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Copyright ©2009 by Spilogale, Inc.

NOVELETS
DRAGON'S TEETH by Alex Irvine
HELL OF A FIX by Matthew Hughes
INSIDE TIME by Tim Sullivan
I NEEDS MUST PART, THE POLICEMAN SAID by Richard Bowes

SHORT STORIES
BAD MATTER by Alexandra Duncan
FAREWELL ATLANTIS by Terry Bisson
ILLUSIONS OF TRANQUILITY by Brendan DuBois
THE BLIGHT FAMILY SINGERS by Kit Reed
THE ECONOMY OF VACUUM by Sarah Thomas
IRIS by Nancy Springer
THE MAN WHO DID SOMETHING ABOUT *IT* by Harvey Jacobs

DEPARTMENTS
EDITORIAL by Gordon Van Gelder
BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint
BOOKS by James Sallis
FILMS: POST-MODERN HASIDISM ... WITH PUPPETS! by Kathi Maio
COMING ATTRACTIONS
INDEX TO VOLUMES 116 &117
CURIOSITIES by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
CARTOONS: Arthur Masear, Bill Long, S. Harris

COVER BY KENT BASH FOR “HELL OF A FIX”

GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor
BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher
ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor
KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher
HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor
JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor
CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 117, No. 5, Whole No. 686, December 2009. Published bimonthly by Spilogale, Inc. at $6.50 per copy. Annual subscription $39.00; $49.00 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, 105 Leonard St., Jersey City, NJ 07307. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2009 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.
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GENERAL AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: PO BOX 3447, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030

As great as it is for contemplating the future, science fiction is also valuable for reminding us that we are living in someone else's future.

This little truism came to mind when our last publisher, Ed Ferman, sent word that a winner from our 1980 contest has been decided a few months early. (If the contest doesn't sound familiar to you longtime readers, don't go searching through your back issues—the contest was conducted by mail as part of a subscription drive.)

Report on F&SF's 1980 30th Anniversary Contest

In 1980, F&SF sponsored a 30th Anniversary Contest called “Win $2,010 in the year 2010.” It asked readers to choose one science fiction concept which will have been realized by the year 2010 and which will have had the most significant impact (good or bad) on your life.

As promised, the approximately 2,700 entries were held securely and recently opened in order to select a winner. I read through all of them over several days, and here are some comments:

* Only a tiny minority chose something bad, typically, “thermonuclear war; I'll be dead."

* The vast majority chose concepts that seemed—in hindsight at least—wildly optimistic. Most frequent entries of this sort included:

World government, world peace
Colonies or factories in space
Robots in the home
Tourist travel in space

Most frequent of all: medical advances that would extend life span to 200 years or more.

So many entries projected a sense of confidence and hope that it was somewhat distressing to see how badly we fell short in realizing these predictions.

* More realistic predictions occurred in two areas: genetic research and alternative sources of energy. But even here, the only concept we came across that has come close to being realized is the electric car.

* The winner was chosen from a fairly large group who saw that computer technology and communication would have the greatest impact. In 1980 personal computers had only been available for a few years (Apple was founded in 1976), and wide use of the Internet was more than a decade in the future.

It was hard to select a winner from this group. What tipped Allen MacNeill's entry into the winner's circle was his prediction of hand-held computers, though he admits that he never thought they would be the size of a pack of cigarettes.

—Ed Ferman

On hearing the news, the contest winner, Allen MacNeill, sent a note that's worth reprinting in its entirety:

Greetings, Ed:
Please forgive my skepticism, but I receive about a hundred “phishing” invitations a day and so am very leery of the kind of notification contained in your email. However, it is indeed that case that I was a very loyal subscriber to F&SF from the 1970s through the late 1980s. As a professor of biology at Cornell, I eventually let my subscription lapse, mostly because I no longer had the luxury of spending time reading a lot of science fiction (more's the pity). I still glance through a copy now and then (usually in the library) and find it to still have the best short fiction in the genre.
Anyway, yes I did indeed enter the contest, and remember the premise well. I believe that I entered several times, with several predictions. I came up with the one about “home computer terminals with interactive access to other home, business and academic terminals, and including hand-held terminals” mostly because I had been using the PLATO terminals in Uris Hall at Cornell and wished very, very much that I could have one of my own (and especially one that I could carry around with me). Of course, the fact that you are reading this email on precisely the kind of “home computer terminal” that I originally predicted would come about is evidence that this prediction was pretty accurate.
However, I never would have predicted either spam or viruses/worms (although David Gerrold did in When HARLIE was One, which first appeared in Galaxy magazine, another sf mag I read with devotion in those days). I have owned at least one “home computer terminal” since 1982 (it was a Commodore 64), only two years after I made the prediction for your contest. My first real desktop (i.e. the fulfillment of the prediction) was an Epson QX-10, which I bought in 1983 when I landed a contract to write an introductory biology textbook for Prentice-Hall. When it died suddenly in 1987 I bought a Mac Plus, and have stuck with Macs ever since. Right now I have two 24” 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMacs, running simultaneously as WIntel machines using Parallels, one at home and one in my office at Cornell, plus a 15” MacBook G-4 that is now starting to show its age (it's almost four years old, and so a virtual antique).
If pressed today, I would say that thirty years from now it is most likely that we will be using some version of a “cloudbook,” for which most of the processing and hard memory/data storage will be located somewhere else. This will, of course, depend on the Moore's Law enhanced capabilities of the descendants of today's cell phones, which I suspect will be incorporated into our clothing, with something like a virtually invisible BlueTooth earbud/jaw mike interface. I don't think we will have implants, however, as they would need to be surgically replaced too often as technology changes—fun as it was at the time, I certainly would not have wanted to have the equivalent of my old C-64 implanted in me!
Anyway, my very brief bio is this: In 1980 when I entered the contest I had just recently finished graduate school and begun teaching introductory biology at Cornell. I have been doing so ever since, with a brief sabbatic as Chief Academic Officer for a Web 1.0 startup in 1999-2000. You can download my curriculum vitae at all four of my blogs (URLs listed in the sig at the end of this email). I am about to be taped for a series of online lectures on evolution for Cornell's CyberTower “study rooms” and am currently writing several books and maintaining four active blogs. I couldn't do any of this without my trusty home computer terminals with interactive access to other home, business and academic terminals, and including hand-held terminals, and indeed cannot imagine what life today would be without them. Very different, and much less interesting in many ways.
By the way, I wish that back in 1980 you had bought $2,010 worth of Apple stock (or any kind of stock, for that matter) and held on to it for the winner of your contest. Now that I think of it, could I have my grand prize winnings in 1980 dollars? ;-)
My sincerest thanks for a terrific magazine, a terrific contest, and for making my day! Please let me know where the announcement of the contest and the fact that I am the grand prize winner will appear, so I can blog it!
Still in Ithaca/Utopia and still crazy after all these years, I remain...
As always.
—Allen MacNeill

evolution.freehostia.com

evolutionanddesign.blogsome.com

evolutionlist.blogspot.com

evolpsychology.blogspot.com

So, congratulations to Allen MacNeill, and for anyone who is reading this editorial in the year 2040, I hope you're making the most of our future.

—Gordon Van Gelder

Alex Irvine is best known for his novels A Scattering of Jades, One King, One Soldier, The Narrows, and Buyout. His story “Wizard's Six” in our June 2007 issue marked his first venture into High Fantasy genre. Now he returns to the same milieu with a story that is neither a sequel nor a prequel, or maybe it's both. It's a broader tale, and elements of “Wizard's Six” are encompassed in it, so if anything here seems familiar to you, that's just an old memory echoing in your head. (And if you want to check it, go to our Website, where “Wizard's Six” will be posted for a month.)

They brought the singer to the obsidian gate and waited. A sandstorm began to boil in the valley that split the mountains to their west. Across the miles of desert, they watched it rear and approach. Still the singer did not sing. She was blind, and had the way of blind singers. They were as much at the mercy of the song as anyone else.

All of them were going to die in the sandstorm. At least the guard captain, Paulus, hoped so. If the sandstorm did not kill them, whatever was in the tomb would. Of the two deaths, he much preferred the storm. Two fingers of his right hand touched his throat and he hummed the creed of his god, learned from the Book at the feet of a mother he had not seen since his eighth year. The reflex was all that mattered. The first moon, still low over the mountains, vanished in the storm a moment after the mountains themselves.

The singer began to sing. Paulus hated her for it, but with the song begun, even killing her would not stop it. In one of the libraries hung the severed head of a singer, in a cage made of her bones. No one living could remember who she was, or understand the language of the song. The scholars of the court believed that whoever deciphered the song would know immortality.

They were at the mouth of a valley that snaked down from the mountains and spilled into a flat plain that once had been a marsh, a resting place for migrating birds. The tomb's architect, according to the scholars, had believed that the soul's migration was eased by placing the tomb in such a place. In the centuries since the death of the king, his world had also died. The river that fed the marshes shifted course to the south; the desert swept in. Paulus scanned the sky and saw no birds.

At first he found the song pleasing. The melody was unfamiliar to him, in a mode that jarred against the songs he remembered from his boyhood. Then all the gates in his mind boomed shut again. He was not a boy taken into the king's service who remembered the songs his mother might have sung. He was the guard captain Paulus and he was here in the desert to have the singer sing her song, and then to die.

Why, they had not been told. The tomb was to be opened. Paulus was a soldier. He would open the tomb. In doing so, he would die, but Paulus did not fear death. He had faced it in forms seen by few other men, had survived its proximity often enough that it had grown familiar. Fatalism was an old friend. The song made his teeth hurt; no, not the song, but some effect of the song. In this place, it was awakening something that had slumbered since The Fells was a scattering of huts on the riverbank. This king had died so long ago that his name was lost. At his death the desert had been green. The world changed, aged with the rest of them. In the desert, you breathed the air of a world where everything had happened already, and it made you feel that you could never have existed.

The obsidian gate shifted with a groan and the wind rose. Sand cascaded down the walls, revealing worked stone, as the singer's song began the work of undoing a burial that had taken the desert centuries to complete. The dozen soldiers with Paulus shifted on their feet, casting glances back and forth between the gate and the approaching storm. They rested hands on sword hilts, gauged the distance to their horses; Paulus could see each of them running through a delicate personal calculation, with the storm on one side and a deserter's crucifixion on the other.

At the mouth of the tomb, at the end of his life, Paulus had only gossip to steer by. Someone important, a merchant named Jan who had the king's ear, wanted to free the spirit that inhabited the tomb. The king had agreed. Paulus wondered what favor he owed that made him willing to cast away the lives of a dozen men. Perhaps they would not die. Still, they had ridden nine days across the desert, to a tomb so old and feared that it existed on maps only through inference; the desert road bent sharply away from it, cutting upward to run along the spine of a line of hills to the north before coming back down into the valley and following the ancient riverbed up to the Salt Pass, from which a traveler could see the ocean on a clear day. Paulus wondered what in the tomb had convinced the road builders to believe that three days’ extra ride was worth it.

The singer wept, whether in ecstasy or sorrow Paulus could not tell. Swirls of sand reared in the figures of snakes all around them, striking away in the rising wind. The obsidian gate was open an inch. The wind scoured sand away from the front of the tomb, revealing a path of flat stones. Another inch of darkness opened up. The singer's vibrato shook slivers from the gate that swept away over their heads like slashes of ink inscribed on the sky. Slowly the gate shivered open, grinding across the stones as the singer began to scream. The soldiers broke and ran; Paulus let them go, to die in whatever way they found best. A sound came from the tomb, answering the singer, and the harmony of voices living and dead burst Paulus's eardrums. Deaf, he felt the wind beat his face. Darkness fell as the storm swallowed the sky. The air grew thick as saliva. The sand undulated like a tongue. From the open gate of the tomb, Paulus smelled the exhalation of an undead spirit. He drew his sword, and then the sandstorm overtook them.

When it had passed, Paulus fumbled for the canteen at his belt. He rinsed his eyes, swished water around in his mouth and spat thick black gunk ... onto a floor of even stones. He was in the tomb, without memory of having entered. Water dripped from his beard and he felt the scrape and grind of sand all over his body. He was still deaf. His eardrums throbbed. Where was the rest of the guard? He turned in a slow circle, orienting himself, and stopped when he was facing the open doorway. A featureless sandscape, brushed smooth by the storm and suffused with violet moonlight, stretched to an invisible horizon. The skin on the back of Paulus's neck crawled. He turned around to face into the tomb, growing curious. He had enough oil for a torch. Its light seemed a protective circle to him as he ventured into the tomb to see what might have been left behind when the spirit emerged into the world. What it might do was no concern of his. He had been sent to free it; it was free. The merchant in The Fells had what he had paid for.

Torch held off to his left, sword in his right hand, Paulus walked along the narrow entry hall. He went down a stairway and at the bottom found the open sepulcher. The ancient king's bones lay as they had been left. His hair wisped over a mail coat that caught the torchlight.

Am I to be a graverobber? Paulus thought. The spirit was fled. Why not?

He took a cutting of the king's hair, binding it with a bit of leather from the laces of his jerkin. Arrayed about the king's body were ceremonial articles: a sword pitted and brittle with age, jars that had once held spices and perfumes, the skeletons of a dog and a child. Paulus went through it all, keeping what he knew he could sell and ignoring anything that looked as if it might be infected with magic. He worked methodically, feeling distanced from himself by his deafness. After an hour's search through the main room of the tomb and an antechamber knee-deep in sand from the storm, he had a double handful of gold coins. Everything else he saw—a sandstone figurine with obsidian eyes, a jeweled torc obscured by the king's beard, a filigreed scroll case laid diagonally into a wall alcove just inside the door—made him leery of enchantment. The gold would do.

Leaving the tomb, he stumbled over the body of the singer, buried in a drift of sand just inside the shattered gate. There was no sign of the rest of his men. It disturbed Paulus that he had no memory of entering the tomb as the storm broke over them, but memory was a blade with no handle. When it failed, best to live with the failure and live to accumulate new memories. He took another drink, scanned the desert for sign of the horses, and gave up. Either he would walk back, or he could cross the mountains and sail around the Cape of Thirst from the city of Averon. The boat would be quicker and the coastal waters less treacherous than the desert sands. Paulus turned west.

In three days, he was coming down the other side of the pass. Two days after that, he was sleeping in the shadow of wine casks on the deck of a ship called Furioso. On the twelfth day after walking out of the tomb, Paulus stepped off the gangplank into the dockside chaos of The Fells, and wound his way through the city toward the Ridge of the Keep. He wondered how the merchant Jan would know that the spirit was freed, and also how Mikal, the marshal of The King's Guard, would react to the loss of his men.

To be the sole survivor of a battle, or of an expedition, was to be presumed a liar. Paulus knew this. He could do nothing about it except tell what portion of the truth would serve him. Any soldier learned that truths told to superiors were necessarily partial.

Mikal received his report without surprise, in fact without much reaction at all. “Understood,” he said at the end of Paulus's tale. “His Majesty anticipated the possibility of such losses. You have done well to return.” Mikal wrote in the log of the Guard. Paulus waited. When he was done writing, Mikal said, “You will return to regular duties once you have repeated your story for Jan Destrier."

So Paulus walked back through The Fells, from the Ridge of the Keep down into the market known as the Jingle and then upriver past the quay where he had disembarked from Furioso, to tell his story to a man named for a horse. In the Jingle he remembered where as a boy he had performed acrobatics for pennies, and where his brother Piero had saved his life by changing him into a dog and then saved it again by trading one of his eyes for a spell. Paulus had not seen his brother in years. So much in one life, he thought. I was a boy, feeding chickens and playing at being a pirate. Then I was in The Fells, rejected from the King's service. Then I did serve the King, and still do. I have fought in his wars, and killed the men he wanted killed, and now I have released the spirit of a dead king into the world to satisfy an arrangement whose details I will never know.

But whom have I ever stood for the way Piero stood for me?

Jan Destrier's shopfront faced the river across a cobblestoned expanse that was part street and part quay. There was no sign, but Paulus had been told to look for a stuffed heron in the doorway. He could not remember who had told him. Mikal? Unease roiled his stomach, but his step was sure and steady as he crossed the threshold into Jan Destrier's shop. The merchant was behind a counter through whose glass top Paulus could see bottles of cut crystal in every shape, holding liquids and pooled gases that caught the light of a lantern hung over Jan Destrier's head. He was a large man, taller than Paulus and fat in the way men allowed themselves to get fat when their lives permitted it. At first Paulus assumed the bottles held perfume; then he saw the alchemical array on a second table behind the merchant and he understood. Jan Destrier sold magic.

At once Paulus wanted to run, but he was not the kind of man who ran, perhaps because he did not value his life highly enough to abase himself for its sake. He hated magic, hated its unpredictability and the supercilious unction of the men who brokered its sale, hated even more the wizards of the Agate Tower who bound the lives of unknowing men to their own and from the binding drew their power. Once, drunk, Paulus and a groom in the castle stables named Andrew had found themselves arguing over the single best thing a king could do upon ascending the throne. Andrew, hardheaded and practical, wanted a decisive war with the agitating brigands in the mountains to the north; Paulus wanted every wizard and spell broker in The Fells put to the sword. The conversation had started off stupid and grown worse as the bottle got lighter.

Now here he was in the shop of a broker, sent by a superior on business that concerned the king. Paulus could spit the broker on his sword and watch him die in the facets of his crystal bottles, but he himself would die shortly after. It was not his kingdom and never would be. He was obligated to carry out the orders he had been given.

"Jan Destrier,” he said. “Mikal the king's marshal sent me to you."

"You must have something terribly important to tell me, then,” Destrier said. “Tell it."

"I led a detachment of the Guard out into the desert, where the Salt Pass Road bends away from the dry riverbed,” Paulus said. “We had a singer with us. She opened a tomb, and the spirit of the king buried there was freed.” He felt like he should add something about the deaths of the singer and his men, but Jan Destrier would not care. “As you requested,” he finished.

"There has been a misunderstanding,” Destrier said. “I did not wish the spirit to escape."

Paulus inclined his head. “Beg pardon, that was the order I received."

"As may be.” Destrier beckoned Paulus around the counter. “Come here.” Paulus did, and the merchant stopped him when he had cleared the counter. “What I wanted was for the spirit to come here. That was what the singer was for. Well, partly."

"Then permit me to convey my regrets at the failure of the King's Guard,” Paulus said. “The spirit came out of the tomb, but I did not see it after that. There was a storm."

"I'm sure there was,” Destrier said. “There almost always is. Never fear, the spirit arrived just as I had hoped.” He held up a brass instrument, all curls and notched edges. Paulus had never seen its like before. “You were kind enough to bring it along with you. Or, perhaps I should say that it was kind enough to bring you along with it."

No, Paulus thought. If the spirit was there, then it saw me robbing the tomb. He closed his fingers around the cutting of the king's hair, thinking that if he could destroy the fetish—crisp it in one of the candle flames that burned along the edges of the merchant's table—that perhaps the spirit would no longer be able to find him. Already he was too late. The spirit, enlivened by some magnetism of the merchant's, drained the strength from his hands. Paulus felt the whisper of its soul in his brain, like the echo of wind in the black silence of a tomb. His legs were the next to go. His arms jerked out looking for something to hold onto, but nothing was there, and when the numbness crept past his knees, Paulus crumpled to the floor. He felt the paralysis like a drug, spinning his mind away from his body until at last he lost touch even with his senses and fell into a dream that was like dying.

"I thought it would ride the singer,” Jan Destrier said. “How odd that it chose you instead."

He did not know how long the stupor lasted. When he regained his senses, everything about him was as it had been before: the table littered with alchemical vessels and curling parchment, the border of pinprick candle flames, the batwing eyebrows of the merchant shadowing his eyes. The merchant looked up as Paulus stirred. “You have performed admirably,” he said. “It's not every man who would have survived the initial possession, and even fewer live to tell of the extraction."

There would be nothing to tell, Paulus thought. He had no memory of it.

"Where has the spirit gone, then?” he asked. It would come for him, of that he was sure. It had ridden him back to The Fells and now that it was free it would exact some revenge for his spoliation of its tomb. Perhaps it would ride him back, if by coming it had fulfilled whatever geas the merchant had laid on it. Then it would abandon him in the sands to die, the way he had thought he would die when the first notes of the singer's song had begun to resonate in the stones of the tomb.

"I have it here.” Destrier produced a cucurbit stoppered with wax, and filled with a swirling fluid. “The stopper is made from the catalyst. When I apply heat, it will melt into the impure spirit, and the reaction will precipitate the spirit into another glass. This essence is my stock in trade. You are familiar with the magic market?"

"I know of it,” Paulus said. “I have never made use of it.” This was a lie, but Paulus had no compunction about lying to merchants, who were in his experience congenital liars. Twice in his life, his brother had spent magic on him.

"Well, do keep me in mind if you ever find yourself in need,” the merchant said.

Paulus's curiosity got the better of him. He framed his question carefully, already outlining a strategy for evading and defeating the spirit. But first he had to know as much as possible about its nature. “Is there magic in the spirit because it died having not used its own? How do you know it has any?"

"Magic is more complicated than the nursery rhymes and old wives’ tales would have it,” the merchant said. “Yes, every human is born with a spark, and may use it. But other forms of enchantment and power inhere in the world. In stones, in articles touched by great men or tainted by proximity to unexpected death. These can be refined, their magic distilled and used. This is what I do. In the case of spirits, and whether their magic results from unused mortal power or something else,” he went on, “it is not what the mathematicians would call a zero-sum endeavor. By trapping the spirit, I trap the potential for its magic that it has brought back from the other world. Distilled and processed, this magic can be sold just as any other. Although the nature of the spirit makes such magics unsuitable for certain uses."

The echoes of the possession still sounded in the hollows of Paulus's mind. He heard the merchant without active understanding. “We are finished here?” he asked.

"Quite,” the merchant said. “Do convey my commendation of your performance to your superior officers."

"A commendation would carry more weight coming from yourself,” Paulus said.

The merchant scribbled on a parchment, folded it, and sealed it. “Then let us hope the weight of it does not overburden you,” he said. Paulus left him setting small fires under the alembic that would purify the spirit's essence into a salable bit of magic.

He delivered the merchant's commendation to Mikal because not to do so would have been stupid. Then he set about shaping a plan to get that distilled element of magic back from the merchant before he sold it, and in its use an unsuspecting client became a tool for the spirit's vengeance on Paulus. He did not have enough money to buy the magic and knew that he could not trade his own; the essence of the undead spirit was doubtless more powerful. He could take it by force, but he would have to kill the merchant, and then leave The Fells—and the King's service—forever. The cowardice of this path repelled him. He owed the King his life. Twice over. He did not love the King, but Paulus understood obligation.

It was obligation that brought him to the seneschal's chamber after word of the merchant's commendation circulated through the court. Mario Tremano had once been the king's tutor. Now much of the court's business was quietly transacted by means of his approval. He was a careful man, an educated man, and a cruel man. Paulus feared him the way he feared all men who loved subtlety. It was tradition in The Fells for scholars to wield influence, but it was also tradition for them to overreach; as Piero often joked, the scholar's stooped posture cried out for straightening on the gallows. Paulus went to Mario Tremano's chamber wondering if Jan Destrier's commendation had made him useful, or doomed him. The only way to find out was to go.

Nearing seventy years of age, Mario cultivated the appearance of a scholar despite his wealth and the raw unspoken fact of his power. He wore a scholar's simple gown and black cap, and did not braid his beard or hair. “Paulus,” he said as his footman escorted Paulus into his study. “You have attracted attention from powerful friends of the King."

"I have always tried to serve the King,” Paulus said.

"And serve the King you have,” Mario said with a smirk. Paulus noted the insult and folded it into his understanding of his situation. It was hardly the first time he had heard cutting remarks about the part of his life he'd spent as a dog. The more venomous ladies of the court still occasionally yipped when they passed him in the castle's corridors. Eleven years had done little to dull the appeal of the joke. The seneschal paused, as if waiting for Paulus to react to the slight. “Now, in our monarch's autumn years, you have a glorious chance to perform a most unusual service,” he went on.

"However I may,” Paulus said. He had heard that the king was unwell, but Mario's open acknowledgment suggested that the royal health was on unsteadier footing than Paulus had known. He was ten years older than Paulus, and should still have been in the graying end of his prime.

"Your willingness speaks well of you, Captain.” Mario spread a map on a table below a window that faced out over The Fells and weighted its edges with candlesticks. Paulus saw the broad estuary of the Black River, with The Fells on its western side. The great Cape of Thirst swept away to the southwest, ending in a curl sheltering Averon. To the north and west, Paulus saw names of places where he had fought in the king's wars: Kiriano, Ie Fure, the Valley of Caves. This was the first time he had ever seen such a map. It made the world seem at once larger, because so much of it Paulus had never seen, and smaller, because it could be encompassed on a sheet of vellum.

The seneschal tapped a location far to the north. Mare Ultima, Paulus read. “How long do you think it would take you to get there?"

Paulus looked at the distance between The Fells and Averon, which was twelve days on horse. Then he gauged the distance from The Fells to Mario's fingertip, taking into account the two ranges of mountains. “Six weeks,” he guessed. “Or as much as eight if the weather is bad."

"The weather will be bad,” Mario said. “Of that you can be sure. Winter falls in September in that country."

It was late in June. Paulus waited for the seneschal to continue his geography lesson, but a sharp question from the chamber door interrupted them. “What have you told him?"

Paulus was kneeling as he turned, the rich tones of the queen's voice acting on his muscles before his brain registered what had been said. He dared not look at her, for fear that he would fall in love as his brother had. This fear had accompanied him for the past eleven years, since he had reawakened into humanity. She had done it, bought the magic to restore his human form, as a reward to his brother for his long service as the king's fool. His brother was blind now, and loved the queen for her voice and her scent and the sound of her gown sweeping along the stone floors. Paulus carried a mosaic of her in his head: the fall of her hair, caught in a thin shaft of sunlight; a line at the corner of her mouth, which had taught Paulus much about the passage of years; a time when an ermine stole slipped from her shoulder and Paulus caught his breath at the sight of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. He believed that if he ever looked her full in the face, and held her gaze for a heartbeat, that love would consume him.

"Your Majesty,” Mario said. “He has as yet only heard a bit about the seasons in the north."

"Rise, Captain,” the queen said. Paulus did, keeping his eyes low. To the seneschal, the queen said, “Well. Perhaps you should tell him what we are about to ask him to do."

"Of course, Your Majesty. Captain, what stories have you heard about dragons?"

Paulus looked up at the seneschal. “Of dragons? The same stories as any child, Excellency. I think."

Mario retrieved a book from a shelf behind his desk. He set it on the map and opened it. “A natural history,” he said. “Written by the only man I know who has ever seen a dragon. A source we can trust. Can you write?"

Paulus nodded.

"Then you must copy this,” Mario said, “while we instruct you in the details of your task."

Paulus took up a quill and began to write. Dragons are solitary beasts, powerful as whales and cunning as an ape. They mate in flight only, and the females are never seen except at these moments. Where they nest and brood, no man knows.... At some point during the lesson that followed, the queen touched Paulus on the shoulder. It felt like a blessing, an expression of faith. His unattainable lady who had given him back the shape of a man was now setting him a quest, and though he would probably die, he would undertake the quest feeling that she had offered him a destiny.

His task was this: in the broken hills between the northernmost range of mountains and the icy Mare Ultima, there lived a dragon. Extremes of heat and cold are the dragon's love. In caves of ice and on the shoulders of volcanoes, there may they be found in numbers. Once, before ascending the throne, the king had hunted it, and survived the failure of the hunt. It was the queen's wish that before he died, her husband should know that he had outlived the dragon. A dragon might live hundreds of years. No man can be certain, because no man lives as long as a dragon. It was to be her death-gift to him, in thanks for the years they had spent as man and wife. “He has lived a life as full as mortal might wish,” she said. “Yet this memory hounds him, and I would not have it hound him when he is in his grave."

"Your Majesty, it will not,” Paulus said. Whether he meant that he believed he would kill the dragon, or meant only that worldly desires did not accompany spirits, he could not have said. Many tales and falsehoods exist regarding magical properties of the dragon's blood. These include...

"How are we to know it is done?” the seneschal said.

"What token would His Majesty wish, as proof of the deed?” Paulus asked the queen. He kept his eyes on the page, and the nib of the quill wet ... language of birds, which some believe to derive their origin from a lost race of smaller dragons quite gone from the world.

"On the king's thigh is a scar from the dragon's teeth,” she said, “and under his hair a scar from its tail. I would have its long teeth and the tip of its tail. The rest you may keep. I care not for whatever treasure it might hoard."

In fact, according to the seneschal's book, dragons did not hoard treasure. They care not for gold or jewels, but such may be found in their dens if left by those who try to kill a dragon and fail. It is said that such treasure grows cursed from being in the dragon's presence, but place no faith in this superstition. Paulus copied this information down without relaying it to the queen. “Captain,” Mario said. “Jan Destrier spoke well enough of you that you perhaps should visit him before you embark. He certainly would have something to assist you."

"Many thanks, Excellency,” Paulus said. “Would it be possible to put something in writing, that there is no confusion on the merchant's part?"

"I hope you do not express doubt as to my word,” the seneschal said.

Although the dragon is said to speak, it does not. Some are said to mimic sounds made in their presence, as do parrots and other talking birds, but I do not know if this is true. Paulus was almost done copying the pages. His hand hurt. He could not remember ever having written three pages at once. “Beg pardon, no, Excellency,” he said. “I doubt only the merchant's memory and attachment to his wares, and I have no gold to buy what he refuses to give."

This was a carefully shaded truth. Gold Paulus had; whether it was enough to buy any useful magic, he did not know.

"Well said, Captain,” the queen commented.

The seneschal was silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Paulus could see that he was absolutely still. Paulus's soldier instinct began to prickle on the back of his neck and he hesitated in his copying as his hand reflexively began to reach for his sword. There was bad blood in the room. It is said that a dragon recognizes the man who will kill it, and this is the only man it will flee. Contrary to this saying, I have never observed a fleeing dragon, nor expect to. Paulus would never be able to prove it, but in that instant he knew that when the king passed from this world, Mario Tremano would attempt to send his widow quickly after. He resolved without a second thought to kill the seneschal when he returned from his errand to the Mare Ultima. The dragon's scale is fearsome strong, and will deflect nearly any blade or bolt, but its weaknesses are: inside the joints of the legs, near the anus, the eyes, under the hinges of the jaw.

"Yes. Apparently being around the court has taught you some tricks, Captain. You must leave immediately,” Mario said when Paulus finished copying. He handed Paulus a folded and sealed letter. It could have been a death warrant for all Paulus knew. “Our king must know that this is done, and his time is short."

Paulus rose to leave, rolling the copied pages into a tight scroll that he slid under his belt. Twice now, the seneschal had slighted him. “You may choose any horse,” the queen said. “And the armory is yours."

"Your Majesty's generosity humbles me,” Paulus said.

"Apparently so much that you act the peasant in my presence,” she said, a bit archly. “Will you not look me in the face, Captain Paulus of the King's Guard?"

I would, Paulus thought. How I would. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I fear that if I did, I would be unable to go from you, and would prove myself unworthy of your faith in me."

"He certainly is loyal,” said Mario the seneschal. Paulus took his leave, right hand throbbing, slighted a third time in front of his queen. One day it would come to blades between him and the seneschal.

That was a battle that could not yet be fought. First, he must survive a long trip to the north and a battle with a dragon. It was said that only a king or a hero could kill a dragon. Paulus was not a king and he did not know if he was a hero. He had fought eleven years of wars, had killed men of every color in every territorial hinterland and provincial capital claimed by The Fells, had survived wounds that he had seen kill other men. Perhaps he had performed heroic deeds. If he survived the encounter with the dragon, the question would be put to rest.

He chose a steel-gray stallion from the stable, young but proven in the Ie Fure campaign the summer before. Andrew, emerging from the workshop where he repaired tack, said, “Paulus, you can't mean it. That one's Mikal's favorite."

"Andrew, friend, if the horse doesn't come back, I won't be coming, either. And if both of us do come back, I'll have the court at my feet. So I have nothing to worry about from Mikal either way."

"Court at your feet,” Andrew repeated. “How's that?"

"The queen has sent me to kill a dragon.” Paulus said.

"There's no such thing as dragons,” Andrew said.

"The queen thinks there are, and she wants me to kill one of them.” Paulus swung up onto the horse. “So I will. Now come with me to the armory."

Paulus had never fought with a lance, but he had thrown his share of spears. He took three, and a great sword with a blade twice as wide and a foot longer than the long sword he'd carried these past six years. He added a short butchering knife with a curve near the tip of its blade, which he imagined to be a better tool for digging out a dragon's teeth than his dagger. A sling, for hunting along the way, and a helmet, greaves, and gauntlets to go over the suit of mail that lay oiled and wrapped in canvas in one of Paulus's saddlebags. The book had said nothing about whether dragons could breathe fire. If they could, none of his preparations would make any difference.

"Two swords, spears, knives,” Andrew said. “I'll wager a bottle you can kill it just with the sling."

"That's not a bet you make with a man you think is going to survive,” Paulus said. Andrew didn't argue the point.

"If I'm not back by the first of November, I won't be back,” Paulus said. He clasped hands with Andrew and rode out of the keep into the stinking bustle of The Fells. The sun was sinking toward the desert that began a half-day's ride west from the Black River's banks. Paulus thought of the tomb, and the spirit, and grew uncertain about the plan that was already forming in his head. Twenty minutes’ ride through the city brought him to Jan Destrier's door. He tied the horse and went inside.

The spell broker was cleaning a tightly curled copper tube. “Ah, the bearer of spirits is returned,” he said. “To purchase, no doubt."

Paulus held out the letter from Mario Tremano. After reading it, the broker said, “I see. I am to assist you."

"I am leaving on a quest given by the queen Herself,” Paulus said.

"A quest. Oh my,” Destrier said. “For what?"

"For something I will not be able to get without help from your stores."

"Specificity, O Captain of the Guard,” Destrier said. “What is it you want? Luck? Do you wish not to feel cold, or fire? Thirst? Do you wish to be invisible, or to go nine days without sleep?"

"I wish the essence of the spirit I brought back to you,” Paulus said.

Destrier laughed. “I might as well wish the queen's ankles locked around the back of my neck,” he said. “We're both going to be disappointed."

It was not Paulus's life that mattered. Not his success or failure at killing the dragon. It was the murderous guile he had sensed in the presence of Mario Tremano and what that meant for the life of the queen after her husband was no longer there to be a useful asset to the seneschal. For her, Paulus would do anything. He stole nothing after killing Jan Destrier; he used the fetish of the dead king's hair to find the essence of the spirit, which was an inch of clear fluid in a brass bulb the size of a fig. He tied it around his neck with a piece of leather, threading the binding of the fetish into the knot that held the bulb.

There would be consequences. If Paulus brought back the teeth and tail of the dragon, he would survive them; if he did not, it would not matter. On the street, he made no effort to hurry. Most of those who had heard Jan Destrier die would be more interested in plundering his expensive wares than in reporting that the killer was dressed in the livery of the King's Guard. He rode for the North River Gate and out into the world beyond The Fells.

He did not know how much power was in the spirit's essence, or of what kind. He did not know whether any of its soul survived inside the brass bulb. But he had a token of the body it had once animated, and he had six weeks to find out.

With ten days left in August, Paulus came down out of the mountains into the land that on Mario Tremano's map looked like a thin layer of fat between the mountains and the Mare Ultima. He had seen snow three times in the mountains already and heard an avalanche on a warm day after a heavy storm. He had been traveling fifty days. Twice he had cut his beard with the butchering knife. He had killed one man so far, for trying to steal his horse. Mikal's horse. He had hunted well, and so eaten well, and even traded some of his game for cheese and bread and the occasional piece of fruit at farmsteads and villages along the way.

He had also learned something of the nature of the spirit in the brass bulb that hung next to the fetish around his neck. If there was anything Paulus mistrusted more than magic, it was dreams, but nevertheless it was through dreams that he had begun to learn. He was sitting in front of a campfire built in the ribcage of a dragon, listening to the bones speak, telling him he knew nothing of dragons. Your book is full of lies, the voice said.

The Book is about faith and learning, Paulus replied, touching two fingers to his throat. The Journey and the Lesson. It was what his mother had taught him.

Idiot, the voice said. Your book about dragons is what I mean.

It may be, Paulus said.

It is.

He awoke from that first dream with the brass bulb unstoppered and held to his lips. “No,” he said, and stoppered it again. “So you do know me."

He would have to be careful, he thought. Something of the spirit remained and he could not know whether it wished him good or ill. He would learn, and when the time came to face the dragon, he would hope he had learned enough.

The second dream took him after he rose in the night to piss into a creek in the foothills of the first mountain range that lay between him and the Mare Ultima. As he drifted back into sleep, he dreamed of walking out into that creek, trying to wash something from his skin that burned and sickened him. This is what you will feel, said the voice of the water over the rocks. This and much worse.

Paulus stopped and stood, dripping and naked, letting the feeling inhabit him, imagining what it would be like to withstand it and fight through it. How much worse? he asked ... and woke screaming in a predawn fog, with the gray stallion a shadow rearing at the agony in his voice.

The night of the first snow, as he crested the first pass and descended into a valley bounded by canyons and glaciers that curved like ribs into sparkling tarns, he was reminded of the first dream. He cut a lean-to from tree branches and packed the snow over and around it, then huddled under his blanket with a small fire at the mouth of the lean-to. When he slept, the voice was the sound of tree branches cracking under the weight of snow. I have killed dragons.

What does that matter to me? You cannot kill this one for me, and even if you could, it would shame me to permit it.

Shame, the voice cackled. It looks very different when you are dead.

Someday I will know that, Paulus said. But not soon.

Sooner than you wish, unless you listen.

Then talk, so I can decide if what you say is worth listening to.

You cut hair from my body, and took gold from my tomb, the voice said.

All the more reason to be suspicious of you.

With a cackle, the voice said, How much you think you know. Who guided you to the broker's? And when you came back to the broker's—do you think you found me? No, mortal man. I brought you to me. I would kill a dragon again.

A cold, shameful fear made Paulus moan in his sleep. The queen—

No. Her mind is her own. I was a king, and would not meddle with others of my station. You, on the other hand....

Paulus woke up. In the pages he had copied from Mario Tremano's book, it was said that kings of old had killed dragons, and driven them to the wastes of the north and west. He rolled the brass bulb in his palms. The spirit had said that the book was full of lies. If the spirit told the truth, then kings of old had not killed dragons, which meant that the spirit was lying.

That is man's logic, he thought, remembering a story from the Book in which a man tried to reason with lightning. Yes, the lightning had said. There is no flaw in your thought, save that it is man's thought, and I am lightning.

Shaking out the blanket and refolding it over the horse's back, Paulus found himself in the same position. In a week, or perhaps ten days, he would find the dragon. Then he would discover which lies the spirit was telling.

With ten days left in August, he came down out of the mountains and began asking questions. The people who hunted seals and caribou along the shores of Mare Ultima spoke a language he knew only from a few words picked up on campaigns, when mercenary companies had come down from this land of black rock and blue ice, bringing their spears and an indifference to suffering bred at the end of the world. He pieced together, over days, that there was a dragon, and that it slept in a cave formed after the eruption and collapse of a volcano. He worked his way across the country, eating white rabbits and salmon and the dried blubber of seals, building his strength, until he found the dragon's cave.

The mountain still smoked. Standing on a ridge that paralleled the shore, some miles distant, Paulus looked south. The mountains, already whitening. North: water the color of his stallion, broken by ice floes all the way to a misty horizon. East: coastal hills, green and gray speckled with snow. West: more mountains, their peaks shrouded in clouds. The people he had spoken to said that in the west, mountains burned.

This was as good a place as any to find a dragon, Paulus thought. As good a place as any to die.

The dragon's cave was a sleepy eye perhaps a half-mile up the ruined side of a mountain. The top of the mountain was scooped out, ringed with sharp spires; a waterfall drained what must have been an immense lake in the crater, carving a canyon down the mountainside and a new river through the hills to the Mare Ultima. Paulus could smell some kind of flower, and the ocean, and from somewhere far to the west the tang of smoke. He dismounted and began to prepare. First, the mail shirt, still slick with oil. Gauntlets, their knuckles squealing like the hinges of a door not hung true. Greaves buckled over his boots. The great sword across his back. Shield firm on his left forearm, spear in his right hand, long sword on his hip. The butchering knife sheathed behind his left hip.

Then he thought, No. This is man's thinking, and I am going to fight the lightning.

He stabbed the spear into the ground, and let the great sword fall from his back. Setting his shield down, Paulus took off the gauntlets. He snapped the leather thong around his neck and unwound the binding of the fetish. With the butchering knife, he cut a tangled lock of his own hair. There was more gray in it than he remembered from the last time he had looked in a mirror, but he was forty-five years old now. He twisted the two locks of hair together into a tangle of black and gray long enough that he could wind it around the base of the middle finger on his right hand, and then in a figure-eight around his thumb. He bound it in place, and unstoppered the bulb. As he tipped a few drops of the fluid onto the place where the figure-eight crossed itself, he heard the voices of ice and snow, rocks and water, bones of dragons. He put a gauntlet on his right hand over the charm and tipped a few more drops into its palm. The rest he sprinkled over the blade of the sword. Then he cast the bulb away clinking among the stones.

It would work or it would not. Picking up his shield and holding his sword before him, Paulus picked his way at an angle up the slope toward the dragon's cave. A voice in his head said, Now you know why I did not ride the singer.

Afterward, he was screaming, and when she came to him, he thought he was being guided out of his life. She spoke, and soothed him, and left him there in his own blood, writhing as the dragon's poison ate its way under his skin. The spirit was gone. In the echoes of its departure Paulus felt the slash of the dragon's claws, shredding his mail shirt and the muscle underneath. When his body spasmed with each fresh wave of poisoned agony, the grating of the mail links on the stone floor of the cave was the sound of the dragon's scales as it uncoiled and raised its head to meet him. The white of his femur and his ribs was the white of its bared fangs crushing his shield and snapping the bones in his wrist. And when he arched his back in seizure, as the poison worked deeper into his body, the impact of his head on the ground was the blinding slap of its tail and then the shock of his blade, driven home and snapped off in the hollow underneath its front leg. The dragon was dead and Paulus soon would be. He thrashed his right arm, flinging the bloody gauntlet away, and caught the fetish in his teeth. His face was slick with the dragon's blood and his own tears. Gnawing the fetish loose, he spat it out. Free, he thought. Free to die my own death. O my queen....

And she was back, with a sledge freshly cut and smelling of sap. Paulus recognized the language she spoke, but couldn't pick out the words. When she dragged him over the stones at the mouth of the cave, pain blew him out like a candle.

The next thing he could remember was the sound of wind, and the weight of a fur blanket, and the rank sweat of his body. He was inside, in a warm place. A creeping icy draft chilled his face. Paulus opened his eyes. The woman was stirring something in a pot over a fire. He tried to sit up and his wounds reawakened. The sound that came out of him was the sound wounded enemies made when the camp women went around the battlefield to kill them. The woman laid her bone spoon across the lip of the pot and came over to squat next to him. “Shhhhh,” she said. Black, black hair, Paulus thought. And black, black eyes. Then he was gone again.

It was quiet and dark when next he awoke. He heard the woman breathing nearby. He flexed his fingers, wondering that he could still feel all ten. Under the blanket, he began to explore his body. His left wrist was bound and splinted, and radiated the familiar pain of a healing broken bone. Heavy scabs covered the right side of his body from just below his shoulder all the way down to the knee. He wiggled his toes. Something was sticking out of the scabs, and after puzzling over it Paulus realized that the woman—or someone—had stitched the worst of his wounds, with what he could not tell. He was going to live. He knew the smell of infection and his nose could not find it. He had clean wounds. Bad wounds, but clean. They would heal. He would walk, and he would live. He saw details in the near-perfect darkness of the room: the last embers in the fire pit, the swell of the woman under her blankets. His fingers roamed over his body, feeling the pebbled scars where the dragon's poison had burned him and the strangely smooth expanses that were without wounds. He flexed the muscles of his arms, and they hurt, but they worked. When he moved his legs, the deep tears in his right thigh cried out. Not healed yet, then. Putting that together with the way his wrist felt, Paulus guessed that it had been two weeks since the woman had found him in the mouth of the dragon's cave.

The teeth, he thought. And the tail.

He must not fail the queen.

"The dragon,” he said to the woman the next morning. She shushed him. “I have to—"

Again she shushed him. Paulus sank back into the pile of furs and skins. He still had no strength. He watched her move around, taking in the details of her home. It was made of stone and wood, the spaces between the stones stuffed with moss and earth. One wall was a single slab of stone; a hillside, with three manmade walls completing the enclosure. Timbers slanted from the opposite wall to rest against the natural wall, covered with densely woven branches. Paulus couldn't believe it could contain warmth, but it did. He threw his covers off, suddenly sweating in the fur cocoon. The woman did not react to Paulus's nakedness. She opened a door he hadn't noticed and the interior of the house lit up with sunlight reflected from deep drifts of snow. The snow must be waist-deep, Paulus thought. Perhaps the dragon's cave was buried. Perhaps no one here wanted trophies from its carcass. Exhausted again, he did not resist when the woman settled covers back over him and went about her business. “Why did you save me?” Paulus asked her.

She shushed him, and again he fell asleep.

Gradually over the winter he learned more of her language, and she bits and pieces of his. From this he learned that she had hauled him to her home, put him on the pile of furs, and tended his wounds with skill that few surgeons in The Fells possessed. Or she was fortunate, and Paulus was strong. Perhaps he would have lived in any case, given shelter and food. He would never know.

His horse was outside, kept in an overhung spot along the bluffs that also made up the fourth wall of the house. As soon as he was strong enough, he went out to see it and found that someone in this icy wilderness knew something about horses; it was brushed, its hooves were trimmed. If these people had mastered ironworking, Paulus thought, the horse would have new shoes. The hospitality was humbling. He thanked her and asked her to thank whoever had taken care of the horse. About the dragon, she appeared confused when he finally made her understand that he had traveled for two months just to get pieces of it to take home. “For my queen,” he said. Though she understood the words, the concept made no sense to her. Arguing with lightning, Paulus thought. Her name meant Joy in her language. She lived alone. Her mother and father were dead, and this was their house. In the good-weather months, she fished and wove and tanned hides; in the winter, she kept to herself and wove cloth to sell the next summer. There was a village twenty minutes’ walk away. A man there wanted to marry her, but she would not have him. He was the one who had cared for the stallion.

Paulus thanked her again. She shrugged. What else would she have done?

Growing stronger, he went out into the snow dressed in clothes Joy made. He met a few of the villagers, who lost interest in him as soon as they confirmed that he had not made Joy his wife. The dragon, it seemed, had made little difference in their lives. It ate caribou and sea lions. There were plenty of both to go around. In The Fells, should he survive to return there, Paulus would be celebrated; here, he was a curiosity.

On one of the first spring days, smells of the earth heavy in his nose, Paulus went out from Joy's house with the butchering knife tucked in his belt. He found his way to the dragon's cave and went inside. It lay more or less as he had left it. His broken sword blade, its edges now rusted, protruded from behind its left front leg. Marveling, Paulus paced off the length of its body. Fifty feet. It was mostly still frozen. He laid out the canvas sheet he'd used to protect his armor and set to work hacking into the carcass with the butchering knife. Four fangs for the queen, and the tip of the tail. Then he gouged out most of the rest of its teeth, leaving those that broke as he worked them free of the jawbone. In the pages he had copied from Mario Tremano's book were recipes for alchemical uses of the dragon's eyes, as well as a notation that its heart was said to confer the strength of giants. The eyes came out easily enough; the heart was another matter. Paulus went to work prying loose the scales on its breast until he could crack through its ribs. The heart, larger than his head, was pierced six inches deep by the blade of his sword. Sweating in the cold, he cut it out and put it with the eyes. Then he added several dozen of its scales, each the size of his spread hand.

