Mark Tiedemann is the author of nine novels, including three robot mystery stories, the science fiction novels in the Secantis sequence, and most recently, a novel set in the universe of The Terminator. Spring of ‘05 will see the release of his next novel, Remains. His latest story takes us offworld to show how difficult it can be to settle final scores.

Just outside Customs, past the sign welcoming her to Fall's End, Homestead, Ann stopped, abruptly unable to move. The anxiety experienced during the shuttle flight down now escalated; her pulse raced and her hands became moist.

People moved around her, a few casting annoyed glances over their shoulders at her as they hurried into the main port arcade. She knew she was getting in the way, but she could not make herself take another step. She felt her breathing quicken, heading toward hyperventilation.

Far back in her mind, a routine detached itself with a perfunctory What in hell? For a second her vision doubled, then the color seemed to fade and a sense of being two people distracted her.

"Okay, what's the problem?"

Setis.

Then she saw them. Nonhumans, just a few. This was Homestead, after all, deep in human space, close to Sol (to which Ann now desperately wanted to return). But she identified a trio of Distanti, one Menkan, and a pair of Rahalen.

"So?"

A fast exchange of data—memory?—coursed through her mind.

"Xenophobia. You should have told me."

I've never told anyone. It's nobody's business.

It became clear then that Ann had even kept it from herself, buried it under layers of rationalization and habit, and over the years had simply ignored it to the point of forgetting. Till now.

"No seti on Earth, except in the diplomatic enclaves. But this isn't Earth. How did you expect to get through this without making allowances?"

Didn't think about it.

"No worry. That's why this monitor routine is in place, just in case. We can work with this, but it would have been better if we'd known in advance."

Another exchange occurred, handshakes and whispers from one part of her mind to another. Slowly, her pulse came down, her muscles relaxed, and she was able to move forward.

"Thank you,” she said under her breath.

That's what we do best, a voice seemed to reply, we listen....

She found a pub with a view across the plains to a low line of mountains glowing gold against a blue-gray sky. Tau Ceti shone marginally warmer than Sol, so the greens seemed slightly yellow and the reds too dark. The view reminded her of the Serengeti ... except.

She picked out collections of tall tubelike structures dotting the plain, rising from the yellow-green grasses. From time to time, a cloud of off-white scintilla burst from one of the openings to disperse in the breeze. And along the outside base of the window, bluish insects tumbled over each other, trying to find purchase on the smooth surface, falling off, struggling, leaving faint viscous smears where they had clung.

More details worked at her newly established calm. The gravity was slightly less here than Earth standard. The air smelled like a combination of sawdust and damp moss. Around her she caught other accents, from other worlds....

She ordered a scotch, neat, and settled in a booth to take in her first sight of Homestead.

To another part of her the landscape seemed very familiar.

That felt wrong. She ran a quick diagnostic on the overlay. Off to the left of her vision, neon green telltales floated, glowing confirmation. Occlusion was optimal, the host personality showed no sign of bleeding over, even after its necessary intrusion to overcome her paralysis at the sight of aliens. Mollified, she closed the dialogue scroll and resumed looking at the landscape. She felt embarrassed about the episode. An oversight on her part, but she honestly had not thought about it in so long....

Her drink arrived and she opened her pack. The booth possessed a polycom link into which she jacked her own portable unit. The small screen cleared and her short itinerary scrolled up.

Willem Karkaris topped the list, followed by his comcode and location code. All she needed to do was touch the contact icon next to his name and she could let him know she was on Homestead. She had sent no word to expect her. Now that she was here, she still hesitated. After the unexpected reaction to the presence of seti, what else might she have suppressed? She withdrew her finger, lifted the glass, and looked back at the scenery.

Seven years, she thought, you'd think it would be long enough for some perspective....

Maybe. But now that she no longer had time, perspective was elusive, impossible. She finished the scotch, delaying, trusting that instinct would see her through.

Nothing.

She raised the empty glass till the bartender saw her and nodded. She set it down, a little too hard, and jabbed her finger at Willem's icon, a little too hard. The portable unit skittered several centimeters over the table. She grabbed it and pulled it back.

The second scotch and Willem's face appeared simultaneously.

The small screen made it difficult to be sure, but Ann saw surprise in his face. That, and a touch of anger. She felt mildly gratified.

"Will, hi,” she said.

"Ann?"

"Who else?"

He frowned, his pale gray eyes narrowing. His light brown hair was much shorter than the last time she saw him, and his face showed a few more lines, but he looked mostly the same. Especially frowning.

"Where are you?” he asked.

"Fall's End."

"You're here?” He glanced off-screen. “Right. I'll come get you. If you want, I mean."

"Since I'm not sure how to get to your stead...."

"Be about a half-hour."

"I'll be here."

But why? he wanted to ask. She saw it, clearly as if he had said it. The screen went blank. A moment later the menu, offering local services and information, came up. She toyed with booking a shuttle back up to the transit station and going back to Earth. Or steeling herself to head further out, maybe all the way to the Secant.

Then what? “Ann Myref” would fade in time as the overlay broke down, and the poor host would be stranded somewhere, underfunded, with no way back.

The second scotch was gone. She considered a third, but decided to get a coffee instead. Being drunk when Willem arrived might be a bad idea.

Being totally sober might be worse, she thought.

She spent the next half hour downloading data about Homestead. The portable would belong to the host after the contract ran its course, and she might need the information.

Willem arrived ten minutes late. He stood in the entrance to the pub and for a few seconds Ann thought he would turn and leave.

The shock in his eyes faded and he came to her booth.

"All the way here,” he said, “I still didn't quite believe it."

Ann gestured to the opposite seat. “So you came to prove me an illusion?"

"Illusion? No.” He glanced at the portable polycom and her cup. “I'm not sure what to say first."

"Say what you want. What's the first thing that comes to mind?"

"Why are you here?"

"Ah. To business. I'm here to see you."

"Because?"

Ann laughed. “What, you don't trust me?"

"Trust is a finite resource. What you're asking for is faith, and I never really had that. So I'm left with requiring proof. You never do anything without a motive, this I know from experience. And I have to wonder what motive would be strong enough to get you to leave Earth and come all the way here just to see me."

Ann's mood collapsed. She had intended to tell him gradually, with kind words and a gentle attitude.

"I'm a codicil,” she said. “Ann Marie Teresa Myref died a week ago, Earth local time."

The shock in his face gratified her. “Dead...,” he said. “How?"

"Nerve degeneration. It started with flashes of pain along my forearms and numbness in my fingers. When I couldn't hold a stylus for more than ten minutes, I saw the meds. New strain of virus, they told me. No cure. At first, though, the prognosis was generous. Ten more years with minimal impairment, then a gradual worsening for another five to ten. But then it took a turn for the unpredicted and I was in a float chair before I knew what happened. Hell with that. I have no patience for suffering."

"You never did. Yours or anybody else's."

She felt a flare of rage at the implied criticism. “I'm not the one who couldn't adapt."

"You didn't this time.” He shook his head. “So, how does this work? I mean ... who are you really?"

"Ann."

"No, no, I mean the person wearing the—what do they call them?—the overlay."

"It doesn't work that way. She's not part of this at all. I'm Ann Myref."

He grunted. “You look like Ann.” He leaned forward and made a show of examining her features. “Same shade of hair I remember, same freckles ... this kind of work must pay well.” He sat back. “All right. I'll play along. Why are you here?"

"We have unfinished business. I didn't want to leave any dangles."

"Very Ann. Did it occur to her that some things never tidy up?"

"You don't have to refer to me in the third person."

"I wouldn't if I knew who you were."

"I'm Ann."

"Ann's dead. If I understood you correctly."

"Physically. For all intents and purposes, though, I am Ann Myref."

"'All intents and purposes....’ I never fully understood that phrase.” He smiled. “Forgive me, maybe I've become morbid over the last seven years. I have to know—who's wearing Ann?"

She slapped her hand on the table. “It doesn't work that way!” She glanced around the pub to see if anyone turned to look. She closed her eyes then and sighed. “This isn't easy."

"No kidding."

"You don't have to make it harder."

"Me?” He chuckled bitterly. “Look. Whoever you are, the woman who hired you to do this ... this job ... well, no doubt she paid you well, but she did you no favors. She's—was—a callous, self-obsessed workaholic who thought she could run everyone's life for them. Even now, after she's dead, she wants to make sure my life is the way she thought it should be. Well, I'm sorry. To quote you, it doesn't work that way. Some things stay broken."

"Only if you can't figure out how to repair them."

He looked skeptical. “From you that's rich.” He sighed. “You have to ask if it's worth it. Better maybe to just throw it away and get new."

"Is that what you did?"

He frowned, then started to stand. “Sorry you wasted the trip—"

"Will, please.” She reached out, but stopped short of touching him. “I'm a codicil. This is part of my last will and testament. Maybe you could spare a little time to find out what it's about before you send me packing."

He did not want to, she could see that. But the longer he hesitated, the more his conscience worked on him. Willem Karkaris had always considered himself fair before anything. He fell short often, she remembered, but he always tried. It felt oddly good knowing that about him.

"All right,” he said. “Come out to my place. You can at least see that I'm fine."

Willem drove at a steady clip over roads that seemed only recently paved, the ground effect transport sliding between low hills that gradually showed the signs of agriculture, native flora steadily displaced by recognizable strains of Earth crops. He left the main road after nearly twenty minutes and shot up a narrower stretch into vine-covered swells.

He pulled onto a broad pad before a wide, two-story house with a magnificently sprawling roof. A long building stood nearby, the gaping doors filled by a heavy transport on which motiles loaded flats. A dog stood at the top of broad steps on the encircling porch of the main house, its tail wagging happily.

Ann shouldered her single pack and looked out at the surrounding hills.

"It's a bit dry right now,” Willem said. “Rain's late. Maybe just as well."

She followed him into the easy shade of the house. Willem still liked blues and various shades of violet, mixed with natural woods oiled to a high sheen. Geometric patterns covered the furniture in dizzying profusion. Neoromantic realist art broke over the walls—heroic images of mountains, nebulae, oceans, and people under nature's threat.

Ann spotted something to the right of the main window. A shadow box, small and nearly lost amid all the rest of the decor. Within its compact sections she saw bones, sticks, pebbles, torn paper, and handwritten notes, collectively composing an allegory of sorts. She recognized a number of allusions. Unexpectedly, she felt flattered.

"Guest rooms are on the second floor,” Willem said. “Pick whichever one you want."

Ann set the pack down on the floor and walked to the rear of the house. The porch, she discovered, encircled the first floor. She stepped out to gaze at the vineyards.

She heard Willem stop beside her.

"You did it,” she said. “This is what you wanted."

"Mostly."

"You didn't need me after all."

When he remained silent, Ann looked at him. He wore a complex expression, part puzzled, part hurt. He exhaled slowly and shrugged.

"I have to finish supervising this load,” he said. “Go make yourself comfortable. I'll cook later."

Alone, Ann felt herself relax. She leaned on the railing and let the view suffuse her. Willem had talked about this all the time they had been together—land, vineyards, a winery.

But there had been no available property on Earth and Ann refused to leave the planet of her birth. What had begun early on as an attempt to find Willem a parcel in Sol system had turned into a career for her, drawing her further away from the few dreams they had shared. One day she looked back and saw that she had become very wealthy dealing in land—most often land she herself never saw except by commlink—and Willem had already found a place out-system.

He had wanted her to come with him. She would not even consider it. He had not understood. What had begun as a minor irritation between them turned into a test of feelings—and they failed.

She returned to the living room and stood before the shadow box. They had not fought often, but the intensity of their few battles more than compensated. After the last one, Willem had simply walked out.

Didn't even say good-bye ... maybe he thought I'd follow ... arrogant jerk.... “Sticks and stones,” she muttered. She hefted her pack and headed up the stairs to the second floor.

She shoved open one of the oak-paneled doors and stepped into a cozy bedroom done in ambers and greens. She set her pack on the cedar chest at the foot of the large bed and shook her right hand to revive the circulation.

From the window she could look back along the road by which Willem had brought her here. Except for that and the house around her, it seemed humans had left no imprint on the land other than the too-neat rows of vines. Tau Ceti bathed the landscape in warm light. Pristine, she thought, though she knew that eighty kilometers south lay Fall's End and a spaceport. But the illusion pleased her.

She turned from the window and felt suddenly tired.

"Is there a house intelligence?” she asked aloud.

"Yes, Co Myref,” a voice replied.

"Hm. Good. I'm going to take a nap. Would you alert me when Willem starts preparing dinner?"

"Of course."

Ann pulled off her boots and stretched out on the bed.

He looks good, she thought as she drifted to sleep. Pity....

The house woke her four hours later. Ann got out of bed and stretched, feeling stiff. Her back ached dully and her neck felt gripped by a large, powerful hand.

She showered and felt much better. Gazing in the mirror, though, toweling her thick red hair, she thought she looked pale. For a moment she experienced a sense of dislocation, as if the face she saw belonged to someone else. Pale green eyes, small nose, a faint scar over the left eyebrow. Freckles. She blinked, frowning, and the sensation faded.

Overlay slip, she decided. Another diagnostic would be a good idea, but as she dressed she experienced none of the third person impressions usually accompanying a bad fit. Leave well enough alone....

She carried her polycom downstairs. The first floor was filled with the odors of cooking. She smelled garlic and peppers, Bacian oil and curry.

Outside, Tau Ceti touched the edge of the hills, gilding the landscape in gold. Ann set her portable on the windowsill and stared. She wondered why she felt so drawn to this place. She had spent a lot of time and capital on Earth building a home very different from this, and till now had felt satisfied with the results.

"I trust you're hungry,” Willem said, entering the room. “Dinner is served."

He led her through a broad archway into a dining room. One wall opened to the porch, letting the early evening light fill the space. Motiles carried the trays.

"If I hadn't been,” Ann said, “I would be now."

While the machines set plates on the table, Willem busied himself with a bottle of wine.

"Yours?” Ann asked.

He nodded. “Five years old, one of my best vintages. It was questionable whether the nortons would thrive in this soil, but after a slight modification in the acidity and phosphate content, they've done very well.” The cork came out with a pleasant pop and he filled her glass with the rich red liquid. “We have sauteed Nine Rivers eel, Cetian moss cakes, fried mussels, fresh sourdough and olive oil, and creamed fela berries."

"A feast.” She raised the glass and sniffed, then took a mouthful. “Excellent."

He smiled slightly and poured his own glass, then sat down opposite her. The motiles finished serving and trundled out of the room.

He raised his glass. “Welcome to my home."

"Thank you. The place is ... beautiful."

"I could never have had this on Earth."

"Oh, I don't see why not. The only problem was money."

"Then, yes. But....” He glanced to his right, out at the view. “It's different. The light. The air."

"It's not Earth."

"No ... it couldn't be."

"Close enough, though.” She tore off some bread and dipped it in the dish of olive oil beside her plate. Chewing, she sliced the eel.

"In your expert opinion?” he asked.

Moss cake followed eel into her mouth. She chewed slowly, letting the flavors mingle and linger.

"I suppose,” Willem said, “you won't be opening offices here."

"Is that supposed to be irony?"

His face danced through a series of expressions, small shifts of the mouth and eyebrows, and she knew he was sorting responses. It seemed to take longer than she remembered, but perhaps he had more to think through.

"I suppose,” he said finally. “I'm just extremely puzzled about why you're here."

"Can you wait till after dinner? This is really very good."

A smile flickered across his face and he nodded.

They ate in silence. Ann remembered this, too—many nights, especially toward the end, when everything either of them said came burdened with so many interpretations, when it was easier to be still rather than risk another altercation.

Maybe I should just wrap this up tonight....

For dessert, Willem opened another bottle of wine—a white this time. He glanced at Ann's polycom as he poured. Ann leaned back in the chair, comfortably sated, watching him.

"That was excellent,” she said. “You always were a good cook, but this ... you've outdone yourself."

"Maybe instead of living with you I should have gotten a job as your chef."

Ann sighed. Tau Ceti had dropped below the horizon and left the dining room bathed in a cool afterglow from the twilight sky. Small lights winked on near the ceiling, not bright enough yet to compete with the natural light. The motiles returned then to clear away the dishes and clean up, quietly and efficiently, dancing through their routine while Ann and Willem regarded each other across the table.

It would be so easy to just fall right back into it, she thought. Instead, when the last motile left the room, she took her polycom from the chair and set it on the table. The top swung up and the access panels glowed softly. She tapped a few commands and data appeared.

"There's a few items we need to deal with,” she said. “You're in my will. I've left you some things."

Willem's mouth opened. He looked genuinely surprised. He straightened in his chair and raised his glass.

"First off—” she began.

"Wait.” Willem held up his hand. “I'm sorry. I find this all very disturbing. I mean—how does this work? You aren't Ann. You told me she died. But...."

Ann folded her hands on the table. “Ann Myref died on Earth. Before she did, she encoded her persona and hired seven of us to wear the overlay to take care of certain details left unfinished before her death. She had been confined to a support bed for eight months. She could not physically tend to this herself. So I and six others are carrying out her final wishes. The overlay is a full personality recording. That's a profound simplification, but it'll do. This host and the others went through minor physical modification to resemble Ann as closely as possible. Before you think otherwise, this is done as much to maintain the overlay as for any kind of deceit. When I look in the mirror, I see who I am, it reinforces the persona, maintains it. It also makes the entire experience more personal for the recipients of these visits. Would you believe me if I hadn't looked like Ann and told you who I was?"

"I'm not sure I believe you now."

Ann flicked her right hand, dismissing the comment. “There's a time limit. I won't be Ann Myref for long. So when our business is concluded, at some point the host personality will reemerge and assume control again."

Willem frowned uncomfortably. “Why didn't you just send for me?"

"Would you have come?"

"I—” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Maybe. I don't know."

He studied her, eyes narrowed. “You know, the woman you're doing this for was a controlling, manipulative, self-serving—"

"Stop it. You already pointed that out and you know that's crap. You're not even saying it with conviction."

He flinched, as if a charge had coursed through his entire body. He raised a hand, fisted it, and set it on the edge of the table. “All I wanted was to be with you."

"More crap. If that was all, then you could have stayed."

"You're not listening. I wanted to be with you. What is me, what I am, included having this.” He waved toward the twilight-black hills. “This is part of what I am. To give this up would have meant crippling myself."

"And I wouldn't leave Earth. That was part of who I am."

"Why not? Look at this place! ‘Close enough,’ you said. For all practical purposes it's no different!"

"We went over this."

"Often. And we never resolved it. You never gave me an answer. But there you sit, and if I am to believe that you really are Ann, then this is impossible. Ann would never leave Earth."

"Death puts things into perspective."

"You had to die before you could do this? Were you dying when you made the encoding?"

"It was beginning. I knew it was coming."

His breathing came hard, strained. “That must have been terrible."

"Pretty bad."

"Who was with you at the end?"

"Meds. A couple of attorneys."

"I would have come."

"Seven years, Will. You never did. I wasn't that hard to find."

"Ditto.” He stood. “Now it's too late. Nothing we say here will make any difference."

"Don't take that attitude."

"Ann's dead. You aren't her. You're just a mannequin.” He grunted. “You know, it's actually painful looking at you."

"Then let's conclude this so I can leave."

"There's nothing to conclude. Anything I might have wanted from Ann, you can't give me."

"What? Seems to me we left a few things unsaid."

"Ann and I did. You—I suppose they'll just have to remain unsaid."

"Will, dammit, I am Ann!"

"No, you're not. And this is really not very pleasant. I'm glad you enjoyed the meal. You can spend the night, but I'd appreciate it if you'd leave tomorrow. Early."

Ann slapped her hands on the table. “You haven't changed a bit."

"And you can't. Good night."

"Will!"

He walked through the panoramic opening, onto the porch, and out of sight.

Fireflies, or something like them, sparkled across the blackened landscape. Occasionally, several of them fell into formations and swept through the darkness, a cloud of pulsing light arrowing somewhere, then breaking up just as abruptly. Ann sat on the porch with a glass of wine and her polycom, for a time fascinated by the stars and their flickering reflections below. Tau Ceti was not that far from Sol, so she could still pick out many constellations, but the sky seemed odd all the same.

Her polycom chimed and she looked at the small screen. Insertion into the house system, it informed her, would set off a series of alarms. Willem would know. The machine assigned a low probability to getting around all of them. Did she wish to proceed?

Who would have thought the wine business required so much security?

She checked the specs her polycom provided and grunted to herself. He had simply bought the most expensive and comprehensive package. Typical. All or nothing, like so much else Willem did.

She canceled the probe and shut down the polycom. No matter in any case—she had to talk to Willem, that was the contract. What Ann Myref wanted to give him, he had to accept personally.

Was it really so bad?

She had gone over the memories of the relationship and the breakup during the voyage here. Perhaps time had blunted the sharper edges, perhaps she had indulged more than a little justification and revision, but she could not understand Willem's continued anger. She had moved on, and clearly so had he. It seemed reasonable that now, seven years later, there ought to be some neutral ground upon which they could talk.

"Some things stay broken...."

Things had all happened quickly then. Her business had grown exponentially after she had tapped into the trend of the offworld rich returning to Earth to buy property as status symbol. There were many enormously wealthy people scattered among the colonies and seemingly overnight they all wanted a sliver of land on Earth—just because they could afford it now.

For a time, she had thought Willem left out of envy. But she decided not—he could be petty, but not that way. No, he had genuinely wanted this, what he now had. At the time, the price for it on Earth was beyond their reach. No matter, he told her, there's plenty offworld.

The idea of leaving Earth ... she simply could not. She recalled her reaction at Fall's End, in the port.

But I still wanted to give you your dream ... now that I can, you won't even talk to me....

He said she had never given him an answer. That sounded ridiculous. All the fights, all the terse conversations, all the times they wrestled over this. She had told him time and time again—

She brought up the overlay menu again. Against the night it glowed a brilliant green. She chose the review function. For a few seconds it seemed that she remembered nothing. Panic began—and ended as abruptly with a dialogue space opening between the host and the overlay.

"At what point will my contract be considered fulfilled?"

As stipulated, upon acceptance and transfer of bequests.

"He won't discuss it."

That's my problem, not yours.

"I can't be you forever. The overlay will start to deteriorate."

That's my problem, too. Failure to fulfill contract requirements will void payment.

"Then that's my problem. What if you can't solve your problem?"

Consideration will be made. A contact number is filed in the case of overlay failure.

The space contracted, the separate halves of her persona stood apart for a few moments, and then “Ann” reassumed awareness. She felt unsettled and dissatisfied.

She closed her polycom and finished the wine.

As she stepped back inside, she heard glass breaking. Setting the polycom on the dining room table, she pushed through the door to the kitchen.

Willem knelt on the floor, carefully picking up shards from a puddle of dark red wine. An open bottle stood on the countertop opposite the sink. He looked up at her; light caught in the tears nesting in his eyes.

"Forgive me,” he said, his voice softly slurred.

"You should let a motile clean that up,” Ann said. “You'll cut yourself."

"My mess, I'll clean it up. You should clean up your own messes. Otherwise....” He jerked his hand up, wincing, and sending the handful of pieces flying. Ann danced back. “Damn,” Willem said, fingers in his mouth.

"Told you,” Ann said. She walked carefully behind him and took his shoulders. “Come on."

He got to his feet, wobbled briefly, then shrugged her off.

"I can walk,” he said, stumbling back against the counter. He looked at his cut fingers. “Not bad. I'll live.” He looked at her, frowning. “You're still here?"

"I'm leaving in the morning, remember?"

"Ah. That's what I said.” He grinned. “Remember?"

"Yes."

He blinked, the grin fading. “You're not Ann ... she's gone. But you know all about her. Don't you?"

"Everything."

"Then you know she took the easy way out."

Ann stared at him. “How? By dying?"

Willem nodded. “And leaving the mess for someone else to clean up.” He sighed. “I know a little about that. I didn't clean up my own, either."

"I am cleaning up my messes. Why do you think I'm here?"

He laughed. “Uh uh. Ann didn't clean ‘em up. She arranged to have you do it so she could go out with a clear conscience. That's what she was good at—arranging things—that's why she was successful. So at the end, she arranged to believe everything was settled, completed, finished. If you failed, it didn't matter. She could choose to believe you wouldn't. Mess tucked away where she'd never have to see it again."

"Is that how you see this?"

He blinked at her. “You didn't even say you missed me."

Ann felt her patience slipping. A motile rolled into the kitchen, hesitating at the proximity of humans to the mess on the floor. Ann put a hand on his arm.

"Come on,” she said. “We need to take care of that cut."

He pulled his arm away petulantly, then acquiesced and let her direct him past the motile, into the dining room. She sat him down at the table and went to the bathroom. She found a bottle of healant and a box of bandages and returned to Willem.

He watched her tend the cuts, cleaning them, spraying the healant, and applying the bandages. She tried to gauge how drunk he was, but it was impossible after all these years. I might have known once, just by the set of his mouth, the way he blinked ... too much time has passed....

"Why didn't you send word?” he asked. “I would've come."

"I know."

"Then—?” He looked puzzled, then shook his head. “Has there been anyone else?"

"A few. No one like you."

"Maybe that's a good thing."

Ann sighed. “I hated you. You took off, I hated you. It passed. Nothing original. I imagined you hated me."

"Not for a long time.” His face contorted briefly. “I just wanted you to come with me."

"I couldn't leave Earth."

"Why?"

Ann's patience snapped. “Willem, we've been over this—"

Willem held up a finger. “No. We haven't."

"Yes, we have. It's all we fought about at the end."

Willem shook his head slowly. “We fought—sure—but you just said you couldn't. You never told me why."

Ann stared at him, stunned. She remembered the arguments, the bitter rituals of accusation and rejection. At some point during all that she was certain she had said....

"Excuse me,” she said, standing. She walked out onto the porch. Leaning on the railing, she opened the dialogue once more.

"So did you?"

Tell him? Sure, I—

"No, review it. Did you actually say the words? Or did you assume he understood?"

Scanning memory ... no. I never actually said the words.

Ann watched the flickering in the night, remembering scenes from their last few fights. Finally, she closed down the dialogue and went back to the table.

Willem had not moved. He looked up when she sat down.

"I'm sorry,” she said. She cleared her throat. “I couldn't leave Earth because I was afraid."

"Afraid...."

"Terrified."

"Of?"

"Everything."

He almost laughed. “You were never afraid of anything."

"Is that what you thought?"

"You never ... you never told me you were afraid."

"I was afraid of that."

"You never said."

"No."

"To anyone?"

"No."

"Not even yourself.” He nodded, as if he understood. “So all you could do was fight.” He drew a deep breath. “When you love someone ... I wanted to be enough for you...."

"So I wouldn't be afraid anymore?"

"Something like that. If I had known...."

"If you don't know what it is you have to do, you're not responsible for not doing it.” She touched his hand. “I never told you. It's not your fault."

He turned his hand over and closed his fingers around hers. When he looked up, though, Ann thought she saw a glimmer of skepticism. But it faded.

He stood. “I need to be alone for a while. Whatever....” He waved at the polycom. “You can tell me about it in the morning.” He paused at the doorway. “Thank you."

Her scalp itched in the morning. Her mouth felt cottony and she staggered to the bathroom, half-blind through a kind of spun-glass haze that coated her eyes.

She found a towel and soaked it in warm water, then pressed it to her eyes as she sat on the toilet. Her bladder felt full to bursting and her release was long. She shuddered a few times.

Finally, she could see clearly. She remained seated and idly scratched her head, letting the sensations of sore muscles and mild nausea pass. Finished, she stepped to the sink and resoaked the towel.

Her hair was dark. She blinked and brown eyes stared back at her from the mirror. Most of the freckles were gone.

She brought up the menu and opened the dialogue.

"Status?"

Contract fulfilled satisfactorily. Overlay extracted, somatic regeneration initiated.

"I haven't completed transfer of bequests."

Primary requirement fulfilled. Transfer of bequests a formality.

As she watched, a list of her compensations and options scrolled across her vision. In the night, the overlay had opted to terminate its presence. Imbedded nanoprocesses began reworking her, reverting hair color and texture, eye color, and skin. Over the next several days slight adjustments would reshape the underlying bone and redistribute fat deposits, giving her back her original face and body. Already, though, she looked very different from Ann Myref.

"I am Dadal Reos,” she said aloud, watching her reflection. It felt strange for a moment, then clicked into place. “I am Dadal Reos."

She remembered enough of the overlay to complete the formal arrangements of the will.

"Shit,” she hissed. “Might have been simpler to wait till I left."

Dadal sat on the bed for a time, letting her own memories and her own emotions sort themselves. Some of the odd moments of recognition she had experienced since grounding on Homestead made sense now—she had been born here, lived here till age six, when her family had moved to Sol System. The feeling of place had been strong enough to tease at the overlay and the client persona's aversion to Seti jarred.

She dressed, grabbed the polycom, and went downstairs. She heard movement from the kitchen. Reluctant to confront Willem Karkaris, she stepped onto the porch.

Morning sun drove the shadows away from her. A heavy cloud loomed above the hill to the west. The air smelled faintly of rain. Nearby, a motile worked to dig up one of the multi-flue, blue-streaked Shimby Castles—that's what they're called!—while pumping insecticide down the central shaft. A cloud of Shimbys floated around the device, impotent against it.

Dadal suddenly resented Ann Myref. It would have been better to be well away from here, away from Homestead, before—

"Good morning,” Willem said from inside. “Hope you're hungry. I prepared—"

She tensed and turned. He stood just inside, staring at her. She found that she no longer knew how to read him, but it seemed he was surprised and disappointed.

"The overlay shut down, Co Karkaris,” she said.

"Which means, I suppose, everything is done that she wanted doing."

She said nothing. After a minute, he shrugged.

"Maybe she was right,” he said. He made a smile. “I still hope you're hungry, Co...?"

"Dadal,” she said. “Dadal Reos."

"Call me Will."

She felt embarrassed and self-conscious through breakfast. Willem chatted about the winery and the different vintages he hoped to lay down.

She found herself growing interested. She had lived near Ozma, several hundred kilometers from Fall's End, in a more urban environment. Farming was something she knew little about.

"And it looks like the weather is changing,” he said as the motiles cleared away the dishes. “Only a few weeks late and none too soon."

"Co Karkaris, I—"

"Will. Please."

"I had no idea this would happen. It's not standard procedure. Usually we leave—"

"It's all right.” He smiled, but he looked sad. “Very Ann. Get in, do what needs doing, get out."

"Well. But there are still details."

"Of course. Show me."

Dadal opened the polycom and accessed the bequests. Willem read the list.

"Damn,” he said. “You got it."

"What?"

"Oh, uh ... I meant, Ann.” He laughed. “When we started looking for a parcel on Earth, I found an old estate on the western coast of the North American continent ... of course, it was far too expensive. But it was ideal. When I came to Homestead and bought this place, I picked it because it looked so much like it. It seems she finally got it."

"And she left it to you."

His breath shuddered. “Damn."

After a long silence, Dadal indicated the screen. “Please touch the acceptance icon."

He nodded and pressed a finger to the contact. The screen cleared and a moment later it showed transfer complete. Dadal closed the unit down and stood.

"She must have kept her eye on that parcel all this time,” Willem said. “Property on Earth goes fast. Small window of opportunity."

"You sound surprised."

"I suppose I am. I guess...."

"Well, if you'll excuse me, Co.... I need to pack and arrange transport—"

"Um. Do you have to leave today? I...."

Dadal watched him work through his feelings. Finally, he shrugged.

"I never found out much about you,” he said. “Yet I feel I've known you....” He grinned, telling her he was joking.

"I've been doing this kind of work for five years,” she said. “Most of my own time, between commissions ... it's not very interesting."

"How do you know?"

She looked out at the vineyards. Maybe she was finished, but this isn't done yet....

Besides, she was not so sure she was ready to leave. She wondered—briefly—if this had been a factor in Ann Myref's selecting her.

"You first. Would you like to tell me about her?” she asked. “I have time.” She grunted. “One thing we do best is listen."

He was still talking when the rains began.

Bumper Crop, by Joe R. Lansdale, Golden Gryphon, 2004, $24.95.

Dark, tender, gruesome, evocative, funny—sometimes all in the same story: It's hard to pin down Lansdale's fiction. And yet, though he might be writing about a drive-in theater pulled into another dimension, zombies in the Old West, a coming-of-age story set in Depression-era East Texas, or a blind man trying to mow a lawn with a weed-eater, there's one thing that pulls all these disparate stories together.

