—you're held responsible for your own actions. What if that's not true? What happens when this concept of ‘I’ disappears?”

“But I don't see the problem. If you make a bad decision, you've got nobody else to blame. Maybe it was this neuron or that neuron, but it was still your neuron.”

Then I remembered the slap I'd given Sara. And how easily I laid the blame on my altered state of mind. Sara had been eager to do the same thing on my behalf.

“The devil made me do it,” said Bulloch. “Remember that expression? Well, what if the devil is in your own head? One of these alternative consciousnesses . . . the evil within us . . .” Bulloch compressed his lips.

I waited for him to go on, but he stared silently at the floor.

“You can't suppress this idea,” I said, “even if Sara and I kept silent. Once researchers start getting their hands on smart probes, somebody else is going to make the discovery one day or another.”

“I know. You're right, of course. I knew it all along. The only thing I could have done is bought time.” His eyes unfocused, as if he was looking at something in the distance. “Like the Romans. Controlled the whole Mediterranean region with efficiency and precision. Lasted centuries. Must have known what they were doing back then. Until change hit them, caught up with them. Always happens, sooner or later, to every great civilization. Time is precious. . . .” Then his eyes closed and his chin dropped to his chest.

It took a moment for me to realize he was no longer breathing.

* * * *

“How did he commit suicide?” asked Sara.

“Ion channel blocker,” I said. I'd just returned to my apartment and turned on the fans to circulate the musty air. It'd been about a week since I'd left for work and wound up in that bizarre conference with Trajan. After I'd returned from the meeting with Bulloch, Sara showed up an hour later. “He had it ready to use. All he had to do was flex his wrist, and a needle injected the drug into a vein. High-affinity stuff. It killed him in a minute.”

“Was he crazy?”

“Maybe. But I don't think so.”

“He seemed okay in the short time I worked with him, but you never know.” Sara paused. “But why did he kill himself? And why at Sci-Reg?”

“I don't know. Cops have checked his office and home, but he didn't leave a note or anything. Maybe he just gave up after he realized he couldn't change my mind. He might not have wanted to live in a world in which he believed his worst nightmare had come true.” I shrugged. “Or he could have been remorseful. He didn't seem like such a bad guy to me, yet he'd done some very bad things. Perhaps he decided to take responsibility for his actions.”

Remorse was something that I knew Derrick wouldn't feel. What would I do about Derrick? What could I do? He would probably keep pretending nothing had happened, but it would be difficult for me to walk by his door without spitting into his office.

But I also hadn't worked out how I felt about my own shortcomings. I had plenty of remorse for hitting Sara. I also had an excuse—but I didn't think it was a good one. The overstimulation of my brain coming from the radiation and the NeuroFac derivative didn't force me to do anything I didn't want to. Buried within my mind—minds?—lay some ugly impulses, probably from years of pent-up anger and frustration. I would have to deal with that—or hide behind excuses.

Sara held out a digital signboard and a stylus. “Our article is finished. Once you look it over and we talk about any changes you want to make, I'll need your signature for the submissions committee.”

I waved it off. “Thanks, but I'll pass. I'm sure it's a good article, and you can publish it as is. But without my name on it.”

She stared. “I don't understand—”

“It's not that I don't want to publish it. But if my name is listed as an author, I'll have to quit Sci-Reg. Regulators can't participate in the field of science they regulate. Conflict of interest.”

“You don't want to join the guild?”

“No, I guess not.”

“You've still got a grudge? That's taking it too far, don't you think?”

“It had already gone on too far and too long,” I admitted. “I think it may have biased my judgments, and I should have never let that happen. But that's not why I don't want to join the guild. The way I figure it, regulators are going to become even more important than scientists in the coming years. I could make a more lasting contribution staying where I am now.”

“You're worried that Bulloch might have been right?”

“I suppose it's all in how you want to interpret the science—and your philosophy of how science should be applied to society. Even if Bulloch's interpretation of the data is correct, I doubt it'll mean the end of our justice system. On the other hand, it could profoundly affect the way we judge human behavior, so it's not impossible either. And since there are so many potential ramifications, it's crucial to get the science right.”

Sara put away the signboard and stylus. “I'll feature your name prominently in the acknowledgments section.”

“Thanks.”

There was one last thing I wanted to say. “I don't suppose you'd like to become one of my prospects,” I asked.

She gave me a pretty smile and shook her head.

“I didn't think so,” I said.

“Would you like to drop your other girlfriends and start dating me?”

“That's inefficient.”

“I guess it is.”

“And it's inconsistent with my perspective.”

“I suppose you're right.”

I sighed. “Oh, well. E pluribus unum.”

“What?”

“It's Latin.”

“I know it's Latin for ‘one out of many,’ but—you mean you're willing to give it a try?”

“Why not?” I wasn't sure it would work, and eventually she would have to make some compromises too. If she refused, we wouldn't stick together very long.

I held Sara close. Ever since I'd seen her picture I'd gotten the feeling that this was the person for me. Strange, to put so much faith in a feeling you can't explain.

It made me wonder which mind I was using. But for the moment, I decided to go where it took me.

Copyright © 2011 Kyle Kirkland

[Back to Table of Contents]

Serial: ENERGIZED: PART II OF IV
by Edward M. Lerner

* * * *

Art By Vincent DiFate

* * * *

Unexpected circumstances offer unexpected opportunities—but people can have very different ideas about what kind of opportunities.

Part I synopsis

Earth's newly captured second moon—a dangerously aimed rock-and-ice mass that had come hurtling out of the Asteroid Belt—is a treacherous rubble pile. Robots surveying Phoebe's surface regularly get stuck. When that happens, astronauts must find and free the trapped bot.

THADDEUS Stankiewicz, intent on a clandestine project in the Phoebe Base machine shop, is startled by fellow explorer GABE CAMPBELL. Once again a bot needs rescue, and the two men are on call. Thad hurriedly sweeps up his mess of pipes, metal rods, and wire coils, and the men suit up. As they cross Phoebe on their way to the trapped bot, Gabe shows too much interest in what Thad had been making. Thad kills Gabe and makes the death appear to be suicide.

Three years pass. . . .

The year is 2023, and the Great Stagflation grips the world. Nine years earlier, a geopolitical miscalculation had sufficed to taint several Middle Eastern oil fields with radioactivity and plunge the region into chaos. The oil that remains usable is more prized than ever. But the Crudetastrophe had not touched Russia's vast oil and gas reserves. Russia emerged from the crisis as a petro-superpower, controlling unprecedented wealth, snapping up American treasury bonds at fire-sale prices, and vying for global economic hegemony.

Solar power satellites beaming energy (as microwaves) to the ground offer America its last best chance to avoid servitude and economic ruin. And so, NASA's interest in Phoebe is less scientific than practical: Phoebe is a vast reservoir of oxygen, water, and raw materials already in orbit. As though constructing miles-across structures in space isn't a sufficient challenge, special interests—everyone from technophobes to eco-extremists to radio astronomers—want to stop the project. The “Reset” movement opposes new energy infrastructure, however eco-friendly, as only repeating past environmental insults.

NASA contractor MARCUS JUDSON supports the Powersat One (PS-1) demonstration project. He finds it harder and harder not to despair at opposition he finds so misguided. His cynicism takes a hit when ELLEN TANAKA (program manager for PS-1 and Marcus's boss) sends him to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The astronomers make a strong case that microwave transmitters on PS-1 (and the many powersats perhaps to follow) can disrupt their research.

Marcus starts dating radio astronomer VALERIE CLAYBURN. They live hours apart and end up seeing more of one another online—often remotely controlling rental bots in a tourist preserve on Phoebe—than in person. On one visit, Marcus meets Valerie's friend and coworker PATRICK BURKHALTER, disgraced former principal investigator of the Jules Verne asteroid probe. Patrick trains visiting astronomers to use the observatory's telescopes, and his coworkers are certain he uses class exercises as a way to hunt for the lost-in-space probe. Patrick claims interest in SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), but everyone presumes the high-powered transmitter he has built for retrofitting into the Green Bank telescope is just in case—against all odds—he ever does locate the missing probe.

Venture capitalist DILLON RUSSO backs innovative alternate-energy start-ups—to subtly sabotage them. Among his investments is Jorgenson Power Systems, which operates a prototype OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion) power plant on an idle oil platform in the Santa Barbara Channel. Besides gullible investors cowed by his reputation, Dillon counts among his backers a Russian diplomat.

The State Department knows Yakov Nikolayevich Brodsky as the Deputy Trade Representative. (His longtime assistant, Irina Ivanovna Chesnokova, is an expert programmer. Irina was born deaf and has cochlear implants.) But trade rep is only diplomatic cover for Yakov's true role: spy and agent provocateur for the Federal Security Service.

* * * *

CONVERGENCE (2023)

Monday, July 31

The blasts of cold air began as soon as the mantrap door swooshed shut. Gusts tousled Marcus's hair and tickled his sock feet, and he shivered in a sudden draft as the isolation-booth air-return vent sucked up whatever molecular detritus the randomized puffs had dislodged. Chemical sensors sniffed for explosives. Magnetometers scanned for metal. Somewhere in Dulles International, he presumed, a TSA agent studied his full-body scan.

Short of administering colonoscopies, TSA could not be any more obtrusive.

A speaker crackled. “You may now leave the security station and reclaim your belongings. Have a safe flight.” The door in front of him slid open.

As Marcus reclaimed his shoes and pocket gear, Ellen stomped—as best she could in stocking feet—to the carry-on inspection area. The security-booth air gusts had left her hair in disarray. A TSA screener had upended her purse into a tray and was sifting through the contents. She muttered, “Ah, the joys of modern air travel.”

“Tell me about it.” Marcus opened and reclosed his datasheet, which inspection had left more crumpled than folded. “At least we have time for coffee before heading to the gate.”

“There's that.” She raked her fingers through her hair, slipped on her shoes, and repacked her purse. “I know I feel safer.”

On cue, the airport PA system reminded them that the terror alert status had been raised to red. The week before, passengers on a Boeing 787 inbound from Dakar to Atlanta had subdued terrorists assembling a bomb in flight.

What color would TSA proclaim after the next incident? Infrared? Microwave?

The terrorists (the Jihadi Alliance? The abortive attack had all the earmarks of their work, but no one was saying) had yet to admit how they had smuggled explosives aboard. Marcus guessed they had only to say they had carried the explosives internally to reduce air travel to utter chaos.

Infrared. That was when the colonoscopies would begin.

Cups of coffee in hand, he and Ellen rode the airport train to their gate. Marcus said, “Tell me again why everyone doesn't just network into this meeting? The off-worlders will link in whatever the rest of us do.”

“It's too important. Sometimes you just have to be face to face.”

“Then why don't they come to us?”

“I run an energy program,” she said. “How would it look if I insisted lots of them travel so you and I didn't have to?”

“But bosses have prerogatives.”

“I do.” She grinned. “That's why you're getting on the plane with me.”

As they exited the train and once again as they walked along the concourse, the PA reminded them of the alert level. And that unattended packages would be incinerated. Together with their owners, once identified. At least Marcus chose to interpret the distorted announcement to be saying that.

There was a blinding flash over the tarmac. Thunder, loud and rolling, rattled the concourse a second later. Marcus said, “We're not getting out of here anytime soon.”

“I guess not.” Ellen slowed to read an airport monitor, on which delay was suddenly very popular. “It's official. Our flight will be late.”

He offered his best long-suffering expression.

“Seriously, this is an important review. Just between us, I wanted to hold it in California. Lots more opportunity that way to interact with the techies.”

Without Phil Majeski stage-managing every conversation, she meant.

The Test Readiness Review was a big deal. If all went well, Kendricks Aerospace would get the go-ahead for preliminary operation of PS-1. Test beams sent to ground stations, starting at trivial power levels and stepping up. Device failures simulated to test autonomous repair by the onboard robots. Short-range maneuvering, exercising thrusters and the onboard navigation software. By year's end, barring some unpleasant surprise, PS-1 would begin its long boost to geosynchronous orbit.

In his mind's eye, Marcus pictured it: on station, motionless in the sky, streaming power on demand to converted solar farms across the country. The ultimate proof of concept, after which many more powersats could be built. The first step to energy independence . . .

“Fair enough,” Marcus said. “I admit it. Some things are worth a bit of travel.”

Ellen flashed an enigmatic grin. “I'm glad you think so.”

* * * *

“The worst flight ever," Marcus groused. “Storm delay. Air-traffic delay at the far end. In between, mewling and puking babies. Crammed in like cattle.”

Valerie let him vent, relieved he had called. “Did you get any dinner?” she finally asked. Body time, it was after ten p.m. for him.

“Ellen's talking to her husband, and then she and I plan to head out. Tex-Mex, maybe. Anyway, I wanted to say ‘Hi’ first.”

To let her know that his plane had not blown up. Terrorist bombs, even failed plots, struck way too close to home. And Marcus still had to fly home. “Go, eat. You must be starving, and I know you have several big days ahead of you.”

“I am, and I do.”

“Think you'll have time to talk after you eat?”

He grimaced. “Sorry. The jerk contractor uploaded drafts of several briefings while we were in the air. I should check them out.”

“Understood. Maybe tomorrow night.”

“Maybe,” he said dubiously. “Good night, hon.”

“Good night.” Reluctantly, she broke the connection.

Their bots on Phoebe got to spend more time together than they did.

* * * *

Wednesday, predawn, August 2

Dillon slunk along corridors and down stairways, feeling heroic and a touch theatrical. At two in the morning, he was apt to be the only person awake on the oil platform become OTEC pilot plant. R & D types did not work nights.

He certainly hoped he was the only one awake.

Stepping off the bottom deck onto one of the massive pillars that supported the structure, Dillon's mood crashed from self-conscious to terrified. A fall from the ladder to the ocean far below could kill him.

When Yakov had proposed this—mission?—it had seemed daring. Exciting. A stimulating change from Dillon's usual subtle, long-term sabotage. He remembered feeling flattered by the suggestion that he might be a man of action. He remembered how good it had felt to figure out how to sneak men onto the platform, how proud he had been of Yakov's praise.

But they had had those discussions by light of day, on solid land. Could he actually do something so bold?

Now, his heart pounding, Dillon wondered if he had been crazy to agree.

Or if maybe he had lost his mind long ago. . . .

* * * *

Years ago, after a really bad fight with Crystal, he had had to get away. It had been two weeks on a Harley, biking all over the Southwest, with only nature and his own thoughts for company. On good days, not even his thoughts had intruded. He had picked the Southwest for no deeper reason than that he had never experienced it. Flown over it, of course. Flown in and out of Phoenix and Albuquerque on business, ditto. But never explored the countryside.

At first he saw only wasteland, but after a few days a curious thing happened. He started really looking—

And found wonders. Here, yucca plants peeking above the dunes, their roots hidden deep below. There, stunted but stubborn, clusters of oak and juniper. All around, stretches of piaon pine, sagebrush, and chaparral.

When he got off the bike, he found animal trails. Oddest were the delicate footprints with two toes pointing forward and two back. Roadrunner footprints, he learned, when he retrieved the datasheet from his saddlebag. And there were insects and animals, too, from tarantulas to armadillos to pronghorn antelopes. Everywhere he found a rich tapestry of life—

Except around towns.

Sodded yards, to his newly heightened sensitivities, were an abomination. So were the little yapping dogs, the thirsty ornamental trees, the swimming pools. And the big waterworks projects that made the other desecrations possible.

Camping one night in the desert, the gypsum sand ghostly pale by moonlight, the stars brilliant overhead, he had had an awakening. A revelation. An epiphany. If Gaia was a true deity, not just the embodiment of nature, then a religious experience.

And anyway, who was he to say who Gaia was or was not?

He had learned young how quickly a fool and his money were parted, and even earlier how many people, his parents included, could never manage to get any money in the first place. But from generalized contempt, he had awakened into a heightened realization.

Humanity was a plague on the planet, screwing up all that truly mattered.

He had returned from his road trip-become- retreat a changed man. He apologized profusely to Crystal. They had not fought about her inability to have children, not exactly—but the tension because of it had strained the marriage almost to breaking. Now, he rejoiced. The last thing the world needed was more people.

But more—much more!—must be done. Only what? What could one man do?

Then, out of nowhere: the Crudetastrophe.

Finally, Dillon saw the way. Energy drove everything. Cut off energy supplies, and you starved the beast.

He would find ways to starve the beast too.

* * * *

Dillon shivered, chilled by the wind and spray. Back pressed against the immense post, hands clenching a railing, he felt that the wind could carry him off the catwalk at any moment. Twenty feet below, glimmering in the moonlight, the waters of the channel foamed and surged.

Subtle sabotage sounded better with each passing minute.

From the sea: a brief double flash, a pause, then a triple flash. A small boat, its engine muffled, emerged from the darkness.

Dillon released the brake that secured the gangplank cables. He cringed at the whine of the winch and, moments later, the thud of the gangplank against the floating dock, although he doubted either sound could be heard on the platform far above.

Three figures dressed in black and wearing black ski masks bounded up the ramp to his catwalk. Two wore tool belts; the third carried a clanking satchel. “Thanks, boss,” the man in the lead said. “We'll take it from here.”

Lower the gangplank. After the unannounced visitors did their work and sailed off, raise the ramp again. The three men would be in and out within the hour, and no one would ever know they had been here. Just as no one would know Dillon's role.

Only that another upstart energy technology would have gotten a black eye.

Tomorrow or the next day, when things went awry, Dillon would be as incensed as anyone. No, more incensed. And disappointed. And shamed. And compelled to pull the plug.

As for why direct action was so important at this particular time to Yakov? That, Dillon did not get.

* * * *

Eve Moynihan sat in her bunk, flashlight in hand, sheet pulled over her head, reading a graphic novel on her datasheet. It was hot and stuffy under the covers, but Grandpa got up, like, a zillion times a night to go to the head. If he saw light under her door, he would tell her to go to sleep. That would not do: If she could sleep, she wouldn't be reading.

Thinking about the heat only made it worse. She clicked off the flashlight and threw off the sheet. It was still hot and stuffy. She was dripping with sweat.

As a nightshirt she was wearing one of Dad's old T-shirts. She peeled the damp fabric away from her skin.

Waves gently lapped against the side of the boat. Waves meant wind, didn't they? Maybe she could cool off on deck.

Or not. She was not much of a swimmer, and Grandpa insisted she wear a lifevest whenever she was topside. Nervy, really, because he was not much of a swimmer either. Mom, who swam like a fish, was a pretty good authority on the subject.

“I won't be falling off a boat,” Grandpa had rebutted when Eve brought up the double standard. “On my boat, you follow my rules.” Then he had ruffled her hair, like she was five years old or something, and added, “Captain's orders. You have to obey the captain.”

So I won't fall of the boat, she thought. It was too hot to wear a lifevest.

As hot as Eve felt, the doorknob was hotter still. Odd. With a hand wrapped in a hem of the T-shirt, she pulled the door closed behind her. In their cabin, Grandma and Grandpa were both snoring.

Up on deck, air was moving. The wind helped evaporate her sweat and she felt cooler—for a few seconds. Then she was worse than ever. She even felt hot inside, if that made any sense.

By the second, she felt hotter, and hotter, and hotter.

She was sweltering, roasting, burning up. The deck seared her feet. It was suddenly more than she could bear and she screamed.

Cool and wet, the ocean beckoned. With a wail of despair, dashing for the side of the boat, she grabbed for a lifevest. The metal buckle burnt her hand, and reflexively she let go—

As her momentum carried her over the side.

Cold water jolted her to her senses. The current was carrying her away from the boat. “Grandma! Grandpa!” she shouted. As she treaded water, screaming, a wave surged over her and saltwater ran down her throat.

Somehow, coughing and choking, she stayed afloat. “Grandpa!”