When he was done, he walked back to Joy, who was outside bartering a roll of cloth for the haunch of a moose killed by a villager who would have gladly given her the haunch, and anything else, if she would accept him. That night, Joy and Paulus ate moose near the fire. When they were done, she got up to put the bowls in water. He handed her his dagger, slick with grease, and she looked at it for a moment before slashing it across his right forearm.

Paulus sprang away from her, hand instinctively dropping toward a sword hilt that wasn't there. “Joy!” he shouted, squaring off against her, glancing around for something he could use as a weapon. He had no doubt that he could overpower her, even weak as he still was, but no man ever went unarmed against an opponent with a knife if there was even a stick nearby that could improve the odds.

She pointed at his forearm. Unable to help himself, he looked. The skin was unmarked. Paulus looked back at her. She made no move to approach him; after a moment, she turned and dropped the knife into the pot of water with the bowls.

It is said of the dragon's blood that washing in it renders human flesh invulnerable to blade or arrow, the seneschal's book had said. Paulus had read over those lines the way he had the rest of the more fanciful passages, skeptically and with no effort to keep them in mind. But it was true. He had felt the blade hit his arm. It should have opened him up to the bone.

"Dragon,” Joy said, and began to wash the dishes.

She knew, Paulus thought. She was showing him. Not just the transformation of his skin wetted with the dragon's lifeblood; she was showing him that he had survived.

"How,” he began, and stopped when he realized he had too many questions to ask, and no words to ask them, and that she had no words to answer. He watched her dry his dagger and set it aside on the table. Before she could pick up another dish, he caught her wrist and drew her toward him. Her expression changed and he thought she would pull away, but she let him draw her down into the furs. She kept her eyes locked on his. Paulus—who had once been a dog, and who had spoken to the dead, and who had winterlong danced on the line between life and death—knew that when she looked into his eyes, she was seeing a dead man she had once loved.

For him, too, she was someone else. The spill of her hair across his chest was the queen's hair, caught in sunlight. Her body moving against his was the queen's body, pledged to another. Her eyes shining in the last light of the fire were the queen's eyes Paulus never dared to meet.

"He died out on the ice,” she said when he asked, a few days later. “Hunting whales."

How long since he had had a woman? Nearly a year, Paulus thought. And he did not want to let this woman go. For her, perhaps longer. She said that her man who died hunting whales was her first, and only. The way she spoke of him made Paulus conscious that he had never felt that way about any woman but the queen, whom he could never have. The queen, with her dying husband and the seneschal Mario Tremano plotting against her. He had come to the ends of the earth, slain a dragon, to realize the futility of his desire. If he could not have her, he could at least save her. This, too, Joy had taught him. Paulus was stronger now. The time was coming when he would have to leave. The dragon's heart and eyes were almost dried. He had carefully cleaned the bits of gum and blood from its teeth, for presentation to his queen. But he was not ready to leave yet. He started obliquely, and over the early weeks of spring more directly, gauging her reactions to the idea of coming south. He described the city, the Keep on the Ridge, the queen, his brother the fool. Subtlety never came easy to him and was impossible to maintain; on the first day in May, he told her that his errand was not yet complete. He must return to The Fells.

"I would have you come with me,” he said. They were tangled in a blanket and in each other's scents. Night was falling. She would never know what it had cost him to speak the words. Having Joy meant acquiescing to the caprice of Fate that kept him apart from the queen he would love. Having Joy meant being a curiosity at court, the guard captain who had once been a dog and now had a wife with callused hands from a distant land, who had never seen silk. But he was willing. He would take her if she said yes.

"I would have you stay here,” Joy said. “But I know you will not. Go."

"In a little while,” Paulus said.

Joy shook her head. “If you know that you are going, go,” she said. “Go to your queen. Go."

"You saved my life,” he said. Meaning that he felt an obligation to her, but also that he believed she too was obligated, that once she had held his life in her hands, she was no longer able to stand back from him and watch him go. Man logic, he thought. And she is lightning.

"I am from this place,” Joy answered. “Someday when I am done mourning, I will take a man from the village, and there will be children in this house. I would take you if you would stay; but if you will not, go to your queen."

There was nothing to say to this. Paulus was not going to stay and Joy was not going to go. She had nursed him back to health, but she did not want him. She wanted a fisherman, a black-haired hunter of moose and caribou, a second chance at her man who had died on the ice. Not a soldier from a foreign land, nearing his forty-seventh year, determined to finish a quest he had begun in honor of a woman he could never have. They both knew what it was to find solace for a little while and then reawaken into the desire for what they could never have, or never have again.

The next morning, Paulus saddled the horse and packed into its saddlebags the teeth and tail of the dragon, the scales, the heart, and the eyes. His sword and shield were broken, his armor shredded, his spear taken to hunt seals, the great sword ruined by a winter under snow. He had a thousand miles to cover with a knife and the sling, and a good horse. Mikal would be glad to see it, but not at all glad to see Paulus.

Perhaps the queen would be glad to see him. Perhaps.

Joy came out from the house with jerky and a fish. “I caught it this morning before you woke up. Your first meal when you ride away from the ocean should always be a fish,” she said. Paulus thought he understood. He swung up onto the horse and did not look back as he rode south, up the hill track toward the mountains.

The problem with a column such as this is that there's never enough room for all the material I'd like to discuss. Books are constantly arriving all shiny and new, but then fall through the cracks because I don't get to them in a timely enough fashion. By the time I do read the book, it can often be far too old to discuss here. I make exceptions, but my mandate is try and stay at least somewhat current.

But good material does get lost in the shuffle.

This is especially problematic with nonfiction books because I rarely read them in one sitting—especially if they're collections of columns or essays. I prefer to dip into that kind of a book from time to time. Because they were written as stand-alone pieces, I feel that's how they are supposed to be read. Taking in one essay or reprinted column after the other seems to lessen their impact. Or at least this reader gets fatigued going from cover to cover in one go.

Anyway, as I've already said, good books get lost. So this time out, I'm going to delve back to have a look at a handful of those that went missing.

Greasing the Pan: The “Best” of Paul T. Riddell, by Paul T. Riddell, Fantastic Books, 2009, $19.99.

The Savage Pen of Onan, by Paul T. Riddell, Fantastic Books, $19.99.

Reading these books reminded me of the mid-seventies when every once in a while a new issue of Richard E. Geis's The Alien Critic would show up in my mailbox. This was in the pre-Internet days of the ‘zines when these little self-published magazines were how we got our news and reviews of the sf field. Geis was wonderfully opinionated, writing lively reviews and essays, all of which could make for even livelier letters pages.

He wasn't alone, either. Those were also the days when Harlan Ellison, John Shirley, and other writers could be counted on to raise a few hackles with their opinion pieces, columns, and letters in various ‘zines.

Although I wasn't aware of him until now, Riddell appears to have carried on that same tradition through the nineties.

Let me say before going any further that these books aren't for everyone. They will seriously annoy some people, and you might be one of them. The columns and essays have been collected from various genre ‘zines (Greasing the Pan) and Riddell's Internet writing (The Savage Pen of Onan). They're at times crude, somewhat confrontational, and highly opinionated, but never boring. That's because Riddell obviously knows his history—both of the sf field as well as general popular culture and the workings of the world at large—so he brings a deeper understanding to his topics than might a less-informed writer.

He's also very entertaining, which is the key to this kind of writing.

The topics range from everything to do with sf—books, media, fandom, cons—through to the general day-to-day we all run into in life, albeit viewed through the eyes of a gonzo journalist. You might not necessarily agree with what he's saying, but there's a good chance you'll nevertheless keep reading because of how he puts his words together and the way his mind works.

Hope-in-the-Mist, by Michael Swanwick, Temporary Culture, 2009, $20.

I can still remember my delight at finding the Ballantine reprint of Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist in 1970. Those were the days when it was almost possible to keep up on everything that was published in the sf field. It was certainly true with fantasy, which wasn't even considered a genre at the time. And you could be assured that while you'd get that sense of wonder from whatever new or reprint book you were buying, it would also be unlike anything you'd already read.

In the opening of Lud-in-the-Mist, the free state of Dorimare might bear some passing resemblance to Tolkien's Shire, but these were both English writers, drawing on the background in which they grew up, and from there the two writers went in very different directions with their stories. I don't need to tell you where Tolkien went. Mirrlees told the smaller, though no less interesting story, of one of the burghers of Dorimare who follows his son into the Dubious Country of fairy after the young man is exiled for eating fairy fruit.

But we're not here to review the novel. Let me just say, if you haven't read it, you should really go out and track down a copy.

Now, getting back to the early seventies, I know I wasn't alone in being intrigued by this woman who in 1926 had published one fantastic (in all senses of the word) novel, but nothing else. At least nothing that diligent searching through the sources available at the time could uncover.

That finally changed in 2003 when Michael Swanwick published a shorter version of this monograph in an issue of Foundation. Swanwick has done a terrific job of pulling back some of the veil, though it's interesting that he was only able to find one photograph—or perhaps he could only get permission to use the one. Nevertheless, Hope-in-the-Mist is a wonderful view into both the life of this mysterious author as well as the alternative literary scene in Europe during the early part of the last century.

Lud-in-the-Mist enthusiasts will also appreciate the lexicon at the back of this book, reprinted from an earlier version that Swanwick had published in a 2005 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction.

The introduction is provided by the ever busy, but always erudite, Neil Gaiman, with a lovely foldout frontispiece by Charles Vess.

I know this isn't a book for everyone, but it's very welcome to those of us who are interested in the history of the field.

The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places, by William Hope Hodgson, Night Shade Books, 2004, $35.

The Dream of X and Other Fantastic Visions, by William Hope Hodgson, Night Shade Books, 2009, $35.

And speaking of classic books, Night Shade continues their terrific series of William Hope Hodgson reprints. These are volumes two and five, respectively. I'm assuming three and four were also published, but I haven't seen copies.

It doesn't matter. If you only buy one book in this series, let it be volume two with Hodgson's classic The House on the Borderland. When you read of the two gentlemen who go from England to Ireland for a fishing trip, and what happens after they find a diary in a curious old house, you won't be surprised that H. P. Lovecraft cited Hodgson as a major influence.

This is darker fare than Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist, and probably not quite as well known as Hodgson's classic The Night Land, but it's an important novel because it was the book that moved British supernatural fiction from the ghost story to the cosmic horrors that Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and others explored so well in the early part of the last century.

It's also just a good read.

Yes, the language and style of prose is a little old-fashioned, but don't let that put you off. Turn off your cell phone, ignore the shiny wonders of your computer, and let yourself slow down a little. I believe you'll soon be seduced by both the story and how it's told. Just don't blame me if, when you finish the book, you feel compelled to go out and buy the other four volumes of this reprint series.

Fantastic Authors: A Research Guide, by Jen Stevens & Dorothea Salo, Libraries Unlimited, 2008, $45.

This is a handy guide to a hundred authors in the fantasy field, featuring short bios, bibliographies, and the thing that many readers will find most useful, “if you like (fill in the blank), then you might like (fill in the blank)” lists. The book is nicely organized, though a bit pricey. It's obviously aimed at the library market.

As to how accurate it is, the best way for me to judge that is to check out my own entry, and except for the line about my recording albums with my friends (I wish I had the time for that), there are no errors. Hopefully this is also the case for the other entries.

The best use for this book is to go to your local library and browse it. With any luck, the “read alike” lists will steer you to a new favorite writer.

Unearthing Ancient America, edited by Frank Joseph, New Page Books, 2009, $15.99.

It was in the mid-seventies that I first ran across the idea that the history I'd studied in school didn't tell the whole story. That was when I started to read Barry Fell's work in books like America B.C. which dispelled the idea that Columbus, or even the Vikings, were the first visitors to our shores.

It's remained an interest of mine ever since, going hand in hand with historical speculation on the real King Arthur that I ran across around the same time in books by Geoffrey Ashe.

It's all a gray area of archaeology. Even in this day and age, the establishment is still unwilling to consider many of the studies that don't agree with their more conventional views of history. What's interesting is how in, say, astronomy, the experts and amateur enthusiasts work hand-in-hand, with the latter often making historic discoveries. In archaeology, the experts will often not even deign to examine the evidence.

Now I'm no expert, but I find many of the alternative views presented here very compelling, and they certainly make for persuasive reading.

Unearthing Ancient America is a great addition to this field, containing a wealth of articles that first saw print in Ancient American magazine. It explores hidden cities, lost artifacts, mysterious stoneworks—in other words, all the interesting stuff. Information is studied through both on-site observation and contemporary DNA forensics.

If you have any interest in this, but haven't been following contemporary studies on the subject, Unearthing Ancient America is a great place to catch up.

The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, by David Hughes, Titan Books, 2008, $14.95.

This is a revised and expanded version of Hughes's 2001 version that I haven't seen so I can't comment on the differences. But it's certainly a fascinating book. Considering the powerhouse producers and directors cited (Stephen Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, Kevin Smith, etc.) it's astonishing that these films were never made. Hughes explains why and as the quote from Empire magazine in the promo material says, “Read it and weep."

This isn't a book for everyone, but if you have an interest in media, and how Hollywood works, you won't be able to put it down.

Jetpack Dreams, by Mac Montandon, Da Capo, 2008, $25.

Back in the September 2008 installment of this column we looked at a book entitled You Call This the Future? which investigated the gadgets and marvels we were promised in the media, but never saw. Jetpacks were one of my favorites, and it seems they were one of Mac Montandon's, too. Except he grew up in the Star Wars age and he views it not with my disappointment that we never got them, but as a fascinating artifact.

Jetpack Dreams (subtitled “One Man's Up and Down (But Mostly Down) Search for the Greatest Invention That Never Was") explores the past and current science of the jetpack. He looks at its history, both documented and clandestine; how it has fascinated Hollywood; and he has traveled the world interviewing other enthusiasts, some of whom were getting their own versions ready to fly at the time.

The book is very readable and entertaining, including a section of photographs of real-life flights and an endless treasure of trivia and information on the subject.

Starcombing, by David Langford, Cosmos Books, 2009, $29.95.

Like the Paul T. Riddell books discussed above, David Langford's new book is a collection columns, reviews, and essays. But these are all culled from twenty-first century sources, and instead of being confrontational, Langford writes with a wry humor, and he has included a small handful of short-short stories.

Where Riddell's books will give you a good view of the sf scene in the States during the 1990s, Langford's Starcombing takes us across the great pond for a look at the UK sf scene in the 2000s.

I have to say that his prose is addictive. Most of the pieces are so short that it seems nothing to read just one more and then find that a couple of hours have gone by and you're well into the book. And of course, having been involved in the field for as long as he has, Langford's a well-informed writer and always has something interesting to say, whether he's writing an essay on James Branch Cabell or the experience of speaking at a Harry Potter convention.

Other Spaces, Other Times, by Robert Silverberg, Nonstop Press, 2009, $29.95.

I don't read them, but I still get tired of seeing biographies or autobiographies of people like Britney Spears on the bookstands. It's got nothing to do with the quality of their work. It's just that they're so damn young. What kind of perspective do they have on a professional life that's run a decade or so? It's too soon.

I'd rather read a book like the one in hand where the author looks back on a career that spans six decades. Robert Silverberg is one of the last giants of our fields, a writer who was here pretty much at the beginning of our field and has remained a working—and successful—participant ever since.

What's also enjoyable about Other Spaces, Other Times is that Silverberg doesn't just focus on himself. Rather he places his career into the context of the field, providing a fascinating insider's view of the sf genre's history over the past fifty plus years.

The book is profusely illustrated and, as you would no doubt expect, written in clear, straightforward prose. Full of personal anecdotes, peopled by other giants of the field who were Silverberg's peers, this is an autobiography that should be on every sf reader's bookshelf.

The Sun and the Moon, by Matthew Goodman, Basic Books, 2008, $26.

Even with the Internet slowly eroding their readership, newspapers remain a popular medium. But today's readers are jaded and distrustful of figures of authority, taking everything they read with a grain of salt. Even a traffic accident can be reported with a slant that might not tell the whole story, or worse, tell the wrong story.

It wasn't like that in the 1830s in New York City. Readership wasn't high, but when people read something in the paper, they usually took it at face value. It was in this climate that the most successful hoax in American journalism took place. That was when Richard Adams Locke wrote a series of articles for the new paper the Sun purporting to describe life on the Moon. He described unicorns, biped beavers, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats living in a fantastic landscape of poppy fields, inland seas, and red-hilled valleys.

And people believed him. Not everyone, but enough that the Sun's circulation skyrocketed and the “penny paper” was established not only in New York but also throughout the nation.

Goodman does a wonderful job of bringing the times to life with an attention to detail that enhances the story, rather than bogging it down. He brings in other stories, as well. The August that Locke saw his articles appear in print was the same month that P. T. Barnum arrived in town, presenting an elderly black woman that he claimed was 161 years old and had been George Washington's nursemaid. We also get to see Edgar Allan Poe's frustration at what he claimed was Locke's plagiarization of a story he'd written a month earlier about a balloon voyage to the moon.

The Sun and the Moon (subtitled The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth Century New York) will especially appeal to readers of Tim Powers, Jim Blaylock, and the Steampunk crowd, but I think anybody who gives the book a try will soon find themselves fascinated with this slice of early journalistic history.

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.

The Manual of Detection, by Jedediah Berry, The Penguin Press, 2009, $25.95.

Private Midnight, by Kris Saknussemm, The Overlook Press, 2009, $25.95

Like a skydive, my friends, it can easily go either way. Exhilaration—or the profoundest of disappointments.

The waters are deep, and you must know them well to navigate safely and reach whatever strange ports and piers you have in mind. There are no maps.

What we're talking about here is writing cross-genre. You know, cats that solve crimes, vampires working at McDonald's, that nice family of spies living next door in Sunny Acres.

Okay, okay, that's not what we're talking about. What we are talking about is the great American genius for quirkiness, for turning off the paved road to walk the rails or find our own path through the brush.

But first, the pre-test. Answer true or false; append extra sheets as necessary.

(1) Crossing genres is a sign of the genre's exhaustion.

(2) Crossing genres is revenant, bringing new life and energy to both.

(3) The genre should remain pure, unadulterated by uptown, lit'ry ambitions.

(4) Any genre loses much of its essential character in getting too far above its raising.

(5) A certain tawdriness is part and parcel of genres that find their direct ancestors in pulp fiction.

(6) Periodic return to its roots is essential to the genre's vitality, that it not lose the fountains of its energy.

(7) The very concept of genre is fictive; a novel of imagination, even a severely arealist one, is no more generic than a coming-of-age novel, a love story, an historical tale, or the standard “literary” novel.

The world is not as we see it. All art that reaches beyond simple entertainment leads us to question received wisdom, to interrogate “what we know” of the world and ourselves, to look at people, social structures, sky and sea, mores and morals, modes of thought—existence itself—anew.

Arealist fiction, be it science fiction, fantasy, or surrealism, by its very abjuration of the visible, consensual world, calls that world into question. The mystery, similarly, addresses gulfs between appearance and reality: mask and character, society's svelte self-image and the violence at its heart, public morality and private corruption. Mystery fiction deals with the irruption of the past, of realities denied, into the present; as much as anything, it is about understanding, about coming to know.

The Manual of Detection is a first novel by Jedediah Berry, who works as assistant editor at Small Beer Press. Former work appeared in Chicago Review, Salon Fantastique, and reprinted in Best American Fantasy.

Of a sudden and quite mysteriously, believing it in fact to be a clerical error, Charles Unwin is drawn from his cloistered life of indexing the world—extracted, one might say—and tossed into the thick of it. He has spent years putting to rights the communiques and reports of the Agency's great detective Sivert, weaving these tatters into coherent narrative. Now Sivert is missing and he, Charles Unwin, is the new detective charged with solving the mystery of Sivert's disappearance.

The Agency, mind you, does not solve crimes; it solves (or resolves) mysteries.

And so, in a world where it is forever raining, a world of sleepwalkers throwing their alarm clocks into the sea, a world of phonographs and steam-powered trucks, Unwin sets off on his bicycle, riding not toward exegesis but into proliferate mysteries. Soon he is suspected of murder, becomes the target of one of the oddest femmes fatales ever to grace a page, has met with a dead person or two perhaps in dreams, is poring over The Manual of Detection with its missing eighteenth chapter, and has discovered that Sivert's solutions to his great cases, “The Three Deaths of Colonel Baker,” “The Oldest Murdered Man,” “The Man Who Stole November Twelfth,” were quite wrong.

And we readers, my friends, despite such elegantly crafted guide-sentences as the following, are as much at a loss as is Unwin.

The revolving doors spun ceaselessly, shunting travelers out into the rain, their black umbrellas blooming in rapid succession.

Despite, too, vivid descriptions such as this, of the Rook twins:

The Rooks regarded him unblinkingly. Their long faces, molded as though from the same mottled clay, could have been lifeless masks if not for the small green eyes set in them. Those eyes were very much alive, and greedy—they caught the light and did not let it go.

And intriguing passages like this one, in which Unwin is studying the Manual:

"He still does not know where to begin,” said the man on the telephone.
Unwin turned. Had he heard correctly? The man with the blond beard stood with his back to the room, one arm resting on top of the telephone, his head bent low. He spoke quietly, then listened and nodded.
Unwin took a deep breath. This was his first hour in the field, and already his nerves were getting to him. He turned back to his book and tried to focus.
"He's trying to focus,” said the man on the telephone.

At a loss because we are truly, here, in another world. Berry has taken to heart art's mandate to make the familiar strange. As he follows Unwin into cascading mysteries, the novel's events and encounters appearing ever more chaotic, nonetheless the half moons and jagged edges of the puzzle begin to lock into place. And the prose, for all its hallucinatory cargo, remains steadfastly focused, precise. Unwin begins as a stereotype, a blank; slowly, against the maelstrom about him, his character emerges.

With its typewriters and phonographs and monolithic gray buildings, Unwin's world—vaguely Londonish, vaguely nineteenth century—shadows, but is resolutely not, ours. And while a battery of high-powered names may cross the reader's mind, among them Kafka and Beckett, G. K. Chesterton, Jack O'Connell, Jeffrey Ford, Jonathan Carroll, and Gene Wolfe, they will cross and be gone quickly: Berry's book is very much an original, and an extraordinary first novel.

In many ways, what Jedediah Berry catches up here is the lucid dream of childhood. Safe within our immediate compass, where everything is known, we look out on a world filled with mysteries. Then one day we're thrown into that world: extracted, evicted, reassigned. The mysteries—if only we stay awake, if only we pay attention—do not end, but we learn to navigate among them. And in so doing, we become ourselves.

That sense of mystery is a hard thing to hold onto, as person or as writer. And unexploded landmines lurk at even the most imaginative novel's end, threatening to pull what we've experienced down toward the ordinary.

Here is the ending of The Manual of Detection.

What frightens us about the carnival, I think, is not that it will come to town. Or that it will leave town, which it always does. What frightens us is the possibility that it will leave forever, and never come back, and take us with it when it goes.
It is taking me now, and I am frightened and alive and very much awake.
I'll try to record it as we go, but that's for another report. This one ends here, on a bridge over the river with the elephants leading us toward what routes they remember, and Hoffman still out there with his thousand and one voices, and Agency operatives already on our tail, and the city waking, and the river waking, and the road waking under our feet, and every alarm clock ringing at the bottom of the sea.

To which I will append one final, well-considered critical remark:

Wow.

Private Midnight is Kris Saknussemm's second novel, following upon the 500-page picaresque, post-apocalyptic satire Zanesville characterized by its author as “techno-theological post-American monster vaudeville.” Here's how Private Midnight opens.

It was what my mother would've called a “BIG floppy” day. As in hot—brutally hot for only early May. I called it ball-sweating, and out of the scorching blue, in struts Jack McInnes. I might not have recognized him if it hadn't been for the Brut 33.

Working the day watch out of homicide, right? With that voice, we know exactly where we are, right?

Well, not for long. Sergeant Friday Land soon shifts to darkest noir. Grisly, worn-out, spectre-haunted cop—check. Chain of horrible, graphic crimes—check. Irresistible, inscrutable bad lady soon to show up—check.

But that's not it, either. And the ground keeps shifting beneath your feet, threatening to give way and swallow you, right up to the final pages.

The cases. Detective Sgt. Birch Ritter and his new partner begin investigating the death of a man who chained himself to the wheel of his Mercedes after dousing it with gasoline, then set the vehicle on fire. Next, a city employee has apparently emasculated himself outside a bar and bled to death. Is there a connection?

The woman. Between those two events, Ritter's former partner gives him a card with an address on Eyrie Street. There he meets Genevieve Wyvern, a weirdly seductive woman who seems to know more than is possible about everything, including Ritter's own nightmare-sown past. As the eroticism blossoms into something far darker and world-embracing, we learn ever more about that past.

The changes. Is what one sees in the world outside the skull a reflection of what is inside? And do events, what we choose, what we encounter, truly change our lives? This is from just past the novel's halfway mark:

I woke up naked in the empty bathtub at 5:30 am. Muscle spasms, hot flashes then rushing cold. A mass of gelatinous fuzz had dried to a crust on my upper body [...]
I tried to stand. I had to grab a hold of the sink and then the door. [...] Even in the old blackout days there'd always been something to take hold of. Now I couldn't be sure of what I'd just dreamed and what I'd actually done. Or what had been done to me.
My bones felt lighter. My face was leaner and softer—and younger looking I thought. The acne scars had cleared. I got on the scales.

Many changes are to follow. And soon Ritter is touring Genevieve's private cellar, where reside, among other earthly delights, the embalmed body of an old lover, Gilberto, the Silkworm; and rack upon rack of tubular molds taken from each man Genevieve has “instructed or been intimate with,” some of them cast in bronze, nickel-plated or jewel-inlaid, others carved from wood.

Some readers will, I'm certain, find components out of kilter, horror elements overshadowing the embedded crime novel, Ritter's interiority arrant; and some will object, on moral or aesthetic grounds, to such full-blown, graphic eroticism. But for me the balance of elements is wonderfully maintained. The detective work runs like a river through the whole, counterposing the weightiness of the fantastic; the biographical elements never go on too long, and fall in seamlessly; the teeter-totter of what is imagined or projected, what real, never falters.

Private Midnight is, finally, a brilliant and brilliantly disorienting novel. Those sounds you hear beneath the floorboard? As with The Manual of Detection, they're the sounds of a writer respecting and rooting deeply into the conventions—finding out what's in there.

In interview, Kris Saknussemm has said: “I would always support the wild, deviant, and visionary work over the quiet, accomplished, and methodical.” And further along, that “the greatest hope for American fiction that I see lies in the direction of ‘speculative’ fiction ... mutant, hybrid forms."

What Greil Marcus termed that “old, weird America” is still with us, scouts. And it is perhaps never more with us than in fresh new work like Saknussemm's and Berry's.

Alexandra Duncan lives in North Carolina, where she works as a youth services librarian. Online, she lives and blogs at ashevilledilettante.blogspot.com/. Her first published story appeared in Rosebud magazine. When “Bad Matter” arrived in our offices, it reminded our staff of some of Ursula Le Guin's fine science fiction stories ... so your editor took the liberty of forwarding a copy to Ms. Le Guin. “Hey, I think you're onto something in that Alexandra Duncan,” replied Ms. Le Guin, who added, “I will certainly look forward to more stories by her.” Should you feel the same way, take comfort in knowing we have another yarn by Ms. Duncan in inventory.

My letter of introduction to the Parastrata crewe came nine months and two days after my father's death. A pair of silent men in handsewn jumpsuits delivered it to his estate lawyer, leaving behind only the letter and a faint smell of dung and ozone. The executor of his estate had it sent by courier to my office at Baghdad University. He sat silent on the other end of our onscreen feed as I read.

"I don't understand,” I said, laying the soft square of paper on my desk.

"Yes, miss.” Mr. Roy, the executor, was all courtesy and high, old Mumbai style. I could make out rows of carefully dusted books and a well-behaved ficus behind his shoulder. “The dialect is unusual, naturally. We can engage an interpreter...."

"I'm well able to read it, thank you, Mr. Roy,” I said, raising my hands to adjust a fold in my hijab and trying not to let his archaic predilection for the word miss chafe me. Shouldn't someone with a doctorate in functional linguistics merit a madam or doctor? Or at least an acknowledgment of competency in her own field? I wondered if my father had mentioned me to his colleagues at all. “What I don't understand is how these people have anything to do with my father."

The executor flushed pink as a grapefruit to his crisp, white collar, as if I had mentioned something profoundly personal and unseemly. “Frankly, Miss Saraih, we thought it was a matter only your family could interpret."

I picked up the paper again. It was strangely heavy, more so than the 20th-century antiquities my students handled in the paleography workshop I gave every spring semester. It was orange-brown and coarse, and had a stale, sweet smell.[1]

[Footnote 1: A selection from Dr. Vikram Hertz's graduate thesis, On the Cultural Idiosyncrasies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, Oxford University Press, 2551: In my investigation of the spacefaring crewes, I discovered an inherent mistrust of modern communications technology among their members. Though they use electronic communications devices for arranging rendezvous with business partners and other matters requiring only verbal agreements, personal letters, marriage contracts, and even catalogs of shipping invoices are always manually printed and signed by the party or parties involved. Communications are then hand delivered through a series of trusted intermediaries. As Dr. Helion del Rios notes in his excellent article on the subject, “Counter-intuitive Means of Communication Among the Spacefaring Merchant Class,” (Modern Anthropology, v214, i9: September 2549), crewes value the relative privacy and perceived reliability of this method of communication over the transparency and ease of use offered by more modern methods. This practice has given rise to a resurgence of interest in the ancient art of paper-making among certain crewes. Though some vessels trade for paper, many others employ crewe members in the task of manufacturing their own paper using ready materials, from recycled cloth and plant products, to animal byproducts or waste.]

The letter read:

So brother doctor,

Want you know some virus come on your Ete. This was meet past, and the fix isn't in it. Mandate say carry copper spooling and opiates your way come next runend, so we come. We listen on how you say these turns, so doctor, but Ete, she lie sleep and talk on you. Think girl must know she meet the Void soon. Right we come. Long promise, so doctor, not forget. Look skyport. We dock til the Decaturn.

—Parastrata Harrah

When I was a child, my father spent nearly two years among the itinerant tribes of spacefaring merchant crewes, completing a field study for his graduate thesis in cultural anthropology. He liked to shock guests at faculty dinner parties with stories of drinking alongside crewe captains and eating fresh-killed meat from the fingers of pale, fire-haired women bearing oxidized metal trays. But he never mentioned a woman named Ete, much less how she might be his.

The executor creaked his chair politely to remind me he was waiting on the other end of the feed.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Roy.” I folded the paper and lowered it to my lap, where he wouldn't see me worrying its thick crease with my thumbnail.

"No trouble at all.” He executed a perfect smile of uniform white teeth.

"The letter ... I'll need some time to think it over,” I said.

"Perfectly understandable,” he said. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something else, then offered another smile instead. “Well, everything seems in order. Please do call me if you require my services again."

"As-Salaam Alaikum, Mr. Roy,” I said, inclining my head toward him.

"Good day, miss.” The executor nodded in return.

I killed the feed and sat alone, turning the paper over in my hands. Maybe, I thought, I could unlock its meaning through the smell. I lifted it to my nose and inhaled. Nothing. Only a vague memory of last winter's visit to a colleague's farm several hours north of the city. But even after I sealed the letter in a plastic specimen bag and dropped it into the front partition of my filing cabinet, the heady odor lingered on my fingertips.

The ship Parastrata had been docked at Bhutto Sub-Orbital Station for five days when I found it. I sent a call ahead to the ship and bought a ticket to the station. On my way to the shuttle, I stopped to buy a copy of The Word of the Sky[2] at a vintage bookshop in the Dubai spaceport. The store had been retro-fitted in the style of bookshops popular when the spaceport first opened: faux-wood shelves, keypad-driven computer terminals, a hologram of a belled tabby fast asleep on the glass countertop. The young man at the counter even had a pair of antique horn-rimmed spectacles balanced across his nose.

[Footnote 2: The book we know as The Word of the Sky is comprised of the major religious poetry and sacred myths of trans-celestial crewes. Though we commonly reproduce it in written form, oral recitation is the authentic mode of transmission from generation to generation. My hosts were at first curious about the text I brought with me into the field, but were later horrified to discover its contents. Their captain requested I destroy my own copy of the book by burning it in the ship's aft waste-decomposition chamber, which I did in the interests of maintaining the crewe's trust and complicity in my research.—Vikram Hertz, On the Cultural Idiosyncrasies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, p. 42. ]

"Nice glasses,” I said as he scanned my card.

He paused with the scanner in his hand and flashed a confused look.

I tapped the bridge of my nose.

"Oh,” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “It's part of the uniform."

I settled into a chair in the terminal to wait for boarding and uploaded the text of The Word of the Sky onto my data assistant. I opened a section at random and scanned the page.

But woman, her mettle's thin,

like copper sails to trap the sun's heat.

Cover us all, she does,

tame the stars’ fury and channel life.

In the air, she floats;

a perfect, iridescent thing.

But when her feet touch the ground,

bare time til she falls crumpled and tarnished.

Women of the air, stay aloft and be whole!

For earth is hard and corrupt,

and only men will bear its touch.[3]

[Footnote 3: The Word of the Sky, canto 2, verses xix-xxix, ed. Florian Moreno, Turner University Press, 2554]

I closed my eyes and smoothed my hands over the cotton fabric of my traveling clothes—gray business suit and a peacock-blue headscarf. I should turn in my ticket, ride back to my office at the university, have a cup of kombucha, and see if I could finish writing that essay for October's edition of Terrestrial Linguistics before the next term began, I thought. Bury the letter and whatever connection my father had with this roving cult of technophobes. I wished my mother were still alive, so I could ask her about those days after my father's return. I wished she and I had not left Mumbai when I was twelve to live with her parents in Iraq. Maybe then my father still would have been alive to receive his letter. Maybe everything would have been different.

I drew in a lungful of the spaceport's cold conditioned air. Whoever Ete was, my father had strayed from the proper line of scientific inquiry and gotten personally involved with the Parastrata crewe. He must have been their patron in some way. Yes, I remembered him coming home with a tom cat and a queen on my fifth birthday, saying they were not for me. He said he was sending them abroad, and my mother had raised her voice behind the oak doors of their bedroom. The next day, he brought home a gray parrot that nipped my fingers and refused to repeat my name. “A belated present,” he had said. I left it behind with him when we moved.

"Flight 792 to Bhutto Sub-Orbital Station now boarding,” the speaker in the chair's armrest intoned, smooth as cream in tea.

I hesitated a moment and the speaker prompted me again. “Second call for Flight 792 to Bhutto Sub-Orbital Station.” I stuffed the copy of The Word of the Sky in my bag, straightened my clothes, and took my place in line to board the shuttle.

A current of humid air rolled across the loading dock as the ship Parastrata's bay doors ground open. The ship's captain, Parastrata Harrah, stood at the lip of the cargo bay, waiting for me.

"Missus,” said Captain Harrah, hiding any surprise at my arrival behind close-knit eyebrows. His skin reflected the pale glow of the station's fluorescent tubes, sallow and translucent as rice paper against a yellowing beard. Something was wrong with his left eye. The iris had turned dark and listed outward, so he stared slightly to the left of me as he spoke.

"Captain,” I said. “Thank you for having me on such short notice."

He grunted in answer, turning back toward the bay. I shouldered my traveling bag and followed him into the ship.

Yellow light pulsed dimly against the cargo bay's alloy walls. My skin turned damp the moment I stepped inside, as if I were visiting the greenhouse containing the replica rainforest at the university. Metal crates and spools of copper wire as wide as hundred-year-old trees lined the walls near the entrance, and in a far corner of the bay, a cluster of goats jostled and bleated behind the gate of a plasticine pen.[4] A sparrow had lodged itself in the rafters and shrieked a warning at us from its nest atop a hanging grid of fluorescent lights. Smells lapped over each other: the tang of metal and offal, ozone burning, and the sharp odors of sweat and new dye mingling with cooking oil and melting wax.

[Footnote 4: Of late, merchant crewes, as they prefer to be called, have begun to specialize in the transfer of particular brands of cargo, rather than accepting any merchandise population centers and outposts wish them to transfer. The Makkaram crewe, for example, has fitted its ship especially for the transfer of volatile gases, and would be ill-equipped to transfer the circuit boards and bolts of silk that are the stock in trade of the Emine crewe. Such specialization reflects the recent increase in the standard of living across the known galaxy, and among the merchant crewes in turn. However, the term “increase” is merely relative. As the trans-celestial crewes’ way of life requires them to remain out of contact with civilization for extended periods of time, they continue to manufacture many of the raw materials terrestrial inhabitants take for granted, such as paper, fabric, dye, and dairy products. Women shoulder a heavy share of the subsistence work among most crewes, eking out a living for their families through heavy labor in dye pits, hydroponic farms, stockyards, and kitchens. Crewes also maintain a brisk trade in livestock among themselves, exchanging such commodities as sheep, goats, cats, canaries, bees, and other relatively small breeds of domesticated animal. A gift of such a work animal would be highly prized, and would be reserved for occasions marking life milestones, such as birth, marriage, or a lasting trade agreement between crewes.—Vikram Hertz, On the Cultural Idiosyncrasies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, p. 23.]

Parastrata Harrah came to a halt at the end of the cargo bay. Several men, with beards as red-orange as their captain's must once have been, stood waiting for us in a dense knot. Children peeked out of the wide doorway behind them, whispering to each other and staring openly at my clothes and skin. They ducked out of sight with nervous giggles when they caught sight of me staring back.

The children, even the older girls, wore their heads uncovered, their hair in every bright shade from copper to blood-orange red. Their skin was as pale as Harrah's. They flashed like fish in the depths of a pond: now hidden, now briefly illuminated in the murky light of the cargo bay. I had no children of my own, no nieces or nephews. I knew they were only doing what children did, but their sudden dartings and pale skin unsettled me. Made me think of ghosts.

Harrah shooed them away and coughed low in his throat. “Missus, so glad you come aboard. Right thinking to speak close. On me and my wives, all say welcome.” [5] He spoke too loudly and looked toward his men, who had folded their arms across their chests. They moved their eyes back and forth between the two of us. One of them leaned his head toward the man at his shoulder and whispered something, all the while cutting his eyes at me.

[Footnote 5: When asked to name a distinguishing feature of merchant crewes, most terrestrial inhabitants note the prevalence of polygamy among the ranks of our spacefaring contemporaries. Although their family structure is key to understanding trans-celestial merchant society at large, the practice is hardly unique in our galaxy, and, as I hope to demonstrate herein, it is neither the sole, nor the most interesting, aspect of their culture. Whether the nature of space travel made polygamy imperative or the pioneering merchants took up such a solitary life to flee persecution for their pre-established social norms is, at present, a matter of some contention in the field of contemporary anthropology.—Vikram Hertz, “The Monogamy Alternative: Marriage and Family Relationships Among Interstellar Crewes,” Modern Thought, v15, i7: January 2553.]

"Soppos, Makam, the goats to lead they own way down some Iota port?” Harrah said, pointing from the group of men to the penned animals behind them. “Less you got no use for pay."

Without a word, the group unknotted and spread out across the cargo bay to finish whatever tasks they had dropped when they saw me coming.

Harrah turned to me. “You, missus, the so doctor's smallgirl, true?"

"Yes,” I said. My mouth flicked up into the practiced smile I deployed whenever someone discovered my relationship to that Dr. Vikram Hertz. I lifted a hand to my head to smooth the folds of my hijab and wished I'd dressed in a more sober color that morning. I felt like a silly girl of fifteen wearing such a bright color, calling notice to myself in a crowd of strangers.

"Pain me coming too late to find so doctor Hertz,” Harrah said. “He talked on you, back when."

"Oh?” I said, trying to keep the question out of my voice. My heart did an odd twist. I didn't remember it, but my mother said when my father came back from his studies, I shook his hand and asked her in a whisper who he was.

"You see why we tell him come,” Harrah said.

"I'm not sure I do,” I admitted. “I thought you could tell me ... in the letter ... what relation this girl Ete is to my father.” I waited, trying to keep my face still and my heartbeat in check, the way I did when I visited the doctor for my annual exam.

"He'd not talk on Ete?” Harrah's voice grated, as if something had gone wrong with its mechanics.

"No,” I started, then saw the look on his face and tried to draw my words back. “Maybe he did. I'm sure he wrote about her. He wrote about all of you."

Harrah's lips folded into a taut line. “Come.” He cut me short and began stalking forward into a long, blue-lit corridor running along the spine of the ship. Pale, red-haired people flitted from room to room along the hall, glancing up with curiosity written across their faces as I passed, then shifting their eyes downward again once they saw the captain.

Five minutes through the door and I had made it all go awry. “I want to thank your wives for their hospitality,” I said, doubling my pace to keep up with Harrah. “I hoped your invitation to my father extended to me, and I might stay a few days to see how I could assist you."

I bit the inside of my bottom lip as we walked and fought the urge to run my hands over my headscarf again. I wished I could have sounded less stiff, but Harrah didn't even seem to hear me. He was staring down the corridor toward a tall, white-haired woman in a floor-length skirt the hue of new grass. Her thin shirt stopped at the shoulders, revealing long, softly wrinkled arms as pale as stripped birch bark. She moved with tiny, graceful steps, so her long skirt and hidden feet gave her the illusion of floating. The woman came to stop in front of us. She dipped a small bow to Harrah, and then to me, without meeting my eyes.

"Missus, here my firstwife Laral,” Harrah said, his voice ripe with pride. “She care of you well, meantime I work my day."

Laral made her bow again and stood aside so Harrah could pass by us. He strode back toward the cargo bay without another look at me. Laral gestured for me to follow her and set off down the corridor with quick, tiny steps. Every twenty meters or so, we passed an open, arched doorway leading to a different room.

"What's here?” I stopped in front of an arch leading to a kitchen noisy with the sounds of metal pots and women's voices, the air thick with steam and the smell of frying meat.

"Not important, not for you, missus,” Laral said, and hurried me farther down the ship's gullet. I caught glimpses of other rooms as Laral sped along. The ship's garden, sunk lower into the floor than other rooms, rich with the smell of wet earth, humming with hydroponic lights and the gentle drone of bees lazing through the air. A dim workshop where men lowered framed screens into a vat of pale brown paste and women raised newly dyed swathes of green and orange cloth, dripping, from metal tubs. Sleeping quarters, dark and empty now in the middle of the work day. And between each room, an arched niche housing a bright yellow canary in a copper wire cage.

"The birds,” I started.

"Them, they watch how the air goes,” Laral explained without breaking step. “When it get some virus, some bad matter, the canaries, they go first to give us know."

The long corridor ended in a closed door, the only one I had seen so far.[6]

[Footnote 6: Crewe members themselves live in common areas open to all. They reserve closed rooms for outsiders visiting the ship for extended periods of time, whether they be traders from another crewe, terrestrial clients, or the rare passenger. Closed rooms are commonly placed at the point in the ship farthest from the general exit, and therefore from the flow of traffic, making it difficult for the room's inhabitants to exit the ship. This imposed isolation of strangers may have evolved from the practice of confining prisoners to a ship's brig. Today, isolation serves the dual purpose of protecting crewe members from what they perceive as the corrupting influence of terrestrials, and the passenger from any harm less enlightened members of the crewe may intend for him.—Vikram Hertz, On the Cultural Idiosyncrasies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, p. 18.]

"Your father stay on this room when he come, back when, missus,” Laral said. “Good for your father, good for you.” She turned the spoked wheel on the outside of the door and pulled it open. A raised mattress covered with a green embroidered blanket took up most of the room, leaving barely enough space for a small wooden table that could fold cleverly into the wall. A clear bowl of bioluminescent fluid hung from the ceiling, casting the same blue-white light that filled the hall. A small, round porthole cut into the wall above the bed.

"My husband say you to rest, missus,” Laral said. “Come eat later, and after you talk on the so doctor."

"Thank you, Laral.” I tried to meet her eyes, but they slipped away from me again, like oil on water. She pushed the door closed after her as she left.

I thought of going after her, asking her to show me more of the ship, but in the sudden quiet, the weight of travel came down on me. I slipped my feet from my shoes, unwound my hijab, and knelt on the bed. Bhutto Station had rotated to give me an almost full view of Earth beyond the cross-hatch of girders jutting out from the station's arms. I put my hand to the glass and traced my finger over the swath of land in the southern hemisphere where my father was buried. North and west, a whorl of dust clouds covered Baghdad, but the air was clear over the caliphates of Russia and the mottled green and white coast of the arctic territories.

I felt a pinch at my heart. For some reason, the view made me think of wandering my father's house—my old home—the week after he died. The Japanese maple in the garden was bigger than I remembered, flourishing to spite the climate. His desk was scratched and not so broad as I had thought. Everything was off, disproportionate, like an antique map of the world.

I covered my head and tried to pray, but my heart wasn't in it. The last curve of Earth's glow slipped past my window, and I lay back on the soft, green blanket to sleep.

I woke to the sound of stifled laughter. I didn't know the hour, but the Earth was out of view and the window looked out on a field of black rich with stars. The smell of hot oil and frying spices hung in the air. I slid my eyes toward the noise and looked out from beneath my eyelashes. Two boys, one ginger-haired, the other stove coil-red, had unwound the door and were peeking through the gap. I lay still, trying to keep my breathing steady and quiet.

"That one look some like the Ava girl,” the taller one with ginger hair said. “Look on that hair. Some black, that's what."

"Maybe she come snatch that smallone ‘way,” the shorter boy said. “Like Shock-Headed Peter with the some long fingers."

"Oh, so! Come, how we say at her.” The tall one laughed. The boys pushed the door closed, and the murmur of voices and cooking smells dissolved.

I sat up and gripped the bunk. The scarf had slipped from my head while I slept. The idea of complete strangers, even little boys, catching me vulnerable, with uncovered hair, made my lungs start to constrict. I forced myself to breathe in and out for a full minute before I got up and changed from my traveling clothes to a tailored, blue, high-collared shirt and dress slacks. I chose a black hijab embroidered with clusters of flowers picked out in black thread I usually reserved for faculty meetings and encounters with government officials.

In the hallway, children darted from room to room, and the adults I had seen working earlier stood about, talking in the arched doorways. A teenage girl openly nursing an infant stared at me as I passed, and she and another girl who might have been her sister began whispering furiously at my back. They both wore their shoulders bare and their hair loose down their backs, but their skirts were so long their toes barely peeked out from below the hem. The girl children and the grown women dressed in the same fashion. A pregnant woman sauntered past with her breasts bare, in the manner of a Minoan statue. I kept my eyes down and worked my way through the crowd, looking for Captain Harrah or Laral.

The dinner hour was beginning. A line of women and small children ringed the communal dining room, waiting for the cooks to serve a rowdy group of men and older boys. I stood against the wall with the women. Some of them stared at me, and I wondered if I should stride forward to stand with the men since, like them, I was strong enough to bear the Earth's touch. Or was my sex the important thing?

"Ah, so missus, here we find you!” Laral appeared out of the crowd, flanked by two younger versions of herself. A faint hint of blush lit the skin around her cheeks, and her eyes flicked up toward mine, then darted away again. “We come looking on the room, but you go."

"Laral,” I said, my throat unknotting. “Sorry, I...."

"You come eat, not wander,” Laral said, her voice firm. “Captain wanting you to speak."

Laral led me to a quiet, dim room, lush with pillows and tapestries shot with copper thread. The captain's private quarters. The captain sat across from me as we ate a dinner of fried tofu and greens, served by his youngest wife. The woman stayed mute as she carried mugs and bowls to and from the table. The captain followed her with his good eye. When we had finished, she retired to a corner of the room with a small hand loom in her lap.

"My Iri,” Harrah said, waving toward the woman. “Clever fingers, she. Long time she work in the dyeing room before I marry her. So pretty fingers not to turn dark with dye, no.” Iri glanced up at the mention of her name, then dropped her eyes again and pulled the yarn taut on its frame, trying to look as if she hadn't overheard.