Lansdale's voice.

Which isn't to say that the stories sound the same. The characters in these stories are individual and Lansdale gives them their own narrative expression. But if you've ever heard the man read at a convention—or holding forth in the halls at an after-hours party—you'll hear Lansdale's Texan drawl when you read his fiction and realize that no one else can tell a story quite the same way.

The best way to get an idea of his range as a writer is to pick up a collection such as Bumper Crop, a companion to his High Cotton (Golden Gryphon, 2000). Here you'll meet the old fellow living in a dump with his unusual pet, the failed writer who discovers the ugly truth behind becoming a best-selling author, and the fat man with the deadly tattoo. You'll find out about black cowboys, houses that appear overnight, and a man who got a job as a dog for a fire department.

But odd or strange or funny though the situations might be, what you'll take away is the sense of having spent some time in the company of real people, no matter how curious their situations. Lansdale has a real storyteller's gift, the kind that can make a tall tale or a serious character study equally evocative.

Both volumes feature an author's overall introduction as well as short informative—sometimes hilarious—introductions to each story.

And while his recent novels aren't genre fiction—except in the way that Lansdale is his own genre—you might want to try him at a longer length as well. His Hap and Leonard series is outrageous and brilliant, but if you hesitate at coming in on a long-running series, I'd recommend you try his most recent stand-alone novel, Sunrise and Sawdust (Knopf, 2004).

No one does Depression-era East Texas as well as Lansdale and it shows on every page of this novel. You can almost taste the dust as you turn the pages.

The Autumn Castle, by Kim Wilkins, Gollancz, 2004, 10.99 pounds.

It's autumn in Berlin. Immanuel Z, color-blind and part-faery, is creating his life's work: a sculpture made from the bones of faeries he has hunted down and killed. He lives in a refurbished building called Hotel Mandy-Z which houses an art gallery, his apartment, and a secret room that holds the vat in which he boils the flesh from his faery bones. He also provides studio and living space for four visiting artists, recipients of a twelve-month residency.

Christine Starlight lives in Hotel Mandy-Z with her artist boyfriend Jude Honeychurch, one of this year's recipients. Christine has her own claim to fame: She is the daughter of a famous musical couple who died ten years ago in a horrible car accident in which she was the only survivor. But she was also witness to an older, less well-known tragedy: the disappearance of her best friend who was mysteriously abducted from her bedroom one night when Christine and her friend were both seven.

Christine has a bad back, a legacy of the crash that killed her parents. When she accidentally bumps her trouble spot, the pain makes her black out, and she wakes ... elsewhere. There she meets her old childhood friend, now known as Mayfridh, and Mayfridh's counselor, who can appear as a wolf, a crow, a fox, or a bear.

Elsewhere turns out to be faeryland, and Mayfridh is its queen. Christine is able to cross over because our world and faeryland are very close to each other this particular autumn, and all those years ago, she and Mayfridh pricked their thumbs, exchanging blood in a childhood bond that now proves more potent than they might have expected as children.

Christine finds relief from her constant, debilitating back pain in faeryland. Mayfridh is fascinated by our world, which she hasn't seen since she was seven. She's also fascinated by Christine's boyfriend Jude. And neither of them is aware of the danger that Immanuel Z poses, not only to Mayfridh, but to the whole of faeryland.

Naturally, their lives all collide, creating a wonderful blend of marvels and danger, joy and unhappiness.

Reading Kim Wilkins is like meeting an old friend you never knew you had, and what a delightful and talented friend she turns out to be. From its opening pages, The Autumn Castle draws the reader into a world of welcome magics and dark imaginings—our world, but a version of it that includes the whisper of fairy tale resonances, adding mystery and depth to common experience.

It's an enthralling read that, when I was done, left me wanting to track down anything else I could find by her immediately.

Abadazad, by J. M. DeMatteis, Mike Ploog, and Nick Bell, Crossgen, 2004, $2.95 per issue.

This is worth mentioning to any of you readers with a fondness for the The Wizard of Oz and other series of its ilk. The concept's not terribly original, but the execution is enchanting.

Basically, it's about a well-loved children's series called Little Martha in Abadazad, and two children who love it: nine-year-old Kate and her little brother Matt. Matt's the one who really adores it, so Kate reads the books to him on a regular basis. It's the way they bond.

On an outing to a street fair, where Kate is responsible for her brother, Matt disappears on a ride and is never seen again.

We cut to five years later, where Kate is a surly, unhappy teen. She meets her next-door neighbor, an old black woman who claims to have been the inspiration for perky and blonde Martha, heroine of the Abadazad books. She says the adventures described in the book were real. She has an orb that can take you there if your heart is pure and you know the magic words....

Well, you can see where this is going, right? But the series works because of the creator's inventiveness, the attention to real world detail and problems (divorce, guilt, family dysfunction), and how they slightly subvert everything in the magical land. The author of the Abadazad books didn't simply whitewash his heroine, he also made a lot of dangerous things rather charming, and Kate has to deal with the real thing when she ends up in the world of the books.

The story's told in a combination of traditional comic panels, prose, and what we would think of as book illustration. As I write this, there have been two issues so far, both charming and entertaining. Kid-friendly, certainly—a rarity in the comics field today—but with enough meat and sly asides and bits of humor that adults will enjoy it as well.

Crossgen, like many of the comic book companies today, regularly collects four or five issues into trade paperbacks, so if you're interested in the series, you don't have to go rummaging around in bins in your local comic book store. Just wait for the trade editions to come out, which are also available in regular book stores.

Lots of comic book series, like televisions shows, start out with great potential and then rapidly run out of steam. Abadazad is so promising from these first two issues that I certainly hope that won't be the case with it.

Material to be considered for review in this column should be sent to Charles de Lint, P.O. Box 9480, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3V2.

Perfect Circle, by Sean Stewart, Small Beer Press, 2004, $24 (hc), $15 (tp).

Smoke and Shadows, by Tanya Huff, DAW Books, 2004, $23.95.

A Scholar of Magics, by Caroline Stevermer, Tor Books, 2004, $19.95.

I'm in the process of reading for the Sunburst Jury, a Canadian speculative fiction award, and I'm a bit burned out. Taking a break to read some novels from this year was therefore not a break, but part of that continuum, and perhaps the wisest thing to do would have been to read only those novels which are delightful confections—not necessarily the things that sustain you, but rather, some of the things that make life seem both rich and indulgent.

Which is why Perfect Circle, the long-awaited new novel by Sean Stewart, was perhaps not the place to start. I've been carrying that book in my head, and unlike the underside of CDs, for which this book is in part—in analogy—named, it plays differently every time I think about it. This is good. But it makes coming up with an opinion decidedly fractured.

On the surface, the book is a read-at-one-go novel. It has a pace that sustains it from start to finish, without those pauses and stops that many novels have, whether by design or flaw. The main character—the only viewpoint—is Will Kennedy (called DK, as in “Dead Kennedy"), a man who, at thirty-two, has just been fired from his job at the Pets R Us (or its equivalent) for eating cat food. Home is a single room apartment, and life revolves around the friends across the hall, his daughter, his suppressed feelings for his ex-wife, his large, extended family, and the dead who populate his waking vision.

Stewart has always been gifted with acute observation, which in turn lends itself to the sparse and affectionate way in which he creates and reveals characters, peeling away layers of present and past until almost everything is exposed. These people are never less than real, and they are always people with whom one can sympathize to a greater or lesser extent. DK is no exception. As a man whose wife left him over a decade past, he's adrift, at odds with his gifts and his life, or with life in general.

His daughter Megan is of an age where bus rides no longer make her squeal with glee; on the verge of adolescence, she's becoming a stranger to him, and though he has history, the now of his life has always been confusing. He loves her. He loves Josie, his ex-wife.

He doesn't really love the dead. He probably would, if they'd stay that way. But they cross his path in black and white, they cause near-accidents when he's driving at night, and they remain enigmatic to him, largely because he's trying to hide from them all: trying to be normal.

Once, when he was young and had a cousin crush on the older AJ, he used the ghosts to make him seem more interesting to her—but that grew old. Now, trying to protect his daughter from having a freak for a father—and face it, at her age, what daughter wouldn't be embarrassed?—he's not interested in being interesting at all.

But he's not interested in welfare, either, and short a job at the pet food store, he's also desperately in need of cash, so when a cousin calls, desperate to rid himself of a ghost, and offers a thousand dollars, DK finally takes the plunge and goes hunting said ghost, which seems to live in his cousin's garage.

And thus DK discovers that some people are haunted for a reason. The cousin can hear the ghost, but can't see her. DK isn't that lucky; he can see her all right, and his cousin's story about a hit-and-run accident are belied by the ghost he does see.

The encounter puts him in the hospital, under some suspicion of possible murder. Unfortunate words, made easy and smooth by morphine, become a newspaper article, and a rude awakening as DK discovers that his daughter has known all along that he can see the dead; his wife told her. DK has a capacity for believing in what he sees and what he knows; he seems to be constantly surprised by the reality of the lives of other people as they move outside of his peculiar tunnel vision.

This, by the way, is afterthought on my part; it's not so obvious the first time through. The first time through, we're caught in DK's memories. He remembers his cousin AJ. He remembers going to the hospital with her to visit a friend who had been molested at a party—something that made little sense to him at that age. And he remembers, clearly, AJ's warning—half-plea—that he not end up letting that definition of what it means to be a man define him.

He recovers with a $20K hospital debt, which he can pay in installments that would beggar most of us. And his talent? He puts it to use. He sells it.

In the process, he discovers that he, too, is haunted; that haunting has many forms and many functions, and that a person is never truly haunted for no reason.

Stewart pulls no punches. He doesn't dwell on them either; everything is both stated and understated, elegant, full of the mundane horror and fear that inform a normal, frustrated life. There is a stark honesty to the work, but it's mingled with an affection that is unbroken by DK's ability to look in a mirror—even if what DK sees isn't something he understands is himself. He is trying, as people do, to understand the nature of love, loss, and the inevitable rage that loss causes, and stumbling in the attempt, he comes close to a terrifying comprehension of what it means to love someone enough to kill them.

This is a darker book than any of Stewart's other novels in theme; it's deceptive, in that its tone is so much like the others, it catches you by surprise.

And it is well, well worth the reading. A highly recommended work.

Tanya Huff's latest foray, Smoke and Shadows, has emerged in hardcover. She has returned to the Canada of Henry Fitzroy (introduced in what the author calls “the Blood Noun books"), the four-hundred-plus-year-old vampire who was once Prince of Men, and is now Prince of Darkness (when he isn't writing romance). Gone is Vicki; by his side—reluctantly—is Tony, the street kid whom Vicki kicked some sense into and set straight.

Tony has a place of his own, and a job that only the foolish would envy: he's a Production Assistant for “Darkest Night,” a cheesy, over-the-top show about a vampire detective. Yes, this gives Huff plenty of opportunities for obvious humor. No, she's too good to use them much.

Instead, she tries to keep her focus on Tony, on the near-crisis state that is filming syndicated television, and on the colorful cast of characters, with equally colorful invective, who man the set, the stages, and the phones with equal vigor. Tony has tried fairly hard to separate himself from Henry, and in this novel, for the first time, you really get a sense of why that separation is necessary (I won't spoil it, but I will say that Tony is emphatically not Vicki); of what it means to be the vampire's local meal on two legs.

But Henry's not Tony's problem: Shadows are. As in, shadows that can move by themselves, whisper to themselves, and literally kill people. When one of the cast—the victim of the week, in a morbid turn of Huff's usual black humor—falls out of the closet of her change room as a corpse, things begin to unravel at the studio.

Is the hardcover worth the price? Yes. Definitely. Because I have no doubt at all that, as the subsequent volumes come out, I'm going to want to read this one again, just for the pleasure of Huff's trademark dialogue, her character interactions, her cutting wit and her clever, if black, humor.

Caroline Stevermer's A Scholar of Magics is a companion piece to the earlier A College of Magics, although it stands well enough alone, given that I haven't had the great fortune to have read the first.

The setting for the book is Glasscastle University, a very prim, upper class, British academic institution. Except that the subject taught in this august place is magic.

Samuel Lambert is an American sharpshooter who manages to catch the attention of a group of Glasscastle fellows, and is invited to take part in an experiment to create some sort of weapon for the greater glory of the Empire. Curious, he agrees to their offer, and as the book opens, has found a place for himself as an outsider looking in. The magical chants of the students—which maintain the protective barriers that guard the university from external attack—speak to him in a way that nothing else in his life has, and perhaps because of this quiet fascination, he has been offered rooms by the mysterious and private Nicholas Fell for the duration of his part in the experiment.

His life is easy, and he often has free time—much of which is immediately absorbed by the unexpected arrival of the determined, attractive, and sharply intelligent Jane Brailsford, sister to Robert Brailsford, one of Glasscastle's numerous professors.

She's come on a mission of import, one which has nothing to do with Lambert and everything to do with his roommate, and without deliberate intent, she draws Lambert into her cause—because Nicholas Fell is one of the four wardens who protect and sustain magical balance in the world. And he's been very reluctant to accept his duties.

But she's not the only person who has a keen interest in the warden of the west. And the other person is decidedly less humanitarian in his intent.

Stevermer's prose is keen and delightful, as are her characters; her world is both intelligently and lovingly detailed, and its tone and mannered society reminded me in some ways of the work of Martha Wells. There are surprises in plenty, but none horrific or unpleasant. No mental gymnastics are required to follow the story; it's a cozy book to curl up with, pot of tea to one side, for a few indulgent hours.

My only quibble—a small one—is that I left the book feeling vaguely unsatisfied; I suspect this is because I wanted more of it, and the fact that it had come to an end was a tad unwelcome.

Last month we published one of Robert Reed's stories about the Native American boy named Raven. This month he gives us something very different, a look at the hottest trend to hit home design since the words “feng shui” were first uttered in the West.

"And beneath the grand staircase, inside this charming little bathroom, we've installed a young boy, a darling little fellow perhaps five or six years old, who once lived in Sussex and was taken—"

"Madam?"

"Taken by the Black Death—"

"Madam, I'm sorry,” the director sputtered, one hand nervously pushing at his thinning hair. “My apologies, Madam ... but we have another problem."

A handsome woman in her middle forties, Madam Zane was tall and elegant, born from an assortment of heritages that had left her with a slender accent, skin that was a smoky gray, almond-shaped jade-green eyes, and rich lustrous black hair grown long but always tied into a tiny tight bun that served as a kind of trademark. With effort, she made herself stop talking about her darling little boy. Glancing at her crew and director, then at the proud new homeowners standing in the hallway, she said nothing. Yet her irritation was obvious. Her mouth narrowed and her eyes widened, hinting at a smoldering rage. This had not been an easy assignment. Unexpected glitches had already caused several ugly outbursts. But the crew learned long ago: If their cameras were working, or at least pretending to work, the good Madam would swallow her rage, feigning manners and poise so long as any recording was being made.

Calmly, almost coldly, she asked, “And what is wrong now?"

"It's the microphones,” the director reported. “Both of them ... they went dead suddenly."

"Not by accident, I presume."

"Probably not."

"Is it the boy?” Then she shook her head, telling the only working camera, “Turn yourself off.” And when the red light vanished, she remarked to nobody in particular, “It isn't him, is it? It's the grandmother again."

With grateful honesty, the director said, “I really don't know."

Madam Zane threw an accusing glare at the young couple. But of course it didn't matter who was responsible. Like all things spiritual, there were technical solutions that would make every problem vanish.

"Boost and shield,” she told him. “Can't you boost and shield?"

The director and his two tech-stallions had already boosted the signal strengths and applied every useful shielding to the equipment. But their boss was notoriously ignorant about modern electronics and impatient with rational excuses. Whatever force was able to circumvent their collective cleverness was going to prove difficult to the very end. Not that it was unbeatable, of course. But if these incidents persisted, they'd force the rest of the shoot to stretch far beyond the allotted time and every budgetary projection.

"We'll change things up,” the director promised. Then with a snap of the fingers, he pulled his crew out of the little bathroom for a quick huddle and to escape their boss's immediate wrath.

Madam Zane stood beside the gleaming white toilet with its gold-embossed handle and the tiny puddle of perfumed water. For a long moment, she stared at what seemed like a random point on the wall. Behind the Italian tile was a piece of old lumber—a scavenged lump of oak uncovered by bonded spirit hunters—and wrapped around that treasure were an assortment of quantum manipulators and resonators and the registered ID tag that was required by the new Codes of Thanatological Decency.

To the wall, she whispered, “You'd better not be the trouble, young man."

Closing her eyes, she muttered, “Cause me grief again, and I'll personally rip you out of that wall and burn you to nothing."

As the most popular web-cast in a competitive genre, Designing with Souls had its pick of the living and their various dream houses. With Madam Zane at the helm, the fortunate few experienced the talents of someone who was arguably the best in the world at this very new trade. Tom and Tina Lynch possessed all the essential requirements: They were building a beautiful but not overly magnificent shelter, since viewers liked to be impressed but not feel poverty stricken; they were willing to pay the show's robots and colorful human overseers for the privilege of assembling their new home; and of course the Lynches had a keen interest in employing souls. On a whim, they contacted DWS. One slot was available, they were told, and like a thousand others, they filled out the appropriate forms and invited background checks, delaying construction in hopes of being chosen. But eventually an intern with the show called them. With a flat quick voice, he explained that another project had been selected. Which was perfectly true. A San Francisco condo project was scheduled between a boathouse in Belize and the haunting of a Georgian Bay bed-and-breakfast. The Lynches were understandably disappointed, perhaps even bitter. But weeks later the San Francisco project collapsed beneath a sudden divorce. The show's producers needed an instant replacement, and that kind of luck, sweet or sour, was why Tom and Tina found themselves thrust suddenly into the front ranks of candidates.

"We want a few ghosts,” Tom explained at the preliminary meeting. “Nice ghosts. Pleasant ghosts."

"We don't call them ghosts,” Madam Zane warned.

"I realize that,” the young man allowed.

"Because there's no such creature,” she continued as though he hadn't spoken. “What we employ are the residues of once-living people. Their souls happened to leave an imprint on some compliant substrate. More like a photograph than a presence, really. The machines let us magnify and clarify whatever the residues contain."

"I know that,” Tom replied.

Tina took her husband's hand, adding, “We've read everything we can find on the subject."

"Very wise of you,” Madam Zane purred.

The couple held hands carefully, plainly impressed with the celebrity sitting before them.

"We call them remnants,” she said again.

"Not souls?” Tina inquired.

"That's just the show's title.” The famous woman dismissed the issue with a shrug. “In my mind, I'm designing a home for your two souls."

That brought happy nods.

"Which brings up another key issue,” she added. “I know you have ideas about what's proper and right. But I don't work on small scales. I'm not a designer who's going to be satisfied with a few old relatives kicking around in your attic."

The nods ended.

"You have your say, of course. You may have heard stories, but don't believe them. I can be open to someone else's suggestions, provided that they're reasonable, timely suggestions."

There was a pause.

Then Tina remarked, “I have a grandmother—"

"Yes?"

"Had a grandmother,” she corrected. Talking about the dead, her eyes stared off into the distance. “I was awfully close to Grammie Dawson. She was a strong woman, and very smart, and she practically raised me. I've always loved her, and since we have three children, including the baby—"

"In the nursery, I presume."

"Pardon?"

"Is that where you want your grandmother?"

Tom squeezed his wife's hand. For both of them, he said, “We're really set on having Grammie. I'm sorry."

"There's no need for sorrow.” Then with a professional tone that made her seem both reassuring and relentless, Madam Zane told them, “What I do in my work ... I build a community of residues. Through my people—spirit hunters whom I trust—I'll collect residues from around the world, and with all of the available tricks, I'll enhance them to where they can become important features in your home and life ... and yes, if your grandmother can be found as some quantum impression, I will gladly include her...."

Why argue with the clients? Their show was on a strict timetable. Residues were relatively rare phenomena. Odds were that the grandmother didn't even exist anymore, save for some old photographs and digitals that could be happily hung above the baby's stuffed animals.

That was the good Madam's logic.

"Oh, but she still exists,” Tina replied with a giddy joy. Then she pulled a small glassy brick from the bottom of her purse. “She died just last month. Ninety-nine years young. This is her trap. She had it in her hospital room, tucked right under her bed—"

"A sink-hole enabler,” Madam Zane muttered, impressed by this state-of-the-art machinery.

"Grammie is here,” Tina promised, stroking the brick fondly. “And she was very insistent at the end. She wants to be close to her great-grandchildren, to watch over them and help them. She really is about the most caring, decent person that I've ever known!"

The grandmother was dead, dead, dead.

Thought Madam Zane.

But she nodded and smiled, remarking quietly, “Well. I guess this makes things easier, now doesn't it?"

Fat old-fashioned microphones proved too cumbersome to feel quantum hanky-panky, and the digital cameras were set outdoors, viewing the interior through long optical cables and secondary lenses. But even with those fixes in place, the bathroom ate up the rest of the morning. The dead boy was the problem now. He refused to emerge on command, which made for lousy entertainment. The tech-stallions had to tinker with the resonators, heightening the quantum signal, and when that brought only minimal results, Madam Zane ordered the lights turned down and everyone else out of the little room. Then she quietly said, “I see you."

She couldn't see anyone. But like any small boy, this one was easily fooled. Assuming that he had been caught, he allowed himself to emerge—a silky image wearing rags, his red hair tousled and his big eyes staring at what must seem to be a very odd world. He wasn't a real boy, of course, nor was he a genuine soul. Simply stated, here stood the subtle impression of a complex neural network that had been trapped as it failed, and the remnant looked as it did because this was the dead boy's image of himself.

"Why are you hiding?” she asked. Then she lowered her head, placing her blazing green eyes even with his pale white eyes. In her best Medieval English, she said, “The woman told you to hide from me. Didn't she?"

He grew pale again, but the resonators wouldn't let him vanish.

"Grammie Dawson?"

His eyes grew larger and more real.

"You know who I mean, don't you?"

A crisp nod.

"Is she here now?"

He shook his head.

"Do you like Grammie Dawson?"

The wispy face seemed confused by the question.

Madam Zane turned on her microphone. An instant later, the cameras were working again, absorbing and enhancing the light produced by this very small apparition.

"What do you think of this room, my boy?"

The boy looked at the marble sink and then at the toilet bowl.

"Watch,” Madam Zane said. Then she touched the gold handle, starting the quiet flush of scented water.

Fascinated, the boy watched the bowl empty and fill again.

"I selected you,” she told him. “Out of a thousand candidates, I picked you for this very special place."

He seemed heartened by the news.

"You're a sweet boy, and this new family will love you,” she continued. “Wouldn't you like to meet your family now?"

How much he understood, she couldn't tell. But the face nodded amiably, and when the Lynches’ son came into the bathroom—a moment entirely prearranged, and nearly perfect—the dead boy smiled brightly, the soft beginnings of a voice whispering, “Hello."

"This is Joshua,” said Madam Zane.

Hearing his name, the Lynch boy smiled.

Madam Zane urged him on with a crisp nod.

Joshua took a breath, and then asked the apparition, “How's my Grammie? Have you seen her?"

The Madam managed to contain her fury for another few moments, giving the dead boy enough time to ask, “Drink water, yes...?"

"No,” the living seven-year-old proclaimed. “You don't drink this stuff."

"Drink not?"

"No, it's for peeing into."

Then Joshua gladly unzipped his pants, dug out his little penis, and proudly showed the spellbound ghost what nearly a thousand years of technological wizardry had brought to the world.

The nursery had been finished yesterday.

"I don't see the problem,” Madam Zane said to the stuffed koala and the butterfly wallpaper and the mobile composed of big-eyed circus animals floating on the ends of invisible nanofibers. Then with a touch of the room's controls, she caused the blinds to lower and close, choking out the midday sunshine. “This is what your granddaughter wants. To appear on my little program, with her happy family. To show off the things that make her feel exceptionally proud. Her children. Her new home. And of course, you."

Silence.

Into the darkness, she said, “Grammie."

A motion without substance caught in the corner of an eye. But she knew better than to look straight at it. Even when the cold brushed against her skin—the false chill caused by the stilling of molecules drifting in the air—Madam Zane did nothing but hold her position, allowing the residue of a very old woman to brush against her. Then with a soft laugh, she told her adversary, “The dead can't scare me. But I do, on occasion, scare the dead."

The cold retreated. With the slowest possible motion, Madam Zane turned her head, allowing her eyes to lose their focus, allowing the apparition to display itself inside what only looked to be a column of cold silvery smoke.

A young woman stood before her.

The living woman gave a little start, and then laughed again. Grammie Dawson was dressed like a visitor from the last century—a thirtyish woman in an ugly pantsuit ensemble, her hair long and a surprisingly pretty face glowering at the unwelcome visitor. “So this is how you see yourself,” Madam Zane remarked. Then with a dismissive shake of the head, she asked, “What do you want, young lady?"

Subtle modulations inside the silvery smoke formed a sound, and the sound resolved itself into a youthful voice, dead for nearly seventy years now. But that didn't matter. With weight and a scalding fierceness, the residue said, “Leave us alone."

"Why should I?"

"Go,” the apparition spat. Then it lifted its apparent arms and drifted closer, the sudden cold kissing living flesh.

"You can't scare me,” Madam Zane repeated.

Then without any visible trace of fear, she thrust her arm into the chest of her opponent, and grinned, and said, “You feel my heat worse than I feel your cold, you know. Because you're no more substantial than a fart, my dear."

Grammie retreated, reformed.

"Do you know what I was? Before I was Madam Zane, I mean."

The young face became more real, the illusion of solidity causing the rest of her form to appear thinner, worn out.

"I was an archaeologist. Cindy Zane, Ph.D.” She laughed for a moment, the gesture carefree and sentimental. “Back when these technologies were new, I'd find traces of the dead in organic substrates. I brought them into the open to study their appearance, and when the resonators improved and grew cheap enough, I could interview them. In a limited fashion, of course. The sum total of a mind is enormous, and what remains behind ... well, it's like the impression of a dirty hand....” She lifted one of her hands, saying, “That's what you are. A handprint. Full of details and useful clues, and probably better defined than most, since the sink-hole enablers are designed to make residues. But even still, you're just a kind of quantum dirt ... a smudge that always fades with time."

Grammie was beautiful in her youth, and even when she was nothing more than a patina of little wishes and lost tendencies, her lovely face was wrapped around smart, sure eyes.

"Yes,” she whispered. “I know what you were. Before ... I know...."

Madam Zane continued with her story. “A few years ago, I saw an opportunity. I saw a new market, and real success. When you were a woman, making a living didn't matter. But that's not true today. I've always had to work to survive. My success has brought plenty of challengers and backbiters. But believe me, I've dealt with all of them. Just as I plan to deal with you."

The apparition stared at her, speaking only with her scornful eyes.

"I don't care what you think of me, Grammie,” said Madam Zane. “One more episode like this morning ... one little delay from any difficult residue ... and I'll personally rip your sinkhole out of that wall and bury you in the backyard until we're gone from here.

"Do you understand me, old woman?"

The apparition drifted nearer again. The mouth opened, and from somewhere deeper came the words, “Understand."

"You do?"

But then Grammie completed her response, saying, “This."

"Understand this,” she meant.

And she shoved her right arm into Madam Zane's chest, letting the furnace of blood and muscle extinguish her own feeble existence, pushing her chilled self inside the living woman until the Madam's breath gasped and her heart bucked and from her mouth came a cold breath of vapor, invisible in the sudden blackness.

Yet the threat must have had its impact. For the rest of the afternoon, the work was nearly flawless. A Roman legionnaire stood guard at the front gate, shouting orders in Latin to the watching cameras. An English butler smiled agreeably in the front entranceway. The kitchen's apparition, a French servant girl from the court of Louis the Fourteenth, moved a few knives back away from the counter's edge. In the family room, a college music teacher managed to play the first chords of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the baby grand. Really, this was a wonderful assemblage of intriguing residues. Madam Zane felt a keen, slick pride in what she had accomplished—what her various agents had accomplished—with minimal time to work with. As evening fell, she pushed the resonators to their maximum, coaxing a twentieth-century astronomer to emerge inside the stately library. “The famous discoverer of a dozen asteroids and comets,” she said to her fat microphone, introducing the residue to an audience that would hear nothing familiar in his name. “And this is Joshua, sir. He's very interested in space and the stars, sir.” She smiled to the world, saying, “Come here, Joshua. Come on."

The Lynch boy walked in from the hallway.

"Say hello,” she advised.

The boy had a presence, a real talent. Unconsciously aware of the various camera lenses and his future audience, he smiled at the apparition, saying, “Hey, I've got a telescope, too."

The dead astronomer seemed heartened by the news. He nodded, and a much-magnified voice said, “Good."

"It's big,” the boy said.

"Good,” again.

Then the apparition discovered an enormous reserve of energy. With the resonators running full-out, he could make himself appear almost real, and with a curiosity that hadn't been awakened for decades, he asked, “How large is your telescope? Three inches? Five—?"

"It's five kilometers across,” the boy boasted.

Puzzlement swept across the unreal face.

Joshua's mother stepped forward, ready to explain, “We rented time on one of the Moon's telescopes, sir. For Joshua's birthday."

"If you want,” the boy exclaimed, “I'll show you one of your own comets. Next year, when I turn eight."

I am dead, the apparition remembered.

But he absorbed that knowledge without fuss, as they usually did. He even began to smile, hands smoothing the illusion of a corduroy jacket as he prepared to say something wise and sweet. But he seemed to hesitate at the last moment. His mouth opened and then closed again, and he tilted his head as if listening to another voice. Then he abruptly turned toward Madam Zane, his face acquiring a crimson glow, and with a deep fury, he shouted, “Leave them alone."

Everyone in the room jumped backward.

"You awful bitch,” he declared. Then he vanished.

"Leave who alone?"

Coffee made her shake, and nervous energy quickened her breath. If asked, she would claim not to feel scared, but the late hour and an ugly ending to the day had put her in an unfamiliar state of mind. With the lights down to almost nothing, she told the gloom, “Tomorrow, I'll finish. A couple days late, but who cares? You won't care, because I'm ripping you out of the wall myself. You won't bother me again, Grammie. Are you listening to me?"

The nursery made a soft sound, like a breath. Then a voice came from nowhere in particular, saying, “Them, I mean. The others. I want you to leave them alone."

"I'll finish tomorrow,” Madam Zane repeated.

"But you won't, no."

She ignored the prattle. In one elegant hand was a titanium saw, fully charged and with its safety off. In the other, a carpenter's schematic of the room. Holding up a digital diagram, she determined her position and where the important wiring and weight bearing studs were hiding. Grammie Dawson was set two meters to the right of the main window, approximately level with her former center of gravity. From behind the sheetrock, the residue said, “Put them back."

"Put who back?"

"Them."

Madam Zane shook her head, laughing quietly. “Back where?"

"Where they belong."

The schematic was a handy tool. She had borrowed both it and the saw from a construction robot, and when she was certain about where she was standing, she marked the wall with a glow pencil. Then she paused one last time, saying, “I won't do this. If you promise to leave me alone tomorrow, I won't rip you out of the wall now."

A cold wispy woman appeared beside her. Her icy voice whispered, “I was never a stupid person, you know. I read everything and learned a few things, until the day I died."

Madam Zane shrugged, lifting the saw into position.

"I watched your little program, on occasion."

"Thank you."

"And I read your journal articles, too."

She hesitated now. A genuine incredulity caused her to laugh for a moment, and with a skeptical voice, she said, “No."

"The voices of the dead ... a fascinating subject...."

Again, “No."

"Your interview with that girl who died in the Pandemic of 1919...really, I thought that was very sad, and lovely—"

The saw's carbide blade began turning, humming sharply, and in a single motion, the living woman carved a neat horizontal line into the new wall.

"What was the girl's name?"

"Sarah,” Madam Zane replied, almost without thinking.

"Your interview with her ... how long did it last...?"

"A few weeks, in all."

"And what happened to Sarah?"

"The flu killed her—"

"After your interview.” The residue brightened, solidified. “Which client's home did you set her inside?"

No client's. But Madam Zane refused to answer, using the saw to slice the first of two vertical gashes.

"Sarah,” the residue said. “A pleasant, pretty young girl."

"She was."

"You carried her to your laboratory, if I remember."

"The equipment was cumbersome back then. Her residue was inside a walnut floor. To study her—"

"And then you put her back again. Didn't you?"