Her head was so hot! Only when a wave broke over her, or she dunked her head, did she get a moment of relief.

There! People on deck. Grandma and Grandpa. They were screaming too.

“Grandpa!”

He threw her a line. It fell far short. Another wave washed over her, and when she came up this time, he was fumbling with a lifevest. He screamed even louder trying to buckle it.

She went under again.

Fighting back to the surface she saw Grandpa leap from the boat. The unfastened vest flapped as he fell.

Her head was so hot. She couldn't think straight.

Another wave washed over her. . . .

* * * *

Wednesday morning, August 2

A day into the meeting, Marcus decided, the PS-1 test readiness review would put any three-ring circus to shame.

It was not that more than one presentation, demonstration, or closed circuit 3-V inspection went on at a time. Ellen and Phil, seated side by side at the front of the Kendricks Aerospace corporate auditorium, in ongoing whispered consultation, kept the TRR on subject. But there was no way to avoid the multitude of viewpoints, offered by everyone from power-grid operators to aerospace engineers to radiation-health specialists from NIH and EPA.

As NASA's program manager, Ellen got the final word whether to proceed with on-orbit testing. But until the review board, the menagerie of outside experts assembled by the National Science Foundation, decreed PS-1 was ready—and safe—go-ahead was simply infeasible.

With almost three days of the review left to go, the notes file on Marcus's datasheet already seemed impossibly long. Still, he was exhilarated. Nothing major had come up. More than a meeting, this was a milestone. At the next coffee break, he had to give Phil Majeski full credit. No matter that Phil would take the compliment as sarcasm.

And then, during a presentation on RF noise simulations, an earnest-looking young man came scurrying up the auditorium's center aisle to whisper into Phil Majeski's ear. Phil's expression flashed from irked at the interruption to . . . what? Marcus could not decide. Nothing good.

Phil leaned over to whisper to Ellen, who nodded. “Keep going, Brad,” Phil said when the engineer behind the podium trailed off. Phil and Ellen strode to one of the side rooms off the main auditorium.

What the hell? With Ellen doing—whatever—Marcus struggled to concentrate on the briefing. Kendricks engineers had come up with a way to detect and disable out-of-spec transmitters. Autonomous maintenance robots would be stationed all around the powersat anyway. With a software tweak and a minor electronics upgrade, the bots would triangulate the position of any malfunctioning transmitter and report it to the beam-control supervisory program. The program would take the failed unit offline, tweaking control parameters from nearby transmitters to compensate. Cheap, clever, and elegant.

If multiple transmitters went out of tolerance at the same time, to the point where triangulation failed, the supervisory software would shut off the beam. Transmitters would then be switched on and off in small groups and varying patterns until the individual failures could be isolated.

Pleased as Marcus was, and as pleased as he imagined Val would be, it was hard to maintain focus while wondering what kept Phil and Ellen away.

Then a real-time window flashed in his datasheet, with an IM from Ellen. Join us.

Bethany Taylor, folding her own datasheet, stood seconds after Marcus did. Summoned too? They met outside the little side room.

“Do you know?” he mouthed.

Bethany shook her head.

The engineering presentation faded into an inarticulate murmur as Marcus closed the door. A vid, its audio turned low, hung over a datasheet that lay draped across the table. The Reuters icon glimmered in a corner. Major news, then. Behind the talking head, Marcus saw a rockbound coast and boats bobbing in a light chop.

What could this have to do with PS-1? Somehow it must, to pull Ellen and Phil away from such an important program review.

“Replay bulletin,” Phil said.

“This is Theresa Wallace, in the Santa Barbara Channel.” The camera panned away from the reporter to survey the backdrop. “We are anchored near Santa Cruz Island, off the southern California coast. You don't see buildings, or roads, or any of the accoutrements of civilization. That's because Santa Cruz, like all the islands of the Channel Islands National Park, has been set aside to preserve irreplaceable natural and cultural resources. Only a few tourists and researchers visit this remote park each year, and the official population of Santa Cruz Island is only two.”

Back to a close-up on Wallace: “And yet, incredibly, high-tech tragedy has struck here.

“Ralph and Mary Moynihan planned to show their granddaughter a bit of nature. They anchored offshore late yesterday afternoon.” The viewpoint shifted, zooming in on one of the boats, its paint scorched. “And then, apparently as they slept, the Moynihan family was cooked."

Cut to a trembling woman in her sixties, her face red and severely blistered. Beside her, the inset image of a girl, perhaps eight or nine years old. “Eve's screaming jolted me awake.” Her voice cracked. The crawl declared two brutally slain. “Then I was scr-screaming, and so was Ralph. The pain was unbearable, like I was on fire and—”

“Stop playback.” Ellen shivered. “I can't watch that again. I'm sure you get the idea, and you'll have no problem finding coverage if you want to see more.”

With a tap on the datasheet Phil banished the frozen image. “Once was plenty for me, too.”

“Cooked,” Bethany said. “Microwaves?”

“Uh-huh,” Phil said.

Marcus felt ill. “I remember reading something about beamed microwaves for nonlethal crowd control. The Army tried it in Iraq, I think, years ago, with truck-mounted transmitters. The microwaves induced painful heating in the skin, chasing people away before any permanent damage could occur.” And the parboiled-looking woman on that report? And two—husband and granddaughter?—dead? That seemed permanent. “That was the theory, anyway.”

Phil shook his head. “Not the Army. It comes out later in the report that some alternate-energy project in the Santa Barbara Channel was beaming power. Only a few megawatts, but short range. I'd wondered at first if extremists had hacked into the software that aimed the beam, but apparently not. The best guess is that vibrations on the platform loosened mounting bolts on the transmitting antenna.”

Marcus had been wondering about Resetters, too, but carelessness was no more acceptable as an explanation.

“A horrible tragedy.” Bethany shuddered. “This will sound terrible, but I'd bet we're all thinking it. The Resetters will pound us with this accident. If a few megawatts did this, they'll ask, what harm might PS-1 do with a gigawatt?”

Marcus had been thinking that, and Bethany's admission made him feel just a bit less callous. “And not only Resetter groups. The oil cartel will be all over this too.”

“Agreed on all counts.” Phil sighed. “Nor will it be long until someone at our review finds out, whether surfing or getting a call. We need to think about how to break the news—”

The sudden clamor in the auditorium suggested they were already too late.

* * * *

Wednesday evening, August 2

“Sushi?” Marcus said. “Sure.”

He did not care for sushi—the Japanese word for bait?—but he liked even less the idea of eating dinner alone. Ellen had an urgent conference call to take that evening with the NASA administrator. Marcus figured he could guess the topic.

“Excellent,” Savannah Morgan said. “A girlfriend told me about a great sushi place nearby. Follow me, gentlemen.”

Marcus had met her and Carlos Ortiz the first day of the review, at which both were observers. She was a civilian cyber-security expert at Space Command headquarters at Peterson AFB in Colorado. Everything about Savannah was exuberant, from bright eyes to grand hand gestures. She wore her hair in a bun pulled so tight Marcus wondered if her forehead ached. Colonel Carlos Ortiz, her uniformed colleague, was short, barrel-chested, and very dark, with a gravelly voice. He was stationed nearby, at Vandenberg AFB.

“Lead on,” Carlos said.

They ducked out a back door to avoid Resetter picketers and the media circus at the Kendricks main entrance. Leaving air conditioning felt like stepping into a blast furnace. At a nearby cabstand they grabbed a ride. Savannah keyed in the restaurant's name and the autocab pulled away.

Carlos peered out at the boisterous crowd. “This is not a good turn of events.”

“What happened near Santa Cruz seems to have been a freak accident,” Marcus said. “The Resetters already hated PS-1. Won't this blow over?”

Carlos shook his head. “I don't see Resetters as your real problem. The Russians and their lackeys will have a field day with this. Powersats as WMDs.”

“But powersats aren't!” Marcus snapped.

“But they could be,” Savannah said. “Yeah, I heard yesterday's briefing about the interlocks and safeties. It's all very multilayered and sophisticated—and, hence, hard to get across to the public. The black hats only have to convey, ‘Think how many pieces have to work right. Because when one of those pieces doesn't work or some safety mechanism gets turned off: death rays. Broiled while you sleep.'”

No one had anything to add to that.

Kendricks Aerospace employed thousands, most on government contracts. That made upkeep of the headquarters campus a reimbursable overhead expense, and the management did not skimp. A block away from the immaculately groomed office campus, though, the neighborhood turned seedy. Piles of uncollected trash. Panhandlers at every bus stop. Store doors wedged open, the whirring box fans glimpsed inside the entrances surely unequal to the task. Storefronts boarded up and spray-painted with graffiti.

Too much of the country, of the world, was this way, and the downward spiral could not be reversed without cheap, plentiful energy.

Someone was responsible for the Santa Cruz accident. Whoever it was, Marcus silently cursed them.

Their autocab passed a news kiosk scrolling teasers. Between bankruptcies and box scores, blackout reports and brownout schedules, something flashed by about sabotage at the Bay of Fundy tidal-power plant. Like every energy disruption, the incident meant more money to the Russian cartel. Before Marcus could retrieve his datasheet and buy the download file, they were out of range.

The console chimed to announce their imminent arrival. “Sushi!” Savannah enthused. “That's not something you want to order in Colorado.”

“So at home for seafood you go with the Rocky Mountain oysters?” Marcus asked.

He took her mimed gagging as a no.

Sushirama was three-fourths empty. Marcus told himself it was Wednesday night and unfashionably early, knowing neither was the reason. Washing down every mouthful with beer, unable to shake the day's awful news, Marcus mostly avoided noticing what he ate.

His new friends swapped stories about mutual acquaintances.

“So what do we do about this mess?” Marcus interrupted. “The PS-1 project, I mean, and Santa Cruz, and public opinion.”

Savannah shrugged. “What you are doing. Test, test, test, then test some more. Make damn sure the safety interlocks work. Involve people like Carlos and me to make sure the system can't be hacked.”

“Because you think it can?”

“You never know,” she said. “Nothing Kendricks presented so far came across as problematical, but that proves nothing. The smallest oversight in implementation can be a security hole. You can be certain unfriendly hackers are looking.”

“Last week's defacing of the White House website?” Marcus asked. “Russians?”

Carlos shook his head. “Too trivial for a foreign-government-sanctioned hack. You want my guess? The Chinese this time. Kids, trainees showing off for the props. But where an attack starts, let alone who's behind it, is nigh unto impossible to prove. When you know what you're doing, and the pros do, you work through long chains of anonymous relays.”

“How often . . . ?” Marcus wondered.

“Don't ask,” Carlos said. “If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

“The good news is I didn't see any gaping holes in the PS-1 design. And kudos on one feature: I approve that core powersat functions like authorizing downlink sites aren't network-accessible. What you can't net into, you can't hack.”

“Any other advice, guys?” Marcus asked.

Savannah laughed. “Yeah. Illegitimi non carborundum."

Don't let the bastards wear you down? Easier said than done when geopolitics—or was it the excellent beer?—had Marcus's head spinning. “Is that it for the Russians?”

Carlos nibbled on maki, considering. “They'll pressure us to abort the project. They won't do anything.”

“Because they can't?” Marcus said. It didn't seem plausible.

“Because militarizing space is expensive, with too much bad press for whoever goes first. And WMDs in space are illegal by international treaty. No, the Russians will keep claiming we're the ones taking that first, illegal step.

“And because the Russian space forces do understand your safeties and interlocks. PS-1 isn't a weapon, not as built. After today, my feeling is they don't even need to convince anyone PS-1 is a disguised weapon. It'll suffice to call PS-1 an accident waiting to happen.”

“There has to be a way to make powersats more acceptable.” Marcus picked at his food, wishing he believed himself. In all those town meetings, had he changed any minds?

“Cheap, reliable electricity. That's what people will understand.” Savannah shook her head. “If we don't lose our nerve first.”

* * * *

Fish scraps swallowed whole did not a meal make, and if the Japanese had any concept of dessert, Marcus had yet to encounter it. Somewhere in Los Angeles a Snickers had his name on it. He was begging off an evening of barhopping when a call from Ellen made excuses moot.

“How'd your call go?” he asked her. She looked drained.

“Interesting,” was all she would admit. “How soon can you get back to the hotel?”

“Once I get a cab, maybe twenty minutes.”

“I'll be in my room.”

He was at her door in twenty-five minutes, after a short cab ride spent surfing news sites. The death-from-the-skies narrative had already begun.

In person Ellen looked even worse than over the phone.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I've had easier days.” She waved him inside. “Sit. I'll fill you in.”

Marcus took a chair. Ellen sat on the foot of the bed. She said, “Not to keep you in suspense, PS-1 testing can proceed. If we get through this week's review without showstoppers. If we redouble our efforts at test and inspection before going live. If we, government and contractor alike, prove we take our responsibilities seriously.”

“What's a showstopper? Who decides?”

“Our blue-ribbon review panel, for starters. And the administrator will review their findings. And behind the scenes, so will someone from the White House.”

Marcus thought back to his unsettling dinner conversation. “And Resetter pressure? Foreign propaganda?”

“The official guidance is: Prove them wrong.”

“Redouble our efforts.” Marcus gazed out the window, trying to imagine what redoubling would entail. His imagination failed him.

“The administrator and I had a long talk after the conference call. He wants to send an independent inspection team. I'd been considering one anyway.”

“An onsite—on-orbit inspection?”

“Right.”

“And Phil agreed,” Marcus said dubiously.

“It's not his decision.” Ellen sighed. “I'll miss having you around every day.”

Huh? “You're firing me?”

He had immersed himself in this project. He had devoted three years of his life to PS-1. To become some sort of public sacrifice to show NASA was serious?

In his mind's eye, Sean leered. You're a sucker, bro.

“Fired?” For an instant, Ellen just stared. “Marcus! Of course not! I need a personal representative up there with the inspection team. Someone who knows the system inside and out. Someone I know I can trust.

“Who do you imagine I'd send?”

* * * *

Saturday, August 12

“Then the lobbyist says . . .” “The old goat doesn't have interns, he has a harem.” “Lost their budget so fast they still don't know what hit them.” “So the Deputy Undersecretary called over to Interior . . .”

Ah, Washington gossip.

Soaking it all in—the good, the bad, and mostly the banal—Yakov took his turn manning the grill. Earl Vaughn, friend, neighbor, and host, held court at the bar. People thronged the patio and deck and spilled onto the lawn. Someplace in the press of neighbors and other guests, wherever the conversation was liveliest, Yakov knew his charming wife would be found.

“Oh, crap. It's you.”

A hell of a greeting. Yakov turned. “Good to see you, too.”

They had a bit of playacting to go through. Tyler Pope, an analyst at the CIA, would pretend not to know Yakov was Federal Security Service. Yakov would pretend not to know he knew Tyler knew. An open question: whether Tyler knew Yakov knew.

Tyler said, “Every time I see a foreign national, it means filing another pain-in-the-ass contact report.” His Texas drawl grated—if not as much as when he chose to practice his Russian.

“I am sorry to be such a burden.” Yakov flipped a row of burgers. “Let me make it up to you. Have some barbecue. Grab a bun.”

“Have you seen the form? My fingers will be bloody stumps before I'm done typing. Give me something to write.”

“You can say I buy corn. But, Tyler . . . “ Yakov leaned forward conspiratorially.

“Yes?”

“I think maybe I will continue to buy corn.”

“Thanks a bunch, neighbor. Or should I say, a bushel?”

They exchanged a bit more such nonsense before Tyler went off with a burger. It was all comfortable and familiar. Safe and predictable, if you were logical and thought ahead.

Yakov thought far ahead.

As a boy, to be a chess grandmaster had been the limit of his ambition. He could have achieved it too—of that he was certain. Instead, the Federal Security Service (in its Russian acronym, the FSB) recruited him first. It turned out they recruited many chess prodigies, especially those, like Yakov, also skilled with languages. Nations played their own games, with the entire world as their game board.

Nations had neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests. But not even nations were permanent: Yakov had watched the Warsaw Bloc come unglued, the Soviet Union break apart, and America's own jetliners turned against her.

The game of nations was more challenging by far than chess, more interesting, and—unlike chess—still far beyond the capabilities of any computer.

Bureaucratic maneuvering was also a game, one at which Yakov excelled. He had climbed rapidly in the ranks of the FSB. With influence at home came his choice of postings abroad. Less patriotic master players chose Stockholm or Paris. He had chosen the hellhole that was the Restored Caliphate.

“Allowing” a few old Soviet nukes—rendered subtly unstable—to fall into the hands of the fanatics had been his boldest gambit.

A very successful gambit, too, after which Russia dominated world petroleum markets. Bolivia and Chile controlled the lithium needed for electric-car batteries—and Russia could, as needed, coerce Bolivia and Chile. If America was not yet quite prostrate, time was on Russia's side. The game of nations should have ended with the Crudetastrophe—

Only the game of nations, unlike chess, dealt the occasional wildcard.

Phoebe was a wildcard. The dormant comet had come hurtling, quite literally, out of nowhere. For as long as the Americans controlled Phoebe and its resources, an escape from their dilemma existed for the Western powers.

The powersat project had to fail, and fail so spectacularly that no one would attempt it again. Not until the last drop of petroleum was under contract, and Russia was without rival, and it suited her to reintroduce the technology.

And so, for a little while longer, the game of nations would continue. Russia would still win. He would still win. Very soon now.

Allowing a neighbor to assume grilling duties, Yakov headed for the bar. He felt like celebrating.

* * * *

Dillon sat in his parked car, windows open for the nonexistent cross breeze, sweating buckets. Only principle kept him from raising the windows and blasting the air conditioner.

Damn Yakov, anyway.

From a house down the street from where Dillon waited, fuming, happy chatter rose. A neighborhood get-together? He ached to crash the party looking for Yakov, but resisted. What he had to say to the bastard must be said in private.

Dillon turned on the radio. He watched and waited until, finally, singly and in pairs, people began emerging from the backyard gathering. A man and woman came Dillon's way. The woman was blond and fair, entirely ordinary. The man was dark and stocky, his features broad, his salt-and-pepper hair thick and unruly—almost like fur. Everything about him hinted at ancestors from the Eurasian steppes. Yakov, damn him, Brodsky.

Dillon got out of his car.

Yakov said something in Russian to the woman, presumably his wife, who nodded and went into a house. “I am surprised to see you here,” Yakov said. “McLean is off your beaten path, I should think.”

“I've been leaving messages for more than a week. You didn't return my calls.” You bastard.

“I have been busy.” Yakov gestured at his front walk. “Very well, come inside. I trust you had a pleasant drive from New York?”

Nothing about today could be pleasant. Giving no response, Dillon followed Yakov up the front walk, inside the house, and into a dark, book-lined study. A magnificent chess board, black onyx and white marble inlaid into a mahogany tabletop, stood beside the desk. The wooden chess pieces, intricately carved, were lustrous.

With a flick of the wrist, Dillon disdained offers of a drink and a seat.

“As you wish.” Yakov poured vodka for himself. “What is so urgent?”

“I thought we had a partnership."

“We do. A very productive one, to my way of thinking.”

“Did, Yakov. We did have a partnership. Past tense.”

The picture of nonchalance, Yakov settled into the leather wingchair behind the desk. His drink sat untouched. “My sources identify interesting start-up ventures. Your company gets my experts inside those ventures for a closer look at new technologies. Together we discourage . . . unfortunate . . . new infrastructure. The arrangement serves us both.”

Amazing! The bastard dared to imply a moral equivalence.

They had—had had—a marriage of convenience. When they met, long ago, at a glitzy Manhattan high-tech expo, Dillon had thought himself so clever to have enlisted the resources of a Russian trade representative.

Too late Dillon understood who had recruited whom.

He said, “You want high energy prices out of pure greed. I want high prices to save the planet. Someone has to force people to reduce their impact on Mother Earth.”