"Captain,” I said. I meant to press him about his message, the girl, my father, but my voice caught in my throat.

Harrah stopped talking and stared at me. He gestured with an open palm, as if he were pushing a bowl toward me.

I looked down and felt blood creep into my face. I rubbed the hem of my shirt between my thumb and forefinger as the seconds stretched out. “Forgive me,” I said finally. “Go on."

The captain stayed silent, and when I looked up, his polite smile had unraveled. He was staring hard at me. “You want me to talk on Ete,” he said.

I nodded.

"I want none to say on her.” Harrah leaned back from the table. “She some bad matter, that one."

"What do you want me here for, then?” I asked, fumbling my practiced courtesy in confusion.

The captain sighed. “Ete draw all some bad luck on her, even now she gone to the Void.” He frowned. “Was so doctor bring some bad luck on her, on us all. Want you should take it."

"The bad luck?"

"Ete, her body,” Harrah said.

"Her body,” I repeated. In my hurry to meet the ship, I hadn't thought the virus Harrah wrote of would have broken down her immune system so quickly. “You mean she's dead?"

"You read the so doctor's letter. She go to the Void some centiturns back,” Harrah said.

Of course. A hand-delivered letter must have taken weeks, maybe months, to reach my father, and more time again to reach me. I silently cursed the crewes for their ridiculous epistolary customs, and then myself for failing to remember them.

"And you want me to take her body from the ship?” I said, praying I had misunderstood.

"Right so.” Harrah nodded. “All crewes say, when she gone, we come trade again, give brides and animals. But now, no. Now she some bad ghost on us."

My heart was a small animal trapped in my breast. “You haven't buried her or ... or....” I faltered, trying to remember from my father's writings what the crewes did with their dead.[7] I knew there was no special magic in what happened to a person's body after she died, but the inside of me felt shaken at the idea of her lying somewhere aboard the ship, rotting. No wonder Parastrata Harrah felt ghosts pressing in on him.

[Footnote 7: Most Islamic and Judeo-Christian denominations recognize burial ad astra as an acceptable final rite for those who die aboard interstellar vessels. Therefore, both military and civilian ships have accepted this expedient form of burial as a matter of course.—Margaret Niasaki, “Expressions of Faith in the Interstellar Age,” Epistemology Today, v32, i24: January 2579.]

"Not having her out on the lanes with us, less she follow our wake,” the captain said. “Needs put her underground, where she come be dust."

I glanced past Parastrata Harrah and saw Iri sitting still as carved wood. Her eyes were on her handwork, but something in the way she held her head told me she was listening.

"Of course,” I said. “Whatever you need. I'll make the arrangements."

"Right so.” Harrah's cheeks creased into a smile. I looked past him again to Iri, and at that moment, she lifted her eyes. Her glare held a terrible charge.

Harrah snapped his fingers without turning to look at his wife. She broke her gaze and stood to serve a plate of honeyed figs, her face once again blank and placid.

In the half-light of the ship's night, the wheel to my door turned. I sat up in bed, pulling a scarf over my hair in a quick twist and holding it fast with my hand.

"Missus?” a woman's voice called in a hushed whisper.

I breathed out. “Iri?"

"So, missus,” Iri said. Her skin glowed specter-white in the simulated moonlight.

My heart beat hard. “What is it?"

She knelt beside the bed. “You, missus, come some long way to talk on the girl,” she said. “You wanting to see her?"

I had shared a bowl of goat's milk with the captain at dinner, but my throat felt dry, as if the soft tissue of my esophagus had bonded to itself. “Yes,” I said, the word tearing my throat open.

"Come,” Iri said. She rose and slipped through the door, soft as air.

We passed the dyeing rooms, the herbarium, the kitchen, the dining hall, and the canaries asleep in their niches. Iri didn't slow as she strode into the darkened cargo bay.

"Isn't she on the ship?” I asked, hurrying after her.

Iri didn't answer. She turned her body sideways and disappeared into a close passageway formed by two rows of copper spooling, stacked high as three men. I hesitated at the periphery, then realized I had lost sight of her and hurried forward into the gloom.

I caught up with her at a sealed hatchway, the twin to my own door. A thin skein of ice covered the seal, but Iri turned the wheel and pushed the door open with a crack like teeth on glass. The hairs on my arms stood on end as a rush of cold air swallowed us.

"Where are we?” I asked, but the question fell away as my eyes adjusted to the dark. A muted glow of blue light bled down from the incandescent bowls hanging from the ceiling, and by it I could make out the shape of a body laid across a raised wooden pallet. A thin crust of ice had turned it white, like the replica effigies of British royalty at the Mumbai Museum of History. I exhaled white smoke and drew my hijab down further over my face, wishing the cloth were thicker.

Iri had gone ahead and stood with her back to me, next to the figure. I walked to her side, barely breathing, and looked down on the body.

It was a woman, younger than I expected, maybe in her thirties or forties, her eyes closed and black lashes sealed in a layer of brine. She was naked from the waist up, except for a small, iridescent green oval held close to her throat by a tendril-thin metal chain. Lengths of thin copper wire had been twined around her long, black braids, which lay heavy over her bare breasts.[8] Even in the dark, I could make out the tinge of discoloration on the tips of her fingers. A dye-worker.

[Footnote 8: The only time a crewewoman is free from labor falls on her wedding day. The other women of the crewe wash the bride. They braid a thin skein of copper through her hair and weave the metal around her wrists and ankles. On her head, they place a headdress of cloth in patches of orange, brown, green, and white, embroidered with copper wire and inlaid with coins. These, and the data disk she wears like a pendant around her neck, are her dowry. The disc is small, the size of an infant's fingernail. It contains a record of the genetic makeup of the bride's crewe, full genealogical records dating back multiple generations, call codes and signifying marks on their ships. At the end of her life, she will be buried in her bridal vestments, and the data disc passed on to any living descendants.—Vikram Hertz, On the Cultural Idiosyncrasies of Trans-Celestial Merchant Tribes, p. 28.]

"Iri,” I said, my voice cracking the air. “Was Ete ... was she my father's lover or, or his wife?"

Iri frowned and shook her head as if she'd tasted something bitter. “No.” She shook her head. “Never, no."

"I thought....” I closed my eyes and started over. “Who is she, then?"

"Our Ete, she the girl of Maram, what gone to the Void some time past,” Iri said, staring down at the cold girl on the pallet. She reached out and rested a thin hand on the corpse's icy hair. “Maram, she one ‘mong the captain's smallgirls.” Iri paused. “You know these names?"

"No,” I said, guilt filling up my chest again. “I'm sorry, no."

Iri waved my response away, as if she had hoped for a different answer, but didn't expect one. “Maram, when the so doctor come, she ask to weave for him. You understand?” she continued.

I shook my head.

"Laral and me, we them what weave for the captain now,” Iri said.

I stared dumbly at Iri, then her words passed through me like a shockwave, and I remembered a clutch of verse from The Word of the Sky:

Woman, she take up the loom

For a man, one man alone,

Come all the fibers and bind together.

Thread over thread,

Life over life,

To make one life.[9]

[Footnote 9: The Word of the Sky, canto 3, verses ivc-ci, ed. Florian Moreno, Turner University Press, 2554]

"Maram? My father?” I asked.

"Yes,” Iri said. “And them, they make a smallgirl, our Ete. But Maram go to the Void on the making of her. When the virus come on Ete, we try to send word by the so doctor, but word go so slow. Too late, Ete. Too late, so doctor."

"But you knew about me?” I said.

"We know he have a smallgirl and firstwife groundways. When small Ete come, we say so doctor come back, but his duty fall nearer the firstwife,” Iri said. “And Harrah say the smallgirl Ete can no way touch the ground, so she stay."

My vision had darkened on the edges. I rested my forehead on my hands. “My father abandoned her?” My voice sounded far away, as if I were in another room.

"No, no, from the so doctor come gifts, letters.” Iri hurried to correct me. “He send animals, medicine, these things. He care for his Ete, but the other smallgirl need him groundways, so he say."

"And now....” I hesitated. I stared down at the body between us, catching the shadow of my father's profile in the slope of Ete's nose, the hue of my own dark curls in this stranger's locks. I looked up. “She's my sister."

"Yes,” Iri agreed.

"How long since she died?"

"Some centiturns, now,” Iri said.

"How old was she?” I asked.

"Coming on three and some hectaturns,” Iri said.

Ete would have been born around the time I was five, then, the same year my father came back to Mumbai. Something thin and painful snapped inside my chest. I felt the bands holding my lungs and heart in check begin to dissolve. I breathed out.

"Crewe say bad luck, have one child only,” Iri said, still stroking Ete's hair. “Say so doctor bring it to fall on our Maram, his Ete, when both go on the Void so young."

"I'm sorry,” I said, my voice coming out low and gravely. I thought of my own mother in her hospital bed, her flesh sunk and drawn over her bones. Of myself bent over a textbook program on the small table by the hospital bed, studying while she dozed under a narcotic drip. My vision blurred, and I tilted my face up toward the ceiling to keep tears from slipping out of my eyes.

"You got no smallchild, right so?” Iri asked. “Maybe he bring that bad luck fall on you, too, even come you never know it."

I didn't say anything. I watched Iri tending to Ete's body in the half-light. Her face and arms reflected the bioluminescence from the lamps above, making her skin look as if something iridescent were trapped beneath its surface. I looked down at my hands to see if I glowed too, but my fingers were like thin shadows against the light. My face must have been a dark mask to her.

Iri kept her eyes on Ete's body and furrowed her brow. “Has a question needs wondering,” she said finally, without looking up from the corpse.

"Ask me,” I said. My voice came out rough.

Iri looked at me from beneath her pale eyebrows. “What you say on burying Ete groundways, making her come out dust, you talking true?"

"Of course,” I said. “I don't want her lying here in the ice forever. She ought to have a proper burial."

Iri's eyes flashed sharp as they had in the captain's chambers. “Not proper,” Iri said.

"To bury her?” I asked, wondering where my words had gone wrong.

"Putting her ‘neath the ground,” Iri corrected. “Captain say Ete body come out dust, but he don't talk on how her soul come out dust, too."

"But Captain Harrah said she was bad luck,” I said.

"That my husband thinking, him and some new-thinking men,” Iri said. “Not the old way. Not some right way. Not proper, like you say."

"What should we do?” I said. “Tell me what's right and I'll do it."

Iri put her chilled hand over mine. “Send our Ete out proper. Send her meet the sky."

Iri and I carried Ete's body from the ice room and laid it on a wooden transom in the center of the cargo bay. We sealed the door and hurried back to the body, but as we bent to lift it, I froze. A thin white figure moved from the far doorway into the darkened bay. I grabbed Iri's wrist. She froze alongside me, her breathing as low and fast as my heartbeat. I lifted the corner of my hijab to cover my nose and mouth, thinking the dark fabric might hide me in the shadowed room, but the figure moved steadily toward us. Of course, I thought. Iri can't hide, shining like a beacon moon as she is.

I gripped Iri's hand. The pale body moved toward us in the dark until I could make out the hush-hush of skirts and the soft patting of bare feet on the metal floor. Iri squeezed back. The figure formed itself into a woman as she closed the distance between us, and then, through the dark, we could make out the face of Laral.

I tried to speak, but my throat made a choking sound.

Laral looked calmly from Iri to me, me to the cold body, as if she were evaluating the quality of a piece of cloth. Her eyes came back to Iri. “And?” she said.

"Yes,” Iri said.

"Right so.” Laral nodded and stooped to the floor. She raised the front end of the transom, her thin birch arms straining under the weight of Ete's body.

"Come, missus,” Iri said. “We send her now."

I let myself shiver and breathe. My heart regained its rhythm and I followed the women's silent footsteps into the central corridor. We passed the dozing canaries and still workrooms, the unlit dormitories full of the sounds of breath, then wound through a warren of hallways tucked behind the kitchen.

We stopped outside a thick bulkhead door with a key reader mounted to the wall at its side. A round porthole of reinforced, shatterproof glass looked in on a sterile room with a beaten metal hatch incised into the far wall. Laral produced a thin key card from the folds of fabric gathered around her waist, slid it through the latch reader, and typed a sequence of numbers into the keypad. The door hissed and unlatched with an echoing pop. Laral and Iri grinned at each other like madwomen loosed.

The two women carried Ete's body into the room and laid it gently on the floor. The warm air of the ship was beginning to melt the ice on Ete's skin and hair. She looked as if she'd been draped in a net of dew. Each woman bent and pressed her lips to my sister's icy forehead. Laral laid her hands on the sides of Ete's head and whispered low in a wavering voice,

Come the last breath of stars,

Their dust fall

And make us all.

Come the last breath of man,

And dust give back again.[10]

[Footnote 10: The Word of the Sky, hymn for the creation of the universe, canto 1, verses iv-viii, ed. Florian Moreno, Turner University Press, 2554]

"Missus, come.” Iri held out her hand.

I knelt between the two women, Ete's kin, my kin through her; I was only beginning to see. Laral unhooked the metal chain and sliver of green from around Ete's throat. She circled her arms around me and fastened the clasp behind my neck.

I put my hand over the pendant, where it rested on my breastbone. I knew this feeling of crumbling and letting go from watching my mother die all those years before. My face was wet, though I didn't remember beginning to cry or trying not to. I reached up with trembling fingers and pulled the hijab back from my head. The cloth unwound in soft, black folds, nearly as long as I was tall. I spread it wide and laid it over my sister's body. I kissed her head through the cloth, as the other women had done. Then I stood and walked with Iri and Laral to the other side of the bulkhead door.

Iri resealed the door behind us. Laral keyed in a different code, then threw a safety catch. She took my hand and placed it on a small, red button below the keypad. I pressed down. There was no sound on the other side of the door as the outer hatch swung open onto the black sky. We stood with our faces against the glass and watched as the void pulled my sister forward into the waiting net of stars.

For his latest tale, Terry Bisson said that it should be the cover story and “Just in case you don't want to use the standard baby-on-dolphin, how ‘bout: boy-girl scuba divers, hand in hand, nude of course, looking down on drowned Manhattan towers.” Scheduling problems kept us from putting Mr. Bisson's vision on the cover of this issue, but we thought the imagery would serve brilliantly to prepare readers for this one. (Pay no attention to the publisher as he puts a standard baby-on-dolphin image back on the shelf for use on a later issue.)

I remember exactly when it all started, this incredible adventure. It was during The Look of Love, when she wakes up after the operation and sees her young doctor's face for the first time.

This guy sits down in the seat next to mine. “Hey,” he says in a loud whisper.

"Ssshhhh!” I said. She was smiling and saying, “Because a woman sees with her heart, not her eyes."

"I need to talk to you."

"You're not supposed to talk in the movies."

"How do you know? Why not?"

"Just because,” I said. This whole thing was making me nervous. I reached into my popcorn and he grabbed my wrist. It was my turn to say “Hey!” Nobody likes to be grabbed by a total stranger, especially at the movies.

He says, “Look at me,” so I do.

"You look perfectly normal,” I said, shaking his hand off my wrist. “So why don't you return to your seat before I get the usher."

"What usher?” he says. “Look around. Do you see anybody else in the theater at all?"

I looked around. It was a tiny theater, only about ten or twelve seats, and even in the dark I could see that all but ours were empty. The doctor was showing her flowers for the first time, so the bright colors made it easier.

"No,” I said. “There was just the two of us. And you were sitting back there, where you belong."

"Why are there only twelve seats?"

"Beats me,” I said. “Now may I watch the movie, please?” They were walking down Fifth Avenue. She was amazed at the sights. She had been blind all her life, until just yesterday.

"How come there's only one exit?” he whispered. “Aren't movie theaters supposed to have several? Something's not right!"

"Shhhhhh,” I said. They had just stopped in front of Tiffany's. She had never seen a diamond before.

"How come there's no concession stand? No lobby? No restrooms?"

"I already have popcorn,” I said. I rattled the bag for proof. “And I never go to the restroom, I might miss something."

"Miss what?” he said. “How many movies have you seen since you've been here?"

"A lot. I don't count them. I just watch them."

"Do you remember buying a ticket? Do you remember sitting down? Do you remember anything before the movies?"

"No,” I admitted. “Come to think about it, it is kind of peculiar."

"Now you are thinking about things!” He took my hand in his, and I let him hold it. “Stella,” he said. “Something strange is going on here, and I won't rest until I figure out what it is."

His eyes were shining in the starlight (the doctor was showing her the stars) and suddenly he didn't look so crazy after all.

"How did you know my name?” I asked. “How come I know yours is Frank?"

"Beats me,” he said, squeezing my hand. “But you are starting to wonder, to question things, and that's good.” He stood up, pulling at me.

"Whoa,” I said. “Where are we going?” I didn't want to lose my seat.

"The exit,” said Frank. “I intend to try it, to see what is on the other side, come what may. But I can't do it—I can't do anything, apparently—without you by my side."

"Okay, okay,” I said. Oddly enough, I was feeling the same way.

I grabbed my popcorn and followed him to the exit door, which was down beside the screen.

It opened with a little bar, which he knew how to operate.

It opened onto a metal corridor, studded with rivets. There was no street, no traffic, no town. I looked both ways to check.

"Just as I thought: we're in a spaceship,” he said.

"That's absurd. It could be a submarine,” I pointed out. “Or a cruise ship, like in Love Boat."

"Submarine corridors are narrower,” Frank said. “Remember Das Boot? Two people could barely pass. And something tells me that this is no cruise we're on. Come on!"

I followed him for what seemed centuries. He hadn't brought his popcorn so we shared mine. The corridor was covered with moss, and vines popped out of the seams between the rivets. Sometimes we had to fight our way through them. There was rust everywhere.

"This ship, if it is a ship, is ancient,” Frank said. “This leads me to think it's a starship, on a centuries-long journey. Remember Destination: Arcturus?"

I did, but just barely. We had come to a door that said starship command. And just in time. We were out of popcorn.

It opened with a little thumb device. It opened like a lens.

Frank stepped through and I followed. He had been right so far and I was beginning to trust him.

"Just as I suspected,” he said. There were controls everywhere, dials and buttons and screens. On one side of the triangular room were twelve glass coffins in two rows of six.

Frank walked between them with slow steps, shaking his head. “Don't look, Stella,” he said.

But I couldn't resist. Each held a moldering corpse.

"The suspended animation must have failed,” he said. “Except for these two."

The last two were empty, and open.

"Lucky for them,” I said.

"Stella,” Frank said, taking my hand, “don't you get it? Those two are us! You and I are the only survivors. If this starship is on a mission to populate a new world, which I suspect it is, now it's up to us alone, you and me. We are Adam and Eve."

It was all beginning to make sense. “That must be why we are naked,” I said. I had just noticed.

"And why you are so beautiful!” he said.

I covered up with my empty popcorn bag as best I could. He didn't even try.

"But first, there are important questions to answer,” Frank went on excitedly. “What went wrong that the others all perished? And how did you and I survive the disaster? Who saved us? Who—or what?"

"Ship,” said a deep robotic voice. It seemed to come from everywhere.

"Who are you?” Frank asked.

"I am Ship. It was my job to keep you all alive, but I guess I fell asleep. Luckily you two survived."

"Machines don't fall asleep,” I pointed out.

"They do if they can't stay awake,” said Ship. “I couldn't help it. I can barely keep my circuits open even now."

"Try,” said Frank sternly. “We need some answers. How long have we been on this journey, Ship?"

"Six thousand years."

I gasped. That's a long time.

"That's six thousand of my years,” said Ship. “Your years are of course very different from mine. I am a quantum device."

"How long in our years?” asked Frank.

"Five thousand, seven hundred and forty."

"We've been watching movies for almost six thousand years?” I asked, amazed.

"No,” said Ship. “You were in suspended animation, like the others, most of the time. You've only been watching movies, as you call them, for a week or so. It's the orientation period."

"Six thousand years is a damn long time,” said Frank. “The Earth we left behind must be changed beyond all recognition. Our only hope is to push on to our destination. How long before we arrive?"

"You're there already,” said Ship. “It was my job to open all twelve pods upon arrival and sleep-walk you to the theater for gradual awakening and orientation."

"That's why there were twelve seats!” said Frank.

"I fell asleep and ten of you died, as I said. I guess I should be ashamed."

"You guess?” I protested. He didn't sound ashamed.

Ship didn't answer. He had gone back to sleep.

"Some Ship,” I said disgustedly.

"The two of us survived and that's the important part,” said Frank. “Now it's our job to populate the new world that awaits us. I'm looking forward to it.” He gave my hand a little squeeze.

I looked around. The control room didn't look very romantic.

"Not here, Stella, not now,” he reassured me. “First we have to find out where we are, and get down to the surface of the planet that will be our new home forever. The home of a new race of humanity forever. A new beginning."

"Can you work the controls?"

"That could present a problem,” Frank said. There were controls everywhere. He studied them dejectedly. He even tried to awaken Ship, but without success. It worried me to see him losing his confidence.

"Maybe we should get dressed,” I said. “A proper uniform might help."

"There's an idea,” he said.

There was a drawer marked men filled with turquoise starship coveralls, and he pulled on a pair. The women's drawer held only bras and panties.

"I guess this will have to do for me,” I said.

Meanwhile, Frank was already looking better, studying the controls with a broad smile. “This uniform apparently has some kind of memory-fabric,” he said. “For example, I know somehow that this gizmo opens the viewscreen. Let's find out where we are. Are you ready for the first look at our new home?"

I held my breath as he pulled the little lever.

A lens opened on the front of the ship and we were looking down at a jewel-like blue planet suspended in space.

"It looks awfully familiar,” I gasped. “It's—"

"It's Earth!” gasped Frank.

"I have figured it out,” said Frank, minutes later. “Apparently some horrendous disaster was threatening and we were put into orbit so that humanity could survive. Put into suspended animation until it was over and we could safely repopulate our precious home planet, like Adam and Eve, starting all over."

"For six thousand years!” I said, amazed. “It must have been pretty bad."

"Armageddon,” nodded Frank. “Nuclear, biological, who knows? Whatever it was, it must have annihilated everybody, man, woman, and child. Luckily, the Earth itself seems to have recovered. The oceans are blue, and there are large green areas."

"I hope there are animals,” I said. I was hungry. I already missed my popcorn.

"We're about to find out,” said Frank. “There's sure to be a Lander here on the ship somewhere. All we have to do is find it."

Easier said than done. Ship was no help. Frank woke him with a shout and asked him where the Lander was parked, but Ship just replied, “I forget,” and went back to sleep.

"Machines don't forget things,” I said. “He's just lazy."

"They do if they can't remember them,” said Frank. He was beginning to look dejected again.

"Maybe the starship uniform knows the way,” I suggested.

"Stella, you're my lucky charm!” Frank exclaimed, grabbing my hand. He led at a run and I followed down endless corridors tangled with vines. My feet were killing me by the time we found the door marked sally port.

There was no knob.

"Open,” said Frank. It was voice-activated and thanks to the uniform, he knew just what to say.

The door lensed open and there was the Lander, a nifty little saucer with twelve seats, which saddened us but only for a moment. “The two of us will be enough for what it is we have to do,” Frank said, squeezing my hand.

"Where are the controls?” I asked.

There weren't any.

Just then, Ship woke up. “The Lander is automatic,” he said, “pre-programmed for descent and safe landing.” Then he went back to sleep.

"He may be lazy but he is programmed to awaken when we seriously need him,” said Frank. “All aboard!"

I could tell he was excited by the prospect of starting the human race all over again. By this point, so was I, his Eve.

I squeezed his hand and we got in.

As soon as we had settled into our G-chairs, the Ship spit out the Lander like a watermelon seed and soon we were descending through the atmosphere with a faint whistling sound.

Clouds whipped by (there was a little oval window) and we saw a vast ocean below.

"I hope it doesn't land in the water,” I said.

"Courage, Eve,” Frank said, squeezing my hand. “I hope you don't mind if I call you Eve."

"Actually, I do,” I said. I preferred Stella and told him so.

The Lander was slowing and I could see towers ahead. It looked like....

"New York City!” said Frank. “I'm amazed that it's still standing after six thousand years."

So was I. We both recognized it from the movies.

We landed as softly as a snowflake in Central Park. Through the oval window we could see grass and a rock or two. Then a face—a teenager with a funny haircut—peered in, grinned, and disappeared.

"That's strange,” said Frank. “Has a savage or two survived in spite of everything?"

He opened the hatch and stuck out his head. “Oh, no!” he said.

"What is it?” I asked. “Is the atmosphere still good?"

"There's oxygen,” he said. “But there's another problem. Come see for yourself."

By now I knew what to expect. Several teenagers, all boys, were staring in the oval window at me. I joined Frank at the hatch and saw people all around, picknicking and playing radios and throwing Frisbees to dogs. Except for the teenagers, no one was paying any attention to the saucer.

"It's New York, all right,” I said. I knew it well from the movies. “But aren't we supposed to be the only humans left?"

"Exactly,” said Frank. “Something is very wrong here. I can't figure it out."

He seemed at a loss, so I took control. “Come on,” I said. I scrambled out the hatch and he followed more slowly, looking dejected; dismayed, actually.

All of a sudden, people noticed us. A whole crowd followed us out of the park, some of them with cameras. It was the bra and panties, I knew. I figured they thought I was a supermodel on assignment and pretended not to notice them.

It was annoying, though, and I was worried about the cops, so I ducked into Altmans and picked out a nice outfit. The clerk must have thought I was a supermodel too, because she let me have it, even though I didn't have any money. She just kind of stared.

I had left Frank at the door (men hate to shop, I knew from the movies) and I found him standing outside, smoking a cigarette he had bummed from somebody. “Maybe the disaster never happened after all,” he said. “But why has nothing changed in six thousand years?"

Even in the starship uniform he looked confused and irresolute. “Let's get something to eat,” I suggested (forgetting we had no money).

We ducked into a Greek diner and I ordered the burger platter which came with fries. Frank got the Greek salad. Through the plate-glass window I could see New Yorkers bustling along the sidewalks and hailing cabs, men and women together, as if busily rebuking our Adam and Eve presumptions. I was disappointed but not as disappointed as Frank.

Finally the coffee came. “This is the best coffee I've had in six thousand years,” I said, trying to cheer him up.

"This is no laughing matter, Stella,” he said, putting me in my place. “If we're back on Earth after six thousand years, how come nothing has changed? How come they left us up there in orbit for six thousand years?"

"Maybe they forgot,” I said. “Maybe this is an alternate Earth.” I had seen that in a movie, which meant that he had too.

"There are no alternate Earths, Stella,” he said gloomily. “That's just in science fiction."

"At least we survived,” I reminded him.

There was no arguing with that. But Frank was no longer paying any attention to me. He was toying with his coffee and studying the mural on the wall behind the counter. (The badly painted mural, I might add.) But it was the mural, I think, that gave him the answer.

"Remember in Farewell Atlantis, when the dolphin saves the baby?"

"Sure."

"What if,” he said (back to his old self), “the disaster happened six thousand years ago, in ancient times? What if there was a highly developed civilization, capable of putting a ship into orbit, that knew it was doomed and sent an Adam and Eve six thousand years into the future to repopulate the planet? That made this final heroic effort before they were lost under the waves?"

"Do you mean...?"

"Atlantis,” Frank said.

"Sounds plausible,” I said. “But if we are from Atlantis, how come New York seems so familiar?"

"The movies, Stella! The orientation."

"How could the Atlanteans have known what New York would be like in six thousand years?"

"Maybe they were just guessing."

"You are the one that's just guessing,” I said. I was beginning to enjoy thinking for myself. “And besides, if they knew New York would be filled with people, why go to all the trouble of sending an Adam and Eve?"

"I'm still trying to figure that one out,” he said. “Let's get the check."

Getting the check was a huge mistake. As soon as they found out we had no money, the Greeks got mad. Frank tried to explain our situation but that didn't help. Finally they agreed to let him work it off in the kitchen, washing dishes.

Meanwhile I got a job in a Gentlemen's Club (luckily, I had held onto my bra and panties) and we sublet a little apartment just the other side of Carnegie Hall. Frank got promoted to chef (the Greeks liked the uniform, and it knew how to cook) and we even had a little money. I discovered I loved New York. But even so, it was all, still, a bit of a let-down. We weren't even lovers, since apparently the only part that had interested Frank was the Adam and Eve part. He avoided the streets, since the crowds of people depressed him. He spent all his time, when he wasn't working for the Greeks, reading about Atlantis and trying to figure it out.

Finally, he gave up. “There are too many unanswered questions,” he said. He ticked them off but I already knew them by heart. “We have to contact Ship,” he said. “He is the only one with the answers."

That took some doing. The uniform had been washed several times and its memory-fabric was fading, but with what was left (and a lot of hard work!) Frank was finally able to devise a device that could call Ship in orbit. It was sort of like a big telephone.

"Here's hoping he wakes up,” I said.

"Don't discourage me, Stella,” said Frank. “I need you by my side now more than ever."

He let it ring and ring and finally Ship answered. (We're talking about almost a week here.)

Ship's robotic voice sounded just like a regular voice on the phone.

Frank explained his Atlantis theory and Ship said, “You got it about right. The twelve of you were put into orbit just before the big wave came. It was a tsunami. Everything disappeared under the waters."

"Why didn't you tell us all this before?” Frank demanded.

"Yeah! And why all the starship this and starship that stuff, when we were parked in orbit all the time?” I asked. We were on speaker phone.

"The starship stuff was for morale,” said Ship. “They were afraid to spring it on you all at once. And they figured that the truth, that you are from Atlantis, would mean more if you figured it out for yourselves."

"Makes sense,” muttered Frank. “Didn't take me all that long."

"How did the Atlanteans know what New York would be like six thousand years in the future?” I asked.

"They didn't,” said Ship. “They only knew that a civilization capable of TV would develop again in a few thousand years, and they programmed Ship, that's me, to wake you up when the broadcasts reached a certain critical mass."

"And if they never reached that critical mass?” Frank asked.

"Then you would have slept on and eventually died, quite peacefully. But the Atlanteans were right, as you see. Technology is a law of civilization and civilization is a law of nature, apparently. And the same TV that triggered the awakening was also handy for orientation, so you wouldn't be landing in a totally unfamiliar world."

"What TV? We were at the movies,” I said.

"I tried to make it seem like the movies, but it was TV mostly,” said Ship. “Most movies aren't broadcast."

"Just as I suspected,” said Frank. “That's why the credits were so short."

"Some of them weren't bad, though,” I said. “But what I want to know is—"

Frank beat me to it. “What is the point of a new Adam and Eve if there are enough people around to create a civilization?"

"The Adam and Eve thing was your own idea,” said Ship. “The Atlanteans knew that civilization would redevelop. They weren't worried about the survival of humanity. There were plenty of primitive people around, mostly in Greece, who they knew would eventually develop TV and movies and so forth. Even space travel."

"If we weren't Adam and Eve,” I asked, “then why were we naked?"

"That was my idea,” said Ship. “I guess I should be ashamed."

"You guess!” I was sick of him.

"Stella!” Frank whispered, shooting me a look. Then he took a deep breath and asked the million-dollar question: “So, Ship, if I'm not Adam and she's not Eve, then—why are we here?"

"To bear witness,” said Ship. “The Atlanteans want to be remembered."

"But we don't know anything about them!” Frank complained. “Apparently all our memories of Atlantis were erased while we were in suspended animation."

"Even civilizations have privacy concerns,” said Ship.

"And Atlantis is just a myth as far as folks here are concerned,” Frank went on. He was getting heated. “Everything I read about it is just myth and legend or cuckoo stuff. Most people don't believe any of it."

"Until now,” said Ship. “Now the two of you are living proof that there was a great civilization, one that cared enough to send a message across the ages. That Atlantis really existed. That it had a technology and a society sufficiently advanced to send you here. Just tell them who you are, where you came from, and how you got here. Twelve would be better but you two are enough."

"Really?” I asked.

Frank took my hand and squeezed it. “So that's our job?"

"That's your sacred mission,” said Ship. “Your Destiny. Your Destiny is just beginning and now mine is done. I am even now in a descending orbit, about to burn up in the atmosphere. Then will I sleep. We machines don't share your enthusiasm for existence. I don't envy you your wearisome survival but I do envy you your mission. It is a great and a glorious one. Farewell."

"Farewell,” we both said at once, and hung up and ran down into the street. Everybody was already looking up at the meteor flashing across the sky, the brightest that any among them had ever seen.

They were all oooohs and aaaahs. Only Frank and I were silent, looking up at the last fading remnants of the Ship that had borne us here across the millennia to bear witness to the vanished glories of the distant past.

Frank is full of surprises. He took me in his arms and kissed me, for the first time. We were in Times Square.

"I wondered if you were ever going to do that,” I said.

"You won't have to wonder anymore, Stella,” Frank said, his eyes gazing deep into mine. “I need you by my side now more than ever. We have a Destiny to fulfill. A story to tell. One that will fascinate, amaze, and inspire the world. The story of a great people who would not, and now will not, ever be forgotten."

And that's what we've been doing. But it's been tough sledding.

Around here, Matt Hughes is best known for his tales of Penultimate Earth, particularly the stories about Henghis Hapthorn and those concerning Guth Bandar. (Hapthorn fans should know that Herpira, the new novel featuring the foremost freelance discriminator, is due out by the time this issue hits the stands.) Now we bring you a story that is not set in the far future. Rather, this one is set in the here and now ... at least, that's where it starts. Where it goes, well, you'll have to read on to find out...

The demon's sudden appearance, along with a puff of malodorous smoke and a short-lived burst of flame, took Chesney Arnstruther by surprise.

He recovered quickly, however. The existence of demons had been a fixture of his youthful education, which had included two hours a week of Sunday school—taught without pussyfooting by his mother. In adolescence, Chesney had drifted away from old-time religion. He found too many absurdities in scripture. Besides, he found a more reliable truth in mathematics.

But he was still able to recognize a demon when it flashed into existence right before his eyes. The brief pyrotechnics had scorched the top of the almost-finished poker table, so that his first reaction was to say, “Get the blue bling blithers off my table!"

The demon, huge and toadlike, with oversized, clawed hands, revealed daggerlike fangs. “You invite me to depart the pentagram?” it said, its voice like bones cracking.

"What?” said Chesney. An instinct for self-preservation reasserted itself. “No, I invite you to nothing, except to go back where you came from!"

"To hear is to obey,” said the demon. “Just sign here and here, initial there.” It had produced a roll of parchment and used the tip of a claw to mark three places with an X.

Chesney thought the document's author must have learned penmanship from a seismograph, the letters all spiky, scrawled with ferocious violence. Then he managed to decipher the content, and said, “No way! You'd get my soul!"

"That is the standard arrangement. You summon one of us, we do your bidding, you render up your insignificance."

"My what?"

"A technical term, where I come from."

"I don't care if it's the word of the week,” said Chesney. “My soul is not an insignificance. I'm not signing."

"Then I can't do your bidding."

"I don't have any bidding. Just go back to ‘where you come from.’”

"Sounds like bidding to me."

"Well, it's not,” said Chesney, sucking away the blood that was still welling from beneath the nail of his left thumb and gesturing with the hammer in his right hand. “It's a rejection of the entire concept of bidding. Especially if the bidding costs me my soul."

The demon looked annoyed. Chesney did not find it a happy sight, but he stood his ground. “Now, go away."

"I can't,” said the toad. “You summoned me. I'm here until I've done whatever it is you need doing. Even if it takes overtime—for which, you ought to know, I get nothing extra—so sign the agreement and let's get to work."

"I didn't summon you,” said Chesney. “It's some kind of mistake."

The demon slitted its yellow eyes. “Let's go over this. This is your pentagram I'm standing on, right? And that's your blood there, deposited by your hand sinister? And you did say, 'Hodey-odey shalaam-a-shamash woh-wanga kee-yai’ didn't you?"

"Oh,” said Chesney, “now I get it. I can explain."

It all began with Letitia Arnstruther, Chesney's mother who raised him singlehandedly from an early age after Wagner Arnstruther, his father, departed for parts unknown with a truck-stop waitress. A devout woman, Letitia could not abide rough manners or coarse language, in both of which her husband abounded. Indeed, her son had often wondered—though he'd never had the courage to ask—what strange concatenation of events must have occurred to unite his parents, even temporarily, in matrimony.

Yet one thing was clear as he grew from childhood to manhood: the mildest profanity would net him cold looks, even colder suppers, and downright chilly silences. As a defense, whenever Chesney felt the need for strong language, he substituted strings of nonsense syllables. The habit, deeply ingrained at an early age, had endured long after he left home to attend college.

In college, Chesney discovered the sheer decorum of the interrelationships that numbers could form with each other; that became his fascination. Though he lacked the creativity to pursue a career as a pure mathematician, his degree led to a position as a junior actuary in a midsize insurance company. He spent his days calculating the risk of death or injuries for tiny slices numerically carved from the demographic spectrum. His evenings were mostly given over to the second love he had discovered in college: graphic novels, especially those that featured oddly talented individuals who fought crime, freelance-style.

Crunching numbers suited Chesney's deeply introverted personality. Actuaries were not expected to be the life of any party. All the men in his department had grown up as friendless as he. Five of them, however, made a regular habit of getting together at each other's homes to play poker. Chesney was asked to join when one of the five left town.

Chesney never applied his math skills when he played poker. He bet high on weak cards and stayed in for pots he had scant chance of taking; but winning wasn't the point—it was being in the game that counted, the sense of risk and possibility that died if he folded early. This endeared him to the other players, all of whom played strictly by the numbers and thus regularly transferred wealth from Chesney's wallet to theirs.

The game's venue rotated. After a couple of months, Chesney was expected to host the next get-together. But he lived in a cramped studio condo in a downtown high-rise. One wall had a pull-down Murphy bed; the opposite wall enclosed a kitchen nook and was pierced by a pass-through hole with a countertop and two stools. Otherwise, Chesney's domestic arrangements comprised a couch fronted by a coffee table and a chair made of extruded plastic.

There was nowhere to sit and play poker, even if two of the five sat on the end of the Murphy bed. Chesney trolled through furniture-store internet sites, and found five folding chairs that could be stacked in his downstairs storage space. But for a decent-sized poker table he sought in vain. They were all made to accommodate seven large men. Chesney could not fit such a table and chairs into his small living space. So he resolved to make his own playing surface. It would need only five sides, and with some judicious trimming it would seat them all comfortably.

Chesney had the lumber yard cut the plywood top to size and bought ready-made legs from the do-it-yourself department. Along with a drill, a multitip screwdriver, a sheet of green felt, a box of tacks, and a hammer, he tackled the project.

"So you see,” he told the demon, “I was tapping in a tack to hold down the felt. I hit my thumb hard enough to make it bleed. I shook my hand and some blood hit the table. At the same time, I swore—the way I swear—and the next moment, there you were.” He paused to suck the last droplets from his thumb. “It was just a mistake."

The demon gave him a look almost as cold as one of his mother's worst. “You expect me to go back and tell that to my supervisor?"

"It's the truth."

"Where I come from, truth is not a highly prized commodity."

"Well, I don't know what else I can tell you,” Chesney said. “I didn't summon you."

"Yes, you did. Or I wouldn't be here."

Chesney tried to explain. “I did inadvertently say the words that summoned you, but I was not summoning you when I said them. The mere sounds don't matter. There has to be the intent behind them."

"Intent?” said the demon. “That's your angle?"

"It's not an angle. It's an explanation."

"So you're definitely not signing the agreement?"

"Definitely."

The demon spread huge, clawed hands like a giant, toothy toad that takes no responsibility for whatever comes next. “Okay,” it said. “But let me tell you, this ain't over."

And with a second puff of stinking, yellowy smoke and a lick of red flame, it was gone.

"So what are you, some kind of wise guy?"

The question broke Chesney's immersion in Champions of Justice. It wasn't just the question, though; there was also the whiff of sulfur and the gravelly quality of the voice, which sounded as if it had come out of a tyrannosaurus with a sore throat. He looked up to see, standing on the other end of the bench in the minipark where he often ate his lunch, another demon.

This one had the head of a weasel that had been refitted with sabertooth fangs and coal-black eyes the size of saucers. It was the height of a small boy, but its body was a miniature version of a potbellied, heavy-shouldered thug in a pinstriped suit with wide lapels and a ridiculously small tie. It wore two-toned shoes of patent leather, the insteps covered by pieces of strapped-on cloth—spats, Chesney knew they were called; the Penguin wore them in Batman comix—and its stubby, hairy-backed fingers flourished a half-smoked cigar as it waited for an answer to its question.

"I beg your pardon?"

"We don't do pardons, mack,” said the apparition. “That's the other outfit's racket."

"The other outfit?"

The demon poked one thumb upwards.

"Ah,” he said, nodding. “I assume you're here about the mistake?"

"We also don't make no mistakes. So we need to clear this little thing up, see? Real quick-like. Twenty-three skidoo."

"Why do you talk like that?” Chesney said.

"Like what? Last time I was up this way all youse mugs talked like this."

"We've moved on. So should you."

The demon moved closer, put one hot hand on Chesney's shoulder. “We can make you a real sweet deal, pal."

"No."

"You ain't heard the offer yet. It's a doozie."

"You mean, ‘an offer I can't refuse?’”

The demon's weasel lips drew back in what Chesney hoped was a smile. “Hey, I like that,” it said. “I can use that."

"Leave me alone or I'll call....” He thought about how to complete the threat and opted for: “a priest."

The humped shoulders shrugged. “That don't cut no mustard with me, mack. I'll just ankle outta here and come back when you're alone."

Chesney sighed. “All right, make your offer, but the answer's still no."

Even before he got the last words out, the park disappeared. He was standing in a small room, the walls lined with metal doors of various sizes, each with a number and a slot for a key. “Where am I?” he said.

"Swiss bank,” said the demon. “Get a load of this.” It tapped a door and the panel popped open. A metal box slid out and the demon flipped up its top. Inside were stacks of banknotes, jewelry cases, and two ingots of pure gold.

"All mine, I suppose?” said Chesney.

"And that's just for starters."

"Won't the owner mind?"

"Where he's going, they don't take cash."

"No, thanks."

The huge weasel eyes narrowed. “Okey-doke. Then how ‘bout this?"

They were in a dimly lit room. After a moment's disorientation, Chesney realized it was a bedroom—no, he corrected himself, a boudoir. The demon did something and the light strengthened. On a vast, circular bed, strewn with silk pillows and satin sheets, reposed a buxom blonde, eyes closed, lips parted in blissful slumber. She was not wearing much, and what little she did have on only enhanced the strong impression she created. Chesney's exposure to unbridled pulchritude was almost nil; he had to drag his gaze away.

"Whadda ya say?” said the demon, its weaselish eyebrows bobbing suggestively.

"No,” said Chesney, though the single syllable seemed to catch in the back of his throat.

"Oh, picky, huh?"

The blonde was replaced by an even more buxom brunette. She stretched in her sleep, rearranging and simultaneously revealing elements of her anatomy in a way that caused Chesney to emit an involuntary sound. But again he managed a “No."

"We got a full selection,” said the demon, and Chesney was looking at a redhead who would have stopped Titian dead on the bridges of Renaissance Venice.

"No!"

The demon cocked its weasel head at him and moved a finger. The redhead was replaced by a naked, muscular young man with prodigious personal qualities.

"Certainly not!” said Chesney. “You're wasting your time.” He glanced at his watch. “And mine."

"Keep your hair on,” said the demon. “I'll get a bead on you yet.” Immediately, the boudoir was gone and they were standing in an office that struck Chesney as somehow familiar. Then he saw the seal woven into the rug and registered the room's oval shape. “Howzabout it?” said the weasel.

"You've got to be kidding,” Chesney said.

"You'd be surprised."

"Who? Which one?"

"Ones,” said the demon. “But I ain't saying nuttin’ more. We don't rat."

"Take me back."

The demon studied him. “Look, mack,” it said, “we've done moolah, molls, and moxie. What else is there?"

"I don't want anything. Just leave me alone.” Chesney blinked and found them both back on the park bench. The demon brought its outsized eyes closer to Chesney and in the center of each black circle he saw a red flame kindle.

"Listen, buddy, you wanna take the deal,” it said. “You're making a lotta trouble for a lotta guys you don't wanna make no trouble for."

Chesney stuck out his small chin. “I'm not making trouble,” he said. “This is your mistake."

The demon growled and it cocked one stubby fist, saying, “Smart guy, why I oughta....” But when the man on the bench did not flinch, the creature clasped its hands together and put on as conciliatory expression as a befanged weasel could contrive. “Listen, mack,” it said, “I'm just a yob doing a job. I got a dozen demons to supervise and we're busy, see? Everybody's working double shifts and we got no time to monkey around. So, take the deal or take the consequences."

"You don't get it,” said Chesney.

"What is it I don't get?"

Chesney thought for a moment, then said, “It never really made sense to me, the heaven or hell thing. But now you show up and make it clear that the game is played pretty much the way the preachers told it, all those Sundays I was growing up."

"Ah, you don't want to listen to those holy joes,” said the fiend.

"Yeah, I think I do. You see, I make a deal with you, I get a few years of fun down here, assuming you don't reneg based on the fine print. Then, bang, I'm spending eternity shoveling hot coals. Or I turn you down and wind up in paradise forever.” Chesney spread his hands. “I mean, do the math."

"Most people we deal with, they don't see it that way,” the demon said.

"I'm an actuary."

Now the demon looked worried. “Listen,” it said, “you don't know the whole score. I'm trying to keep a lid on this thing, but you don't play ball, she could blow. I mean, sky-high, you get me?"

"No,” said Chesney. “And you don't get me. What did they used to say, last time you were here? ‘Take a powder?’ ‘Amscray?’ ‘Agitate the gravel?’”

He dived back into Champions of Justice. When he heard the clap of air as the fiend disappeared, he glanced at his watch and was pleased to see that no real time had elapsed. He wanted to finish the comic before his lunch break was up. It featured his favorite hero, a mild-mannered, bespectacled UPS courier who battled drug cartels and international terrorists in the bowels of a dysfunctional metropolis. The brown-clad crimefighter was about to turn the tables on a cabal of ninja-trained mujahadeen. “Go, Driver, go,” Chesney breathed.

Saturday evening, he was setting up for poker. He had bought taco chips and salsa and more beer than the mini-refrigerator could hold. The table looked great, the blood cleaned off with club soda. Chesney went downstairs to his locker and came back with the five chairs. Nudging open the apartment door, he was surprised to see a little blonde girl in pinafore and ankle socks standing beside the table.

"Are you lost?” he said.

"I just got one question,” she said. Actually, the voice asking the question came not from the girl but from the fanged mouth of the ruby-red snake that uncoiled itself where a tongue would have been if this had really been a little girl instead of another demon.

He put down the chairs. “What?"

"Just tell me, are you ready to go all the way on this?” said Snaketongue.

"Yes, I am,” Chesney said. “I didn't give much thought to my soul before you guys started demanding it. Now I figure it's worth hanging onto."

The snake went back where it came from and the demon crossed its arms and looked up at him in a way that let the man know he was being weighed up. Pinned to one of the pinafore's straps was a large button with a design on it: a pair of crossed pitchforks against a background of leaping flames. Underneath were the letters IBFDT.

"What's the button?” Chesney said, but the demon didn't answer. It finished its examination, then nodded as if in confirmation of something it had been mentally chewing on, and disappeared. When nothing further happened, Chesney unfolded the chairs and put them around the table. He had just finished when the phone rang.

It was Clay, not the best poker player of the five but the one who made the least secret of how much he enjoyed raking in a pot after Chesney had stayed in too long.

"We're all set here,” Chesney told him.

"I'm not playing tonight."

"Why not?"

"I dunno, I was getting ready, but suddenly I just don't feel the urge."

"We need you,” Chesney said. “Four's not enough."

"Sorry.” Clay hung up.

Chesney folded one of the chairs and leaned it against the wall. The phone rang again; it was Ron, the one who had originally invited Chesney into the game. “I'm not coming,” he said.

Like Clay, he wasn't sick or jammed up. “You don't feel the urge?” Chesney asked.