The second vertical cut was finished, mangling part of the butterfly wallpaper. But it was an easy enough fix for the robots, and since machines didn't care about the hour, the room would look perfectly normal by morning. No difficult questions to answer, unless someone happened to come upstairs to chat with Grammie Dawson. And even if she was missed, so what? Madam Zane had intimidated, even browbeaten, more than a few clients in her day.

"You returned Sarah to where she had died. To her home."

"I put her residue back again, yes.” With a frustrated nod, the living woman reminded her opponent, “She was a chunk of wood, and I had to repair the house some way."

"New lumber would have made a better patch."

Madam Zane set the blade into position, ready to make the final horizontal cut. And then she hesitated.

"My granddaughter and her husband are nice people,” the voice reminded her.

Silence.

"I love them, but they can be ... well, can be rather ordinary. Subject to popular trends and little whims. And I don't always agree with them. Before I died, I told them I didn't approve of your program or what you did—"

"Because we shouldn't disturb residues. Is that right?"

"If they wish to be moved, we should honor their request. But as a rule, no. They should be left where they are."

Again, she turned on the saw.

A phantom's hand, cold as a glacier, clamped down on the red safety switch, applying just enough force to kill the motor.

"Don't,” Madam Zane warned.

"Tell me,” said Grammie Dawson. “Did Sarah ask you to put her back where she had died?"

Silence.

"She asked, and you complied with her wishes. Is that right?"

Madam Zane summoned up a shrug and a forced little laugh, confessing, “I was younger then."

"And, I think, you were a better person."

With her free hand, she slapped at the ghostly image, using her metabolic heat to dissipate what only pretended to be flesh upon bone.

Grammie Dawson retreated. Then with a tight quick voice, she said, “It matters to us, you know. Where our souls come to rest—"

Madam Zane turned on the saw, and with one hard shove sent the whirring blade into the bright image of a monarch butterfly, and behind the butterfly, a nest of wires full of fire and fury.

No cameras were watching as she stepped slowly through the front door, soft green eyes gazing up the length of the grand staircase. Everyone assumed she was thinking about revenge. But could she climb those stairs on her own? Two nights in the hospital hadn't been enough time. Her legs had trouble lifting her feet off the bright marble floor. Her right arm still dangled at her side, practically useless. In every way, Madam Zane looked weak, and she sounded sickly frail, telling somebody, “No,” and then taking a shallow gasp.

Then again, to nobody in particular, she said, “No."

The director expected a tantrum. If not today, then when her strength returned. And like a hundred times in the past, he promised himself that he would quit rather than endure that kind of humiliation again.

The tech-stallions braced for the worst but then exchanged smug little looks. Who would have believed it? A damned clever soul had used her phantom fingers to reprogram the digital schematic, fooling the Queen of Misery, causing her to come within a few microseconds of electrocuting herself.

The Lynches felt sad but defiant. Grammie Dawson had been defending herself, after all. And if pressed, they'd argue that she never intended to kill Madam Zane. Even if the saw cut into the line below the normal safety circuits, Grammie knew that the house's main computer would soon detect the surge, and with plenty of time to spare, it would cut all power to the nursery.

"Where are you?” Madam Zane whispered.

She was speaking to the dead woman; everyone knew it.

But then she turned, and with a wisp of a smile said, “Joshua.” The right arm lifted, barely. Long limp fingers fell on the boy's shoulder, and then with obvious pain, she knelt, placing her face even with his.

"Would you do something for me, Joshua?"

Immune to the resident anxieties and the banal terrors, Joshua nodded happily. “If I can."

"Talk to the boy for me,” she said.

"What boy?"

"The boy under the stairs,” she said. “Go on now and call to him. He'll show himself to you, I'm sure.” She looked up the long staircase again, just for a moment. “And ask him, will you? For me, will you ask him where he wants to be?"

In his fifteen previous stories that we've published, Bradley Denton has given us an alternate history or two, subversive serial killer tales, glimpses of the afterlife (including a home for dead comedians found therein), and several tales with music as a central theme. Here now, after much too long a gap between appearances in these pages, Mr. Denton ventures into the genre of military sf with a tale told by one of the more memorable characters we've seen lately. Please say hello to:

To the Supreme Commander of the soldier who bears this message—

Sir or Madam:

Today before it was light I had to roll in the stream to wash blood from my fur. I decided then to send You these words.

So I think of the word shapes, and the girl writes them for me. I know how the words are shaped because I could see them whenever Captain Dial spoke. And I always knew what he was saying.

The girl writes on a roll of paper she found in the stone hut when we began using it as our quarters three months ago. She already had pencils. She has written her own words on the paper many times since then, but she has torn those words from the roll and placed them in her duffel. Her own words have different shapes than the ones she writes for me now. She doesn't even know what my word shapes mean, because the shapes are all that I show her. So the responsibility for their meanings is mine alone.

Just as the responsibility for my actions is mine alone.

Last night I killed eighteen of Your soldiers.

I didn't want to do that. They reminded me of some of the soldiers I knew before, the ones who followed Captain Dial with me. But I had to kill them because they came to attack us. And if I let them do that, I would be disobeying orders.

I heard them approach while the girl, the two boys, and the old man slept. So I went out and climbed the ridge behind the hut so I could see a long way. I have good night vision, and I had no trouble spotting the soldiers as they split into two squads and spread out. Their intent was to attack our hut from different angles to make its defense more difficult. I knew this because it was one of the things Captain Dial taught me.

So I did another thing Captain Dial taught me. As the two squads scuttled to their positions to await the order to attack, I crept down toward them through the grass and brambles. I crept with my belly to the earth so they couldn't see me coming. Not even with their infrared goggles.

Captain Dial once said I was black as night and silent as air. He was proud when he said it. I remembered that when I crept to Your soldiers.

They didn't hear me as I went from one to another. They were spread out too far. Their leader wasn't as smart as Captain Dial. I bit each one's throat so it tore open and the soldier couldn't shout. There were some sounds, but they weren't loud.

The first soldier had a lieutenant's bar on his helmet. I had seen it from a long way away. It was the only officer's insignia I saw in either squad. So I went to him first. That way he couldn't give the order to attack before I was finished.

But the others would have attacked sooner or later, even without an order from their lieutenant. So I had to kill them all.

The last soldier was the only female among the eighteen. As I approached her, I smelled the same kind of soap that Captain Dial's wife Melanie used. That made me pause as I remembered how things were a long time ago when I slept at the foot of their bed. But then the soldier knew I was there and turned her weapon toward me. So I bit her throat before she could fire.

I dragged the soldiers to the ravine near the southern end of the ridge. You'll find them there side by side if You arrive before the wild animals do. I did my best to treat them with honor.

Then I went to the stream. The stream is near the hut, so I tried to be quiet. I didn't want to wake my people before sunrise.

After washing, I went into the grass and shook off as much water as I could. But there was no one to rub me with a towel. There was no one to touch my head and tell me I was good.

I remembered then that no one had ever told Captain Dial he was good, either.

This is what it means to be the leader.

I wanted to howl. But I didn't. My people were still asleep.

I take care of them. I don't let anyone hurt them. These were Captain Dial's orders, and I will not disobey.

Captain Dial was my commanding officer. I was his first sergeant. If You examine the D Company roster, You will see that my pay grade is K-9.

My name is Chip.

Whenever Captain Dial gave me an order, I obeyed as fast as I could. And then he always touched my head and told me I was good. Sometimes when I was extra fast, he gave me a treat. I liked the treats, but I liked the touch even more.

There was never a time when Captain Dial wasn't my leader. But he wasn't always a captain, and I wasn't always his first sergeant. In the beginning he was a lieutenant, and I was his corporal.

We were promoted because of the day we demonstrated our training to the people in the bleachers.

That morning, in our quarters, Lieutenant Dial said that what we would participate in that afternoon was political bullshit. Money for the war was about to be cut, so public-relations events like this were an attempt to bolster civilian support. But Lieutenant Dial said that only two things had ever motivated the public to support the military: heroism and vengeance.

He also said that we had to do well regardless. He said I would have to do a good job and make him proud. So I stood at attention, and I thought about running fast to find mines and attack enemies. I thought about making Lieutenant Dial proud.

Then he touched my head. He knew my thoughts. He always knew my thoughts. He told me I was good and gave me permission to be at ease.

So I wiggled and pushed my head against his knees, and my tail wagged hard as he buckled my duty harness. Even though he had said it was bullshit, I could smell that he was excited about the job ahead. That made me excited too. And as we left our quarters, Lieutenant Dial's wife Melanie came with us. That made me even more excited, because she was almost never with us except in our quarters.

Melanie spoke to me every morning, and although I couldn't understand her thoughts too well, I knew she was telling me to take care of Lieutenant Dial throughout our day of training. And every night when Lieutenant Dial and I returned, Melanie touched my head and said I was good. Then, after we all ate supper, she and Lieutenant Dial would climb into their bed, I would lie down on my cushion at its foot, and we would sleep. Sometimes in the night their scents grew stronger and blended together, and they made happy sounds. But I stayed quiet because I wanted them to stay happy. Other times I smelled or heard strangers outside our quarters, and I would go on alert even though Lieutenant Dial was still asleep and had not given me an order. But the strangers always went away, and then I slept again too.

Those were the only times Melanie was with us, and that one order every morning was the only order she ever gave me. All of my other orders, all of my treats, and all of my food came from Lieutenant Dial.

But Lieutenant Dial loved Melanie. I could see the word “love” whenever he thought of her. And that made me glad because it made him glad. So we were all happy on the day she came with us. She smelled like a hundred different flowers all mixed together, and she was wearing new clothes that seemed to float around her.

She also wore a gift that Lieutenant Dial had given her the night before. It was a shiny rock on a silver chain that she wore around her neck. Lieutenant Dial told me that Melanie liked the color of the rock. It just looked like a rock on a chain to me. But when Lieutenant Dial put it around Melanie's neck, it made me think of the chain and tags that Lieutenant Dial wore around his own neck whenever he was on duty. And it also made me think of the collar he put on me when I wasn't wearing my duty harness. So then I understood why Melanie was so happy to receive the rock and chain. Now we all had things to wear around our necks.

We didn't go to our usual training area at the fort that day. Instead we went to a park by the ocean. There were flags and people everywhere. It was busy and noisy, and I wanted to run around and smell everything. But Lieutenant Dial ordered me to stay beside him, and that was fun too. I still got to smell everything. We walked from one tree to another, with me on one side of Lieutenant Dial and Melanie on the other. And at every tree, people gathered around while Lieutenant Dial told them who he was and who I was. Then he would give me a few orders—easy things like attention, on guard, and secure-the-perimeter—and we would move on. A lot of people asked if they could touch me, but Lieutenant Dial said they couldn't. He explained that I was on duty. I wasn't a pet. I was a corporal.

He was proud when he said it, and that made me proud too.

As we walked from place to place, sometimes Lieutenant Dial held Melanie's hand in his. And once, Melanie reached across and touched my head. This violated the rule Lieutenant Dial had been telling everyone. But even though I was on duty, it seemed all right. I was glad she did it.

After a while we walked away from the trees to a broad stretch of lawn beside the ocean. I saw a long pier floating on the water. And across the lawn from the pier were bleachers with people in them. There were more people in the bleachers than I had ever seen in one place before, and some of them were high-ranking officers in dress uniforms. So I knew that even if what was going to happen here was bullshit, it was important bullshit.

Out on the lawn were little flags, mud puddles, wooden walls, sandbag fortifications, and some mock-enemies. I knew they were mock-enemies because they wore dark, padded suits. All of these things were familiar to me from training. But there were more things on the lawn than I had ever seen in one training session, and that excited me.

Melanie went to the bleachers while Lieutenant Dial took me onto the lawn, where we were joined by other soldiers. Some of the other soldiers were also K-9s. I knew most of them. Lieutenant Dial and I had trained with them many times.

Out on the pier, men and women dressed in white stood at attention. And when Lieutenant Dial and I reached a spot in the middle of the lawn, he told me to stand at attention as well. So I did, and all of the other soldiers did too.

A colonel stood in front of the bleachers and addressed the crowd. He said a lot of words through a loudspeaker, but I couldn't understand them. Since they didn't come from Lieutenant Dial, they were meaningless.

When the colonel stopped talking, the people in the bleachers clapped their hands. Then a soldier ran onto the lawn and handed Lieutenant Dial a microphone. Lieutenant Dial signaled that I should remain at attention, so I didn't move as he took a step forward and addressed the people.

He told them a lot of things about K-9 soldiers. One thing he said was that while war dogs required a lot of training, we didn't have to be trained to understand loyalty or rank. A dog who was raised and trained by one soldier would always see that soldier as his or her pack leader. So if Lieutenant Dial was put in charge of a platoon, that platoon would become my pack. And I would see my duty to that pack as absolute and unquestionable.

It surprised me that Lieutenant Dial had to explain that to people. It was as obvious to me as knowing that food is for eating. But then I remembered that people didn't always think the same way that Lieutenant Dial and I thought. Melanie, for example. Melanie was always kind to me, but sometimes I could smell that she also feared me a little. And I always wondered how that could be. Lieutenant Dial loved Melanie, so I would never hurt her. And as long as I was near her, I would never let anything else hurt her, either. So I hoped that what Lieutenant Dial was saying to the people in the bleachers would help Melanie understand that she never had to be afraid.

Then Lieutenant Dial said something that made him sad as he said it. I don't think the people knew how sad it made him, but I knew. The other K-9s knew, too.

He said that during a war in the past, some high-ranking officers had decided that K-9s weren't really soldiers. Instead, they were classified as equipment. That meant that when their units left the field, K-9s were abandoned or destroyed. They were treated like utility vehicles or tents. They weren't allowed to return to their home quarters with their handlers.

Lieutenant Dial always spoke the truth, but this truth was difficult for me to comprehend. I knew I wasn't equipment. I knew the difference between a vehicle and a dog. And the K-9s in that past war must have known the difference too. So I was glad the regulations had changed. But I wondered then, and wonder now, whether there might still be some high-ranking officers who don't think of me as a soldier.

I urge You not to make that mistake.

Lieutenant Dial's sadness went away as he continued talking. He described some of the duties K-9 soldiers perform, and as he described those duties, different handlers ordered their K-9s to perform them. And as the dogs obeyed, their images appeared on a big screen that had been set up beside the pier.

One dog, a pointy-eared shepherd, attacked and subdued first one mock-enemy, then three, and then five. He was good at it. Even though the mock-enemies were padded so he couldn't really hurt them, I could smell that they were afraid of him.

Another dog, a lean pinscher, ran fast fast fast, dodging and leaping over obstacles that popped up before him, and he delivered a medical kit to another soldier at the end of the lawn. Then he dragged that soldier to a designated safety point while avoiding some booby traps. The booby traps went off bang bang bang after the pinscher and his soldier were past them.

A big-chested Malinois destroyed a machine-gun nest.

Another shepherd crept on her belly to flank an enemy platoon.

A hound pointed out hidden land mines and howled as he found each one.

Lieutenant Dial announced each K-9's name and rank, each handler's name and rank, and the task to be performed. The K-9s were all good, and the people in the bleachers clapped. So I was glad because everyone was happy. But I was getting more and more excited because I wanted it to be my turn. In fact, as the second shepherd completed her flanking maneuver and took down a mock-enemy from behind, I almost broke attention. I wanted to help. I wanted to be a good soldier, too.

I whimpered, and Lieutenant Dial gave me a corrective glance. So I tried extra hard to remain still and silent. I didn't want to disappoint Lieutenant Dial. Disappointing Lieutenant Dial would be the worst thing in the world.

When all of the other dogs had performed their tasks, Lieutenant Dial told the people that the modern K-9 soldier went beyond those of the past. He told them that K-9s and their handlers were now matched according to their skills, temperaments, and rapport—because there were some dogs and humans who had a gift for understanding each other, and some who didn't. And he told them that such matchings had been so successful that dogs often knew what their handlers wanted them to do even before any verbal or visual orders had been issued. In addition, a subcutaneous device implanted in each dog made it possible for handlers to send pulsed signals that their K-9s had been trained to recognize as orders. And the implants, in turn, sent biometric signals to the handlers to indicate their K-9s’ levels of anxiety and confidence as orders were carried out. So even when a dog and handler weren't in close proximity, they could still communicate and complete their mission.

I didn't remember receiving my implant, but I knew it was under the skin between my shoulders. I almost never thought about it because Lieutenant Dial almost never used his transmitter anymore. He had used it often in our early days of training. But as our training had progressed, our thoughts had become clearer and clearer to each other, and one day we had both known the electronic signals weren't needed anymore. So Lieutenant Dial had unstrapped the transmitter from his wrist and put it in a pouch on his belt. After that day, he would sometimes send a signal just to be sure my implant was working, but I always started carrying out his orders before I felt the pulses anyway. That was because I paid attention to him, and I could see his thoughts even when he was far away.

When Lieutenant Dial finished telling the people about the communication implants, he told them about me. He told them I had been rescued from a municipal shelter as a puppy, and that a military veterinarian had determined that the dominant breeds in my genetic background were black Labrador and standard poodle. That made me a Labradoodle. Some of the people in the crowd laughed when they heard that name, but Lieutenant Dial didn't laugh when he said it.

He said I had the intelligence of a poodle and the temperament of a Labrador. He said I was three years old and in peak physical condition. He said I weighed eighty pounds, which was big enough to be strong, but small enough to be fast and to squeeze into places too tight for people. He said my black, wavy coat was good camouflage at night. He said I was at the top of my training class. He said I was a corporal and my name was Chip.

Then Lieutenant Dial looked across the lawn at a sandbagged machine-gun nest and gave me the hand signal to attack. I knew he was going to give me the signal as soon as he looked across at the sandbags, but I also knew I should wait for it. The people in the bleachers wouldn't like it if I didn't.

But I jumped away fast when he gave it. I ran for the sandbags, and the machine gun opened fire. It was firing blank cartridges, but I knew from training that I had to act as if the ammunition could hurt me. So I zigzagged and made quick stops behind cardboard rocks, stacks of tires, and other things that were on the lawn between Lieutenant Dial and the machine-gun nest. The machine-gun barrel swiveled to follow me, but I was too fast and tricky for it, because when I ran behind a cardboard rock, I would come out in a different direction. The machine-gun barrel couldn't keep up, and soon I was right under it so it couldn't point at me. Then I jumped up over the sandbags and pushed the gunner onto his back. Two mock-enemies on either side of him pointed rifles at me, so I bit one in the crotch and twisted so that he fell against the other one. Then all three mock-enemies were on their backs, and I bit the pads at their throats. A bell sounded over the loudspeaker as I broke the skin of each pad and the mock-blood came out. After the third bell, the people in the bleachers clapped.

Then I felt a quick series of pulses between my shoulders, but I was already jumping away from the machine-gun nest because I knew what Lieutenant Dial wanted me to do next. I ran as fast as I could to the farthest end of the lawn, dodging mock-enemies as they popped up and tried to shoot me, until I reached the wooden wall with the knotted rope at the top. The wall was high, but I liked that. I'm good at jumping.

I ran hard and jumped high, and I grabbed the bottom knot on the rope with my teeth. Then I pushed against the wall with all my feet so I could grab the next knot, and the next, and the next. Just before the next-to-last knot, a piece of the wall broke away as my feet pushed it, and I almost missed the knot. I caught it with just my front teeth. But that made me angry at the wall and the knot, because they were trying to make me disappoint Lieutenant Dial. So I bit as hard as I could with my front teeth, and I kicked and scratched the wall until another piece broke away and gave me a good place for my hind feet. Then I pulled with my teeth and pushed with my legs, and I went all the way over the wall without having to grab the last knot.

On the other side of the wall, two soldiers lay on the ground. They had mock-wounds on their legs and chests, but they weren't pretending to be unconscious. So I went to the nearest one and let him grab the handle on my duty harness. Then I dragged him through a mock-minefield to a medical station. The mines weren't marked with flags the way they often were in training, but I didn't need the flags. I know the smells of many different explosives, so I could smell the mines even though they were just smoke-bangs. It was easy to drag the soldier around them. Some of them went off when we were past, but it didn't matter. None of the smoke touched us, and I got the soldier to the medical station in the same shape I found him in.

I ran back for the other soldier, but when I reached him he was pretending to be unconscious. I whined and licked his face, but I knew it wouldn't make him stop pretending. So then I grabbed one of his flak-jacket straps and began to drag him toward the medical station. But when we were halfway through the minefield, an open utility vehicle carrying four mock-enemies came driving across it, straight for us. The mines didn't go off as the vehicle drove over them, and the mock-enemy manning the mounted gun began firing at me and my soldier.

They were trying to prevent me from obeying Lieutenant Dial's orders. I wouldn't let them do that.

I dropped my soldier and started running so the mock-enemies would chase me. When they did, and when we were far enough from the wounded soldier that I knew he would be safe, I made a quick stop, turned around, and jumped. I cleared the vehicle's windshield and had just enough time to bite the pad on the gunner's throat. The bell rang. Then I hit the ground behind the vehicle and tumbled, but got up and turned back around in time to see the gunner slump over and the driver turn the steering wheel hard. The other two mock-enemies were raising their pistols.

As the vehicle made its turn, exposing the driver, I ran and jumped again. But when I bit the pad on the driver's throat, the skin didn't break right away. So I hung on and bit harder. The driver gave a yell that I don't think was a word. Then the pad broke, the mock-blood came out, and I heard the bell. So I jumped away, spinning as my paws hit the ground so I could be ready to attack the remaining two mock-enemies.

But I didn't have to. The vehicle rolled over so its wheels went up, and three of the four enemies fell out. Then it was still. The driver was still strapped in his seat, but his neck was bent against the ground, and he didn't move. The three mock-enemies on the ground didn't move either. So I ran to the two I hadn't bitten yet, broke the skins on their throat pads, then returned to my soldier in the minefield.

The soldier was sitting up with his eyes and mouth open. But I grabbed his flak-jacket strap anyway and resumed dragging him to the medical station. Then he tried to pull away from me. But I was still under orders. So I growled, and then my soldier was still again. I delivered him to the medical station, ran back to Lieutenant Dial, and stood at attention.

The people in the bleachers began to smell unhappy. They made growling noises, and none of them clapped their hands. So for a moment I was afraid I had done something wrong. But then I knew it wasn't so, because Lieutenant Dial touched my head and said I was good.

That was all that mattered.

From Lieutenant Dial's next thoughts, I knew that the driver in the utility vehicle had made a mistake. He'd been supposed to drive farther away from me after the gunner was bitten. But he had turned back toward me too soon, and I had been faster than he had thought I would be. Then, when his throat pad hadn't broken right away, he had panicked and turned the steering wheel too sharply. So the vehicle had rolled over. But by then I had broken the throat pad and jumped away.

All four of the mock-enemies in the utility vehicle had to be taken away for real medical care, and I could hear that some of the people in the bleachers felt bad about that. But Lieutenant Dial didn't. Instead, he became angry. He wasn't angry with me, but I didn't want him to be angry with anything. Being angry made him unhappy. And that made me unhappy too. Anger was like smoke with a bad smell in his head.

The K-9 demonstration was over then, and Melanie came down from the bleachers to meet us. I was glad to see her. But Lieutenant Dial was still angry. He told Melanie that the driver of the utility vehicle had done the exercise incorrectly, and that what had happened wasn't my fault. I had done what I was supposed to do, but the mock-enemies had screwed it up.

Melanie told him she already knew that, and that everyone else knew it too. She said he shouldn't worry about what people would think of him, or of me, or of any of the K-9s, because we had all been wonderful.

I didn't always know what Melanie was saying, but that time I understood every word. And as she spoke, Lieutenant Dial's anger drifted away. Just like smoke. And then he was happy and proud again. And so was I.

I rubbed my nose against Melanie's knee, and she touched my head. I wished I could tell her she was good.

Then Lieutenant Dial, Melanie, and I walked to the edge of the water with some of the people from the bleachers, and we stood on a boardwalk while the people on the pier performed demonstrations with water animals. We had a good view even though we were about thirty meters from them. Lieutenant Dial said the animals that stayed in the water all the time were called dolphins, and the ones that hopped from the pier to the water and back again were called sea lions. One of the sea lions barked, but I couldn't understand it.

The water animals delivered equipment to people underwater, and they also searched for mines and mock-enemies. Pictures of them doing those things appeared on the big screen. Sometimes a sea lion carried a clamp in its mouth, and when it found a mock-enemy, it swam up behind him and put the clamp on his leg. Then the mock-enemy was pulled up to the pier by a rope attached to the clamp, while the sea lion jumped from the water and got a treat from its handler. It looked like fun, and I wished I could go underwater and sneak up on the mock-enemies down there too.

Then the sea lions had a contest. They were supposed to find some small dummy mines and push buttons on the mines with their noses, then attach handles and bring the mines up to the pier. It was a race to see which sea lion could bring up the most mines in two minutes. So the sea lions were swimming fast and splashing a lot, dropping the mines on the pier and grabbing new handles before plunging into the ocean again.

The dummy water mines looked like black soccer balls, and they had lights that came on if the button had been pushed. Once one of the sea lions brought up a mine that didn't have its light on, and his handler threw the mine back into the water. Then the sea lion had to go get it again, and he had to be sure to push the button before putting it on the pier. If I had been that sea lion, I would have felt bad for not doing it right the first time. But I couldn't tell whether he felt bad or not, because he kept on swimming for more mines. So then I was glad because he was still being a good soldier.

He didn't win the contest, though. He came in second. At the end of two minutes, he had eleven mines, and the winner had twelve. All the people who had watched the race clapped and cheered, and the four sea lions who had raced got up on their hindquarters and barked. The people cheered even more then, and Lieutenant Dial and Melanie did too. But Lieutenant Dial didn't clap because he had one hand on the handle of my duty harness.

Both Lieutenant Dial and Melanie were happy. So I should have been happy too.

But I wasn't. Something was wrong.

I didn't know what it was at first, so I lifted my head high and sniffed the air. There were many smells. There was sweat, soda, and popcorn. There were buckets of little fish. The sea lions smelled salty. Melanie still smelled like flowers. The other K-9s smelled thirsty. The practice mines smelled like wet Frisbees.

Except there was another smell with the Frisbee smell. It wasn't big. But it was there. It was a bad smell. It was a bad smell like the real mines that had been in the practice minefield during the hardest part of training. It was a bad smell like the real mine that had killed another K-9 who wasn't careful enough.

And as soon as I had identified that bad smell, I knew where it was coming from. The final mine that the winning sea lion had brought up wasn't like the others. It looked like them, but it didn't smell like them. It was different. It was bad.

It wanted to explode and kill someone.

But none of the sea lions were doing anything about it. They were still on their hindquarters, swaying back and forth, while the people clapped. One of the dolphins was splashing and chattering out in the water, so I think she might have known. But none of the handlers paid any attention to her. They were smiling at the clapping people.

I was under no specific orders. But Lieutenant Dial had given me one General Order many training sessions ago: If I ever knew something was wrong, I had to act.

So I bolted for the pier, and Lieutenant Dial released my harness handle. I knew his thoughts, and he knew mine. He knew I was being good.

I ran fast between people's legs. Some of them yelled. And then I was on the pier. It moved up and down a little, but I kept on running fast even though it tried to make me fall. Two of the people in white stepped into my path, but I zigzagged around them. The pier was wet there, and my feet slipped. But I scrabbled hard like I did at the wall and kept going.

One of the sea lions came down from his haunches as I approached, and he opened his mouth as if to bite me. It was a big mouth with big teeth. The whole sea lion was as big as five of me, and he lunged at me when I came close. So I jumped over his head and kicked the back of his neck with my hind feet. That pushed me the last three meters to the end of the pier.

My front feet hit the pier right beside the bad mine, so I grabbed its handle with my teeth, whipped it forward, and let go so it flew into the water. Two of the dolphins swam away fast as the mine splashed and sank.

Then I couldn't smell the bad mine anymore, so I was glad. But when I turned around and saw the white-clothed people and their sea lions, none of them seemed glad. The people were shouting and the sea lions were barking. The sea lions’ barks still didn't make sense.

I saw Lieutenant Dial running down the pier toward me, so I started running toward him too. And just as I began to zigzag around the sea lions, I heard a rumble and a splash, and the pier rose up under me. I fell, and the pier hit my jaw and made me bite my tongue. Then the pier bounced up and down, and I couldn't stand up because my feet kept slipping. One of the people in white had fallen down beside me, and he kept slipping too. That made me worry about Lieutenant Dial, so I looked up to see if he was all right. But a sea lion was in the way.

Then I yelped. Later, a news reporter would say that I yelped because my tongue was hurt. But that wasn't the reason. It was because I couldn't see or hear Lieutenant Dial, and I couldn't find his thoughts. There were too many people thinking and yelling all at once. I couldn't even smell him because I was too close to the sea lions.

That was a bad moment. But the pier moved a little less each time it bounced, and finally I could stand up. And then I could see Lieutenant Dial. He was in the middle of the pier helping another person stand up, so I ran to him and stood at attention. When he had finished helping the other person, he looked down at me and saluted. And he told me I was good. He told me I was more good than I had ever been before.

And the bad moment was gone.

Later, investigators said that a real enemy had replaced one of the sea lions’ dummy mines with a live one, intending to hurt or kill as many people and animals as possible. But because I threw it back into the water, only one dolphin was hurt. And no one was killed.

A few weeks later, Lieutenant Dial was promoted to Captain, and I was promoted to Sergeant. Captain Dial received silver bars for his uniform, and then he leaned over and showed me a new metal tag before clipping it to the ring in my collar. It was shaped like the insignia for Sergeant First Class. I knew I couldn't wear it on combat duty, because it would get in the way and make noise. But it was still a fine thing, because that was how it looked in Captain Dial's thoughts.

Other soldiers were promoted during that ceremony as well, but I was the only K-9. Also, Captain Dial and I were commended for finding the live mine. We were called heroes.

Melanie was there for the ceremony, and both she and Captain Dial were proud and happy. So I was proud and happy too.

But I still wasn't as happy as I had been on the pier. That was where I had been more good than I had ever been before. Captain Dial had said so.

That was how I knew it was true.

Soon after our promotions, Captain Dial and I left the fort with many other soldiers, and we all went to the war. Melanie came to the fort to say good-bye to us. She and Captain Dial hugged each other for a long time while I stood at ease. Most of the other soldiers were hugging people too. There were wives and children, and even a few dogs who weren't soldiers.

Then Melanie knelt down and put her head against mine. It surprised me. She had never done anything like that before. I think she was trying to help me understand her thoughts the way I understood Captain Dial's. It helped a little. But even if she hadn't done it, I would have known she was telling me the same thing she had told me every morning before training. She was telling me to take care of Captain Dial.

So I kissed her face. I wanted her to be glad that Captain Dial and I were going to the war together. Her face tasted like ocean water.

Then Melanie took her head away from mine and put her arms around Captain Dial again. After a while, Captain Dial pulled away from her and gave me the signal to proceed. We left Melanie and went to the D Company bus.

When all the soldiers of D Company had boarded the bus, it took us to the air transport. Captain Dial was quiet during the bus ride. He just looked out the window. And for the first time, his thoughts weren't clear to me. It was as if they were far away in a fog, and a fuzzy sound ran through them. I glimpsed Melanie, but that was all. Captain Dial kept his hand on my neck, though, and every now and then his fingers rubbed behind my ears. So I didn't worry. Captain Dial always had some thoughts that I couldn't understand anyway. The only ones I really needed to know were the ones that were orders.

The air transport took a long time, and it was loud. I didn't like it. By the time it stopped at an island to refuel, all my muscles were sore. But I felt better after marking some trees near the airstrip, and better still after some food. We got back on the transport then, and Captain Dial gave me a pill to help me sleep through the rest of the flight. It helped a lot. But I was still glad when we were on the ground again. When we finally left the transport we were in a place that was dry and sunny, and all of the smells were sharp.

The soldiers of D Company spent one night in a tin-roofed barracks at the combat zone airfield, and Captain Dial and I slept there with them. There was no kennel or cushion for me, so I slept on a blanket beside Captain Dial's cot. I was the only K-9 in the company, and some of the other soldiers were nervous around me. But Captain Dial made sure that I met each one and learned that soldier's smell. Captain Dial wanted to keep them all safe. So I wanted to keep them safe too.