Yakov took a pawn and began rolling it between fingers and thumb. “As you say, we both aspire to high energy prices. I fail to see what troubles you.”

“People died, damn it!” Only a few caged animals in the Nature Conservancy's wildlife research center were supposed to roast, and that had been difficult enough for Dillon to accept. True, he hoped humanity would develop the wisdom to let itself become extinct. That was a far cry from slaughtering a little girl. “Innocent people, Yakov.”

“A few dead birds would not have served my purpose, so our people pointed the transmitter elsewhere. But be at peace. The man owned a yacht. How innocent could he be?”

A not-so-veiled threat? Dillon owned a yacht, too, and Yakov knew it. “You and I are through. Your engineers no longer work for me, no longer will have access to . . . anything I see. That is what I came to tell you. You can forget we ever met.”

“I think not.”

“It isn't for you to decide.” Trembling with rage, Dillon turned to leave.

“You must see something before you go.” Yakov smiled dangerously. “I promise. It will be worth your while.”

Setting down the pawn, Yakov pressed a thumb against the sensor pad on his desk. Emitting a red laser beam, the computer—no mere datasheet—scanned his face, seeming to linger on an eye. The computer announced something in Russian and the beam disappeared.

“With certain information, one cannot be too careful.” Yakov typed a long string of commands. Finally, he turned the display so that Dillon could see.

Video, but of what? The color balance was odd. Night vision? As the imagery jittered and bounced, Dillon needed a few seconds to parse a gigantic pillar rising from the sea and a man waiting on a spidery catwalk.

The vessel with the camera glided to a stop, and the image stabilized. The camera zoomed into a tight close-up of a face. Dillon's face. Sick to his stomach, he saw himself lower the gangplank and welcome three men dressed all in black onto the oil platform.

“Shall I fast-forward to the cheery wave with which you send off our colleagues, their mission accomplished?”

“You're bluffing.” Dillon struggled to keep his voice steady. “You won't show that to the police because then I would tell them everything.”

“An accessory to murder? I imagine you would cooperate.” Yakov shrugged. “I am an accredited diplomat. Worst case, your government declares me persona non grata and sends me home. The only one interested in releasing this recording to the police is me.”

Dillon stared. “But why would you . . . ?”

“Your task is complete, a timely reminder to the public of the dangers of microwave beams.” Yakov reclaimed the chessman. “This is you, Dillon: a mere pawn. At this moment, by your own choice, a sacrificial pawn.

“Still, let us for a moment consider our options. You can go to prison, humiliate your wife, and destroy everything for which you have labored. Or you can trust me again and, pardon the terminology, be promoted to a queen. Stay with me and we will advance both our interests. You choose.”

Knowing that he had no choice—and, too late, that Yakov could never be trusted—Dillon asked, “What do you have in mind?”

* * * *

Sunday, August 20

Valerie collected the scraps and wrappings from a very pleasant picnic lunch, while Simon rammed around nearby—up, down, and all around the nearest trees. “Look at me!” he shouted about every ten seconds.

“Wow!” Marcus answered every time.

After lunch he had stretched out on the blanket, a slight smile on his face, his eyes closed. He looked as relaxed as Simon was manic. Or maybe, after three sandwiches, epic quantities of deli salads, and two brownies, the man was going into hibernation.

“The amazing thing,” Valerie said, “is that the running and climbing won't tire him out. I'm exhausted just from watching.”

“Then don't watch. As long as he keeps up yelling, you'll know he's fine.”

“Spoken like an engineer.”

“Guilty as charged,” Marcus said. “It's very nice here. It's as if we have the forest to ourselves.”

Because they more or less did. “Green Bank does have its charms.”

Sitting up, he gave her a quick hug. “It only needs the one.”

The line was awkward, and she was awkward. To have someone in her life again—even though that usually meant texting and a nightly phone call—felt wonderful.

And scared the hell out of her. She shivered.

“I need to be up there,” Marcus said. “Engineering is a contact sport.”

Whereas astronomers only watched. Likewise guilty as charged, but she was still offended. And relieved that he had misunderstood her reaction, not that his upcoming adventure was much easier for her to discuss. “You want to be up there.”

“That too.”

“Space is dangerous," she blurted out.

“It isn't just something I want to do, it's something I have to do, and I don't mean because Ellen asked. This is about the future. It's for you, me, and Simon. It's for the whole country.” He sighed. “And Keith must have said much the same before he went overseas. Sorry.”

“It's okay.” They both knew it wasn't.

What a pathetic mess she was! After almost four months, they were hardly—together. Every time things got hot and heavy, she had pulled back. “I'm not ready,” she had told him just last night. She guessed he was not quite ready, either. He had somehow seemed almost relieved.

So maybe they were both pathetic messes.

“Look at me!” Simon called.

“Be careful, hon,” she answered without looking.

“I'll be fine,” Marcus tried again. “Space is a tourist destination.”

“Of spoiled, indulgent zillionaires.” Oversexed zillionaires. Commercials for The Space Place were about as subtle as Viagra ads. Would zero-gee sex really be out of this world?

“You make my point, Val. Allowing any harm to befall a zillionaire guest is terrible for business, even before the lawyers get involved.

“Flying as a mission specialist, I'll get twice the training any tourist gets.” Training for which he left tomorrow, a detail he neglected to mention. “And rather than being a tourist, gadding about playing space polo or whatever, I'll be on Phoebe or at the powersat the whole time, surrounded by old hands from NASA and Kendricks Aerospace.”

That made perfect sense, damn it. Everything about him going made sense—except how the very idea tied her insides into knots.

No one was more committed than Marcus to the project's success. He knew PS-1 inside and out. His boss trusted him. He was qualified to train for spacewalks in the neutral buoyancy tank. (Learning to scuba had been Lindsey's idea—one more reason to resent the woman.) And even I, unwittingly, played my small part to make him a stronger candidate, as our bots explored Phoebe together.

“Look at me!” Simon called.

Something in Simon's voice was different than the last many shouts, and she did look. He was at least fifteen feet off the ground and still climbing! Her heart leapt to her throat. “Come down! This minute!”

He kept climbing.

"Simon!"

“We don't want to scare him,” Marcus whispered. “Simon, you little monkey.”

“Or to encourage him!” she hissed.

“It's okay,” Marcus whispered back. “Monkey want a banana? Peel it with your feet?”

Simon stopped to look down at Marcus. “You can do that?”

“Well, I can. At least I used to be able to. Silly monkey, you won't find any bananas up there. The bananas are all in the picnic basket.”

Simon considered. Making eep-eep noises, he started to climb down.

Whistling nonchalantly but moving fast, Marcus headed for Simon's tree—

And with an oof, caught Simon as he slipped and fell.

“I want a banana,” Simon said, wriggling.

Valerie dashed over and took Simon, squeezing the boy so tightly that he squealed. “We're out of bananas, hon. We'll buy some on the ride home.” Over Simon's head, she mouthed to Marcus, “Thank you.”

“No problem,” he mouthed back.

To see Marcus as a possible companion, maybe she had had first to see him as a possible dad. For whatever the reason, a lot of her doubt had just evaporated.

While her fears for him had redoubled.

* * * *

Tuesday, September 5

Valerie had had it wrong. Space training was not dangerous. Some of the people in the zero-gee trainer just wished that they could die.

Not Marcus. Not, anyway, today. So far.

On his first flight, the training plane porpoising across the Gulf of Mexico, he had blown chunks. He had made lots of rookie mistakes. Skipping breakfast. Launching into aerobatics at his first opportunity, without acclimating first to the sensation of freefall. Turning his head during one of the high-gee pullouts. Thinking about how this worked: the plane tearing from steep, full-throated climbs, its turbofans belching black smoke, into great parabolic arc-overs, into steep dives, into screaming pullouts. Climbing and dropping ten thousand feet—over and over and over. And maybe the worst slip-up of all, psyching himself out.

Every zero-gee training plane since the dawn of the Space Age had carried the nickname Vomit Comet. Knowing that hadn't helped.

Feeling great, Marcus soared across the padded main cabin. All around, people in boldly colored flight suits drifted and hovered, twisted and darted, like so many tropical fish in a gigantic tank. Blue for the real astronauts and space workers in training. Green for NASA's guests: everyone prepping for the PS-1 inspection. Red, the most common color, for the tourists. In the spectrum of visible light—scientist humor—red was as far as possible from blue.

The sad truth was that red suits outnumbered blue and green, and the Cosmic Adventures training center—once the NASA Johnson Space Center—had been a shock.

His flight to orbit, like his training, would be commercial. Before arriving at the training facility, he had not internalized that. NASA Goddard's usual research was too esoteric to interest industry, and its campus did not offer enough unused land to draw speculators.

Approaching the cabin's back wall, Marcus tucked and rolled. A thrust of his legs sent him gliding back the way he had come: sixty feet to the opposite bulkhead. “It gets better,” he called to two men and three women, their faces pale, belted into their seats and waiting for the misery to end. Both men and one of the women wore green.

The review team was limited by budget, schedule, security clearances, and, Ellen had intimated, acceptability to the White House. At least two of the team candidates would stay behind. He guessed there would be volunteers.

“Better?” one of the seat-belted men groaned. “Any time would be fine.”

One of the seated women turned her head toward Marcus—and as quickly away, lunging for her airsick bag.

“Honest, it does,” Marcus said, floating away.

Many of those loose in the cabin, while faring better, still flailed about unproductively. Swimming in air did not work well.

Marcus gave a shove to a woman (he guessed from the long, bobbing ponytail) stranded in midair. The recoil sent Marcus soaring on a new trajectory. He kicked off the wall, throwing himself into a corkscrew spin just for the fun of it.

Because it was fun. His parents, of the attitude that fun was all this was, had commended him on his government-paid boondoggle. Sean had mused aloud about the Seven Thousand Mile High Club—never mind that it would have been seven thousand kilometers—and whether Phoebe, like The Space Place, kept “escorts” on staff.

And Mom and Dad called him cynical.

“Feet down,” a loudspeaker warned. Inside five seconds, gravity would return.

Marcus extended arms and legs to slow his spin. He twisted, getting his feet oriented, trying not to land on Savannah Morgan when he came down. Once down returned.

Of the onsite inspectors whom he would be babysitting (as Ellen would have it, with whom he would liaise), so far only Savvy had gotten her space legs. She and Marcus grinned at each other as they positioned themselves.

With a howl of the plane's engines, gravity returned.

Vomit spattered the floor and Marcus's flight suit as he landed steadily, if not yet quite gracefully. He stretched out flat as gee forces surged. Not that 1.8 gees at the bottom of the arc could compare to the four gees he had experienced riding the centrifuge, but that acceleration was steady. None of this up-and-down, on-and-off—

His stomach lurched.

So, okay, he did not entirely have his space legs.

Almost before he knew it, the engines were throttling back and the loudspeaker advised, “Going over the top.” Zero-gee came in not-quite-half-minute spurts, about one every minute.

Spurt was an unfortunate image, but he powered past it.

Zero-gee returned with a feeling deep in his gut like at the top of a rollercoaster, for an instant before the rest of his body caught up. Then he was up and away, turning lazy somersaults in midair, a bigger-than-ever smile on his face. He had just gotten a mind's-eye view of Simon Clayburn, space monkey, afloat in zero gee and peeling a banana with his toes.

When he called Val tonight, Marcus thought he would keep that picture to himself.

* * * *

Bearing a loaded tray, Marcus surveyed the cafeteria's crowded dining area. He recognized faces, but saw no one he actually knew. Between the hectic flight-training schedule, futile efforts to stay current with PS-1 progress, and random summonses from the candidate inspectors, he had yet to achieve a routine.

Sill, eating alone tonight had been his choice.

The would-be inspectors did everything together. He was not one of the group, not exactly, but still he would have to work with them. And so, often, he ate with them. Some evenings, though—and tonight was one of them—he was not in the mood to be treated, as some of them would, as the enemy. When push came to shove, Ellen had had very little influence over the composition of the team.

Maybe, he thought, if the Vomit Comet had tamed Olivia and Reuben. (Did he wish that on them? Not really. Not very much.) But to judge from their sniping that afternoon, his chief critics had recovered from their ordeal.

Olivia Finch, quick witted and sharp tongued, presumed that NASA and its contractors—all of them, including Marcus—would hide everything they could. Her skepticism was ironic, given how Phil Majeski and the rest of the Kendricks crew expected Marcus to hyperventilate about the most trivial variance. She was a quality-assurance specialist from Caltech. And Reuben Swenson, for all his good-ole-boy affectations, was twice as sharp and almost as cynical. He was a power-systems engineer from the DOE Oak Ridge Lab.

The way Marcus's luck ran, he knew Olivia and Reuben would end up among the chosen.

Midday, pleading the press of work, Marcus had IMed Savvy—they had become friends, pure and simple—not to wait for him tonight at dinner. He could work 24/7 and still never catch up, so he had not even been lying.

But before even opening his message queue, Marcus had called Val at home. She had another long night ahead at the observatory. He had thought the appeal of radio astronomy was that you did not need to work nights, but the big radio telescopes were too expensive not to schedule around the clock.

They had talked for more than an hour. By the time she had had to dash to work and he had gotten to the cafeteria, the hot entrées had sold out. He would cope: as long as the grill line stayed open he would never go hungry. He could eat a cheeseburger and fries every day.

A table at the back of the dining area had two empty seats and he headed that way. The four men sitting there were deep in conversation. Marcus had noticed them before. It was his impression they were bound for The Space Place.

“Are these seats taken?” he asked.

“Help yourself,” one of the four said. “We're leaving.” And kept talking.

Marcus ignored them, taken with the impulse to send Val flowers. His datasheet, only one-fourth unfolded, drooped off the end of the table. As he entered the stiffen-for-typing command, a shopping-bot icon started to flash. Bargain found. Tapping the icon revealed an unbelievably good price for the upscale 3-V set he had been coveting.

Had he been naive enough to believe the offer, the urgent instruction that he needed to reconfirm his banking information stood to correct him. Damn! Another generation of agent software compromised.

Google confirmed the break-in. The Russian mafia was suspected. Or the infamous hacker, “Psycho Cyborg.” Or freelancing students from any of three notorious Chinese hacking academies. Or maybe organized crime in Botswana. The only element of the reports that Marcus found credible was that digital forensics folks were on a merry chase from computer to computer around (and around, and around) the world, hoping to track the exploit to its source.

Good luck with that.

Flowers would wait. First he had to shop—the slow, geezerly way, directly at the websites of a few trusted e-stores—for new agent software.

Three of his tablemates did, finally, leave; one offered an ironic-sounding, “Bye, boss.” Their most solemn member stayed behind, seated cater-corner to Marcus.

The straggler had a long, gaunt, almost ascetic face, with a deeply cleft chin. He was wiry and even seated managed to seem athletic. His blond hair, worn short, had begun to recede. He squinted so much that Marcus could scarcely tell the man had blue eyes.

“Hi. Marcus Judson.” He leaned close enough to offer his hand. “I'm headed for Phoebe soon.” Anyplace else, Where are you from? or What do you do? were the standard icebreakers. Here, everyone opened with something about their upcoming flights.

“Dillon Russo. The Space Place.” Dillon seemed awfully dour for someone going to the world's most exclusive tourist destination.

“Enjoying your training?” Marcus asked.

“It's been . . . interesting.”

“That it is.” Marcus searched his table in vain for a salt shaker. He snagged one from another table and sprinkled his fries, then took a big bite from his burger.

“You know, a meat diet consumes far more energy and generates more carbon emissions than eating vegetarian.”

Uh-huh. And how much energy will it take to hoist your bony vegetarian butt and a week or two's supply of (shudder) tofu to The Space Place?

At least Dillon had left methane—cow farts—out of the discussion.

Marcus finished chewing, then returned to training. “What have you done here so far?”

“My med tests. FAA disclaimers and safety lectures. Got fitted for my counterpressure suit. A couple rounds up against the toilet trainer.”

“Ah, the toilet trainer,” Marcus sympathized. Step One on the instruction placard read, Activate camera.

Going to space meant learning to shit while jammed, positioned just so, against a four-inch toilet opening. Peeing down a funnel into a vacuum hose was the easy part. Male docking not recommended. . . .

“Good times,” Dillon agreed, grinning. “But wait, there's more. The centrifuge. Flew the hopper"—barebones utility craft—"simulator, while some snag with my scuba certification got straightened out. Once it finally did, mostly I've been in the NBT.”

Marcus had spent time in the neutral buoyancy tank too. The tank was the world's largest and deepest swimming pool. It contained life-sized mockups of Phoebe base and several other key Phoebe structures, The Space Place, and a representative expanse of PS-1.

Neutrally buoyant objects, however massive, could be moved about in the NBT as though weightless. In a pressure suit, wearing weights to neutralize the trainee's own residual buoyancy, the NBT was the only way to mimic aspects of space conditions for longer than the half-minute at a pop that the Vomit Comet achieved. Real astronauts rehearsed in-space construction projects for days in the NBT before trying them out for real.

None of which made the NBT a good zero-gee training simulation. Try to move anything quickly in the tank and the water's drag—hardly a factor in space—interfered. The objects with which one practiced seemed weightless, but the swimmer himself did not. And the scuba divers all around, loitering lest some trainee got into trouble, shattered the illusion of being in space.

“I haven't seen The Space Place mock-up,” Marcus said. There were not enough hours in the day, even if NASA would have paid his way to use that end of the tank.

“Nor I, beyond the preflight requirement.” Dillon rubbed his chin. “I can see that once I'm up there. I figured, why not spend my time in the tank mock-visiting places I can't visit.”

For someone who vacationed in space, extra NBT time probably cost only loose change from beneath the sofa cushions. It must be nice to be rich. Unless—

“One of the men here earlier called you boss. Do you do business on orbit?”

“We work together. I own an investment firm and The Space Place outing is last year's bonus.”

“Business must be good.”

“You have no idea.” The words came across closer to a dirge than agreement.

Real astronauts, and Marcus knew a few, were far less serious. The old adage was evidently correct: The rich were different. Oh, well, he would have a zillionaire anecdote with which to regale Val.

“Done your freefall flight training yet?” Marcus asked.

“Tomorrow's my first flight.” Dillon looked at his tray, the food picked over, and slid it away. “It's never too soon to stop eating.”

“Today was my second time, much more successful than the first, so I'll offer you some free advice. Eat something in the morning, just nothing heavy or greasy. A dry bagel, say, or some cold cereal.”

“Thanks.” Dillon stood abruptly, shoving back his chair. “I've got work to do. If you'll excuse me?”

“Sure. Have a good evening.” As his new acquaintance stalked off, Marcus guessed the man did not know how.

* * * *

With a stack of hardcopy program listings under one arm, Patrick followed Valerie down Jansky Lab's second-floor hallway. She paused outside the observatory's main control room to tap at a wall-mounted keypad.

He had never been trusted with the access code. As a point of pride, he had observed closely enough, often enough, to know the code. As a point of honor, he had never used it.

With a soft squeak, the door opened.

“Hey, Ian,” she called to the man on duty.

Ian Wakefield glanced up. He was chewing on the stem of an old briar pipe he had never been seen to smoke. Eight computer displays sat on the curved console that he had to himself. “Hi, guys. Shut the door.”

Patrick looked for a clear spot to set the printouts.

All around, holos flickered and LEDs glowed. A row of electronics cabinets stood in the middle of the floor. More cabinets filled an interior nook, behind a glass partition. All that gear—supercomputers, signal processors, amplifiers, and an atomic clock—spewed RF that could bollix observations. Even the humble keyboard on which Ian pounded away emitted low-level RF as its innards ceaselessly scanned to detect keystrokes.