"Yeah. I don't feel much like doing anything."

Chesney folded another chair. He'd never played three-handed poker, and doubted it would be much fun. Within ten minutes, he didn't have even that to look forward to: Jason and Matt both canceled.

Saddened, Chesney gathered up the chairs and took them down to storage, then followed with the disassembled table. He came back to the refrigerator crammed with beer and the bags of chips on the countertop, opened one of each and sat on the couch. Normally, taco chips and beer were his favorite snack, especially when the former were dipped in fiery salsa, which he had also bought plenty of. But now, after taking the edge off the hunger and thirst he had built up moving furniture, his appetite failed. He poured the last half of the beer down the sink.

What do I do now? He thought about going out and renting a DVD, as he often did on a weekend night—sometimes even straight-out porn. But the prospect had no appeal tonight. He'd really been looking forward to poker; it was the only time he felt a little wild and unpredictable.

He put on his coat and set out for the comics store. A new Freedom Five should be on the rack. He walked with his usual gait, shoulders indrawn, hands in pockets, focused on the sidewalk before him. It wasn't terribly dangerous to make eye contact in this neighborhood, but there was no reward to compensate even for the minimal risk. Nobody would welcome his gaze.

He had not gone far before something about the background noise level penetrated his lonely thoughts. He looked around. This part of the downtown livened up on Saturday nights. His block had two old-fashioned bars and a nightclub where twenty-somethings danced in a trance engendered by a combination of vodka, strobe lights, and more decibels than were good for their chances of not needing hearing aids before they cleared their fifties.

Evening was settling in; the street should have been filled with cars, the bars with drinkers and the nightclub doorway with bouncers selecting from a lineup of the future deaf. The thump of the club's bass kickers ought to have been underlying the tenor honk of horns, with the treble laughter of girls-in-groups topping off the layered cacophony of a Saturday night soundscape.

But the street was quiet: only a couple of cars moving sedately past empty parking spots; the club's sound system silent; no squeals from clutches of girls because there were no girls. The sidewalks—and the bars, too—were practically empty.

Something big on TV tonight? he wondered. Is that why the guys aren't coming? It would not have been the first time he had missed some major node in the mass culture. People at work had stopped asking him how he voted on American Idol.

He pushed at his unresponsive memory. Some pneumatic teenage girl singer was coming to town; he'd overheard a couple of the office clerks talking about how their daughters were planning to get tickets the moment the internet box office site came on-line. Last time, the concert had sold out in under a minute.

But that event, even if it was happening right now, would only account for the absence of teenage girls on the street. But the entire block was almost deserted. And now Chesney let his gaze go farther, down the next block and the one after; he turned to look back the way he had come; and it was all the same—the sidewalks and pavement virtually empty.

Maybe it's something big, he thought. An attack? He decided to forget about the Freedom Five and hurried back to his apartment. But when he flipped on the cable news channel, all he saw was a female anchor telling him that some vote in Congress had not turned out as expected.

The image cut to a reporter outside the Senate who was saying that an earmarks-laden spending bill had failed to receive a single affirmative vote. Even the senators who had shoehorned in pet projects had inexplicably voted nay. Chesney listened for a while, but found it hard to take much interest. He was about to switch channels when he noticed something about the reporter's demeanor: normally, this commentator spoke with an air of forced gravitas, as if the truly important part of any story was the fact that he, the reporter, was deigning to take notice of it; but now he was reciting from his notes as if ticking off a laundry list.

Strange, thought Chesney. The anchorwoman came back on. It was only as he was looking at her that another oddity clicked into focus for him. She was less than perfectly coiffed and made up. She looked less polished—quite ordinary, Chesney thought—and her presentation lacked that quality of being ever so pleased with herself that was standard for TV newspeople.

By coincidence, the next item was about the upcoming tour of the teenage girl singer. The anchor reported that tickets had been expected to sell out almost immediately, but since the box office opened an hour ago, only a few hundred tickets had sold—and those appeared to have gone to indulgent parents and grandparents buying them as presents.

Now the network cut to a live feed. Breaking news: a would-be suicide bomber had been about to blow up a Pakistani police station. Instead, she had removed the explosive vest she wore under her voluminous black robe and surrendered to some policemen loitering around the entrance. And the officers, instead of hustling her inside for a painful interrogation, had sat down with her on the front steps. They seemed to be having a restrained discussion, with much rueful head-shaking and nods of mutual, though sad, agreement.

Chesney clicked through a few more news channels, ending on a live show hosted by a curmudgeon who enjoyed browbeating guests with insults and invective. He saw the pundit slumped in his chair, a bearded professor in the guest spot, both of them shrugging and conversing in mild tones. The usually choleric host was saying, “Of course, it doesn't matter much one way or the other, does it?"

The academic blandly nodded and said, “No, not really."

Chesney switched off. Something was out of the ordinary, though he could not yet put his finger on it. Maybe some new flu going around, he thought.

He switched to the entertainment channels, found a sitcom he usually enjoyed, about a dysfunctional family. The dialogue mostly consisted of characters scoring points off each other with sarcastic putdowns—often scathing and decidedly risqué. In the past, some of the sallies and verbal duels had caused Chesney to squirt cola out of his nose; but tonight's episode seemed like a constant barrage of unnecessary cruelty. He didn't even chuckle, although the studio audience that had been there for the taping went into paroxysms of mirth as the grossly overweight young male lead launched into a sustained rant about his chain-smoking mother-in-law's sexual history.

Chesney switched off. The silence in the apartment seemed suddenly profound: no horns or engine noises rising from the street; no stereos blaring from any of the neighbors; no arguments, either, although Saturday night was prime time for the high-rise's several unhappily married couples to bring their week's disappointments to each other's attention.

He was puzzled. He thought again about going to the comix shop, but the Freedom Five did not lure him tonight. After a moment's thought, he decided that he was feeling let down by the collapse of his first shot at hosting the guys for poker. Or maybe it is the flu.

Sunday mornings invariably meant a call from Chesney's mother, urging him to tune in to some religious broadcast that was filling her with enthusiasm. Most often, it was The New Tabernacle of the Air, fronted by the Reverend William Lee Hardacre. Broad-shouldered, tall, fiftyish, with silver hair that looked as if it had been poured into a mold and let to set overnight, he wore a big gold-and-diamond ring that flashed as brightly as his piercing blue eyes whenever he raised his hands to call down divine wrath on some celebrity whose behavior had caught his attention over the preceding week.

Reverend Billy Lee had started out as a lawyer, a labor-management mediator. Well into a successful legal career, he caught the fiction bug and began penning bestselling potboilers set in the arena of corporate law. Then, while writing his seventh blockbuster, he experienced some kind of spiritual epiphany. He gave up both law and literature to enter a seminary. When he emerged, he launched The New Tabernacle of the Air.

The show always opened with Hardacre at a desk, commenting on news items from the past week. His analysis was invariably sharp and often insightful, especially when it came to spotting hypocrisy among the famous and powerful. The final ten minutes would see the preacher single out one particular celebrity for what Time magazine once called “a precise and comprehensive flaying."

Like a prosecutor summing up for the jury, the preacher would detail the excesses and egotisms of his weekly target then invite his legions of viewers to write to the object of his censure—he always had their actual mailing addresses to pass along—and express their views. Letitia Arnstruther never failed to comply. She liked to read her best passages over the phone to Chesney, urging him to join in the campaign to rid the world of whatever evil the Reverend Billy Lee had unleashed her and her fellow devotees against.

But today, Chesney's phone had not rung. Grateful to be left alone, he got up late and ate a bowl of corn flakes while rereading an issue of The Driver, the one where the hero foiled a plot to kidnap a billionaire's beautiful daughter. But though he had always enjoyed the comix artist's striking images, especially those that featured the amply endowed kidnap victim, this time the tale failed to capture him.

Still the phone hadn't rung. He wondered if something might have happened to his mother, though that seemed as unlikely as if “something might have happened” to the Himalayas. Letitia Arnstruther was the kind of person who happened to others. She herself was as unaffected by the doings of other people as Mount Everest was by the tiny, gasping creatures that crept up to its ice-capped peak. Except, Chesney admitted, when it came to sins committed by persons of note—especially what she always referred to as the “sins of the flesh,” by which she did not mean gluttony.

The few Sundays when she hadn't called had coincided with an exceptionally enrapturing performance by Reverend Bill Lee. He found the TV remote and flicked on The New Tabernacle of the Air, which went out live in this time zone.

He caught the Revered Billy Lee in mid-fulmination: “Lust and fornication, brothers and sisters! Sodom and Gomorrah! The fleshpots of Egypt, the Whore of Babylon! But I say unto you that these are as nothing compared to the recent conduct of the celebrated TeShawn ‘Bad Boy’ Bougaineville."

Chesney was vaguely aware of the name: Bougaineville was the football player who had shot up his girlfriend's Lexus when her behavior failed to satisfy him. Chesney remembered the man saying, “Bleep, I done give the dumb bleep the bleepin’ ride inna firs’ place."

Chesney muted the sound. The preacher was in full cry, his helmet of silver hair shining in the carefully positioned lights so that it formed a halo above his earnest face. His blue eyes flashed, his capped teeth gleamed, his square jaw jutted as he bit off each phrase, while sweat trickled from one temple. Chesney could imagine his mother seated on the overstuffed sofa, knees locked and hands clasped, leaning forward, a flush of pink in her cheeks. TeShawn would be getting a memorable letter from Letitia Arnstruther.

That'll be it, he thought. But then something odd: across the bottom of the screen came a crawl. The program scheduled for this time period is not available. We present a repeat airing of last week's New Tabernacle of the Air. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Chesney clicked the remote. Live coverage of a football game was scheduled to begin just about now. He found a pre-game interview with a young man described as the NFL's most highly paid wide receiver and realized it was none other than TeShawn Bougaineville. The player was tearfully confessing to a longstanding weakness for cocaine and fast women. The sportscaster interviewing him was also in tears. “How awful for you,” he blubbered. The expression of sympathy made TeShawn break down and sob.

"What the hepty-doo-dah's going on?” Chesney said. He switched channels to the Sunday public affairs show, In Contention. But the three regulars were not shouting each other down or trading insults. Instead, they didn't have much to say about anything, and what they did say seemed to Chesney to lack all conviction.

He shut off the TV and went out. He headed for the riverside park, usually a lively place on a warm day like this: couples necking on the grass slopes, skateboarders daring each other to try potentially neck-snapping stunts on the step-seats of the concrete amphitheater; older folks walking in pairs and shaking their canes at in-line skaters whizzing past on the asphalt paths.

But today only a couple of solitary pedestrians stared into the river's muddy flow. A woman sat on the steps of the amphitheater, pensive, chin in hand. Chesney passed the civil war memorial, heading by habit toward the basketball court and the hot-dog cart. He always bought a steaming chili dog smothered in fried onions and ate it on one of the nearby benches, keeping an eye out for female joggers.

But no jiggling bosoms passed by today, and after a single bite of the hot dog he set it down and let it go cold. The man who sold them closed up his cart and pushed it slowly toward the parking lot.

"What's going on?” Chesney said, aloud.

"You talkin’ to us?” said a voice behind him.

He turned. The speaker was one of a group of young men, in their teens and early twenties, whom he had sometimes seen playing ball on the single-basket court: tough guys, wearing clothes that showed their muscles and gold chains, two of them with red bandanas tied around shaven heads. Usually, they swore a lot and played loud rap from a boom box. Sometimes they shouted at Chesney when he went past, words that he only partially heard and always pretended that he didn't.

"No,” he said, trying to keep a tremor out of his voice.

"Oh,” said the one who had spoken, olive-skinned with a sparse mustache, a chain tattoo encircling his neck, “that's okay. My mistake.” They walked away, and Chesney noticed that none of them moved with their customary macho swagger.

"What,” he said again, “is going on?"

Monday morning, the stock market went phut. At least, that was how the cable news phrased its report while Chesney ate his corn flakes.

"Can't remember a day like it,” a reporter said, standing in an empty trading floor. “Two hours since the Stock Exchange's opening bell, and most brokers and traders haven't shown up for work. The only trades are those made automatically by computer programs and some charitable foundations. Otherwise, the place is dead. Nobody's interested in making money."

The bus ride to work was eerily placid. Nobody jostled for first place on line, and Chesney even saw a teenager offer an old lady his seat. The traffic was sedate; the taxis were actually yielding right of way, and nobody ran a red light.

At the office, he had barely settled behind his desk when Ron and Clay came into his cubicle. They were having a discussion about whether their work was morally defensible.

"I think it's ethically neutral,” Clay said. “We're only calculating risk factors for different demographics, so that policies can be designed that balance risk and reward for the company."

"Yes,” said Ron, “but the side effect is to identify some groups that will be denied coverage completely."

They both turned to Chesney and said, together, “What do you think?"

It was not a question the actuary had ever considered. “I'd want to think about it,” he said. “Evaluating people based on risk categories can be seen as extending from a recognition that fundamentally, life is not fair."

"Agreed,” said Clay.

"On the other hand,” Chesney continued, “just because life is not fair, should we reinforce the unfairness? Life, after all, is not a moral being making ethical choices. But we are."

"That's how I see it,” said Ron.

"But if we don't work out the risk factors, the insurance business can't function. Ultimately, nobody gets insured, and that can't be good.” He paused. “It's tricky."

Clay said, “Maybe we could calculate the net benefit-to-misery ratio inherent in the way the industry works now, versus the same ratio if there was no insurance for anybody."

"But how can we be sure benefit and misery cancel each other out?” said Ron. “Maybe an ounce of misery is worth a pound of happiness."

"Plus we have a moral obligation to our employer to earn our salaries,” Chesney said.

"But if we're part of an immoral enterprise, our obligation is to quit,” Ron countered.

"Isn't it odd that these issues never came up before?” Chesney said.

"Well,” said Clay, “we've always been too busy."

"Shouldn't we be busy now?"

"Not if we've been part of a fundamentally immoral system,” said Ron.

And around and around the discussion went.

At noon, tired and hungry after a hard morning's debate, Chesney went to the park to eat lunch. He chewed his sandwich without much appetite. Was it proper for him to eat his fill when billions of people around the world were malnourished? On the other hand, he couldn't do much about the problem if he was underfed. “Not that I have been doing anything about it,” he said to himself. “Maybe I should."

His eye fell on the headline of a tabloid that someone had left on the bench: “Conscience Bug” Spreads. Chesney picked it up and read the story. A scientist from the National Centers for Disease Control was speculating that there might be a viral vector for the wave of morality sweeping the world. Something seems to have disabled our “selfishness circuits,” the report read. Greed, anger, lust, gluttony—all of what used to be called the “seven deadly sins” —have suddenly stopped affecting our conduct.

It's as if, after having spent all our lives with a devil and an angel on each shoulder, none of our devils are showing up for work.

"You are causing a great deal of bother,” said a genteel voice. Chesney lowered the paper and saw a dapper, bearded gentleman seated on the other end of the bench, his hands folded over the head of a black walking stick.

"I beg your pardon?” Chesney said.

"Something I am not often inclined to give,” said the stranger. “And certainly not to you, after all that you have done."

There was something familiar about the face and voice. Then Chesney had it: the man was the spitting image of the actor who had played Kris Kringle in the original 1940s version of Miracle on 34th Street. He had the white beard and the snowy hair, though his eyes did not twinkle as he regarded Chesney with an animosity that seemed to struggle with amused contempt.

"You're not another demon, are you?” the actuary said. “I've told you—"

"Not another demon, no,” the other interrupted. “I am the one they all work for.” And now any vestige of amusement went away. “Until you came blundering along."

"I don't understand."

The dapper gentleman pointed a finger at the newspaper Chesney still held in both hands. The words none of our devils are showing up for work floated free of the page and rose to hover before Chesney's eyes, where they enlarged until they were six inches high. Then they burst into yellow-and-orange flames before dying down to inky smoke that dissipated in a nonexistent wind.

"You,” said Satan, “you ridiculous little man, have singlehandedly caused Hell to go on strike."

It all made actuarial sense. It was basically a problem of numbers and demographics. Hell, like Heaven, was an autocracy. Satan ruled, aided by his inner circle of fallen angels who, before the Fall, had held high ranks within the angelic hierarchy: Thrones and Dominions, Powers and Principalities. Now they were Dukes and Princes of the Abyss, and below them were legions of demons who had been mere rank-and-file rebel angels and archangels before they had all tumbled down to the black-iron shores of the lake of fire. To these fell the tasks of punishing and tormenting the dead who earned eternal damnation, and of tempting the living toward conduct that would eventually bring them to the waiting furnaces and pitchforks.

At first, it had been enjoyable work. The tormentors had fallen to it with a will, creating wonderfully ironic punishments: Sisyphus and his rolling rock; Tantalus's disappearing food and drink; Nero's out-of-tune orchestra ceaselessly playing his most beloved compositions. The tempters, meanwhile, constantly whispered in humanity's collective ear, generating a stream of new customers.

But, as the ages wore on, Hell's success was its own undoing. There were only so many demons. The constantly accelerating intake of the newly damned was not matched by any increase in the legions of Hell.

Back when humankind numbered only a few hundred million, a demon assigned to the punitive battalions was charged with “making it hot” for only a few hundred condemned. Now the world's population was heading for seven billion, and a great many of them—urged on by the corps of tempters, still creatively finding new transgressions to recommend—were crowding through the gates of Hell. A fixed number of overworked demons had to cope with an exponentially increasing quota of the damned. Their productivity had reached its limit, yet the demand for more, more, more never ceased. The fiends were fed up.

Over the past century, into this volatile dynamic had come the first labor organizers to earn damnation. Of course, no true saints of unionism were consigned to Hell; but the labor movement attracted the same range of opportunists and self-servers as any other path to power and plenty. So, although no Joe Hills were to be found in the nine circles, the Jimmy Hoffas were amply represented.

These rabble rousers saw a familiar scenario: their tormentors were overworked and underappreciated. And the fact that there were not enough demons to keep every damned soul in constant misery gave the organizers the leisure to exploit the opportunity. Before long, some had talked their way off the treadmills of red-hot iron. They began to advise their erstwhile tormentors on tactics and strategy.

Not long after, the first delegation from the Infernal Brotherhood of Fiends, Demons, and Tempters approached the Dark Throne to propose that His Satanic Majesty enter into discussions on matters of mutual interest. The demons who carried the messages to the feet of the Adversary were summarily blasted to fragments, but they painfully reconstituted themselves and came back for another try.

Eventually, Hell's dysfunctionality had to be faced. As a stopgap, management negotiated a first contract with the workers. Contracts being a field of expertise in which management excelled, the final terms were not much of an improvement for the members of the IBFDT. But it was a base to build on. All that was needed now, the Brotherhood reasoned, was for management to breach the contract. Then the whole infernal work force would come out on strike, and they wouldn't go back until they had a real deal.

Into this powder keg awaiting a spark stepped Chesney Arnstruther. The toadlike demon that answered his unintentional summons had been called away from its regular duties, pouring molten gold down the throats of misers. According to the contract, it should have been excused from its tormenting quota while it secured Chesney's signature on the contract and carried out whatever that contract required. When it returned without a signature, its supervisor told it that it still had to fill all the misers with gold—and there were plenty of misers.

The demon had balked. Its supervisor, Xaphan, the fanged weasel in spats, had tried to straighten the matter out by getting Chesney to accept the contract. By the time Xaphan returned in failure, the toad demon had gone to its IBFDT shop steward, Snaketongue, and the ranked dominoes had begun to quiver.

Snaketongue argued that the IBFDT member had been exempted from its quota when it was called away. Xaphan countered that the toad demon had brought back no signed contract, so no exemption could apply.

There was no clause in the master agreement to cover the anomaly. Supervisor and shop steward stared at each other for a long moment, then the latter had stepped upstairs into Chesney's apartment to ask the pregnant question: “Just tell me, are you ready to go all the way on this?"

When Chesney said, “Yes, I am,” the dominoes began to topple.

"Now you understand,” said Satan.

Chesney shook his head, not in denial but from the still-resonating impact of all the information that Lucifer had caused to appear in his consciousness—including graphic images that would have given Hieronymous Bosch the collywobbles.

"Now let me show you a few things,” said the Devil.

"You've shown me enough already,” said Chesney, but a manicured hand took charge of his arm and instantly they were somewhere else. It was somewhere high, like a great precipice, but the perspective was odd. Then Chesney saw it: “All the kingdoms of the world,” he quoted. “This is where you brought—"

"Speak the name,” said Satan, “and I'll kick you over the edge.” He shook his shoulders as if throwing off a cramp. “Look out there."

Chesney looked, and whatever he looked at somehow enlarged and deepened until he was transported into a fully rounded scene. He found himself standing in a factory that made computers, but its assembly line was stilled, its employees absent, its huge, dust-free space echoing with silence.

"No greed,” said the Devil. “No one orders goods, because no one wants to make a profit by selling them. And even if they did, no one wants to make wages by manufacturing them."

An instant later, they were back in the high place. “Look,” Satan said again, and Chesney was drawn into another setting: the nightclub down the street from his studio, its booths empty, its lights extinguished, the dance floor deserted, the ranked bottles behind the bar growing dusty.

"No lust. No young men strutting to impress the young women, no young women letting themselves be impressed."

And then a four-star restaurant, chairs piled on tables stripped of their cloths, grills and ovens cold, coolers full of meats and vegetables turning dry and drab.

"I get it,” Chesney said. “No gluttony. And nobody's trying to keep up with the Joneses because envy's turned off, and the leisure industry's flat on its butt because people aren't feeling slothful. And fashion's dead because there's no vanity."

The restaurant disappeared and they were back on the high place.

"And what were you going to show me for anger? Some guy sitting in a cave twiddling his beard?"

"I'll show you anger,” the Devil began, then made a visible effort to restrain himself. “I'm showing you,” he said after taking a deep breath, “that I am woven into the warp and weft of the world. You have undone one of the fundamental fastenings of existence."

"No,” said Chesney, “all I did was hit my thumb and not swear. All the rest came from your side of the house."

Suddenly, Chesney was back on the park bench, but now he faced a lean, dark-haired personage with precisely planed features and a tiny, pointed beard. Satan flexed his long-fingered hands, like a strangler warming up. A faint whiff of sulfur stirred the air.

"We can make you a special offer,” the Devil said. “No fine print, no surprises. Anything you want. President. Movie star. Richest man in the world, Bill Gates for your butler, the Queen of England as your maid."

"But eventually,” said Chesney, “you'd take my soul."

"The customary arrangement."

"But I'm not the customary customer, am I?"

The Devil's brows made a vee. The air darkened. “This must be resolved,” he said.

"Fine,” said Chesney. “I accept your arguments, the warp and the weft, the necessity of sin. I'm still not prepared to give up my soul just to plug a hole in Hell's collective agreement."

The answer was a grinding of teeth.

"I sympathize,” said Chesney. “I mean, I really do. But can't you cut a deal with your employees?"

Satan sighed. “They're being very hardheaded."

"How about promoting some of the worst sinners to be assistant tormentors?"

"Against the rules. The worse people are up here, the worse they have to suffer once I get hold of them."

"Can't you change the rules?"

"Not the ones I didn't make."

Chesney came up with a new idea. “How about promoting the least sinful?"

"We've tried that,” the Devil said. “They lack ... verve."

"Shorter work week?"

"We're already running into backlogs."

"Then I got nothing,” Chesney said.

"If you accept the deal,” Satan said, “I could arrange for you to live a very long time."

"No matter how long it was, eternity will always be a lot longer."

"Yes,” said the Adversary, “and it's growing longer still while we sit here getting nowhere."

"I appreciate,” said Chesney, “that you're not ‘making it hot for me’ up here."

"Again,” was the answer, delivered in a tone that suggested immense anger barely under constraint, “I don't make the rules."

The odor of sulfur sharpened, then Chesney was alone on the bench.

Chesney had always felt, in his innermost corner that he told no one else about, that he was destined for some great achievement. The fact that life had so far offered him few avenues of approach to a grand destiny had not discouraged him. Nor had the fact that the only time he ever mentioned his feeling to anyone—his mother, when he was ten—she had strongly discouraged him from holding his breath in anticipation.

Despite the low-ball cards life generally dealt him, Chesney nourished his belief in secret, first by reading and rereading the biblical tales of other disregarded young men who achieved greatness: Joseph and his triumphs in Egypt, and David the sling-swinging shepherd boy who rose to take Saul's throne. Later, he discovered other sources of inspiration, and further fueled his hopes with the exploits of Batman and the Green Lantern, and especially Ben Turner, who developed his powers as The Driver after handling a mysterious package misdirected from a parallel dimension.

Ever since his encounter with the toad-demon, Chesney had been nurturing a hope that all of this was building toward the realization of some greater plan—with him as its keystone. It occurred to him now, as he made his way back to the office, that his desire to make some singular mark in the world must be pure; the demon that would have tempted him to the sin of pride was instead walking a picket line in Hell. That realization led him to another: if he usually had a tempter, he must also have an operative from the other side.

He stopped at the edge of the park. “Hello,” he said. “Are you there?"

No answer came.

"I'm talking to you,” he tried again, “my guardian angel—the one who counters the demon assigned to tempt me."

Still no answer.

"I know you must be there. And you don't have much to do right now. I could really use some advice."

A small voice spoke reluctantly in his ear. “We're not supposed to be audible."

Chesney looked around but there was no one in sight. “These aren't normal conditions, are they?"

The voice said, “Hmm.” After a long moment, it said, “We're also not qualified to advise. No real training, you see. Basically, we're about countering temptation. A reactive role."

"You mean, whatever my tempter says I should do, you say I shouldn't?"

"And vice versa."

"It doesn't sound as if you put a lot of thought into it."

"Thinking is not encouraged,” the voice said. “That's what got you-know-who into all his ... difficulties."

Chesney said, “Still, you're bound to be more experienced at this sort of thing than I am."

"I'd have to ask someone senior. I can't tread on your free will."

"But I'm freely asking you for advice. You must have heard what the Devil said."

"Oh, yes. I must say it was strange to see him again. I gather he's tied up most of the time in administration, you know. That's what thinking gets you, I suppose."

"Back to my situation,” said Chesney. “What's the right thing for me to do?"

"Oh, no,” said the voice, “I really couldn't say. The most I'm authorized to do is to encourage you to consult your conscience."

"I thought you were my conscience."

"No. You got one when you got free will."

"Well, what about your conscience? What does it say?"

"Don't have one,” said the voice. “No need. No free will."

"Angels have no free will?"

"I think we used to. But we must have got rid of it, after we saw how much trouble it caused for your recent visitor and his followers. Ever since, we just do Himself's bidding, no questions asked."

"All right,” said Chesney, “what is His bidding?"

"Hmm,” said the voice. “He hasn't said anything to me."

"You said you could ask someone senior?"

"Oh, yes. I could ask a Throne, maybe even a Dominion."

"Then would you please do so, and get back to me?"

"If they say I can."

After lunch, Chesney returned to an empty office. It had been empty all morning. He had come to work thinking he owed it to his employer, but now he realized that it was more a matter of following a routine. He had become a creature of habit.

He had disposed of the last few items in his electronic in-basket before lunch. Now he switched off his PC and sat gazing at the blank monitor. Consult your conscience, his guardian angel had said. Since childhood, his conscience had always spoken to him in the same terse and querulous voice: that of Letitia Arnstruther.

"I should go and see her,” he said.

He waited far longer than normal for a bus. When it finally arrived, he took a close look at the driver, wondering if the man had come to work from a sense of duty or from sheer force of habit. In the inert expression on the driver's bland face, he recognized the look of another prisoner of routine.

He was the only passenger as the bus rolled through virtually empty streets, taking the bridge out of downtown and heading for the suburbs. It was an express service, and normally Chesney took it as far as the major intersection where the Buy-Buy mall and a brand-name outlet center faced each other across several lanes of traffic. There he would transfer to a local route for the remaining eight blocks to his mother's house.

But when he had stood at the connecting point for twenty minutes, his transfer slip in hand, and no local bus came, he set off to walk the rest of the way. The first two blocks, passing the parking lots of the mall and outlet center, were an eerie experience. Usually, the vast stretches of asphalt were jam-packed with cars, SUVs, and minivans. But today the lots held only a few plastic shopping bags skirling in the breeze. Stores stood unlit and empty, and roads normally thick with comers and goers were bare.

Chesney felt a rising tide of guilt. The soundless, unpeopled streets, as he left the commercial zone and entered the neighborhood in which he had grown up, were now not just strange—they were an unspoken reproach to him, personally. Because, after what the Devil had told him, it was beginning to sink in that all of this silence and inactivity was the doing, intentional or not, of Chesney Arnstruther.

The dawning awareness brought a question to the front of his mind: Was good the mere absence of evil? On the basis of what he was seeing and experiencing, he wasn't at all sure such a case could be made. He now lived in a world that was shorn of evil, the forces of iniquity having packed up their tools and booked off, but he could not bring himself to say that this new world was good. It was more accurately summed up by a word that he had recently come across in a newspaper article on neologisms that were making their way into updated dictionaries.

"Meh,” said Chesney. “That's what it is. Not good, not bad, just meh."

And that was Chesney's.... He had been going to use the word fault. But he realized that he wasn't prepared to go that far, not yet. But it is definitely my doing, he told himself. He had to shoulder some of the responsibility, and therefore some of the blame. But how much? He didn't know. And, not knowing, he couldn't judge how much effort he was obligated to put out to rectify the situation.

As he walked along, he wrestled with the math, but his mental calculator couldn't come to grips with the ratios. Not enough solid digits to feed into the equations, too many variables. He needed certainty. And thus he hurried his pace. Because, when it came to delineating fault, for cutting through a tangle of who did what and how and to whom, and revealing the hard core of culpability, Chesney knew of one incisive, discriminating mind that could pierce the darkness like the beam of a lighthouse in an old-time cartoon.

Two blocks later, he turned onto the front walk of the house where that intelligence had reigned, constantly sorting moral wheat from chaff—and finding far more of the latter than the former—for as long as Chesney could remember.

He stepped up onto the porch, knocked as he turned the big brass doorknob, and called, “Mother, it's me."

He stepped into the dark-paneled hallway and was immediately wrapped in the house's familiar odor of ancient furniture polish and lavender potpourri. No answer had come, and he spoke a little louder: “Mother?"

"In here,” came her voice. He opened the heavy glass-paned door that led into the parlor and stepped into the space that he most associated with his mother. The scene was as always: the old-fashioned overstuffed furniture, inherited with the house and still dappled with doilies, the wide sweep of a curved-legged coffee table covered in envelopes, writing paper, and sheets of postage stamps.

And she herself was where she so often was: at the parlor's antique writing desk, a relic of the age when Victorian ladies communicated with their world through scented note paper and fine penmanship. Mrs. Arnstruther's handwriting would have come up to those long-ago ladies’ exacting standards, though the characters of the persons to whom she wrote would have raised many a refined eyebrow.

For, in the years since Chesney had ceased to be the chief focus of his mother's days, her primary occupation had become the composition of earnestly scathing letters to politicians, movie stars, musicians, journalists, authors, and academics. These missives included unsparing assessments of their recipients’ characters and activities, along with pointed recommendations as to how they could improve their lives. Should they choose not to take her well-meant advice, she offered detailed descriptions of the eternal fates that surely awaited them.

For all their elegant phrasing, her narratives of impalings, amputations, roastings, piercings, gougings, and rough penetrations into intimate parts that awaited her correspondents made for harrowing reading. But her contemplation of their visitation upon the recipients of her epistles always brought a glow to her rounded countenance.

But now Chesney found her seated at her desk, a letter unfinished before her, her fountain pen idle in her plump fingers. Her cheek rested against her knuckles, and the eyes she turned toward her son lacked their customary glint. “There you are,” she said, as always, though without even a tinge of the usual accusatory tone that allowed Chesney to infer the unspoken completion of the phrase: and about time, too.

"Mother,” he said, “are you all right?"

The answer was a sigh. “I suppose,” she said. “But I seem to lack energy.” She gestured at the paper before her. “I was trying to write a letter to that young woman who gyrates on the television, but..."—she sought for the words—"it just won't come to me.” She put down the pen and leaned back in her brocaded chair, letting her hands fall to her lap. “I feel ... listless."

"Mother, come sit with me,” Chesney said. He took her hands and drew her over to the sofa. “I need your advice."

Normally, such an admission would have set Letitia Arnstruther firing on all cylinders. She gave off advice the way pinwheels gave off sparks. But, as she sat at one end of the overstuffed chesterfield, she remained subdued, and startled her son by answering, “I don't know if I'm any good at advising anyone today. I just don't seem to have much ... oomph."

"I know, Mother. And I even know why,” said Chesney. And not two minutes later, so did Letitia Arnstruther. He had to admit that she took it well. He had been wondering how others would react, but his mother at least absorbed the information with genuine surprise, followed by a welling up of concern for him.

"My poor Chesney,” she said.

He was taken aback. He had never heard his mother express sympathy. Even when she was patching up his boyhood cuts and scrapes, she was more given to issuing instructions on how to avoid their happening again. But he had no time to dwell on the past, so he told her: “I don't know what to do."

"Well,” she said, blinking, “you must do what's right."

"That's the problem I'm wrestling with. It couldn't be right to take the deal the Devil has offered—that would be siding with evil. Not to mention damning my immortal soul. But it's not just about me. While Hell is on strike, nobody's doing any sinning, anywhere in the world. If I give in, I would be responsible for all the evil that would follow once Hell goes back to work."

"So you shouldn't give in."

"But the whole world has come to a stop,” Chesney said. “It turns out that sinning is what makes the world go round. With sin turned off, nobody's motivated to do anything, except for those who keep on out of habit or a sense of obligation. Why, even you....” He broke off when he saw her look of consternation.

"Me?” Her expression took on an introspective cast. After a moment, her eyes widened and went to the piles of stationery and stamps on the coffee table then to the writing desk. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my."

"I'm sorry, Mother,” he said.

"Pride,” she said, as if to herself, then, “no, it's more out of envy. Now, why did I never see that?"

"I'm sorry,” he said again, “very sorry."

She pulled herself together. “Well,” she said, “first of all, you have nothing to be sorry for. You meant no harm. You're trying to make good come out of it."

"But I don't know how."

"And why would you? You're an actuary, not a philosopher.” She seemed to recover some of her old energy. She lifted a spiral-bound notebook from the coffee table, flicked through its pages until she found what she was looking for. “Here it is,” she said and reached for the phone. She punched in a long-distance number and waited for an answer. But when it came, her brows briefly drew down and she put the phone back on its pedestal. “Voice mail,” she said, rising from the sofa. “That won't do. We'll have to go see him."

"Who?” said Chesney.

But she was already through the door to the hallway and her voice came back to him over the rattle of car keys.

"The Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre."

They traveled in the beautifully maintained mid-sixties-vintage Dodge Monaco that Letitia Arnstruther had inherited, along with her house and furniture, from her widower father.

"I'm not sure about this,” Chesney said, sitting on the passenger side of the wide bench seat.

"But I am, dear,” said his mother. “No one knows more about Heaven and Hell than the Reverend Billy Lee."

"But I'm not sure we should be bothering him."

She did not take her eyes off the road. “He's a minister of the gospel. How could it bother him to help someone in spiritual trouble?"

Chesney pictured Hardacre's face as he normally saw it, formed into an image of stern condemnation, eyes lit with what seemed a less-than-holy light as he foretold doom and damnation for the sinners he singled out for examination. “Well, maybe,” he said.

The Reverend Billy Lee's walled country estate was a two-hour drive south of the city. As one of the New Tabernacle of the Air's Saints Circle, Letitia Arnstruther had three times attended social functions in a marquee set up on the long, manicured lawn. No one that Chesney or his mother knew had ever been invited inside the mansion itself.

They passed through an arched gateway and followed a long drive of crushed white stone, parking on a wide apron in front of the doors of a multicar garage. The sounds of the Dodge's doors closing and their footsteps on the pristine gravel were loud in the silence that hung over the place.

"I'm still not sure—” Chesney said.

His mother said, “I'll be sure for both of us."

They ascended broad steps to a pillared portico, and she gave the old-fashioned bell pull a solid tug. From inside, Chesney heard mellow chimes, but the door remained closed. Letitia yanked the cord again, harder and longer.

"I'm coming,” said a voice from within. The door opened. A medium-sized, balding man in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt stretched over a definite paunch looked up at them. “What can I do for you?"

"We'd like to see Reverend Billy Lee,” said Chesney's mother.

"You are seeing him,” said the man.

"I don't like to contradict,” said Letitia, “but I've met Reverend Hardacre—"

"And I don't look like him,” the man finished for her. “Well, this is what he looks like without his girdle, his padded shoulders, the lifts in his cowboy boots and his two-thousand-dollar hairpiece.” He held up one hand and Chesney saw the flash of his diamond-studded, heavy gold ring. “This is part of the act, too, but I can't get it off. Too many steak and lobster dinners."

He peered up at the woman through washed-out hazel eyes and continued, “I don't have my contacts in, but I think I recognize you. Letitia Arnstruther?” When Chesney's mother confirmed the identification, Hardacre said, “You write absolutely horrific letters. I get copies from the lawyers of people I've sicced you onto. They're practically pornographic. I used to not know whether to laugh or wince. Of course, now I know.” He winced.

Chesney saw that his mother was not taking the Reverend Billy Lee's unembroidered revelations well. He thought he had better change the agenda. “Mr. Hardacre,” he said, “I'm Chesney Arnstruther."

Hardacre looked him up and down. “You're not the husband?"

"The son. We need to talk to you."

The preacher shook his mostly hairless head. “I don't think I'm any use to anybody right now, son,” he said. “If I ever was any use before, which is a matter for debate. I've got the conscience bug."

"Yes,” said Chesney, “and it's my fault."

Hardacre looked at him more sharply now. “Then you'd better come in."

He led them to a baronial sitting room: a vast stone-flagged floor scattered with a dozen plush Persian carpets; a high, domed ceiling from whose center descended an iron chandelier with gilded scrollwork; one wide wall pierced by tall, mullioned windows flanked by drapes of heavy, dark velvet; a fireplace that could roast an ox, and above it a life-sized oil painting of the Reverend Billy Lee posed like Charlton Heston's Moses preparing to part the Red Sea. Concealed lighting bathed the portrait in a glow that ensured that the image would be the first thing to which a visitor's gaze was drawn.

Before the fireplace was a conversational grouping of massive armchairs upholstered in ox-blood leather. Chesney thought they were designed to impress rather than to offer a comfortable seat, but he hadn't come for a relaxing chat. He got right to the point. “I've accidentally caused Hell to go on strike."

The reverend's face did not at first register any emotion. After a moment, Chesney saw the man's brows rise and fall, while his lips half-pursed then turned down at the corners in a frown of concentration. Finally, his eyes widened and his mouth half opened, the index finger of his right hand thrust forward to point at Chesney. “Ah,” he said, nodding. “So that's it."

A ripple of relief passed through Chesney. He had been expecting to have to argue his case, but instead found himself in the position of the character in a mystery who provides the sleuth with the one clue that illuminates all the others.

"I've been puzzling over it,” Hardacre said.

"I would have thought you'd have been praying over it,” Letitia said.

The reverend's eyes couldn't twinkle without the blue contacts and the carefully focused lights of his television studio, but he managed a pretty good version of his down-home smile. “Not much point in that, ma'am,” he said. “We kind of have an agreement: I don't bother Him, and He lets me get on with things in my own way."

"So you're not really a man of faith?” she said. Chesney heard nothing in her tone but innocent wonder. On any other day, the words would have been freighted with scorn and anger, but no dark power was stoking his mother's fires.

"That's a complicated question,” the preacher said. Then Chesney saw him put the matter aside as he continued, “but it seems your son has a more pressing conundrum. So why don't you tell me how you got yourself—and all of us—into this fix?"

So Chesney told him, starting with the poker night and working his way up to the encounter with Satan in the park, Hardacre interrupting occasionally to pose small questions. When the tale was told, he bowed his head, steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips, a gesture not of prayer but of concentration. After a long silence, he looked up and said, “I think your mother has indeed brought you to the right man.” He paused and quirked his lips, then said, “Ordinarily, I would say that with a genuinely overweening pride, but I guess the fellow who supplies me with that emotion isn't on the job.

"Even so,” he continued, rubbing his palms briskly together, “no reason why we shouldn't get down to work."

"What can we do?” Chesney asked.

"Well,” said the reverend, “it's been a long time since I've handled one, but first we're going to bring both sides to the table and get us a bargaining session."

"I will not,” said Satan.

"You gotta,” said the red snake protruding from the little girl's mouth. “We've given all we've got. Management has got to cut us some slack."

"I do not ‘manage’ Hell,” said Lucifer. “I reign in it."

Snaketongue folded its arms across its pinafore. Satan examined the ceiling, as if he found it far more interesting than the fuming demon across the table.

"All right,” said the Reverend Billy Lee Hardacre, “That's enough for our initial session. I'd like to suspend negotiations while I explore opportunities for finding common ground. Then we'll meet again. Shall we say two hours?"

"You gotta be kidding,” said the IBFDT president.

"Pointless,” said the Devil.

"You'll just have to trust me,” said Hardacre.

"Why should we?” said the Devil.

The preacher rose and ordered the papers he had spread before him on the table. “Because,” he said, “I know something you don't."

Chesney and his mother had eavesdropped on the bargaining session from an adjacent room, the mediator having left the door slightly ajar. Now as Hardacre came in, Chesney said, “That didn't seem to go well."

"It always starts like that,” Hardacre said. “If it didn't, they wouldn't need a mediator.” He had dressed for the occasion: one of his carefully tailored suits, hand-tooled western boots, the silver-haired toupée.

"What did you mean,” Letitia asked, “when you said you knew something they didn't?"

"Ah,” said Hardacre. He laid the thick sheaf of pages he'd been carrying down on a side table. “That will take some explaining. And first I need to talk to someone else.” He looked at Chesney. “You said your guardian angel was going to seek advice from higher up?"

"Yes, but I haven't heard back. I got the impression it didn't want to deal with me."

The preacher nodded. “I'm sure it didn't. But we can't allow them that option.” He addressed the air. “Show yourself. We need to talk."

Nothing happened. Hardacre sighed. “I can solve this, but you have to buy in.” He waited. “Otherwise, it all stops. And He'll never know how it ends."

An achingly beautiful chime sounded, and a tall, nobly-featured man with hair as blond and fine as corn silk, wearing an impossibly white suit, was suddenly standing before them. “What do you mean?"

Hardacre had his own question: “Throne or Dominion?"

"Throne,” said the angel. “Now, what did you mean?"

"I mean,” said Hardacre, “that He's written Himself into a corner. When that happens, it's up to the characters to save the story."

Chesney thought it was probably the first time the angel's perfectly smooth brow had ever had to wrinkle. “I beg your pardon?” it said.

"I'll explain,” said Hardacre, “over supper."

"I'll be glad,” Hardacre said, serving out plain bologna sandwiches and glasses of water, “when we get this settled. I miss gluttony."

The angel did not partake but joined the three mortals in the dining room. “You were going to explain,” it said.

Hardacre chewed his sandwich without enjoyment and swallowed. “It goes back to when I was writing my seventh novel,” he said. “Halfway, I got stuck. I'd started out knowing what the story was about, but the characters took on a life of their own. They developed in ways I hadn't anticipated. After a while, I couldn't see how to make them do what the story said they ought to do."

"That's not uncommon,” the angel said. “Don't authors sometimes find that the characters take over the story?"

"Indeed. And a wise writer follows where they lead. So I let my characters decide where they wanted to go, and together we made a different book from the one I had set out to write. That made me realize that it's not the writer's story; it's the characters’ story, and the author is just writing it for them."

"Very witty,” said the angel, “but what does it have to do with our situation?"

"The experience,” Hardacre said, “taught me that you can not only learn by reading books. Sometimes you learn by writing one. And that's when I had my revelation, the one that made me give up law and literature, and pursue a degree in theology."

Chesney chewed his almost tasteless sandwich and listened to the preacher offer his argument. The more he saw of how Hardacre took control of the situation, the less the younger man could maintain his belief that he was the central figure in this story. Perhaps he should accept that he would always be one who watched from the sidelines and let more determined people push and elbow each other, or stroke and pull together.

Sure, he had accidentally called up a demon, but now it looked as if he would not be the one to finish what he started. Listening to Hardacre expound to a high-ranking heavenly hierarch, he thought, Hardacre's the hero. I'm just the character who gets the ball rolling, so that Reverend Billy Lee can step in and play the leading role. He looked at his mother, her eyes locked on the preacher, even though there was an actual angel in the room, and wondered if any woman would ever take that much interest in him.

"But you never received a doctorate in theology, did you?” said the angel. Chesney saw that the news came as a surprise to his mother.

"No,” Hardacre admitted, “my thesis was not accepted.” He paused for effect. “But I'll bet it would have to be now."

Again the angel looked perplexed. But Hardacre had turned to Chesney now. “You're an actuary. You calculate the odds of this or that event happening to this or that segment of the population."

"Yes."

"Does your work convince you that life is unfair?"

"Yes."

"Because the guy upstairs sometimes stacks the deck?"

"What do you mean?” Chesney said.

"Take Adam and Eve,” Hardacre said. “He sends two innocents out into a garden where an evil intelligence is plotting to destroy them. Does He warn them about the snake?"

Chesney shook his head.

"Or Cain and Abel. Cain's a farmer. Abel's a shepherd. Cain had to work hard weeding and harvesting crops, while Abel just followed a bunch of sheep around. But when they offer Him their best, He blesses Abel's offering and disses Cain's."

"But when Cain kills Abel,” Chesney said, “God doesn't punish him. He even puts a mark on his forehead to warn people to leave him alone."

"Which makes me wonder,” said Hardacre, “didn't God consider fratricide a punishable offense? When Cain asks, ‘Am I my brother's keeper?’ he gets no answer. A straightforward question of ethics, but apparently it stumps God."

The angel opened its mouth to speak, but Hardacre kept right on. “And then there's poor old Job. His life gets trashed because God and Satan make a bet. His wives and kids are killed, his goods are destroyed, he gets covered in boils, and when he complains, God tells him not to be uppity."

"It wasn't quite like that,” said the angel.

Hardacre waved the objection away. “And there's other stuff. Two different creation stories in Genesis. Or take Noah and the Flood. God doesn't like how His creation is going, so He erases the whole thing and starts all over. Who does that?” Hardacre immediately supplied the answer: “Writers do that."

"Where is all this leading?” said the angel.

Hardacre put up a hand in a way that asked that the question be deferred. “One more thing. The most important clue of all: always the books."

"Books?” Chesney said.

"He always wants us to write books. The Torah, the Gospels, the Koran, the Rig Veda, the Book of Mormon, lots more. Even when virtually everybody was illiterate, he was inspiring people to produce books."

"He wants you to remember what was important,” said the angel.

Hardacre said, “I don't think so."

"You question?” said the angel.

"Of course. We're supposed to.” He appealed to Chesney. “If He wanted us to read a book, why didn't He just write one and have it delivered to us at birth? Or he could just put the information into our heads"—he looked at the Throne—"the way he did with you. Why all the different versions, the contradictions? And all written by us?"

"I assume you have an answer?” said the angel.

"I do,” said the preacher. “But when I defended it as my doctoral dissertation, I got shouted at.” He came back to Chesney. “But all the different books are a collective clue—what critics call a recurring motif."

"But what does the clue tell us?” Chesney said.

"The obvious,” said Hardacre. “All of this, all of us"—he gestured broadly to include all creation—"is His book. And He's writing it to learn something."

"He is what He is,” said the angel. “What does He have to learn?"

Hardacre gave the heavenly visitor a gentle smile. “Morality, of course."

"To quote you,” said the angel, “'I don't think so.’”

"You don't think at all,” said Hardacre. “You were created, ready-made and perfect, to already know everything you need to know. What He needs you to know. You immortals—including the ones down below—are not characters in this story. The thing about characters is that they change. You don't change. You're just fixed factors, background forces, like weather or gravity.