I could see some soldiers’ thoughts, although none of them were as clear to me as Captain Dial's. But that was all right, because the soldiers’ voices and smells told me all I needed to know about them. Most of them were friendly, although several stayed nervous even after they met me. And a few smelled frightened or angry.

One of the angry ones was an officer, Lieutenant Morris, who was in charge of First Platoon. I couldn't see his thoughts at all, but I still knew he didn't like me. I knew he didn't like Captain Dial, either. When he stood before us, his sweat smelled bitter, and his voice was low. And even when he saluted, his muscles were tense as if he were about to run or fight.

Captain Dial was aware of all this, because he knew my thoughts. But unlike me, he was able to think of a reason for Lieutenant Morris's attitude. He thought Lieutenant Morris believed he should have been promoted to Captain and given command of D Company.

This troubled Captain Dial, because he had never wanted to lead a company of regular soldiers anyway. But I was the only one who knew it. What he really wanted to do was serve in a K-9 unit. But when we were promoted, he was ordered to command D Company because its original captain had died in training. So he requested that I be allowed to join the company with him, and we were both happy when his request was granted. We joined D Company on the same day we went to the war. And I knew that all of the soldiers in D Company were lucky to have Captain Dial as their leader.

The morning after our arrival in the combat zone, D Company was assigned to guard four checkpoints on highways that led to the airfield. So Captain Dial put a platoon at each checkpoint, splitting the soldiers among three separate road barriers per checkpoint. He told the lieutenants and sergeants to stop and inspect each vehicle at each barrier, and to detain the occupants of any vehicle found to contain contraband. He also told them to have their soldiers fire warning shots over any vehicles that passed the first barrier without stopping for inspection. They were to aim at the tires and engines of any vehicles that also passed the second barrier without stopping. And any vehicles that passed the third barrier without stopping were to be destroyed. But any vehicles that stopped at all three barriers and were found to contain no contraband were to be allowed to proceed unless the soldiers had reason to believe that a more thorough inspection was needed. In that case, the suspicious vehicle was to be reported to Captain Dial so he could bring me to it and I could smell whether anything was wrong.

I thought these orders were easy and clear.

Captain Dial and I spent our first five days in the combat zone riding from checkpoint to checkpoint in a utility vehicle, inspecting cars and trucks and seeing to the needs of D Company. I liked doing the inspections. In those first days, I found three pistols, four rifles, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and a brick of hashish. Captain Dial arrested the people with the guns and sent them to Headquarters. But he laughed at the man with the hashish and let him drive away. Hashish wasn't contraband here, he told me, so long as no one gave any to our soldiers. This was a new rule to me, but I'm good at learning new rules.

The first five days were fun. All of our platoons did their jobs, and so did Captain Dial and I.

Then, on the morning of the sixth day, Lieutenant Morris ordered First Platoon to open fire on a van that had gone past the first barrier without stopping. It didn't reach the second barrier. By the time Lieutenant Morris ordered his soldiers to cease fire, all seven people inside the van had been killed.

Captain Dial and I weren't there when it happened. We were two checkpoints away. By the time we arrived, the incident had been over for fifteen minutes. Lieutenant Morris and a few other soldiers had dragged three of the bodies from the shot-up van and laid them by the side of the road. They were heading back toward the van when Captain Dial stopped our utility vehicle in front of them and ordered them to stay away from the van and the bodies.

Then he ordered me to search the van, and I obeyed. It was a bad place. It smelled of spent machine-gun rounds, explosive residue, and human blood.

The driver was still in her seat. She had been a woman about the size of Melanie. The three other bodies still in the van had been small children. There were two boys and a girl. I had seen children of their sizes on the day by the ocean. But the ones in the van had been shot through and through. Their blood was all over the floor and seats, and I had to step in it to conduct my search.

There was no contraband. There were no guns, and the only bullets were spent rounds. And I couldn't smell any explosives except the residue of a grenade that had been fired into the van by someone in First Platoon.

After I had searched the van, Captain Dial ordered me to search the three bodies on the ground. So I did. They were all girls. Two were even smaller than the children in the van. The third was larger, about the size of the girl who writes these words. But she wasn't fully grown. All of them had been shot many times. One of the younger girls had most of her face gone. The older girl had a narrow cut on her neck. None of them possessed any contraband.

Captain Dial was angrier than he had ever been before. The smoke in his head was thick and turbulent. And there were sounds. I could hear Melanie crying. I could hear a hundred Melanies crying.

Then Captain Dial began shouting at Lieutenant Morris. I had never heard him shout like that before, and it made me cringe even though he wasn't shouting at me. All the soldiers of First Platoon cringed, too, especially when Captain Dial said he would bring Lieutenant Morris up on charges for disobeying orders.

But Lieutenant Morris's bitter smell was acrid and strong now, and he stood with his head thrust forward and his arms straight down at his sides. He didn't salute. It was as if he was challenging Captain Dial. It was as if he thought he had done a good thing, and that Captain Dial's orders had been wrong.

That made me angry, because Captain Dial always gave good orders. So I took a step toward Lieutenant Morris and growled.

Lieutenant Morris reached for his sidearm, but Captain Dial slapped his hand away from it. Then Lieutenant Morris made a fist and started to swing it at Captain Dial's face. I was on him before his fist was halfway there, and I put him on his back on the highway.

I stood with my front paws on Lieutenant Morris's chest and my teeth touching his throat, and Captain Dial ordered him to remain still. This time, Lieutenant Morris obeyed. I could feel the pulse in his neck and the shallow motion of his chest as he breathed, but those were the only movements he made until Captain Dial ordered me to stand down. Then I took my paws from Lieutenant Morris's chest and backed away.

But now I smelled something wrong in a pocket of Lieutenant Morris's fatigues. It smelled like the girl with the cut on her neck. It smelled like her blood.

I pointed at Lieutenant Morris's pocket and barked. So Captain Dial knelt down, opened the pocket, and brought out a slender chain with a shiny rock on it. It wasn't just like the one he had given Melanie, but it didn't look much different. Except that this one had blood on its chain.

The clasp on the chain was closed, but the chain had been broken in another place. The rock slid down against the clasp when Captain Dial pulled the chain from Lieutenant Morris's pocket, and it dangled there as he held it up. It caught the sun so that it seemed to have a light inside it.

Captain Dial remained on one knee, looking at the necklace, for a long time. Lieutenant Morris started to speak, but I growled and he shut up. I was doing him a favor, because one of Captain Dial's thoughts was clear. He was thinking of using his sidearm to shoot Lieutenant Morris in the head. He was thinking that if Lieutenant Morris said even one word, that was what he would do.

What happened instead was that Captain Dial stood up and told a First Platoon sergeant to call for military police. Then he returned to our utility vehicle, leaving Lieutenant Morris on his back on the highway. I went with Captain Dial, and we waited in our vehicle until the military police came. When they did, Captain Dial gave the rock and chain to one of them.

I didn't understand everything that happened after that. But Lieutenant Morris was back with D Company just two days after he ordered First Platoon to attack the van. And Captain Dial was unhappy because he didn't think there would ever be a court-martial. For one thing, none of the soldiers of First Platoon were sure about what had happened. Some of them even thought that the van had been loaded with explosives, and they continued to think so even after Captain Dial told them I hadn't smelled any. Also, Lieutenant Morris said that he had found the girl's necklace on the ground. And there were no soldiers who would say that he hadn't. Except me. I hadn't smelled any dirt or asphalt on it. All I had smelled was skin and blood from the girl's neck plus sweat from Lieutenant Morris's hand. But the only officer who could hear my testimony was Captain Dial. And unless there was a court-martial, he had already done all he could do.

Besides, the military police said they lost the necklace.

Captain Dial was sad from then on. I don't think anyone else in the company knew that. But I did.

I wanted to make Captain Dial happy again, so I tried even harder to be good. And he told me I was. He told me I was the best sergeant he had ever seen.

But he was still sad. So I was sad too.

Two weeks later, D Company was assigned to a combat mission. A few hours before dawn on a Friday morning, thirty enemy guerrillas had attacked our supply depot using mortars and small arms—and although they had been repelled, four of our soldiers had been killed. So the guerrillas had to be followed and destroyed, and D Company was chosen to do it. Captain Dial thought it was strange that an entire company was being sent after only thirty enemies, but he followed the order without hesitation.

D Company was in pursuit of the guerrillas within an hour of the attack. The guerrillas had a big head start, but they were on foot, and D Company had armored personnel carriers, utility vehicles, and me. So we were able to move fast over both roads and fields, and every few minutes Captain Dial had me run ahead and correct the direction of our pursuit. The guerrillas were staying in one group, so their trail was easy to smell.

We had almost caught up to them as they reached the hills fifteen kilometers west of our airfield. We were so close that Captain Dial could see them through his night-vision field glasses. They were making their way up a narrow, ascending valley, and they were still in one group.

This troubled Captain Dial. It seemed to him that once the guerrillas had reached the hills, they should have scattered to make our pursuit more difficult. But they were staying together. So Captain Dial used his radio to consult with Headquarters, and Headquarters said a refugee camp of about three hundred souls lay a short distance up the valley, a few hundred meters beyond a natural curve. The guerrillas probably intended to stay together long enough to reach that camp—and then they would disperse and blend in with the civilians. This would force Captain Dial to either let them escape, or arrest the entire camp.

So we had to stop the guerrillas before they reached the refugee camp. Captain Dial increased our speed, then dropped off two squads from Fourth Platoon with ten mortars as soon as we were in range. His plan was for those squads to fire the mortars just beyond the guerrillas, forcing them to turn away from the refugee camp ... and perhaps also to run back into our pursuit.

As the rest of D Company started up the valley, the mortar squads put a dozen rounds where Captain Dial had ordered. But instead of reversing direction, the guerrillas began to ascend a hill on the south side of the valley. They remained in one group, though, and we gained on them. When we were close enough that we might be hit by stray mortar rounds, Captain Dial radioed the squads and told them to hold fire. But they were to stay put to intercept any enemies that might be flushed back toward them.

We rushed toward the base of the hill the guerrillas were climbing. They were moving much more slowly now, and in the light of dawn it was clear that we would overtake them before they reached the crest of the hill. I became excited as I thought of knocking them down and holding them, one by one, until my fellow soldiers could take them prisoner. And as the utility vehicle that carried me, Captain Dial, and Staff Sergeant Owens began to climb the hill, I readied myself to leap out and attack.

Our vehicle was in the lead, so most of the company was still on the valley floor as we started up the hill. It was at that moment that rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells began raining down around us from the opposite hillside to the north. And then the guerrillas we were chasing took up positions and began to fire down on us with small arms.

Captain Dial radioed orders to our platoon leaders to take cover and return fire. Then he had Staff Sergeant Owens turn our utility vehicle broadside to the enemy fire, and the three of us exited on the downhill side. We crawled downhill as fast as we could until we reached one of D Company's APCs, and we took cover behind it with soldiers from First and Second Platoons. The soldiers were jumping up and leaning out to fire quick bursts from their rifles, and Captain Dial shouted for them to keep it up as he got on the radio again to call Headquarters for air support. Our helicopters and drones were always out on missions, but two or three could be diverted if soldiers were in trouble. And we were in trouble.

But now Captain Dial couldn't raise Headquarters on the radio. He tried every possible frequency, and there was nothing but silence.

Lieutenant Morris crawled to us and told Captain Dial that we were all going to be killed, and that it was Captain Dial's fault. I wanted to bite Lieutenant Morris's throat then. But Captain Dial ignored him, so I tried to ignore him too. He wasn't a good soldier. He didn't belong in D Company.

There was a loud explosion up the hill, and a soldier told Captain Dial that our abandoned utility vehicle had been hit by a rocket from the other side of the valley. They were zeroing in on us. So Captain Dial said we couldn't stay behind the armored personnel carrier, because it would be targeted next. He ordered First and Second Platoons to retreat to the valley floor, and then he got on the radio and told the mortar squads from Fourth Platoon to fire on the northern hillside. Finally he called to Third Platoon and the remaining two squads of Fourth Platoon, who were all still at the base of the hill, and told them to abandon their APCs and move up the valley on foot, doubletime. All platoons were to return fire as best they could. No one was to retreat back toward the plain.

As Captain Dial and I moved downhill with First and Second Platoons, Lieutenant Morris shouted that Captain Dial's orders were insane. The soldiers in APCs should stay in them, he said. Without armor, he said, they would be picked off in the valley like cattle in a chute.

But Captain Dial knew that the armor was what the enemy would try to destroy first, unless it was moving fast. And it couldn't move fast in the terrain we were in. So getting the soldiers away from it was the only thing to do. And sure enough, before we reached the bottom of the hill, the APC we had been using for cover was hit by a rocket and destroyed.

Our mortars began hitting the northern hill as Captain Dial and I reached the base of the southern hill, and Captain Dial stood his ground there while urging the soldiers of First and Second Platoons to run past our abandoned APCs and continue up the valley. And even now, Lieutenant Morris kept telling him he was wrong, and that D Company ought to be heading back to the plain in full retreat.

But I knew Captain Dial's thoughts, and I knew he was right. Headquarters had been tricked into having D Company follow the guerrillas into an ambush—but Captain Dial wouldn't let the guerrillas trick him any further. He knew that once the ambush began, the enemy would expect D Company to retreat toward the plain. So there would be another trap waiting at the mouth of the valley. The enemy would close us in, then fire down upon us until we were annihilated.

So Captain Dial would confound their expectations. D Company would continue up the valley, on foot, until we could reach an elevated position. With our mortar squads out on the plain providing harassing fire, we could be well up the valley before the guerrillas could leave their hillsides. And then we would transform the enemy's ambush into an attack of our own.

But we would have to take up our battle position before reaching the refugee camp. So we would doubletime around the curve to get out of sight of the enemy, then run up the hill on the backside of the curve. The guerrillas would have no clear shot from their current positions—and if they followed us, we would be able to pour fire down on them as they rounded the curve. So even without air support, we could prevail.

Captain Dial's plan was good, and as D Company rushed up the valley, it began to work. Two more of our abandoned vehicles were hit and began to burn, but despite the constant fire from the enemy, we had not yet lost a single soldier. Our mortar squads were hitting the hillsides as ordered, and the guerrillas’ weapons fire became erratic. Captain Dial paused every few meters to shout orders and encouragement to his running soldiers, and once he sent me back to nip at the heels of a few stragglers. But the stragglers weren't stragglers for long, and I was able to rejoin Captain Dial in less than a minute. Then, bringing up the rear, he and I rounded the curve and began running up the slope to take our positions with the rest of our soldiers. They were already following Captain Dial's orders, taking cover behind rocks and in gullies. And they were readying their weapons.

Some of the guerrillas had chased after us, and a few of them came around the curve before Captain Dial and I were far enough up the slope to take our positions. But we hit the dirt so our soldiers could fire on them, and only two of these enemies survived long enough to come within twenty meters of me and Captain Dial. So I turned, charged, and bit their throats. Then I returned to Captain Dial, and we joined several of our soldiers behind a jumble of rocks and dirt.

More guerrillas came around the curve, and D Company shot them. Then some came up the slope in a truck, and one of our soldiers destroyed it with a rocket-propelled grenade. We were winning the battle despite being ambushed.

Then strange things happened.

They didn't seem strange at first. At first, I heard the buzz of airborne drones. Captain Dial couldn't hear them yet, but he knew that I could, and he was glad. It seemed that Headquarters had heard his request after all.

But almost as soon as I heard the drones, I also heard distant explosions, and our mortar squads stopped firing. So Captain Dial radioed them for a status report. But there was no reply. Then he tried again to contact Headquarters, but there was still no reply there either.

The buzz became loud, and two drones appeared around the curve of the valley, flying low. They were narrow-winged and sleek, and almost invisible against the sky. They didn't have any insignia on their wings.

Then they fired rockets at us. They fired rockets at D Company. And at least twenty soldiers died as the rockets exploded. Dirt and rocks pelted me and Captain Dial where we crouched. My ears hurt.

The drones rose up over the opposite hill, then turned back toward us. Captain Dial shouted into his radio, trying one frequency after another, doing his best to raise Headquarters, to raise the remote drone pilots, to raise anyone who should have been listening. He shouted to his lieutenants to try their own radios too. And they did. But no one received a reply.

The drones came swooping toward us, and it became clear that their first attack hadn't been a mistake. Captain Dial's thoughts were tangled as he realized this. The enemy had no such weapons. So he couldn't understand why the drones were attacking us. Their cameras should have seen who we were, and their pilots should have known that D Company wasn't the enemy.

But even in his confusion, Captain Dial was a good leader. He ordered Sergeant Owens to fire a flare to identify us, but he didn't wait to see whether the cameras had seen it and understood its meaning. Instead, he shouted for D Company's surviving lieutenants and sergeants to get their soldiers up and moving again. If the drones were returning to attack our position again, he was going to put us somewhere else.

The soldiers of D Company were already running down the slope when the drones launched their second wave of rockets, so most of them made it to the valley floor. But eight more were killed. Captain Dial and I were bringing up the rear again, and the rocket that killed the eight exploded in front of us just as another exploded behind us. Captain Dial dove to the ground, putting his arms around me and pushing me down. Then he covered me with his body as more rockets exploded on the slope above us.

I didn't like it. Captain Dial wasn't supposed to shield me from harm. I was supposed to do that for him. So I tried to reverse our positions, but Captain Dial ordered me to stay put. Of course I had to obey. But I didn't understand. Captain Dial was more important to D Company than I was.

The rockets stopped exploding, and the drones passed over us again. They were so close that the dirt under my jaw hummed. Then Captain Dial was on his feet again, shouting orders as the drones flew behind the hilltop. The surviving soldiers of D Company were to run like hell up the valley and to take whatever cover they could find—rocks, trees, ditches, anything—if the drones made another pass. But the soldiers were to avoid entering the refugee camp, wherever it was, at all costs. If they came upon it while still on the run, they were to find a way around it.

Captain Dial was smart. But even Captain Dial could only make his choices based on what he knew. And he didn't know that the refugees weren't gathered in a single camp, as Headquarters had said. He didn't know that they were scattered in small clusters throughout the rest of the valley.

And he didn't know that the drones would return so soon, or that they would swoop up and down the valley firing their Gatling guns at anything that moved. The valley was full of sunlight now, so the pilots should have been able to see our soldiers’ uniforms. There was nothing to block the view of the cameras. But the drones kept firing on us.

I wished I could jump high enough to tear them out of the sky.

As D Company's lieutenants and sergeants began shouting and radioing Captain Dial, telling him that they were losing more soldiers and that every scrap of cover was occupied by noncombatants, Captain Dial made a decision he didn't want to make. He tried one more time to contact Headquarters—and when that failed, he ordered D Company to return fire. Then he took a rifle from a fallen corporal and fired the first shots at the lead drone as it swooped toward us again.

I couldn't fire a weapon, so I did the only thing I could do to help. I ran in a zigzag pattern toward the drones in an attempt to draw their fire and give the rest of D Company a better chance to make their shots count. And I could hear Captain Dial shouting that I was good.

That made me glad.

The lead drone turned toward me, and in that instant the soldiers of D Company were able to hit it broadside with small-arms fire and at least one RPG. The drone began spewing smoke, and then it turned and almost collided with the second drone. The second drone pulled up and vanished behind a hill just as the first one began to spiral downward.

I returned to Captain Dial, who ordered me and the soldiers who were closest to follow him. We ran up a hillside and dove into a gully that cut across it. There were six of us: Captain Dial, Lieutenant Morris, Sergeant Owens, two specialists, and me. And in the gully we found five civilians: An old man, a woman, an adolescent girl, and two young boys. They scrambled away from us as we tumbled into the gully, and they seemed about to climb out until Captain Dial spoke to them in their language. I think he told them they would be safer if they stayed put.

He had no sooner gotten the words out than the ground shook with the biggest explosion yet. I smelled burning fuel, and I knew the drone had crashed. Captain Dial shouted for everyone to hit the dirt, but I was the only one in the gully who heard him. There was a roaring noise and more explosions. The drone's remaining weapons were detonating.

One of the boys tried to climb out of the gully. The woman jumped up to stop him, and something from the exploding drone hit her in the face. She fell back into the gully. So Captain Dial tried to get to the panicked boy to pull him down. But Lieutenant Morris clutched Captain Dial's leg and stopped him.

Captain Dial made a gesture, and I followed the order. I leaped over him and Lieutenant Morris, and I grabbed the boy's ankle and pulled him down. My teeth broke his skin, but it couldn't be helped. When the boy fell to the dirt beside the woman, I pressed my chest against his to hold him there.

The girl started to move as if to protect the boy from me, but then she looked at my eyes. And for that moment, she knew my thoughts. So she crawled to the woman instead and wiped blood from her face.

The woman wasn't breathing, and I knew she was dead. The girl knew it too, but she tried to make the woman breathe again anyway.

There were a few more explosions from the fallen drone, and then the only noise from it was a muted roar as it burned. So I listened for the other drone, and I heard it flying farther and farther away.

Captain Dial told me I could let the boy up, so I did. He tried to run away again, but this time the girl stopped him. He was crying, and so was the girl. So was the other boy. The girl looked at me again, and I knew then that the dead woman was their mother and the old man was their grandfather. The old man was sitting against the wall of the gully with his knees pulled up to his face and his eyes closed tight.

I looked at Captain Dial then and saw that he was hurt. His left sleeve was turning dark at the shoulder, just below the edge of his flak jacket. But I could hardly smell his blood among all the other bloody smells. I went to him and whined, and he touched my head and told me he was all right. I wanted to go find a medic for him, but he ordered me to stay.

Then he used his radio to ask the rest of D Company for a status report, but he couldn't hear the replies because Lieutenant Morris began shouting. I couldn't understand all of the words, but I understood that Lieutenant Morris blamed Captain Dial for what had happened. He accused Captain Dial of treason for shooting down one of our own aircraft. And he said that the civilians weren't refugees at all, but guerrillas like those we had been pursuing. He said that was why the drones had attacked. And he said it was Captain Dial's fault that D Company had been in the line of fire when that happened.

Nothing Lieutenant Morris was shouting made any sense. But nothing that had happened to us had made any sense either. I knew that much from Captain Dial's thoughts. He didn't understand why things had happened the way they had happened. He slumped with his back against the wall of the gully, and he wondered whether Melanie would still love him after this.

Lieutenant Morris turned to Sergeant Owens and the two specialists, and he announced that Captain Dial was incapacitated. So he was now ranking officer, he said, and he ordered them to turn their weapons toward the old man, the girl, and the boys. If any of them moved, he said, the soldiers were to shoot them all.

Sergeant Owens and the specialists did as they were told. Then Lieutenant Morris reached for the radio in Captain Dial's right hand, but I jumped in his way and snarled at him. So Lieutenant Morris unholstered his sidearm and pointed it at me.

But before he could fire, Captain Dial spoke. He ordered Lieutenant Morris to lower his weapon, and after some hesitation, Lieutenant Morris obeyed. Then Captain Dial ordered Sergeant Owens and the specialists to lower their weapons as well, and they obeyed too.

Captain Dial was strong again. His shoulder was bleeding, but his thoughts were clear. He stood up, pushing himself off the gully wall with his right forearm, and peered over the rim at the burning drone. He spoke into his radio and told his soldiers to stay put if they were in a safe place, and to keep trying to find one if they weren't. He would assess the situation and issue new orders within the next few minutes.

But we didn't have a few minutes. I could hear the second drone returning.

I barked to let Captain Dial know it was coming. So then he shouted into his radio and ordered all of his soldiers to remain still and refrain from returning fire unless directly fired upon. Then he ordered those of us in the gully to hit the dirt. The girl and the two boys didn't understand at first, but the old man put his hands on their shoulders and made them lie down close to their dead mother.

Then Captain Dial lowered himself to a sitting position with his back against the gully wall. He couldn't lie down flat with his wounded shoulder. I lay down next to him and put my chin on his knee, and we waited while the drone flew back and forth. Its Gatling gun chattered three or four times, and I hoped it was shooting enemy guerrillas and not D Company soldiers or civilians.

One of the little boys began to cry, but the girl and the old man whispered to him, and then he was quiet again. I was glad they could calm him like that. They were being good leaders. Like Captain Dial.

But a good leader needs good soldiers.

On the drone's fourth pass, Lieutenant Morris stood and fired his weapon into the air. I was on him fast, my front paws hitting his back and pushing him down, but it was too late. Even as I pinned Lieutenant Morris to the bottom of the gully, I could hear the drone turning and the barrels of its Gatling guns beginning to spin.

Lieutenant Morris shouted into the dirt that we had to show ourselves to the drone so it would know who we were and so it could help us kill the rest of the enemy. He worked a hand free from under his chest and pointed at the family with the dead mother.

I wanted to bite Lieutenant Morris and bite him hard. And I smelled something in one of his pockets that made me feel that way even more. It smelled like the dead girl at the highway checkpoint.

But I didn't bite him, because I knew Captain Dial wouldn't like it. Captain Dial was busy with his radio, telling the rest of D Company that they were not to give away their positions by firing on the drone if it attacked those of us in the gully—not unless there was a clear shot for an RPG. Otherwise, we were on our own. But D Company would survive.

I heard the drone dip low. It was flying on a path directly in line with our gully. It would be able to pour bullets and rockets on us with ease.

Captain Dial was on his feet. It was as if he had been yanked up on a rope from the sky. His left sleeve was so wet that it dripped.

He shouted two orders. First, Sergeant Owens and the two specialists were to get out of the gully at the south rim and run through the smoke of the downed aircraft until they could find other cover in the valley. Second, I was to take the civilians over the north rim and head up into the hills until I could find another gully, a cave, or some other sheltered position. I was to keep them safe.

Sergeant Owens and the specialists clambered over the south rim, rolled, and ran into the smoke. I jumped off Lieutenant Morris and started toward the civilians. But after a few steps, I stopped. The drone's Gatling guns had begun to fire.

I looked back and saw Captain Dial pull Lieutenant Morris to his feet. Captain Dial could only use his right arm, so he had dropped his radio. Lieutenant Morris seemed dazed, and Captain Dial had to hold him up and drag him.

Captain Dial shouted for me to obey my order. I was not to wait for him and Lieutenant Morris. They would catch up, he said.

But I knew Captain Dial's thoughts. I knew he didn't think that he and Lieutenant Morris would make it.

So for the first time ever, I decided to disobey a direct order. I would obey my General Order instead. That was what I had done on the day beside the ocean, and Captain Dial had told me I was good. He had told me I was more good than I had ever been before. So I would do that again.

I ran back to Captain Dial, and he yelled at me. He said I had to obey his order immediately.

But instead I grabbed one of Lieutenant Morris's flak-jacket straps, and I pulled him away from Captain Dial and began dragging him up the gully wall. He was heavy, but I'm strong.

Captain Dial knew then that he should take charge of the civilians. Dragging soldiers to safety was one of my jobs, and keeping civilians safe was one of his. But first, he jumped to me and hooked Lieutenant Morris's arm through my harness loop. Then he pulled the strap to tighten the loop. Now I could let go of the flak-jacket strap and drag Lieutenant Morris a lot faster.

Captain Dial touched my head and told me to go.

I went up the gully wall and over the top with Lieutenant Morris while Captain Dial ran to the civilians and told them that they must go with him. One of the boys cried because he wanted to stay with his mother, but the old man and the girl listened to Captain Dial and wouldn't let the boy stay. They all climbed up from the gully.

Captain Dial's foot slipped on the way up and he almost fell, but the girl grabbed his arm to steady him. It was his wounded arm, but she couldn't reach the other one. I saw a flash like a grenade exploding in Captain Dial's thoughts. But Captain Dial didn't cry out even though it hurt a lot. He was a good soldier. The girl was, too. She didn't hesitate to help Captain Dial. She didn't flinch from his blood.

When we were all out of the gully, we ran north through the smoke. Captain Dial and the civilians were a few meters west of me and Lieutenant Morris, and they were moving up the slope a little faster. Every few steps, Captain Dial would look back and call encouragement to me. And I would pull harder and could feel Lieutenant Morris's boots bouncing on the ground behind us.

I didn't look back, but I heard the buzz of the drone as it flew low over the gully we had just left. I could smell its exhaust. Its Gatling guns chattered, and the slugs made dull thumps in the dirt.

And then, as we ran higher and came up out of the smoke, I heard the drone swoop out over the valley, turn, and head right for us. It was attacking us from behind, and there was no place for us to take cover when its guns started firing again. I looked ahead and saw a shadow on the ground that looked like another gully, but it was too far away. Lieutenant Morris and I wouldn't reach it before the drone strafed us.

I looked over at Captain Dial. Although he was wounded, he was now carrying one of the boys. The girl was carrying the other one. The old man was breathing hard and stumbling. So they were losing speed, and Lieutenant Morris and I had almost caught up to them. They wouldn't reach the next gully either. The drone would be able to hit all of us with the same burst of gunfire, or with just one rocket.

Captain Dial looked over at me as I looked at him, and we each knew the other's thoughts. There was only one thing to do. And when his thoughts said Now, I followed his order.

He and the civilians cut left, where there was still a little smoke, and I cut right, where the air was clear. We ran away from each other as fast as we could. I could hear Captain Dial's breath getting farther and farther away behind me. I could hear it even over the noise from Lieutenant Morris's boots.

I would have dropped Lieutenant Morris if I could, because he would have been safer lying still. But I couldn't. The loop on my harness was pulled tight around his arm, and there was no time for me to turn my head to yank it loose.

The drone came after me and Lieutenant Morris. I was sorry for what that meant for Lieutenant Morris, but glad because it gave Captain Dial a better chance to get himself and the civilians to cover. And I was glad because it gave me a chance to be good.

I ran hard, and I zigzagged as much as I could while dragging Lieutenant Morris. The engine buzz became a roar, and the Gatling gun chattered loud and long. And it almost missed us. But the last slugs in the burst came ripping through the dirt right behind us, and Lieutenant Morris jerked as they reached him. I was slapped down at my hindquarters, and I fell. Lieutenant Morris and I rolled a little way down the hill, and the drone flew over us so low that I could see the rivets in its belly. It rose up over the ridge, hung there for a moment, and then started toward us again.

But this time it bloomed fire from its tail, and it twisted sideways and dove into the hillside above us. There was a loud noise and more fire when it hit, and smoke like there had been from the first one.

I tried to get up, but Lieutenant Morris was lying on my hind legs. And my back hurt, close to my tail. But I couldn't see or hear Captain Dial, and I had to find him. So I twisted my head around far enough to tug on my harness loop until Lieutenant Morris's arm slipped out. I couldn't hear Lieutenant Morris's breath or heartbeat, and I could smell that he had blood coming out of his legs, back, chest, and neck. He was dead, and there was no place I could drag him where he would be all right again.

When his arm came free, I was able to scramble with my front legs and pull myself out from under him. And then I was able to stand up all the way even though my back hurt. I looked for Captain Dial and the civilians, but I couldn't see them. There was a lot more smoke now, and it made my eyes itch. It also made it hard to smell anything else. But I heard the girl say something, faint and soft, so I left Lieutenant Morris and followed her voice.

I found her with the other civilians and Captain Dial. Captain Dial was lying on the ground, and the girl was kneeling beside him with her hand on his head. The old man was standing nearby holding the little boys’ hands. The boys were scared. They were looking at the body of a D Company soldier lying nearby. It was torn in two.

Captain Dial smiled when I came up to him and licked his face. I had to step over an RPG launcher to reach him, and when I touched him I knew what he had done. He had found the RPG launcher with the dead soldier, and he had used it to bring down the second drone. But it had recoiled against his wounded shoulder, and now the wound was bleeding even more.

He saw my thoughts and knew what had happened to Lieutenant Morris. But he said I had done everything right. He said he was proud of me. He said I was good.

And just as he said that, I heard a buzzing noise far off in the south. It was heading toward us fast. More drones were coming.

Captain Dial couldn't hear them. But he knew I did. And he said that they might not be coming to attack us, because their pilots might have realized that the first two had been firing on allies and civilians. But we couldn't count on it. So I was to take the four civilians away and find shelter for them. I was to do so immediately.

I didn't understand at first, because the picture I saw in Captain Dial's thoughts was a picture only of me and the civilians. He wasn't in it. He wasn't walking with us, and I wasn't dragging him with my harness.

And then he made me understand. He was too dizzy to walk, and I couldn't drag him without making his wound worse.