Unseen copper screening—behind painted wallboard, beneath well-worn carpet, and above the acoustic ceiling tiles—encased the room. Conductive glass in the windows completed the enclosure. Many a physics lab was a Faraday cage: a room whose metal sheath kept ambient radiation outside. The GBT control room was an inside-out Faraday cage trapping radiation; this cage kept the emissions from all this electronic gear from reaching the exquisitely sensitive receivers of the big scopes.

“The door,” Ian repeated.

Patrick set his printout stack on the floor and pulled the door shut. “Where do you want us to set up?” he asked Ian.

Ian gestured vaguely. “What are you two up to?”

“ASTRID upgrade,” Valerie said. “We've got time on the forty-five-foot dish for testing.”

Ian called up the day's observation schedule. “Right, so you are. Okay, to install software you'll need sysadmin privileges. Valerie, I'll log you into workstation six.”

There an emphasis on you, and a sidelong glance that Patrick ignored.

“It's a slick upgrade,” Valerie said, talking fast. She blithered when uncomfortable, and slights like Ian's made her uncomfortable. “The dishes are always oversubscribed. . . .”

Patrick wasn't uncomfortable, only sad. Misplace a billion-dollar spacecraft just once, and years later people still don't trust you. He arranged printed-out test cases on the console ledge as Valerie rattled on about the sky survey one of her grad students was doing, and that a dish slewing between approved observations could be observing while it moved.

The astronomer's integrated desktop, the observation-planning software more commonly known as ASTRID, did not plan between sessions. Yet. Patrick had helped Valerie code an upgrade to change that. The new code would take pending requests into account when planning how to redirect a dish. Rather than take the simplest path—rotate this far; tip that much—the upgraded software would optimize dish movement to seek out objects of interest along the way as it moved. The new software not only read the look-when-you-can list, it updated the list as it went. Suppose a scope were to look repeatedly at sky objects A and B. With the new software the dish would trace a different route, gathering different data along the way, each time. Yet another new feature reprioritized based on the real-time weather, because rain and snow blocked some wavelengths.

“Pretty cool,” Ian conceded, gesturing outside at the heavy rain. “I could have used that last upgrade today. Okay. Test away.”

“Thanks.” She plugged a thumb drive into her assigned workstation.

“What do your hear from Marcus?” Patrick asked. He didn't care beyond calming down Valerie.

“His second Vomit Comet ride. He didn't throw up today,” she said lightly.

Too lightly. Marcus's upcoming spaceflight plainly terrified her.

“Any day you don't throw up is a good day,” Patrick said. “And what's Simon up to?”

“He's sleeping over at a friend's tonight.” After a flurry of typing, she turned. “Okay, the software is installed in a test partition. Test sequence one, please.”

As testing proceeded, Ian glanced over his shoulder every so often to give Patrick the fish eye. With traces of pity rather than distrust, Valerie checked on Patrick, too. Because, obviously, the new software also meant many more opportunities to hunt for the Verne probe.

Knowing Valerie meant well, Patrick pretended not to notice.

Tuesday, September 19

* * * *

From within the claustrophobic confines of the spaceport mantrap, Dillon watched TSA screeners poke and prod his carry-ons. How interesting could shoes, a datasheet, and a bottle of aspirin be?

He imagined the various sensors at work, sniffing for explosives and scanning for metal. Beyond the already intrusive airport-type screening, he also got X-rayed. He might have had a bomb up his ass, and no one bound for space could credibly object to a few millirems on the ground “for everyone's safety.”

The mantrap door slid open and the overhead speaker came on. “You may now leave the security station and reclaim your belongings. Have a safe flight.”

As Dillon slipped on his shoes and tucked his few carry-on items into flight-suit pockets, Jonas Walker exited the mantrap. Jonas was senior among the three “employees” Dillon had been ordered to deliver to The Space Place. The others, Lincoln Roberts and Felipe Torres, had already cleared the Security checkpoint and exited to the tarmac.

“Shall we, boss?” Jonas said. Only however deferentially he spoke, it was not a question. He gave the orders now, he did not take them, and it had been no accident that he, not Dillon, was the last of the four to pass through security.

Jonas was soft spoken and poised, almost petite, yet with a creepy physical intensity: James Bond turned welterweight wrestler. He knew more about software than any five other people Dillon knew. Ditto Lincoln in electrical engineering and Felipe in communications systems. Tweedlesmart, Tweedlesmarter, and Tweedle-Effing-Genius. In simpler times, Dillon had been happy to have Yakov's experts at his company.

More naive times.

“Are you ready?” Jonas prompted, this time with an edge to his voice.

“Sure.” Dillon grabbed his bag. He wondered what hold Yakov had over Jonas and the others, but they no more responded to Dillon's subtle probing than he to theirs.

Maybe we're all trapped.

“After you, boss.”

At the terminal door, held open by a smiling member of the ground crew, they were offered sunglasses. They walked out into a gorgeous late-summer day. Heat devils shimmered and shimmied over the tarmac.

One of the huge mother ships officially dubbed The Space Portal—and known to everyone as Big Momma—sat straight ahead, its white paint gleaming in the sun. Mother ship one or two? Dillon wondered inanely. And which of Cosmic Adventure's three shuttles?

As though he did not have enough to think about.

Beneath a hundred-fifty-foot wingspan, Big Momma appeared to have three fuselages, but only two were part of the plane. The central segment was the shuttle on which they would ride to orbit. Near the mother ship's cruising ceiling, the shuttle would drop free and light its rocket.

Dillon and Jonas started walking.

The shuttle was a fat dart studded with windows for the passengers. From the angle at which he approached, Dillon could not see the rocket nozzle. The entire back half of the shuttle was covered in frost condensed from the air by the frigid liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen tanks. The rime weighed less than sufficient insulation to have kept the ice from forming.

Dillon first, they strode up the shallow ramp into the shuttle. A man and woman stood waiting inside, with big starburst logos emblazoned on their yellow flight suits. Pilot and copilot. Dillon did not know, or care, who was which.

“Welcome to Cosmic Adventures,” the man said. He had a scruffy mustache and a crooked smile. “It's a great day to fly.”

The shuttle accommodated six passengers, with three seats on a side, and the flight was going to be full. Lincoln and Felipe had taken the back row. Dillon thought he recognized the women, both raven-haired beauties, from space training. They sat in the middle seats, leaning across the aisle, speaking Spanish. He and Jonas took the remaining seats, in the front row.

Dillon immediately began fastening and tightening restraints: a lap belt and two shoulder harnesses. He would be damned if whoever came to check on the passengers would find anything to adjust on him.

Because the belts were something he could still control.

Mustache Man checked everyone's seatbelts and double-checked the hatch seal before disappearing into the cockpit. The lock in the metal cockpit door engaged with a clunk.

“This is Captain Blackwell,” a woman's voice announced. She had a touch of southern accent. “Prepare for departure. Our ride is cleared for takeoff.”

Dillon looked out his window. Though Big Momma blocked much of his view, he saw they were already, ever so slowly, creeping away from the terminal.

They trundled down the runway, the start of the trip to orbit eerily mundane. Using almost the entire long runway, the heavily laden plane more lurched than leapt into the air.

With the plane's top speed of only two hundred knots, Dillon had expected this phase of the “launch” would drag. Instead, as the ground receded beneath them—the Florida coast lush with life, the Atlantic waters a rich blue-green—he willed time to stop. A lump formed in his throat. So much beauty.

Too soon, Big Momma began leveling off and the next announcement came. “Approaching sixty thousand feet. Prepare for release and launch. Release in five. Four . . .”

At zero, Dillon's stomach fell out.

Faster than he could process we've dropped, the shuttle's rocket roared to life. An elephant sat on him and crushed him into his seat. His cheeks sagged toward his spine. His eyeballs pressed into his head.

The shuttle tipped into a steep climb. “Ignition,” the pilot reported unnecessarily.

It was not a whole elephant, not even close. Max acceleration would be only three gees and Dillon had taken four gees on the training centrifuge without breaking into a sweat. But with the ship's growl and shudder, as the ground withdrew and the sky grew darker by the moment, it seemed different.

“Whee!” the woman behind Dillon half cheered, half grunted.

“Next stop, The Space Place,” the pilot announced. “Is everyone comfy back there?”

Not even close, Dillon thought. But the gnawing in his gut had nothing to do with the roar of the engines.

Thaddeus Stankiewicz watched his baby sister, grinning from ear to ear, sashay across a crowded living room. A dozen people must have waylaid her en route. “You clean up good,” Thad said as she finally got to the phone.

“Thanks!” She twirled once for the camera.

In fact, Robin was gorgeous and dressed to kill in a short, low-cut black sheath. Her hair, long and golden, was swept up into a fancy hairdo to which he could not put a name. He thought the dangly diamond earrings were new. Men in tuxes and women in cocktail dresses milled and murmured in the background.

“It's about time,” she said. “I thought you'd forgotten.”

“Never. And I hope you know I'd be there if I could. I wish I lived closer.” I wish we lived on the same world. “In my defense, it's still early afternoon, Phoebe time.”

“Well, it's almost eight in Stockholm. When will you deign to come down to—”

Twin girls, so like Robin at the same age, in matching pink party dresses, crowded the camera. “It's Uncle Thaddeus,” one shrieked. Deborah, he thought. She was always just a bit taller.

“Hello, Uncle Thaddeus,” the girls chanted in unison.

“Hi, girls,” he said. “You both look very pretty. Are you taking good care of your mother on her birthday?”

“Uh-huh,” Deborah said. Cynthia only nodded vigorously.

“My little darlings have been on their best behavior.” Robin put an arm around each girl. “When will their favorite uncle grace us with a visit?”

“Soon,” Thad lied. Beneath the camera's line of sight, he rapped the shelf of the comm console. He glanced over his shoulder at the locked door of his tiny room. “Sorry, kiddo. Duty calls. Enjoy your party.” He leaned closer to the camera. “Bye, girls.”

“Bye, Uncle Thad—”

He broke the connection before he lost self-control. “Take care, kiddo,” he told the final, frozen frame.

For weeks after . . . the incident, Thad had awakened every day, when he slept at all, expecting, and dreading, to be called upon again. To get new orders. As much as he wanted to leave—to flee—the scene of the crime, he had not dared. But the call never came and he had learned, once more, to sleep.

He had dared to hope, as the months passed, that new orders would never come. That he was done. That he was out. That he could carry his shame and guilt with him to the grave. That Robin would never know what he had had to do to protect her.

When two years passed without contact, he had dared to apply for a job Earthside—and an anonymous e-mail advised that his assignment was not complete. Every day since, he had awakened wondering if today was the day.

Thirty minutes earlier, the long-dreaded message had come at last. The innocent-seeming words had etched themselves into his brain. Something compelled him to reread the text anyway.

A great birthday party, Cousin—too bad you aren't here. I wanted you to have some reminders of what's important. Enjoy. Jacob.

Cousin Jacob was imaginary. Yakov was all too real. And Thad's master, these past long years.

Thad tapped the text's first attachment, a file named Birthday 2023. A holo opened: of Robin, beaming, wearing the cocktail dress he had just seen, her adoring husband at her side. She held out dangly diamond earrings, still in their little black-velvet-lined case, for her guests to admire. The twins, in identical pink party frocks, grinning goonily for the camera, stood hand in hand in front of their parents.

Without question, the vid had been taken today. And Yakov had it.

The remaining attachment was labeled Birthday 2014. He remembered that birthday all too well.

Robin had been a wild kid: rebellious, often drunk, hanging with a bad crowd. He was ten years older, and she had always looked up to him. Had he been around for her, maybe he could have done something. Instead he had been in Afghanistan.

Somehow we're always a world apart, kiddo.

When Robin's high school expelled her, their parents, calling it tough love, had thrown her out too. She was long gone—out of touch, out of sight—before he even knew. When his regiment shipped home, he had had no idea where to look for her.

By 2014, she was a druggie, hopelessly addicted, hooking to support her habit. On her nineteenth birthday, taking stock of her life, she chugged a bottleful of pain pills.

From the ER, Robin had reached out to Thad. “I can't do this anymore,” she had said. “I can't take anymore.” Gaunt, trembling, with tears streaming down her face, she had put herself into his hands. He had sworn never to do what their parents had done. He would never abandon her. He would never fail her.

Together—and with lots of therapy—they somehow worked through things. Robin detoxed, learned to stop hating herself, and got her GED. She went to college and met her future husband. Randall Brill came from old money; he proudly carried a Fifth after his name to prove it. Randy and his family believed her late start at college came of two years backpacking across Europe.

I wanted you to have some reminders of what's important.

If Robin's past were revealed, it would destroy lives across the family. Could she go on after that? Or would she try again to kill herself?

I wanted you to have some reminders of what's important.

Yakov had used Robin's secret once to bend Thad to his will. Yakov had needed “a man I can trust,” on Phoebe. “A man with motivation, to perform a small, technical task.”

And because no one could know about Thad's task, a man had had to die.

Three years after that . . . murder, Yakov was back in touch. What horrible thing did he want?

His hand shaking, dreading what the second attachment would show, Thad tapped the 2014 icon.

File corrupted, a pop-up proclaimed.

He found, as he expected, a message encrypted within the “corrupted” file: Prepare the artifacts and await contact. Do not reveal yourself unnecessarily, but the success of the mission comes first.

Artifacts, Thad understood all too well. His “small, technical task” of three years earlier. He trembled to think what type of mission required them, because the devices he had built could serve only one purpose.

I do it for Robin, he told himself. Whatever it was. Because he had no choice.

To keep his promise to his baby sister, he had long ago compromised himself beyond redemption.

* * * *

Beautiful beyond words, Earth receded in Dillon's window. While other passengers floated about, cavorting in freefall as the shuttle coasted toward their hotel, he remained in his seat. He could float just as well where they were headed, but Gaia's slow retreat was an almost religious experience.

Two clicks sounded on the loudspeaker. “This is Captain Blackwell. We've been flying tail-down so you can enjoy Earth. I hope everyone has appreciated the scenery. We're coming up to another quite spectacular view, though, so we'll be rolling over. If you might find that maneuver disorienting, you may want to buckle up. Regardless, stay alert and enjoy the show.”

Jonas and one of the women returned to their seats.

“Commencing slow roll in sixty seconds,” Blackwell updated, then gave a countdown from ten. “Commencing roll.”

The men and one woman still afloat in the cabin seemed to rotate in the air, but it was the shuttle, not the passengers, that turned. The earthlight streaming through the windows slid up the wall. As Earth fell from sight, a holo opened at the front of the cabin. Three small, bright objects glistened in the image.

Blackwell's travelogue resumed. “I'm relaying our view from the cockpit. We're overtaking Phoebe and its sunshield. At the moment we're about five hundred miles apart. The bright oval is the sunshield. The shield is actually round, but we're catching it at an angle. We don't see Phoebe itself. It's behind the shield from us, and too dark anyway to spot easily.

“What looks like a rectangle is a square we're viewing almost edge-on. That's NASA's prototype powersat, PS-1, constructed mostly with raw materials from Phoebe.” She spouted the usual bullshit about how great powersats would be. She rattled on how the onboard thrusters would lift PS-1, once its checkout was complete, to a stationary orbit above the Americas, while more such obscenities were built. “The powersat is dimmer even though it's about fifty miles closer to us than the sunshield. On to the third—”

“Why is PS-1 dimmer?” the still-floating woman asked.

The cabin must have had a microphone, because Blackwell answered. “The shield is white to reflect sunlight. The solar cells on the powersat are dark to absorb sunlight.

“On to the third object up ahead: the deformed-looking dot. It's both smaller by far than the other things we're seeing, and it's two hundred miles beyond the sunshield. That dot, ladies and gentlemen, is The Space Place. We'll be docking there soon. While we're busy in the cockpit, you're welcome to listen and watch on channel one.”

Spacecraft docking patter turned out to be as dry and formulaic as airplane cockpit chatter. Dillon began surfing other options on the in-flight entertainment system and came upon an educational vid. At least he assumed it was educational: the animation showed Olympian gods looking down on Earth.

“. . . was a Titan, a daughter of Gaia, whom some call Mother Earth. Phoebe was often described as ‘golden wreathed’ and associated with the moon. How appropriate then that Phoebe now is a moon.”

He fast-forwarded until the visual changed from animation to real imagery.

“. . . still argue about the origins of the object that became Earth's second moon. The orbit on which it was spotted must have been new, or the object would have been observed years earlier. Regardless—”

He fast-forwarded again. Animation, when it resumed, defied recognition at the speed he scanned. He went back to play and the image resolved into a dark, tumbling blob.

“. . . and without detailed knowledge of the object's exact nature, NASA's options were limited. The key question was: How solid and sturdy was the object? How hard a shove could it withstand before shattering into an unstoppable hailstorm of debris? If, as turned out to be the case, it was a rubble pile, NASA would need to deflect it very gradually.”

A stylized spacecraft zoomed into the animation frame, to hover, its thrusters blazing, above the tumbling blob.

“Enter the gravity tractor.” The spacecraft graphic alternated twice with the image of an ordinary farm vehicle. “All objects in the universe attract each other. The object we know as Phoebe outweighed NASA's gravity tractor by about a million to one, but thrusters on the Rescue One spacecraft kept it from being pulled down to the surface. By maintaining with its thrusters a slight separation, the spacecraft exerted a very small—but very steady—pull on Phoebe.

“Just as an ordinary tractor uses a mechanical linkage to tow a plow, NASA's spacecraft used the pull of gravity itself to . . . slooooowly . . . over many months, move Phoebe into a more desirable trajectory. By the time Phoebe came within reach of a crewed mission, Rescue One had closely observed Phoebe for a year. NASA astronauts knew exactly where to set the thermal nuclear rockets that nudged Phoebe into its present orbit.”

Someone tapped Dillon's shoulder.

“We're passing right by Phoebe,” a female voice asserted. She had a charming accent. “Why can't we visit?”

Dillon looked up. The woman should have put her hair into a ponytail or something. As it was, she looked like Medusa. “Security,” he said. “So I hear.”

“Because I might conquer America's precious little moon with my nail file? Oh, wait. I don't have my nail file. I was told I had to pack it.”

Across the aisle, Jonas snickered.

“Trust me,” Dillon said, “I had no part in setting that policy.”

The loudspeaker clicked again. “This is Captain Blackwell. We're cleared for final approach to the hotel. If you have not already done so, please return to your seat for docking.”

Dillon had studied the brochures for The Space Place. He knew its major parts, how its systems operated, and just how big it was. But until then, he had not truly had a feel for it.

Outside his window: a pearl onion (pierced by a white toothpick) with an equatorial bulge. The pearl became a great bubble. The “toothpick” ends were docking stations, one projecting from each pole. The bulge resolved into two concentric doughnuts, the outer one spinning. Sun-tracking solar panels hung far enough from the hotel not to impede guests’ views.

Closer still, more detail emerged. The struts that connected the solar panels to the main body of the hotel. Clinging to the bubble, two arcs of much tinier bubbles: emergency escape pods. Where too-bright sunlight would otherwise have streamed inside, the bubble material had been polarized, and from this angle was opaque. Elsewhere within the bubble, hints of interior structure.

Scattered specks—people in spacesuits—zipped about the hotel. The sphere's diameter was about forty times their height! The people jetted to one pole of the hotel as the shuttle coasted toward the other.

“Docking in five seconds,” Captain Blackwell announced. The shuttle hesitated as bow thrusters engaged. “Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . “ There was the faintest of vibrations as magnetic couplers engaged. “Welcome to The Space Place.”

* * * *

Wednesday, September 20

Feeling needy and manipulative, Valerie emailed a few recent adorable pictures of Simon. Then she waited for two days before she called her parents. Timing was everything.

She checked in with them more or less weekly, and every conversation was pretty much the same. The weather is crazy. Politicians are crooks. A catalogue of aches and pains, “But what can you do?” For some hapless 3-V star, a slut-of-the-week award. A recitation of grocery sales in Danville.