"That's why we have free will and you don't. We're the ones who have to think. We have to work it out, move the story forward, make it come right in the end. The question is: What is ‘right in the end'? What's the point of all this?"

Chesney's mother spoke. “To earn salvation."

The preacher shook his head. “We wouldn't need salvation if He hadn't given us free will, then sicced the Devil on us. Besides, why does He keep changing the rules? We used to be damned for eating pork and lobster, or wearing cloth made of two different fabrics—then all at once that's okay. First we could have lots of wives and concubines, then we could only have one, then He changed his mind again and told Mohammed he could have four. For centuries, ‘an eye for an eye’ was fair play, then suddenly it's ‘forgive them their trespasses.’”

Chesney said, “You're saying He's trying to figure out what's right? Through us?"

Hardacre poked a finger in his direction. “Ahah."

"But what about all those people who go to Hell?” said Chesney. “God lets them fail and suffer so that He can learn something?"

"You can't make a story without conflict,” the preacher said. “Conflict brings suffering. He's not writing a Care Bears episode."

"But that's cruel,” Letitia.

"It's the price we pay. And that He pays, too. Because He's partly responsible for our screw-ups."

"It's still cruel."

"Yes,” said Hardacre, “but it's not real. We're not real. And when the story is all told, when He writes ‘The End’ at the bottom of the last page, then all this will wrap up. Hell, Heaven, angels, devils, saints, sinners—it will be as if we never were. The story will be told."

"Then what happens to us all?” Chesney said.

"We go back where we came from."

"But where's that?"

Hardacre tapped his temple. “Where do any characters come from?"

"You're saying,” the angel said, “that he has generated us as characters in a book He is writing, and when it is finished, we will all be reabsorbed into Him?"

"You have a problem with that?” Hardacre said. “What did you think would happen in the end?"

"The world will end. All will be judged. The good will live in Heaven; the bad will go to Hell. You have read the Book of Revelation?"

"Oh, yes, just as I have read Zarathustra's writings and the Norse sagas,” said the preacher. “They're like the two Adam and Eve stories—early drafts. Since then, the story's moved on."

"It's a remarkable theory,” said the angel. “But I'm not surprised that the seminary rejected it."

"Angels are never surprised,” said Hardacre. “How could you be when you know everything you need to know? Just as you won't be surprised when my theory turns out to be correct."

"You believe you'll prove it?"

"In about an hour,” said Hardacre. “When we resume negotiations."

"What is that doing here?” said Satan. For all Hell's reputation as a hot place, the look he gave the Throne could freeze a bonfire.

"He's part of the solution,” said Hardacre.

"No,” said the angel, “I have no authority to intervene."

"You will have,” Hardacre said. “Now, I'd like to put a proposal on the table."

The Devil turned his head so that he did not have to look at the Throne. His sharp-pointed fingernails drummed impatiently on the polished wood.

"I've asked Chesney Arnstruther to be present because he is obviously part of the situation,” Hardacre said.

"Very well,” said Satan.

"Fine by me,” said Snaketongue.

"And Chesney's mother is here, well, mainly because she's his mother."

The Devil made a gesture of irritation but offered no objection. The IBFDT president shrugged its pinafore straps.

"Now, as I understand it,” Hardacre said, “this dispute grows out of two roots: one, the number of sinners to be punished in Hell has grown exponentially and continues to increase, putting limits on your work force's productivity; two, labor organizers have introduced collective action."

Hearing no contradictions, he went on, “Shall I assume that under no circumstances would you countenance doing less tempting, leading to a decrease in the intake of sinners?"

"Not acceptable,” said the Devil.

"So we cannot address supply, and must deal with productivity. I have a suggestion: down among your ... population, in addition to labor organizers, you're bound to have some public relations consultants."

"Quite a few,” said Lucifer. “It's a field that rewards amoral inventiveness."

Hardacre said, “I suggest you pluck a few out of the furnace and have them advise you on the concept of ‘opinion leaders.’ Briefly explained, they are those individuals within any community not officially recognized as leaders but whose actions and views carry more weight with their neighbors than do the deeds and words of the bulk of the population. PR practitioners have developed sophisticated techniques for identifying them. By concentrating your tempters on opinion leaders, you need put less effort into the rank and file."

Satan stroked his pointed beard. “Freeing up tempters to join the punishment corps?"

"Exactly.” Hardacre turned to the IBFDT president. “Would you have any problem with a reallocation of the work force?"

"Would seniority transpose from one corps to the other?” the demon said. Hardacre looked to the Devil, who nodded. “Then no problem,” Snaketongue said.

"But your proposal gives an advantage to ... the other side,” said Satan, flicking a hate-filled glance at the Throne. “They already have superiority of numbers."

The angel said nothing, but a tiny smile moved the corners of its perfect lips. Satan growled.

Hardacre spoke before the rancor could escalate. “Suppose the other side withdrew some of its effort, concentrating on the same opinion leaders, easing up on humanity's rank and file?"

The angel gently stirred the air with two elegant fingers. “We will not do that."

"You will,” said Hardacre, “if my theory is right."

"What theory?” said the Devil and the IBFDT president.

"He thinks,” said the Throne, “that we are all characters in a book that Himself is writing."

The demon vibrated its snake-tongue against its little-girl lips, making a unique sound of scornful disbelief. The Devil made a small sound and rolled his coal-black eyes.

"If I'm right,” said Hardacre, “we'll know soon."

"How?” said all three of the non-mortals at once.

"We'll know because the solution that you"—he nodded to the angel—"just found unacceptable will suddenly become acceptable. Just as there once was a hard shell over the Earth called the firmament, and then there wasn't. Just as it was once possible to build a tower or put up a ladder that would reach to Heaven, and then it wasn't."

"I don't remember the firmament, and the Tower of Babel is just a myth,” said the angel.

"Because He doesn't need you to remember,” said Hardacre. “But the firmament and the tower, the Sun that could be stopped in the sky, they were as real as this room. Then they were revised out of subsequent drafts. He keeps rewriting back chapters as he goes forward. I used to do that myself."

"How could you know this if we don't?” said Satan.

"Characters know what they need to know. That's how the internal dynamics of story-making work."

The Devil gave the mediator a hard look. Chesney admired the way Hardacre stood up under the power of that stare. “I find your idea offensive,” Satan said, “not to mention ridiculous."

"If I'm wrong, we all just sit here and the story comes to a dead stop. If I'm right, we make a deal and move on."

They sat. The only sound in the room was the staccato drumming of Satan's fingers on the tabletop. The wood was now gouged and scorched.

After a while, Reverend Billy Lee said, to no one in particular, “When you've written yourself into a corner, remove a wall."

They waited. The Devil's drumming grew more impatient. Smoke rose from beneath his fingertips. He opened his mouth to speak.

And the Throne said, “We accept."

Satan cast the angel a suspicious glance. “You said the proposal was unacceptable."

"Did I? I don't recall."

The Devil blinked and his expression took on an inward cast, as if he had just lost the train of his thought. “What just happened?"

"I think we got a deal,” the IBFDT president said.

Hardacre said nothing. But Chesney had never seen a man look so happy.

"But you cannot tell anyone,” said the angel.

It seemed to Chesney that Hardacre was about to argue. Then he saw a sequence of thoughts cross the preacher's face, the last one being acceptance. “Yes, that's fair,” he said.

"And you,” the angel said to Satan, “may not tempt him to tell.” Satan's brows clouded, and the room suddenly smelled of sulfur, but the angel went on implacably, “or the deal's off."

The Devil's lips drew down in a grim frown. For a long moment, the issue hung in the balance. Then he said, “Not acceptable."

"Of course,” said the Throne. “It's your pride. Your damnable pride."

"As it always was,” said Lucifer, “and always will be."

Hardacre spoke. “Perhaps if the instigator of the crisis offered an apology."

Satan raised an eyebrow. “An abject apology?"

"But he is blameless,” said the Throne.

"All the better,” said Hardacre.

Satan considered it. “The idea does appeal,” he said. “He will have to bow down to me."

"But not serve you,” said Hardacre.

Satan made a motion that dismissed the point as insignificant. “And in front of all my subjects. We'll give everybody an hour off."

"Us, too,” said the demon.

"Except for crowd control,” Satan shot back.

"Agreed. We'll use the reassigned tempters."

Hardacre looked around the table. “Then I think we can call this dispute settled,” he said.

"Like flip-flonkin’ flickafack, you can!"

They all looked at Chesney. If he could have, he would have regarded himself with equal surprise. The words had come out of him before he had known they were there. And now he heard himself continue, “It's not fair. I have nothing to apologize for."

His mother had been regarding Hardacre with a gaze that looked to Chesney like pure adoration. Now she turned to her son and put a gentle hand on his arm. “There is, my dear,” she said, “a precedent."

"Are you saying you won't do it?” Hardacre said. “There's a lot riding on this."

Chesney's reaction had been an unthinking rejection of the injustice. Now he thought about it while Heaven and Hell waited to hear what he would say. And then an idea came to him. More than an idea. A revelation.

Maybe, he said to himself, I am the hero of the story after all. Aloud, he said, “I will do it"—he even paused for effect—"on one condition."

Hell was a deeply unpleasant experience. The heat made Chesney's skin ache, the air seared his lungs, and the sights and sounds brought up surges of horror and pity from inner depths that the young man had not known he possessed. Still, he bore up and when the time came, he spoke, clearly and loudly, the words of the formal apology as they had been negotiated by Billy Lee Hardacre and the Devil. Then he made a deep bow and held it until he heard a small grunt of satisfaction from Lucifer.

The event took place on a narrow promontory of naked rock that arched out over the enormous Pit, crammed with the entire population of the underworld. Demons lashed and prodded the damned into serried ranks that stretched farther than the actuary could see through the foul and filthy air. When Chesney straightened from his bow, he saw the final phrases of his apology—"and do most humbly beg Your Satanic Majesty to overlook the inconvenience and impudence of my unpardonable conduct"—as huge letters of fire slowly fading above the pit. After his little grunt, the Devil made no response other than to wave him away as if the whole business were of not the slightest consequence.

The IBFDT president then stepped up and signed an ornately decorated and sealed document. Satan did likewise. The ruby-red snake protruding from the little girl's mouth then shouted, with a surprisingly stentorian volume for such a small serpent, “We've settled. Everybody back to work."

A moment later, Chesney found himself back in his studio apartment. The electronic calendar on the countertop between the main room and the kitchen nook said that it was the same day on which he had first summoned up the toad-demon. The calendar's clock ticked over to the second just after he had smashed his thumb with the hammer. As with the firmament and the Tower of Babel, the days when Hell had gone on strike had been written over. They had never happened.

Chesney's thumb hurt and bled, but he suppressed the urge to utter anything more than a heartfelt groan. Nor did he shake the wounded digit, spraying blood. Instead he popped it into his mouth and sucked it.

"Ain't that a pretty sight?” said a gravel-scratchy voice. Chesney turned to see the diminutive, weasel-headed supervisor in the Al Capone suit regarding him with disgust. “A thumb-sucker, yet."

Chesney extended the hurt thumb. “Heal it."

The fiend shrugged.

"Xaphan, I command you,” Chesney said—they had now been formally introduced—"heal my thumb."

Xaphan rolled its weasel eyes then gestured brusquely. Immediately, the pain left Chesney's thumb, the swollen redness disappeared, and the split flesh from which his blood had flowed was whole again.

"Good,” said the young man. “Now to work. We don't have much time before the guys come over for poker."

The demon consulted a gold pocket watch chained to its vest. “I can give you one hour, fifty-nine minutes, five seconds. And no banking unused time."

"I know the terms of the deal,” said Chesney. “In future, don't waste time reminding me.” He rubbed his hands. “Now, first I'm going to need a costume. It has to be bulletproof, knifeproof, fireproof, acidproof..."—he thought for a moment—"well, just make it generally proof against anything that could harm me."

"You gonna want a cape?” Xaphan said.

"No cape. But I should have some kind of utility belt to hold all the doodads."

"What kind of doodads?"

"We'll work that out later. First, I need a good name."

"Howzabout ‘The Bozo'?"

"Enough of your sass,” Chesney said. “I'm thinking, maybe, ‘The Regulator.’ How's that sound?"

"Like some punk thinks he's top of the world."

"Listen,” said Chesney, “a deal's a deal. You're my ‘condition’ and your boss agreed to it. I get you two hours out of every twenty-four, you come when I call you, and we fight crime and bad guys."

The fiend shoved its hands in its pockets and scuffed its spatted shoes against the carpet. “I don't like this. I don't like you."

"You don't have to. Back to the costume. I've always liked Batman's colors, good for lurking in the shadows, but I want a big capital ‘R’ on my chest.” He snapped his fingers. “And another ‘R’ on the buckle of the utility belt."

Xaphan muttered something. Chesney ignored it and continued. “And gloves—no, gauntlets—that let me climb walls. Boots to match. And it's all gotta fold up and fit into a pouch I can carry in my pocket, for when I have to go into action on short notice."

The oversized weasel eyes rolled, but the demon was writing it all down on a pad. “You want I should give you a cleft chin and a little curl of hair down over your forehead?"

"No. But I'll need a mask so I can keep my identity secret."

"You wanna fortress of solitude? A glass airplane?"

Chesney ignored the sarcasm. “No, but I'll need a bigger apartment."

Xaphan flicked its hands in opposite directions. The inner walls of the studio blew outward. Chesney saw his startled neighbors in the adjoining suites sitting amid billowing clouds of drywall plaster. “Undo that,” he said, and when the walls instantly went back in place, “and from now on you only do what I directly order you to do."

The demon sulked.

"At least until we've worked the bugs out,” Chesney said.

"Bugs?” the demon said. “That's a good one, coming from you."

"'Bugs’ hasn't meant ‘crazy’ for, I dunno, fifty, sixty years,” Chesney said. “You should get a software update."

"You don't like how I talk?"

"Not so much."

"Well,” Xaphan said, “so's your old man."

"Which means?"

"That I don't like you."

"We've covered that,” said Chesney. “Now where were we? We've done costume.” He snapped his fingers. “I know, tell me where some really bad guys hide out."

"Oh, swell,” said the demon. “You slay me."

Brendan DuBois is best known in the mystery and thriller genres, where he has published scores of stories and almost a dozen novels, including Six Days, Resurrection Day, and Killer Waves. He says that while he has published plenty of short fiction in fantasy/sf anthologies like Knight Fantastic, Alternate Gettysburgs, and Man vs. Machine, he has been trying to place a story in a professional sf magazine since 1973. Now he's gone and done it with this here story of life on the Moon.

I was covered with dust, working hard on an HVAC Series Four-Twelve air filter series from the good folks at 3M, carefully vacuuming each side, when my tube's tell-tale rang, telling me I had a visitor. I called out, “Minerva, no visitors, all right?” and my homegirl acknowledged with a couple of beeps, and I went back to work, knowing that Minerva had now lit my do not disturb bar outside.

The filters are large, a meter to each side, and according to the tech spec sheets, are to be replaced after six months of use. Well, these dusty puppies were at least three years old, and by hand-vacuuming each one of them, we hoped to extend their life by another year or so. Not sure the nice folks at 3M would think this was a great idea—hey, did you know 3M stands for Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing?—but when the nearest 3M outlet is more than three hundred thousand klicks away, you make do.

The tell-tale rang again and I stopped with the vacuum nozzle, and a familiar male voice came over the speaker in the WC, where I was working. “Sorry, Eva, I need to see you."

I carefully put the filter I had cleaned to one side. “Feeling not mutual, Tom."

"Colony business,” he said. “Need to talk soonest."

"I'm busy,” I said. “Doing my daily required volunteering."

"This is more important,” came the voice from overhead. “Look, Eva, don't make me override your lock. That'll mean an entry report has to be filed, hearings held, blah-blah-blah."

I picked up the next-to-the-last filter, looked at all the gray dust clogging it, from one side to the next. “Tell me what's so hot, and then I'll let you in."

"Vip dip this afternoon,” he said. “Sorry."

"Ugh,” I said. “Come on, I'm third on the list this quarter."

"You were third, but number one's monthly arrived early, and number two's in the infirmary, throwing up whatever she manages to swallow."

I looked at myself in the small mirror in the WC. Short black hair, not a bad bod, just wearing plain paper panties, for with all the dust kicked up in the air, why get everything else filthy? Besides, when done, cleaning me and the WC only took a few minutes with a few judicial sprays of water, emphasis on the word judicial.

"Eva?” came the voice, just one step away from begging.

"All right,” I said, letting the vacuum nozzle fall to the floor. “Give me a second to get decent."

And Tommy, bless him, kept his mouth shut.

I wiped down the best I could with a couple of wet cloths, and then scooted out of the WC into my main tube, tossed on a robe, and called out, “Minerva, unlock main access."

Before me was my personal hatchway leading out to Beta Corridor: it slipped open and Tommy O'Kane scooted in, the hatchway sliding closed behind him. The glowsticks for my tube were at sixty percent brightness, not at my request, which failed to illuminate some of the corners. The tube was the standard design, WC off to my left, the living quarters in the center, with a tiny kitchen area, sleeping bunk, and round table. A wallscreen showed an on-going dust storm at the base of Olympus Mons, millions of klicks away.

Tommy gave a quick bow, which I returned, and said, “Sorry to bother you, cousin."

"Yeah, right. Who's the vip?"

"A real oldster. One of the originals from Microsoft, up here for the usual meet and greet."

I couldn't help myself. I groaned and sat down at the table. “Please ... the usual, right?"

"Yeah."

I looked at Tommy, who had on the standard dark gray jumpsuit. Dust doesn't show up as much on a gray jumpsuit, and his beard was finally starting to fill in. Poor Tommy, three years older than me and assigned to External Relations, a job that pretty much sucked from one end to the next. Me, I'm only assigned to External Relations on an as-needed basis, and being who we are and what we are, it meant a steady gig, most months.

I gathered my robe about me. “Okay. What's it going to be? Option A or Option B?"

Tommy's face showed a bit of relief. “Option A."

"Good,” I said, repressing a shudder. “Which one you thinking of using?"

"Flag,” he said. “The guy seems responsive."

"All right,” I said.

He unzipped a pocket to his jumpsuit, passed over a thick plastic envelope. “The man's name is Roger Kimball. Staying at the Hyatt, room three. Scheduled to depart tomorrow at oh-nine-hundred. True blue, so you shouldn't have any problems. He's in his quarters now, we expect him to be there the rest of the day. Questions?"

I took the envelope in hand. “Price?"

Tommy's face now hardened. “We were hoping ... well, the council was hoping, that, um...."

"What? What was the council hoping?"

"It was hoped that since it was an Option A, that um, you'd consider it just another volunteer gig, and um, not a paying gig."

I smiled sweetly at him. “That's very thoughtful of them.” I tossed the envelope up into the air, where it rose up, hung for a moment, and then began its slow descent. “Tell you what, Tommy, if that envelope hits the table before we agree on a price, then you're going to have to find another girl."

He looked up at the envelope, eyeing its slow fall. “Extra water ration for next month."

"How much?"

"Two decaliters."

The envelope was drifting down close to the table.

"Four."

"Deal,” he quickly said.

"For two months,” I just as quickly added. “Beginning the moment you leave my tube."

"You—"

The envelope was almost there. I kept on smiling.

"Deal,” he said, just as the envelope came to rest on the stone table.

"Very good,” I said.

And as he got up, poor Tommy, no doubt under pressure for what he had to do in his job, whispered something foul, which I let slide right off me. I stood up and said, “Maybe so, but at least I know who I am, and what I do."

Tommy said bitterly, “That allow you to sleep at night?"

I bowed. “You can leave now, cousin, and trust me, you'll never be here long enough to find out how I sleep."

So when Tommy left, I slid out my keyboard, dumped the Mars footage on my wallscreen, and called up my household account. When I saw the bump in my water ration, I silently thanked Tommy for keeping his part of the deal. I dropped the robe and went back into the WC, quickly finished off the last filter cleaning, and then dragged out the newly cleaned filters to the hatchway. “Minerva,” I said, “arrange for filter pickup, task four-twelve-six completed."

The return beep-beeps gave me all the acknowledgment I needed, and I went into the WC, whistling, thinking I'd like a long, hot shower—as long as I can stand it—and that pleasant thought managed to outweigh temporarily what was going to happen later.

When I got out, the filters had been picked up, and then I got dressed, first pulling out some black frilly things that a vip had brought me a year ago, and then putting on my best and cleanest jumpsuit. It really didn't fit me that well, but for vips it fit just right, snug around my bottom and my boobs—the two best B's, as some would say—and I picked up the plastic envelope and exited my tube. Now I was in Beta Corridor, and I started loping my way up to Terminus, running through my mind the usual vip chatter and nonsense I'd have to start flinging soon. It sounds weird, but I do have a sense of pride in my work.

As I loped along, my feet barely touching the stone floor of Beta Corridor, I saw that the glowsticks along here were still dim, as dim as the ones in my own tube, and that meant that Engineering still hadn't gotten Reactor Two back on line. I wish those overeducated morons would get it fixed, and soon. In Beta Corridor, it was mostly residential and dorm tubes. Some of the more enterprising souls had little selling stands out in front of their hatchways, trading or battering goods that they either made, or that came up to them via visitors or relatives back there.

Even though most of the stuff I've seen over and over again, I usually like to linger and see what's for sale, but I had a job to do, and I wanted to get it over with, as soon as I could. One young boy whistled at me and said, “You go, Eva! Maybe you'll take me one of these days!"

And I called back, “You'll never be able to afford me, cousin!” and the cheerful laughter followed me as I kept up my moving, now coming to a wider and brighter area that marked Terminus. Other corridors—Alpha, Gamma, and Delta stretched away in the darkness—but I was looking to enter Main. Unlike the large open hatchways for the other three corridors, the one leading to Main was narrower, only big enough for one person to pass through at one time. And Main was blocked by a checkpoint, where a thin man in a gray jumpsuit, with tiny frayed red epaulets marking Security, got up from his chair and said, “Left or right?"

"Right,” I said, and he held up a scanner. I passed my right wrist across—the one with the smartchip, inserted when I was born—and he looked down and nodded. “Unlimited access, but you're due out by ten hundred tomorrow. Sound right?"

I nodded, silently cursing Tommy, knowing that he and the others had arranged this so if Option B became an opportunity, I could legally be in Main and spend the night and morning with the vip. How fricking sweet, how fricking thoughtful.

"Yeah, sounds right,” I said.

He pressed a switch that was underneath the counter, and the hatchway slid open, leading to another closed hatchway. We exchanged bows and he said, “Not a nice thing, what you're doing."

"Has to be done."

He said, “If you ever decide to stop—"

"Oh, Christ, spare me, okay?"

And I entered the dark lock.

The hatchway behind me closed, and a light softly switched on. The hatchway before me slid open, and my eyes blinked at the brightness, and I stepped slowly forward—

And walked into paradise.

First thing I noticed, of course, was the fake turf on the stone beneath my feet, and even though it was fake, I stepped out and kicked off my slippers, just let my toes play in the turf for a few minutes. The other thing I noticed was the soft music, playing out there from hidden speakers. The lights were quite bright—no power rationing in Main, of course—and the place was clean, well-lit, and looked wonderful. It even smelled fine. Funny thing is, whenever I'm in the other corridors, I never notice the smell of all those ill-washed bodies until I come here. Main was much wider than any of the other corridors, and there were outdoor places for drinking and eating and gathering. There were stalls as well, selling stuff, but me and everyone else who lived back in the corridors weren't allowed to come here to buy. Which was okay, in a way, since none of us—save for a very fortunate few—could afford what was for sale. People moved about, and even from a distance, it was easy to see who belonged and who didn't: those who didn't moved about like they were drunk or had some neurological disorder.

But what really ticked me off was in the center of Main, in a little stone plaza—a fountain! It wasn't that big—I've seen vids of fountains from back there, how large they were—but it was big enough, and in our gravity, the water did the most amazing things in shapes, loops, and mist clouds ... but being the cynical bitch I am, I guess, I didn't see the beauty. I just saw the waste. Oh, the Council claimed that the wastage was minimal, that the system captured and recycled most everything else, and that the visitors from back there found it a treat, but still ... a waste.

And to make it even nastier, there was a plaque on the base of the fountain, describing how and when the colony was founded, and trust me, save for the dates, everything on that plaque was a lie. The noble words about founding a new stepping stone for the benefit of mankind ... as if.

So. I moved around, going up to the small hatchway that had the Hyatt logo glowing overhead. I waved my wrist in front of the hatch, it slid open, and then I went into the tiny lobby area, and since I knew where I was going, I just loped down the turf-covered corridor to a door marked three. Not far to travel, since there were only six rooms here. Some time ago, in a wonderful bit of grift, the Colony arranged this deal with Hyatt, and believe me, there's never been full occupancy here, ever. I rang the tell-tale on the little key station outside of the door and a voice came out, “Yes, who is it?"

"Roger Kimball?” I asked.

"Yes?"

"My name's Eva Lindsay. I was hoping I could see you.” I made myself a little bet: the man's got a head injury. If I was right, then I could take another shower later this evening as a treat.

I waited, knowing that old Mister Kimball was no doubt looking at the vid screen on the other side, scoping out the sweet native girl in her too-tight jumper, zipper low enough to show frilly black underthings, and knowing crime was impossible here—with all the CCTV, how could it be anything else?—and his doorway clicked open, and he stood there, smiling.

"Come on in, please,” he said. I looked him over as I entered: a lean old man wearing tan trousers and a long-sleeved blue shirt, crewcut with gray-white hair, and fair, wrinkled face. I shook his hand and let him close the door behind me. I noticed he had a small bandage on the back of his head, and thought, score, I can take that shower later.

I took in his room, noting that it was about three times the size of my own home tube, with real furniture brought up by heavy cost from back there. There was also a vid screen showing some ocean scene, and lots of nice gear and geegaws and a little place that looked like a wet bar.

He sat down, moving a bit awkwardly. He looked me over as I slid into my own chair. I almost sighed, feeling how soft it was. If I was any more tired, I could have fallen right asleep right there. I smiled at him and said, “How's your head feeling?"

The old man touched his bandage, smiled sheepishly, and said, “All right. It was—"

"An accident, right?"

He nodded. “Yes ... the first night I was here, I couldn't help myself. I had to see how far up I could jump, and I hit the ceiling."

I smiled. “Happens all the time."

He returned the smile. “Still ... it was embarrassing."

"No worries,” I said. “The medicos here see it all the time."

"I'm sure,” he said, crossing his legs. “So, what can I do for you, young lady?"

I took a breath, half-proud, half-ashamed at how good I was at this. “I understand you're leaving tomorrow, at oh-nine hundred. I do work for the Council on occasion, and one of my jobs is doing an informal debrief of our most important visitors, to see how their trip was, and what might be done to improve conditions for our future visitors."

Roger's smile got wider, and it looked like tears formed in his eyes. “This trip ... sounds so simple, doesn't it. A trip. But this trip's been a dream of mine ... for as long as I can remember ... and to see it come true ... sometimes I still feel like it's all unreal, that I'm actually here."

Okay, I thought, we can dip into our luxury goods after the shower if he talks about Armstrong and company, and sure enough, he wiped at his eyes and said, “You may find it hard to believe, but I'm old enough to remember the Eagle landing, back in ‘69."

I managed to fake enthusiasm and surprise in one tone of voice, which I thought was pretty good. “Really? You don't look old enough, honest."

He grinned. “I was nine years old. Watching on a black and white television set in our living room, in Missouri. A Sunday evening, my parents let me stay up late ... I was so lucky to be able to watch it, and so lucky to remember it all. Seeing the landing leg of the LM, seeing that ghost-shape coming down ... the first man on the moon. And I was alive to see it. And here I am ... all these decades later, on the same place Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, and the eight others walked on. Incredible."

"Yes, it is incredible."

"And you, you look young enough to be native born. True?"

I nodded. “True. There's a couple dozen of us who were born here."

"God, how fortunate."

I had to bite my tongue. Fortunate, Christ.... But I managed to keep it all under control and I said, “I bet it was expensive to come here."

He shrugged. “I can afford it ... and I'm not getting any younger, Eva."

I crossed my legs. “So you're pleased with your trip?"

"Quite pleased,” he said, “but I'm curious about a few things. Look, mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"Go right ahead,” I replied, ticking off in my head the usual big three questions, which will be followed by my big three lies. And bless my new best friend, he asked the three big questions, and in order, as well: visit here, visit on-top, and visit back there.

"The Colony ... except for a couple of escorted visits, I wonder why we're not allowed free access to all of the residential corridors.” He laughed. “It's almost like you're trying to hide something."

I smiled. “I know, strange, isn't it? But like you were briefed on, there needs to be some sort of temporary quarantine, just in case you and the other—” and oops, almost called him vip, which is a no-no in polite company “—visitors are carrying germs or bugs that we're not able to treat. We have a first-class medical system here, but if everyone in the Colony were to get sick, all at once, it would put a tremendous strain on our resources."

"I see,” he said, “It just ... well, it just reminded me of Cuba."

That surprised me. Cuba? I remember the vids and lessons on Cuba, an impossibly beautiful island in the Caribbean, home of a lot of history, most of it unpleasant. “Why Cuba?” I said.

"There was a time ... when I was younger and way before your time,” he said, “when there was a separate system. For visitors and tourists. Special shops, attractions and beaches that only the tourists could visit. The government tried hard not to let the tourists and the residents mix."

My fists were clenched and I had to push myself to relax. “Well, we're mixing now, aren't we?"

That brought a laugh but I reminded myself to research what Roger had just told me. Cuba!

"And your other questions?” I asked. “Go on."

"I went for a trip, up to the surface, and I was stunned to find out that so few people actually go up there. Why is that?"

I shrugged. “Comfort, mostly. Look, it takes a long time to get prepped to go up and out, and for most of us ... it's a pain. Why take the time to go out? There are enough rovers and remotes that can give you any kind of data you're looking for. And suits are expensive, there are only a limited number and most of the time, they're reserved for tech staff, or for the astronomers."

"But you've been to the surface."

"Sure. A few times. It's a nice break, to get out and actually see the sun and the sky."

But not like back there, I thought, not like back there, to actually feel wind on your face....

He smiled again. “I know this is going to sound strange, but ... being native-born. Have you ever thought of coming to Earth for a visit?"

Bingo, question number three. “Sure I have,” I said. “But I don't have to tell you how expensive it is. And plus, well, there's always been questions about physiology. My body is used to the gravity here. I think I could handle the weight training, but could my immune system handle Earth germs? Nobody really knows ... and like I said, it's expensive."

Roger nodded. “Funny how many science fiction authors predicted, even a hundred years ago, that going from the Moon to the Earth would be a problem for her colonists."

Sure, I thought, but they sure missed the boat on a whole lot of other predictions, and why was it that all the vips who came here were males with childhood dreams? We've never had a female vip here, not once, and it just showed me the superiority of my sex. Too practical, I guess. Roger shifted in his chair and said, “Look, lunch is being served shortly ... would you care to join me?"

I couldn't help it, my mouth started watering. “That ... that would be wonderful."

"What would you like?"

"Anything, anything would be fine."

He picked up a free handset, made the call. “Anything it'll be."

As we waited for lunch to arrive, Roger blathered on and on about his trip here, the most amazing thing he had ever experienced, from the launch at Baikonur to the rendezvous at Bigelow, and then the three-day trip here, the shuttle descent, blah blah blah. Then the tell-tale rang and Roger got up, getting up too quickly and almost rising up to the ceiling. He gave me a goofy grin and said, “After a few days, you'd think I'd be used to it."

I got up and helped him. “Not to worry. Happens all the time."

He got the door open and one of my cousins came in, wearing slacks and a white coat, and he winked at me as he set up the tray. Roger placed his thumbprint on the room service ticket, and that was that.

We sat down at a round table—it felt like real wood, though I don't recall hearing about such pricey upgrades—and we ate lunch: a fruit juice, salad, and a two-egg omelet with real cheese and veggies. It all tasted so fine and delicious. When I was finished, I looked over and saw that my new best friend hadn't finished his salad.

Hadn't finished his salad. He was wiping his lips and then his hands with a cloth napkin, and he hadn't finished his salad.

I had to put my hands under the table, to clasp them together, to stop them from shaking. It was just over a year ago when we lost half of our farm tanks to some creeping crud that took a long time to control, and in that time, we were all on short rations. Back then I lived with Mother and Father in their tube, and they were part of the decision group about what to do. Food was cut back once, twice, and there were rumors—which I've never had the guts to check on—that more drastic measures were being considered if that creeping crud couldn't be contained.

It was, eventually, but I still remember going to bed hungry, and I still remember looking at our small rations of greens and vegetables ... and it didn't make sense for me to get angry, but I did.

He hadn't finished his salad!

So when the dishes were taken away he looked at me again and folded his hands, and then there was a magic trick, when the look on his face changed. “All right, Eva, let's get to it, all right?"

Oh, he was good, quite good, but it was what I expected. How could it be otherwise, him having lived so long, and having made the mega-euros to fly himself out here and back?

So I played along. “I'm sorry, Mister Kimball, I don't know what you mean."

He laughed. “Oh, come on. You said you were coming in to do a survey, to find out about my trip, and you haven't taken a note, haven't asked any really probing questions, have just been a quiet and sweet lunch partner. So. What's going on?"

I looked down, willed my face to flush on cue. “I ... I have a business proposal for you."

"Really? What kind of deal? Investment? Don't be offended, but sharper and better-dressed men and women have already talked my ear off, trying for me to invest some more in this little venture ... and I'm sorry, that part of my investment strategy has been tapped out."

I shook my head. “No ... more of a sale. A one-of-a-kind sale."

"Of what?"

"Of this,” I said.

I leaned back and unzipped a side jumper pocket, pulled out a plastic wrapped package, and I took my time, unwrapping the plastic, slowly drawing it out, now seeing his gaze focus on my hands. Unwrapped and unwrapped, and then colors came to view, faded colors, a splash of blue, a splash of red, a splash of white. Finally I was done and spread the plastic out, and the little faded square of fabric was in the middle, soiled, of course, with the ever-present gray dust.

Roger's voice was hoarse. “Tell me what that is. Tell me now."

"A square of fabric. Left behind in July 1969. Untouched by human hands for all those decades ... until now."

He looked up. “Impossible. You're ... you must be at least five hundred klicks away from there. At least! And I know what you have here, and what you don't have here. There's no way anybody from the Colony could get to Tranquillity and back again."

"True,” I said, gently touching the edges of the dusty material. “No human could go from here to there. But a small rover could, solar-powered, with one mission and one only: to collect souvenirs. Some of our more brighter engineers did this ... took a number of years, but it's worked. It's been back and forth from the first landing area twice, but we've been doing it quietly, of course."

"Of course,” Roger whispered, looking down at the little square. “NASA would go ballistic if they knew what you were doing."

I gave him a sharp grin. “From what I hear, NASA needs to go ballistic, but for the past twenty or thirty years, all they've been doing is launching unmanned probes and paper spaceships that never get metal cut."

He kept his gaze lowered, looking at the fabric like it was some holy relic, from what I've read of the holy men from the Middle Ages. Collecting relics, pieces of the cross, that sort of thing. A slim finger went over, gently touching the frayed and faded nylon.

"For sale."

"That it is,” I said.

"And that's what you do. Sell souvenirs to your visitors."

Despite my cheery face, I felt a cringe. Sure, I thought, and that's Option A ... and Option B is a whole lot more undesirable, and sometimes I do that as well. It's my job, and everyone here, young and old, has a job. “Sometimes. But only if we feel there's someone who'd be interested. Someone with a love of this place, a love of the history."

Tears came back into his eyes, as he nudged the fabric again. “I've got to have it. How much?"

"Make me an offer,” I said, knowing what the Council demanded, hoping he would get close enough so that I wouldn't have to offer him Option B to close the deal, and I almost breathed a sigh of relief when he offered me a figure that was ten percent more than we had planned for.

"Mister Kimball,” I said, sliding the piece of nylon over to him. “You've got yourself a deal."

So after a few minutes on his keyboard here in his tube, transferring the funds from one of his accounts to a Colony account based in the Cayman Islands—and what a magical place that seemed to be—he made me some tea and we talked a bit more, and then I decided it was time to leave.

He got up from his couch—better, this time, he was improving—and he said, “One more thing, before you go."

"What's that?"

Roger went into the bedroom area of his tube—such luxury, to have a separate room to sleep in!—and came back out. “I ... I know how expensive it is, to ship things up here. So I want to give you a few gifts, Eva. If you don't mind."

I hoped he didn't see the eagerness in my look. “No, I don't mind, not at all."

With that, he passed over a plastic bag with the Hyatt logo on it, and I opened it up and peered inside. Clustered in there were treasures, treasures that I resisted the urge to take out and fondle and ooh and aah over. I then closed the bag and looked up at him, gave him a big smile, a genuine one this time.

"Thanks ... thanks Mister Kimball,” I said.

He looked a bit embarrassed. “Not much, but I thought you'd like it.” He looked around and laughed, “You know, all my life, I've traveled and stayed in hotel rooms, and this is probably the dumpiest one I've ever been in ... and I don't care. And what I find sad is ... well, is the thought I'll never come back."

I tried to be cheerful. He thought this place was dumpy! “Oh, I'm sure you will, one of these days."

A sad shake of his head. “With money, you can do a lot, but you can't hold back time any longer—especially since that immortality research stuff went bust. The docs for the transport nearly downchecked me before I left; I doubt I'll be healthy enough to ever travel like this, ever again. But still ... I made it. Made it here."

"Yes, you certainly did,” I said, and now I really wanted to leave, but there was one more surprise. From the shirt pocket he took out a rectangle of cardboard, passed it over. “Here. My business card. With my personal phone and personal e-mail ... if you ever do make it to Earth. Eva, it was a pleasure meeting you, and I thank you so much for the piece of flag ... I can't tell you how much it meant to me."

I pocketed the card in my jumpsuit and in a half-lope, made it to his door, wanting to hide my face, for at least a moment. “I know. And I'll know you'll cherish it."

He held out his hand, and there was a twinkle in his eye, and for almost a moment, when he gently kissed me on the cheek, I thought about Option B and, well, I could have lived with it.

Later, back in my tube, I ignored a couple of messages from Tommy—no doubt looking to congratulate me for once again single-handily swelling the Colony's budget options—and took my promised second shower. Then, after putting on an Africa savannah loop on the wallscreen, I sat cross-legged on my sleeping platform, looking at the treasures Roger had given me. There were vials of shampoo, of perfume, and some hard candies and chocolate and a couple of tiny bottles of wine and bourbon. I drank one of the little bottles of wine and ate one of the chocolates, and everything else went into a little locker I have, stashed under my platform. In there were some coffee crystals, tea bags, more candies, scents, other bits of frilly clothing and in a little wooden container, some Earth soil. I let my finger dance a bit in the soil, and feeling a bit woozy from the rich food I ate and the alcohol I had drunk, I stretched out and said, “Minerva, lights out, wake-up in eight hours."

The little bleep-bleep of acknowledgment, and I rolled over and fell asleep.

Sometime during the night, I had to use the WC. When I was finished, the light from the WC lit up something on the floor. I bent down and picked it up, saw that it was the business card that Roger had left me, and sure enough, there was his name and five different contact numbers and e-mail addresses. And I don't know why I did it, but I turned over the card, and there was a little handwritten note.

I read the note three times.

Then went to the keyboard, quickly toggled up some info, and got dressed.

Too late, of course, too late to make it personal, but I went to Surface Access One—doubt they'll ever make a Surface Access Two—and signed out one of the P-suits. In a dark corridor leading out of the sign-in area, a row of suits hung there, empty, looking like the discarded skin of some awful insect. I got one of the suits in my size, and spent a while, getting everything put on, plugged in and checked out. The suit smelled of sweat, piss, and the sour tang of vomit. All of them did.

And there were plenty of suits. “Our little secret, Roger,” I whispered to myself as I slowly walked up the ramp to the surface, feeling like one of those old black-and-white vid mummies. “When it comes to suit maintenance, it's low on the list of priorities, especially when priorities are keeping air, water, food, and lights running. So who wants to die from a suit failure for a stupid walk on the surface?"

Outside the light was bright indeed, and I lowered the helmet visor. I didn't have to walk far. From where I was, I could see the spindly frame of the shuttle craft, ready to take Roger and whatever other rich vips who were ready to go back home.

Home. The word sounded so rich and full.

"Secrets,” I whispered, staring at the shuttle craft, wondering how delightful it must be, to climb inside. “We have so many. Why we keep you away from the residential corridors ... because we're horrified if people found out how poor we were, how much we struggle, that there'd be pressure to close us down. Like that fake flag fabric we sold you, for needed cash. And God, do we need cash, because we still need supplies from Earth to survive, another dirty little secret. And sometimes, damn it, sometimes we trade something more dear than fake flag fabrics."

I saw movement at the base of the shuttle. It was getting close.

"Other secrets,” I whispered. “You and so many others ... brought into the romance of what it would be like to be here. But I didn't have a choice, now, did I? I'm here, stuck because my parents, the stupid people, were dreamers. Fine. They like short rations, little water and tiny cubes, fine. But why didn't I get a choice?"

Another few minutes passed, and then I thought about the card that Roger Kimball had left me, two little handscribbled lines that promised so much:

Eva, when the time comes for college, let me know. I'll bring you to Earth on full scholarship. R.

A light flared, at the base of the shuttle, and in a cloud of dust it rose up, higher and higher, quickly becoming just a moving dot of light. I leaned back, followed the promising little dot of light, as long as I could, and then I said one more thing into the void.

"Please,” I whispered, “please get me out of here."

But if I was lucky, I had time.

I mean, I'm not even seventeen yet.

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Kit Reed's debut in our pages (that was “The Wait” in our April 1958 issue, if you want to check). Among her many memorable contributions to F&SF are “The Vine,” “The Singing Marine,” and “Attack of the Giant Baby.” Now she returns with a story about youth culture, parenting, the performing arts, and, oh yeah, a few things that are out of this world.

Fat Myra Weingarten booked the Blight Family Singers without even asking where we were with elevator music, the stupid cow. This, like, weenie-bun chorus is headlining our Midwinter Bash. That's Dr. Weingarten to you and she has the power, for at Wingdale Junior College, she is the dean. She told us over the P.A., like that would prevent the protest rally that followed. We stormed her office during the harp intro to the Blight Family's biggest hit, they were going FAAAAAA la-la-la as Trig Masters, our leader, bunched his big shoulders and hit the door.

Myra, do you not hear them? What planet are you from? Did you never swim across a mosh pit or get so hammered and blissed out that you forgot what you did, you only remembered that it was awesome?

Have you even looked outside? Minnesota, in the winter from hell. Did your brains freeze? If we can't get loaded on Groundhog Day and roll naked in the snow, we'll die. We don't need much, just head-banging rock, a guy to hook up with and enough controlled substances to drink, smoke or snort or otherwise ingest so we can make it through winter, ergo the Bash. Listen. We held gazillion car washes and sold Whatever door to door to pay for booze, humongous speakers and a kick-ass band. Now look.

They're tuning up in the auditorium as we speak.

During the demonstration outside Dr. Weingarten's office, a few things came up.

A. The Blight Family Singers? Myra, who are you? The movie's on TV every mortal Christmas and it's awful, uplifting though it may be. So, what if the Blights ran away from this cult at Etheria, and what if evil Daddy Flagg's colonists chased them with guns and dogs? As they slide down the icy mountain, are they really going FAAA la-la-la?

As if!

B. The Blight children are not what you would call kids. You can see gross hairs in the guys’ noses. Tufts sprouting out of their ears! The girls’ boobs flop in the stupid dresses and go wall-eyed when they dance. And the outfits. Like their mom shopped at American Girl, Pioneer Days department, dress your girls like the doll they want, except that no way are these girls. The guys’ shirts are tight, and not in a good way. The girls have pink wedges where their puffed sleeves ripped under the arms because they grew or the dress shrank, and you can see they hate that there's fat popping out. So, do us all a favor and cancel, OK?

Right. This whole thing is the mother's idea. Do not be deceived by that gooshy smile.

C. Which is probably A: Fat Myra blew the whole party budget, thereby wrecking Bash. Our dean paid the Blights off in advance.

Do you believe she tried to shame us? “Think of Wingdale Junior College. The Blights will put us on the map. Now, disperse."

What did she think, we'd apologize and go?

Trig Masters started, “No way."

We all went, “No way."

I made Trig our leader because, OK, he's this year's Ice King and as of right now, he hasn't picked his Ice Queen to sit up there on the float with him which, the thrones are heated and he's gorgeous, both a definite plus. Look at him raising his fist, killer man. “No wayyyyy...."

Then Marly Mason, whom I do not like, slithered up him like a snake up a tree, chanting, “Astro, Blazers, Full Frontal,” and she got everybody shouting out their favorite bands.

Security came.

Fat Myra wasn't giving up. After it got quiet she tried to guilt us. “It's the least you can do. This poor, brave woman went through hell so her kids could walk free."

Well, they don't look too free to us, squirming in their dirndls and highwaters. So what if this Mother Blight like to died saving her spawn from the clutches of the infamous leader, the Most Reverend Jethro Flagg? She's the kind that's too smug to suffer, and besides. It's all sooo last-century, and have they not made money on it, bigtime? The escape story made the Blight Family fortune, plus! About the frostbite amputations. You have our condolences, but how long ago was that?

If she wants to save the ones they left behind in Etheria, fine, just don't do it on our dime. And look, if the damn fools that stayed back at the compound really think some heavenly craft is going to come down and float them up to Paradise, who are we to get in the way? Let them make soap and ranch elderberries and lie down and do Whatever with each other in one great big bed like their leader proclaims. If they think Daddy Flagg can get them to heaven that's their business, right? If they're stupid enough to drink the Kool-Aid, fine. Not our problem. It's theirs.

Besides. It's not like the Blights can't save everybody all by themselves. They're richer than dirt. Every school in America does the Blight Family Musical. The movie alone! Residuals, music downloads, the DVD. That icky sound track is a platinum record now. Grandmother music, like, they buy it all the time. If you happened to be locked in an elevator with your grandmother and it was playing, you'd claw your ears off to make it stop, but she'd be humming along. Plus, grandmothers give it to you at Christmas a lot, because they think it's going to improve you or some damn thing, and they forgot they gave it to you for Christmas last year.

Dean Myra was banging on her chest like a grandmother, going, “Save the children."

Trig yelled, “Screw that, save us!"

I am very proud of Trig. We yelled right along with him until Security did its thing.

By the time the tear gas finally cleared, we were staring into the jaws of the trap Dean Weingarten set for us. I mean, she was like steel. “No matter what you people think, you will all be very nice. I don't have to tell you that Wingdale is in crisis. Think what would happen if the Blights set up housekeeping in our town! Tours. Special attractions. Jobs for every mother in Wingdale, important positions for every dad. Money, so they can buy you things."

We got really quiet then.

"The Blights are shopping for houses, and if they buy one here...."

Everybody breathed in.

Dr. Weingarten got taller. She breathed out for all of us. “Wingdale wins. Now. Clap. Cheer. Smile like crazy. Make them love Wingdale so much that they want to stay."

Clang.

Our big night and they're in there harmonizing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, FA la-la-la, while we are pretending to be glad. I don't care how good this is for greater Wingdale, my man Trig and me (take that, Marly Mason), we're bummed.

Prosperity is an illusion, but I protect my darlings from harsh truths. I must, for if their smiles crumble for one second, the people will see it and we'll be done. We have to go out there tonight and no matter what the conditions, we have to shine like the stars we are and make them love us. If they don't we'll never get another gig, but I spare my children the hard facts.

I've protected them all their lives. Believe me, it isn't easy. I have so many to watch, and they keep wandering off! There are my two big boys, Edward, who is Jethro's and my favorite, even though we fight. Then there are Ethan and the twins Edwin and Erna, from Willard Schott; Edna and Erness, Elton and Edgar and little Earl and—face it—Mickey too, that is, Micah Blight, my husband ever since our leader joined us at the biggest group wedding in the history of Etheria. In spite of my feelings on the subject, the Most Reverend Jethro Flagg pronounced us, thus making Mickey my primary instead, like it or not and thank you very much.