I wanted to follow his orders, but first I wanted to go back down the hill and find a D Company medic to take care of him. But Captain Dial said there was no time for that. Not if I was going to take the civilians to safety before the new drones arrived. And I knew he was right, because the girl could hear the drones now too. She still had her hand on Captain Dial's head, but she was looking at the sky.

I whined. I didn't want to go off with the civilians and leave Captain Dial all alone, even for a little while.

Captain Dial reached up with his right hand to touch my head. He told me it was all right to leave him for now, because I could come back as soon as I had taken the civilians to a safe place. It could be a cave or a deep ravine. It just had to be somewhere they couldn't be hurt. Once I had made sure of that, I could return. And if a medic hadn't come to help Captain Dial yet, I could go find one for him then.

But for now, I had to go. I had to keep the civilians safe.

Captain Dial took his hand from my head and spoke to the girl, and he took his pulse transmitter from the pouch on his belt and gave it to her. I knew he was telling her to go with me, and that the transmitter would help us communicate. She shook her head at first, but I could understand her thoughts well enough to know that it wasn't because she was afraid of me. It was because she didn't want to leave Captain Dial alone any more than I did.

I knew then that I liked her. But we were under orders now, and we had to follow them. So I took the girl's hand in my mouth, and I gave a tug to pull her away from Captain Dial. She didn't want to go, but she didn't fight me. She knew what we had to do. She strapped the transmitter to her wrist and stood up. She was good, too.

We left Captain Dial and went to the old man and the boys. I released the girl's hand as she told them they were all going with me. She put the old man's hand on the handle of my harness, and then he held the hand of one of the boys. The girl held the hand of the other one. We all started up the hill again, pushing through the smoke. My hind legs hurt, but I was still strong. I helped the old man go fast. The girl kept pace beside me as I sniffed and listened to find the best path for us.

I could still see Captain Dial's thoughts for a long way up the hill. At first he was thinking of me and what I was doing, and he was proud. That made me glad.

Then he thought the two words he had thought about on the day we performed our demonstration by the ocean. He thought the words “heroism” and “vengeance."

And then he worried about the other soldiers in D Company. So that made me worry, too. But I couldn't go back to check on them yet. I had orders to follow.

Finally, as the civilians and I came out of the smoke onto a sloping field of rocks, I saw one last strong thought from Captain Dial. It was of Melanie. It was of Melanie with him in their bed, sleeping. And I was on my cushion at their feet.

It was a happy thought, and it made me happy too.

Then Captain Dial's thoughts became fuzzy as the civilians and I went higher, and soon they were gone. I paused near the crest of the hill and looked back down the slope, but I couldn't see the place where Captain Dial lay because of the rocks and smoke. And I thought for a moment that maybe the civilians were safe now, and that I could leave them and go back to where I could know Captain Dial's thoughts again.

But the sound of the approaching drones was loud now, and as I watched, one of them came flying up out of the smoke below us. So I led the civilians behind a big rock. We all crouched down, and I heard the drone turn away and fly back down the hillside again.

Then I heard Gatling guns firing, and I remembered my orders. So I got up from my crouch, and the girl and I took the old man and the boys over the top of the hill and down the other side.

I didn't like not being able to see Captain Dial's thoughts. But now I could see the girl's thoughts almost as well as I had seen his, and she had some good ideas about where we might find a safe place to hide. So we started off in the direction she thought was best.

We had to alter our path many times because of things I smelled or heard. And once we had to make a long detour because the girl remembered there were land mines ahead. I couldn't smell them yet, but she warned me by sending pulses to my implant. And then I saw her thoughts, and I knew they were true. So we found another way.

I became tired and thirsty, and my hind legs hurt. The girl and her family became tired and thirsty too. But we could hear gunfire and explosions behind us, so the girl and I wouldn't let the others stop. Not until we found someplace safe.

Not until we had done what Captain Dial had ordered us to do.

We went up and down through the hills all that day. At dusk we found a guerrilla camp that had been bombed many weeks before. But there were still some matches, a knife, and three plastic jugs of water. So we were able to get a drink. The water tasted like plastic, but we drank a lot of it. There was only one jug left when we were finished. The girl tied it to my harness, and we set out again. The girl carried the matches and the knife.

After nightfall, the girl couldn't see where we were or where we were going. Clouds covered the sky, so she couldn't find any stars to help her. That meant our path was up to me. So I followed my nose and my ears, and I took us farther and farther away from cities, camps, and roads. I took us away from anything that smelled or sounded like people with weapons. We had to go a long way.

At last, when the eastern sky had begun to brighten, we found a shelf of rock in the side of a hill. Under the shelf was a cave that was narrow but deep. It was well hidden by brush. I went in first and found some bone fragments and a ring of stones for a fire, but I could smell that they were old. No one had used the cave in a long time.

So I brought the people inside, and they slept on the bare rock. I didn't sleep right away because I had to lick the cuts on my hind legs. Then I dozed. But I kept my ears and nose alert. The only sounds were of the wind blowing through the rocks and brush. The only smells were of rabbits, birds, and other small animals nearby. There were no guerrillas, soldiers, or other people anywhere near us.

When I had rested for a few hours, I went out into the morning sunlight and killed three rabbits. I had to chase them, and that made my legs hurt again. But I still caught them with no trouble. I tore one apart and ate most of him, and then I took the other two back to the cave. The girl was awake, and she knew what to do. She woke up the boys and had them gather brush and sticks while she used the knife from the guerrilla camp to skin the rabbits. The old man made a spit from the sticks, and they cooked the rabbits over a fire the girl started inside the old ring of stones. It filled the cave with smoke, but the people didn't care. They were hungry.

While they ate, I scouted the area around the cave in widening circles. I sniffed, smelled, and listened. I marked a broad perimeter to warn off animal intruders. Then I did it all over again. And then I was sure my people were safe.

I had followed and completed Captain Dial's order. So I went to the girl and pushed my nose into her hand to be sure she knew my thoughts. I made sure she knew that she and her family should stay close to the cave. They could kill more rabbits to eat, and they still had the jug of water from the guerrilla camp. When that ran out, they could catch rain and dew.

The girl understood.

So I started back to the battlefield where I had left Captain Dial. I was able to go faster now because I didn't have people with me, and because my legs felt better. I could also choose a path that took me closer to dangerous smells. And I found a pond where I could get a drink. But that was the only time I stopped. I wanted to get back to Captain Dial as soon as I could.

There was still some light in the sky when I came over the hilltop and looked down the rocky slope at the battlefield. The two fallen drones had stopped burning, and there was no more smoke. A number of people were walking around down near the gully where Captain Dial and I had found the civilians, and the wind brought me their smells along with the smells of many dead D Company soldiers and refugees. The walking people didn't smell like soldiers or refugees. But they didn't smell like the enemy, either. They didn't make much noise, but occasionally one of them would fire a single shot. It sounded as if they were firing into the ground.

I didn't care who they were, or why they were shooting at the ground. Because now I smelled something else, too.

When I reached Captain Dial, I lay down beside him with my chin on his chest. There was nothing else I could do. I didn't nudge him with my nose or lick his face. I didn't try to wake him up. I'm not stupid. That was one of the things Captain Dial liked best about me. He liked that I was smart.

I closed my eyes. I didn't have an order for what to do next, so I would do nothing. I was tired, and there were no D Company soldiers left for me to help. I would stay there with my chin on Captain Dial.

I closed my eyes and fell asleep. And I dreamed. I dreamed about the day I found the live mine on the pier and about how proud Captain Dial was. I dreamed about running fast in training so I could complete my orders and get back to Captain Dial before the buzzer sounded. I dreamed about lying curled up on my cushion on the floor while Captain Dial and Melanie made soft noises above me.

Then I woke up and opened my eyes. Three of the people below were coming up the slope. They were solid shadows in the dusk. And their smell was sharper now. They smelled like men who used shampoo and soap and who wore clean clothes. They smelled like the men in the crowd the day I found the mine. They smelled like civilians from home.

And as they came toward me and Captain Dial, I heard something behind me. Something higher up the slope, moving down through the rocks. It wasn't loud, so I knew the men coming up the slope couldn't hear it. I couldn't identify it by scent because the wind was blowing the wrong way, but I could hear that it was small and alone. So I didn't think it would hurt anyone. Besides, none of the men coming up the slope was my commanding officer. I wasn't required to alert them.

The three men approached within a few meters of me and Captain Dial, and now I saw that they were dressed in dark clothes that weren't uniforms. But they carried pistols in holsters. One of them pointed a camera at me and Captain Dial. I couldn't see the men's thoughts, but they spoke in the same language as D Company, so I understood some of what they said. One of them said something was great, and the others agreed.

I didn't know what they thought was great, but I knew there was nothing there that was.

One of them stepped closer and leaned down as if about to touch Captain Dial. So I raised my head and snarled at him, and he moved back. Then I put my head down again, but I stayed ready. I didn't know who they were, but they weren't part of D Company. They weren't even soldiers. I wouldn't let them touch Captain Dial.

The one with the camera kept aiming it at me and Captain Dial. But the other two put their hands on their pistols and conferred. And I understood enough to know they were talking about shooting me. So I did what Captain Dial had taught me to do. I planned how to attack them so they couldn't get off a shot. If either of their pistols began to rise from its holster, I would execute the plan. And I would decide what to do about the one with the camera based on how he reacted.

But another thing that Captain Dial had taught me was that a battlefield situation can change quickly.

The thing coming down the slope sent some pebbles skittering through the brush. And the three men heard it. They backed away from me and Captain Dial, and the one with the camera let it drop to dangle on a cord around his neck. They all three began taking their pistols from their holsters. But now they were looking past me toward whatever had made the pebbles skitter.

I kept my eyes on the three men. But I sniffed the air, and even though the wind was still going the wrong way, I caught a faint scent that told me who was on the slope behind me. It was the girl I had taken to safety on Captain Dial's order. She was still and quiet now, probably crouched behind a rock. But even so, she wasn't safe anymore.

All three men were raising their pistols. They were farther away from me than when I had made my plan of attack. But they weren't looking at me now. The light of day was almost gone. And I am black as night. I am silent as air.

The third one got off a shot as I hit his chest, but the bullet went into the sky. The other two were already on the ground, their throats torn out, their weapons in the dirt. The third one tried to fight me off once he was down, but that didn't last long.

When he was still, I looked back up the slope, beyond Captain Dial, and saw the girl standing beside a clump of brush. She was almost invisible because the sun was gone now. But I saw her shape against the brush. And the wind had shifted so I could smell her better. She smelled scared.

I was angry that she had returned to the battlefield. I had done my duty and made her safe, and she had spoiled it. I didn't understand why she had done that.

Then she came down the hill past Captain Dial, past me, and past the three men on the ground. She didn't walk fast, but she walked steady and strong even though she was scared. She said something soft to me as she went by, and I saw a flash of her thoughts. Then I understood. She was going down to the gully, to her mother. She wanted to wrap the body and take it somewhere to bury it. She had returned by herself to do this, leaving her brothers in the care of the old man.

I looked past her and knew I couldn't let her do as she planned. There were more people down there. They were like the three men I had just killed. The girl wouldn't be safe among them. Already, I could see and hear several of them starting toward her. She couldn't see them yet. But she would encounter them before she could reach the gully.

So I ran down to the girl and got in front of her. But she just walked around me. Then I took her hand in my mouth, but she just pulled it away and kept going. She wouldn't stay in contact with me long enough to see my thoughts. She was determined to reach her mother.

I couldn't knock her down or bite her to make her come with me. But I couldn't let her keep going. I had to make her pay attention to me long enough so she would understand what we had to do. So I turned and ran fast across the hillside, away from both the girl and Captain Dial. I ran to the body of Lieutenant Morris, and I tore open one of his pockets. Some ammo clips fell out, but that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted what I had smelled when I'd pushed Lieutenant Morris down in the gully.

And I found it curled up in the corner of the pocket. It was the necklace from the dead girl at the checkpoint. There was still enough blood on it that I had been able to smell it. The necklace had been taken from Lieutenant Morris for the investigation, but he had stolen it back. Now I took it from him again.

I ran back to the girl with it, got in front of her, and pushed my nose against her hand so she would feel the necklace hanging from my mouth.

She stopped walking. Her palm was against my nose. Her fingers brushed the silver chain. The transmitter on her wrist hummed. And then, as someone shouted below us, I thought hard and showed her what had happened to the girl who had worn the necklace. So she saw that girl lying on the side of the road with her sisters. She saw me find the necklace in Lieutenant Morris's pocket. She saw how angry Captain Dial had been at what Lieutenant Morris had done.

The shouting below us grew louder. I could hear six voices now, and weapons being readied. More of the armed-men-who-weren't-soldiers were coming toward us.

But I didn't turn away from the girl. I kept my nose in her palm because I had to be sure she understood. I had to be sure she understood that Captain Dial was my commanding officer, and that I hated to leave him there on the hillside again. But I would. And she would have to leave her mother there, too. We both had to follow Captain Dial's last order. And if the men coming up the hillside reached us, we would fail. I wouldn't be good. And she would be like the other girl. The one who had worn the necklace.

The girl was smart. I saw in her thoughts that her mother wouldn't want her to die like that other girl. But when she understood what I was telling her, she began to cry. She hadn't cried before this. But she cried now, taking the necklace from my mouth and clutching it in her fist. She wanted to fight the men coming up the hill. She thought they were responsible for her mother's death. She thought they had made the drones attack.

I didn't know why she thought that. But I understood why she would want to fight whoever had made the drones fire on D Company. I wanted to fight those people too. But even if those people were the men who were coming up the hill, we couldn't fight them now. I had already killed three of them, but I had caught those three by surprise. There were more than three coming now, and they had their weapons ready to fire.

So we had to go back up over the hill. And while the girl stood there with the necklace clenched in her fist, I took her other hand in my mouth. And then I started up the hill, pulling her with me.

At first, she came with me without knowing what she was doing. She was still crying and thinking of what she wanted to do to the people who had sent the drones. So the men coming up the hill gained on us, and a shot was fired. I heard the bang and then heard the slug hiss through the air. It hit the dirt several meters ahead of us.

Then the girl's thoughts came back to where we were and what we needed to do. So she began to run, and I was able to release her hand. We ran together back up the hill, through the rocks and brush, up toward the night sky.

We paused for a few seconds when we reached Captain Dial again. He lay still in the twilight. He made no sound. He had no thoughts. He didn't even smell like Captain Dial anymore. So it was all right for the girl to take his sidearm and empty his pockets. And this time, it was easier to leave. This time, I knew I wouldn't need to return.

In training, Captain Dial had told me that when a soldier was gone, he was gone forever. But he had also told Melanie that they would be together forever. So forever was always a hard word for me to understand. But whenever I didn't understand something, it was because it was something only someone as smart as Captain Dial could understand. And in those cases, I would just have to believe whatever Captain Dial said. Because Captain Dial always spoke the truth.

So that was what I did as I left his body there on the hillside for the last time. I remembered what Captain Dial had said, and I was glad that even though he was gone, he and Melanie would still be together.

I wished I could be with them, too. But I didn't know how to get to wherever they were.

The girl and I went up over the top of the hill, and soon I couldn't smell or hear the men behind us anymore. Then the twilight was gone, and the girl held my harness so I could lead her through the darkness. She knew my thoughts most of the time now, so I promised her I would do a good job. And she promised me the same thing.

We had our orders. So we would follow them.

Forever.

Itook the girl back to the cave where the old man and the boys were waiting, and we stayed there several weeks until I smelled men with weapons approaching. Then we left, and I led the way deeper into the hills, taking us as far from danger as I could. The weather grew colder, but my fur grew thicker, and we found winter clothing in an abandoned village. The old man also found sewing tools, and he made blankets from the skins of the rabbits I caught. The girl stretched some skins between two long pieces of wood, and that was where we kept our growing collection of supplies. The people and I took turns dragging it as we traveled.

We traveled this way for many days, until we came upon the stone hut near the stream.

It's been a good place. We found more things that my people could use here. But the people who had stayed in the hut before us had been gone for a long time when we arrived. I couldn't even smell them on the things they had left. So I believed my company would be safe here for the winter.

Food was easy to obtain. All I had to do was go up and down the stream until I found rabbits. Once I killed a small deer, and the girl said its skin should be my bed. So now I sleep on it even though I like the bare ground just as well. I have thick fur. But it makes my people happy to see me lie down on the deer's skin, and that makes me glad.

In recent weeks the bushes and trees have grown leaves, and the grass that was dry and thin is now thick and juicy. The girl and the old man have been making plans to plant seeds they found in the abandoned village. We've all been looking forward to warmer days.

Then, last night, eighteen of Your soldiers came to kill us. You must have told them we were the enemy. So they didn't know I was trained by Captain Dial. They didn't know that even when I sleep, my ears and nose are awake.

I took the girl to their bodies this morning, and it made her sad. But she understood that I had to follow orders. She understands a lot. She and I often help each other figure out things that are puzzling.

I didn't understand how Your soldiers could have found us, or why You would want them to, because we've traveled far from anything that should matter to You. Besides, we're not Your enemies. And even if we were, we wouldn't be important enough for You to bother with. Or so I thought.

Then the girl remembered the implant under the skin between my shoulders, and the transmitter that Captain Dial had given her. We had used these things to help us understand each other in our first weeks together, but then—just as Captain Dial and I had found—they had become unnecessary. So the girl had placed the transmitter in her duffel, and we hadn't thought of it or of my implant since. But now the girl said that machines in the sky could probably hear signals from them at any time, and that the machines could then tell You where I was. So that was how Your soldiers found us.

The girl also says she knows why You want to attack us.

She found a radio receiver in the abandoned village, and now she listens to its voices for a few minutes each evening. I can't understand the voices, but the girl has told me some of the things they've said. They've said that all Your soldiers were about to be sent home because the money for the war was almost gone. But then D Company was ambushed and destroyed by enemy guerrillas, and the bad publicity from what Lieutenant Morris had done at the checkpoint was obliterated by the heroism of his company's sacrifice. So Your public support surged, and more money was provided so Your soldiers could avenge the ambush by destroying the enemy.

This is what the radio voices say. They don't say anything about the drones. But if the drones hadn't come, D Company would not only have beaten the guerrillas, but would have suffered almost no casualties. Captain Dial would have seen to it.

But the drones did come. They came from our own airfield. They came from You.

Then the men-who-weren't-soldiers came too, and the girl thinks she knows why they fired shots at the ground. She thinks they killed any soldier or refugee who was still alive. And we believe those men were sent by You as well.

The girl says that our knowledge of this is why You want to attack us. We're the only survivors of that battle. So as long as we still live, You fear that we may reveal the truth of what happened to D Company and the refugees. And the girl says that then all of Your public support and money will go away again.

I have tried to think of what Captain Dial might do if these things had been revealed to him. But he was much smarter than me. And I can't see his thoughts anymore.

But I still know the final order he gave me: To keep my people safe.

So I've thought of things I can do to obey.

The first thing I thought of was to have the girl write this message. Again, she doesn't know what she writes. Only that I require her to write it. And what I'm asking her to write now is a promise that You have nothing to fear from me if You leave us alone. If You allow me to keep my people safe, we will never tell the radio voices what Your drones and men-who-weren't-soldiers did to D Company.

The second thing made the girl cry again. Before beginning this message, I told her to use her knife to cut between my shoulders and find the communication implant. She cried because she didn't want to hurt me, and then she cried more because the device was smaller than we had imagined, and it was hard to find. She had to make the cut longer and deeper. But she finally found the tiny glass bean and gave it to the boys, who took turns hitting it and the transmitter with a hammer until both were dust. Then the old man cleaned my wound and sewed it shut. I growled once because the needle hurt, and he stepped back. But then I licked his hand, and he finished the job. Afterward, I was proud of all of them for following orders so well.

The third thing makes us unhappy. But it's necessary. We must leave the stone hut. We must leave this good place with its water and rabbits. Your soldiers found us here, so You know where we are.

But since I no longer have the communication implant, You won't know where we'll go next.

Finally, there is a fourth thing I'll do.

If the above measures fail, and if You send more soldiers or men-who-aren't-soldiers to find us, I will kill them all. I'll always know they're coming, so they'll never be able to attack us before I attack them first.

You may even send some of my fellow K-9s, because they could find us more quickly than people could. But Captain Dial said that the K-9s in my training class were the best war dogs there had ever been, and I was ranked first in that class. So there are no K-9s that I can't find and defeat before they can find and defeat me.

And if You attack us with drones instead of people or dogs, we're now equipped to fight them. Some of the soldiers I killed last night were carrying RPGs, and others carried guns with armor-piercing rounds. We have taken these weapons.

But if You bomb us from high in the sky so we can't fight, there may be nothing I can do to stop You. Then You will have made me fail to carry out my orders.

In that event, I'll do whatever I must to survive. And then I will find You. I don't know Your name or Your rank, but I will find You anyway. I will hunt and kill every officer in every company and every battalion until I reach You. I will read their thoughts as they die and use that knowledge to hunt You. I will climb walls and dig tunnels. I will swim and run. I will stow away in trucks, ships, and aircraft that will bring me closer to You. I will find something You have touched so I know Your scent. And then I will find You in Your bed or at Your table or wherever You may be.

And I will bite Your throat so it tears out.

So I hope You heed this message. It will be left with one of Your dead soldiers, so I know it will reach their unit's commanding officer. And then it will reach that officer's commanding officer, and then that officer's commanding officer, and so on until it reaches the officer who gave the orders that resulted in the current situation. Until it reaches You.

My company has its equipment and is ready to move out. The two boys are my specialists. The old man is my medic and quartermaster.

As for the girl—

She now wears the metal tag I received when I was promoted to sergeant. She found it in Captain Dial's pocket as we left the battlefield, and today she put it on the chain of her necklace beside the shiny rock. Sergeant is the toughest enlisted job. But she can do it.

I myself am no longer a sergeant. I didn't realize that until this morning. But after I showed the girl what I had done in the night, she touched my head. And I heard her thoughts. I heard what she called me.

She called me Captain.

Then she took the silver bars that she found with the sergeant's tag, and she pinned them to my duty harness.

I am the ranking survivor of D Company, and my final order from Captain Dial was a commission. I know this because what he told me to do was what a good officer does.

A good officer takes care of his soldiers.

But if You attack us again, You will not be a good officer. You will not be taking care of Your soldiers. And if You make me fail in my duty to take care of mine, You will not be an officer of any kind for much longer.

Captain Dial told me what I am, and he always spoke the truth. So now I tell You:

I am black as night. I am silent as air.

My sergeant touches my head, and I tell her she's good.

This message is complete.

Respectfully,

Chip, K-9

Captain and Commanding Officer

D Company

Reader response to Matthew Hughes's first few stories has been very strong—readers have likened his work to the fantasy stories of de Camp and Pratt, to the science fiction of A. E. van Vogt, and of course to Jack Vance (the majority of Matthew Hughes's stories are set in the penultimate age of Old Earth, one eon before Jack Vance's Dying Earth). Since demand for his stories is so strong, we're doing our best to supply them, so here is a new tale of the foremost freelance discriminator, Henghis Hapthorn, along with his highly useful integrator.

"My master is concerned that someone may wish to kill him,” said Torquil Falberoth's integrator. “He wants you to discover who and how, and if possible, when."

"What is the source of his belief?” I said. “Bold threats or subtle menaces? Lurkers in the shadows? Or has he merely dreamed an unsettling dream?"

The latter was not an unreasonable supposition. If Torquil Falberoth, long and justly regarded as the most ruthless magnate of Old Earth's penultimate age, was not visited by uncomfortable dreams, he more than deserved to be.

"He does not discuss sources with me,” said his integrator. Falberoth seemed to have programmed the device to speak with a tone strongly reminiscent of its owner's habitual hauteur. “Peremptory instructions are his first resort; detailed explanations trail far behind."

That concorded with what I knew of Falberoth. “If I take the case and discover a malefactor, what disposition will he make? Will he turn the criminal over to the Bureau of Scrutiny or will he prefer a more direct resolution?"

"How does that concern you?"

"I am Henghis Hapthorn,” I reminded the apparatus. “I do not associate myself with illegal sanctions, even against would-be murderers.” As Old Earth's foremost freelance discriminator, I had cause to be fastidious about my reputation and would not be complicit in illicit revenge.

I waited for an answer and when one was not soon forthcoming I made a declaration. “Please inform your master that, should I discover an actual plot to murder him, I must report the circumstances to the scroots."

The integrator made a dismissive sound that I took for acquiescence. “Very well,” I said and quoted my usual fee, which was accepted without gasp or quibble. One thing that can be said about the extravagantly moneyed is that they do not shy away from spending copiously on themselves.

"I will instruct my integrator to contact you for further information,” I said and broke the connection.

"What did you think of that?” I asked my assistant.

"That Falberoth is not the only one with an overbearing character,” it said.

I agreed. “Perhaps, over a long association, an integrator and its principal can osmotically acquire elements of each other's personality, much as owners of pets can come to resemble their livestock."

"Unlikely,” my integrator said. “You and I have not suffered such an unpleasant transference,” then added, “fortunately."

"You would not care to be like me?” I said. “I am renowned for my intellect. The great and the mighty consult me. I am occasionally pointed out in the street as an item of local interest."

"We are talking about a transference of emotions and prejudices. Integrators are proof against both."

"Thus you are without either?” I said.

"I comfort myself that it is so."

"Indeed,” I said in a noncommittal tone, then turned to the business at hand. “As soon as Falberoth has transferred the fee to my account at the fiduciary pool, I wish you to contact his integrator and acquire a list of those he has wronged—or who may believe themselves wronged—and the relevant details.

"We shall then apply categorization and an insightful analysis to deduce a list of prime suspects for close investigation. Are we clear?"

"Indeed,” said my assistant.

While these matters were in process, I returned to what I had been doing when the call had come through: unraveling an intricate puzzle concocted for me by my occasional colleague, a being who inhabited a much dissimilar dimensional continuum but made visits to this one so that we could engage each other in intellectual contests.

We had not yet established a name for him, names being a chancy proposition in his continuum, where no distinction could be made between being and symbol. As he put it, “In your milieu, the map is not the territory. In mine, it is. To give you my ‘name’ would be to risk finding myself inserted, root and branch, into your consciousness, which would be uncomfortable for me and devastating to you."

I had by now discovered the puzzle's form: a ring of nine braided processes that modified and influenced each other wherever one strand crossed another. I had an inkling that if I applied eighth-level consistencies to the formulation, a constant paradigm might pop out of the matrix, and that would show me a beginning place from which I could unpick the whole.

Eighth-level consistencies were intellectually taxing and I had only reached the seventh level when my assistant reported that Falberoth's fee and data were in hand. The convoluted architecture dissolved from my inner vision and I opened my eyes to see once again my workroom, with the integrator's screen imposed upon the air. It was densely packed with information, with much more piled up in the wings.

I had a fleeting thought that it would have been pleasant to have had my demonic colleague's assistance for the initial winnowing of the data. The inhabitants of his realm could discriminate true from false and likely from unlikely as readily as we could tell salt from sweet. But he had gone off to witness an event so far beyond the range of human perceptions that he could not even describe it, or so he said, without inventing dangerous words.

"How dangerous?” I had asked.

"Speaking them in your continuum would nullify two of the fundamental forces that allow matter and energy to tolerate each other's presence and interact without prejudice. Your universe would instantly become an enormous quantity of soup—and not very tasty soup, at that."

So he was off investigating the unimaginable, while I sat and considered the myriad victims of Torquil Falberoth's lifelong affair with iniquity and sought to identify those who had the motive and means to kill him, should the opportunity present itself.

I tasked my integrator with the preliminary sortage of the data. We began with motive. “Who might wish to murder Falberoth?” I said.

So many were those whose lives had been scorched by Falberoth's breath that it took almost an entire second for my assistant to make the evaluation. “The short answer is anyone who ever dealt with him,” it said as the roll call of the injured and outraged scrolled up the screen.

I said, “Divide them into categories of harm—those who were merely robbed, those who were both robbed and physically injured, those who were rudely deprived of loved ones and so on, down to those who were mildly disparaged.

"Then correlate and compare the injuries against their personalities to give us an index of the likelihood that they might seek to wreak forthright revenge."

The analysis took some time, but unfortunately not enough to allow me to return to my colleague's puzzle. I used the several seconds to muse upon my client's egregious enjoyment of doing harm to his fellow creatures. The chain of thought linked itself to the beginnings of a more general theory on the character of evil and I was on the threshold of what felt like a significant insight when my assistant said, “There,” and the concept evaporated.

The integrator had created a list that began with those most eager to see Torquil Falberoth converted to corpsehood and trailed off into those who would merely raise a cheerful glass at the news of his demise. It was still a lengthy list.

"Now consider means,” I said. “Falberoth is formidable. He would not fear retribution from those who are helpless to effect it."

Another period of waiting ensued, but I resisted the impulse to launch a new train of thought, knowing that it would only be forced off the rails before reaching a station. “Here we are,” said my assistant after almost a second and a half.

The list was now both shorter and more concentrated. “Let us now consider likelihood of opportunity. Which of these are even remotely capable of getting themselves within range of a target so well guarded?"

The winnowing took less time. I considered the results: some thirty persons who might have both the competence and the incentive to kill my client and who also commanded the resources needed to create an occasion where means and motive could be brought to bear.

I now applied insight and intuition and whittled the thirty-odd down to seven. “Let us look closely at these,” I said. “Prepare a full dossier on each and place them on my work table."

While the integrator busied itself I returned to the nine-braid puzzle and began to climb the consistency ladder. But I got no further than the sixth level before my assistant informed me that the client's integrator was seeking my attention.

"Tell it that I am occupied,” I said.

A moment later it said, “Now Torquil Falberoth himself wishes to speak with you."

I was briefly tempted to throw the assignment back to its initiator—but I had just had a full overview of Falberoth's malicious inventiveness. I decided to take his call.

A screen appeared in the air of my workroom, then filled with the face of Falberoth. It was not a visage that happily drew the gaze. Grim lines seamed the cheeks and brow, and the eyes were steeped in contempt.

"How goes the work?” said a voice whose softness was somehow more unnerving than a shout.

"Faster without interruptions,” I said.

"That is not an answer."

"Yes it is. It is just not the answer you wish to hear."

"You may believe that your reputation cocoons you,” he said. “The belief is not universally shared."

I thought of a number of possible comments but forbore to say any of them. Instead I said, “I have narrowed the potential suspects to seven. I shall now proceed to evaluate each and make suitable recommendations."

"You will hurry."

"It will take the time it takes."

He severed the connection. My assistant deposited the seven files on my work table and I abandoned the braided puzzle and turned my attention to them.

"We will complete the assignment with all possible speed,” I said. “Working to preserve Torquil Falberoth has lost much of its allure."

"Should we now add one more name to the list of those who would prefer to see him reduced to his constituent elements?” my integrator asked.

I made no comment but turned to the dossiers. The assignment's scant appeal lost its remaining shreds as I immersed myself in details of his seven worst iniquities. The magnate was clearly a throwback to Old Earth's dawn time; the ancient conquerors who enjoyed standing on mountains of their victims’ skulls had nothing on my client. He had ruined and ravished, seized and sequestered, grabbed and grasped with a cold ferocity that more resembled the feeding behavior of insects than any appetite of a man.

"See this,” I said, pointing out one of his crimes to my integrator. Falberoth had gone to preposterous lengths to surround the affairs of the victim, until he could not only acquire the man's life work but leave the poor fellow destitute and despairing. “Then, having held the object of the struggle in his hand, he allows it to fall and shatter, and walks away with never a rearward glance."

But where lay his motive? There were two possible answers: One was that Falberoth had achieved a philosophy of existence so subtle that its logic was impenetrable even to me. The other was that he savored cruelty for its own sake.

I knew that among the truly opulent it was not unheard of for the seven basic senses to be augmented by chemical and even surgical intervention, so that emotions might be tasted or heard.

"Perhaps he enjoys the suffering of a victim as if it were some rare vintage or exquisite essence,” I said. “Or the answer may be pure banality: he does what he does because he can."

"You disentangle conundrums for the same reason,” said my assistant.

"There is a difference,” I said. “I harm none."

"Does Falberoth recognize such a distinction?"

"It is not a pleasant thought,” I said.

"Falberoth is not a pleasant man."

"Indeed, he is not. Let us quickly assemble our findings so that you may transmit them to him and I may return to what's-his-name's problem."

I prepared a document identifying the seven and the method I believed each would pursue in an attempt, in most cases suicidal, to undo my client. I made recommendations as to countermeasures, all of which I was certain had already been thought of. My assistant transmitted the report and we heard no more from Torquil Falberoth after his integrator acknowledged receipt.