This call was no different, and Valerie wondered if she would have to raise the subject. She decided to wait a little longer.

Mid-rant about Illinois's latest corrupt governor, Mom stopped. “Enough of that. I meant to thank you for the new pictures of Simon.”

“You're very welcome. I hope you guys enjoyed them.”

“Dad says Simon is growing like a weed.” Pause. “The next time we see Simon, Dad says, we won't even recognize him.”

Taciturn as Dad was, he did say things on occasion. More often, Dad says was code, Mom hinting at matters she did not care to raise outright. Dad says twice was a giveaway.

“We can't have that,” Valerie said. “You guys should come for a visit. Spend some quality time with your grandson.”

Mom blinked. “You're asking?”

“I'm asking.” Hoping her jitters did not show, Valerie suggested, “How about this coming weekend?”

"This weekend? That's not much notice.”

I didn't have much notice. “You and Dad are retired, Mom.”

Mom tipped her head, considering. “I'll need to check with your father but sure. We'd love to see you and Simon.”

“And Mom . . .”

“What, hon?”

“Can you watch Simon for me at the beginning of your visit?”

“The fog begins to lift. Who is he?”

“Yes, I'm seeing someone. He asked me on a getaway weekend.” And to the launch, to see him go very far away. It was all Valerie could do not to shiver.

Ever since Marcus had called from the training center to invite her, she had been putting off this conversation. Unless Mom came to watch Simon, this trip could not happen, and scarier than seeing Marcus off was not to see him off.

What came next? “You're not married,” perhaps. Valerie saw nowhere to go from there, beyond agreement. Or, “How well do you know this man?” Just five months, Mom, and mostly from afar, but if that is not long at all, it seems long. In a good way. Or, perhaps, “What are the sleeping arrangements?” Marcus, whether he was being gallant or sensitive, obtuse or still hung up on Lindsey, had offered separate rooms if Valerie wanted. She didn't know what she wanted!

And the scariest question of all: “Do you love him?”

She only knew with certainty that she had loved one man. He had gone to Afghanistan and never come back. Deep in her gut experience warned: love equaled loss.

Did she love Marcus? Probably. Almost certainly. But love wasn't real until the word came out of her mouth—and out of his. And if love equaled loss—

Did part of her want Mom to talk her out of going?

For all the scenarios Valerie had imagined, she had missed one.

“Dad and I loved Keith too,” Mom said. “His death was a tragedy. But, hon . . . ?”

Valerie waited.

“Your father will be so happy you're getting on with your life.”

* * * *

The circuitously routed, many-times encrypted e-mail reached Yakov in his Embassy office. Merely the message's origin on The Space Place, were the wrong parties to take notice, might raise inconvenient suspicions, but he did not worry. Russian programmers were among the best in the world, and the Federal Security Service engaged only the best of the best.

And she who personally handled his information security? She was the most skilled of all. Yakov trusted in her talents without reservation, no matter how very far removed infosec was from his own expertise. It was not only that at the highest levels of the Counterintelligence Directorate, her exploits were legendary. The CIA, MI-5, and the Mossad all wanted dearly to nail the hacker they knew only as “Psycho Cyborg.”

Boasts were cheap. Survival convinced.

Unwrapped and decoded, the message to Yakov read, simply, P-K4. Pawn to king four, in the classic, descriptive chess notation that Yakov still favored.

Pawn to king four: the opening move of many a game.

The Americans, oblivious, did not know they were in a game. Or that there was a game to be in. Or that, with his men in place, the game clock was running. Or that the stakes of the game were—the world.

Entering his own terse message, to Psycho Cyborg herself, Yakov took the next move. It is time for things to get hot, he wrote.

Very hot.

* * * *

Friday, September 22

Marcus's flight from Houston and Valerie's flight from DC came into the same terminal. Good: He could meet her at her gate. To meet at baggage claim would be in no way romantic.

Their hug was satisfactorily it's been way too long, but in the accompanying kiss, passionate though it was, he sensed a trace of but why am I here? He hoped he was wrong.

“Baggage claim?” he asked. Not for him: Cosmic Adventures had checked most of his luggage through to Canaveral Spaceport.

“Only my carry-on. I like to travel light.”

“One more reason you're a keeper.”

A smile came and went. “Lead on.”

They picked up their rental car and hit the road. His flight had been late, but hers later; he worried that they would not get where he wanted in time. Once they left the interstate, palm trees and gated communities lined the roads. The traffic sucked.

“I'm still not seeing why you picked Tampa,” she said. Because they would have a three-hour drive Monday morning to Cape Canaveral. She would have a two-hour solo drive back across the state to catch her return flight.

Not Tampa, just its airport. “You will.” He hoped.

Making small-talk and catching up, they drove the length of Cape Haze. The sun sank lower and lower, and his anxiety grew. At the little town of Placida, they took the bridge—with its unconscionable tolls, to discourage the riff-raff—to Gasparilla Island.

“Any relation to sarsaparilla?” she asked.

“The perhaps fictitious Spanish pirate, José Gaspar, is big business in these parts.”

“Huh. So our weekend has a pirate theme?”

“Arrr, matey.” Though he still wondered if anyone would be shivering his timber.

As they began passing large private homes on ocean-facing lots, she looked surprised. He pulled to a stop on the shoulder. “Right: not a hotel. This is a friend's second home, and she's letting me use it.” The sun peeked out between houses. There was just one way to make it. “Val, I propose that we go straight to dinner while we can enjoy the sunset. We can unpack later.” And postpone the conversation about into which bedroom to set her bag.

“Sure. I mean, arrr.”

The restaurant near the island's south end was unassuming—but oh, the view! Florida was not quite yet in season, and they almost had the place to themselves. They took a table on the patio, near the beach, and he ordered wine. The sun, red and fat, almost kissed the horizon. Long, slow combers washed up the sand. The breeze from the ocean was cool.

He asked, “How are your parents?”

“Good.”

“They don't mind keeping an eye on Simon?”

“Let me put it this way. They may not notice that I'm gone.”

“Simon sent me a note. Did you know that? Told me not to let you eat kiwi, that you'd blow up like a balloon.”

“I can't have any secrets?” She sighed melodramatically.

They finished the carafe and started a second. Seagulls glided low over the waves while a brown pelican settled noisily onto a spray-slick boulder. The sun had all but disappeared, painting ocean and a rim of sky the color, somewhere between pink and red, to which he could never put a name. “Let's take a walk before ordering.”

She nodded.

They slipped off their shoes to play tag with the waves. Hand in hand they strolled along the beach. By the time they reclaimed their table, the sun had gone and the stars were out. Gazing over the water, utterly relaxed, he said, “I could sit all night listening to the surf.”

“Marcus.” She sounded serious.

He turned as she took his hand. “Yes?”

“How would you feel about listening to the surf from the house?” And somehow imagining he could have missed her point, she clarified, “And not necessarily sitting.”

* * * *

Monday, September 25

After a weekend of intimacy, the ride across Alligator Alley was much too short. Valerie dreaded watching Marcus leave—

While he could hardly wait for his flight to begin.

Spotting the first Cosmic Adventures billboard, it hit her. This is it. He is going. But Marcus was so excited, and not just at the adventure. He truly believed in powersats as safe energy for everyone. In some measure, he even went to PS-1 to protect her work.

He chattered enthusiastically, while her spirits yo-yoed, the entire drive.

Of the early Space Age, only vestiges remained at Canaveral Spaceport. The Rocket Garden. The enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, in which Saturn V moon rockets and then space shuttles were once prepped for flight. A few launch complexes, including the pad reactivated in haste after the discovery of Phoebe.

Tourist attractions and historical monuments.

And diminishing it further: hotels, hangars and warehouses, and, finally, a low, garish terminal structure.

But it was his terminal. The gateway to his adventure. For his great cause.

With pride and fear, she walked Marcus to the departures counter. Kissing him bon voyage, she knew his mind was already far, far away.

* * * *

Afloat in the cabin of the Cosmic Adventures shuttle, Marcus thanked his stomach for staying put. Savvy Morgan and Olivia Finch floated with him, but Reuben Swenson, clutching an airsick bag, remained belted into his seat. Earthlight—mostly the reflected blue of the oceans—did nothing for his pallor.

The loudspeaker clicked. “Commencing a slow roll in sixty seconds,” Captain Blackwell announced, then gave them a countdown from ten. “Commencing roll.”

Marcus took hold of his seatback. As Earth vanished, the cockpit camera's view popped up. Phoebe's sunshield came into view. PS-1 was a dark square beside it, The Space Place a brilliant dot beyond them both. He did not yet see Phoebe.

“Enjoy the view of the powersat while you . . .” Blackwell chuckled. “Sorry, folks, habit. My standard patter. You're the ones who'll decide when PS-1 gets the go-ahead for GEO.”

“No rush,” Savvy said, grinning.

Reuben, contributing once again to his barf bag, seemed to differ.

“With such a knowledgeable bunch on my ship, maybe I should be the one asking questions.” The captain paused. “No? Then maybe you have questions for me.”

“What about solar flares?” Reuben asked. From his tone of voice, he hoped one might put him out of his misery.

“Good question,” Blackwell said. “Sunspots run in eleven-year cycles, and we're near the peak of a cycle. We are apt to see more flares than usual. Flare radiation can travel at half or more light-speed, so there's not a lot of warning.

“Earth's atmosphere blocks the radiation, but of course we're well above the atmosphere. That, and the short notice, is why space habitats have radiation shelters. The Space Place has the fancy kind: They can project a big electromagnetic field to deflect the radiation. Phoebe does it the easy way: a deep tunnel. This ship's metal hull is inherently a shelter, too, though not thick enough that you'd want to spend hours aboard during adverse conditions.”

“And if a flare hits while we're at work on PS-1?” Olivia asked.

“Little metal closets,” Marcus said. He wanted the inspectors in the habit of asking him their questions about PS-1. “Only for emergencies, though. With the typical warning, workers can get back to Phoebe.”

“About that warning,” Captain Blackwell said, “there are solar observatories for spotting solar flares and such. You'll always have several minutes’ warning, usually more. Plenty of time to get into a shelter. Solar astronomers can even sometimes predict a flare.”

“How good are space-weather predictions?” Reuben persisted.

“About like weather forecasting fifty years ago,” Blackwell answered cheerfully. “Enough about that. I need to get back to work, and you need to return to your seats.”

Buckling up, Marcus studied the cockpit-camera view. Black on black, very faintly, a glob stood out against the darkness of space. Phoebe. He watched it grow.

Reuben leaned across the aisle toward Marcus. “And such?”

“And such what?" Marcus asked back.

“The captain. She said solar flares and such. What's such?"

“Coronal mass ejections. CMEs. In layman's terms, a radiation shit storm.”

CMEs were among the space hazards with which PS-1 had to coexist, so Marcus knew a fair amount about them. The typical CME was a few billion tons of matter flung from the sun's corona, heated to plasma, traveling at a million or more miles per hour.

Given all the directions in which the sun could spit out CMEs, you hoped one did not come straight at Earth. When a major CME did, it fried electronics, garbled radio transmissions, and induced continent-spanning current surges powerful enough to disrupt, sometimes even crash, power grids. And that was inside an atmosphere to take the brunt of the abuse.

None of which, Marcus decided, would reassure Reuben. “But like flares, the space weather system monitors for them.”

Reuben groaned. “Tell me again why I volunteered for this joyride?”

“Final approach,” Blackwell announced.

A rocky mass emerged from the darkness, growing by the second. A sprinkling of lights marked the main base and its outbuildings. A necklace of strobing lights defined a landing zone. Distant from both sets of lights, glimpsed only in profile as a bite out of the star field: the automated infrared observatory. Blacker than black: the inky depths of the Grand Chasm.

Marcus had seen most of Phoebe on security cams and from rented bots—but never like this. Never in person. And in minutes, he would be on Phoebe.

Reuben Swenson looked like he still expected an answer.

“You volunteered,” Marcus told him, “in a good cause.”

* * * *

Wednesday morning, September 27

The most fun to be had around Phoebe base involved flying a hopper to or from PS-1, but Thad could not shake a sense of impending doom. It did not help that Reuben Swenson, rather than trusting his seatbelt or gripping the rear-saddle handholds, clung to Thad like a remora. Counterpressure suits, skintight, hid nothing.

Crescent Earth, mostly ocean and clouds, hung overhead. PS-1, straight ahead, glittered in the sunlight. To Thad's left and right, about forty yards distant, a hopper paralleled his course. Marcus Judson piloted on the left, with Olivia behind him. Savannah Morgan flew solo on his right, ideally not attempting, as she had joked(?), to “improve” the console user-interface software while on their way.

On Thad's command console, the PS-1 icon remained centered in the nav window. In his rearview camera, the compressed-nitrogen spray propelling the hopper dissipated over a very short distance from white fog to invisible. The hopper trembled as Reuben squirmed on his saddle. The wiggling was nothing their gyros couldn't sense or attitude jets manage—just annoying.

A console LED blinked twice as Thad's countdown timer, its digits green for go phase, broke sixty seconds. “Coming up on coasting phase,” he radioed. “How's everyone doing?”

He got back a chorus of goods and fines. Only one response sounded insincere, but even Reuben, on the ass-end of the curve for acclimating to zero gee, had performed suit and hopper exercises to Thad's satisfaction.

And in a pinch Thad could activate the autopilots on any of the hoppers, fly one by remote control, even fly all three in formation. For now he only kept watch, the imagery from his hopper's sideways-looking cameras streaming into corners of his HUD.

“Are the hopper nav computers ever turned off?” Marcus asked hopefully.

“Not on purpose,” Thad lied. “Pilots, watch your timers.” At zero he cut off his hopper's thruster. Only a few seconds late—nothing the nav software could not handle—his charges did too. On his console the timer reset to seven minutes, now in the yellow of the coasting phase, and resumed counting down.

“Thruster reversed,” Savannah was the first to announce. “But for the record, I feel cheated.”

“Not me,” Marcus said. “I want to see myself arrive at PS-1, not back into it.”

“Amen to that,” Thad thought. “Test reversal, everyone.”

If anyone's gas valve had malfunctioned, they had time to pivot with their attitude jets. Savannah might get her wish. But every hopper gave a puff of thruster gas from its front.

They coasted, while PS-1 grew and grew. Marcus and Savannah switched to a private channel, presumably to discuss an inspection protocol.

These were competent people, even (in other circumstances) likeable people. Almost certainly, Thad had concluded after a day spent working with them, after finding some reason to be alone with each of them, they were not—not any of them—Yakov's people.

Prepare the artifacts and await contact. Do not reveal yourself unnecessarily, but the success of the mission comes first.

None of the newcomers had even hinted at another role, or shown awareness of what Thad had built—and hidden—so long ago. If he was not to hand off the devices, what had Yakov meant?

Flashing interrupted Thad's brooding. “Prepare for maneuver,” he radioed. With better precision than on their earlier maneuvers, his apprentices started their hoppers decelerating. The timers had reset again, now decrementing in the red of stop phase. PS-1 loomed larger than ever. In fifteen minutes they would be docking.

Prepare the artifacts and await contact. Do not reveal yourself unnecessarily, but the success of the mission comes first.

His mind skittered round and round the same nasty suspicion. He wasn't delivering his contraband devices to a visitor. Did that mean he would be turning the devices against one?

How much longer must he wait for Yakov's mysterious contact?

* * * *

Dillon floated in the hotel's renowned Grand Atrium, a clear bubble more than two-hundred feet in diameter. Many of the guests—and so, too, much of the staff—were outside, suited up and riding hoppers, playing or observing space polo. He hoped they would stay outside for a good, long while. He liked having this volume almost to himself.

After the past several weeks, he needed to relax—and at last he could. He had gotten Jonas, Lincoln, and Felipe aboard The Space Place, with no trace of a connection to Yakov. And accomplished it so smoothly Dillon could almost wish he had asked Crystal along.

Not that she would have come. The extravagance of his outing had made her furious, and he could not explain. Once he got home he would make it up to her. Somehow.

My job, thank Gaia, is done. And that means I'm done. Yakov had promised.

Air currents had wafted Dillon toward the hotel's north pole, giving him a great view of the hotel's rings. The outer ring spun as always at a stately two revolutions per minute. The inner ring (really, only three “elevator” cars connected by curved structural elements) was spinning down. He wondered who was entering and leaving this unspun central volume.

If the rings marked the hotel's equator, he was at around fifty degrees north latitude. (Fifty-four forty or fight, bubbled up from some deep recess of his memory. He had no idea what that meant.) Small bubbles, zero-gee private rooms (and, in the unlikely event of an air leak, shelters), ringed the atrium at thirty degrees latitude, both north and south. Hatches to the two arcs of escape pods lay at about sixty degrees south latitude.

Jonas, Lincoln, and Felipe disdained most zero-gee sports, so they would not be outside playing or watching polo. They were not enjoying the freedom and view here in the grand atrium. So where were “his” employees? After sports and zoning out, the main attraction here was freefall sex. Maybe they were to be found among the wobbling private bubbles.

If Yakov had had a reason for placing three deniable representatives aboard this hotel—and ruining Dillon's life to do it—he had yet to discern it.

* * * *

A vast, dark plain hid half the sky. PS-1 did not really extend forever, but from where Marcus glided, a few feet above, the difference was not obvious.

“Be alert, people. We're coming up on a row of docking posts,” Thad radioed.

Marcus's hopper had slowed to less than a slow walk. He switched his main display from nav mode to landing mode, then guided a targeting circle over the nearest docking post. The circle flashed. “I have target lock,” he reported.

“Lock here too,” Savannah called.

“Go,” Thad said.

Marcus double-tapped the console's touch panel and his hopper ejected its docking tether. The gas-propelled tip—guided by hopper sensors through the cable at the tether's core—wrapped itself round and round the post. With another few taps he turned off the hopper's main thruster and started the take-up reel. A spurt of gas killed his momentum as the last of the docking tether wound onto its spool.

“Touchdown. The crowd goes wild,” he radioed.

From the adjacent post, Thad said, “We'll call it a two-point conversion if you dismount without floating away or putting a boot through the solar cells.”

Marcus and the rest had practiced dismounts in the neutral buoyancy tank in Houston and again on a mock-up on the surface of Phoebe; this was not the same. The surface that glittered a few feet beneath his boots was fragile and wafer thin. A typical expanse of the powersat (moved to the Earth's surface) would have weighed a fraction of an ounce per square foot. By the time he had reached the annular platform at the base of the post, he was soaked in sweat.

Olivia clambered down beside him. “Wow,” she mouthed.

“You said it.” Only wow did not begin to express his feelings. Maybe no words could.

They had docked about halfway out from the powersat's center, near a diagonal. Guide cables and catwalks crisscrossed the delicate surface. A primary computing node, where Savannah would do much of her inspection, was a mere few hundred feet away. Beyond the computing node, Marcus spotted the array of connectors, most still unoccupied, where robotic spacecraft would someday dock to designate new downlink coordinates.

Here and there, metal closets: radiation shelters. At risk of freezing off your privates, they were outhouses, too, because the closets stocked urine collection devices. Bleed oh-two into a shelter and you could safely open a counterpressure-suit fly. Only be really careful about resealing the fly before opening the shelter hatch. . . .

He scanned more systematically. All around, scuttling robots. A pair of human workers removing a solar panel to access the klystron/antenna array on the satellite's other side. Farther still, along the powersat's closest edge: some of the many thrusters that would—if this inspection trip went well—raise PS-1 to GEO. And in the distance, back the way they had come, two hoppers flying in tandem, towing a loaded cargo pallet. Mid survey, when he turned his back to the sun, his visor automatically depolarized.

One by one, everyone descended their docking post and checked in. “All right,” Marcus said. “Everyone has their assignments for today—”

Text popped up on his HUD. Incoming call from Earth.