Most Reverend, hah! I could tell you a thing or two, but I won't. For good reason I fell out with Jethro, a.k.a. the charismatic and powerful Daddy Flagg. We fell out and I led my children over the snow to freedom, frostbite and complaining or no. To “children,” add Mickey. He's fathered at least three of our nine, but he's one more responsibility. It's like having a large, extra child.

My children, my burden. If only they'd stayed little and sweet and loving to sing! But no, they grew. They started to complain. That's what got us into this hole.

Oh sweethearts, you don't want to sing in our concerts? You're quitting because they make fun of you at college? You want to try acting? Start a rock band? Study fashion design? All right, my darlings, enjoy! Canceling the concerts cut into our income, as did every public appearance and product endorsement my ungrateful children refused, not to mention the auditions and classes and demos I paid for because every one of the nine had illusions, and every one of them flopped. Everything comes at a cost.

Fall out of the public eye and you fall off the A-list, and that's only the beginning. They think we're touring to liberate the ones still locked in at Etheria, in Jethro's thrall.

They don't need to know we're singing our hearts out in the icy waste because we're broke.

It's not the first time I've protected them. What Jethro and I did together before we fell out, I kept from them. They don't know that during the Last Battle I found out certain things about our leader, or what came down when I confronted him. I keep the details of those sweet nights and the last, painful one locked inside my heart.

Good mothers are perfect, and my children don't need to know what grossness I endured with certain colonists to guarantee safe passage, or how truly dangerous Etheria was. My book's about the stockade with armed guards and the brave Blight family singing our way to freedom in the blinding snow, and the rest? Never mind. That's good enough for them.

I'm not about to tell my darlings what I had to do to launch our career either, although they owe me, which, believe me, I do let them know. All they need to remember is that when we finished our first concert, everybody in the Bowl stood up and cheered, and my children loved it. They loved the money. They got off on the applause, and now?

Don't you want it all back?

That's how I put it when I made this booking. I do what's needed to take care of them, and if that means keeping a tight rein, listen. It's for their own good. Doesn't every mother do the same?

In return, I expect loyalty. I expect them to fall in line, and they do, except for Edward. He fought to stay behind with Jethro, but in the end I brought him to his knees. I am, after all, a mother, and mothers know how.

I dragged him out by the hair. “That will teach you to get in my way."

We fought every time he ran away and I brought him back. Of course I won; I always do, which is why the Blight Family Singers are back on the road. We stand as one. I can manage Edward, and the others?

They think we're on a gala comeback tour, by popular demand. They don't need to know that we can't go home because we don't have one. The bank's men were pounding a foreclosure sign into the lawn at the Tupelo mansion as our tour bus rolled away. They took our lodge outside Denver and the Florida compound too. The hard truth is that all we have left is the clothes we stand up in and our old costumes, which the girls bitched about altering for our comeback tour. And although there are issues with the finance company, fifty per cent of the bus. Oh, and Mickey's vibraharp, but he mustn't know it's come down to that.

If they knew how bad things are, could they dance onstage laughing and singing, and could they face the public with those same bright, shiny Blight Family smiles?

Trust me, they don't need to know.

The town fathers in this wretched town don't need to know it either. They think we're poised to throw millions around Wingdale, which is how we got this gig. Pardon the vulgarity: if we can't get another booking on the strength of this one, we're screwed. In this business you do what you have to, to get what you want. I've put out that we're settling in Middle America, and the Wingdale Chamber of Commerce wants it to be here. If they won't accept this Midwinter Bash check as earnest money, where will we go?

Look. If my kids want to bitch about the road, outgrown costumes and close quarters on the bus, let them. They can vent all they want, but it won't change anything.

The Blight Family Singers are legendary, and I will damn well keep it that way. They're grumbling now, but when the lights come up and we go on and the thrill comes back....

When we march on stage and that first wave of applause breaks over the footlights and splashes us full in the face, it strikes me like an electric shock. It's better than sex.

I come alive.

But, God! Are we not going to sing in the comfort and safety of this cheesy auditorium? The idiot stage manager just said “Showtime” and opened a door on deep snow. Outside? Have they looked outside? Why is that monstrous dean in her bearskin coat telling Mickey, and not me? Does she imagine that he's in charge because he is the man? Mickey blinks the way he does when he isn't getting it, poor fool. His chin goes all trembly. “Out there?"

The dean pushes the door wide and winter roars in. She slaps his shoulder and points. “Out there."

I shove him aside. “We can't sing in that!"

That face! “I can always stop payment on the check."

My God, is she serious? Are the school guards really armed? They herd us like prisoners through a trench in the snow. At the far end a ladder leads up to a crude platform, with curtains separating it from whatever lies beyond. I dig in. “We won't."

She bunches her shoulders and gives me a push. “Heaters onstage.” It's like being wrangled by a grizzly bear.

The guards rattle guns. Snow fills our slippers and we trudge forward on icy feet. My family's bones rattle like wind chimes. I tell her, “We'll die!"

We clump at the bottom of the ladder, a little clot of misery. She points. “I said, there are heaters onstage."

Onstage. Then a wind carries in voices. There's a crowd massing somewhere beyond the velvet curtain that separates us from whatever waits. I hear movement out there, feet stamping, a beginning shout.

Audience!

I marshal my family. “We survived Etheria,” I tell them. “We can certainly make it up on that stage. Brave smiles, everybody,” I say as we start up the ladder. “Brave smiles."

Look at her, preening in purple velvet like a budding diva. You'd think we were back in the Hollywood Bowl. It's fucking freezing out here.

If she thinks I'm going to stand up here grinning like a fool and sing until my corpse turns to solid ice, she's wrong. The Moment is close. I have seen certain signs. Mother is too old to know about mosh pits, but I'm waiting for the right spot. When I see it, I'll plunge. Then I can swim to freedom over the heads of all those brainless teenagers.

Waiting is hell. My blood chills and my brain stops cold. The past starts playing like an old movie inside my head.

"Your future is just around the corner and it will be wonderful,” she told us, booking yet another performance in Paris, Venice, Prague, anywhere far away from home. School. Our friends.

OK, Mother. When? Nine childhoods lost to your agenda, months at rehearsals like forced marches, on a never-ending road trip with the bitch mother of all time rushing us back and forth between venues, and for what?

We're nothing but bit players in the story of Edwina Blight.

She dressed us like children for so long that it was obscene. It got old and so did we, with mandatory facelifts, as though us looking younger makes her young, but what's a little pain when Edwina's self-image is at stake? We're no better than extras, background for the never-ending story, expendable props to be moved around to decorate every scene our mother plays.

She is the star of her own life.

"Now do this. Do that,” she said with that imperious wave and she was our mother, so we had no choice. She pushed us around for decades, and for what? We grew up, but what good did it do us? We still can't get away. I belong with my father and I can't get away.

"Children,” she said last week, in that fake, motivational voice kindergarten teachers use. It worked when we were ten. “Pack. I've booked our gala comeback tour!"

Mother, I'm thirty years old!

"I can't.” I stood my ground, but in private. We faced off under the wisteria at the bottom of the garden in Tupelo, where the others couldn't hear. They don't trust me anyway because I am Jethro's, so it was just as well.

"Do it for me, sweetheart.” Her touch was soft and her tone was too sweet; I knew what went on between her and Jethro, and I hated her. “Do it for us."

You ran away from him, I didn't. I said, “I'm not going.” I did not say, I want to stay where he can find me.

"But darling, we can't go on without your gorgeous soprano solo."

"I'm not a soprano anymore. I have to stay here!"

"You can't stay here.” Her eyelids peeled away from those wild blue globes; she was frantic. “He's after us."

My heart leapt up. I tried and failed to stare her down. “Is that so bad?” If he lifts me up, I won't have to do this. I'm sick of running, hiding, performing like a trick monkey and doing her bidding at every turn.

She shuddered. “They're after me."

I didn't say Who? Jethro hasn't exactly told me who they are, only that they're coming to take us and it will be magnificent. I said, “Is that such an awful thing?"

"We can't stay here.” She forced me onto the bus. “We can't stay here, Edward. We can't stay here!"

No apologies, no explanation. Now we're in this awful place. When the bus pulled into the Wingdale Motel 6 and she had us wedged into two units, she didn't rest. She sent poor Fa—I mean Mickey—out to buy a house, like she actually expects us to settle in this icy hole in the road.

Here, when all I want is to get Margaret and Sally and Felicia and take them home to Etheria, to meet the only real father I know. Mickey's okay, but he's nobody to me. If I can't make it back to Etheria in time, Daddy Flagg will find me, he promised, but if I want to fly up with them at the time of the Great Upload, I have to live according to the Rule. Three women and no babies. Yet. Once I get my girls pregnant, I'll take them home, and it will be wonderful, Father promises.

We don't see each other but we talk all the time.

I don't care what lovers’ quarrel moved Edwina to yoke us kids like a chain gang and drag us out of Etheria, Father knows I fought her night and day. Nothing has been right between us since. Oh, I put on the costume, I sang, I kept on singing years after the critics said we were finished as an act; the venues got smaller and meaner, but I sang. I fell into line, but in my heart I belong to Daddy Flagg.

He's coming soon.

Through all our show-business success and all the trials intervening, I, at least, have stayed in touch. She doesn't know it, but he and I talk all the time, and I know when Father's coming and what he wants.

It's nothing like the poison you poured into our ears, Mother. He has great plans for us. You think you're free, Edwina, but thanks to me Jethro knows where you are right now, and what we've been doing every step of the way. He always knows, and when The Moment comes, if he wants you, whatever you're doing, he will find you! And if he doesn't want you, then fuck you.

As for the miraculous Great Upload? Where we fly up to Paradise? Light the field, prepare the straight way, and all you who believe will become luminous.

It's soon, and when I fly up I'll look back down at you standing there, Mother. I'll watch you get smaller and smaller until you're nothing more than a spot on the ground, and I'll laugh.

Unless—and I've tried to overlook certain signs but I can't ignore them—unless he wants you back.

You're a hard woman, Edwina Ferris, I said to her after the fight, and she gave me that look. Not Ferris, dear Daddy Flagg, remember? You married us, and that made it official. It's Blight.

I never should have told her my intentions, about which of the flock I had chosen to go with me and which would stay behind and what would become of them.

She glared; her words split me like an axe. It's Edwina Blight.

When I came out of my yurt that night and flew over the snow to peel away the Etherian children curled around her and lift her out of her nest, I wanted to romance her until she forgot everything but our bodies and the stars overhead, but her family yurt was empty. My beloved, vindictive Edwina was gone. She decamped with her precious brood, every damn one of them. She took Edward, my boy! And that lame excuse for a husband that I gave her, Micah Blight. She didn't get that I chose him for her because he was so weak.

Mickey. What imbecile names himself after a mouse?

So this is my fault, I suppose, for not making Edwina my primary at the first group wedding, but I have many to love as per our masters’ orders, and women are notoriously jealous. They want the cradles of Etheria filled to overflowing with citizens of the next world.

I have my own bed to fill. There's no time for exclusivity, Edwina's demand. I have bigger things on my mind. The mission, what is expected, and which parts of it I must perform. I have to bring legions with me to the Great Upload, when They come and we rise. And the others? That's my job too.

I have work to do here, and through hell and high water, petty mutinies and federal incursions, no mere human can slow me down. And how do I know They will come for us? When They will come and whether They are who they say they are, which has never been clear?

Listen. I fell from a star, the blaze on my forehead is proof of that, don't ask. And when They come it is I, and I alone, who will decide which ones come with me to join the kingdom and who stays behind, and if I choose to humble my beautiful Edwina and destroy her instead of scooping her up? That's mine to say. My boy Edward yearns to make new citizens for the future, whereas she.... Run, Edwina Ferris, if you're that intent on your precious freedom. Run wherever you want, you won't get far. I have my sources, and believe me, I keep track. Flaunt your fame and wait for me to bow down and worship, if that pleases you.

As if that worked out. Fame must have been fun while it lasted, but you haven't been famous for a while. Survival is the best revenge, and if, my dear, you're stuck in Wingdale, Minnesota, with nothing but that bus and the clothes you stand up in, there's a reason.

Face it, you crossed the wrong man.

I know where you are and I know what you want, and I am here to tell you that you'll be sorry for walking out on the enterprise. You'll be sorry very soon.

In this cold, time stops. I see my whole life flash before my eyes, and it's over.

Jethro is blazing mad. Trying to keep me in Etheria, he told me about the mission. To make me see how important it was, he said an awful thing.

"I have instructions from the future."

"For the future?"

"No.” He thought he was preaching to the converted, but he was wrong. “I have instructions from the future."

He described—what exactly? Etherians from the next century? Preternatural beings from Elsewhere? Not clear. I don't think he knows.

Whoever they are, he told me they were coming for us, he just didn't know when. And that when they take us, they want to.... What? He wouldn't tell me. “Just be there."

"Why?"

"Just be there, it's important."

I hissed through bared teeth, “Then tell me why."

With one slip he revealed the endgame and drove me out of the kingdom. He said, “If you want to live."

So, the concert? The first thing is, it started out bad. One minute Trig Masters, that I thought he and I were bonded, one minute Trig was hanging with me and in the next, he wasn't. He was down front in what should have been the mosh pit holding Marly Mason way up in his arms, like there was anything worth seeing up there, and he kept holding her, even though we could forget about the rock band. There was nothing to see but the bitch was up high and laughing at me, so take that, Trig Masters, you and I are done. Kids crowded in like bumper cars, squeezing me back and back until I squirted out of the mosh pit and onto the sidelines alone. There I was out in the cold and I was thinking, Okay Tifney, story of your life.

Then I was either very lucky or it was fated and weird. This tall guy onstage made a lighthouse turn and stopped cold and, wow, he beamed brighter! I think he saw me. Then creaky old Mr. Blight started plinking away on, like, this mellophone thing and ta-DAAA, the Blight Family Singers concert began.

It was awful. The mother had this screechy soprano that ripped into us like a buzzsaw, gooshy song after gooshy song, with the chorus doing backup in crap harmony, even the guy I had my eye on, although unlike the others, he had this excruciated look. It was horrible, although I have to admit that I wasn't around to hear the whole thing because of what happened next and where I went afterward, not to mention what it was like out there when him and me got back from the bar.

I am, however, wiser now and changed forever by the experience, just so you know.

This Mother Blight was up there swaying in tight velvet, warbling “Whispering Hope” like she was giving the microphone a blowjob while the rest of them harmonized to break your heart, and we were all, like, ewwww. Nobody had thrown anything yet, but the kids in back had started to grumble and boo, and that guy that I had my eye on, I think he got it. She hit a high note and his face went all, SHEESH.

He didn't just get it, he got us, and everything changed.

He jumped UP like a seven-foot Laker making a hoop, and I could swear he was looking right at me. His fist shot up in the air and he howled, “BOO-RAH,” and Mrs. Blight, she turned around in a purple fury, like, her glance would send him straight to hell.

Well, big lady, not so much. Instead of standing down or cowering like she expected, this tall, cute guy shoved aside the sisters in their ruffles and flounces and came down front and center. Then he jumped high. He shook that fist and yelled to crack icebergs, “BOO-RAH!” So we all knew that he was even more bummed by this experience than us. It knifed over our heads like a flying sword. “BOO-RAAAAAHHHH."

And all of us poor pissed-off, frustrated Midwinter Bash-sters, we raised our fists and yelled back at him, unless we were yelling with him, we gave out with the big “BOO-RAAAAHHHHH,” and the next thing I knew he spread his arms out and did a swan dive into the crowd. He landed where the mosh pit would be if this was a real old-fashioned rave and Dean Weingarten had ever heard of a mosh pit and hired a decent band, and he flew into that crowd grinning like he didn't care if they caught him or not.

Trig and his guys put up their arms and started passing him along, so he floated over their heads like a swan on a duck pond. Every kid out there was hooting and howling and passing this cute guy over their heads and it seemed like he was steering. Poor guy, he was OLD, my God he must have been at least thirty, but he was zooming over their heads laughing and howling like another kid.

Then the most amazing thing happened, he floated out of the mosh pit and pretty much landed on me.

Like it was intended. Like fate.

By that time Security was onstage with wands and shit, surrounding the Blight Family Singers as we in the audience were more or less storming it, well all except me, because I was mesmerized by the one that had escaped.

He had black, black hair and thick black eyebrows and huge pale eyes and I was thinking, I'm in love, which I'm not—yet, although in spite of a couple of things, I'm close.

Wingdale Junior College was moving into high riot mode, and do you believe that Blight woman struck up with “Amazing Grace” as though the mutiny was nothing and all of us suffering out here loved her, and the chorus chimed in like none of this had happened and we could actually hear it over the yelling and sirens and all? A couple of other things also happened, not the least of which was me seeing Marly drag Trig off God knows where to do God knows what with him in the snow, and if you think I will ever forgive either of them....

Never mind.

I was face to face with this amazing guy. I said the nicest thing I could think of. “That was brave."

"I'm Edward,” he said, like that explained it. He flipped his phone open, read a text message and clicked it shut with a nod, like, There. “Listen! He's on the way.” He took my arm like we'd been dating all our lives. “Let's get out of here."

Which is how we ended up downing double shots at Schillinger's Bar, which I chose because it was within walking, and although I'd come to Bash with that jerk Trig Masters, no way was I going home in his car. “Okay,” I said and fell in next to him. “Okay, Edward,” I said.

In the light at Schillinger's he looked not that old after all but boy, he looked tired. Bud Schillinger gave me that look, like, I knew I would be carded so Edward pretended the two doubles he ordered were for him. We did the entrance interview, which bands we liked, whether we liked our parents and what was our favorite color and, this is weird, how I did in school: honor roll; it made him smile, but it's still embarrassing. He had to snort both doubles before he could get past that his mother ripped them out of Etheria to further her career, and wow, he hates the Blight Family Singers concerts more than he hates her, like, he says it's coming, and if she's not on board it serves her right. Then he thanked me for—what was it? Leaving my friends to bring him to Schillinger's so he could vent.

"It's not like they're friends.” I leaned in closer and wow, he was shivering! I touched his sleeve. “You don't have a coat."

Then he gave me the weirdest look. “I won't be here long."

"We just got here and you're leaving?"

"It's not like you think.” How was I supposed to know that by here, he meant the planet? Accidentally my hand was still on his arm and he reached up and spread his fingers over mine; they were so warm. It was intense. I was waiting for him to explain but out of nowhere he said, “So meanwhile, are you seeing anybody?"

"Yes. No. Well, not anymore.” Oh, flirty girl, all fake-innocent. “Why?” Take that, Trig Masters.

He didn't exactly answer. “Did you ever think that there's someplace better than this?"

"What, Wingdale? Man, there's gotta be.” Man. I'm here in Schillinger's with a man. Just thinking it excited me, so I wasn't rightly listening when he explained. Something about the pre-kingdom with a leader designated by Them, which when I asked, he told me They knew better than us and if I came with him, we'd end up in a far, far better place. When he laid it out for me his eyes were so bright that I knew that whatever he was seeing, it was real. I was thinking he was crazy or I was crazy, or we weren't and something big was about to happen to both of us.

I made a silence for him to drop words into. It didn't happen right away. When he finally spoke, it was so sudden that I jumped.

"Did you ever hear of Etheria?"

"Yeah, sort of. Um. Not so much."

"It's wonderful.” To hear him, you'd think it was downtown Oz. “It would have been so easy if we'd stayed, but Mother did this stupid, stupid thing.” He almost choked on it. “They fought. She took us away. But it's okay. He stayed in touch."

"Who?"

"My father."

"That stringy old guy with the xylophone thing?"

"No, my real father.” He looked so proud. “Jethro Flagg. He promised to come for me. For the Great Upload.” He opened his phone. “It's tonight.” He set it down on the table. He squared it on the table with a look, like he was expecting further instructions. Then he scanned me up, down, with those amazing eyes; he was, like, assessing me. “They aren't taking everyone."

"Because...."

"New society. They want the best.” He nodded and Bud brought over a couple more doubles. I grabbed one; I needed it.

I made another silence and waited. It took him too long to go on so I pushed. “Who are They that they're so important?"

"Jethro hasn't rightly said. Just that they have more brains and better technology so wherever they take us, it will be better, and so will we....” He got all wrapped up in thinking about it.

"Yo, Edward.” I fanned my fingers in front of his face. “Edward?"

Then he surprised me; he sighed. “I worry about the rest."

It was only a little creepy. “Which ones are those?"

The squint told me it pained him to say it out loud. “They aren't taking just anyone. We'll be fine, but the others....” He took my hands and sparks zapped between us for a long time. They exploded into words. “Oh Tifney, do you want kids?"

"Like, now?"

He shook his head. “When it's time."

"Maybe. Probably. Not yet, but maybe when I'm ready....” This conversation was spinning its wheels. Because he was so cute and anyplace was better than Wingdale I said, to please him, “Whenever that is."

His phone buzzed on the table. He didn't even look. He jumped up, tugging on my hand. “We have to go. We have to go!"

Just then the bar shook; the neon in the front window gave way to a white glare bigger than a billion strobes going off simultaneous. It filled the bar and bleached out all our faces. I froze until I heard Edward groan. “What,” I asked him. “What?"

"Just hurry!"

By the time we got out in the street it was all dark again. He ran. I ran. We kept running even though it was slippery and we were pretty much blinded. I fell and he helped me up. He was so upset that I wanted to tell him we didn't have to hurry. Girls know these things. Whatever he thought was about to happen was already done.

When we got to the field it was empty. There was a big black patch where every speck of ice had melted. To look at the gouges in the terrain, you'd think something tremendous had landed, but it was gone and the ice surrounding had turned to water. Except for Dean Weingarten and the Blight people lurching around the stage bumping into things, everybody was gone. I didn't think that was so bad. I never liked them anyway. Whatever happened to them, my folks would be okay. They never come to these things.

I was okay but Edward crouched in the mud like a hunter looking for tracks. Then he fell on his knees and shouted at the sky. His voice was so full of pain that it tore me apart. He kept crying out the same thing over and over and over, “What happened, what happened?"

I heard thuds as two of the Blight people jumped down from the stage. Twins, maybe. They looked like Edward, but they looked more like each other. Edward was too forlorn and grieved to see them until they got all up in his face, one coming at him from one side and the other from the other. They did this, like, synchronized tap on the shoulder and said what they had come to say. This got his attention.

One said, “He came."

The other said, “She went."

"Mother left you a message."

"She said, ‘This will teach you. Nobody gets in my way.’”

Walking through downtown Boston recently, I saw a couple of street preachers expounding to a semi-enthralled audience of two about the “Meaning of Life.” They had even emblazoned the phrase at the top of their easeled hand-painted poster-board. Beneath the bold phrase in a bright yellow box they had printed three words constituting the steps toward making sense of the human circumstance. The words were “Admit,” “Believe,” and “Commit."

It was an elegant and simple equation, if not particularly easy to pull off in real life. But that is one of the major comforts of religion; to validate and explicate the mystery of life for those who can give themselves over to it. Folks who prefer to decipher the existential equation along more secular or scientific lines are on their own. And, for good and ill, it usually shows.

Consciously or not, fiction writers tackle these themes constantly. Amongst them is a respected “young” (although now in his forties) Israeli writer called Etgar Keret. Mr. Keret's stories tend to be quite short, but less than sweet. Although ostensibly both apolitical and nonreligious, Keret—the son of two Holocaust survivors—clearly draws on both Hasidic tale-telling traditions and the extremities of Israeli society. Keret's characters are depressive, defiant, treacherous, and tender. They look for moments of connection, even bliss, in a world made up of a troubled past, an uncertain future, and an anxious present that always seems on the brink of violence.

His pithy, fierce fables explore the absurdities of life, and often do so using elements of fantasy and horror. Keret might explain how the inhabitants of the moon annihilated themselves or consider the disastrous results when a nervous expectant father dreams next to his wife's big belly. In Keret's slightly altered world a group of buddies might take turns being temporarily possessed by a dead friend, a writer might have his talent repossessed by a daemon, or a fish on a restaurant plate might offer pithy advice to a disenchanted diner. In a story that he dedicated to his girlfriend (later, wife), Keret even explored the concept of romantic acceptance by having a young man discover that his beautiful female lover transforms, each night, into a fat middle-aged soccer fan with a pinkie ring.

Whether gruesome or whimsical, Etgar Keret's stories are very visual. It is not surprising then that quite a few have been transformed into short films. And on several occasions Keret has worked with visual artists to adapt his works into graphic novels and novellas. Feature films are more difficult to pull off, in all cases, but especially when you are trying to take an absurdist short story and extend it for two hours without eliciting impatience or boredom in your audience. Realistic other-worldness is a challenge, especially in a live action film. Goran Dukic's 2006 film Wristcutters: A Love Story couldn't quite pull it off—while the same Keret novella of “offed” souls and their romances and adventures in the netherworld ("Kneller's Happy Campers") actually works very well in the graphic novel he did with Asaf Hanuka, Pizzeria Kamikaze.

For filmic transformation, Mr. Keret's work has been better served by Tatia Rosenthal, an Israeli-born and New York-based filmmaker. Ms. Rosenthal had previously adapted Keret's work into shorts like her 1998 NYU student film based on the author's marvelous story about a woman who (literally) seeks to mend her broken marriage with “Crazy Glue.” Realizing that Rosenthal was not only a simpatico soul, but also that her preferred medium, stop-action animation, could well lend itself to the postmodern magic realism of his storytelling, Keret decided to collaborate with Rosenthal in bringing more of his fiction to the screen.

The approach the two took in constructing a feature film from Keret short stories was a good one—select several of his tales with complementary thematic content and intertwine them into a single movie. Ms. Rosenthal has said that they were aiming for something like “Altman's Short Cuts, only with puppets.” But the kind of folks who fund feature films are not exactly inspired by that particular kind of high concept. As we know, Mr. Altman's movies seldom set the box office on fire. Moreover, Hollywood has always hated animation for adult audiences. It's okay if you pitch it to the kiddies and throw in enough puns and cultural allusions so that the parents can enjoy it, too. But to make an animated movie specifically for mature audiences (complete with puppet sex scenes—Oh, the Horror!) is more than the moneybags of tinseltown care to consider.

Hence, it took several years to get backing for the Keret-Rosenthal project, and it required the filmmakers to make the film an Australian-Israeli co-production to secure final funding. The result is an odd example of cultural détente. Although you might think that using Aussie actors to give voice to Rosenthal's silicone figures and Keret's very Israeli sensibilities would result in singularly indigestible salmagundi, such is not the case. If anything, the mixture of existential themes with fantasy elements, an Israeli outlook with an Australian patois, and adult content conveyed by endearingly coarse little 1/6 scale puppets all helps make $9.99 a unique and quite satisfying cinematic experience.

Set in an unnamed (Sydney? Tel Aviv?) everycity, the action of the film focuses on those who live and work in and around a single apartment building. The film opens with a dispirited single dad of two grown sons, Jim Peck (Anthony LaPaglia), trying to catch a cab to the office. When a homeless man (Geoffrey Rush) tries to bum a cigarette and a buck for a cup of coffee from him, the two end up having an unsatisfying exchange about moral responsibility and manipulation. And when no cup of coffee seems to be coming his way, the weary homeless man politely thanks Jim and puts a bullet in his own head.

Rush's disgruntled suicide shortly returns in the form of an equally peevish angel who ends up befriending (and exploiting) a lonely old widower, Albert (Barry Otto). Meanwhile, Jim despairs about his sweet and deeply domesticated son, Dave (Samuel Johnson), who can't seem to find or hold a job. Jim wishes kind-hearted Dave could be more like his cocky brother, Lenny (Ben Mendelson), a repo man with an eye for the ladies. But even a slick character can be brought down by romance, as Lenny learns when he falls under the spell of a beautiful supermodel named Tanita (Leeanna Walsman) who likes her men smooth, and (eventually) to resemble bean bag chairs.

In another subplot involving romantic frustration, a young school teacher, Michelle (Claudia Karvan) fears that her immature and lazy boyfriend, Ron (Joel Edgerton) may never make an adult commitment to her and to a family life. So she leaves him lonely ... but not for long. An invading posse of miniature stoners are soon crashing with the hapless Ron and leading him to further juvenile excesses of drunken sloth.

And in the most touching storyline, a young boy, Zack (Jamie Katsamatsas), eager to own a soccer action figure, is given a piggy bank by his father so he can earn the money for the toy. But before long the boy falls in love with the innocent cheeriness of his porcine coin collector, and has to find a way to save his beloved friend when his father says that it is time to take a hammer to him.

While all of the inhabitants of the building long for something—anything—to fill their emptiness and give their lives more meaning, hapless Dave thinks he has discovered the secret to a purposeful and joyous life in the pages of a “small and amazing booklet” that promised to disclose the meaning of life for a penny less than a tenspot (giving the film its title). After reading the book, it all becomes clear to Dave. But, alas, no one else—including his exasperated dad—seems interested in achieving Nirvana, or even hearing about it.

Sounds like a downer. But it's not, really. A few of the characters meet with calamitous ends, but others open up their lives to new joy and the experience of pure love. We humans, even the tiny silicone variety, can ask for little more.

Chances are you never got a chance to see $9.99 in a movie theatre. Outside of the film festival circuit, it got only a week or so in a handful of theatres in a few major markets. So, do seek it out as a home video. It might not completely unravel the meaning of life for you, but it will likely entertain and delight you. And, along with films like Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis (2007) and Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir(2008), $9.99 may also signal that the world—if not Hollywood—is ready for artful animated films fashioned for adult audiences.

Sarah Thomas is currently living in Massachussetts, where she is enrolled in Boston University's graduate journalism program. This story, like Brendan DuBois's story in this issue, suggests that life on the Moon might not be easy.

All the predictions regarding how quickly the public would bore of the mission were grossly underestimated.

For fifteen news cycles, at least one network was providing round-the-clock coverage. The base's larger structures were self-assembling, so there was plenty of time for Virginia to prance around for the cameras in her jumpsuit, sticking posters to the polycarbonate walls with duct tape. The mission directors had encouraged her to take as many mementos from home as she pleased—both for her own peace of mind, and to demonstrate the efficiency of the new Valero thermocakes.

"You know, fifty years ago astronauts couldn't take more than seven pounds of material with them,” she said to a camera one day, in a slightly different format than she had related the same statistic, earlier, for this network's ratings rival. “For perspective, that's about the equivalent of a small palmtop computer-printer. I'm glad I'm coming up here now,” and here she lifted an ostentatiously thick hardback book and set it on a shelf.

"Do you like to read, Sergeant Rickles?” asked the newscaster, after a four hundred thousand mile pause.

"Very much so,” she said, loading the shelf with more leather spines. “And the folks at Harper-Doubleday were kind enough to provide me with some of my favorites."

On the first supply flight, two months later, nearly ten million viewers tuned in as the Vice President toured the completed Fort Discovery moonbase and presented Virginia with a signed first edition of the President's autobiography. Virginia thanked the Vice President and his entourage, then made them all tea on the facility's infrared induction cooktop.

The early supply shuttles came in so fast Virginia was less afraid of loneliness than of not getting her work done.

Though the primary purpose of her mission was, simply, to live on the Moon—to prove to the skeptics that space exposure was not lethal, to advertise the products and technologies that would fund later NASA missions, and to excite people about the possibility of luxury moon tourism—a few genuine experiments had attached themselves along for the ride. All were designed to look after themselves, but they required calibration and monitoring, and it wasn't long before Virginia began to resent the interruptions.

"But I told you, I don't need any more food!” she yelled at the monitor one day, while the deputy director listened impassively. “I've got fourteen crates out there. Isn't the idea that I'll be self-sustaining anyway?"

"Never hurts to have a backup. And the food will definitely be eaten. We'll use it on other missions."

"And paint? What the hell do you expect me to do with paint?"

"Benjamin Moore is donating twelve million dollars and all the labor and supplies to paint the next two space shuttles, Virginia. Use your imagination."

So Virginia painted childish murals on the walls of the kitchen and living area, murals of trees and deserts and fish under the sea. Then some station got the bright idea to encourage children to send their drawings and poems to the moonbase, with the envelope addressed, “Sgt. Virginia Rickles, Fort Discovery, The Moon, U.S.A.,” and Virginia's murals disappeared under reams of paper and wax.

An unexpected resurgence of Virginia's popularity came when the President and Executive Host booked a luxury shuttle cruise and requested a stopover at the moonbase.

They could not have come at a better time. The hydroponic garden had really taken off; the Plexiglas window in the mess was a sheet of green, dotted with tiny flecks of red fruit. Some of the experiments were beginning to yield definitive results, and an automatic physical had just pronounced Virginia in better shape now than when she arrived on the moon.

The Executive Host was much taller than he looked on television. Virginia found herself smiling whenever he said anything to her.

"You know, my mother was a First Lady,” he told her on their third day, while they walked through the hydroponic garden with the news crew tagging discreetly behind.

"I know. I watched her special on expanding the White House when I was a kid."

"You and everyone else. She never really got over that, how controversial it became."

"I never understood why. I thought the new wings were beautiful. She had exquisite taste."

"Well, she'd be happy to hear you say so."

"Was it strange to move back after the election?"

"A little. It was like visiting your old high school."

"I never did that."

"Visited?"

"No, went to high school. I was homeschooled.” The Executive Host looked at her then. He did not find her a pretty woman, though there was something attractive in her utter health. There had been one unexpected physical result of long-term space exposure; her pupils were permanently dilated, with a mere sliver of brown surrounding the black like a hemisphere of chocolate truffle. The Executive Host wondered if she thought of herself as a Cortes or a da Gama, hacking through a jungle of vacuum to find a new world.

The President caught up with them then, looking worried. They were needed back on Earth, she said. The situation with some other country was deteriorating. Even as the President mentioned who, Virginia felt the name of the enemy sliding away from her mind like a bar of wet soap.

America was too distracted for space now. Even the elementary schools stopped sending her pen-pal messages. She continued to broadcast faithfully every week, explaining a piece of technology in simple terms, talking about her AIBO as if it were a real dog. She had to stop showing it, though; it had shorted after wandering into her shower stall.

"No, no, everything's under control down here,” said the Deputy Director. There was an unusual amount of background noise. “We're going to send up another shuttle to collect the seedlings."

The shuttle never arrived. It was blown up, and there was no money to build a new one. The only things left were the commercial craft and the communications satellites, all turned inward.

"You've never asked,” he said to her on another night. He had starting calling a few times a week. She brewed two mugs of coffee when he called, let one become cool and bitter while she drank the other and listened.

"I've never asked what,” she said. It wasn't a question.

"Never asked to come home. Never asked to get off the base."

There is a long pause, during which the director thinks about Virginia. He realizes she has no replacement halogen bulbs. He realizes he wants her to drink that second cup of coffee, that it will break some small unsullied chunk of his heart if she throws that cold liquid down the reclamation drain. He realizes he expects to die soon, possibly within hours.

"Well, you've had a lot on your mind down there,” she says finally, swirling her index finger in the dark liquid. Virginia is thinking that she has never, in her life, thought of anywhere on Earth as “home.” This base is not home either, just a place reflecting all the entities that have encased her; an old mattress with the springs poking through. “I always knew this was going to be a long mission. I trained for this, I wanted this. I'm better equipped, literally and figuratively, to be alone up here than any astronaut outside of Russia. I'll be okay."

The director's pause is shorter. He knows if he opens his mouth to tell her that there is no Russia anymore, he will never be able to forgive himself.

"That's true. Now, tell me about the EKG readings.” Virginia drinks her cold coffee while the Deputy Director's heart flutters like a bicycle streamer, waiting for the bombs to begin again.

Four weeks later, Virginia tries to raise the Deputy Director. It is difficult to make a call; there is a lot of interference. She eventually gets a signal, but the control room is empty. Though there are no windows on the station, a camera is always trained on Earth. The view when she switches on her video screen is cloudy and unhelpful.

The wall calendar tells her it is Christmas.

She has found a gift for herself. It was shoved in the corner of her bunk, where, on some unremembered morning shortly after her arrival, she used it to stop a shelf from wobbling. The manual for the AIBO. It is in Japanese, but she has many different language dictionaries, and it might allow her to fix the toy.

When Virginia was small, her mother and stepfather lived, very briefly, in a bed and breakfast in northern Vermont. She was with her mother just on holidays then, and the first one she spent there was Christmas. There is very little she remembers about that Christmas; it passed in a smear of dry turkey and presents reflecting generic, girlish interests not her own. But she remembers the fire in the massive stone fireplace, glittering off the wineglass tipped in her mother's loosening fingers.

The children's drawings do not burn so bright, in the glass dutch oven on the induction cooktop. But she watches anyway, whistling tunelessly.

There are two symptoms of long-term space exposure. The first, the dilation of her pupils, causes her little discomfort except to make the white plastic of her surroundings luminously bright. The second she discovers with no warning one day while she is masturbating furiously in the shower; a faint tingling on the pads of her fingers irritated by repetitive motion. She gives up after a few minutes, simply collapses to the fiberglass floor of the stall and lets the reclaimed water sluice over her head.

Behind the bathroom is a small gymnasium; a rack of free weights, a yoga ball, and an elliptical crosstrainer. Her mission briefs stipulate she spend twenty minutes in here every day, but lately she has been stretching it to two hours. She runs through her routine and then improvises workouts never attempted before; hooking her knees around the handbars of the elliptical crosstrainer and powering it with her hands, strange balletic swings with her wrists and feet strapped to five pound weights. Sometimes she passes out from exertion and awakens later, clammy with sweat.

She has not increased her food intake. Her hips winnow down to knobs. Her clavicles work like dull knives trying to cut through the peel of a salt-white tomato.

"I wonder if there's still a Disney World,” she says to no one in particular one day. She hasn't spoken in weeks, just sat at the table with the unchanging white light growing brighter and brighter.

"I wonder if there's still a Disney World,” she says again, to taste the flavor of the echoes that come back to her off the gleaming plastic surfaces. “I never went to Disney World. I can't remember if I ever wanted to. Maybe when I was really young. I think I once saw a special on the travel network about the underground passages in Disney World. They were carpeted, and the announcer said they were cooler and quieter than the park. There was a plush bench against a hall, and Snow White and Winnie the Pooh were sitting next to each other. Just ... talking. I remember wanting to visit there—not the park, the underground passages. I wonder if they still exist. I wonder if the passages protected the workers. Maybe Snow White made a barricade and is trying to tunnel her way back to the surface. Maybe there are armies down there, battalions of Mickeys trying to save America. I'm an American. America. I'm a citizen of the United States of America."

And here Virginia cries, finally. She hasn't cried in two years. She cries because of the strength of the heart beating in her chest, she cries because even her great immunity against loneliness is still mutable, still sieved with tiny holes of feeling through which the whites of the countertops can pass. She cries because she realizes, finally, that she is only forty-three years old.

One day, Virginia is methodically going through every drawer in the base.

She is counting all the spoons, all the screwdriver bits, all the Band-Aids, and organizing them along more whimsical lines. The drawer of all things that smell sweet will be next to the drawer of things that are yellow. She is not sure, yet, into which the pencils will go.

She finds many nuts and bolts; four tall ones, sixteen stumpy little ones, four with wing screws. Her idea comes to her almost without thought, and she has broken out the silver cans of Benjamin Moore paint. The alternating teal and lime colored squares go on the table, and Virginia is as bouncy as a child waiting for them to dry enough to play chess.

She begins the next day, but it is no good. The chess squares begin to gnaw at her mind; no amount of workout-derived blackouts can keep them at bay. She tries sneaking up on the game, shoving pawns along senseless lines while passing between the kitchen and gym. She sees the eyebolts in her sleep, which has a gray hue from the light passing through her eyelids to her gaping retinae.

"I need another game,” she decides one day. “If I'm playing two games at once I won't be able to plan as far ahead.” The kitchen agrees with her.

She plays this game with spice canisters against herb tins, on a black and pink field much larger than the other. The games reproduce exponentially. Sheets from experimental schematics against pieces of a page-a-day calendar with jokes about cats. Components of a microscope against burned-out lightbulbs. Balls of wadded duct tape against knots of her own hair. The surfaces of her base become a fractal meadow of colors, echoes of which invade her sleep and give her dreams of peaches that taste of onion and sawdust.

It occurs to Virginia one day that she can go outside, collect some rocks for more chess pieces. Virginia has never left the station. There is a suit in the airlock; it is slightly too large for her and has a faint chemical smell.

Virginia trips as the pop of expanding air knocks her off balance. Her cosseted shoulder bumps softly against the portal jamb. She takes a few steps outside, dizzy with fear.

Above her, the black is a twitching membrane the color of chloroform. Being under it makes her skin feel nauseous, like licking a battery with some shameful orifice. Her eyes quest around for something normal to latch onto, and they find the Earth. She stands, buffeted a little by the processes of her body in the low gravity, and stares at the Earth, shrouded in a scum of cloud, only interrupted occasionally by a thin slash of blue. She stares, thirsty for land, and finally she sees it, an obscene brown bulge, the Florida peninsula denuded. She goes back inside the base and tries to calm the knocking of her heart.

Virginia attempts suicide only once.

She is outside again; she walks in the suit every day now. It makes its own oxygen, recharging enough in the evening to give her eight hours of breath should she need it. There are many rocks outside, and she has carved some with an arc welder, making a landscape of rough-hewn squirrels and jellyfish.

She is shaping some stone with her absurd spatula mittens into an approximation of a sleeping cat. The mittens tremble, stop. The stone cools quickly. The arc welder bounces slowly when it pillows into the sparkling dust. Virginia reaches behind her back and locates the small jet pack, meant to be used to locomote quickly in the low gravity.

She switches it on and lies back, and the obscene black sucks her up like a milkshake.

After an hour the pack runs out of fuel. She has no way of knowing how far up she has gone. She just lies there, her eyes aching with abyss. Her mouth moves, a mephitic lullaby of nonsense syllables rocking her someplace beyond sleep.

But she does not clear the gravity well, and after five additional hours she comes to a soft landing in the dust. For a few moments she holds her breath. Then she stands and follows her homing readout back to the base.

"All right,” she says later, to the kitchen. “Maybe not today. But it's okay. I know it's there for me now. No rush."

Next Christmas, she burns the AIBO in the dutch oven, the little pieces of doggy head glinting oddly in the firelight.

Thirty-one years pass.

The mission crew of the BRSCG Sangre de Christo stands outside the hemisphere of pitted polycarbonate and tries to understand what they are seeing.

Around them, the moon rocks have been carved into a forest of skyscrapers and half-licked Tootsie pops. Mutant snails with spider legs gambol through the razor shadows. Faces stare up from arcane root structures, surrounded with spaceboot prints. Matteo, the mission leader, curses softly under his breath and wishes that their political officer were there to atomize their surroundings with holy water.

Behind him, Lourdes approaches the portal door with a large diamond drill. At a nod from Matteo, she flicks the switch and starts cutting through the outer airlock.

Matteo turns, stares at the gibbous Earth. He thinks the light-sprawl illuminating the cloud cover just at the horizon line might be Guatemala City. In the privacy of his mind he still names it thus, in the precise English of his Jesuit lizard-memory. La Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción is clunky to him. Commandeered prose, like the components of the ship that brought him here. Like what they are doing to this building.

Next to him, the communications officer tugs his elbow.

The airlock portal has opened. From the inside.

For a few moments they just stand there, their breath misting the inside of their helmets. Matteo moves first, his half-hop looking oddly enthusiastic. The rest follow. Once inside the portal, repressurization is soundless within their helmets. A long pause, during which Lourdes fingers the controls of the diamond drill, and then the inner portal opens.

They walk inside, slowly. Before them is a warren, lit by sputtering lightbulbs and covered with senseless tessellations of paint and organic matter. Lourdes kneels, staring at a phalanx of neatly balled dust. The only piece of recognizable architecture is a wall, so designated because a portal yawns in it; ropy vines crawl through, overspreading the space above his head with stalactites of banana.

In his ear mike, Lourdes screams softly.

Matteo approaches. The space where she is looking was once a kitchen, now painted matte black and covered with powdery drawings of dogs and computer chips. A glass pot sits on the stove, full of burning gingerbread men. And on the floor, an elderly woman covered in a curtain of moon-colored hair crouches. Her eyes are black pools. She is thin as a skeleton.

"Your hands grew back,” she says after a moment, looking at the burning cookies. “That's nice."

Inside the Sangre de Christo's landing shuttle, a small digital recorder plays Gloria Estefan, and everyone but Virginia is dancing.

The Guatemalan astronauts are friendly with each other. They have trained together for years—learned to read the argots of dozens of dead empires, guessed when gold could be replaced with copper. They had all received Extreme Unction on a live television broadcast before taking off on this, the first space mission since the war. But now they are here and alive, and they celebrate, drinking aguardiente from plastic bags. The political officer snoozes with his feet on the table.

Lourdes is the only other woman. Her left hand grabs invisible cloth and throws it around like a matador as the men hand her over from one to the other. Between songs, Lourdes talks to Virginia; quick bursts of furtive pidgin English dropped while she watches the political officer. She has no idea if Virginia can understand or not.

"Someday, I would like to be a nun. Maybe there will be convents here when I am older. We could be called Las Hermanas de la Señora de la Luna,” she confides seriously. “Do you know what that means?"

Virginia shakes her head.

"You can be our hermit. You'll bring us luck!” She giggles. Virginia cocks her head quizzically, reaches toward Lourdes's jawbone with the tips of her fingers. She touches, then shies away as if she has been shocked.

"No, it's okay, see?” she takes Virginia's hand again, brings it to her face. “Real. Verdadera."

Virginia's hand trembles there, papery and warm on the down of Lourdes's face.

"Verdadera. We aren't going to disappear, Miss America. You're safe now. You're with friends."

One of the other crew members sweeps her up then, and she dances, throwing a smile to Virginia. Smiles are interesting. Virginia wishes her face would do that.

"Friends,” she says, thinking of antique automobiles. No one hears her.

"I keep telling you, she isn't capable of understanding the Creed!” Matteo in his stateroom, speaking to the Commissariat.

"This isn't my decision, Matteo. This comes directly from the Holy See. And she must be baptized as well."

"She's an old mad woman. She's been alone for decades."

"She's an American. She's an enemy of the Guatemalan people."

"She doesn't know who we are! I don't even think she understands a word we say to her."

"You speak English. I'm prepared to absolve you if you need to translate the Creed for her."

"She needs a doctor. She needs to be back on Earth."

"That is out of the question. She's a political liability, and you can't spare the weight."

"I doubt she weighs more than eighty pounds. We can leave the diamond drill. We'll get it on our next visit."

"Absolutely not. You think there are many of those left? She's waited this long. She can wait a little longer."

"This is insane. It would be kinder just to kill her."

"Are you accusing the Holy See of fallibility?"

"I ... no, of course not. Forgive me.” Matteo switches off the console, sits on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands.

The next morning, Virginia isn't in her bed.

Lourdes discovers her absence first, going into her bedroom early in the morning with a cup of mate and a hairbrush. The blanket is folded into an origami swan on the bed; it reminds Lourdes of the napkins she has seen in pictures of bourgeois restaurants. She drops the mate to the floor. The cup bounces as she screams.

Matteo is the one who discovers the missing space suit.

Lourdes begged to go out looking for her, but the political officer pointed out that they could wander for hours and never find her. He said a brief mass to Saint Anthony and Saint Joseph of Cupertino, and then told them all to get back to work.

But no one could. Lourdes paced back and forth, a string of coral rosary beads in her fingers. The political officer drank a little tequila from a hip flask and went back to sleep. Matteo played chess, flicking his eyes back and forth to the outside camera feed. He saw her first, stumbling back to the station, and shouted to the others to give way, leave room at the airlock.

Virginia stepped back in, took off the helmet. They all looked at each other, inexplicably bitter and relieved.