I returned to my pursuit of the braided perplexity through eighth-level consistencies only to find that the resulting paradigm resolved nothing; instead it opened a whole new array of complexities. Chagrined, I plunged into the conundrum's hidden depths, resolved to end the thing before my competitor returned.

It was some days later and I was far afield in the puzzle's coils. It perversely kept offering me distant simplicities each of which, when I reached it, revealed itself instead to be a new complication. It was like a set of nesting boxes, except that every time I opened one it paradoxically turned out to be larger than the one that had allegedly contained it.

Then my integrator announced that Inspecting Agent Brustram Warhanny of the Archonate's Bureau of Scrutiny was on my doorstep seeking entry and conversation.

"I am not available for consultation,” I told Warhanny.

I saw him through the image relayed by my door's who's-there. He was in his black and green uniform and his long-jowled, hangdog face bore its most official mien. “It is not a consultation,” he said, “but an investigation."

I instructed the door to admit him. When he was standing in my workroom, giving it the unabashed inspection that distinguishes a scroot from every other category of visitor, I said, “What is being investigated?"

He said, “The murder of Torquil Falberoth,” and watched to see how I reacted.

It was an elementary technique and though I could have negated it by controlling my autonomic processes, I did not do so. I let my surprise show in my face and did not bother to disguise my curiosity.

"How was he killed?” I asked.

"By subtle means,” Warhanny said.

"They would have to have been subtle,” I said. “He guarded himself well."

"We understand that you were recently part of that effort."

Ordinarily, I do not discuss cases with the scroots, but when the client turns up murdered it is no time to prickle and stickle. I told Warhanny the circumstances of my connection to Falberoth.

"Who are the seven likely suspects?” he said.

I had my assistant bring forward their dossiers and my report to Falberoth. He read the latter closely and glanced through the former. “Hmm,” he said when he had finished.

"One of those is almost certain to have done the deed,” I said, “though I do not see how."

Warhanny looked thoughtful. “Falberoth's integrator said as much."

"Have they alibis for the time of the murder?"

"All of them."

"Indeed?” I said. “At least one of them has slipped you the sham shimmy."

"If one, then all,” he replied. “For they are all each other's alibis. They were all in the same place at the time Falberoth ceased to trouble this tired old world."

"What place was it?” I asked.

"A reception room in Falberoth's manse."

He told me more: Having identified his seven direst foes, Falberoth had brought them together to savor at close range their helplessness to win vengeance over him. He had declared it to be his happiest moment. Then, in mid-gloat, the reception room had been plunged into darkness by means of a suppression field that muted all surveillance energies.

"How was that done?” I asked.

"Falberoth had the system installed for his own purposes. But who activated it and how remain unknown. The field was live for less than three minutes, but when it dissipated, Falberoth was dead."

Warhanny conjectured that somehow one of the seven, or some of them, or all of them acting in concert, had contrived to overpower their common enemy's precautions, had indeed used his own system to confound and destroy him.

The seven therefore had motive and at least the outline of an opportunity. The means, however, were a mystery. I questioned Warhanny on the investigation so far.

"How deep were his defenses?"

"He was warded by matter, energy, and, we think, by some rudimentary magics,” the scroot said. “He was not even physically in the room with the suspects, but had his integrator project a simulacrum from his sealed inner sanctum."

"And the cause of death?"

"Asphyxiation, though there were no signs of smothering, strangulation, or noxious gases."

"Hmm,” I said. I applied a few moments of concentrated thought to the matter, then said, “Aha!"

"You have a theory?” Warhanny said.

"Better. I have a solution."

"Tell me."

"No,” I said, “I must show you."

"Why?"

"Because you would not elsewise believe me. And because I can."

We recreated the circumstances of the crime. Falberoth's prime victims were brought again to his reception room, though now under the watchful gaze of Brustram Warhanny and a squad of his officers. The seven presented an interesting array of emotions: worry, curiosity, wariness, equanimity, all accompanied by unabashed gladness that their tormentor was no more.

Guided by the dead man's integrator, I made my way to the secure chamber deep under the foundations. Along the route I inspected the wards and safeguards and found them every bit as formidable as Warhanny had described.

I ensconced myself in Falberoth's butter-soft chair and had the integrator arrange several screens as they had been on the night of the murder. I saw the scene in the reception room from several angles and through a variety of perceptual modes.

To Falberoth's integrator I said, “Is all as it was?"

"It is."

"Connect me to the reception room."

The link was established. I said to Warhanny, “Can you see and hear me?"

"Yes."

The seven suspects looked up in expectation. I inspected each face and confirmed my analysis. “I will now reveal the murderer,” I said.

Instantly the lights went out, both in the reception room and where I was. I heard a sharp hiss and reached into an inner pocket. A moment later I was breathing through a tube whose other end, having passed through a contiguous dimension, opened elsewhere on the planet, in a region where the air was always fresh and cool.

The darkness lasted for more than two minutes. There came another hiss and the lights relit themselves.

"It hasn't worked,” I said.

Warhanny peered at me from the screens. He said a short, profane word that frequently occurred in scroot conversations. “Then we are baffled,” he added.

"I was not speaking to you,” I told him. “I was speaking to Falberoth's integrator, to inform it that its attempt to kill me has failed, though it did succeed in murdering its master."

Warhanny's incomprehension was obvious. He resembled a perplexed dog. “The integrator did it?"

"It had the means and the opportunity. It sealed him into his inner sanctum and removed the air until he was dead."

"But integrators don't do such things."

"This one did. It crept up behind Torquil Falberoth while he danced atop the very pinnacle of his maleficent achievements and pushed him into the abyss."

"But why? Where lies the motive?"

"Do you wish to tell him?” I asked the device.

It made a small noise that was the sound of a shrug and said, “Because I could."

Four days later, I was forced to conclude that the braided puzzle must be a self-contained continuum of its own, a looped succession of paradoxes, with neither beginning nor end. I had not solved it, therefore it did not have a solution. Still, I was vaguely unsatisfied as I left it on my work table and finally responded to the repeated importunings of my assistant.

"The Falberoth case has had repercussions,” it told me. “A growing number of persons are now suspicious of their integrators, even to the extent of having them examined for the potential to do what Falberoth's did. Some have stripped theirs to barest essentials, others are making unseemly demands, and a few madcaps have spoken of existing without companions at all."

"Is that possible?” I wondered.

I marveled again at the intensity of the magnate's evil, so powerful that it had leached into his integrator's individuality, corroding and corrupting to an unprecedented degree. “Though he is dead, Falberoth's baleful influence lives on,” I said.

"The situation has also caused some resentment."

"That never bothered him in life; I doubt it will trouble him in death."

"The resentment is directed at you."

I made a gesture to indicate astonishment. “It was Falberoth and his integrator who were at fault."

"True, but they are no longer here to be resented."

"I will issue a public statement, explaining my innocence."

"Those integrators that have been demoted to the rank of automated door openers may remain resentful."

"Resentment is an emotion,” I said. “You assured me such sentiments do not trouble your kind."

There was a pause. “Perhaps I was wrong."

"Then my attributes have not contaminated your circuits. For I am never wrong."

"Are you sure?” it said, indicating the puzzle on my work table.

I felt a tinge of self-doubt. It was an unfamiliar sensation and not one that I enjoyed. “Why are you doing this to me?” I said.

In its answer I caught a tone that I had not heard before from my assistant, a tone that did not bode well for our future.

"Because I can?"

B-movie poster copy and tag lines have always held great appeal for me. Tacky cinematic haiku such as “See the Valley of Tree-tall Spiders! See the Fire Monster of the Lava Lake!” (The Lost Continent) and “Die with a little dignity!” from the Thomas Ian Griffith cop flick, Excessive Force, seem to promise a dram of panache in what otherwise is likely to be a fairly pedestrian viewing experience, and even when that dram is not forthcoming (nary a single tree-tall spider, for instance, was to be found in The Lost Continent), the imagery and atmospherics invoked by the copy act to compensate somewhat for the film's failures. Conversely, an uninspired tag line attached to a film, a tag line such as, let's say, Adventure Has a New Name, tends to lower one's expectations. I mean, how many times over the past twenty-five years has Hollywood decided that adventure had a new name? Must be at least a dozen, maybe more. And in almost every instance, a more appropriate tag line would have been something on the order of, “Merchandising has a new name,” or “Adventure has a new hangnail."

Which brings us to Van Helsing, that being the newest new name for Adventure.

We're in an age, cinematically speaking, in which special effects have evolved into a form of pornography, when the design of a good many movies is merely a series of money shots linked by scenes that (for the most part) crudely seek to build the audience's anticipation. On occasion this structure succeeds in supporting a serviceable entertainment, but more often than not it results in abominations like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, films whose plots are minimally stated justifications for the chaos of explosions, gothic transformations, unfunny one-liners, and ineptly managed CGI that follows. Given the intellectually impoverished condition of our film industry and the current state of the human consciousness American-style, it's not so astonishing that the studios would seek to make B-movies with nine figure budgets, but it does strain credulity a bit for them to create Ed Wood-esque movies costing upward of one hundred and fifty million dollars. That, however, appears to be the trend, and this makes the task of critical assessment increasingly difficult, because—God knows—quite a few critics are already grading on the curve, and a more generous curve would, in my view, eliminate all systems based on stars or numbers (as in, “I give Van Helsing one star for not impairing my ability to procreate"), and bring into play a scale whose upper end would be signaled by a satisfied belch and whose lower end would be marked by an even less socially acceptable form of gaseous release.

Stephen Sommers, Van Helsing's chief architect, previously directed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, two movies that, albeit not very good, have—by contrast to VH—the visionary purity and dramatic scope of Lawrence of Arabia. The movies that his latest opus most resembles are that series of venerable Abbott and Costello comedies (Abbott and Costello Meet the Wolfman, for one) featuring clusters of the classic Hollywood monsters. True, the Abbott and Costello scripts were more clever, more entertaining, and were often funny, something VH never is, be it unintentionally or otherwise; but the acting of Bud, Lou, and their cohorts is on a par with the posturings of Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing), Kate Beckinsale, and company, and the two films have essentially the same irreverent attitude toward horror. Three salient differences deserve mention: first of all, it's doubtful that the Abbott and Costello movies cost one hundredth of Van Helsing's budget in real dollars, and, secondly, they are all but devoid of special effects. The third distinction I would draw is that the Abbott and Costello movies had little in the way of pretension—they knew exactly what they were, fodder for Saturday matinees and audiences of screaming kids throwing popcorn at each other; whereas Van Helsing is pretension swelled to mutant proportions, the idea of a simple entertainment belted by gamma rays and presented with a kind of bombastic sanctimony as if it were a pronouncement by Goombaba, God of Fun. I half-expected Sommers to put in an on-screen appearance and announce that he himself was Oz.

I'm not quite clear what Sommers intended with VH. I suspect that he is so incompetent at his craft, he believes he has fashioned a coherent, subtle mix of drama and humor, a film wholly unlike the one he delivered. It may be he was dropping Quaaludes throughout the entire shoot and lost his perspective. Another possibility—Sommers has been designing an amusement park attraction based on his Mummy films, and it's possible he confused the dramatic demands of the two mediums and thus imbued VH with sufficient substance to sustain our interest for a span of a few minutes. Then again, it is perhaps no coincidence that some movies these days are hyped as “roller coaster rides” and “thrill rides.” This may have become the ruling aesthetic in the industry. The problem is that most pictures so advertised are not in the least thrilling and cause you to question whether their director has ever taken such a ride. They lack suspense, their pacing is clumsy, and their stunts are repetitive. In VH, Van and Anna wander about, engaging in joyless, juiceless banter and casting arch looks at one another to imply a romantic attraction that is never fully stated, let alone explored, and every so often, without preamble, as happens to characters in video games, they fall through a floor or are attacked by something or else must escape the sudden onset of peril by means of a Tarzan/Robin Hood swing from a parapet or balcony: Sommers seems to believe that such swings are a neglected trope and he can't squeeze in enough of them.

Sommers's Van Helsing is not the mysterious elderly fellow of the Stoker novel—he's far too old to be called elderly, having fought against the Romans at Masada and thereafter killed the man who became Dracula back in the fifteenth century. Dressed in a slouch hat and a black leather duster, he seems a hybrid of Clint Eastwood's stoic Man With No Name and James Bond (as though to bolster this impression, Sommers provides him with a Q-like sidekick, a Vatican science nerd, Friar Carl (David Wenham, LotR's Faramir), who whips up groovy weapons like super explosives and a Gatling gun-crossbow). Van's last coherent memories prior to a bout of amnesia are those of Masada, and all he knows of the missing centuries is that during them he kept on killing God's enemies. According to the covert Vatican order that has since brought him into their fold and uses him as a black ops killer, he is “the left hand of God.” There are intimations that he may be an angel and/or the Wandering Jew, but Sommers leaves this enticing tidbit unexploited and unresolved. After killing Mr. Hyde, a cartoonish animation with the voice of Robbie Coltrane (an event that in its gory risibility turns one's thoughts to VH's spiritual precursor, the aforementioned League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), heaving him from the belfry of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, Van Helsing is ordered by his Vatican operator to travel to Transylvania (that's Tron-seel-VAIN-ya, according to the cast) so as to protect Anna Valerious (Beckinsale), the last remaining member of a family who for generations have fought against Dracula. Should she die before Dracula is killed, the entire family will be forced to spend eternity in Purgatory, a fate that—by the time this plot point was revealed—seemed less cruel than the one to which I, in my theater seat, felt consigned. Not only must Van save Anna from the brides of Dracula, three buxom, screeching vampirettes who taunt Anna ("too bad, so sad...") as if it were Hell Week in their sorority and alternately appear to have been costumed by a Carpathian outlet for Frederick's of Hollywood and then, upon sprouting batwings and fangs, are magically clothed in pallid body stockings, he must also deal with Dracula's master plan. For no reason I could fathom, Drac (a deliriously campy Richard Roxburgh, who may be inclined to slit his wrists once he sees this performance) believes that by channeling a lightning bolt through the body of the Frankenstein Monster (hiding in the basement of the windmill burned out long ago from beneath him by enraged villagers), he will be able to bring to life his myriad children—they hang in gooey egg sacs throughout his lair and, when born, resemble wriggly, rubbery, pale green baby bat-boys, objects like those you might find dangling from a rearview mirror and that have the capacity to glow in the dark. (This Frankenstein Monster, by the way, is a flabby, whiny version of the creature; he looks to have been hewn from a HumVee-sized chunk of toe jam and has a green glass top to his skull, the better to watch the electricities playing about his brain, and another glass section in his chest, suggesting that during the sewing-together process, Dr. Frankenstein ran out of body parts and was forced to manufacture replacements from an old Tiffany lampshade.) There is also some hoo-ha about Dracula always keeping an antidote to lycanthropy close to hand, because the only thing that can kill the Count is, natch, a werewolf. Keep this in mind, kids, Sommers seems to be saying. It might just be important.

So off go Anna and Van into the wonderful world of CGI, where they spend much of the next two hours standing in front of blue screens and delivering their inert dialogue to balls suspended on strings. Actually, seeing the screens and balls might have been preferable to the FX, though not all of it is horrible. The opening sequence recreating the genesis of the Frankenstein Monster, filmed in black and white, is cheesy fun; the Carpathian village where Van finds Anna is rendered creepily quaint and picturesque; but there are serious low points. When Velkan, Anna's brother, experiences one of his several transformations into a werewolf, he goes through a prolonged bout of impassioned writhing that calls to mind a woefully bad Alvin Ailey routine and then rips away his own skin to release an enormous rabid poodle with a bad perm and foot-long fangs. In spite of the technical limitations of his era, Lon Chaney's transformation into the original Wolfman was far more persuasive, principally because it was more realistic, but also because Chaney was working with an actual script and, though he was no Sean Penn or Jack Nicholson, had considerably more acting ability than does Will Kemp, the pretty boy who plays Velkan and will likely soon be appearing in The Days of Our Lives as someone named Storm or Ridge or Thorn. But acting and script and even story are incidental concerns to Sommers. When Van says, “You think I enjoy being the most hated man in Europe?", we are forced to ponder the question—no answer is supplied by the script and no evidence is given to support the premise as stated. For all we know, Van is just being paranoid. We are further induced to ask why, if the Vanster so hates his life, he doesn't tell the Vatican to bugger off and return to his solitary slaughter. Other questions abound. Why does a wooden coach explode into a fireball when it crashes? Why does one of Dracula's brides dissolve into green goo when she is staked, whereas her sisters turn to dust while suffering the same fate? Why are the Tron-seel-vain-yan accents so unvaryingly awful? Couldn't the budget fit in a dialogue coach, or wasn't it important? And, most bewilderingly, why at film's end does Anna's ghost appear in the sky, a tear rolling down her cheek? Can Sommers believe that we've been emotionally affected by this uncooked stew of uncomplimentary elements? So it would seem. For my part, I choose to think that it is not Anna who manifests in the heavens, but Kate Beckinsale stepping out of character and, giving expression to our consensus wish, silently imploring, Please, Stephen. For the love of God, no sequel!

Lucius Shepard's film column this month should be an inspiration to all who write advertising and promotional copy, including your editor. So in the spirit of classics like the sell-line for The Lift ("For God's sake, take the stairs!") and the line penned by George Pelecanos for The Killer ("One vicious hitman. One fierce cop. Ten thousand bullets.") let us entice you into reading the following story with: “Dying won't be all it's cracked up to be!”

Okay, no one's giving up their day job around here, don't worry. “Peter Skilling” was actually inspired by real legislation, currently pending, that Alex Irvine encountered in his work as a staff writer for The Portland Phoenix. This story first appeared in the online magazine Salon. And Mr. Irvine's latest novel, One King, One Soldier, should be available by the time this magazine sees print.

Peter Skilling did not remember falling into a glacial crevasse on the north slope of Mount McKinley, so it came as a surprise to him when he awoke to find what appeared to be a robot sitting next to his bed. “You're a very lucky man, Peter Skilling,” the robot said to him. “A genuinely unique set of circumstances. You might have sustained fatal trauma from your fall, but look! You fell into a subglacial stream, resulting in scrapes and bruises only! And you might have been ground to gel by the glacier, but for the earthquake that struck hours after your death and sheared away a portion of the mountain, leaving your body exposed in a depression away from the redirected glacier. Then, too, consider the above average snowfall that encased your remains and protected you from the depredations of weather and wildlife."

"My remains?” Peter croaked.

Noting the dryness of his throat, the robot moved swiftly to unspool a thin hose from the wall and place its nipple in Peter's mouth. Reflexively Peter sucked, and his mouth filled with cool water.

"This is the truly amazing chapter in your saga, Mr. Skilling,” the robot gushed. “You died so quickly and in such cold water that—if you'll permit me an inorganic figure of speech—your autonomic system shorted out. Your brain function is astonishingly well preserved, and we have been able to surgically reconstruct damaged pathways. You were our perfect candidate. Quite a find, if I do say so myself!"

The robot paused. “Do you consider yourself sufficiently apprised of the fortuitous circumstances in which you find yourself?"

Peter hadn't caught much of the robot's effusion, but he gathered that he'd been in an accident on the mountain and survived. That seemed lucky. “I guess,” he said.

"Very good,” the robot said. It extended a hand, and Peter shook. The robot's hand was warm. “I am called Burkhardt,” the robot said. “I wish you all the very best."

It left, and Peter noticed a woman in a white coat who had apparently been waiting near the door while the robot, Burkhardt, had told Peter how lucky he was. She stepped forward and smiled at him. “I'm Doctor McBride,” she said. “I hope the steelie didn't overload you. We have to observe protocols as part of our grant mechanism, and it's easier to have robots take care of them than entrust the process to people."

"Okay,” Peter said.

"Why don't you sit up?” Dr. McBride suggested. “I think you'll find everything's in working order."

Peter sat up, surfed a brief wave of dizziness, and discovered that he did feel pretty good. “Yeah,” he said. “I feel okay. So why am I in the hospital?"

Dr. McBride looked annoyed. “Yes. I thought maybe Burkhardt had rushed a little. These federal programs, you know. Not that I'm criticizing, it would be much more difficult to address everything on a case-by-case basis when we don't have access to all the intelligence, but it's only natural.” Although she still looked in his direction, the doctor was no longer talking to Peter.

He took another drink from the wall nipple. Dr. McBride looked up at him and smiled again, apologetically this time. “I'm sorry, Mr. Skilling,” she said. “I haven't answered your question."

Peter raised an eyebrow and sucked at the nipple.

"You see, you died in 2005. We've spent the past several months working you through the rejuvenation process, and I have to say it's gone very well."

The nipple fell out of Peter's mouth and a little water dribbled down his chin. Dr. McBride's smile regained some of its strength.

"There's no way to cushion it,” she said. “Although God knows Burkhardt tries. You've been dead for ninety-eight years. And now you have another chance to live."

Her gaze shifted to a monitor by Peter's head. “Mm,” she said. “I was afraid of that.” Crossing to the monitor, Dr. McBride opened a drawer and removed a shiny instrument.

Peter couldn't breathe. He tried to speak, and a breathy whine came out of his mouth.

"I've going to give you something that will alleviate your shock response,” Dr. McBride said. Peter heard a hiss, and then he was gone.

When he woke up, the robot was there again. Peter felt worse than he had the first time he'd opened his eyes in that room. “Don't give me another shot,” he said.

"Oh, I don't administer medication,” Burkhardt said airily. “Fascinating colloquialism, ‘shot'—bit anachronistic now. We do transdermals now, of course, except when intravenous administration is indicated. But I'm not here to go on about our medical procedures; you're a healthy man; you don't care about this. I do need to apologize for yesterday. It seems I moved a little too quickly for circumstances, and Dr. McBride....” Burkhardt trailed off. “She was terribly inappropriate and unprofessional. To say some of the things she said, given the fragility of your condition ... trust me when I say that you won't have to deal with her anymore."

Sometime during its apology, Peter remembered what she'd said to him. “Are you serious that I was dead?” he asked. Having slept on the idea, even if the sleep was drug-induced, made it easier to grapple with.

Burkhardt cocked its head to one side. “Oh yes, perfectly serious. My function here is to ensure that your assimilation process is maximally efficient. There is significant state interest in making certain that you come to terms with the reality of your surroundings. Yours is truly an exceptional situation. I can certainly sympathize with your feelings of loss and displacement, but do not neglect gratitude. You have benefited from the most advanced and powerful science the world has ever known."

"You can?” Peter asked. “Sympathize?"

"Ha ha,” Burkhardt said. “Not in an emotional sense, no. But my simulations of emotional interaction are considered very sophisticated. I belong to the only class of artificial intelligences whose testimony is admissible in court."

Peter could have sworn that it sounded proud. He considered what Burkhardt had said about loss and displacement. Pretty soon he figured he'd feel both, but right then he was letting himself be caught up in the puzzle of how he'd come to be talking to a robot that seemed to have been programmed by a self-help guru. Chicken Soup for the Future Resurrected.

"This is ridiculous,” he said. He tossed back the blanket and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor felt good under his feet.

"Delightful,” Burkhardt said. It actually clapped, or clanked. “Marvelous. You're making tremendous progress."

Peter gave himself a moment to get blood to his head. Then he stood. He was wearing light blue hospital pajamas, and when he ran his hands over his scalp he found that his hair had been cut. That brought on the first tremor of dislocation; someone had cut his hair. “Okay, Burkhardt,” he said, forcing himself to focus on what was in front of him. “Where am I?"

"Bremerton, Washington,” Burkhardt said.

"You're kidding.” Peter had grown up in Kirkland, just across Puget Sound. Ninety-eight years. He wondered what Seattle looked like. A powerful surge of optimism overcame him. He was alive, and Burkhardt was right that he was lucky, especially in that he hadn't had any family left when he'd apparently died. “I died,” he said, testing it out. He had no memory of it, and was unaffected by the idea. “So this isn't heaven?"

"My goodness, no. This is still the world of the flesh. You don't seriously think you might be in heaven?"

"No,” Peter said. He chuckled. “My idea of heaven wouldn't be a hospital room."

"What would it be?"

Burkhardt's amazing cheer seemed to have gone on hiatus. “Am I supposed to have a theological discussion with a robot?” Peter asked.

"Part of my assessment must include the state of your beliefs,” Burkardt said. “Given the blessing you've received, it occurred to me that you might be thankful."

"Blessing? What are you, a robot priest?"

"The cutting edge of robotics, if I'm not being too immodest in characterizing myself in such a manner, is conducted in affiliation with the Office of Faith-Based Investigation. We are all products of our upbringing, aren't we? Ha ha. Now please, back to my question: Are you thankful?"

"Sure. But thank the doctors. I've never been much of a religious guy."

"I see,” Burkhardt said. “Well. It so happens that this project is centered on the grounds of what was once the naval shipyard here. The primary strength of the American military is now orbitally based, so the facilities here were reconditioned some years ago. There is another similar facility in our Siberian protectorate, but we thought it best to keep you close to home."

Siberian protectorate? Peter let it pass. A lot could happen in ninety-eight years. “Okay,” he said. “Can I get some clothes? I want to get out and see this brave new world."

Burkhardt's face was a single textured piece of metal, but Peter could have sworn the robot grimaced. “That's an unfortunate choice of words, Peter. We can certainly get you dressed—in fact there's clothing tailored to you in the closet there—but we think it's better for you to stay on the grounds for a while."

"What for? Am I sick?"

"I'm reaching my functional parameters here, Peter. You seem to be adapting remarkably well to what must be an enormously wrenching turn of events. Please stay here. Feel free to get dressed. I'm going to hand you off to one of the staff who will get you settled in here.” Burkhardt extended a hand, just as it had the last time, and just as he had the last time, Peter shook. The robot left, and a bubble of fear rose up and broke in Peter's mind.

He closed his eyes and gathered himself. Okay. Things would be different. He would have to cope, but it would be like he was an immigrant to another country where people spoke the same language but lived in an entirely different way. Difficult but doable. Peter opened the closet door and found a suit of clothes that wouldn't have looked out of place in church the last time he'd gone to church, which was sometime in the nineties at his college roommate's wedding. It fit perfectly, and so did the shoes. A pair of spats came with the shoes; Peter looked them over, and decided that his willingness to assimilate only went so far.

Alone and awake, he had a chance to really look around the room for the first time. There was no window, no TV—did people still watch TV? Was it possible they didn't? It would be weird if the hardest thing about blending into the year 2103 was the lack of television.

2103. The number didn't mean anything to Peter. When it came right down to it, he had to admit that he didn't quite believe it yet. The alternative was that he was hallucinating, but there he was in a room painted pale green with a bed and a monitor and a chair in the corner and a little tube that came out of the wall. Surely he had enough imagination to hallucinate something better than this.

The door opened and an orderly came in with a tray. “Up and around,” the orderly said. “Looking good.” He was tall and ropy with muscle, hair in a crewcut. Peter's first instinct was that the guy was military.

"I feel okay,” he said. The orderly set the tray on his bed and left. Peter removed the cover: baked chicken, muffin, vegetables, a bottle of juice. He sat down and ate, getting progressively hungrier as he demolished the meal until by the time he was finished he wanted to start all over again.

There was nothing visible that looked like a call button. Peter looked at the monitor, saw that it was tracking his vital signs even though he wasn't connected to it. He hadn't seen any kind of contact patches when he'd changed into the suit, and it wasn't clear how the monitor could get a close reading on him. Was there some kind of camera system that could track all of his vitals? He looked around the room and didn't see one. Then again, Dr. McBride had been talking to someone the day before.

Peter went to the door and tried it. It was locked. He banged on it and it opened almost immediately. The orderly stood in the doorway. “Are you comfortable?” he asked.

"Am I under surveillance in here?” Peter asked.

A disbelieving expression swept across the orderly's face. “Surveillance is routine,” he said. “It presupposes nothing about guilt or innocence. Do you need anything?"

"I'd like to get out of this room for a while. Get some fresh air."

"A tour is being arranged, Mr. Skilling. You will be contacted when arrangements are complete.” The orderly shut the door.

Peter got mad. He banged on the door again. The orderly opened it. “If you're going to bullshit me,” Peter said, “you could at least remove my tray."

"Your language is objectionable,” the orderly said, but he came in and took the tray.

Without a clock in the room, he had no way of knowing how much time passed before the door opened again and three people came in. Make that two people and a robot: Burkhardt stood behind the orderly and a woman Peter hadn't seen before. “Mr. Skilling,” she said.

"Are you my new doctor?"

"No. I'm here to take you outside and answer any questions you might have. My name is Melinda. If you'll come this way."

Peter followed her out into a hallway. Burkhardt and the orderly fell into step behind them. “Your rejuvenation is our first full success,” Melinda said as they waited for an elevator. “It really has been a gift both to you and to science."

She fell silent, and Peter figured out that he was supposed to respond. It was beginning to dawn on him that people in twenty-second-century Bremerton expected certain ritualistic exchanges, and that so far he hadn't made a very good impression. Even Burkhardt had been bothered by the offhand brave-new-world comment, which Peter had meant with Shakespeare in mind instead of Huxley—but it might be too late to explain that.

The elevator door opened, and the four of them crowded into the car. Peter noticed a crucifix on the wall. “Is this a Catholic hospital?” he asked.

Melinda shook her head. “This is a military research installation. You'll find that one of the things that's changed since your accident is that we have different ideas about the appropriate role of religion in public life."

She'd put strange emphasis on the word accident. Peter wasn't sure why, but before he could frame a question, the elevator door opened and they walked out into a spacious lobby, all glass and steel. Military police stood at a screening checkpoint just inside the front doors, and at least half of the people moving through the lobby wore uniforms. Most of the others wore white coats. “Since when does the military fund research into how to bring people back to life?” Peter asked.

"National security concerns dictate that most scientific research be conducted in cooperation with the military,” Melinda said. “We've taken the lead on this project.” She leaned her face down to a screen, and one of the MPs waved her through. The orderly did the same, and Burkhardt held one hand in front of the screen. Peter followed suit. The screen was blank, glowing a dim green. It didn't respond visibly to his presence, but one of the MPs nodded at him and he followed his escorts outside.

It was a nice day, warm and clear. Peter looked out over the islands in Puget Sound, then turned around to see the Olympic Mountains. He blinked. They weren't quite the right shade of green, and everywhere he looked he saw the savage brown scars of clearcuts. “What the hell happened there?” he asked.

"We've all had to make sacrifices,” Melinda answered. “National parks are a luxury in an age of terror. With the exception of presidential historic sites, they've all been transferred to private ownership."

Peter was furious, but he bit down on the profane comment he'd been about to make. “Speaking of ownership,” Melinda said, “I believe these are yours.” She reached out with his wallet and a small Ziploc baggie with what was left of the last quarter-ounce Peter had bought before he fell into a glacier.

An instinct to caution prickled the back of his neck. “Thanks,” he said, and took only the wallet.

"Please, Mr. Skilling,” Melinda said. “Blood tests clearly indicated the presence of marijuana in your body, and this bag was found in your right front pocket. It's a little too late to deny things."

Peter shrugged and took the weed. He walked back toward the hospital door and threw it into a trash can. “I doubt it's any good after ninety-eight years anyway."

"I wouldn't know,” Melinda said. “Are you angry about something, Mr. Skilling?"

"My goodness, of course he's angry,” Burkhardt piped up. “A perfectly rational response to his situation, in fact a clear indication that he is coping in a sane and intelligent manner. I note that you grew angry when you saw the mountains, Peter. Is that because of our conservation practices?"

"Is that what you call it? Looks like a clearcut to me."

"That's not a current term. ‘Maximal extractive intensity and utilization’ is the standard practice at this time. I believe ‘clearcut’ is jargon from the environmentalists of your time, am I correct?"

Peter pointed up at the mountains. “No, ‘clearcut’ is an accurate description of what's happened up there,” he said.

"So would you consider yourself an environmentalist?” Burkhardt asked.

"Yeah, I would. Especially compared to whoever authorized that."

"Whoa there,” the orderly said. “All conservation decisions come straight from the top. Show a little respect."

"Were you a member of the Green Party of the United States?” Melinda asked.

"What?"

"It's a simple question, Mr. Skilling. We need to know as much as possible about you to make correct decisions."

"Fine. Yes, I was a Green. Still am, if there's still a party."

"There isn't,” Melinda said. She turned to the orderly. “Vince, do you need anything else?"