Huh? This was not a public link. “Going private for a moment,” he told everyone. “Take the call,” he told his suit. “Hello?”

“Hey there, spaceman,” Ellen's familiar voice greeted him. “It's Wednesday.”

So? “We just docked with PS-1. We're about ready to get to work.”

“How does it feel?” Ellen asked. “Having status to give at a weekly meeting? And from PS-1, not our dreary conference room?”

It felt great!

* * * *

Thad went off to lend a hand to some Kendricks workers. Savannah settled down by one of the powersat's four primary computer complexes; its open access panel cast a faint shadow by earthlight. Olivia and Reuben meandered across the vast structure, taking measurements and capturing vids as they went.

Marcus waited to be called upon.

Every so often Reuben removed a solar panel and the transmitter panel beneath, sticking his head through the hole to study the powersat's other side. He and Olivia went on and off their own private channel, dictating their detailed findings, but once, well within an expanse of microwave antennas, with only his legs showing, Reuben forgot to switch channels. “Like God's own horn section,” he muttered.

For a while Marcus trailed after the pair. But that was silly; he could not lose them. Counterpressure suits used the same color-coding as flight suits. The green-suited figures together were Reuben and Olivia. The green suit by itself, other than Marcus's own, was Savvy. (Thad, in blue, having joined a crowd of Kendricks workers, could have been anyone.)

If Marcus did manage to lose track of a colleague, the helmet-cam views relayed to his HUD still showed everything he could need to see. If he wanted to look from other angles, he had plenty of experience remotely accessing PS-1's onboard cameras.

He stopped following them.

To Savvy's tuneless humming he watched bots transfer concrete structural elements from a recently arrived pallet to a storage depot. Amazing stuff, that concrete: a blend of dust, carbon nanotubes, and glue, every ingredient mined and manufactured on Phoebe.

All around him bots scuttled about clutching instruments, tiny tools, and spare parts, measuring, adjusting, replacing. Many bots moved alone; others worked in teams to manipulate objects larger than themselves. He played a game with himself, trying to guess which bots were guided by onboard programs and which obeyed the dictates of human operators. Logic said most bots had to be autonomous: One unit per ten thousand square feet did not seem like much, but across the vastness of PS-1, that came to more than ten thousand bots.

It was enough tiny pliers, screwdrivers, and whatnot for ten Santa's workshops. He tried to imagine little elfin hats and tiny, upturned slippers on all those bots.

He monitored the remote readouts of the inspection team's oh-two. He unplugged and removed a random solar panel (freakishly thin!) and the microwave-transmitter panel beneath, peeking through in an impromptu inspection of his own. Unlike the solar-cell side on which, for their own safety, everyone worked, the transmitter side was uncluttered: no shelters or depots or guide wires or anything to scatter microwaves. He put the panels back in place, careful not to chip the strong-but-brittle Phoebecrete struts.

He glided hand over hand along one of the guide cables, just for the practice, to a catwalk far across PS-1. The powersat was too vast and thin to be mechanically rigid, and as Marcus flew along he sensed the immense structure bending and flexing. But that was impossible; the perception was—had to be—in his mind.

To form and focus power beams required knowing exactly the relative positions of all the many thousand microwave transmitters. Sensor arrays detected PS-1's every flexure and tremor. Electro-elastic fibers constantly tensed and relaxed under real-time software control, synchronized by any of PS-1's four atomic clocks, to maintain precise alignment by damping out any vibration. And just in case the anti-trembling system failed, transmitters turned themselves off—not that PS-1 was transmitting—if independent accelerometers ever indicated that flexing had gone out of tight tolerance. It was another complex set of functions that Savvy would be testing another day.

Another day in which he would be on call, floating around and watching. He wondered if the workers might let him help . . . with something.

A robot labeled 3056 waited nearby, inert. Marcus tapped command codes into the wireless keypad strapped to his left forearm, but 3056 did not stir.

“Thad,” he radioed. “Why can't I get a construction bot to move? We're all supposed to have sysadmin privileges for our inspection. That authorization should be more than adequate.” Because there isn't any more privileged level.

“You'd think.” Thad sighed. “I created new accounts for your buddies, but you already had an account up here. I never got around to upgrading your authorization. Sorry. Give me two minutes. Once that's done, you'll need to jack into a local comm node.”

“Okay, thanks. And I should have remembered about using the local terminal.” Because these are serious bots, doing serious work, not toys like Val and I use to stroll about Phoebe. The wireless links to these bots were heavily encrypted.

Marcus linked his forearm keypad to a nearby comm node with a fiber-optic cable from his tool kit. This time when he gave an order, 3056 scuttled away from him. He lined up four idle bots and sent them off onto a hundred-yard dash. Controlling them with codes was less natural than with the game-controller interface he and Val used with the Phoebe bots, but still easy enough. With his helmet camera he shot a vid of them scrambling, and mailed it to her. Thinking of you, the accompanying note read.

On his return trip across the powersat Marcus peeked into supply depots and counted oxygen tanks, water bottles, and charged batteries. He sampled the pap—both varieties were foul—from his helmet dispensers. He tried and failed to perceive the functioning of the attitude system, thrusters cooperating to keep PS-1's solar cells facing toward the sun. With a grin every time he looked overhead, he savored the ever-changing panorama that was Earth.

After a couple of hours, he was bored.

“Savvy,” he radioed. “Private channel three.” For no special reason, he waved at her. She waved back. “How's it going?”

“I'm still poking around, but so far, no surprises. As advertised, several critical functions for aiming the beam are hardware-controlled. Beaming only works if the designated collection point radioed to PS-1 matches—in hardware—lat/long values preconfigured in a control-module port. And the powersat's failsafe handshake with an aiming beacon at the authorized downlink point is all done in hardware too.”

“That's all good, isn't it?”

“Outstanding, if it holds up. I haven't yet emptied my bag of dirty tricks. Even though I've confirmed aiming is hardware-controlled, there's still some access from the ground. There has to be. To choose from among the authorized downlink sites. To start and stop transmissions. To initiate and read out onboard diagnostics. To control thrusters for orbital station-keeping and the eventual boost to GEO. I need to make sure that when using—or misusing—those few ground-accessible functions, I can't get into anything else.”

“To do what?” he asked.

“Just let me do my job, okay?”

A priority alert started blinking on his HUD, but he figured he could finish the discussion. A comm emergency override took that decision from him.

* * * *

Dillon's stomach gurgled and he thought maybe he would head to the gravity ring soon. Some guests spent their whole stay in freefall, but Dillon did not see the point in eating from a squeeze tube when minutes away there was a four-star restaurant at one-third gee.

Soon, but not yet. Except for Maria Portillo, one of the women who had been on his shuttle, he had the northern hemisphere to himself and that hardly ever happened. Arms and legs fluttering, expending more energy than he cared to, she did slow laps through the air. With flippers on her feet, her long black hair loose and flowing, she brought to mind a mermaid.

The only distractions were distant oofs and grunts. While the northern hemisphere was one wide-open expanse, nets and taut ropes ran every which way through the southern. Once you acclimated to zero gee, you could get a hell of a good gymnastic workout there; until then you could make your way through as though on monkey bars. Not coincidentally, arriving passengers disembarked their shuttles through the airlock at the hotel's south pole.

Earth shone through the wall. Dillon found it inexpressibly calming. If only everyone could experience Mother Earth this way, surely many more would be Resetters.

Whenever air currents nudged him to face south, the polo game came into view beyond the clear, curved wall. Hoppers darting. Tethered onlookers maneuvering with gas pistols to keep out of the players’ way. The strobing red balloon “ball” sailing hither and yon, now and again scoring through the illuminated goal loops sited at three points of the game triangle. Had another few people chosen to play, there would have been a fourth goal, defining a tetrahedron.

The stupid polo game would not last forever. With a sigh, Dillon reached for the small gas pistol clipped to his belt—and his hand bumped someone. Twisting around to see who sent them drifting apart. “Sorry, Maria.”

“My fault.” Her English had a charming Latin touch. “I should watch where I am wafting.”

“Where's Adriana today? Outside?”

“What happens in The Space Place stays in The Space Place.” Maria gestured at the nearest private bubbles, some of them set opaque. “Your colleagues too?”

“Maybe.” He changed the subject. Maria and Adriana had turned out to be high-ranking marketing execs at Bolivian National Lithium Company. He could handle getting some cartel money invested into Russo Venture Capital Partners. “I was about to head out for lunch on the ring. Care to join me?”

“That would be very nice.”

He offered a hand. With gentle puffs of his gas pistol he delivered them to the equator, to the webbing beside a door. She stowed her flippers in a mesh pouch. The inner ring was de-spun and they went, feet first, through the connecting tube onto an elevator car. They slipped their feet through loops on the car's back wall. He pressed the panel marked outer ring.

The inner door closed. Unseen circuits activated. Electromagnets in the elevator cars pressed against Earth's much larger magnetic field, and the inner ring began to spin. The wall to which they had attached themselves became the floor. A progress bar on a wall display tracked their gradual spin-up.

“After hours adrift, gravity feels odd,” she said.

And it was not even much gravity. At max, on the outer ring, one-third Earth's gravity. Spinning any faster, the Coriolis effect would have made many people ill.

“Ding,” he announced, in unison with the elevator, evoking a smile. A floor panel slid open, and they stepped down the ladder in the connecting tunnel to the outer ring. What had become a ceiling panel slid shut, and a door opened in their tunnel. They walked out onto the central aisle of the outer ring.

“Coming through,” a woman's voice called.

“Good day, Captain Aganga,” Dillon said, no matter that captain was a pretentious title for a hotelier. The long-term staff lived and, when they could, worked on the outer ring, where gravity helped maintain their bone mass. They still had to exercise, though.

Their hostess was jogging toward them, in an odd gliding pace adapted to the low gravity. She was very tall and very dark. Sweat soaked her hair band, ran down her neck and face, and glued her T-shirt to an admirable physique. She blotted her face with a towel as she went past. “Mr. Dillon. Dr. Portillo.” And then she was past them.

“On to lunch,” Dillon said. He and Maria walked in the opposite direction from the captain, past machine shops, supply rooms, and engineering sections, toward the dining room. They encountered Jonas, wearing a sweatsuit, a towel draped over one shoulder, leaning against a doorjamb, phone in hand. Catching his breath, Dillon supposed.

“Hello, boss.” Jonas saluted. Mockingly? “Maria.”

“Hello,” they said.

Maria followed Dillon's lead and kept walking.

Farther down the hall, they found Felipe also standing, also dressed to jog and holding a phone. “That's two of you. Where's Lincoln?” Dillon asked.

Felipe made a crude gesture. “Occupied.”

“Show some manners,” Dillon snapped, appalled.

He and Maria came to the dining room. Chamber music played softly. Mozart, he thought. Something smelled wonderful. The ma'tre d’ came scuttling up—

And sirens began to wail.

* * * *

In the tunnels of Phoebe and in the chambers, large and small, of The Space Place, loudspeakers came to life. Aboard every ship and within every spacesuit—around PS-1 too—every radio receiver flipped to its emergency channel. Everywhere, sirens wailed.

Then the recording began, identical in every location.

“Alert. Alert. This is not a drill. The solar weather forecasting system predicts a major solar event. Report at once to the nearest radiation shelter. Alert. Alert . . .”

* * * *

Wednesday afternoon, September 27

Dillon and Maria swam from the elevator into the Grand Atrium—and chaos.

“First things first,” he told her. “Spacesuits.”

“Right.”

They pulled themselves along ropes to the southern row of rooms. In the bubble next to him, the wall rippled and vibrated, frantic rather than erotic. Dillon said, “The fastest way to change is with a partner.” He followed her to her room and helped her into her counterpressure suit. In his room, she returned the favor. Each stripped naked in the process, and there was nothing erotic about that, either.

The loudspeakers blared, and he recognized Captain Aganga's resonant voice. “All guests are to put on vacuum gear and proceed to the southern airlock. This is not a drill. The elevators will cease operation shortly, once supervisors confirm evacuation of the outer ring. Proceed as quickly as you safely can to the south-polar airlock. Staff there will check your suits. Once outside, other staff will guide you . . .”

The polo players and observers were mostly still outside. Through the clear walls of the Grand Atrium, Dillon saw a freefall scuffle break out over a stash of oxygen bottles, even as a hopper approached towing a fresh supply.

“I don't understand," Maria said. “Why are we going outside into lethal radiation? I thought the hotel has electromagnetic shielding, that the whole place is a radiation shelter.”

That had been explained, but he knew he hadn't internalized all the bad news. He guessed she hadn't, either. “I heard the captain say the shield generator has failed. We have to evacuate.”

“To Earth?”

From more than four thousand miles up? Anyone evacuating by escape pod would get a fatal dose of radiation long before reaching the ground. And—sudden intuitive flash—their safe evacuation to Earth could do nothing to advance Yakov's plan. Whatever the hell that was.

“I don't know,” Dillon lied. “We need to get going.”

Captain Aganga had been drenched with sweat from her jog, but Felipe and Jonas had been fresh and dry. Because rather than catching their breaths, they were lookouts. They had been keeping watch for Lincoln, the electrical-engineering wizard. Had EM Shield been a placard on a door between the two men? Dillon was almost sure it was.

By the south-polar airlock, people had queued up. Some carried a bag, a small suitcase, or even, in one case, a backpack. Most, like he and Maria, had only the spacesuit they wore.

He thought, we look like refugees.

Aganga continued directing the evacuation. “There are too few staff to pilot all the hoppers. Any guest qualified to fly a hopper is invited to identify herself to the staff inside the airlock. Hotel personnel will assign guests to hoppers for the flight to Phoebe.”

“Phoebe!” Maria shuddered. “That's far. And off limits.”

Two hundred miles. “The depths of Phoebe are the only possible radiation haven we can reach. They have no choice but to take us.”

And that must have been Yakov's plan! Somehow. Part of it, anyway. Dillon no longer flattered himself that he understood his erstwhile “partner.”

How could even Yakov plan for a CME to come shooting at Earth?

Someone in staff livery came speeding by, and Maria grabbed his sleeve. She said, “Hoppers? Why not the escape pods?”

“Sorry, ma'am. The pods do one thing: return to Earth if something goes catastrophically wrong. (Something had gone catastrophically wrong, Dillon thought. As always, people had anticipated the wrong catastrophe.) “To keep the pods simple and reliable, that is all they can do. Once lit, the solid-fuel retrorocket runs till it burns out. The pods will de-orbit; they cannot be used to maneuver in orbit. If you'll excuse me?”

“But I don't want—”

“That's just how it is, ma'am.” Shaking off Maria's hand, the hotel worker rushed off.

* * * *

By the time Thad's charges had regrouped at their docking posts, the evacuation of PS-1 was well underway. “We have plenty of time,” he had assured them, hoping he was right.

They had the good sense to keep chatter to a minimum, or at least to use private channels among themselves.

Forty tourists? Twenty hotel staff? Phoebe's population was about to quadruple. It was going to be cozy in the shelter.

Oxygen and water for the extra people would not be a problem; Phoebe produced those for The Space Place in the first place. But what else might they need in the shelter? Food. First-aid kits. Blankets. Flashlights and a battery assortment. Datasheets, because the CME could take hours to stream past. Critical spare parts for—he was not sure what, and hoped someone had had time to think that through. Counting only the staff, the number of toilets in the shelter was marginal. So: bunches of urine collection devices and fresh piddle pads for the ladies.

A CME could fry satellites and much of Phoebe's surface gear. The bigger the structure, the more susceptible, to both charge build-up and induced currents. In theory, PS-1 had been designed to handle a CME. He guessed they would find out.

The hopper garage was crowded by the time Thad got to Phoebe. Waving the inspection team toward the main airlock, he advised, “In you go. Anything small you guys may want with you in the shelter, get it now.”

“Is there time to change into clothes?” Reuben asked.

“Is there time to check messages?” Marcus asked.

“You figure that out,” Thad said. “Just be inside the shelter in fifteen minutes.” Because in not much longer, the first wave of the Phoebe evacuees would descend on them. Soon after that Phoebe would emerge from behind Earth.

Soon after that, the leading edge of the CME would burst over them.

After cycling through the airlock, they grabbed Velcro slippers from the wall rack and scattered. Thad joined them in flouting the rule about keeping spacesuits near the entrance. He dashed to his own room to find the message-waiting light blinking on his comm console. Not forwarded while he had been out, he supposed, because the recall had put local networks into overload. He tapped display next.

Take care of yourself. Cousin Jonas is coming. Your cousin, Jacob.

This is not happening! Thad told himself.

He yanked open the deepest drawer in his small dresser and flung the clothes from it into his hammock. With a nail file jammed into the crack he pried up the drawer's false bottom. Beneath lay the parcel hidden for so long. He stuffed the parcel and fresh batteries into a tote bag, covered everything with a clean jumpsuit, and put the false bottom and wadded clothing back in their places.

Then he sped to the main airlock. “Cousin Jonas” would be among the soon-to-arrive tourists.

* * * *

Do not reveal yourself unnecessarily. The words gave Thad hope Yakov's other agents would not reveal him if he cooperated. He might yet come through . . .

Through what? He had no inkling, beyond something bad.

Just inside the main airlock he found a frightened-looking crowd, all wearing red or yellow counterpressure suits: tourists or hotel staff. Helmets in hand, borrowed Velcro slippers crammed over their boots, they shuffled down the station's central corridor into the station. Here and there an evacuee carried a suitcase or a pitiful satchel.

Thad noticed three men in red at the rear of the procession, looking all around. Why had they caught his eye? Because they looked more composed than the rest?

The chief had put on a fresh jumpsuit for the occasion. “This way,” he urged, waving evacuees down a cross corridor. “I'm Irv Weingart, station chief on Phoebe. Our deep shelter is this way. This way, people. I'm . . .”

The shortest man among the trio fixed his eyes on Thad. “Cousin Thaddeus?” The man managed the Polish pronunciation, something Thad had only heard from a great aunt. “Is that really you?"

Yakov's contact. “Yes, it's me. Small world, Jonas.”

The three men angled over to Thad. “Where are they?” the short one hissed.

“Follow me,” he whispered. He ushered them into a nearby pantry.

The pantry was empty—not only of people, but with many of its shelves cleared. Thad reached into his tote and delivered the parcel and the sack of batteries.

Jonas tore open the parcel, nodded approval, and put everything into his satchel. “These better work.”

“They will.” Thad opened the door. “We have to get into the shelter.”

“In a minute.” Jonas seemed oddly indifferent to the CME racing their way. “Now give me user ID and password for a sysadmin account for the powersat.”

“It's useless. Sysadmin logon only works from hardwired terminals on PS-1 itself.” And going there now, with the CME about to strike, would be insanity. Thad could not get his mind around what these men thought to accomplish. “We have to get to the shelter.”

“Indeed we do.” Jonas smiled enigmatically. “Our mutual acquaintance told me that the magic word is ‘Robin.'”

Thad flinched. “All right. He recited his logon codes. “Now can we go?”

“We three will go. You have to disable long-range comm first.”

“I can't turn off comm,” Thad protested. “We have people still on the surface. They're shutting down and securing the observatory, solar-cell factory, nuclear power plant, and anything else they can get to in time.”

“Long range,” Jonas repeated. “As in, reaching Earth. But I said disable, not turn off.”

“The long-range radio is already switched off as protection against the CME. If I turn it back on, the CME will get it.”

“This isn't up for discussion.” Pause. “Remember Robin.”

“All right.” For Robin. “Let me take you to the shelter before someone gets suspicious about us.”

“We wouldn't have it any other way,” Jonas repeated.

The surface crew, still in their vacuum gear, emerged from the main airlock as Thad shepherded Jonas and his companions toward the shelter. “Stragglers,” Thad told them.