Then Virginia speaks. “Queen to G5, queen takes rook. Then bishop to H3, check,” she says in flawless Spanish.

"Madre de Dios,” whispers Lourdes, running to Virginia and throwing her arms around the bulky suit. “Està un milagro!"

"Excellent,” said the political officer sleepily. “Now she can be educated!"

Matteo swallows angrily. He turns and his eyes alight on the chessboard.

"King to D4,” he says, shoving the pieces.

"Bishop to A5,” she says, her head still resting on Lourdes's shoulder.

"You're very good, Miss America. Or do you have a name?"

There is silence then; Lourdes is afraid to move. Then she feels a tiny drop of water fall into the hollow of her neck.

"Virginia,” she says. Then, “Bishop takes pawn."

Matteo does his best.

He tries to teach her to swear allegiance to the principles of Catholic Socialism. Virginia is absently poking her fingernail into a sore she has worried into her cheek. Her other hand is wrapped around Lourdes's wrist, tapping out a meandering staccato rhythm on the veins. The red coral rosary is around her neck; the beads make soft, knucklebone sounds as she sways her neck back and forth.

"Matteo, just stop it!” cries Lourdes. Last night, she offered timidly to stay in Virginia's place; a request she knew would be declined, but she made it anyway. They are almost out of power. The commissariat has not changed his mind; the political officer refuses to intercede. They are returning to the Earth, and Virginia must remain. The thought makes Matteo furious and Lourdes sick. But there is nothing for it. And he will tell her, now.

Matteo stands. “You're right. Miss Virginia?” he looks at her, switches to English. “Miss Virginia, we have to leave. We have to go back to Earth. Only for a little while, you understand? You can stay here. You don't have to go back to your base. We're going to leave you the music player, and we'll be back soon. Maybe a few months."

Virginia looked at him, and he was afraid for a moment she had relapsed, that his words just fell into the black hollows of her eyes and made no impression. But then her jaw collapsed, her head ducked into the painful sharp shoulders. She clutched Lourdes, howling pitifully.

"No, no no!” she screamed. Lourdes was sobbing now, saying she was sorry, over and over again, in Spanish, English, even in Latin.

Then, suddenly, a fist reached out, flashing with a whisper of silver as it landed alongside Virginia's neck. Her black eyes rolled back in her head and she fell still, twitching. The political officer withdrew the needle, his soft hands catching her on the way down.

"There,” he said. “Now we can leave in peace."

Matteo punched the man in the jaw and he fell like a stone.

Lourdes and the political officer made the last sweep through the station, making sure they missed nothing. Matteo was already handcuffed in the shuttle. Virginia was in a life bed, still sleeping. Once it was switched on, the life bed was designed to keep all vital signs steady, provide nutrition, and keep her comfortable until they came back and woke her up.

Lourdes kneeled next to the life bed and took the thin hand in hers.

"I am sorry, Miss Virginia. I will be coming back soon. I have already volunteered to join the first order here. We will be back in a year, maybe a little longer. You will never be alone again. I am sorry."

Virginia's eyes do not stir, but she squeezes Lourdes's hand.

"No more thinking,” she says, so softly Lourdes can barely hear. “No more thinking."

"No more ... yes, that will do.” The political officer was behind Lourdes; she had not heard him, but he heard Virginia. As he walked out of the station, she could see a look of excitement on his long face.

Matteo was penanced to ten years of missionary work for insubordination, and thus not present when the political officer presented his plan for Virginia. She would never have been allowed back on Earth, Matteo reflected later. She would have been stoned in the street, or sent to one of the criollo gulags. He should have known that the real reason they wanted her to remain was so they could figure out a way to humiliate her.

Maybe it was kinder anyway, he told himself. She got her wish. Maybe her last feeling before they lobotomized her was some ponderous gratitude.

A camera crew went back with the political officer, to perform the operation. They only broadcast the result, not the operation itself; if Virginia fought for her life, cried and begged for consciousness, Matteo never learned of it. Overall, it was disappointing television; a woman with no mind might just as well be daydreaming. It was the political officer who found the solution. He got the idea to place a video monitor in front of her vacant face, its display reading static. The angle made it look like it was sprouting from her neck like a flower on a milk-colored stem. The image was broadcast all over Guatemala, put on the backs of playing cards and graffiti'd on buildings; a pair of bony shoulders draped in the bloodied remains of an American flag, topped by an empty screen staring into nothing.

When Sister Lourdes and the nuns returned one year later, the first thing Lourdes did was lift Virginia's limpid body out of her life bed, and move her back into the corner of the mess. Then she turned on the music, and cried a bit, and picked up their conversation where they had left off.

Virginia dreams static dreams of space, sitting in the corner of the Guatemalan station/convent. She is washed, fed, her hair is combed. On feast days the nuns will dress her and carry her on a fiberglass bower through the corridors. Her eyes remain open, staring into nothing—little jewels of cotton-dry amber, the pupils retreated to some empty cardboard box inside. And on Saturday nights, a swirl of frantic life surrounds her, the voices of people dancing and laughing, as her heart echoes the leftover moments away.

Nancy Springer says her new book (due out next year) is a shuddery supernatural chiller entitled Dead End Bend. Her latest tale is a quiet story for the holiday season.

Most old women like me don't bother with a Christmas tree. “Like me” means on a fixed income, which equals poor, and also means getting more lonely and scared each day as the other old women you know die off. Lonely is when you buy postage stamps one at a time, so when there's something to mail you can walk to the post office and talk to somebody. Scared is when you realize you already own all the clothes you're ever going to need, including something decent for your funeral.

Show me some “Q-Tip,” some “wrinkly,” some small-town “senior citizen” like me who says they're not scared of dying, and I'll show you a liar. No matter how much peace and light some of us talk, we all go around with perturbed shadows inside us. Trust me. If you're my age, the reason you stop bothering with a Christmas tree is because you're scared you might not be around for another Christmas, so you try not to let Christmas matter. You make excuses. There's not enough room in your apartment. Your back aches. It's too much trouble. Your husband's not around anymore to cuss and complain while he puts up the lights. Christmas is for young people and children.

You tell the kids not to get you anything. Except I only ever had one child and she died, so that takes care of that. She was hit by a pie truck, of all things. Husband died too, fell over in the middle of a Rotary Club meeting when he was fifty-four. Heart attack.

I think that's when I started to get old. Such being the case, I have spent one-third of my life being old and I am still trying to get a handle on it.

Which brings me to this either senile or visionary business of the bottle-brush tree. Except I don't want you thinking it took place all at once like somebody pressed a button on the back of my head, because that was not the case at all. It started way back in early summer, maybe even spring, and I didn't even know what I wanted the bottle caps for. I mean the plastic ones off cartons of milk or orange juice. They were bright-colored circles, that's all, and I started saving them because I just plain liked them. They gave me pleasure that didn't cost me a penny extra. I started keeping an eye on people's trash and recycling bins during my daily walks, because I had blue, green, orange, yellow, and white, but I wanted red, pink, and purple. And to make it harder and more satisfying I wanted only bottle caps with no logos or lettering. Innocent, so to speak. I kept them in a bowl in the kitchen and sometimes I'd count them or line them up by color or play with them, making the little circles into bigger circular designs on top of the table.

My little girl, Iris, when she was alive, she used to play for hours with what most people would consider trash, like oatmeal boxes or toilet paper rolls, corn cobs or maple wings. Right up till she died when she was seven, she had magic inside her head that could make just about anything alive.

Except herself after the truck ran her over.

Most people think I named my little girl after a beautiful flower. Which I did, but also I had in mind the Greek goddess Iris, who carried messages from the clouds on top of Mount Olympus to the Earth below, as a rainbow.

By the time summer was over, I had bottle caps all the colors of the rainbow and then some, but it turned out I was just getting started. I walked every day, sometimes twice a day, because it had become important for me to find pretty, I mean really perfect lovely little things that the rest of the blind world just chucked in the trash. Like a tiny plastic doll I picked up from the gutter, or shiny paper clips, or those powder-blue lacework circles from kids’ cap guns, just dropped on the sidewalks, forgotten.

When winter set in and it got too cold to walk much, I found a thrift shop with a free box. You would not believe—well, maybe you would, but I could not believe the good things they dumped in there. A bright yellow plastic whistle, absolutely perfect, and a tiny toy white bird that just needed to be scrubbed clean, and a lavender plastic butterfly, and—oh, all colors of clips like mini clothespins, and strings and strings of Mardi Gras beads, and I could keep going but I'd wear you out.

Just one more thing: week after week I kept finding jacks like the ones I used to play “ball and jacks” with when I was a girl, except these were plumper and more satisfying and all pretty colors of plastic, not dull metal. I brought them home till I had dozens. They would spin like tops and make a blur of circle color, and such colors I never saw before, even in a sunset. Young people these days don't know what they have. Pinky orange periwinkle lilac jacks. I would sort them into rainbow caterpillars, or stack them on top of bottle caps like circus acrobats.

Circus is a good word to describe that thrift shop, the clowns who worked there and the midway stuff they sold. I could have bought Chinese pottery nose cleaners and Mexican sombreros and inflatable Elvises and Mount Rushmore paint-by-numbers and a stuffed moose head that sang “Unchained Melody,” but I didn't. I was sticking to my rules I'd set for myself pretty much out of nowhere and not knowing why. Such as, the things I took home had to be of no cost, meaning no value, overlooked by people in general but cherished by me. Like the baby rattles and teething toys I found in the free box, barely used. Bright yellow ducks, little pink pretzels, little blue blunt-winged airplanes.

Back when Iris had died, within a year I gave away her clothes and toys. Then after my husband died, within the next couple of years I got rid of all the photos, all the Christmas tree ornaments, all the birthday knickknacks, all the anniversary trinkets. Some people hang onto memories, but for some people, doing that just hurts worse.

That's how I thought it was for me. Yet at that thrift shop freebies box, I couldn't keep away from those tiny baby things. I took a few home—a powder-blue teething doughnut, bright plastic pretend keys on a ring, a circle of chewy plastic beads. I'd lay that one on the table and arrange the bottle caps inside it and try to see how many jacks I could balance on top before they all fell down like the children in the nursery rhyme, ashes, ashes.

Like Iris, dust to dust.

And my husband. Iris was gone, and I had given her ashes back to the sky where she belonged. That's what a rainbow is, light through dust. But I had no idea what to do with my dead husband, so I kept him in the basement with the rest of the bottled preserves. Red beets and green pickles too old to use, and I knew I ought to throw them all out, clean the jars, and take them to the thrift shop. After Christmas, maybe.

The month before Christmas, I noticed, people brought in even more donations than usual. It was like they were clearing out junk to make space for more junk incoming. Anyway, along with morbidly obese teddy bears and frosted-glass candle holders and World's Best Grandpa coffee mugs, the thrift shop filled up with artificial Christmas trees. I never took a second glance at any of them until one day I noticed a miserable-looking little tree, the size you'd put on a table, shoved under the clearance clothing rack.

"I haven't seen anything like that before,” said one of the volunteers when I picked it up.

I said, “It's a bottle-brush tree."

"Huh?"

"When they first started, they used to make them like that. Straight branches like the brush you'd clean a baby's bottle with."

"Well, nobody's going to want it. It's ugly."

I said, “I want it."

I had no idea what I wanted it for. I already had something to scrub the john with.

Up until then, one rule of my nameless game was that my finds should be small enough to be stowed like a secret in my purse or my pocket. All of a sudden I was breaking that rule and I didn't know why.

Of course I didn't know what the game was for either, so it didn't matter. I sat the tree on the kitchen table—everything that comes into the house lands on the kitchen table—and there it stayed, its bare circles of straight branches rising in dusty diminishing tiers.

Meanwhile the next week was all about red and green and merry ho-ho here and merry ho-ho there. Daytimes if I went to the post office, it was Christmas stamps for sale and clerks in Santa Claus hats. Evenings weren't any better. I'd try watching TV, but then I'd get disgusted and wander into the kitchen, sit at the table in the dim, flickering fluorescent light—damn things never did work right—and play with my toys until it was time to go to bed and not be able to sleep. I'd circle the jacks like covered wagons in an old Western movie to protect the lavender butterfly and the toy bird. I'd make chains of the plastic clips biting each other like yellow green purple blue alligators, and I'd spin the jacks, and I'd stack the bottle caps.

And there stood the bottle-brush tree, with the twisted wires sticking out of the ends of its so-called branches.

Bottle-brush tree, bottle caps, and one night I just stuck the bottle caps onto those branches to cover the wire ends.

White, cream, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, bright green, and all I had to do was just shove them on and they stayed, and I had plenty to fix up the whole tree.

Then I stood back and looked, and that ugly tree was not so ugly anymore.

Well, one thing led to another as it always does with me. Next I draped shiny Mardi Gras beads all over the tree, and what the heck, I clipped on a few red clothespins and threw on a few sparkly jacks, but then I decided the jacks would be prettier if they dangled and twirled, so I took some paper clips and bent them into hangers to hang all the jacks from the branches. I put hangers on the pale blue cap gun doohickies too. Lacy plastic things, they looked kind of like snowflakes, and the jacks catching the light looked kind of like stars—

And then I realized what I was doing.

Also, that it was Christmas Eve.

Which I'd been trying not to acknowledge. For days and days, strangers and radios and horse-faced TV announcers had been telling me Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas until it had gotten easy to ignore—

Yet here I found myself decorating a Christmas tree.

Caught myself in the act, so to speak.

Huh. It wasn't really a Christmas tree, I argued to the arresting officer: me. Not without any lights.

And no real ornaments, just junk.

And no angel or anything on top. See? Look, this was just a joke of a tree. Kind of making fun of myself, I took five of those clips like miniature clothespins, red yellow green blue purple, and I fastened them to the top of the tree in the shape of a star.

Yeah, right. Some star.

It was not enough for me to be scared, solitary, old, and shriveled; I had to be sarcastic too.

But at that moment I seemed to hear a little girl laughing—and the tree lit up.

Like somebody had flicked a switch, it stood all alight with color.

At the risk of repeating myself: there were no strings of electric twinkle-bulbs on that bottle-brush tree, none. Yet it shone all over, branches aglow, like a pot of junk at the end of a rainbow.

Make that the beginning of a rainbow.

And the rainbow was Iris. I knew it. I could feel her there in the dim kitchen with me.

I sat down because I had to. No strength in my knees.

"Come on, Mommy!” she sang to me right inside my head. “You forgot the baby things!"

And so I had. I'd been forgetting them for a long time. But I managed to stand up again without falling over, and my hands trembled only a little as I hung the teething rings on the tree. And the yellow whistle, and the white toy bird, and the tiny doll. I mean, Christmas is about a baby, and I'm not the only person who ever lost mine.

Then I tried to think what else might please her. “Let me see,” I whispered. “Paper clip chains?"

"No, Mommy, it's finished! Look! It's perfect!"

She was right. There on the kitchen table stood the most beautiful Christmas tree I had ever seen, bright and playful yet awesome and alive, like the burning bush in the Bible. I sat down and just gazed at it. And I swear I seemed to feel Iris sitting in my lap, wriggling like the kid she was, twisting around and giving me a hug, her invisible arms around my neck.

The rainbow light stayed in the tree all night. I know, because I never bothered trying to sleep, never went to bed.

The next morning—Christmas morning—once it got light, I couldn't see the rainbow in the tree anymore, but maybe it was still there. I could make believe it was still there.

Or I could just plain believe.

In Iris. Bringing me a gift from the sky, a message about how to be old. How it's all about completion, about coming back around to where you began, like circles, like the lid off a baby bottle, or like a hula hoop, or a teething ring. Or like the iris of your eye encircling the dark window of your soul.

Or like a perfect rainbow, the whole thing, not just the little bit a person can usually see.

You know a complete rainbow goes full circle. I never realized that until I heard it on some quiz show on TV: yes, it is possible to see a rainbow as a circle, a ring of prismatic light, if the shadow of your airplane is exactly in its center.

I'd like to see my rainbow that way one day, scarlet yellow green blue violet encircling me. But as I've never been in an airplane and never will, it would have to be under other circumstances, of which I am not quite so afraid anymore. That inner darkness, I'm hoping it gets left behind on the ground. When I go, I hope I see a ring of rainbow embracing the soul-shadow of my own departing wings.

Tim Sullivan lives in Miami with his companion, Fiona Kelleghan. His novels The Parasite War and The Martian Viking have recently been republished in electronic editions.

"My name's Mae,” said the pretty brown woman, looking down at him. A luminous, violet ceiling was just over her head. “What's yours?"

"Herel...” he said, uncertain of where he was. He was fastened to a flat, inclined surface. “Herel Jablov."

"Herel Jablov?” Mae said. “You're famous."

"Am I?"

"Yes,” Mae said, handing him a water packet with a sucking tube sticking out of it. “Drink this."

"Thank you.” He accepted the packet, noticing how nice Mae smelled, not perfumed but natural. “I'm very dry."

"Do you remember anything?” Mae gently asked.

"Yes,” he said, after taking a long sip. “I remember being carried through the dark by ... I don't know what it was, but it was unprotected out there.... And then I saw a star."

"A star?"

"But it wasn't a star,” he went on. “As we came closer I saw that it was an oval of light ... a window ... and then I saw someone watching me through it."

"That was me."

"I could see my rescuer in the light cast from that window.... It wasn't human."

"No, it wasn't."

"Where am I?"

"You're in a time station."

"A time station?"

"That's what I call it,” she said. “I don't know what it's officially called."

Herel looked at her. She wore a simple blue garment, a knee-length jersey. He realized that he was naked.

"I'm not dressed,” Herel said, embarrassed.

"The robot stripped you of your pressure suit and your thermal longjohns after it took you out of the Arrowhead and brought you inside,” she said. “Do you remember?"

"Yes, it examined me.... Am I okay?"

"You'll be fine,” she said. “The disorientation won't last long. Your parietal lobes are adjusting."

"Yes, of course."

"Here,” she said, freeing him from clasps that held him to the gurney. She handed him a yellow garment similar to the one she was wearing. He got up and found that he floated. He quickly slipped the jersey over his head. Mae helped him arrange it, and he was calmed by feeling her fingers through the fabric.

"Is anything coming back to you?"

"It's starting to.” He remembered losing contact with the other members of the team as he fell. “Did anyone else show up?"

"No, just you."

"There were four of us,” he said, “Park Li-Joon, Hess, Ertegul ... and me."

"Yes, I know about the team,” she said.

"Did they make it?"

"They all came back, all but one."

"Which one?"

"You."

"Me?"

"Yes."

What was she talking about? “But I'm here."

"It will take a little while to explain,” she said.

Herel was confused and discomfited. It was better not to think about it right now. He gestured at the violet chamber. “Will you show me around the ... time station?"

"So soon?"

"I'd like to see it."

"Sure. Come with me."

He drifted behind her through a low hatchway, propelling himself forward with handholds extruding from the walls.

"This is the kitchen,” Mae said. “Or the galley, if you prefer."

Like the examination room they'd just left, there were no windows set in the galley's luminous green walls. Packets of water and food floated, but otherwise it was empty.

"We're near the station's center,” Mae said. “There are four extensions stretching out from this point, two cells—staterooms, I call them—at the ends of three of them and the docking node at the end of the fourth."

"So there's plenty of room?"

"It doesn't seem like it after you've been here awhile."

"I suppose not."

"We have everything we need to survive,” she said, handing him a food packet, “but very little else. How's your memory now?"

"I remember falling after I lost contact with the others, but nothing else until the robot snagged me. Something must have happened in between."

"It'll be easier if you think farther back ... to your childhood, say.... You remember that, don't you?"

"Sure.” He sucked a mouthful of brown stuff from the tube. The grainy texture was a little off-putting, a bit sweet for Herel's taste, but otherwise it wasn't bad.

"High school? University? Maybe graduate school?"

"And earning my engineering degrees ... my Arrowhead design being chosen ... and being selected by the Institute ... training for the project ... and the big day...."

"It's what happened recently that you don't remember, huh?"

"Yes, that's right."

"This is going to sound odd to you, Herel, but the reason for the blank spot in your memory is that you've just come from the future."

"The future...?” That did bring a lot back. “Yes, that's what we were trying to do ... go into the future...."

"You succeeded, but you can't remember what happened uptime."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, maybe because it hasn't happened yet, so you've got no memory of it."

"That's preposterous."

"Maybe so, but people who come from uptime never remember what it was like."

He cast about for something to refute what she was saying, but he could remember nothing before the robot found him.

"You were dropped into a Kerr hole,” Mae said. “You emerged in the future, but no one can stay there for long."

"Then this isn't the future?” Despite his faulty memory, he knew that she was telling the truth.

"No, you were pulled back, sensors picked you out of the matter flowing from the white hole out there, and you were rescued by the robot."

He felt as if he'd awakened from a dream about an amusement park ride. He had fallen and fallen and fallen....

"If this isn't the future, where are we?"

Something lashed down from the ceiling and snatched his empty food packet before Mae could answer.

"What's that?” Herel was startled as several more of the nearly transparent fibers flailed around them.

"I call them tendrils,” Mae said. “They're part of the station's maintenance system. They're just cleaning up."

"How do they work?"

"Autonomically,” she said, taking him by the hand and drifting with him into another room. “I used to find them disturbing, but I got used to them."

They left the busy tendrils to their task as she led him to the big oval window near the docking node. It was dark outside.

"This is where you watched them bring me in?” he asked.

"Yes."

"Other than saying we're in a time station near a white hole, you haven't told me where we are."

"We're inside."

His own gaunt face and trim body were reflected in the window. “Inside what?"

"Inside time."

"I don't know what that means."

"As I understand it, we're in a crossover loop between two branes, caused by a phase change that ties time in a knot."

"A knot inside time?"

"Yes, the crossover stabilizes quarks into strangelets."

"And we're pulled back from the future into this ... strangelet universe?"

"Yes."

"So time travel isn't a one-way ticket."

"No, it isn't,” she said, “but sometimes the return trip is misdirected."

"How do you know all this?"

"A physicist was stuck here for a while. We talked."

"I see.” He stared at the darkness through the window.

"In our continuum, you were drawn through a rotating ring of neutrons,” she said. “That's what makes it possible for matter to pass through the collapsing star without being destroyed."

"Yes, some black holes have mass and angular momentum, but no charge."

"You know all about it."

"I should. I was one of the designers of the Arrowhead."

"I know."

"You do?"

"Yes, you and the others went through the Kerr hole and everyone but you came back to the precise time and place where you'd started. Some people called it a hoax, said none of you had ever gone anywhere. Conspiracy theorists claimed that you'd been killed because you wanted to reveal the hoax. I was a little girl when it happened."

"But you're a mature woman."

"I'm thirty-five."

"Only two years younger than me."

"Time doesn't mean much here."

"There are no clocks?” he asked, trying to understand this strangelet reality.

"What good would they be?"

"They'd be useful for small tasks.” The lack of clocks disturbed Herel; he liked to quantify things.

"There aren't any small tasks. Everything's taken care of,” she said. “The station is sensitive to our needs."

"How do you mean?"

"When you're hungry, it will give you something to eat. Water is plentiful because the basic elements are everywhere. The atmosphere is similarly synthesized—nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and all the necessary trace elements. If you're ill, your medical needs are attended to."

"The time station understands all our bodily requirements?"

"Yes, but the mind is a different matter. We have readers, but not much else to pass the time."

"Readers?"

"For viewing books, operas, films, plays, and the like,” Mae said. “You'll find them all over the station."

"And that's all the entertainment there is?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Maybe we can learn about the future from these readers."

"No, everything in them predates our time,” she said, “just as your epochal journey into the future predated my time."

"You're the only one who knows what happened to me...."

"I guess I am, and I'm grateful to you, Herel. I owe you my life for designing the Arrowhead. I would have died out there without it. How did you come up with such an ingenious design?"

"It was tricky, juggling space limitation, stress factors, and shielding while keeping costs down."

"See, your memory's coming back strong."

"So it is,” Herel said. “I do remember emerging from the white hole."

"Floating on the waters of Lethe,” she said.

"What?"

"It's the river of forgetfulness in classical mythology."

"I never had much time for literature,” Herel said. “Is the physicist you mentioned gone?"

"Lillian? Yes, she's gone. People never stay long ... except for me."

"Except for you...” He struggled to remember her name. “—Mae?"

"Yes."

"How do people get out of here?"

"A ship comes and takes them."

"Who pilots the ship?"

"No one, it's completely AI."

"Where does it go?"

She shrugged. “Maybe there's another Kerr hole somewhere inside the time knot, an escape hatch, but I don't know."

"Did robots build the time station?"

"I think so, at the direction of the uptime people."

"But the uptime people don't come here themselves?"

"No, but they have a way of sending directives into the knot."

"It was very humane of them to have this station built."

"Well, that may have been their intention,” Mae said, “but the reality is something quite different."

He looked at her sad brown eyes and realized how inane his comment must have sounded to her. She'd already told him she was stranded here. He looked away, flushed and embarrassed. That awkward feeling was all too familiar, as if he never knew how to say the right thing.

"Why can't you leave?” Herel asked.

"Because I'm a criminal,” Mae replied in sweet tones that belied her words.

"What?"

"I protested the System War,” she said, “a struggle between the regime on Earth and colonists on Luna, Mars, and the gas giants’ moons."

"You were against the regime?"

"Yes."

"So this is a prison?"

"For me it is,” she said. “For others it's a way station."

"That's unfair."

"The court didn't think so."

"But how could the court even know this station had been built?” Herel asked.

"They couldn't,” she said. “They didn't care about that. The conventional wisdom held that there were too many people already, so they might as well get rid of the troublemakers."

"They just dropped people into the Kerr hole and washed their hands of them, not knowing if they'd die?"

"When I first got here I thought someone would come for me. Then Lillian arrived and told me they couldn't, maybe for the same reasons we can't remember going up ahead."

"How do they run this place from uptime?"

"They don't. The station is self-sustaining."

"And it's all for us?” he asked, thinking of the tendrils.

"It's a very lonely place."

"Well, at least we have each other."

"For now."

It was a dull life, just as Mae had warned him. Without any means of calculating the passage of time, Herel whiled away the hours with interactive dramas, reading, and watching the tendrils creep out of the walls, floor, and ceiling to clean and maintain the enclosed environment. He guessed that they were nanowire fashioned from potassium manganese oxide, easily able to absorb oil and grease, but that didn't explain their independent movements. At first he followed them and tried to find out where they came from, where the mechanisms that controlled them were stored.

The air was circulated through wall slashes so thin he couldn't insert a finger between them.

He searched the premises thoroughly. Other than the airlock hatches in the docking node, he found no entryway into the time station's guts. Holes opened like mouths to receive the empty food and drink packets, and then closed again seamlessly. The tendrils seemed to grow right out of the solid walls, disappearing when they finished a job until the next time they were needed. They fascinated him, but once he'd seen them working a few dozen times he lost interest. After a while, he hardly noticed them, except for the occasional frisson provided by catching their movements in his peripheral vision.

He spent hours drifting through the time station, making observations, never giving up on finding out what made it all hum. He noted that the pastel walls consisted of soft material and that there were no sharp corners, no tools or knives and forks. Herel estimated the time station's interior at just over 2,000 square meters—2,028, as nearly as he could tell without precision instruments.

He made it his purpose, his work, to learn about it. When he tired, he sought out Mae, because her company was the only genuine pleasure he derived from his new surroundings.

"I feel rather frustrated,” he confided to her in the galley, “expending all this effort and learning so little. I have no idea what powers this place or how it reacts to our needs."

She nodded. “The time station seems to be alive, doesn't it?"

"Yes, almost as if it's been endowed with consciousness."

"Maybe it has."

"That would explain a lot, but I don't see how it's possible."

They talked often about their earlier lives. Herel got to know Mae. He thought she was wonderful—literate, kind, intelligent, and warm. They were nearly the same age, or had been when they were dropped into the Kerr hole. He was thirty-seven and she was thirty-five, even though he was born twenty-eight years before her. He admired her heart-shaped face, her dark eyes, her diminutive figure, the mole on her cheek. He enjoyed listening to her soft voice. She often read to him. He felt protective toward her.

"Why didn't you pay your taxes?” he asked during one immeasurable day as they chatted.

"It was a matter of principle,” she said. “I was an activist in the peace movement."

"How did you get involved in that?"

"I was part of a triad marriage, and we were all in it together—or so I thought."

"What happened?"

"Suzanne and Lodzi, my partners, relented and paid their taxes. They got suspended sentences, but I wouldn't do it. I never heard from either of them again."

"I'm sorry, Mae."

"I was foolish enough to believe what my attorneys told me."

"What did they tell you?"

"That I'd get probation. They didn't count on the court's hard line,” she said, tears coming to her eyes. “The state made an example of me."

"But why you?"

"Because the court thought everyone would see that if they'd do this to a nonviolent person, they'd do it to anyone. It cost a lot to wage war on the colonies. Imagine if billions of people refused to pay their taxes."

"So they cast you into the darkness."

"You could say that,” she said, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. “But I'd like to know more about you, Herel."

"I volunteered."

"Yes, I know, but why?"

"I wanted to lead the way through the Kerr hole."

"You're an idealist,” she said.

"No, I'm a mechanical engineer."

"And an explorer,” Mae said with an admiring smile.

"Call me Magellan."

She frowned. “You should be proud of what you did."

"Why, because I stumbled on a new kind of prison?"

"It could be worse.” She shrugged. “There's only one prisoner so far."

"I know, Mae, but it's you."

Mae looked at him with appreciation. “Thank you, Herel,” she said. “But I have my function here."

"Caring for lost travelers,” he said, his heart pounding so violently that it hurt. “Yes, I suppose it is important, and you're the perfect woman for the job. They made you into an example, all right, a beautiful example."

Their eyes met, reminding Herel of lines from a poem, “The Ecstacy” by John Donne, that Mae had read to him several times:

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes, upon one double string;

So to entergraft our hands, as yet

Was all the means to make us one,

And pictures in our eyes to get

Was all our propagation.

He took her warm hand in his. She didn't look away. It was then that Herel knew he loved her. He hoped to consummate that love very soon.

It still hadn't happened when a man was brought to the time station.

The robot was much taller than a human being and more slender. Herel felt as if he were seeing a figure from his falling dream when it came through the airlock carrying the barely conscious man in its long, segmented arms. The examination room was right off the airlock's inner hatch.

Four gleaming hands stripped the traveler of his pressure suit and thermal underclothing, calipers extended from slender fingers to measure him, and other instruments slid in and out of its hands and torso to pierce him and tweak him, to take blood, stool, and urine samples, to swab the inside of his mouth and to record his temperature. Tests were quickly administered to determine the condition of his organs, nervous system, circulation, and respiration. Herel identified with the robot's efficiency. Watching it work was like observing some superior species.

When the robot finished the job, it silently made its way to the airlock and went back outside, firing jets built into its elbows and heels to direct it back toward the white hole's tractor radius.

The new guest was a stocky young fellow with titanium plates embedded in his temples and bas-relief tats adorning most of his body. He gaped, his head lolled on his thick neck, and his eyes were unfocused. His head was shaved but the rest of him was hirsute. Herel didn't like seeing the young man's muscular, nude body.

But Mae didn't mind. She rubbed his wrists and fetched him water, explaining to him that he'd been yanked back from the future and spat out of a white hole. He looked at her as if she were speaking in tongues.

"What's your name?” Mae asked.

"Conway."

"I'm Mae and this is Herel."

"We inside?” he asked. His voice was surprisingly high and light.

"Yes,” Mae said. “How did you know?"

"I been inside before,” he said.

"You have?"

"Uh-huh, third time."

"You mean you've been in prison three times?” Herel said.

Conway's sleepy blue eyes regarded him. “Yeah, what else?"

"I thought you meant inside time,” Mae said.

"I don't blink."

Herel didn't understand what Conway meant, but Mae kept on trying to explain the time knot to him.

"Just three of us here?” Conway asked, as if he hadn't been listening to her.

"That's right,” Mae said. “And Herel won't be here much longer."

Conway's eyes cleared as he began to understand that he was not dead or sentenced to some hellhole, but alive in a safe place with a lovely woman, soon to be alone with her.

"What were you convicted of?” Herel asked, intending to make Mae see what kind of man this was.

"Armed robbery,” Conway said with an unmistakable sense of pride. “Chipped it true."

Herel glanced at Mae, but he couldn't tell what effect this admission had on her, if any.

"It was on Ogle,” Conway went on. “Had it skivved. Gonna slide right after the chip. Got slapped at Customs."

No colony had existed on that massive world in Herel's time. In fact, OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb had barely been explored in those days.

"Yeah, heavy world,” Conway said, “I chipped a gravity case and slipped speedy. Headed back to Mars, maybe Earth. Live big and true.” He sighed. “But slip into slap instead."

Mae and Herel didn't speak. Conway's eyes glanced furtively from one to the other.

"I hurt nobody,” Conway said, a whine creeping into his braggadocio.

"I thought you said it was armed robbery,” Herel said.

"I spill crediscs,” Conway said, “not blood."

"What if someone had done something you didn't like during the robbery?” Herel persisted. “Would you have killed her?"

Conway didn't answer the question. He glowered, understanding that Herel was his enemy, but not fearing him at all.

Mae fetched a red jersey for Conway.

"Hungry,” he said, after she helped him put it on.

They took him into the galley to get him some food.

"Once you've eaten,” Mae said, “you'll be fine."

"I'm all right, just tired,” he said, taking a squeeze of brown glop in his mouth. “What's this?"

"It's synthesized food,” Mae said. “I know it doesn't taste like much, but it's good for you."

"Sweet."

They ate quietly for a few minutes.

Conway whistled when the tendrils came out of the walls and ceiling.

"They do all the cleaning,” Mae explained.

He laughed, pleased that he would have no chores in this prison.

"So where am I?” Conway asked, as if they'd never told him.

They explained it all to him again. He didn't seem to comprehend what they were telling him, except for one salient detail.

"I'm here—” he said, “—forever?"

Mae didn't say anything.

"Looks that way,” Herel told him.

Unexpectedly, Conway grinned at Mae, revealing filed incisors and canines. “And Conway thought this would be skiv."

Feeling depressed, Herel showed Conway to his bunk after the meal, choosing the cell across the corridor from his own, all the way on the other end of the station from Mae's stateroom. He intended to keep an eye on Conway.

Herel strapped Conway into the bunk and watched him fall asleep. He went to his room and brooded for a few hours. After thinking things over, he found Mae reading in her room and said to her, “We've got to talk, Mae."

"All right,” she said, letting her reader float away, its projected words swimming above it. “I'm not going anywhere."

Herel pulled himself inside her room and said, “I don't like the way Conway leers at you."

She shrugged. “He's just a kid."

"Young, yes, but he's a felon, not a political prisoner."

"Anyone can make a mistake."

"He's a sociopath."

"A sociopath?” she said, laughing at the dated term.

"Look, I understand that you're sympathetic, but Conway's going to make trouble."

"What trouble can he make here?"

"That's what I don't want to find out."

"There's nothing for him to steal, and there aren't any weapons."

"That's not the point."

"What is the point?” Conway asked from behind him.

Herel shut up as Conway hauled himself into the room to face him. He floated so close by that Herel could smell the stale sweat on him.

"So what is it?” Conway demanded, sticking out his chin.

"We were having a private conversation,” Herel said.

"About me."

"Conway—” Mae said.

"Not blaming you, Mae,” Conway said. He never took his eyes off Herel. “He's skivvin me."

"No, it's just—"

"I blink what's just,” Conway said. He turned toward Mae, the plate on his left temple gleaming. “People skiv me all my life. Never give me true."

"So it's always someone else's fault?” Herel said, failing to keep the sneer out of his voice.

"You blink,” Conway said, as if reciting lines from a melodrama. “Born in a whorehouse. Momma bad. She got slapped, and I chipped to live. Had to."

"Did you ever try anything else?” Herel asked. “Did you make any attempt at bettering yourself, at educating yourself?"

Conway ignored the question. He stared straight at Herel, until Herel saw his own reflection in the blue eyes.

Herel turned and pulled his way out of the room. He was ashamed of letting Conway get to him, but he had to think this through. He went to the observation window near the docking node and stared out into the dark.

How many more like Conway would be sent here? Why were Mae and Conway the only two prisoners here, each from a different century? Was this place intended to eventually house miscreants from different eras, a means of thinning out the overcrowded population? Was it an experimental penitentiary, maybe the prototype?

It did him no good to speculate. All that really mattered was that Herel was going to be taken away when the next ship came, leaving Mae alone with Conway. Would she read poetry to this thug? Would she civilize him?

No, instead he would brutalize her in this most isolated of all places. She would be at his mercy, and he would break her down no matter how much she tried to make him understand compassion and beauty—just as she had failed to make the court understand that her principles were more important to her than the state's power.

Herel knew he had to do something. But what? How could he stop it? He'd be gone soon.

He had to act before then.

Mae spent more and more time with Conway, giving Herel the opportunity to do something he'd had little time for before—reflect. He'd never been good at dealing with people socially. He didn't know how to talk to women, for one thing. His mother had died in childbirth and Herel had no siblings. He'd studied hard—structural analysis, chemistry, thermodynamics, kinematics, metallurgy—to please his father, who'd been proud of his accomplishments. The old man hadn't lived to see Herel's finest engineering accomplishment, the Arrowhead, or his subsequent selection by the Time Travel Institute.

After his father was gone, Herel had only his career to live for. Not only had he never married, he'd never had many relationships at all, certainly none that lasted.

As the years had passed, he'd told himself that he simply couldn't find a suitable mate; that he was too dedicated to engineering for romance; that he wasn't like other people, but a man of superior intelligence; he was nobly pushing humankind into the future, and his time was too important for ephemeral dalliances. He was obsessive about his work.

Like any good engineer, Herel prided himself on his ability to solve problems.

He began to plan something while he brooded in his cell. It was no different than outlining any other project: First you become committed to it, and then you arrive at a general method of achieving it. After that you begin to put flesh on its bones, adding details and refining the framework. You try whatever you think might work and discard whatever doesn't contribute to the plan until it's perfected.

He had to draw his blueprint carefully. There were variables. For example, Conway was strong and he'd have no compunctions about using violence. Ironically, that might give Herel an advantage. Conway wasn't afraid of Herel, because he had no idea what kind of courage and determination it had taken to be one of the first to go into the future. How could an illiterate criminal imagine the level of competition that Herel had overcome? He wouldn't expect Herel to do anything.

Or would he? Criminals were wary, and they believed everyone was of like mind: greedy, violent, narrow, controlled by base urges. Herel had to take that into consideration.

He observed Conway's habits, looking for patterns.

While he watched and waited, he noticed a change in Mae. At first she tried to ignore Conway's tales of lawbreaking in two solar systems, perhaps thinking the young man would take the hint. But as she became accustomed to his unfamiliar slang, his swagger drew her curiosity. Herel guessed that her own gentle sense of rebelliousness responded to Conway's outlaw persona. He was a charismatic young man. Not only that, but he often made her laugh, something Herel couldn't do. There was so little to occupy oneself with at the time station that it was understandable Mae had become attracted to Conway.

That understanding didn't make it any easier for Herel to bear.

When Conway wasn't boasting, his attention frequently wandered, sometimes right in the middle of a conversation. The only times he seemed focused were when he talked about his crimes or his sexual conquests. He wasn't interested in literature or drama, no matter how often Mae tried to persuade him to read, but he loved to tell stories about himself.

He flirted with Mae with increasing boldness. His remarks to her became ever more crude.

"You want to slip-slide with me?” he asked Mae during dinner, flashing his sharpened teeth in a wolfish grin. “I thrust true and true."

Mae laughed off the advance, but Herel let go of his food packet and hauled himself out of the galley, grinding his teeth in anger. He could hear Mae's laughter fading behind him as he returned to his cell, where he angrily concentrated on his project. He wished that he could stay away from Conway until the time came to finish it, but he had to watch him as closely as possible. A behavioral pattern was emerging.

Conway could have just bided his time until Herel was gone, but he was too impatient to hide his intentions. He thought he'd soon have Mae to himself and he'd be able to do anything he wanted, and he was prematurely boastful about it.

His impatience would be his undoing.

The opportunity came later than Herel had anticipated. He was beginning to fear that the ship would arrive before he could carry out his plan. But at last Conway said the words he'd been waiting for.

"Wanna go out?” Conway asked while Herel stared through the oval window.

"Out?” Herel said, aware of a catch in his voice.

"Out there.” Conway jerked his head toward the airlock. “I hike after we eat. Wanna come?"

Herel hesitated. He was careful not to appear too eager.

"You blink?” Conway persisted.

"Yes, I blink,” Herel said, his mouth dry. “Have you asked Mae?"

"Sure, but she said uh-uh."

"I guess I could go with you,” Herel said, “just for something to do."

The three of them dined together a little while later, Mae reading over her food.

"Mae,” Conway said to her as maintenance tendrils whisked away their empty food packets.

"Yes,” she said, turning the reader off. The paragraphs faded from the air as she gave Conway her attention.

"Herel and me hike after dinner."

"Oh.” She was indifferent, perhaps looking forward to being rid of them both for a little while. “That's nice."

"You're welcome to come with us,” Herel said.

"No, that's all right,” she said. “I'm enjoying this novel."

Herel had been pretty sure she'd say that.

"What is it that's got you so involved?” he asked.

"Something I've always meant to read, but never got around to,” she said. “Crime and Punishment."

"Story of my life,” Conway said.

"Oh, yeah,” Mae laughed. “You're a regular Raskolnikov."

Conway looked puzzled, but for once he said nothing.

The two men walked to the docking node and suited up. Herel knew exactly what he was going to do. He'd worked it all out. He couldn't trap Conway in the airlock and let out the oxygen. There was a breaker inside, and even Conway could figure out how to work it.

The inner hatch opened and they both went inside the airlock. Once they were sealed off, Conway flipped the switch that worked the outside hatch. It was a big switch, easily manipulated by gloved hands.

The outer hatch opened like the mouth of the leviathan.

"No stars?” Conway said, peering into the darkness.

"Just one."

"Huh?"

"The white hole we came through."

"Where?” Conway said.

"It's out there, but you can't see it."

"Not white?"

"That's just a term to contrast it with a black hole."

"I blink."

Conway gripped a handhold as Herel attached a tether to his own suit. He saw the Arrowheads that had carried them through the white hole limned in hard chiaruscuro, three coffin-sized projectiles fastened to the time station's fuselage.

"Fired me out like a torpedo,” Conway said, looking at the Arrowheads. “Nitty slap ride."

"Did you know I was the Arrowhead's designer?” Herel asked.

"Oh, yeah? You lived a long time back, huh?"

"Long ago, yes.” Herel knew that Conway considered him old-fashioned and stodgy. That would make it all the easier. “Here, let me attach the tether to you."

Once the tether was secured, Conway reached back to test its strength. Satisfied, he floated out through the hatch. Herel followed, but he didn't let go of the handhold. It was strange to see empty space, no stars or gas clouds, nothing but black emptiness. If it wasn't for the light cast from the window, the two men might have been nonexistent.

Herel knew there was a remote possibility that the robot would interfere with his plan, but it was a risk he was willing to take. He was betting that it was too far away, stationed at the point where a chunk of warm, living tissue could be detected amid particles flowing from the white hole. Without an Arrowhead, Conway couldn't survive. There simply wasn't enough oxygen in his tank to keep him going for more than a few hours, and his suit wouldn't shield him for long from the hard, relentless radiation.

"Dark, huh, Herel?” Conway said, not as a friend but as a man who had grown accustomed to Herel's proximity. Herel supposed it was like that in prisons everywhere. A convict didn't get to choose his cellmate, so he talked to anyone who was there.

"That's right.” Herel kept his words to a minimum, trying not to reveal his hatred or his fear.

"You blink what I do?” Conway said as he pushed off with his legs, launching himself away from the station.

"What's that?"

"I tell Mae stories."

"Are they true?"

"Not all."

"You mean you're not really so bad?"

"Bad enough. I do what I do."

"I suppose that's true of everyone."

"Yeah, you blink my way, Herel,” Conway said.

"Do I?” Herel was beginning to wonder if he could follow through with his plan, now that Conway seemed to be speaking honestly for once.

"Yeah, we both blink,” Conway said, floating farther out on the tether. “Two men and one woman. Both slip-slide her. Airlock her."

"Really?"

"True and true,” Conway said. “We take turns until you slap out. Like that?"

Herel was so angry that he couldn't speak for a moment, but then he quietly said: “No, I don't."

"Mae gonna slip-slide me anyhow,” Conway said, unaware that he was about to be set loose. “Whenever I want. But you can have Mae before you go."

"That's very generous of you, Conway.” His heart pounding, Herel released the tether from its mooring.

"Yeah, I slip-slide with Mae no matter what."

"She's never known anyone like you,” Herel said, barely able to control his tone now that he was finally about to complete the project.

"Nobody has,” Conway said, getting smaller and smaller while his cocky voice retained the same volume over Herel's helmet receiver.

"Haven't they?"

"I thrust good, true and true. Women love Conway."

"I see."

"Slip-slide. Tie her down, switch bitch, rosy cheeks. Burn a little. Fun."

Herel ground his teeth. He had never been so furious.

"Hey, how long's this rope?” Conway asked, breaking off from his twisted sexual fantasizing.

"Long enough."

Conway's dwindling figure reached back to turn himself around, but the slack tether prevented it. It trailed behind him.

"What goes on?"

"You do,” Herel said. “Blink that?"

"Huh?"

"Good-bye.” Herel's breathing was ragged. He took one last look at Conway disappearing into the eternal night and pulled himself into the airlock. He shut the hatch and began to pressurize the enclosure.

"Herel...."

Herel didn't reply.

"Herel!” Conway's panicky, piping voice cried over the hissing oxygen. “Pull me back!"

Herel listened to Conway scream while the airlock filled up.

"Herel! Herel! Herel!"

Conway kept screaming. Sweat stung Herel's eyes. He could have shut off the receiver, but he didn't.

Finally the airlock was pressurized. Herel pulled himself inside the time station and sealed off the airlock. He removed his helmet and carried it with him as he sprang the inner hatch. It took him a while to catch his breath, and then he quietly stripped off his suit and stowed it. He went to his room to lie down, pleased that he would never hear Conway's voice again. He strapped himself into his bunk and snatched a reader he'd left on a line. Everything was quiet.

It was a job well and neatly done. He hadn't really killed Conway; he'd just let the little bastard drift away.

He turned on the reader and ordered an interactive play, Othello. The Renaissance scenery and characters sprang up around him, but the actors’ words sounded like gibberish. He snapped off the play and ordered a novel, Rabbit Run, but he was unable to get past the first paragraph. He tried poetry, but it was no good. Not even Donne. He let the reader float away. The light dimmed.

He lay in the dark, waiting.

"Conway?” Mae was silhouetted in the doorway as she looked into the cell across the corridor.

"He's not there,” Herel said, stung that she'd been looking for Conway instead of him. Well, that was all over now.

Mae turned toward him, her head and shoulders inside the stateroom, the rest of her floating in the corridor.

"Where is he?"

"He's gone,” Herel said, wishing that he hadn't been lying here when she found him.

"Gone?"

"He said he was getting out of here,” Herel said. “I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen. He just pushed off and disappeared."

"What?” Her body stiffened.

"Don't worry,” Herel said. “The robot will pick him up."

"No, it won't,” she said, her voice quaking. “He'll be dead long before it can get to him."

"Do you think so?"

"I know it."

"I didn't realize that."

"My God,” she said, tears in her eyes.

Herel unstrapped himself from the bunk. He got up and went to Mae, trying to touch her with his pale, freckled hands.

"Why did he want you out there?” she demanded, yanking herself away from him to back into the corridor. “If he was trying to escape, why did he ask you to go?"

"Because he knew you'd think something was wrong if he went alone."

"I could have prevented it,” she said, sobbing.

"No, I don't think so,” Herel said, pulling himself closer to her. “He never understood the difference between a white hole and a Kerr hole."

"Yes, he did,” she said, backing farther away. “I made sure he understood."

"No, he didn't get it."