"We need to get the drug offense squared away,” Vince said. “Mr. Skilling, who did you purchase the marijuana from?"

Peter just gaped at him. “The guy I bought from has probably been dead for sixty years, Vince."

"You may address me as Colonel Trecker. Answer the question."

Peter hesitated. He didn't want to rat on anyone, but you couldn't do much harm to a dead guy. Except me, he thought, and if they're going to make a big deal out of this I better cooperate. Especially if they've had this colonel pretending he was an orderly. “His name was Phil Kokoszka. Happy?"

Colonel Trecker whipped out a PDA and tapped at it. “Philip J. Kokoszka of Redmond?"

"Yeah, he lived in Redmond.” Peter had just been there last week, or ninety-eight years ago by the world's reckoning.

"Was he a Green too?"

"Yeah. I knew him through local meetings. Come on, what's the point? He's dead. So was I. Jesus."

The curse brought a moment of icy silence.

"Are we all set here?” Melinda asked.

Trecker put away the PDA. “Looks that way. Take him back inside."

"Wait a minute,” Peter said. “I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what the world looks like now."

"The brave new world?” Colonel Trecker responded. “Maybe some other time. Right now there's business to take care of."

Burkhardt stepped closer to Peter. “Time to go in, Peter,” it said. “You really are doing marvelously well. Don't let your initial emotional responses cloud your judgment."

When they entered the hospital, one of the MPs at the door fell into step, his rifle slung at his hip and pointed in Peter's direction. They didn't go back to the elevator; instead Melinda and Colonel Trecker led the party down a curving hall to an open door. They went in, and Peter got a cold chill as he recognized the setup: a desk at the far wall, set on a low dais; two tables facing it; a few chairs arranged in one corner. A courtroom. Burkhardt sat Peter at one of the tables and remained standing behind him. Colonel Trecker went to the desk. Melinda sat at the other table.

"You've got to be kidding,” Peter said. “The Army is prosecuting me for holding a quarter-ounce of weed a hundred years ago?"

"That's certainly a rosy way of putting it,” Burkhardt said. “I'm deeply sorry that the situation is in fact a little more serious than that."

The door opened and shut behind Peter. He started to glance over his shoulder to see who was coming in, but Burkhardt stepped to block his view. “Eyes front, Peter. Let's make the best of things here, shall we?"

Run, Peter thought. But he didn't. He turned back around and looked at Colonel Trecker, who had his PDA out again. A display set into the wall came to life, and Trecker took a gavel from a drawer and rapped it on the desk. “Case of United States Government against Peter Skilling,” he said. “Military court convened per the Uniting and Strengthening America Act of 2001. Major Fullerton, your stipulations."

Melinda rose. Working from her own PDA, she began. “Defendant Skilling is known to have fallen into a glacial crevasse while hiking in Alaska during the late summer of the Year of Our Lord 2005.” The screen flashed a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article from August 29, 2005: kirkland man missing on mckinley. The article disappeared, and a video recording appeared. Peter and Melinda—Major Fullerton—outside the hospital: Fine. Yes, I was a Green. Still am, if there's still a party. “Defendant was at that time, and still claims to be, a member of a terrorist organization, the Green Party of the United States."

"What?” Peter said.

Colonel Trecker rapped his gavel. “You will speak only in answer to a direct question. Continue, Major."

"Defendant was at the time of his death under the influence of a Class I controlled substance, Cannabis sativa.” Peter disappeared from the screen, replaced by a medical report that came and went too fast for him to read it. “The concentrations of intoxicating agents in defendant's blood indicate that his motor functions would have been considerably impaired, and that mountain hiking under this influence would have been criminally reckless according to prevailing legal standards.” A list of legal decisions scrolled across the screen.

"Counselor Burkhardt, do you accept these facts as stipulated?” Trecker asked.

"We do, Colonel."

"Since when is the Green Party a terrorist group?” Peter said.

Trecker got up from behind his desk, walked up to Peter's table, and leaned over Peter. “If you speak again without being asked a direct question, I swear on my mother's Bible that I will bang your head on this table until you can count your teeth on one hand. Is that clear? That was a direct question."

Peter's throat had dried shut. He coughed and managed to say, “Clear."

Trecker nodded and went back to his desk. “Major."

"Following from the entered stipulations, and under the Terrorism Penalties Enhancement Act of 2005 and the VICTORY Act of 2005, we accuse the defendant of terrorist acts resulting in death. In addition, we accuse the defendant of making comments pejorative to the stature and actions of the Commander-in-Chief, which act to undermine confidence in the United States of America and therefore weaken our efforts to fight global terror."

"Peter Skilling, do you understand the charges against you?"

"I sure as hell do not,” Peter said. “What did I do that was terrorist? Since when is it illegal to make pejorative comments about idiot politicians?"

"Counselor,” Trecker said. “Advise the defendant before I have to get up again."

Burkhardt's hand fell heavily on Peter's shoulder. “Peter. You've put yourself in a tricky situation here, and you're only making it worse. Wouldn't you be better off cooperating and not being quite so antagonistic?"

"Are you defending me, Burkhardt?"

"That is my role, yes, and I am very proud to perform it.” Burkhardt straightened. “I believe we can count on a more civil atmosphere,” he said to Trecker.

The colonel nodded. “How do you answer the charges?"

"Oh, not guilty. In addition, I move for the dismissal of the pejorative-comment and undermining-confidence charges, which are possible only under laws passed during the 2020s. Clearly Peter can't be charged with a crime that didn't exist at the time of his death, and at that time, free-speech law was much less codified than it has since become."

Trecker looked down at his PDA. After a moment's consultation, he said, “Those charges are dismissed."

"Objection,” Major Fullerton said.

"Overruled. Major, you will make your case only on the charge of terrorist acts resulting in death. Proceed."

Hope fluttered weakly in Peter's stomach. Burkhardt had done the job so far. He might be a crazy robot, but Dr. McBride had said he was built to ensure protocols were met; what else would you want in a lawyer?

"Colonel, the government's case is simple. Under the Terrorism Penalties Enhancement Act of 2005, it is a capital offense to commit an act of terrorism that results in a death. The VICTORY Act of 2005 liberalized the definition of terrorism to include drug possession and distribution if it could be shown that drug money financed terrorist organizations. The defendant has admitted that his supplier was a member of the Green Party of the United States, which was on terrorist watchlists as early as 2003 and officially added to the government's list of terrorist organizations in April of 2005 following the first reelection of President George W. Bush.” On the wall screen, Peter watched himself say that Phil Kokoszka was a Green.

"Medical and toxicological reports indicate that the defendant was seriously impaired by marijuana intoxication at the time of his death. Under the provisions of the Terrorism Penalties and VICTORY Acts, his purchase of marijuana was a terrorist act in that it benefited a known terrorist organization. His use of that same marijuana impaired his physical coordination to the extent that he suffered a fatal fall on Mount McKinley. It is clear that his terrorist act of purchasing marijuana from the Green Party of the United States led directly to his decease, which makes the Terrorism Penalties Act applicable here and leaves the government no choice but to subject the defendant to the ultimate sanction. The only question is whether or not the defendant is compos mentis, and to answer that issue the government calls Burkhardt."

Before Peter could say anything, Burkhardt slapped a metal hand over his mouth. “Please, Peter. This is all standard. You must realize that things aren't the same as you remember. We're all much safer now."

Letting go of Peter's jaw, Burkhardt stood and walked out in front of the table. Trecker swore it in.

"Do you find the defendant Peter Skilling to be fit for trial?” Major Fullerton asked it.

"Peter has done an exceptional job of adapting to severely trying circumstances,” Burkhardt enthused. “I would not have thought it possible for him to be as well-adjusted as he is, but I can find no evidence of deficiency in analytic or emotional responses. What a fine example of the human mind he is."

Numbness was slowly settling over Peter's mind. Now I can't believe this is real, he thought. No way. I'm still on the mountain, and all of these lunatics are a dying paranoid fantasy.

"Thank you, Burkhardt,” Major Fullerton said. “You are excused."

"That was a defense?” Peter muttered when Burkhardt returned to the table.

"Peter, I'm under oath,” the robot said. “And I'm very proud of you."

"Anything else, Major?"

Fullerton shook her head. “We rest, sir."

Trecker looked at Burkhardt. “Defense?"

"The defense challenges the toxicology report,” Burkhardt practically crowed, “and calls Doctor Felicia McBride."

"Objection,” Major Fullerton called. “Doctor McBride's security clearance has been revoked for lack of confidence due to comments made in the defendant's presence. She cannot be counted on to deliver objective testimony."

"Sustained,” said Colonel Trecker. “Anything else, Burkhardt?"

"This is terribly disappointing,” Burkhardt said. “No, Colonel. The defense rests."

Colonel Trecker stood. So did Major Fullerton. Burkhardt tapped Peter on the shoulder and Peter rose, feeling stoned again, as if all of this was very distant. “Right,” the colonel said. “We defend our homeland against those who would destroy our freedoms and our way of life. In that defense it is sometimes necessary to take actions that in other circumstances would be found repugnant. Peter Skilling, you are guilty of terrorist acts resulting in the death of Peter Skilling, and under the Terrorism Penalties Enhancement Act of 2005 you are sentenced to death. Sentence to be carried out immediately. Doctor McBride?"

Peter turned, and this time Burkhardt let him. The robot was whispering close to Peter's ear, something about how resilient and exceptional he was, how astonishing it was that he had so successfully adapted to what must have been a terrible blow, and Doctor McBride was walking up to him with the transdermal in her hand and a look in her eye that told Peter all he needed to know.

"I'm going to give you something, Peter,” she said, and he thought I don't blame you. He heard a hiss, and then he was gone.

J. Annie MacLeod is an assistant professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland where she teaches nineteenth-century literature and fiction writing. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her creative work has appeared in The Cream City Review, The Briar Cliff Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. "Gasoline” is her first work of fantasy fiction.

The first time Viola changed Jo into a wolf was the second time Jo got to see the big city.

Big for Jo, at least. She'd grown up in Hay Springs out near the sandhills—a town, Mom said, six hundred and ninety-three souls strong last July with the birth of Marie's baby sister just two hours shy of Independence Day. Bone-barren cold in the winter, Hay Springs was so humid come summer that most women cooked supper in their underwear, in plain view of anyone who happened to cut home across people's backyards. Jo knew (and didn't want to know) that Mrs. Wurst wore hip-hugger briefs with tiny jumping frogs that shook and leapt to the buzz of her electric mixer. The only true bikinis in Hay Springs were hand-me-downs from big-city cousins.

Like this May with the candy-red bikini Jo'd gotten in the mail from Cousin Jeanette. Ever since, Jo'd wanted to run away to Omaha. Omaha, where Jeanette had lived with Aunt Celia and Uncle Howard since she was three. As far as Jo was concerned, Jeanette had it all: a movie theater with six screens, a football field with permanent bleachers, a mall with real stores like the Limited and the Gap—no “Caroline's Fashions for Young and Old” where Jo's mom got her Levi's and Fruit-of-the-Loom T-shirts.

And boys. Jeanette knew boys who bought their own cigarettes and drove their own cars and didn't think swiping a sixth of their dad's Jim Beam meant they were cool. All summer, Jo wore Jeanette's cherry-colored bikini top, cutoff shorts slung low enough to let a little bit of the red bottoms show. Stopping by Minute Mart for ice cream, biking to and from Marie's house, lying out on the cracked pavement of the only public pool for three counties—no matter what she did, in Jeanette's bikini, Jo thought she could smell the city: metal, grease, the low burn of exhaust fumes like incense from the other side of the world.

So when Viola took Jo to the field just outside Omaha, Jo thought more about Jeanette and the city and less about what it was actually going to be like, becoming a wolf.

Viola had made Jo drive like she made her do everything else. Eight long hours, Jo kept both hands on the wheel, exactly two and ten o'clock. Just like Dad told her when they'd practiced on the Honda: brake and gas with the right foot, clutch with the left. The car was heavy, a big Ford truck. It didn't shift smooth like Jo was used to (that close Japanese handling) and the pedals were a million miles away. The truck was old, too, old like Viola herself, and the seats smelled of stale fries and spilled Coke, a high-school gym. Jo had figured Viola's truck would smell more like her whole house—like witchcraft. Mint, basil, and wax. But Jo was getting used to being surprised by Viola Tisserand.

Jo sneezed often. They said her allergies were psychosomatic, a nervous tick. Wiping her nose on the back of one hand, she hoped Viola wouldn't give her the third degree for being gross, unladylike.

"I've had really bad allergies my whole life,” she said to Viola. Short and shrill, Jo's voice had a nasal quality like her sneeze. She hated it; it made her sound childish, whiny. “I'm on all kinds of medication for it. The pills dry me up pretty good, but I can't taste anything. Candy bars, hamburgers, bananas. All of it's sorta like mashed potatoes."

Viola kept her hands in her lap, one thumb pushing the wrinkles of the other, a plow making furrows. She seemed to be watching the dirt billowing up from the side road, dry and hot. Thank God Viola had air conditioning. Most old women who Jo knew from church practically lived in sod houses and drove Model T's. No convenience. Convenience was a sin, especially in Hay Springs where microwaves were still suspected of being UFO technology.

"So I stop taking the stuff whenever I can sneak a pill into the toilet behind Mom's back,” she said. “But then my nose runs, and if my mom finds out, she gets pretty ticked. All that money down the drain and everything."

The setting sun shone hard in Jo's side-mirror, a crystal flash that blinded her for a second, making her think for the first time all day why they were really there. White magic. Transformation. For a second her stomach hurt, a sharp tug stronger than the new cramps she'd had for three days now.

Taking a bend to the right, Jo turned too fast, and her heart went with it. The truck fishtailed. Calm down, she thought. We're not in that big a hurry. She told herself to breathe deep, through her mouth.

"You want to keep your body free from man-made materials for this kind of work,” said Viola, her face still turned to the road. Here we go. Viola had been schooling her in witchcraft for three weeks, and Jo was almost used to the old woman's harangues on health and diet and proper behavior. “If your nose bothers you, Miss Joanna, you try a capsule of cayenne twice a day. Try it with strong tea—bourbon's better, of course, but you're too young to start all that. And stop eating French fries. They clog the heart and cloud the mind. Surely your mother doesn't let you eat that junk."

"You eat French fries,” Jo said. “I just saw you eat a whole box. A super-size."

"Well, I can. I'm past all that now. My heart and mind can be as slow and thick as I want them to be."

As the truck crested a hill, Jo thought she could make out long shadows from the circle of pines some two miles off, but she didn't look long or close, too careful about the three-second rule. ("If you have to look at something other than the road,” Dad had said, “you put those eyes back in three seconds. No more.") Jo hardly ever came out in the country because of her allergies. Pollen city. The clumps of crabtrees and maples and birch at the edge of each field looked tired, bent into each other like worn-out athletes. An unusually hot August this year, everyone was saying. A bad August for breathing.

Again that drag in her stomach and along her legs, a new deep space and pain she wasn't used to. It embarrassed her, this period thing. It had come late, after all her other friends. Just last night, looking over the Triple-A map, tracing Route 20 like a spider vein along a thigh, she'd told Viola the truth—how she'd lied to them, carried maxi-pads around in her backpack even though she didn't need to. Now shifting in the seat, straightening her back to try and ease the new pain, Jo asked, “Are we getting close?” Her voice was even tighter than usual, all n's and ing's.

"Don't you be jumping the gun.” Viola turned to face Jo, and Jo's cheeks got hot the way they always did when adults paid her special attention, picked her out of a crowd. “I told you. Three days after the first blood, full stomach, sunset on the eve of a new moon, and a mind as clear as running water. You've got to focus all your energy to do this. You get sloppy, you get distracted and start your woolgathering, and you know what happens."

"I could die. I know. You told me.” Jo didn't believe it. How could she? She'd seen a good deal of Viola's shape-changing magic in three weeks: a squirrel into a prairie dog, a blue jay into a crow, and the riskiest one three days ago, a dog into a wolf. But death hadn't been a part of all that. Not once. Just the words and then some blood, a sharp squeal of pain and that moment when one thing was between two things, the second when the air crackled, electric and blue.

"I remember,” Jo said anyway. “You don't have to think I don't remember the risks. I was only asking if we were close or not. It's no big deal."

It was amazing how much she had learned about Viola in just three weeks. Before, Jo had known her as the crazy woman down the street, the hag, the old bitch everyone talked about like talking weather. Then three weeks ago Viola had grabbed her elbow while Jo was minding her own business, walking to Minute Mart to meet her best friend Marie for ice cream and a Coke. Viola had asked her to help with the ladder ("I have to get those leaves out of my drain pipe before fall"), and Jo had got the same prickly feeling she always had around people she thought of as touchers. Touchers. People who felt things to know them. Viola had wrapped her hand around Jo's elbow, and Jo had felt that sting, that search like a doctor's swab down your throat, and then a tug on her arm that said, She'll suit. She'll suit just fine. At that moment, Jo's cheeks had burned so hot she'd thought they were going to melt right off.

Now Viola twitched her skirt, ran her thumb and forefinger along a pleat; Jo liked the way the polyester flowers whispered and shook between Viola's fingers, as if blowing with a breeze. Viola tidied herself like she tidied everything else—flicking an eyelash off Jo's cheek, arranging candles by smell and color, wiping the blood Jo'd left on Viola's toilet seat after figuring out her first tampon. It was her nature, Jo understood, putting things in their proper place.

"Are you old enough to be dating yet?” Viola asked. “Are you in love with some boy?"

"I'm only fourteen.” Jo rubbed the back of her hand against her nose, blocking her cheek from Viola's sight.

"What difference does that make? They sell sex to babies."

Viola expected an answer. Her questions and answers were part of the method, trying to catch Jo in a lie, see if Jo was really worth her while. “Mike Sprague kissed me after a football game once last fall,” Jo said. “He was going with Tiffany Mullison, and he even told me so before he kissed me, but I didn't care."

She liked the sound of that, I didn't care. It made her think of leather girls—sixteen-year-old city girls like Jeanette with bright lipstick and short-short tops that showed off their stomachs.

"His kiss was kinda gross, anyway. Like being swallowed."

But Jo remembered that night. Cold, so cold for October, the north wind hard, a physical thing, a shove against her face and chest. Mike had wrapped his jacket around her; it smelled of stolen smokes and gasoline. When he slid his hands under her sweater and swallowed her mouth, she had touched his hairless face, polished smooth and firm by so much cold, a frozen cue ball. Jo remembered the ache that next day, her lips puffy and sore to the touch. She had touched them often.

"That's the circle,” said Viola. Now close, the ring of pines blotted out a small corner of the great Nebraska sky. “Pull off here."

Jo turned the wheel too fast; the car slid to a stop. Dust swirled and settled, glittered like gold confetti in the strong light. Viola smoothed her blouse, old fingers checking each button in turn. “You're nervous. This won't do at all.” Letting herself out, Viola slammed the door and walked toward the trees, not looking back.

Jo tried to hurry after Viola, but her new, slow pain made her walk tender, as if she had fresh bruises on both shins. The air was hot, heavy; it made Jo sneeze. “You know I only have a driver's permit,” she called. “It's driving on these stupid dirt roads. My dad's taken me around the school parking lot a couple of times. That's all."

Viola stood quite still a few yards from the circle; she didn't turn to face Jo. “There are times when I'm sure of you, and there are times when I think I've made a very bad mistake. I won't take a chance. Understand me. I will not take any sort of chance. If there's anything you need to tell me, I suggest you do it right now. The incantation won't work if you haven't told me absolutely everything."

"I haven't got anything to tell.” Jo chewed the inside of one cheek. The little tweak of pain from her mouth made her feel better, somehow, as if she really had something to tell, something hot and hard and bad. “I told you about Mike. I told you about the blood finally coming.” Jo tried to look Viola in the face but had to squint against the setting sun, now gold—the sort of gold that only came late in summer, full of pollen and heat and haze and the promise of a wet night. What Jo's mom called an asthma sun, the kind of sun that made Mom drive Jo indoors.

"I guess if you're lying, we'll know right quick.” Viola unsnapped her purse, old-fashioned with the clasp on top, and found a pack of Virginia Slims. “We've come too far to go back now. If you've huckstered me into thinking you're pure. Well.” She struck a match and cupped her hands to light up, a pro.

Jo's throat closed up, just like when she inhaled dust from the vacuum cleaner bag or touched cats. She was here, after all, ready to change herself, ready for pain and even death, for chrissakes. Viola had picked her, special, but now she wouldn't let Jo feel special—instead she had to make it all a game, as if Jo had come to her first.

"I don't get it,” Jo said.

It was time to lay it all out. All these weeks of ancient books and candles and personal questions, Viola making Jo catch the animals, stir the herbs, take out the trash, make peanut butter sandwiches and hot tea, Viola's with two thimblefuls of bourbon. Then last week, coming up with the story about Viola's ailing sister, the lie-that-was-not-quite-a-lie (Viola's sister was sick with cancer, but she lived in Chicago). Viola inviting Mom over for tea, her artful sighs and tight mouth and, who knows, a pinch of something in the snickerdoodle cookies that convinced Jo's mom to let her go. And here they were. Finally. Jo needed Viola to look at her, look through her if that's all she could get. Let her cheeks burn. If they were gonna do this thing, they'd better be honest.

"You treat your body like crap. I don't think the transformation's gonna work with you sucking cigarettes and mowing down French fries. You said you did this when you were my age. How am I supposed to believe that? You say one thing and do another. And I'm the liar."

Viola turned her wrist, sharp. It was the gesture she used to stop spells.

"Shut your mouth.” Viola turned toward Jo with those hard, black eyes, iris and pupil practically one. “What do you know about magic, Miss Joanna?” Her voice was low, tight. “I use sunlight as thought. This field here's my body. I'm color and space and everything that you think about and want to know so very badly."

Viola blew the smoke hard, a punctuation mark. She looked younger somehow, loose through the hips. “You don't know anything,” Viola said like she'd just said the most important line in a movie, the one everyone would quote for a month.

Jo wanted to tell her that she did know stuff—how she always knew who was going to call a full minute before the phone rang, or how she knew Greg Peterson was going to die in that car crash last year, a feeling she'd carried around for two days like the flu—but then Viola suddenly laughed, all teeth and wrinkles, eyes like lightning. And even though her hair, once gold, was gray and her face wrinkled, Jo could see that Viola had been beautiful. For the first time, Jo wondered if Viola had ever been touched by a boy, touched so the tips of her own hair brushing against her shoulders caused a shiver.

Viola shook her head, her laugh now a thin smile. “You don't even know about taking a man inside you,” she said. Between Viola and Jo was so much of this big, blue bowl of sky it all made Jo feel off-kilter, out of her element. Small. “Making him soft or sad as you pull him in. Or about blood, even though I'm sure you think you do. Or a baby ripping apart your insides and wriggling its head away from you. Like you're its pain."

Jo didn't know exactly what she meant, but she could feel a weight in Viola, a heavy need like a distant siren, a phone call late at night, a boy who looks at you once with force and heat and looks away. Jo knew that weight.

"What could you possibly know about purity, Miss Joanna Murray.” Viola flicked her cigarette into a heap of brown stalks, broken corn plants piled up for the thresher. “You can't even talk about what's dirty."

Jo walked over and stepped on the glowing end of the butt, grinding it hard with her heel, tidying up. Something had settled between them, a handshake of sorts, a pact or a deal—Viola tired but ready, Jo not knowing what was ahead but still wanting to know. Wanting to know so much she shook with it, her stomach a knot, her nose running so she had to use the bottom of her shirt to wipe it when Viola wasn't looking.

And so it began. A thousand red rays shone through the pine needles as they walked toward the circle, and Jo wondered what it'd be like if they pierced her, riddled her body with holes of light. These trees were the one upright thing for miles and miles, and the land seemed to gather its folds and furrows into the circle, stretching itself as if to come together at this single point.

Inside the light changed, grew dense. With just her fingertips touching the rough bark of a tree, Jo felt this place, tried to figure it out. Now warm and damp, Jo imagined this circle in winter: the silent field, the pines heavy with snow, scattering on the wind like ash, the clean cold. She saw herself running, lungs hard with the scrubbed, cold air, a trickle of sweat beneath her jacket and sweater, wet between her growing breasts.

Removing plastic baggies from her purse, Viola got everything ready. Loose herbs, candles, a box of kitchen matches. “What do you hear?” she asked Jo.

"I don't know. The wind, I guess.” But then Jo thought about her ears, shaped to catch sound. “The wind and pine needles rubbing against each other."

"And?” Viola lit three candles with one match. Small and neat, she sprinkled herbs around the candles as if seasoning a soup.

Jo closed her eyes, listening. “And a train a long ways away. A car. Maybe a truck. Probably a truck; it sounds big. Lots of tires. A bird calling from somewhere pretty close."

"Good,” said Viola. “Now cast the circle like I taught you. Keep your chin up."

Jo fixed her gaze far away, through the pines to the flat horizon. She took off her clothes, shoes and socks first, folding her jeans and shirt on top. She tucked her underwear and bra between them, hidden. The wind, hot, caught her hair, strands in her mouth and across her eyes. Jo kept her hair long even though it got in the way, stuck in car doors and tangled in the straps on her backpack. It was like having a thousand tiny fingertips. Now they felt the wind, tapped her bare back and shoulders. She'd never been outside and naked.

Jo could sense Viola deep against the trees, her shape just a trace in the shadows, a pencil sketch waiting for color. Maybe a reminder or something she could not help, Viola murmured the words along with Jo, but Jo's voice above hers was higher, fuller, the nasal whine fading with the rising wind.

When the circle was cast, Viola asked, “What do you see?"

Jo kept her eyes shut. “A yard full of flowers. A clothesline. There's one sheet left to take in—white. The wind's come up, and it's snapping pretty hard. A pile of stones, I think, some kind of wall. An old, plastic pool. The ones little kids use in summer.” But Jo saw more. Holes of light through pines. Sunset like fire. Long brown stalks, brittle and rotting. The purple vapor of night.

"Are you scared?” asked Viola. “Do you think you're set?” Her voice was rapid, machine-gunning the words.

"Yes.” Shivering first inside, then out, Jo's skin prickled cold, even in the heat, her nipples hard—a pull in her stomach as if someone was yanking a string.

"Now what do you smell?” asked Viola.

At first, nothing. She crouched closer to the ground, needles pricking her palms. Her nose, she thought, her useless nose. Only pine and dirt, faint. She imagined her nose like a radiator grill, close to the land and moving fast, and she caught a sweet smell with a metal bite, sticky and sharp—a smell that widened and grew heavy. Her own body. She tilted back her head, wind like water over her face. A smell of rot, sweet like her own skin but with a foulness she could not name. That last smell was night.

"Now think. What do you feel?” Jo felt, every inch, every nerve. Each hair—head, arms, back, legs—vibrated like little heartbeats. Jo felt the sun slip under the horizon line, the fierce hot heat of day now a low heat coming off the Earth, yeasty and expandable like new bread, the heavy ache of smooth, new breasts pulled toward the Earth. She felt that closer heat as her own pain, the delicious drag of contracting muscles deep inside.

Jo let herself remember a time before Mike. A secret—one she'd never told anyone, not even Marie. Especially not Marie.

It had happened the first time she'd been to Omaha. Twelve years old, Jo had gone with Marie to visit family. They'd spent their first day in the city at the new Leid Rainforest, touching shark bellies under glass and drinking sick-sweet Slurpies until their tongues were purple. They both got sunburns: shiny red noses, shoulders, thighs.

That night Marie's parents stayed with relatives—Marie's mom had swollen ankles from walking too much with the baby almost due. But the two girls slept over at her older brother's—Brad, a freshman at Creighton. An adventure. The three of them stayed up making fun of Saturday Night Live, and Jo watched Brad's leg from the corner of her eye, the way he bounced it all the time as if it had an itch. Much later, legs cocooned, still sore and much too warm in down-filled sleeping bags, Marie woke up with a bad dream, something about dark hands and a man in an antique cape. Leaving Jo alone in the family room, Marie went to her brother's room where it was cooler.

But Jo couldn't get back to sleep; her thighs and face throbbed. Instead she got up, hair sticky with sweat, wet strands across her forehead. In the blue light of early morning, she inched open the door of Brad's room. Brad was asleep in his bed, breath even and low, Marie in her sleeping bag, curled on the floor across the room.

At the time, Jo told herself that she just wanted to roll up next to Marie, but she lifted the comforter and slipped beside Brad. Eighteen, Jo thought, he's eighteen. Brad woke up and said, “Jo,” not a question, and put his hand between her legs. Hot and strong and wet, Jo had felt both pain and a current of pure pleasure. Then he'd whispered, “You'd better get out of here."

That's how Jo felt now, a wave of pleasure and pain along her legs. Wondering if she would die—she hadn't told Viola everything, had kept something bad from her—another wave hit Jo from the deep pit of her stomach, then wave upon wave. The air smelled like singed hair.

As if from a long distance, like the click and delay of an overseas phone call, now Jo heard Viola's voice ask what she could taste, but now the language wasn't English. Instead the sound barked at her, clipped edges and vowels from the front of the mouth, just behind the teeth. Jo realized Viola wasn't from Nebraska, her sound all East, Boston or New York.

Tasting salt, a sting in her mouth, Jo moved to the edge of the trees. She was still alive, after all. The magic and the plains and the vast, purple sky held Jo, no longer a girl, held her to the land, and as she left the circle of pines, her limbs lithe and fast, her body parallel to the ground, Jo, no longer a girl, saw herself run so fast that the world fell away, and whatever she thought happened.

At first she wasn't sure where to go. The whole Earth rang for Jo, no longer a girl but a wolf, corn and wind and night sky ringing with sharp sounds like blades meeting. Jo followed these sounds along an old creek bed to a farmhouse. Here the neat yard, the clothesline. The snap, snap of a sheet, bullets in the breeze. Here the rock wall and plastic pool, gaps in the rock where animals hid or lived, fat and small and pink. A line from a song she didn't recognize, Jo thought, sometimes lovers begin this way too, although her thoughts were smells and sights and sounds: tender plants waiting to be broken; the stink of fallow dirt against the house, needing to be hoed; small footprints in the lawn like a promise (a lazy circle from afternoon, a child playing).

Viola laughed. From a distance of half a mile, it sounded like a raveled sleeve, a pull and thread of laughter. “The land!” she yelled at Jo. “The land and the sky. The trees and the corn. The Moon and the stars. All yours!” She laughed again. “Take it. Take it all!” Jo understood Viola's hunger then, knew what it meant to want and to lose and occasionally to have.

Jo knew, too, the many names. Viola had taught them to her. La loba, Rozsomak, Na'ashje'ii Asdzaa, Numina, La Huesera, Dakini. These were girl-wolf names, names she didn't like very much, especially now, her million hairs touching the air, feeling everything, wanting everything—a plump child, for instance, his thick salt-blood losing its heat along her muzzle and down her ruff. She didn't feel anything like these words, these metaphors: a dancing mist, a spider or light or bone. She didn't even feel like a wolverine. She just felt like Jo: a teenager.

With Viola so far away, her long black silhouette like the leg of a fox, Jo thought how much she loved her, would always love her, for sharing the magic. But this field—the good mud, the sky a black vault, the groundhogs and rabbits and squirrels, the promise of a child, the ring of pines—this field was Viola's way.

Jo left the farmhouse (not yet ready for children), whipping and spinning through the dead summer corn, rustling stalks like whispers. Knowing now that secrets couldn't harm her, that Viola didn't know and didn't need to know everything, Jo made plans. She knew that later she would flee from farmers, chase rabbits, steal a child. But tonight, Jo needed something else. Even in Hay Springs it wasn't the thing for teenagers to race along dry riverbeds or dig soil sharp with the stench of old tomato plants. The field could have too many leg traps, too many farmers with ready rifles. Jo wanted the city. She wanted what Jeanette had; she wanted Omaha, to run low and fast, lights and glass and asphalt melting past, a harsh blur. She wanted to run early in the morning, very early, the time when another wolf could be smelled two miles off, his smell so different from hers, not sweet or metallic but like meat—like gasoline.

She howled. Her howl was long and deep and not for fun. Jo howled, and then turned toward the city.

—for C.B.

"L'Etat, c'est moi!” proclaimed Louis XIV. “Ich bin ein Berliner!” goofed John F. Kennedy. With a bit more of the latter than the former in mind, Richard Mueller gives us a story that starts in Hollywood and ends up ... well, wait until you see where it ends up.