When they reached the entrance to the shelter, lights blazed inside. He wondered if anyone had thought about pumping out the heat from so many extra bodies, or to bring in extra fuel cells.

"There you are.” Irv looked relieved. He stood beside an open hatch. “Cutting it close, don't you think? Go on down. I'm going to make one final sweep of the station.”

Pausing on the ladder that led down a shaft into the shelter, Jonas shot a dark look over his shoulder.

“I'll check things out, Chief,” Thad said.

“Station chief's prerogative.”

“Our visitors have met you,” Thad said desperately. “You keep them calm while I do the run-through.”

Irv shrugged. “Okay. Don't tarry.”

Tarzan-swinging toward the command center, Thad tried to imagine an innocent-seeming way to disable comm. He could not just pop the circuit breaker or jiggle loose a socketed component: After the CME had passed, someone else might get to the command center before him. But when the CME came through, all sorts of electronics would fry. . . .

He found heavy-gauge wire in a parts cabinet and snipped off a length. Gripping the wire with insulated pliers, he shorted the high-voltage terminal of the power supply to components inside the main radio console. Sparks flew. On circuit boards, devices went pop. Smoke erupted. For good measure he fried the diagnostic subsystem, too, then closed the cabinet doors.

By wrapping his hand in a handkerchief, he managed to coil the wire—still hot, its insulation bubbled and blackened—without doing harm to the fingers of his counterpressure suit. He rushed to his tiny room to cram the coiled wire under the drawer's false bottom. It would not do for anyone to find the wire.

He found Irv pacing outside the shelter entrance. “I was about to come looking for you.”

“Ye of little faith,” Thad said. “Let's go down.”

* * * *

Dillon stood in the shelter, obsessively looking around, obsessively checking the wall clock. The CME was almost upon them.

Welded aluminum panels lined the shelter, a volume hollowed out deep beneath Phoebe's main base. Phoebe's mines offered many minerals in abundance, but not metals. Those had to be lofted from Earth, and that happened only for a good reason. Such as providing a few key parts of PS-1. And a sturdier storm cellar . . .

A stranger (a woman, he thought) had shoved a drink bulb into his hands. Someone in a blue flight suit, anyway, so he or she was one of the Phoebe personnel. He had half-drained the bulb before it registered that he had burnt his mouth on hot coffee. Tuning out the discomfort, he checked the clock again. Another minute had passed.

The shelter was full, but more people kept crowding inside. Dillon recognized maybe half the faces in the shelter, from among hotel guests and staff. A few others looked familiar. He guessed he had seen those people, in fact, remembered having had a dinnertime conversation with one, at space training in Houston.

That was another world. Literally.

Maria, reunited with Adriana, stood across the shelter speaking rapid-fire Spanish. At least Dillon thought it was Spanish. With so many people talking at once it was hard to tell.

Jonas, Felipe, and Lincoln were in a huddle near the entrance. They, like many of the evacuees, had blankets draped over their shoulders. Of the three, Dillon could see only Jonas's face. He looked tense.

Why the hell not look tense, Dillon thought. He still shook from the long hopper ride.

Jonas saw Dillon watching. Join us, Jonas mouthed.

They were smart and knowledgeable. They would understand what was going on. As Dillon edged through the crowd to stand with them, more people came in. One gave Jonas a nervous, sideways glance.

Dillon flinched at sudden loud booming. Looking toward the noise, he saw the station chief rapping on the still-open metal door. People turned and some quieted down. More rapping and booming. The crowd gradually fell silent.

“May I have your attention?” Weingart said. The station chief's hand had moved to the metal door's simple latch handle. “According to forecasts, the leading edge of the CME will reach us in five minutes. It's time we close ourselves into the shelter to wait it out.”

“Is everyone accounted for?” Jonas asked. “From Phoebe, the hotel, and PS-1?”

“Yes,” Weingart said.

“Here, inside this room?” Jonas persisted. “Everyone.”

“Yes.” Weingart repeated impatiently. “It's time we—”

“Excellent,” Jonas said. “My friends and I will be leaving.”

“I cannot allow that,” Weingart said. He began pulling the door. “We'll be all right.”

“I'm afraid I must insist.” Jonas threw off his blanket and dropped his bag. He held a gun. So did Lincoln. Felipe held two.

At least the devices looked like guns. They had handgrips and outward-pointing metal rods. But unlike any gun Dillon had ever seen, the “barrel” was solid rather than hollow and was wrapped in wire coils. A metal doughnut, smaller in diameter than the coils, hugged the barrel at its handgrip end. A battery sat beneath the barrel.

“What is this?” Weingart asked. “Whatever you have in mind, forget it. It's about to become lethal out there.”

“Nevertheless,” Jonas said. “Felipe, give the boss his gun.”

One of the odd guns was shoved into Dillon's hands.

At some level he must always have known Yakov would never let him go free, for an eerie calm washed over Dillon. He could stop thinking, stop speculating what he might do or should do or could do. He could not possibly disassociate himself from whatever was about to happen.

His only hope of a future lay in joining these men. A future in Russia, under the Russian equivalent of a witness-protection program, even if everything worked out—but still, a future. He wondered if Crystal would join him.

“It's suicide to go out there,” Weingart said. “A very messy suicide. The radiation won't kill you immediately, but you'll get many times a lethal dose. I can't let you go.”

Jonas waggled his gun. “You can't make us stay. Now back away from the door.”

“I don't know what kind of Tinkertoy gadget you have—”

Zap!

Weingart gaped at the red, bloody hole in his thigh. For a moment, he looked stupefied. Then he crumpled, collapsing in slow motion.

In the sudden hush, Dillon heard the high-pitched whine of a circuit recharging.

“It's called a coil gun,” Jonas said conversationally. He thumbed something on the handgrip. With a click, a new metal doughnut emerged and settled onto the barrel. “It uses electromagnets to accelerate a metal washer. Does anyone else require a demonstration?”

No one spoke.

Jonas smiled. “Good. Stay inside and you might live through this.”

Felipe, Lincoln, Jonas, and Dillon backed out of the entrance, closing the hatch behind them.

* * * *

The hatch slammed shut.

The boom of finality jarred everyone from their stunned silence. Around the shelter there were sudden shouts, and tears, and knots of whispered consultation.

Marcus shivered. He knew those men. From the training center. The one they called boss was—Marcus needed a moment to retrieve the name—Dillon Russo.

Phoebe's doctor was struggling through the crowd toward Irv Weingart. One of the hotel evacuees, shouting, “I'm a doctor,” was pushing that way too.

“Quiet!" Thad yelled, louder than anyone. “Everyone move against the walls, please, as best you can. Let the doctors through.”

Marcus sidled backward, doing his part to clear a path, then twitched as someone grabbed his arm. Savvy.

“Those bastards trained with us!” she said. “I'm sure I saw them in Houston.”

“I remember.”

How much did he remember? One evening he had taken an empty seat at their table. All but Dillon had left. He and Dillon had discussed training, of course. But hadn't there been something else? Dillon had criticized Marcus for . . . eating meat.

Vegetarianism was not what bothered him. That was a lifestyle choice, and it did not mark someone as an extremist, let alone a terrorist. But Dillon had not criticized the animal-rights aspect or the health benefits of a meat-free diet. He had complained that raising beef took too much energy. The pieces fit.

“Shit!” Marcus said. “Almost certainly, the four of them are Resetter extremists. They'll be after PS-1!”

Thad must have heard. He pushed through to Marcus. “Tell me what you know.”

Marcus told his story, ending with, “We have to stop them.”

Thad tapped his wristwatch. “It's too late, unless you have a death wish.”

No, but Dillon and his buddies must have one to expose themselves to a CME. Marcus wondered: Did the CME somehow figure into their plan?

The work crew had left PS-1 with its systems shut down, like unplugging a TV before a lightning storm. A CME washing over the powersat would still do some damage, but robots and spare parts staged inside metal sheds would handle any necessary repairs. Unless—

Marcus said, “If those guys reactivate PS-1, the CME damage will be bad. Very bad. Maybe start-over-from-scratch bad.”

Thad looked conflicted. “They're out there, willing to die for their cause. We're in here. If you are nuts enough to leave the shelter, they're armed.”

Marcus started unfolding his datasheet.

“What are you doing?’ Savvy asked.

“Maybe we can net to the command center from here.” Only the shelter walls were lined with metal. A Faraday cage. If they opened the hatch a crack and tossed out the datasheet, it could transmit a message to the command center. “Call down to NASA. They can order PS-1 into safe"—inert—"mode.”

Thad shook his head. “Won't work. Our long-range comm is off for the CME.”

“We have to do something." Marcus glanced over to where doctors still worked on Irv Weingart's leg. He looked zoned out on painkillers. “Who is in charge? I need to talk to him.”

Thad smiled sadly. “With Irv out of commission? The sad truth is, I'm in charge.”

To be continued.

Copyright © 2011 Edward M. Lerner

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY
by Don Sakers

Ah, short stories! Who doesn't love a good SF one? I know I'm preaching to the choir here; Analog readers obviously appreciate short stories. But what is it about the form that we like so much?

For one thing, a short story is quick to read. When you enter the world of a novel, you know that you're going to be in and out, like a tourist in a fancy parking garage. Like it or not, you have to put the book down now and again to deal with the real world and its distractions. Not so with a short story; one can often finish in a single setting, so the outside world never has to intrude.

Another appeal of the short story is its focus. Novels have room to spread out all over the place: multiple interesting locations, complex multilayered plots, many intriguing ideas, and the proverbial cast of thousands. A short story, on the other hand, is all about minimalism: one idea, one plot, one major setting, at most a handful of characters. If the best novels are a full-course gourmet meal, the best short stories are a perfect, exquisite, handpicked strawberry.

This quality of focus allows a short story to pack an enormous punch in a way that longer forms simply can't. Think of some of the classic short stories of the field, and how they left you reeling the first time you read them: Arthur C. Clarke's “The Star,” Harlan Ellison's “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” or Damon Knight's “To Serve Man.”

In terms of focus and punch, you can't beat the “short-short story” of fewer than 1,000 words—the length featured in Analog's Probability Zero department. A good short-short is a whiff of ammonia, a shot of smooth whiskey, a bite-size confection that lingers for hours on the taste buds.

Finally, short stories—like tapas or smorgasbord—allow one to sample unfamiliar things. The investment of time isn't huge; if you don't like the story, you haven't lost much. Readers can try out new authors, different genres, exotic voices. Writers can experiment with techniques, viewpoints, modes of expression. And short stories are a great way to introduce SF to those who don't ordinarily read it.

For a long time the SF field was composed almost exclusively of short stories. This period lasted from the foundation of the pulp SF magazines in the 1920s until after World War II, and covered the entire era usually called “The Golden Age of Science Fiction.” In those days, the field's most talented writers worked in short stories, and the magazines were the only source of the full variety of SF. However, finding older stories required enormous effort, haunting used bookstores and digging through endless bins of moldering pulps.

That changed in 1946, with the publication of perhaps the most important SF anthology ever published. Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, collected thirty-three of the best stories (and two essays) from the prewar pulps (most of them originally published in Astounding). The list of contributors is a “Who's Who” of Golden Age SF. The commercial success of this anthology demonstrated that there was a market for science fiction in book form; it's entirely fair to call it, as Frederik Pohl did, “the book that started the science-fiction publishing industry.”

When the SF community began giving the annual Hugo Awards in 1955, it was only natural to include short stories as one of the main categories. In 1966 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) followed suit with their own Nebula Award.

While magazines (and now, webzines) have remained an important source of short stories, anthologies and collections are an important way to preserve and spread good stories. (A collection is usually made up of stories by one author, while an anthology consists of many different authors.) Adventures in Space and Time, sadly out of print, remains a good source of Golden Age stories. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, edited by Robert Silverberg based on a vote by the membership of SFWA, contains twenty-six of the best short stories published before 1965.

Over the years, many editors have put together annual “Best of the Year” collections of short stories; currently The Year's Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois is into its twenty-seventh year, and editor Rich Horton's The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy is on its third annual volume.

Not all anthologies contain reprints. In 1953 Frederik Pohl published Star Science Fiction, the first of a series of anthologies of previously-unpublished stories (such an anthology is termed an “original anthology.") Star was essentially a magazine in book form, and that pattern continues today in such anthologies as The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction edited by George Mann.

But there's another type of original anthology, and that's the “theme” anthology—a book where all the short stories flow from the same inspiration. These can be as sublime as Bruce Sterling's Mirrorshades or Nick Gevers’ Steampunk (both of which encapsulated entire literary movements: cyberpunk and steampunk respectively) or as ridiculous as my own Carmen Miranda's Ghost is Haunting Space Station Three. The heyday of theme anthologies was the mid 1970s, when literally hundreds of them flooded the market—as much as 25% of them produced by a single editor (the infamous Roger Elwood).

This time around I have a selection of anthologies containing over seventy short stories and novelettes (a novelette is basically a long short story) plus an assortment of essays, poems, and other short pieces.

* * * *

Nebula Awards Showcase 2011

edited by Kevin J. Anderson

Tor, 416 pages, $17.99 (trade paperback)

Kindle, Nook: pricing not available (e-book)

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2842-7

Genre: Reprint Anthology

* * * *

As mentioned above, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) awards the annual Nebula Award to the best SF works, as chosen by vote of the members. While the Hugo Awards are chosen by readers, Nebula voters are professional writers. As with any award, controversy eternally accompanies the Nebulas, and the arcane rules are continually being revised. Nebula voters (who are actually a self-selected subset of SFWA) tend to prefer works that are move literary and avant-garde than the average Analog story—indeed, the only piece in this current volume that was published in Analog is a 1981 Joe Haldeman story. (This story, the volume's sole pre-2009 tale, is included as a sample of Haldeman's work; Haldeman was awared the SFWA Grand Master Award this time around.)

None of that matters. Whatever the process, the Nebula Awards generally go to fine stories on the cutting edge of the field.

The 2011 Showcase presents the results of the 2010 Nebula Awards, which were given for stories published in 2009. Editor Kevin J. Anderson includes all of the nominees in the short story and novelette categories and the winning novella, as well as three poems that won the Rhysling Awards (presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association).

* * * *

Dark Futures: Tales of SF Dystopia

edited by Jason Sizemore

Dark Quest, 268 pages, $14.95

(trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-9826197-2-8

Genres: Dystopian Futures, Original Theme Anthology

* * * *

One place the short story really shines is in the genre of dystopian futures. While everyone enjoys a nice, dismal dystopia, the problem is that they're all so bloody depressing. By the end of even the best-written dystopian novel, you tend to feel tense and wrung-out, if not downright paranoid. But with short stories, you can dip into and out of an unpleasant future world before it starts to get to you.

Editor Jason Sizemore has put together a book of nineteen dystopian tales ranging from gritty Big Brother cityscape (Maggie Jamison's “Memories of Hope City") to thought-provoking faux nonfiction ("A Marketing Proposal” by Sara M. Harvey) to positively poignant ("Black Hole Sun” by Alethea Kontis & Kelli Owen, in which two digital-native teenagers react to news of the upcoming end of the world). As is often the case with theme anthologies, it's fascinating to see how different authors go in a different direction from the same staring point. There's certainly enough variety here to keep the various dystopias from becoming too oppressive.

* * * *

Welcome to the Greenhouse: New Science Fiction on Climate Change

edited by Gordon van Gelder

OR Books, 352 pages, $17.00

(trade paperback)

$10 (e-book—www.orbooks.com)

ISBN: 978-1-935928-27-0 (print)

978-1-935928-26-3 (e-book)

Genres: Ecological/Environmental SF, Original Theme Anthology

* * * *

Let me get this out of the way immediately: global climate change is a controversial topic with passionate feelings on all sides. None of that matters right now. Science fiction has always explored possibilities without claiming that they are real. You don't have to believe in psionics to enjoy Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human any more than you have to believe in flying saucers to enjoy The Day the Earth Stood Still. SF is about answering the question “What if?” even when the particular “if” might be unlikely or even impossible.

Gordon van Gelder has put together a strong anthology of sixteen stories that answer the question “What if global climate change happens?” Some pretty impressive names have given their visions: Brian W. Aldiss, Gregory Benford, Bruce Sterling, Alan Dean Foster, and Paul Di Filippo, but there are also some relatively unknown bylines here as well.

The key to a good story about any huge trend, like worldwide disaster, is to make it personal. This is a lesson the authors know well; all of these stories are written at the scale of individual human beings, with compelling characters facing personal problems. From a paddlewheel trip across a drowned California to the family problems of an adolescent in a transhuman world, there's something here to please everyone. (If you're not a fan of global warming, there's even a story about a new ice age.)

No matter what you believe about climate change, Welcome to the Greenhouse is a treat for anyone who appreciates good SF in the best speculative tradition.

* * * *

By Other Means

edited by Mike McPhail

Dark Quest, 218 pages, $14.95

(trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-9830993-5-2

Series: Defending the Future 3

Genres: Military SF, Original Theme Anthology

* * * *

Military SF comes in short story form, too. In the Defending the Future series of anthologies (the two prior volumes were Breach the Hull and So It Begins), editor Mike McPhail brings together some satisfying single-servings of military-themed science fiction. Analog readers will see some familiar names here, among them John G. Hemry and Bud Sparhawk. David Sherman contributes a story from the science fantasy Demontech universe.

Altogether, By Other Means contains fourteen stories. You might expect lots of huge space battles and epic derring-do, but many of these tales are more personal and character-driven. There's more than a bit of introspection and moral reflection, as well.

Reading By Other Means, it's easy to imagine yourself at the off-base bar on a deep-space transfer station, overhearing the tales of passing space marines, naval officers, and assorted other soldiers. If you enjoy a well-told story in the military SF genre, this is the book for you.

* * * *

Golden Reflections

edited by Joan Spicci Saberhagen

& Robert E. Vardeman

Baen, 467 pages, $20.00 (hardcover)

Bean Webscriptions: $6.00 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3415-3

Genres: Alternate History, Original Theme Anthology, Parallel Worlds, Time Travel

* * * *

A type of anthology that's becoming more common nowadays is what we might call the “tribute anthology.” In this type of book, authors write stories in honor of a big-name colleague; they can be set in worlds created by the honoree, or written in his/her style, or otherwise inspired by the great one. Sometimes these tribute anthologies appear to commemorate a special anniversary or birthday (as with Elizabeth Anne Hull's Gateways, published for the 90th birthday of its honoree, Frederik Pohl). Sadly, too many of these tribute anthologies are posthumous.

Golden Reflections is such a posthumous tribute to the late Fred Saberhagen. In 1979 Saberhagen published a clever little alternate worlds novel called Mask of the Sun, set in an alternate world in which the dominant Aztecs are fighting other timelines for control of the multiverse. It was a fairly successful story of warring parallel worlds, with many devoted fans.

About a year after Saberhagen's death in 2007, his widow (one of this volume's co-editors) got the idea of inviting other authors to write stories set in the Mask of the Sun universe. The idea turned out to be a popular one. Early on, the editors decided to feature only longer pieces, novelettes and novellas. Golden Reflections presents the results: seven stories, plus a reprint of the original novel that started it all.

As is usually the case with tribute anthologies, the list of authors is impressive: Daniel Abraham, Jane Lindskold, John Maddox Roberts, Dean Wesley Smith, Harry Turtledove, David Weber, and Walter Jon Williams. Even more impressive is the stories themselves. Every one is meaty, engaging, well-written . . . and a true tribute to Fred Saberhagen. From ancient Pharaohs to Cervantes, the cast of characters is both fascinating and fun. Including the source novel was a good choice; it's great fun to see what threads the other authors have picked up and woven into their own tales.