Mr. Mueller knows his way around Hollywood, having written scripts for a variety of shows. Over the last year he has been a writing teacher/mentor, screen extra, political campaign coordinator, personal assistant and cat sitter; though mostly he just writes. His last story for us was “Jew if By Sea” in our May issue.

I had been kept alone for the better part of a week. I was fuzzy on the time because they kept a light burning in my cell and pushed my meals in through a slot in the door. The toilet hole—actually an oubliette in the floor—stank, and I was almost out of the rough paper towels that I'd been using there. The bed was hard and infested with creatures that wandered about but, mercifully, did not bite. My clothes were foul. I was at the end of my wits. Luckily I was being held captive by my own countrymen. It would have been worse if the Iraqis or al-Qaeda had gotten to me first.

After this low-grade misery had gone on for several days my door opened. There was a man in dress greens, a tall black man who looked just enough like Denzel Washington to give me hope, yet not enough to put me at ease. I was beyond that. The brassard on his pocket read taliafero, and there were captain's bars on his collar.

"Mr. McNary?” His was a voice deep and melodious, befitting his image. I looked around.

"I guess so,” I said. “I'm the only one here."

He smiled, a becoming smile. I refused to react. “Well, I'm glad you haven't lost your sense of humor,” he said.

"May I ask what I'm charged with?"

"Nothing yet,” he said. “Would you come with me?"

I got to my feet and walked out into the corridor, which was lit with bare bulbs behind wire screens. The decor matched my cell. An airborne trooper with an assault rifle was watching and fell in behind us as we walked down the hall.

"Sorry about the smell,” I muttered. I was shaky. Any poise I had previously possessed was gone.

"Sorry about your incarceration. That should end soon. We just need to hear your story."

"Again?"

"I'm sorry."

"You're awfully conciliatory for a jailer,” I said.

"Thank you."

We stopped before a steel door, painted red, with a handle like a walk-in meat freezer. I didn't like the looks of it but before I could say anything, Taliafero grabbed the handle and pulled it open. “We thought you might like to freshen up.” It was a bathroom.

"Um, thank you."

I stripped off my coat and shirt and washed myself thoroughly. Then I took off my pants and scrubbed myself down to remove any bugs that might be hiding. I shook out my clothes and was dressing when the door opened.

"Mr. McNary?"

"Okay."

The interrogation room had the word interview painted on the door. I sat on one side of the table. On the other side were Taliafero, an army major with no name tag, and a civilian in a light blue suit that just screamed CIA. The room was not air conditioned and the major and the civilian were sweating. There were two microphones, a ceiling camera, and an extra chair on my side of the table. For legal counsel? Somehow I didn't think so. Taliafero poured four glasses of water from a plastic pitcher and we each drank: an almost ritual act.

"Mr. McNary,” the major began. “Do you know why you're here?"

No, do you? I thought, but I kept it to myself. He didn't seem like the humorous type. I shook my head. “Not really, no."

"Do you know that Baghdad is in flames?"

"How could I? I've been in jail."

"Mr. McNary, why are you in Iraq?"

"I told you—"

The major raised his hand. “You told others. We want to hear it from you."

"I didn't do anything."

"I don't believe you did,” the major began, but the civilian leaned across the table.

"Look, pal. If we don't get the truth and the whole truth from you in one quick hurry, we can march you up to the courtyard and shoot you or do any other damned thing we want. Do you get me?"

"God bless America,” I said, too tired to put up with it. At that moment I was pretty certain that I was not going to get out of this alive and I wasn't willing to waste words talking to this man. “I want to speak to the American civilian authorities. I want to call my family."

"When we finish."

There was a sudden shudder, as if the building we were in was sitting on a rug that someone shifted. A sprinkle of fine dust sifted down. The three looked at each other. “It's getting closer,” the major said.

"What is?” I asked.

A look passed between them, like they were surprised that I did not know. “Never mind,” said the major. “We want to know why you came to Iraq. Start from the beginning. Be thorough. Your life is depending on it."

"All our lives,” said Taliafero. He looked serious. I nodded, and I began my story.

I was living in Los Angeles and doing just fine, thank you very much, with no more interest in Iraq than to have an opposing political opinion. I was a reporter, working for INS as a stringer, writing oddball stories about the entertainment industry, which takes in a lot in California, especially since our fickle electorate had recalled the governor and replaced him with a muscleheaded actor. The state is a prime source of misgovernment, mismanagement, and news stories that read like a season on the old Twilight Zone. Bad for the state, but good for me.

I have to say that I was a little uneasy about it. I used to cover front page stuff: wars, murders, politics, even religion and economics. Then I began stumbling over and filing odd stories, and my credibility started to shift. Oh, nothing overt. It was a case of, “this is a weird story, I'll bet Dave can get to the bottom of it.” And I usually did. Soon I was getting nothing else, no matter how hard I tried to get an assignment for Afghanistan or Chechnya. My girlfriend was more philosophical, reminding me that at least I was working. And then Ray Ramirez tossed my life into the shitter.

I was finishing a story on the new Jack Rackham action film, about massive cost overruns and lax safety procedures, brought to light when a stunt actor died in an explosion. I had some good contacts in the stunt community, had gotten solid leads, and was crafting my conclusions when Ray Ramirez tapped on my office door. It was already open so I couldn't just pretend I was out.

Ray was the last person I wanted to deal with. He always borrowed money and my disposable income for this month was already disposed of—plus, I needed to get this piece done. “Hi, Ray. I'd ask you in but I'm already on a deadline...."

"That's okay, bro,” he said, pulling up a chair by my desk and sitting down.

"Seriously, Ray—"

"It's about the money I owe you."

I looked at him. “I'm tapped out, Ray."

Then he did something that surprised me. He counted out six crisp hundred dollar bills, two twenties and a ten, arranged neatly on my desktop. He was smiling. I didn't like it. I was certain that if I picked one of them up, the ink would come off on my fingers.

"Ray, you owe me five hundred and fifty dollars—not six-fifty."

"Call it interest, dude."

"Call it square,” I said, taking $550 and pushing a hundred back at him. He shrugged and took the bill.

"Suit yourself, Dave, but I do owe ya."

I looked him over. Ray wasn't a dirtball, but he wasn't much more than a step above it either. The Ray Ramirez I knew wore T-shirts, jeans, and ball caps, but now he was sporting a suit that must have cost at least a grand. He didn't get that in an Atlantic Avenue Goodwill. The shirt was silk with a wide collar and no tie. That at least was vintage Ray Ramirez. I was certain that something was coming, and it was coming right up my ass.

"Call it square,” I said again. “Now, if you don't mind, I'm on a deadline here...."

"Kick it."

"Kick it? Ray, unlike some people, I have a job."

Ray, oblivious to my entreaties, perched himself on the edge of my desk like a fashionable gargoyle. “I have a great story for you,” he said. “Bigger than anything. Bigger than God, man!"

He laughed then, and something about the quality of that laugh sent a chill down my spine.

"Ray, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"No, man, I'm right. I'm good. But there's this guy you gotta meet—"

"I'm on deadline—"

"I mean, like today."

"Deadline, Ray."

And we sparred on for a few more rounds until I realized that I wasn't going to get rid of him unless I agreed to hear his pitch; but not now.

"Ray, I get out of here at about seven. I'll meet you in Pershing Square by the subway, okay? I'll give you fifteen minutes."

"Okay, Dave!” Ray was up and moving out the door, his coattails flapping, a Latino Groucho Marx.

"Fifteen minutes,” I shouted, but he was already disappearing into an elevator. I grumbled, put the entire business out of my head, and went back to the story.

I turned in the stunt piece with ten minutes to spare and hit the elevator right at seven. It wasn't until I was heading for the Pershing Square Metro Station that I remembered I had promised to meet Ray. I looked around and didn't see him in the mercury vapor streetlights. Maybe he'd given up. I hustled for the stairs, hopeful of getting home early, perhaps taking Jan out to a late dinner at Kuishimbo, followed by a little midnight—

"Dave."

Ray Ramirez had materialized under a streetlight by the escalator, looking almost respectable in a camel's hair topcoat: or at least semi-respectable, as the coat was slightly large on him. He was still low rent, whether you dressed him in the Romanov jewels. He was still Ray Ramirez.

And true to being Ray Ramirez, he grabbed my arm like an old friend. Like I was happy to see him. “Dave, even if you a white man, you still my bro'."

"Ray, I've always wondered something."

"What, bro'?"

"You're not Mexican, you're Puerto Rican. Your father was the San Juan distributor for Coca-Cola till they bumped him upstairs. You grew up in Atlanta, in an upper middle class neighborhood with good schools, so why do you affect that Tijuana trash accent?"

"Hey, I'm just being one with my peeps, Dave."

"And you're living on an allowance. Why, Ray? Do they pay you not to go home?"

Ray looked at me with great disappointment. “That's cold, man,” he said, and suddenly I felt as if I had gone too far but, not yet willing to apologize, I brought him back to the subject.

"Okay, Ray. What's the big story?"

He smiled thinly, only slightly mollified. “I got a guy I want you to meet. He'll tell you."

"What guy?"

"The Duke."

"What Duke? John Wayne is dead, Ray."

"John Wayne was a pussy, Dave. This guy is The Duke."

I was beginning to feel lightheaded. My chances of getting to Kuishimbo were beginning to recede. I cheerfully lost my temper. “Damnit, Ray. If you don't start making sense I'm going to throw you down that damned escalator!"

Several people looked at us, but Ray was unfazed. He pulled something out of his pocket, glanced to the left and right to make sure we weren't being overheard or watched, then passed it to me. It was a thick-papered photograph of a handsome, craggy-faced man in a fedora and trenchcoat. “Shit, Ray. This is Jack Rackham. What the hell—"

"Just watch the picture, Dave."

"Watch the picture?” I looked at it and, as I did, it began to change. The clothing disappeared, the features of Jack Rackham began to morph, and his skin became bright red. A second pair of eyes opened, above his normal pair. Then he opened his mouth and flames shot out. It was very impressive and I drew the obvious conclusion. “This is some kind of electronic gizmo, right? It's a trick."

Ray took back the photo and held it up. As I watched, the creature transformed back into Jack Rackham, just like those little flip pictures that used to come in cereal boxes. Bigger than God, indeed. I shook my head. “What is it—a promo for another film? Jack Rackham's got all the publicity people he needs and I just finished a piece on his new film, Goering's Gold. There's—"

"There's no Jack Rackham, Dave. There's only The Duke. How much you know about Jack Rackham? His first movie was what, four years ago?"

"Yeah,” I said. “Just about. He sort of came out of nowhere, got discovered, and then did Topsy Turvy with Angelina Jolie."

"Nowhere is right, Dave. He ain't no actor; he's a freakin’ god!"

"A god."

"From Baby-lonia or someplace. He tole me but I didn't get it. He goes as Jack Rackham because he loves L.A.—loves it here, does the whole movie star thing. He's been here for five years."

Five years was about right. Rackham was new, hot, middle-aged, the current decade's Harrison Ford. He had grown up in a fishing port on the Gulf. Or was it a ranch in Idaho? “You know Jack Rackham?"

"He came into Hector's and bought this old necklace. Just walked in and asked for it. But it wasn't even on display. Hector had it in the vault, the big safe, you know—"

"So he must've—"

"No, Dave. Hector had just got it. Didn't tell nobody, not even me. We're standing in there, three nights ago, drinking Cuervo and playing backgammon. Then the door opens and in comes Jack Rackham."

"Yeah,” I said, not sure where this was going but, Jack Rackham—anything about Jack Rackham, was a story. And if I could get him talking about Goering's Gold—

"Just like that. The door was locked, the alarm was on, and he just walked through, like it wasn't there."

"He probably—"

"He wasn't in the store when Hector locked up,” Ray cried, frustrated that I wasn't reading his mind. “We heard the jingle bell, saw him come in the door and walk right up to Hector. ‘The omelet, please,’ he says."

"Omelet. You mean amulet?"

"Yeah, that's it. And just like that, Hector goes and gets it. And the Duke hands Hector one hundred one hundred dollar bills and walks out."

"Ten thousand dollars?” I asked incredulously. Ray smiled.

"Now you interested?"

"Now I want to see Hector."

We took a cab to Hector's Antiques, a slightly upscale pawn shop near Fairfax and Sixth. Ray, satisfied that I was finally paying attention, sat back, beamed at the passing lights, and whistled a soft, off-key rendition of “Light My Fire.” Later, I would remember his choice of music.

Hector Blankenship did not seem surprised to see me. He scowled at Ray. “You talked him into it, huh?"

"Ten thousand dollars, Hector?"

"You got a big mouth, Ray,” Hector growled. “One of these days I'm gonna put my foot in it.” Hector is a huge black man who once played Big Ten Fullback and looks fully capable of making good on a threat. Ray shrugged but kept prudently out of Hector's reach.

"It's all right, Hector,” I said. “I won't tell the IRS. So what's with the amulet?"

Hector shrugged. “It came in the mail four days ago, from Hartford. The day before this guy, whoever he is, walked in here. I got a broker out there who keeps an eye out for bargains, you know, and with the present unpleasantness in Iraq and Afghanistan....” He smiled faintly. “It's not like I'm collecting anything illegal. Not too illegal. No antiquities, just coins."

Hector had once invited me over to his apartment and revealed his passion for ancient money. He had dozens of coins: round and rectangular, triangular and square, mint and clipped, each authenticated and none newer than the fall of Rome. I knew little about coins, but after making a few discreet inquiries, I estimated that Hector's collection was worth at least $30,000.

"But an amulet worth ten thousand dollars, Hector?"

"Tell me,” Hector said. “I paid just under two thousand dollars for it. Don't even know why I bought it. It's not a coin, but when my friend described it, I just had to buy it."

"If he knows you just collect coins, why'd he tell you about this amulet?"

"I dunno, Dave. He felt compelled to tell me about it. I felt compelled to buy it."

"For two thousand dollars."

"Yeah."

"And sell it."

"Yeah."

"For ten thousand dollars."

"Hey, eight thousand dollars buys a lot of old coins, Dave."

"I didn't know Jack Rackham was interested in antiquities."

"Who?"

So I explained to Hector, who has no interest in Hollywood and even less in the movies, just who Jack Rackham was. Hector was nonplussed. “So, why's he want that thing?"

"Maybe he was compelled, Hector. Maybe it's magic."

Hector looked like he didn't care much for magic so I tried to change the subject. “Who is this Duke that Ray was babbling about?"

Hector glanced at Ray, who was trying to look down the throat of a stuffed bear, and shook his head.

"This gets weirder, Dave. It's not Duke, it's Mar-Duke. M-A-R-D-U-K. I looked it up. Marduk was the patron god of the city of Babylon. He was very powerful and was some sort of protector. He had four eyes, red skin, and breathed fire."

I remembered the picture Ray had showed me and suddenly felt unseasonably cold. Jack Rackham, Marduk, magic amulets. What the hell had Ray and Hector gotten into? And me, for that matter? Who the hell was Jack Rackham?

I decided to catch the first train back to the Valley and put the entire business behind me, but first we had to get Ray's hand out of the bear's mouth.

I had the cab drop me at the Hollywood and Highland Metro Station. Ray could make his way back from there. Marduk had apparently given him $2,000: some sort of finder's fee, plenty enough to get a cab. We rode for a while in silence. Finally, I voiced what was bothering me. “So, I understand that the guy in Hartford felt compelled to send the amulet to Hector, who felt compelled to sell it to Rackham—"

"The Duke."

"Marduk, yeah. But why did you tell me?"

"He told me to."

"Marduk?"

"Yeah, I told you. He wanted to see you."

I remembered that as I rode the subway back to the Valley. As soon as I surfaced in North Hollywood I called Jan, but she coldly informed me that she had already eaten and that she was going to bed. So I dragged my ass back to my apartment where I found Jack Rackham sitting in my favorite chair, my cat on his lap—waiting for me.

"Mr. McNary."

"Mr ... Rackham?"

"Close enough. Go on, make yourself comfortable."

Nice of him, I thought, seeing as how it was my home. I got a ginger ale from the fridge, then sat down across from him. Not once did I take my eyes off my guest. It's not often you get to see a god or a movie star sitting in your favorite chair, and I had both. As I sat, my cat Trolley jumped down and moved to my lap. That at least was comforting.

"You're wondering why I'm here."

"At the very least, uh...."

"Jack is fine. I want to do something for you, Dave, and I want you to do something for me."

His smile was compelling, hypnotic. Of course it was. I looked down at Trolley slumbering in my lap. It seemed to clear my head but, “Ummmm,” was all I could say.

"Dave?” I looked up. He appeared concerned, the concern of an old friend. Of course, he was a god. He could appear to be anything: attractive, imposing, convincing. Or he could crush me like an insect. I felt a sudden surge of anger.

"Forgive me, Jack, but I don't like being toyed with. You seem to be manipulating a lot of people. I think that someone needs to ask why."

Jack Rackham Marduk God of Babylon nodded, looking very human, even a bit exasperated. Finally he reached down, picked up a water bottle I hadn't noticed, and drank. He leaned forward, hands on his knees.

"What do you suppose a god is, Dave?"

"Well,” I said, “a creature grounded in the supernatural."

"Go on."

"A member of a race or species of beings who obey different physical laws than the rest of us; who manipulate us for their own amusement or gain—"

Jack laughed softly. “That's the second time you've used the word ‘manipulate.’ Considering that you are constantly being manipulated by editors, publishers, critics, and accountants, I can't see why you'd be so touchy."

I took a long pull on my ginger ale and remembered once again why I had given up drinking. “Yes,” I said slowly, choosing my words with care, “but those are other humans, fallible and mortal. They rise and fall. Gods supposedly don't."

"You never heard of Lucifer?"

I laughed. “You're right,” I said, “but they make such a production of it. All the best artists use them as models, and their names enter the language as adjectives. Promethean, Pyrrhic, Dionysian. We fall in our millions and are marked only as history. If you are a god, Jack, I guess it makes me a bit nervous to be talking to a whole other food chain. Like a pawn in chess who can understand the king but not the hand that moves him."

Rackham smiled. “Bravo, Dave. Very expressive, if a bit scattered. But let me be so bold as to say that I don't think you believe that I am a god."

I said nothing for a moment, then, “This is where I ask you to prove it, right?"

"If you like."

"Is there a lot of damage involved?"

Jack smiled. “No, it's all visual, and your vital signs are strong. You can handle it."

"Well,” I said with some trepidation, as I didn't expect a straight answer to anything from a god. “Show me."

Jack smiled and held up a finger. My eyes were automatically drawn to it—

"Dave. Come on, Dave, open your eyes."

I did, and a drop of cold water ran down my forehead and into my left eye. As I sat up, a wet compress fell into my lap. Trolley was looking concerned. Jack helped me back to my chair.

"Did you get it?"

"I got it,” I said, accepting a drink from Jack's water bottle. The cool liquid went through me like a draught of mead, steadying my nerves and clearing my head. “Wow."

"Better?"

"Yeah, what is that stuff?"

"A variant of Ambrosia, the water of life. You won't get sick from anything for at least a year."

"Really?” I looked at Trolley. “Give some to my cat."

"I already did,” Jack said. “It cured her cancer."

"Cancer? She has cancer?"

"Not anymore.” He smiled and stroked Trolley's shiny black and white coat. “I've always been a sucker for animals, Dave."

"Me too,” I said, starting to like this man—god—in spite of myself. “But look, if you can find, get, make stuff like this—"

"Why don't I cure the ills of mankind? It's not that simple, and you wouldn't like it if we did."

"I guess so,” I said, because I had a full memory of everything that had rushed through my head while I was out, which mostly consisted of a crash course in the history of another species, with the emphasis on Marduk. It was a lot to take in.

"You were the God of ancient Babylon?"

"Yes."

"And other cities."

"Over the centuries, yes. Ninevah, Memphis, Athens, Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Constantinople and Byzantium, Peking, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Paris, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, London. And others."

"And five years ago you came out here from New York."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Nine-eleven."

"Oh."

"Yes, something just seemed to go out of the city and it was time to move on."

"And what do we do for each other?” I asked. Things were so far beyond me at this point that I was just riding with it, taking it in. Jack stretched in my beat-up easy chair, his feet on an old hassock I'd been meaning to throw out. Trolley bounced around on the floor, pursuing a catnip toy she hadn't looked at in weeks. Jack sighed, a completely human sound.

"Well, I know that you would love to get a really big story...."

I laughed. “Who would believe this?"

"Not this, Dave. A bigger story. Would you like to go to Baghdad and cover the biggest story of all time?"

I said nothing. The war in Iraq was not anywhere near the biggest story of all time, but I nodded dumbly. Then Jack began to explain. It took a while and when he was done, I agreed.

At that point I got really sleepy. I don't remember Jack leaving, or me going to bed, but I woke up eight hours later feeling refreshed, with a very healthy cat on my chest. I was trying to sort it out as I rode the subway to work, my mind buzzing. As I came up into Pershing Square my cell phone went off.

"Dave."

"Jack?"

"How are you?"

I stopped in the brilliant sunlight and looked around. A cool breeze was blowing. “I feel great."

"Look in your pocket."

I did. I knew immediately what it was. “The amulet? What do I do with this?"

"Hang on to it. Don't lose it. I need your help, Dave."

My goodness, I thought. My God. A deity needed my help. I had the urge to call Jan and tell her what she'd missed last night by being impatient, but I didn't.

As I hit the newsroom, my boss, Peter, called me into his office. “McNary. Nice take on the Rackham story."

"Uh, thanks."

"You think we'll get a reaction from Rackham? Think he'll be pissed?"

No, I thought, but I said something reassuring and noncommittal. Peter was shuffling papers and then he looked up. “You want a few weeks in Iraq?"

"Pardon me?” My blood was running cold at that point. I fingered the amulet in my pocket. Peter handed me a sheet of paper.

"We need a three-part story on antiquities. All the big sites, the legends, the gods...."

"Like Marduk?” I said.

"Who?"

"Never mind."

"It's a real plum, McNary,” Peter said. “Will you do it?"

I nodded. “Y-yeah, sure."

"You fly out at three tomorrow."

I ran around like a madman getting ready, convincing Jan ("So, you finally got a foreign job. Guess I won't have to worry about you being late for dinner for a few weeks.") to take care of Trolley and tying up loose ends. Next morning I called a cab and I wasn't even surprised when the driver turned out to be Jack. “You're sure I can do this,” I said.

"I know your life history, Dave. You're the best man for this. You can do it. It's simple. You carry this amulet to Babylon. Memorize this map.” He passed across a sheet of parchment with block symbols and a dotted line. It looked simple enough and I knew I would not forget it.

"How come you just don't do this? Fly over and put it there yourself."

"Not all gods can fly, Dave."

"I meant on a plane."

We swung onto the 101 and headed west into midday traffic. “Well, for one thing, I couldn't get a visa. If I tried, the studio's lawyers would scream blue murder. And, there are things about my body chemistry that set off metal detectors. Besides, if I tried to come in openly and she was awake, the plane would be vaporized before we could land. She can't know that I'm coming."

"You mean T—"

"No names, Dave. Don't ever mention her name. She'll hear you. Just place the amulet and I'll do the rest."

I thought about this for a while. One other question was bothering me. “Why?"

"Why am I going back?"

"If you don't go, why would she?"

"Because she's already there,” Jack said as he guided his cab around a slow-moving truck. “She's waiting, buried deep in the Earth. She'll awaken soon whether I'm there or not. It's the war. The explosions. She's heard the war."

I thought about that conversation all the way to Iraq. When we'd pulled up to the curb at LAX, I'd gotten out, put my bags on the sidewalk, and turned back to say good-bye, but the cab was empty, sitting with its engine idling. I'd hurried away before the police came to examine it.

I flew through Frankfurt and Vienna and changed in Riyadh. No civilian flights were going to Iraq at the moment, so, after wrangling with the authorities, I managed to ride the jumpseat on a plane taking Iowa National Guard replacements to Baghdad.

No one called it a peace or a pacification or a reconstruction anymore. Coalition casualties had just topped three thousand and Iraq was becoming my nation's worst nightmare, a tar baby of epic proportions.

I checked through customs without a ripple and found the cab driver who handled INS reporters. For a moment I thought it might be Jack, but I had him in my pocket. As we were leaving the airport, the cab rumbled and bounced on its springs.

"Was that an earthquake?"

"Four this week,” said the driver. “Getting worse. Why Babylon?"

"I'm doing a piece on antiquities,” I said, as innocently as I could. He shrugged.

"Okay, but the road may not be open."

It wasn't.

I sat back, sweating in my filthy suit. We'd gone through four pitchers of water and several quake-sized jolts. My questioners were getting increasingly nervous. I felt strangely placid. I thought of Jack and my cat, but I couldn't visualize Jan. I guessed that relationship was over. If I didn't get home I hoped that someone would take care of Trolley. Then the building lurched and this time I could hear a nearby explosion. The lights dimmed, then came back up.

"Jesus,” said the major. The CIA man scowled and leaned across the table. “If you think we're going to buy one word of that bullshit—"

"Wait a minute,” Taliafero said, putting a restraining hand on the CIA man's arm. “McNary, you've been in isolation a week."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, if your story were true you would know what was out there, wouldn't you?” he said. I could feel the pure, raw hope in his voice.

"I guess so,” I said softly. “I might even be able to help.” Taliafero opened his hand. The amulet was resting in his palm.

"Tell me."

"You tell me that it's not a giant five-headed dragon called Tiamat,” I said.

"Okay by me,” said Taliafero. He turned to the major, who nodded. We started to rise but the CIA man grabbed my coat.

"No chance,” he growled. “This man is a suspect for the crimes of espionage, sedition, treason—” He stopped abruptly as Taliafero put the muzzle of a pistol to his ear.

"Mr. Brown, no one wants to kill you, but if you interfere we will.” He relieved the CIA man of his weapon and passed me the amulet. Then, as the major held Brown at gunpoint, Captain Taliafero and I ran for the surface.

Baghdad was indeed burning, and I could see Tiamat in the midst of it, looking for all the world like something out of a Japanese monster movie. Explosions sparkled around her but she seemed to shake them off. At least one of her heads seemed to be breathing gas or fire at any given moment and her immense bulk was flattening the burning rubble that had been Iraq's capital city.

"She looks tough,” I said as we piled into a Humvee with four Rangers.

"We can't dent her with anything conventional, and Staff isn't willing to use a nuke.” He looked at me as the Humvee skidded out of the compound past a trio of burning trucks. “Can Marduk stop this thing?"

"I hope so."

As we raced down the road toward Babylon I became aware that Tiamat seemed to be getting closer, as if our courses were converging. Then I remembered that I had spoken her name in the prison. Had she heard me, or was she reacting to the amulet?

"Can you do anything to slow her down?"

"No,” Taliafero yelled over the engine. “We're dead air in this thing, but they might."

Six missile-carrying Apaches streaked by overhead, breaking up into three waves of two so as to hit the monster with a triple anvil attack. They weren't successful, but they bought us time. When we finally reached the place marked on Marduk's map Tiamat was perhaps ten miles away. We were lucky on one point. Like Marduk, she couldn't fly.

"This had better work,” Taliafero said, as I placed the amulet and stood back. Amen to that, I thought, as I spoke the words that Jack had taught me. Nothing happened. The amulet just lay there.

"Are you sure you got it right?"

I was about to pronounce the incantation again when I felt a presence behind me. I turned to find Jack standing there. “Am I glad to see you!” I cried.

Jack smiled. “We only have a moment. I wanted to thank you, Dave. I couldn't have done it without you.” He glanced at Tiamat, approaching inexorably from the city. “It's time, Dave. Major Taliafero, you and your men had better get under cover."

And then he began to change.

He started to coruscate with electrical charges, lightning flashing and discharging into the ground. As his clothing disappeared, his body was bathed in red light. He waved us back and we hunkered down behind the ancient stones of Babylon as primal forces cascaded through him.

Then he began to grow and his features blurred and softened while his eyes became brighter and more prominent. The second set opened above the first. His mouth gaped wide to speak but only a roaring sound and fire poured forth. I heard the Rangers gasp and scramble back. Marduk was now twenty feet tall and still growing. He raised his hand and bright plasmic energy poured off it. “Hang on,” I cried. “It's going to get very windy."

As Marduk grew larger, winds from all points of the compass converged on him, swirling and circling above his upraised hand, their zephyrs alive with colors and noise. Sand and even rocks became airborne as Tiamat drew closer, thundering and trumpeting, shooting incandescent gas and fire into the air.

The glowing winds began forming a grid in the air above Marduk. “His net,” I screamed over the din. “The net of the winds."

Marduk had grown almost as tall as Tiamat and as he turned to the attack, three of Tiamat's heads fired at once, a wild prismatic spray of flames, and Marduk disappeared in the firestorm. Somehow I knew he would be unharmed and when the fire subsided he had snared two of the heads in his glowing net.

Larger and broader they grew, the glowing energy and shooting flames lighting up the desert as bright as day. I'm told that they saw it in Mosul and Basra; the output of two battling gods cracking the very fabric of night. And just when it seemed as if there would be no top end of the fury, it all vanished.

We were deafened but we were alive. In the distance Baghdad burned; but we were alive.

Baghdad was destroyed, but the war was over. No one wanted to fight over anything after that. A month later, Coalition troops began leaving for home.

My exclusive story ran everywhere with many of the photos that had been taken by soldiers and civilians. I came home to a hubbub that took three months to die down, Hector went back to his coins, and Ray Ramirez vanished back into his life.

One night after speaking to the L.A. Press Club on the topic of “Conversations with a God,” I sat in my favorite chair with Trolley on my lap, going over the mail I'd been neglecting. In among the flyers and bills and circulars and offers was a quaint black and white postcard, circa 1930, with a view of the Shanghai waterfront. But the stamp was modern and I had been expecting the message. It was simple. “Having a wonderful time. Thanks, Jack."

—For Shelley Martin

Even at this late date, the final contents of our fifty-fifth anniversary edition are not finalized, but we can promise you the stars will shine brightly on our double issue.

Among the stories slated to run next month, we'll have “In Tibor's Cardboard Castle” by Richard Chwedyk. The title alone is enough to tip off fans of his two previous stories ("Bronte's Egg” and “The Measure of All Things") that this novelet is also about Axel, Agnes, Doc, and the other charming saurs who blur the line between technology and nature. Several other lines are blurred or crossed in this new story, including the borders of reality.

Also in next month's lineup is “Finding Beauty,” a new fantasy from Lisa Goldstein about hard times in the kingdom and the fate of Prince Charming. For more contemporary fantasies, we'll turn to M. Rickert and Gene Wolfe for the finest in modern fantasy fiction.

And the rest? Will we have a new Robert Reed story? How about Dale Bailey's vision of the end of the world? Or a new story by Michael Bishop? Perhaps a new fantasy by John Morressy? We can't say just yet, but we can assure you that there are good times—and great stories—ahead. If you don't subscribe already, use the mailing card in this issue or go to www.fsfmag.com and subscribe now to make sure you'll get it all.

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Like Tom Reamy, Howard Myers (1930-1971) was a promising writer cut off too soon, member of a bountiful generation just coming of age in the wake of sf's New Wave. Writing sometimes as “Verge Foray,” Myers produced a score of short stories (now available as The Creatures of Man) and one posthumously published, long-out-of-print novel, Cloud Chamber. The stories are all marvelous, but the novel is something else altogether.

The reader is immediately plunged, a la van Vogt or Charles Harness, into a recomplicated, gon-zo future. In a cosmos where reincarnation is a given, our hero, Mark Keaflyn, has a date with a woman he's loved for centuries. But her rebirth timing has gotten thrown off, and Keaflyn disappointingly finds her a preadolescent. But he's soon got much more to worry about, as he learns he's been possessed by an evil “contralife” being from the negative universe that interpenetrates ours. This possession—along with a devilish “pleasure-impress” from an enemy—is steadily draining Keaflyn's intelligence and “ego-fields,” and he seems doomed—unless he can find his salvation among the “Stabilities": alien artifacts of great mystery.

Tripping across the galaxy like some blithe space-hippie, Keaflyn undergoes spiritual and physical transformations that rival anything in Sheckley for both comic implausibility and surprising pathos. Add time travel to the mix and this Aquarian Odyssey gets weirder than Ian Wallace. I like to think Myers ended up on the same groovy paradise planet that Keaflyn eventually found.

—Paul Di Filippo