* * * *

Jar Jar Binks Must Die . . . and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies

Daniel M. Kimmel

Fantastic Books, 189 pages, $14.99

(trade paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-61720-061-8

Genre: Popular Nonfiction

* * * *

Short isn't just for stories. The nonfiction equivalent of the short story is the essay—and essays are popular for much the same reason as short stories.

Daniel M. Kimmel is a science fiction fan and movie reviewer. In this volume he's collected several dozen short essays on science fiction (and related genre) films. These aren't reviews, written to help you decided whether or not to see the movie; these essay generally assume that the reader is familiar with most of the movies mentioned.

Kimmel obviously loves SF, and that love shines through even when he's castigating individual films. Whether he's explaining why Metropolis is such an important film, or joining in with the obligatory George Lucas bashing, his writing is intelligent and entertaining. You may disagree with him (in fact, you almost certainly will on something), but you can't say he doesn't give reasoned arguments in support of his positions. And his knowledge of SF movies is encyclopedic.

This is the guy you want sitting next to you when Channel 45 has a weekend “sci-fi” movie marathon.

For anyone who likes SF movies, this volume is worth the price of admission.

That's about it for this issue. When you're done reading the short stories in this issue, go forth and read more.

* * * *

Don Sakers is the author of Dance for the Ivory Madonna and A Voice in Every Wind. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com. Genre and series information is based on listings at www.readersadvice.com.

Copyright © 2011 Don Sakers

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS

Dear Stan,

Your editorial, “Adjectives That Aren't” [March 2011] brought up a few sore points. I was reminded of a conversation my Kenyan safari driver and I had one afternoon after a ride through the bush. His English was very good and was American English, with an American accent, so I think I must have mentioned that fact to him. He said that they had so many American tourists that he and his colleagues learned most of their English from Americans rather than the British. It turns out that he was also a fan of William Holden, who apparently frequently visited the Kenyan Safari Club, which presumably has a lodge near Mount Kenya. So apparently he learned his native Swahili at home and then American English from his tourist charges.

At any rate, he said in a non-rhetoric way, “English is a very precise language, isn't it?” I remember pausing a moment in rapid thought and then agreeing with him. Yes, it is.

But since your editorial, I've been having thoughts about just how precise English is. I know a few words in several languages, and while it's not enough to hold a conversation in any of them, from what little I have learned, I suspect that American English is as complex, detailed, and precise as any of the rest.

But that isn't apparently enough. There are several commentaries about subjects I have wanted to write about in the past but haven't. The problem is that I begin to write and then suddenly find I'm running right into someone's prejudice. If I write the commentary and it's published, how many people am I going to upset or antagonize? How do you write something that is completely contrary to either the general opinion of the public at large or a large portion thereof? How do you write something for an audience that is absolutely convinced that they know better than you and refuse to even listen to an alternative? How do you convince someone to listen to a point of view when he knows he is right and absolutely refuses to listen?

Is there a way to write something with an apology included? Not an apology for writing what you believe, but an apology for contradicting someone else's deadly held beliefs? Or do you? Do you simply spend your entire life avoiding confrontational subjects? How do people hold their beliefs without listening to possible alternatives?

Leonard R. Cook

Goleta, CA

* * * *

In my long experience with this very subject, I've found that essentially anything you write will offend somebody. If you try to avoid that, you'll wind up saying nothing of substance—and that will offend somebody, too. The best you can do is think out what you really want to say; say it as clearly and carefully as you can, in terms that don't sound like personal attacks; and resign yourself to the fact that a few people will still take them that way and you will antagonize people from time to time. That's no reason not to deal with issues that need to be dealt with, but it's a good idea to check what you've said to make sure you haven't been gratuitously offensive.

* * * *

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

Reading “Quack” (Analog April 2011) gave me a bit of deja vu. I remembered an article in the 13 December 2010 issue of The New Yorker. In the “Annals of Science” department by Jonah Lehrer it is entitled “The Truth Wears Off; Is There Something Wrong With the Scientific Method?”

If you have not already seen it, I strongly suggest you go get it and read it carefully. Also, mentioned by Lehrer, a paper by John Ioannidis: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” I haven't seen that one yet but the title demands attention.

Lehrer's article is about a phenomenon that may be called “the decline effect.” I don't want to go into too much detail, but here is a tidbit quoted from near the end of the piece, just to pique your interest:

“The same [decline effect] holds for any number of phenomena, from the disappearing benefits of second-generation antipsychotics to the weak coupling ratio exhibited by decaying neutrons, which appears to have fallen by more than ten standard deviations between 1969 and 2001.”

I hope you find Lehrer's piece as fascinating as did I.

Jack Searight

* * * *

The author replies:

I looked up Lehrer's article on the “decline effect,” and it sounds like a fascinating phenomenon. Scientific studies apparently become less reproducible over time. Someone needs to do a careful scientific study of this!

Jerry Oltion

* * * *

Dear Mr. Schmidt:

I was pleasantly surprised by your editorial “A Seasonal Dilemma” in the April issue. Surprised that a science fiction magazine would devote several pages to a pedagogic educational topic. Pleasantly, because it was an insightful commentary on a subject that has been baffling me since I became a high school English teacher and avid science fiction fan.

I also teach summer school now and then and have always wondered why kids would choose to give up their vacation to spend more time in a place they apparently didn't want to be. I used to use summer school as a threat. I would tell them that if they didn't do the work they would end up spending their summer in class to make up the credits needed for graduation. It didn't work. When I asked them why they would jeopardize their vacation I was surprised by the answer most of them gave: “To hang out with my friends.” It seems summer school has become a social venue.

Coincidentally, I recently heard an NPR discussion with ex-District of Columbia school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, who said that America sees education as a social issue, whereas other countries see it as an economic issue. Although she used it in a different context, the word “social” struck me as a term that has often come up in the news lately with the increasing popularity of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Has school become a place to socialize, then? Even in the summer?

I look back on my own experiences when I was in high school and remember that I used to shudder at the thought of losing my summer vacation. But 50 years ago, San Jose was a different place. There were reservoirs for swimming; there were bike trails and places to camp along the creeks and in the uninhabited hills surrounding the valley.

The point, however, is that there was, in “those days” ample opportunity to explore, and socialize with friends away from the confines of a classroom. The reservoirs are now polluted and most of the areas where we used to hang out are either closed, fenced in with locked gates, or posted with “Keep Out” signs. Is it, therefore, any wonder that summer school may be a preferred alternative to the mall or the streets, for both kids and adults who want to keep them off the streets? The adventure and discovery that lies just over the hill is left unexplored. And the learning experience that comes with it is left unrealized.

Every kid now has a cell phone with which they communicate and socialize, often surreptitiously in class. Can a book or the library really compete with a video game or Facebook?

I have seen statistics that claim more children are reading than ever before. If that is true then we need to change the curriculum because many of my students do not read the books they are assigned. They most often go directly to Google and search for one of the myriad sites now available offering essay writing services and brief summaries.

Plagiarism is increasing at an alarming rate. Our school doesn't have the resources to pay for the service that catches it so the students are taking a chance that the teacher doesn't have the time or is too lazy to check each essay online, even if it looks like it was written by a college graduate.

I was recently instrumental in getting Card's Ender's Game included on our district's list of freshman English texts. It is one of the few books that they actually read. Many of them borrow my copies of the sequels (no one has ever requested a Gatsby sequel). During that unit I also show the movie Serenity, which has become a favorite and is the only movie they have ever requested to be shown again. Perhaps this will result in a new generation of sci-fi fans.

Don Donschikowski,

San Jose, CA

* * * *

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

Your editorial about summer vacation touched on something critically important. In order for a person to learn something, they need to want to learn it. A friend of mine who started his own software company, without stopping in business school first, told me that some books become interesting when you need to know what is in them. A six-week rolling cash forecast becomes very interesting when it is not a theoretical exercise but the way you make sure you have enough money to pay your employees on time.

My son learned to write before he learned to read, for example, using a book called I Spy. He figured out how grocery lists worked (you put something on a list and someone buys it and brings is home) and started to make shopping lists for himself and for his sister with things they needed or hoped for. The words on paper had meaning for him when he wanted them there, but he wasn't engaged in the content of other people's words.

A slow reader at first, everything changed in middle school. There was an “electives” program in two periods each week, with interesting things to do, like helping out in the library, working at the local florist, or even playing Dungeons and Dragons. These were taught by anyone who wanted to teach them, sometimes even older students, and they had no way of demonstrating any academic value. One could always go to study hall instead, but few chose that option.

My son and his friend really learned to read in D&D. One day he came home to tell me about interlibrary loan, and how the library in a nearby town had the whole set of D&D books, while our library only had two. It was so exciting that eventually the boys decided to create their own D&D game based on the novel Shogun. Of course, then they needed to read that novel, plus all they could find about Japanese culture. Then they had to figure out how to make the formulas for who would win an encounter, and how to create point values for the different characters in the game. All of a sudden math became important in daily life.

The electives program was eventually cancelled because of its pure frivolity, and possibly the unexpected level of enthusiasm among the students was a contributing factor. After all, it didn't live up to testable academic standards, and students who taught other students didn't have academic credentials. But each of the students who lived in the program saw one way or another how to use the skills they were supposed to be learning in their more formal classes.

Having fun really is an important motivator, and the value of having highly motivated students has already been established. Thank you for your editorial.

Jean Risley

* * * *

Dear Stan:

Your editorial “Too Easy” (May 2011) applies equally to both infringers and content producers. Content producers, such as Analog, have a valid concern when it comes to infringing activity. However, there needs to be a bit of self-reflection over who has the ethical high ground.

The purpose of copyright, as you have acknowledged, is to provide a monopoly incentive that is of limited duration and limited scope to encourage the production of content for the benefit of society. After the limited monopoly period has expired, the content is supposed to fall into the public domain. In 1790, the limited time period was for fourteen years. Over the years both the time period and scope of copyright have expanded. With the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright has expanded so that it will last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. I would contend that the ever-increasing scope of copyright constitutes “theft” from the public domain. How many more times will the scope of copyright be expanded to grant content creators an undeserved privilege? I also wonder how a dead author can obtain an incentive under copyright to create?

While technology has made it “easy” for infringers to infringe, it has also made it easy for the content industry to aggressively “protect” content, often at the expense of due process. One highly appropriate example, considering that Analog publishes science fiction, was the removal of Orwell's books from the Kindle. Basically, Amazon.com was able to “reach into” the Kindle and unilaterally delete the books without informing the Kindle owners. So people who thought that they bought content suddenly found out it was gone. Then there is the Sony Rootkit boondoggle, where Sony made hidden modifications to computers that they did not even own. Sounds like trespassing. The current high profile example of corporate abuse concerns the PS3, where Sony post-sale unilaterally removed some functionality from the PS3. Basically you buy a product and then find out it has been “disabled,” which raises the specter of bait and switch. Now Sony is also suing purchasers for making modifications to their hardware. My big take away from the examples is that content producers are eliminating the concept of sale and are also asserting a “right” to make modifications post-sale without regard to the consumers rights.

The scope of copyright has expanded to the detriment of other content creators. Certain content creators, for example, are attempting to extinguish the concept of “fair use.” Please see the article published by Orson Scott Card concerning J.K. Rowling. Briefly, Orson writes: “Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling". Additionally the estates of Philip K. Dick and JRR Tolkien have claimed infringement even though the respective authors are now dead.

Content producers whine that pirating costs them money. Well, it is time to think outside the box. As one example, Thom Holwerda of OS News wrote: “Piracy hurts the content industry. This has been the common line of thought in the piracy and copyright debate for years now, and even though study after study highlight that this is simply not the case—or at least, not as clear-cut a case—the content industry and its avid fans continue to spread this party line. Well, yet another study, this time from the Japanese government, has concluded that piracy actually increases anime DVD sales.” A bit closer to Analog, BoingBoing reports: “O'Reilly drops ebook DRM, sees 104% increase in sales”

I have probably run out of space. To conclude, the issue of copyright is complex. We need to restore some sanity to copyright. Copyright in not solely about protecting the content creators. It also must protect the public domain and also acknowledge that the consumer in buying content, acquires a valid use to that content which must also be protected.

Sincerely,

Stephen Rynas

* * * *

I agree with much that you say, but didn't go into all that because copyright was not my main topic (even though some readers read it that way, presumably because that was their main concern), but just a secondary example. As for “the rights of consumers,” that's certainly a legitimate concern for material that has been bought in good faith. But I can see no right of consumers to work that has not been bought while the creator is still alive, as I've heard claimed by some extreme advocates of “information wants to be free."

* * * *

Dear Stan,

I purchased an e-reader about four months ago, and by now feel I've got the hang of it. So, as of the March 2011 issue I now get my Analog digitally. E-books are something I used to read about as SF.

I am almost 76 years old and have been reading SF since I was eight. (Went from Tarzan comics to ERB in book form. Read all of the Tarzan books at the library, discovered the John Carter of Mars series on the same shelf and have been hooked ever since.)

I like the digital copies, but have some issues with the format, such as no real TOC, and no illustrations. Also, through Barnes and Noble, I have to pay monthly, rather than having an annual subscription.

I also subscribe to Asimov's, and will switch it to digital in May. Of the two mags, I prefer Analog, mainly because it gives me what I consider to be true SF, not fantasy, horror, etc. Analog is more like the mags I read as a youngster. Every time I could scrape up 15 cents, I bought a copy of Amazing or Astounding. I remember I had to sneak them into my room past my mother, who considered some of the cover art lewd.

Thank you for putting out such a great publication, month after month.

Richard Panza

Tucson AZ

* * * *

E-readers are young and evolving, with plenty of competitive pressure. The features you want, or something equivalent and maybe better, may already be available on a different model, or soon will be on one or more.

* * * *

Dear Stan,

I have an interesting story to tell you. I am a 57-year-old woman, who first subscribed to Analog in 1971 or thereabouts (around the time when Worldcon was in San Francisco, where I lived about half of my life). I have been an avid reader of sci-fi/fantasy since the age of eight or so. The myopia I was born with changed from 20/40 (with correction) in 1994 to 20/100 (with correction) by 1998. By 2000 my ability to read print (magazines, newspapers, and books) was impaired to the point I nearly had to give up my day job working in a law firm as an assistant. I've been able to make reasonable accommodations (computer monitors and magnifiers) so that I don't have to change careers, but I did give up pleasure reading for the most part. I have been listening to audio books and audio media (podcasts and the like) for many years, and am a huge fan of podcasts and get a lot of information from radio as well. I have an iPhone and work well enough with it for the purposes I need (still, the print is a bit small). This week, my husband (also a big sci-fi buff—we are both techno geeks as well) gave me my first Kindle. The first purchase I made was for a subscription to Analog, which I began reading the next day. I have already read one short story, the editorial (Stan, I always love your thoughtful essays), and am in the beginning of the next short story. There are few words to express how thrilled I am to be back reading my all time favorite magazine. I cannot tell you how much my life has been enriched by having Analog available in a media that works for my limited eyesight. Thank you and know that you are a blessing for many the world over (and I really love my husband, too).

Kate van Houte

Lakewood, CO

* * * *

Dear Analog,

I used to get five magazines a month through subscription. I've narrowed it to two, and yours, along with F&SF, are my only ones now, and very happily so. My decision was based on the number of stories etc. that I actually finished (i.e. enjoyed). There are two things that F&SF does that I would wish you would too. They are both small, and in the category of minor quibbles!

First, if a story follows characters from a previously printed story in Analog, could you put a small reminder of that at the end so the reader wouldn't be sitting there going, “. . . I know I've come across those characters before, but where/when. . . ?”

The second relates to the covers. I very much enjoy your covers as they give a colorful slice of future possibilities. If, however, the cover connects to a story within the magazine, could that attribution be attached after the “Cover design by . . ."?

Thank you for such wonderful story and poem choices. And I must admit my favorite place to go to, when it is there, is Probability Zero. I have long been a fan of the short-short and yours are always fun and a delicious chuckle.

Oh yes, of all the magazines it is only yours where I read the editorials. They always give me something interesting to think about

Micki Miller

* * * *

Actually, we usually do put a note at the end of a story that's part of a series, frequently listing earlier stories in the series. But, being fallible creatures, I can't say we always remember. We'll keep trying.

And it's easy to tell when a cover illustrates a story in the issue. Here's the secret: If a story title appears on the cover, that's what the cover illustrates. If there is no title, but only author names, then the cover is not tied to a story.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS
by Anthony Lewis

17-21 August 2011

RENOVATION (69th World Science Fiction Convention) at Reno-Sparks Convention Center, Reno, NV. Guests of Honor: Ellen Asher, Charles N. Brown, Tim Powers, Boris Vallejo. Membership from 1 October 2010 until some later date (see website for latest details): Attending Adult: $180; 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/

2-5 September 2011

COPPERCON 31 (Central Arizona SF conference) at Hilton Hotel, Avondale, AZ. Guest of Honor: Carrie Vaughn; Special Guest: Adam Niswander; Local Guest Author: Janni Lee Simner. Membership: until 30 April 2011—adult $35, youth (8-12) $17.50; more thereafter. Info: www.casfs.org/cucon/; info@coppercon.org; Box 62613, Phoenix, AZ 85082.

9-11 September 2011

CONJECTURE (San Diego area SF conference) at Hilton San Diego Mission Valley, San Diego, CA. Guest of Honor: Allan Steele. Membership: $45 until 7 September, $50 thereafter and at the door. Info: 2011.conjecture.org/; chair@conjecture.org.

16-18 September 2011

CONSTELLATION XXX: CORONA BOREALIS (northern Alabama SF conference) at Holiday Inn Express, Huntsville, AL. Guest of Honor: Gene Wolfe; Artist Guest of Honor: Lubov; Fan Guest of Honor: Gay Haldeman; MC: Stephanie Osborn; Special Guest: Joe Haldeman. Memberships: until 12 August 2011—$40 (adult), $25 (accompanied age 4-12), free (accompanied 0-3); more later. Info: www.constellation.org/constell/index.html; PO Box 4857, Huntsville, AL 35815-4857

23-25 September 2011

FENCON VIII/ DEEPSOUTHCON 49 (Dallas/Fort Worth area SF conference) at Crowne Plaza North Dallas, Addison, TX. Guest of Honor: Gail Carriger; Music Guest of Honor: Joe Bethancourt; Fen Guest of Honor: Steven H. Silver; Artist Guest of Honor: Vincent Di Fate; Science Guest of Honor: Les Johnson; TM: Bradley Denton; Special Guest: Lou Anders. Membership: until 1 September 2011 $35. Info: www.fencon.org/memberships.html; info@fencon.org [include FenCon in subject line]; P. O. Box 701448, Dallas, TX 75370-1448.

30 September-2 October 2011

ARCON 35 (St. Louis area SF conference) at Doubletree and Gateway Center, Collinsville, MO. Guest of Honor: Spider Robinson; Artist Guest of Honor: Brad W. Foster; TM: Rusty Hevelin; Fan Guest of Honor: Steve Lopata; Masquerade MC: Vic Milan. Membership: Adult $60 until 15 September 2011, $65 thereafter and at the door; Young Adults (11-16) $20; Kids (6-10) $8. Children through age 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Info: www.archonstl.org/35/; inforequest@ archonstl.org; P.O. Box 4191, Ballwin, MO 63022.

Copyright © 2011 Anthony Lewis

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Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Astounding), Vol. CXXXI, Nos. 7 & 8, July-August 2011. ISSN 1059-2113, USPS 488-910, GST#123054108. Published monthly except for combined January/February and July/August double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. One-year subscription $55.90 in the United States and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within eight weeks of receipt of order. When reporting change of address allow 6 to 8 weeks and give new address as well as the old address as it appears on the last label. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. (c) 2011 by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention. Reproduction or use of editorial or pictorial content in any manner without express permission is prohibited. All stories in this magazine are fiction. No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental. All submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope, the publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

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