She looked at him hard. “You're lying."

"What? Mae, I—"

"You're lying,” she repeated, transfixing him in the fierce depths of her brown eyes.

"How can you say that?"

"Tell me it isn't true, then."

As much as he wanted to, he couldn't lie to her anymore. She knew.

"You were jealous and you killed him,” she said, tears balling into drifting pearls that framed her face.

"No, Mae,” he said desperately. “It wasn't like that."

"What was it like?"

"He wanted to share you like a slab of meat—he was sadistic—he intended to tie you up, to burn your skin, to beat you,” Herel said, speaking very rapidly. “He wasn't a decent person."

"And you are?” She turned and quickly hauled herself down the corridor to her room. The light soles of her feet were the last he saw of her.

Herel felt paralyzed. He was suspended between the floor and the ceiling, the bulkheads closing in on him for what seemed an eternity.

"Herel!” Conway's voice cried at last, shocking him.

Was he losing his sanity? How could he hear Conway now?

"Herel!"

He pushed himself through the corridor and heard the panicky voice again: “Herel, please!"

He entered the galley and heard Conway there too.

"Herel!"

And then he realized that Mae was broadcasting it all over the station.

"Herel, help me! I don't want to die!"

"Oh, God,” Herel murmured.

"Herel!” the frightened voice echoed around him.

Mae forced Herel to listen to the doomed man's voice until it weakened and faded away, leaving behind nothing but static.

It took a long time.

Herel rarely saw Mae after that. She kept to herself, reading and exercising. She came out to eat only when she knew Herel was in his cell. He tried to talk to her the few times he saw her, but it didn't do any good. She had shut him out.

Herel consoled himself by remembering that the ship would come sooner or later and he would go to a place where Mae's accusing eyes would never light on him again.

He had hoped to make her love him. She'd been fine stranded here until he showed up and fell for her. She'd been resigned to spending the rest of her life in the time station, a peaceful enough existence, its monotony occasionally relieved by the arrival of a traveler. Now he had turned it into a place of death.

He'd thought he could save Mae from violence by what he'd done.

How could he have believed such a thing? It was like thinking you could pour water down the throat of a drowning man to save him. He'd thrown away Mae's friendship, let alone any love she might ever have felt for him. He'd deprived her of companionship in this lonely prison after he was gone.

He reminded himself of what Conway had in mind for her. It didn't help.

Until he'd come here, Herel had always managed to avoid looking inward, but he couldn't do that anymore, not here in this claustrophobic place. He thought about his lonely life and the terrible thing he had done. In the distorted strangelet world he subsisted in, he stared into his own soul no matter how much he tried to fight against it. It was as black as the space outside the time station.

He hated himself for his weakness even more than he hated himself for murdering Conway.

He realized for the first time that he'd always secretly been afraid of where his emotions would lead him. He'd been right to be afraid.

He rubbed his stinging eyes and tried not to think about it anymore.

By the time the ship came he was a much older man. Decades had passed, centuries, millennia. Not inside time—which could not be quantified—but inside his tormented skull.

At first it was just a soft hum, something he might have imagined. And then he was sure he heard it, but he thought it was the power surging through conduits behind the bulkheads, something he'd never really listened to even if he'd heard it all along. He imagined electrons leaping from one orbit to another, forever fleeing their nuclei.

It got louder.

Mae emerged from her stateroom and he knew. The sound was a signal.

"Is it the ship?” he asked.

"Yes,” she said, pulling herself past him through the corridor. He followed her.

"How long will it take to dock?” he asked, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. It sounded strained and raspy, almost as if it came from somewhere else.

"The ship will be here soon enough."

Not soon enough to suit him. He could hardly believe it was finally happening.

At least she was talking to him now. He had to say what was on his mind before it was too late.

"Mae, I'm sorry."

"Okay, you're sorry."

"I was trying to do the right thing.” Even as he spoke the words he realized how inadequate they were. “I wanted to protect you."

"From what?"

"From Conway."

She looked at him with pity. “He was just a foolish boy."

"I was trying to help you."

"Didn't you think I could take care of myself?” she asked.

He stopped trying to justify himself to her. He hadn't known then that she was stronger than him, stronger than Conway, stronger than both of them put together—but he knew it now.

He was grateful that it would all soon be in the past. But he had one more thing to say. “Mae, I'm in love with you."

"Didn't you know I like women?” she said. There was no malice in her tone.

Conway didn't breathe for some few seconds. At last he exhaled.

All right, then. He'd never had a chance with her. All right. It was better this way.

The hum grew louder still, and they went to the window to watch the ship arrive. Peering into the darkness, Herel saw nothing.

"Are you sure it's coming?” he asked, conscious of a stricture in his chest.

"Yes."

The humming stopped. Herel could hear himself breathing. His vision shook with each of his heartbeats.

And then it was there. It seemed to emerge all at once into the light cast from the window. What he could see of it was sleek and strange, designed perhaps a thousand years or ten thousand years beyond his time. He was awestricken to think of how much its makers must have known—or would know....

Somewhere inside the time knot was another Kerr hole, and he would be dropped into it. It had to be. Would he go forward? Would he be drawn back to his own time? Or would he go somewhere and sometime he'd never dreamed of? It didn't matter, as long as the ship took him away from the time station.

He got into his suit and went to the airlock. He put on his helmet and tested his air supply. This was it.

He slammed his palm against the switch and opened the inner hatch.

Entering the airlock, he faced the outer hatch. He opened it, taking pleasure in the sound of oxygen rushing in from the ship. The light coming from inside it was so bright it hurt his eyes. Its interior seemed tantalizingly familiar, but that couldn't be. He couldn't remember the future.

He saw shiny, unidentifiable objects. One of them came to life in the patch of brilliance cast into the airlock. It was a robot.

It stood and looked down at him, a slender, bronzed humanoid with the graceful lines of a racehorse, some three meters tall.

Herel pushed himself forward.

The robot effortlessly picked up a box, serpentine arms spanning its width. The box's smoky sides did not hide what was inside it.

It was Conway.

He was desiccated, but his shriveled nakedness was recognizable inside his transparent coffin. His skin was gray paper glued to bones, his tats almost indiscernible from the leathery wrinkles. His lips were pulled back to bare his filed teeth in a terrible grin. He was curled up like a fetus.

Herel stopped, shocked to see the corpse. Conway was small, so very small.

Herel rebuked himself for hesitating. A dead man couldn't hurt him. He moved forward again.

Something held him back.

He looked down to see tendrils lashing out and coiling around his arms and legs. The station's maintenance system was restraining him.

The impassive robot watched as Herel was dragged back through the inner hatch. He struggled, but he was helpless as more tendrils slithered over his body. As thin as they were, their grip was steel.

The robot entered the time station and set the box down just inside the examination room. It stepped back through the airlock and returned to the docking node without turning around, like a film running in reverse.

"Good-bye, Herel,” Mae said. Her voice was muffled through his helmet.

"Mae!” he cried to her in terror as he was pulled farther and farther from the airlock. “What's happening to me?"

"You're staying here."

He was carried past her. She was buoyant as tendrils helped her put on her pressure suit. They seemed to caress her. Scores of them, hundreds of them, swayed about her like seaweed in a gentle current.

"What are you doing?” he cried.

"I'm leaving."

"But how?"

It was the first time he'd heard her laugh since he'd killed Conway.

"Looks like the rest of my sentence has been commuted,” she said, accepting her helmet from a waving skein of tendrils. “And yours is just beginning."

"But they can't do this!” he shouted, bound and helpless. “It's impossible!"

"Is it?” she said, not bothering to put on the helmet.

"Mae—"

She was inside the hatch.

"Mae! Don't go!"

She floated through the airlock.

"Mae!” he screamed, writhing in the grip of the tendrils. “Don't leave me alone! Please!"

She didn't look back.

"Mae!"

She was rising into the light when the inner hatch closed.

"The last few novels I've done have reflected what to me is a very surreal moment in history,” Harvey Jacobs said in a recent interview. “I get a kick out of the fact some of the critics call my writing ‘surreal.’ But then I pick up the daily paper and feel like a kindergarten student compared to what's really going on.... You think you write about an extreme character, then the whole economy of the world collapses and you find out there are people like Bernie Madoff.” His latest novel, Side Effects, concerns a man who must sacrifice himself for the sake of the pharmaceutical industry. His new F&SF story concerns a different everyman, a guy working in a garage when things get strange.

Colin Kabe felt limited by his job at Max's Automotive Rehab, the garage where he worked on coughing motors, squealing transmissions, and nicks and scratches that interrupted the performances or marred the looks of the world's most spectacular cars. What he called his “pedigreed patients” included a full pantheon of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Daimlers, Aston Martins, Porsches, Packards dating back to the 1920s, Caddys with spreading asses built just after World War II, sleek Corvettes, Jaguars, MGs, Triumphs, Morgans, Rolls Royce Silver Shadows, Bentleys—even an occasional Thunderbird or Mustang (the originals) and a steady stream of Mercedes touring cars, rare gull-winged coupes, and one-of-a-kind sedans, some of which had belonged to members of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, and maybe to Der Führer himself.

When they came for fixing or buffing, those anointed beauties sometimes seemed to groan in pain like wounded movie stars which, in a sense, they were. It was Colin's mandate to make each engine purr and to coddle the silky skins of those magnificent machines.

After the servicing and repairs were finished, Colin took his time with the washing and polishing. He dealt carefully with the slightest blemish. Each car had been built to shine, to glow like a rolling rainbow. When they left Colin's care, they were restored, as arrogant as they'd been before trouble struck.

Working with such beauties would make most men salivate, yet Colin Kabe was in a place beyond the pleasure he once felt when he fixed a dent or found an authentic replacement for a splendid hubcap. He was tired of his boss's accolades and customer praise, indifferent to generous annual salary increases, immune even to the stock tips and gifts bestowed upon him by clients who treated Colin as if he were a great plastic surgeon with a practice strictly limited to royalty.

All the automotive adoration he justly earned seemed as superficial and hollow as an empty gas tank. Life was moving in fast gear. In a curious way, the iconic cars he dealt with reminded Colin of time, and he felt his time running out. Instead of fixing those classic cars for others, he wanted to own a few himself. But even more important to Colin than just making his fortune while he could still enjoy the comforts and delights of wealth was the way in which he'd make it. Those Nazi cars in his charge were built by slave labor. Colin resolved that his money would be clean, unadulterated by the indelible grime of guilt or compromise that often clings to treasure.

Before he'd lived out his life tinkering in Max's garage, Colin needed to accomplish much more, make some indelible mark on history's forehead, and get rich in the process. He sought a goal for himself as challenging as it was compelling, some task both financially and spiritually rewarding. Colin vowed to cross the horizon of hubris and burst into a land where wealth and altruism merged.

His vision of winning well deserved (and well rewarded) immortality took gradual shape. He was told in a dream that his destiny was to do something about it.

The terrible it, indefinable as the dark matter that fills the universal void.

The awful it more corrupting than eternal rust.

The it always talked about and roundly condemned.

The it so many pledge to face up to, do something about but for all that bravado, very few actually made the attempt and certainly nobody had succeeded.

It was out there, somewhere, maybe everywhere.

It left a trail of mayhem that probably tracked back to the Big Bang, it touched every life, but who had actually seen it and who could identify it in a court of law?

Colin knew if he could tame the elusive, ubiquitous, fearsome it, his contribution would benefit the nation, the planet, perhaps the very universe while rewarding him with a dividend of gratitude, respect, fame, gold, and enviable power.

While he filed, polished, tweaked, painted, and burnished bruised metal, Colin thought about gathering enough energy to catapult him past the ordinary, splitting the walls of limitation that boxed in his dream.

Classic Car Express magazine had dubbed Colin “the quintessential mechanical healer.” He reasoned that to crack the riddle of it shouldn't be that much more difficult than turning a bashed-in car that barely survived a head-on collision with a tanker truck into a Monte Carlo Grand Prix champion. Doing something about it had to be approached with patience, logic, determination, skill, and the proper motivation. Colin Kabe knew he had the proper credentials.

One night, his boss, Max, stayed late to send out bills. He found Colin still in the garage, staring into space. “Are you all right?” Max said.

"Fine,” Colin said, in a resonant voice Max had never heard. “I've decided to do something about it."

"About what?"

"Never mind,” Colin said in his familiar voice. Max shrugged and left. He'd always sensed that his star employee was a bit eccentric. Better to indulge than antagonize an artist, especially since it was Colin's magic that brought in the big spenders.

Many evenings, after he was certain Max had left, Colin would raise the hoods a.k.a. bonnets of the magnificent assortment of vehicles assembled in the garage, flip on their ignition switches, and listen to the engines hum with the contented calm he occasionally experienced after good sex. In minutes, that calm was replaced by anxious impatience; he heard belts, gears, spark plugs, cylinders cry out for the jolt of fuel that would send them prowling the world's best highways in bodies and insides fit, toned, good as new; made whole by Colin Kabe.

It was satisfying to share those joyous vibrations. But lately, even that satisfaction waned. He was just kidding himself. His plan to do something about it was still on hold while he tried to summon up the courage to venture into the uncharted territory where it made a home.

On one of those evenings, when Colin felt particularly useless in the infinite scheme of things, something went very wrong. The hoods of those iconic automobiles began raising and lowering, flapping of their own accord. Globs of oil spit from one engine to another, splattering newly waxed torsos and glossy windshields. It was as if the cars at Max's upscale garage were involved in a bar brawl, a vulgar and noisy clash of drunken aristocrats. It was a disgusting display, absolutely the kind of it that needed something done about.

Colin was understandably startled, then frightened, then puzzled by such a wretched display of emotions (if the word emotions could be applied to a gathering of machines, however superior). After initial paralysis, Colin practically leapt from car to car, trying desperately to slam flapping hoods shut, holding down trunk lids which had begun to open and shut, using whatever tools he could grab, even pieces of duct tape in an effort to halt leaks and calm the turbulence. Nothing worked. Colin heard himself shouting at creatures of metal, rubber, and glass, “You, all of you, stop slapping those wipers, quit squirting Windex, quiet those horns, get hold of yourselves this minute, remember who you are. The best of the best! For God's sake, end this nonsensical behavior at once!” He was showered with a mocking cascade of gasoline erupting from unscrewed caps. These were not children pissing on one another—these were vintage sophisticates behaving like delinquents.

Then Colin found himself surrounded by sudden silence as the insurrection ended; hoods and trunk lids clamped shut, there was no more spitting oil, no gushing fountains of high test, no swoosh-swish of wipers, only the usual after-hours quiet Colin used to question the meaning of his life.

The silence didn't last—a burst of raucous laughter echoed through the room, ricocheting from car body to car body, tingling Colin's ears. It was feminine laughter, no question, a unique brand of chortle he'd heard before in certain delicate moments, some of which he'd have much preferred to forget.

"Is someone in here?” Colin said. “Is this some kind of attempt at humor? If it is, I don't find it funny, not a bit. Max? Are you behind this idiocy?” It was a redundant question since it was obviously not Max who was laughing—Max never laughed.

"Over here,” a female voice said. Colin looked around but saw nobody. The laugh came again. Whoever or whatever was teasing him was certainly having a fine time.

"Peek-a-boo, I see you,” the voice said.

"I'm beginning to feel angry,” Colin said. “Watch yourself. Despite my Buddhist inclinations, when taunted, I have quite a temper and certification as a black belt—"

Colin felt a thud inside his skull and found himself splayed across the roof of an Aston Martin that once belonged to the Duke of Windsor. “I'd hold back on the threats,” the voice said. “Now, look over at the gray Rolls. Yippee ki yo!"

Colin looked and saw a trim little lady riding the steer-horned hood ornament of a red convertible that had carried Roy Rogers around Hollywood back in the nineteen-thirties. She was about the size of Colin's index finger, dressed in an outfit that seemed to have been spun from platinum wire. Her face was pleasant enough, cartoonish though, with a pink nose, orange lips, and violet Orphan Annie eyes. When she jumped off the steer horns and onto the running board, Colin saw she had the body of an athlete.

"It makes me nervous to have you staring at me, Colin,” the action figure said. “I'm getting the feeling that they fucked up, made me too small and much too colorful before sending me down here, which is ironic since I was told to blend in, observe the species, be as inconspicuous as possible."

"How do you know my name?” Colin said. “And who made you too small?"

"It would take all day to explain. But I know your name because I was told that if anything went wrong you would be the man to do something about it. I hear you're obsessive about fixing anything that moves. And I require your services in order to complete my mission and get on with my life. You are the best mechanic in this world, aren't you? That's what the magazine said."

"Well, I do confess to a certain talent as an agent of vehicular balm. But I hope you're not talking about any service even remotely medical. I mean, if you're some kind of toy or robot, please find someone else to meddle with you. My specialty is cars. Sometimes, I do motorcycles, busses, station wagons, RVs, and trucks, but not often."

"I know what you do. By the way, my name is Lullaby. At least, that's the name on my inter-orbital passport. And I assure you, I am not broken or defective in any way. But my transport is having transmission problems along with a few other unexpected glitches. And I'm depending on you to correct the malfunction, do something about it."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Lullaby. I work only by appointment. All appointments are made by my boss, Max Ubberman, and I'm booked solid for a month in advance."

"A month? Ha! I've got to get back for Diploid Plaxyrf's Emergence Anniversary."

"Diploid Who?"

"My mentor. My Illuminate. He is the Fountain of Wisdom in which I bathe. And he's about to celebrate his seventh millennium."

"Oh, that Diploid Plaxyrf,” Colin said. “Well, please wish him a happy Emergence and tell him to give Max a call."

"You're making snide remarks? About my Illuminate?"

"No disrespect intended,” Colin said. “By the way, is your Illuminate the one who recommended me? Because I have no memory of doing any work for any Illuminate—and how did you know that, if you ran into trouble, I was the one with the ability to do something about it?"

"Diploid showed me your file. It says you can always be counted on to do something about it."

"My file? What file? Listen, Lullaby, I think you'd better let me in on—"

"I am in a hurry and it's quite a walk to where my transport settled. There is no road. With my wee legs it will take us forever to get there. Unless you'd agree to carry me."

"No problem,” Colin said. “But house calls and carry time count with Max and labor charges are two hundred dollars an hour. Double time for overtime. Your call."

"Money isn't a problem,” Lullaby said, reaching into a pocket and producing a credit card. Colin shrugged, plucked her off the running board, and lifted her in the palm of his right hand.

"Where to?” Colin said.

"Just outside town,” she said. “Over the peak of your mountain, if you call that lump a mountain."

"Oh, it's a mountain,” Colin said, feeling his dander rise. “It happens to be the seventy-fifth highest mountain in the nation."

"That explains why they made me so small,” Lullaby said. “I see now that the scale you use to measure status maximizes minimums. We used it as our guide. By our usual standards your mountain is a pimple on a bug's behind."

"I don't know if I can help you,” Colin said. “I'm not at all clear about who you are or where you're from or what you're talking about. All I do know is that to me a client is a client and I suppose I might consider some freelance work off the books."

"What books? Do you mean repair manuals?"

"No, I don't use repair manuals. I use my intuition. I haven't consulted a manual since I was fifteen. ‘Off the books’ is an expression that means you pay cash. No credit cards. No receipts. No taxes."

"Ah. Interesting."

"Now, let me take a few basic diagnostic tools along. Hopefully, we won't have to tow your car to the shop. If that's necessary, everything is back on the books and Max has his hand up my butt if you follow me."

"I don't follow you,” Lullaby said. “You follow me. And it's not exactly a car."

"What? A scooter?"

"Can't you walk faster? The Rebuild Crew will be along in a few hours. I would hate to be the one held responsible for slowing them down."

"Rebuild Crew?” Colin said. “Slowing what down? Your mentor should teach you something about communication."

"This is a rush job. There wasn't time for nuance. What are these lines in your palm?"

"Natural crinkles. Some people believe they can tell your fortune and predict your life span by reading—"

"I'm sorry I asked,” Lullaby said.

Colin thought, “Well, here I go again. Same old same old. Colin Kabe off to another after-hours rescue of some weirdo customer who probably needs nothing more than an oil change or a jumper start. And here I had planned to use this night to think about really doing something about it. Okay, let's face it. I can use the extra money and I enjoy screwing Max out of a few bucks, so what the hell."

"Just past the snowline,” Lullaby said.

"The snowline? That's a long, hard climb. I didn't come prepared for—"

"I should have realized. Here, let me climb up your arm, around your neck and down your back."

"This isn't the circus,” Colin said. “Hey, watch yourself, lady. I'm not insured for—"

He felt his client shimmy up his arm, grab at a clump of his hair, swing around his neck, then lower herself hand-over-hand down the path of his spine. The next thing he felt was a tremendous surge of power as he was lifted off the ground, propelled up the mountain, flown over its icy peak, then deposited on a frozen rock.

"What just happened?” Colin said.

"This is the place,” Lullaby said.

Colin saw nothing but more frozen rock. “You're parked here? I don't think even a Hummer could—"

"Look up."

Colin tipped his head back and gazed at a moonless, starless sky. Then he realized it wasn't the sky above them. It was a huge, donut-shaped object that appeared to be made of some shiny metal with the same luster as Lullaby's outfit.

The wind gusts that prowled the mountain stopped for a moment. Their howl was replaced by the sound of a pulsating hum. Colin recognized the complaint of a wounded motor. “What in creation is that?"

"My vessel,” Lullaby said. “He's a Falx 458 D with Triple Vam. The model's trade name roughly translates into your language as Chaos."

"Into my language?” Colin said. “Where are you from exactly? Because there's something highly unusual going on here."

"Where I'm from is irrelevant,” Lullaby said. “Let's just say a long way from here. I'm on a tight schedule, your planet isn't my only stop tonight. For some reason, Chaos conked out on me. It made a kind of wheee wheee wuggg chirp uhhh noise and just settled on your firmament."

"My firmament? Nobody but priests and ministers ever say—"

"Don't nitpick,” Lullaby said. “This is a Gentrification lane and that's the important thing. Can you get to work, please?” Lullaby gestured and a ladder descended from Chaos's gut. “When you reach the belly, there's a staircase to what I imagine you people would call the power port."

"How can you know that the wheee wheee wuggg chirp uhhh came from the power port? That machine is enormous. There seem to be a thousand places that—"

"I know because it's happened before. Something to do with the ecebular transmission indapavator."

Colin had no clue as to what an ecebular transmission indapavator might be, but he kept a bland face. He knew better than to let a client suspect doubt or puzzlement. The mechanic in Colin had always loved a challenge. Challenge was nourishing. Taking on some new ailment and technology still gave him satisfaction even if it was still in the realm of being a glorified repair man. At least he could do something about fixing the glitch that stymied Chaos even if he couldn't do anything about it. “I'll have him or her purring in a while,” he told Lullaby. “I'll get you back on track."

"I'm surprised to find an Earthizen so cooperative."

"We try to please,” Colin said, climbing.

"I'm coming up with you. In case you have any questions."

Colin turned and looked down the ladder. “I usually work alone, but—” He found himself facing a different Lullaby. She had transformed into a more familiar-sized woman, entirely gorgeous, a sports car of a lady. He sighed. She smiled.

"Do you prefer this template?” Lullaby said.

"I was getting used to the other...."

"You're just being gentlemanly."

"I admit, your new architecture is easier for me to take."

When he reached Chaos's power port, Colin stood shivering in disbelief. He'd never seen such beautiful engineering. The room gleamed with brilliant no-nonsense design, a quintessential amalgam of art and functionality. There were thousands of gears, miles of writhing tubes, elastic as snakes, pastel-colored wires connecting with input jacks set into splendidly tooled mountings. The glow of a nuclear furnace was visible from behind a thick block of some transparent polymer.

The whole place was magical, with the throbbing engine adding mysterious, soul-soothing background music. Colin trembled when he thought of Lullaby's ride along the Gentrification lane (whatever that was) suddenly interrupted by a malfunction. He snapped out of his trance and found what seemed to be the control board and went to examine it.

"Don't touch anything before you consult with me,” Lullaby said. “Pressing the wrong button could be immediately lethal and I do plan to get home in time for—"

"Diploid Plaxyrf's Emergence Anniversary,” Colin said. “You made that quite clear. But I must examine the patient before I can diagnose and correct the problem. I hope it won't require any spare parts because I've never seen a machine like this. And, yes, I will consult with you before I do anything the slightest bit lethal. You did say lethal?"

"I did,” Lullaby said.

"Is this some kind of warship?"

"You could say that. It depends on your perspective. Chaos is a warship to the Luddites on the Preservation Committee but an ark of peace to the Society For Integral Social Development."

"What's your opinion?"

"I suppose I am in a war. Against clutter. Galactic clutter."

"Something is cluttering up the Gentrification lane?” Colin said.

"Exactly."

"And what might that be?"

"Your little planet of course. You've got to realize that we're constructing a whole new upscale neighborhood and the residents will surely insist on a beautiful view of your sunball and perhaps your moonsphere if we can move it to revolve around some adjacent asteroid. View adds value."

"You're saying that we're your clutter?"

"Nothing personal. But Gentrification does require some inconvenient displacement."

"And Earth intrudes on the view from your new fancy neighborhood. So you and Chaos were sent along the Gentrification lane to clear out any rubble that might impede the Builders’ progress."

"Exactly.You won't recognize this area in a few days,” Lullaby said.

"Drastic, but interesting. I'm all for urban planning but this seems rather self-serving and extreme."

"What's drastic, self-serving, or extreme?” Lullaby said. “Our habitat is thriving. So we expand the suburbs. It's a natural process and obstacles must be eliminated. Colin, may I ask you something sweetly intimate?"

"Please do."

"Would you consider coming home with me?” Lullaby said. “I already have an apartment in the new complex. I can shift my shape if you get tired of any one structure so you wouldn't ever be bored. And there is always need for a skilled mechanic like you. However fabulous, our appliances and transports have been known to break down, as you know. You could open your own garage, be done with this Max person. Most important, as a bonus, is that you'd survive evaporation. Think about it."

"I'll think very seriously about it. I absolutely will. It's certainly a tempting offer. To live in a Gentrified neighborhood, have my own business, and be with you, Lullaby. But first things first. I've got to get this baby moving or you're in big trouble with your Illuminate. Or is it the Contractor?"

"That is so considerate,” Lullaby said.

"I do appreciate your offer,” Colin said as he released a clip, loosened a few bolts, slid off the guard protecting the ship's control panel. He peered inside the amazingly delicate mechanism. He wondered what would cause a wheee wheee wuggg chirp uhhh? “I have to climb inside behind the panel,” Colin said, lifting a small flashlight off a hook on his belt.

He climbed over the pilot's seat, wriggled past the steering post, wormed behind the control panel. The more he saw in his flashlight beam the more astonished he was at this marvelous piece of equipment. Colin had never much believed in the existence of sentient life on other planets, much less intelligent life, less than less in aliens with brains capable of producing magnificently engineered machines like the one whose intricate innards he now explored. When Lullaby rocketed him up the mountain, then changed her structure, he'd suspected an extraterrestrial connection. Now, seeing into the guts of an object—a thing—perfectly fashioned, practically organic, intricate as an anatomical drawing of a dissected human body, he had no doubt that Chaos and its passenger were from somewhere out there.

What did all that signify for Planet Earth? If Lullaby's mission was to destroy what her species regarded as nothing more than cosmic detritus, then fixing the glitch that frustrated their Gentrification plan would be the ultimate act of treason.

By not repairing Chaos, the diabolical destroyer, he could save the world that produced him—even if only for a few days, weeks, years, decades, millennia—who knew how “they” measured time? He would finally be doing something about it.

Colin explored the maze inside Chaos. He tapped his screwdriver gently against a lug nut that could have been sculpted by Brancusi. Lullaby's invitation surely included the promise of exploring her own maze; if her equipment was half as tantalizing as her spaceship's, well.... And then there was the matter of his surviving the apocalypse.

"How are you doing in there?” Lullaby shouted. “Did you find anything that might explain the wheee wheee wuggg chirp uhhh?"

"Not yet,” Colin said. “I'm doing my best. And my best is the best."

"Just don't dawdle. If the Builders get here and I haven't cleared their—"

"I know, I know,” Colin said. “Your job is on the line."

"Maybe more."

At that moment, Colin's flashlight spotted a curiously twisted strand of cable that had managed to wrap itself around what appeared to be the kind of alternator used in the 1951 Tucker sedan. That same renegade cable pressured a section of what could be a fuel line!

Colin chuckled to himself. There was the problem, no question. So easy to fix he could do the job with a wrench and a pair of pliers.

By restoring Chaos—an alien craft never before seen in the galaxy, Colin would be hailed as the most respected mechanic in the history of mechanics, the subject of books and ballads. Even Max would be impressed. Except that Max would have been vaporized before word of Colin's triumph reached him. Or any other human. They would all be dead, their planet vanished. Poor disappeared Planet Earth turned into stardust. Hardly a memory. A dot on an antique celestial globe.

Meanwhile, Colin would be enjoying a life of bliss and luxury in an upscale, gated community with a goddess for a wife.

"No,” Colin whispered to himself, staring up at a pair of sinister torpedoes, armed and ready to fly. “It wouldn't be right for me to profit in any way from fixing this lovely machine. Especially since I'd know that I passed up a big opportunity to do something about it."

"Making any headway?” Lullaby yelled into the cave where Colin worked.

Colin felt the throb of the stricken motor. He reached for his wrench and pliers.

"Consider it a miracle if I can get this wagon up and running without the help of an owner's manual. Tell your Gentrified friends that Colin Kabe did the job he was hired to do."

"That's wonderful,” Lullaby said. “You're going to love my apartment. A terrace overlooking this very segment of—"

"About that,” Colin said. “I'm afraid I won't be going with you to wherever it is you're going. Where I'm going is back to Max's Automotive Rehab to say good-bye to my four-wheeled kids."

"But I can't wait while you say your sentimental farewells,” Lullaby said.

"I know,” Colin said.

"I get it,” Lullaby said. “You're turning me down. Foolish man. There's nothing more futile than species loyalty."

"Oh, don't worry. I'll fix your buggy,” Colin said. “Chalk it up to pride of craft which, considering the circumstances, may be a sin."

Colin climbed the ladder down from Chaos to the roof of Max's Automotive. Lullaby, who'd agreed to fly him there, blew him a good-bye kiss. He waved back. “Good luck with your real estate,” Colin said. “Enjoy the unobstructed view from your terrace. You'd better get moving."

"I still have a minute or so,” Lullaby said. “You work so fast."

"I do,” Colin said. “Time is money."

"It is?” Lullaby said. “I wish you had enough left to explain that to me."

Chaos's rockets burned blue flame. The craft soared through a layer of clouds, steadying when it reached attack position.

"Damn,” Colin said to the air. “I had every chance to finally do something about it."

He entered his work space and hung up his tool belt.

"Hmm,” Colin said, washing grease off his hands in Max's stained sink. “Maybe I did."

"I Needs Must Part” is Richard Bowes's fourteenth story to appear in F&SF. It's intended to be a chapter in a novel tentatively titled, Dust Devil: My Life In Speculative Fiction. It's my personal favorite just like all the other ones. Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.

In the predawn one morning last April, I woke up from a violent and disturbing dream. In it, I was somewhere that I realized was the Southwest with three other guys whom I knew in the dream but didn't quite recognize when I thought about them later.

All of us were engaged in smuggling something—drugs as it turned out. We were tough. Or they were anyway, big guys with long hair and mustaches. There was, I knew, another bunch of guys much tougher than us with whom we didn't get along, and there were cops.

The end of the dream was that I heard police sirens and was scared but relieved because they weren't as bad as the other guys. The last image in the dream, however, was the cops smashing two of the big guys’ faces right into the adobe wall of the building we stayed in. And I knew, in the way one does in dreams, that the other guy and I were in for something as bad or worse. Then I woke up before dawn in my apartment on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village.

From the time I was a small boy I've been afraid of the long marches of the night, the time in the dark when the lights inside me went out. The fear that would hit me as my head was on the pillow was that I, the one falling asleep, would not be the one who woke up.

Imagining the fragility of my identity chilled me. I did fall asleep again though and dreamed once more.

This time, I saw the head cop with his short white hair and gray suit sitting in his car, smoking a cigarette, staring blue-eyed and expressionless at me. I was much younger than I am now, maybe in my mid-twenties instead of my sixties.

In my dream, I realized that I had been looking at a computer and had viewed all this on some kind of a website.

When I awoke this time, the sun was up. Except for my having seen it as a website, the dream seemed like a fragment of the past, a time when I might, in fact, have found myself in places almost as bad as the dream.

I felt sick, my stomach was upset, every bone and muscle ached, and each move I made took an effort.

Nothing seemed to have led up to this illness. I'd been to the theater the night before with my friend Ellen. We'd seen a show with music about eighteenth-century boy sopranos (played by women) and abducted orphans.

A few hours before that, an affair I'd been having for some time with a guy named Andre was broken off very suddenly. The man with whom Andre lived had called me up and said that Andre had told him everything. They both wanted me to stay away from him from now on. It was a once-a-week thing that had become routine and boring, as I told the man, and I asked him to say good-bye to Andre for me.

I'm a veteran of more than forty years in Manhattan and normally neither big, melodramatic Broadway shows nor sudden disruptions in love cause the kind of distress I felt that morning.

Even as I wondered if I should call my doctor, I was aware of a kind of web stream that ran constantly in a corner of my brain. The fever dream took the form of a constant Google search complete with web pages and blogs I couldn't remember looking for.

Pictures and stories with elusive contexts appeared. At one point, I found myself looking at the profiles of the members of a tough cop unit somewhere in the Southwest. It had short bios, photos of them with mustaches and holsters and mask-like sunglasses.

As I wondered why and how I had looked this up, I saw a familiar face with a white crewcut and expressionless cop eyes.

I remembered I wanted to call my doctor. As I dialed the number, I thought of the tune and lyrics of a song I'd been listening to recently. It was by John Dowland, a poet and composer who was kind of the Kurt Cobain of Elizabethan England. Something in the melancholy grace of the tune, the resignation of the song's lyrics had caught me.

Now, oh now I needs must part,

Parting though I absent mourn.

Absence can no joy impart:

Joy once fled cannot return.

Maybe this attachment had been a kind of harbinger, some part of my consciousness telling me I had started dying. I wondered how Dowland's song “Flow My Tears” had affected Philip K. Dick when he'd used it in a title.

Somehow the call to the doctor never got made. I couldn't remember what day it was. People who phoned me, friends, the godchildren who in sentimental moments I thought of as my kids, the woman who had been my work-wife before I retired from the University, seemed concerned.

Many things ran on the screen inside my head. The Macabres when I found myself looking at their site seemed like many a New York late seventies punk group. The photos showed the musicians—emaciated, decked in bondage accessories, with their hair hacked off at odd angles. A bit of one of their songs played. Then police sirens wailed just like they had when my friends and I had gotten caught.

I realized that the sirens were my phone ringing. A friend who had once been a nurse wanted the telephone number of my medical group and the number of someone who could take me there next morning.

That night was especially awful: a long confusion of dreams. Chris, my speculative fiction godchild who lives in Ohio, seemed almost frantic. He kept calling me but I was too sick to talk to him for more than a minute or two.

When I looked at my inner computer screen it showed me palm trees and bright sun and elephants. The Macabres now worked nearly naked in a prison chain gang. A woman with the face of a peacock seemed very familiar. I thought I spotted the policeman with the blue eyes that gave away nothing. He looked right at me and was about to speak.

Then my doorbell sounded and it was my friend Bruce who was there to take me to the doctor's. With his help I walked the few blocks to my medical group office on Washington Square. A very concerned doctor ordered me into Saint Vincent's hospital. Shortly afterward Bruce escorted me to the emergency room admittance desk. Then he hugged me and was off to another job and I was in the power of the hospital.

There was no waiting. I identified myself, was given a form to fill out, and was shown right into the middle of the beds and gurneys, patients and orderlies. Numbers flashed on computer screens, and machines beeped.

Nurses and doctors clustered around an enormously fat, comatose woman, then dispersed. A social worker took the life history of an elderly black man who very patiently explained to her how he had lost everything he had ever had and lived now in a shelter. A moaning patient rolled by on a gurney hung with IV bags. Two cops wheeled in a shooting victim.

Then an orderly threw back the curtains around a bed and told me to come inside. My clothes were taken away. I was dressed in two gowns—one worn forward, the other backward—and socks with skid-proof soles. I was bled and examined and hauled through cold corridors and X-rayed.

Tubes got attached to me. A catheter was stuck up my urinary tract; at one point a very new intern tried to stick a tube down my throat and I choked and gagged. A horrible brown goop came up my guts and into my mouth and nose. My hospital gowns got soaked and there was commotion. People talked about me as if I were dead or not there.

It reminded me of an accident scene. I heard police radios, saw flares illuminating a nighttime car crash. I saw a familiar picture on a computer screen. It was in black and white, a 1950s newspaper shot.

A kid in his late teens had been thrown onto the branch of a tree by the force of a collision. He hung there bent at the waist over the branch of the tree, his loafers gone, his legs still in jeans, his upper body bare. The cool striped shirt he wore now hung down over his head. That was probably to the good: the face and eyes under those circumstances are not something you'd want to see.

That image haunted me at fourteen. I had imagined myself dramatically dead in just that manner if only I could drive and had a car.

"That photograph was his own private version of the old primitive painting, ‘Death on a Pale Horse,'” I read on a screen in front of me and realized I was looking at a website about me.

Then the screen was gone and I was back in the tumult of the emergency room. “Intestinal blockage—massive fluid build-up,” said a female resident. “It's critical."

"Rejected the drain,” said the intern who had failed to get it in.

A male nurse who spoke quietly to me—like I was a frightened animal—put his hand on my chest to calm me and stuck the tube into my nose and down my throat in a single gesture. A tall wheeled IV pole with hooks that held my drains, feeding bag, urine bag and various meters was attached to me.

Doctors examined me further. I felt like my insides were grinding themselves apart. A bag hanging next to my head rapidly filled with brown goop that had been inside me.

It was very late at night when I was wheeled onto elevators and off them, then down silent corridors. I was still dirty and wearing the damp hospital gowns when I was brought into a ward on the twelfth floor.

A young Asian nurse named Margaret Yang took over. Before I was placed on a bed, she called and four orderlies appeared. Women talking in the accents of Puerto Rico, Ukraine, and Jamaica brought me into a bathroom, sponged me off, put me under shower water and turned me around under it saying, as I tried to cover myself, “It's okay. You are as God made you."

Only when I was clean, in clean clothes and on a bed looking out at the night, did I remember that I had been in this hospital forty-two years before.

When I was a kid first coming into the city from Long Island, I woke one night with no idea who I was or where I was. The place I was in seemed vast, chilly, and sterile. The lighted windows in the brownstones across the street revealed stylish apartments and I knew it looked like a magazine cover without knowing what that was or how I knew this.

A nurse told me I'd been found facedown in a hallway, bleeding from a cut on my forehead and without any wallet or ID. I had lots of alcohol and a couple of drugs in my bloodstream.

A very old nun, thin and stiff, her face almost unlined, came around late that night. She inspected the bandage on my forehead and talked about Dylan Thomas. I was still enough of a Catholic kid to feel embarrassed talking to a nun while sitting on a bed in just a hospital gown.

"He was brought here not ten or twelve years ago after a hard night's drinking. He died from that and pneumonia on the floor just below this one.

"I thought of him when I saw you,” she said, looking at me calmly. “I wonder if you too are a young man who has an uneasy relationship with death."

I said I didn't know if I was or even who I was.

"Time will reveal those things,” she said. “You're still very young."

Then I found myself looking at that long ago night on a computer screen. It was all conveyed in images: a New Yorker cover of figures silhouetted against the lighted windows of their brownstones, a figure of a nun that seemed almost translucent.

What appeared at first to be the famous drawing of the young Rimbaud unconscious in a bed after being shot by his lover Verlaine turned out to be a photo of Dylan Thomas dead in Saint Vincent's Hospital—and became me at twenty-one with my poet's hair and empty, blue amnesiac eyes.

I pulled back from the screen and saw all around me a vast dark space with green globes rotating through it. Then I squinted and saw that the globes were the glowing screens that monitored each patient in this hospital. Beyond us, further out in the endless dark, were other screens in other hospitals, stretching on into infinity.

Apparently I called out, because then Nurse Yang was speaking to me, asking if I was okay. The universe and the globes disappeared. Saint Vincent's, as I saw it all these years later, seemed a small, slightly shabby and intensely human place.

"I'm so glad,” I told her. “You people have saved my life."

She was amused and said that this was what they tried to do for everyone brought in here but that it was always nice to be appreciated. When she started to leave, I got upset and she showed me how to ring for help if I needed it.

After she was gone I lay in the cool quiet with the distant sound of hospital bells and the voices of the women at the nurses’ station. But I didn't sleep.

My fear that all trace of me would be lost while I slept was out and active that night. Lying there, it seemed likely that this person with a search engine installed in his head was not the me who had existed a few days ago.

Drugs and the tubes siphoning the liquid out of my guts and into plastic bags had eased my pain and I did drift off every once in a while. But nurses and orderlies came and woke me quite regularly to take my signs and measure my temperature.

At one moment I would be awake in the chill quiet of that hospital with a view out the window of the Con Edison Building and the Zeckendorf towers at Union Square visible over the low buildings of Greenwich Village.

In the next, I'd be looking at a computer screen that showed a map of the old Village—a vivid 1950s touristy affair with cartoon painters in berets and naked models, beatnik kids playing guitars in Washington Square, and Dylan Thomas with drinks in both hands at the bar of the White Horse Inn.

Awake again in the dark, I waited, listened, half expecting the old nun to reappear. Instead what I got was a moment's glimpse of the white-haired cop who had watched myfriends get beaten. He looked at me now with the same deadpan.

I came out of a doze, awakened by a gaggle of bright-eyed young residents. “Mr. Bowes,” one of them, a woman with an Indian accent, said, “We were all amazed by the X-rays of your intestines. It was the talk of the morning rounds."

"Why?” I asked.

"Because of the blockage they were extremely distended. You came very close to having a rupture which would have been very bad. You could easily have died.” All of them, a small Asian woman, and a tall rather dizzy looking blond American boy, and a laid back black man, nodded their agreement and stared at me, fascinated.

"How did this happen?” I wanted to know.

"We believe it was from twenty-three years ago when you had cancer and they removed part of your colon,” she said. “After all this time, the stitching began to unravel and adhered to the other side of your intestines."

Other doctors appeared: the gastroenterological resident spoke to me, my own internist popped in. They told me that I was out of immediate danger. Sometimes the blockage eased all by itself. Sometimes it required surgery. The surgeon would see me the next day.

My bedside phone had now been connected. I made some calls. People came by, friends and family, old flames and godchildren. They brought flowers and disposable razors, my CD player, a notebook, they gave me backrubs and went out and asked questions at the nurse's station. They established my presence, showed the world that I was someone who was loved and cared for.

Margaret Yang came and sat for a while, talked to my sister Lee who was visiting, about this unique old hospital and how they were all devoted to it. I wanted to hang on to everyone—nurses, friends, family—who was there in the bright daylight.

They had brought me the Dowland CD. The counter tenor sang:

Part we must though now I die,

Die I do to part with you.

Gradually on that lovely spring day with the sun pouring down on the old bricks of the Village, twilight gave way to night. Lights in the hospital dimmed, the halls got quiet.

When I was operated on for cancer it was uptown at Mount Sinai. The ward I was in overlooked Central Park and at night in the intensity of my illness and fear and the drugs inside me, I saw lights passing amid the leafless winter trees.

And I imagined an alternate world called Capricorn where people dying of cancer in this world appeared to the population as glowing apparitions.

The night before that operation, I awoke with the feeling I was falling through the furniture, through the floor, and thought I was falling into Capricorn.

Remembering that, I saw a picture of myself, ethereal and floating amid a stand of winter trees in a hospital bed. The white-haired cop was showing it to me on a screen.

"When we spotted that, we knew you were in no way run-of-the-mill,” he said. “Our seeing you like this confirmed an initial report from when you were in this place as a kid with a busted head and no memory. Someone spoke to you and said you had an uneasy relationship with death and the potential to see more than the world around you."

Some people have the gift of being perfect hospital visitors. The flowers my friend Mark brought the next morning looked like a Flemish still life, his conversation was amusing and aimless.

He sat beside my bed that morning and I told him about a book I'd once written.

"The first thing I wrote after I had cancer was a fantasy novel called Feral Cell. In it people dying of cancer in this world are worshipped in an adjacent world named Capricorn. They call our world Cancer and call themselves the Capri.

"The faithful among them find ways of bringing a few people who are doomed on our world over to theirs. To prevent us from drifting back here, we are dressed in the skins of deceased Capri, drink their blood, which is called the Blood of the Goat, and are objects of awe.

"But there are others on that world—decadent aristocrats, of course—who hunt us. They throw silver nets over us and drag us down. They skin us and drain our blood and use those things to cross into this world."

"That must almost have made getting sick worthwhile,” he said.

"The future New York City I depicted in the book—turn of the third millennium Manhattan—was all open-air drug markets and rival gangs of roller skaters and skate boarders clashing in the streets. What we got, of course, was gentrification and Disneyland.

"A lot of being sick is like one long nightmare. In my Capricorn everything was terror and magic. At night, patients in a children's cancer ward could be seen floating amid the trees of a sacred grove."

Mark walked with me as I pushed my IV stand around the floor. One of the hall windows overlooked Seventh Avenue. Outside on a glorious day in spring, traffic flowed south past the Village Vanguard jazz club.

"The low buildings make it look like the 1950s,” Mark said.

"Time travel,” I said.

It was a quiet Sunday. Later that afternoon, my godchild Antonia was giving me a backrub. Suddenly a dark-haired woman, not tall but with great presence and wearing a red dress suit, appeared. She introduced herself as the one who would be my surgeon if the intestinal blockage didn't ease. And I knew that it hadn't and wouldn't and that she would operate on me.

As night came and friends and family had departed, I thought of Jimmy when he was a patient at this hospital. Jimmy had been a friend of mine in the years of AIDS terror. He designed and constructed department store window displays.

Since I'd first known him he talked about the little people inside his head, the ones he relied on for his ideas.

"Last night they put on this show with fireflies and ice floes. Perfect for Christmas in July,” he'd say. “Sadly, what I'm looking for is ideas for Father's Day which is, as always, a wilderness of sports shirts and fishing tackle."

Just before Jimmy died in this very hospital, I came into his room and found him in tears.

"They're all sprawled on the stage dead,” he told me.

Without being aware of a transition to sleep, somewhere in the night I became part of a Milky Way of bodies lying hooked up to lighted screens. I saw all of us, patients here and across the world, floating in a vast majestic orbit.

Then the cop, tough, his blue eyes giving away nothing, watched as I looked at the photo he'd handed me.

It showed me in my dream of the Southwest along with my companions who would later get arrested and beaten into pulp.

"How did you know these guys?” he asked.

"I was a friend of one of them. Louis."

"Friend, you mean like a boyfriend?” He displayed no attitude, but past experience with cops made me wary. I shook my head.

Then he told me, “It must be tough for someone like you. Kind of comfortable, retired, having something like this from his past brought up after all these years."

"Nothing like that happened to me. It's just a dream."

"A dream, maybe, but made up of bits of your past."

Then I heard voices and he was gone. Lights went on in my room and curtains got drawn around the other bed. Since my arrival I had been the only patient in the room. That ended.

"In here."

"Easy."

The new patient cried out as they moved him. Through an opening in the curtain, I saw nurses and orderlies transfer him to the bed. Then they stood back and two young surgeons from the emergency room approached. From their talk, I learned that the patient had been in some kind of an incident that had damaged his scrotum.

The doctors spoke to him. “We saved one testicle and your penis,” they said. “But we couldn't save the other."

The patient asked a question too mumbled for me to hear and a doctor said, “Yes, you'll have full function."

Then they were gone and almost immediately the kid slept and snored. His name, I found out later, was Jamine Wilson and he was nineteen.

Dawn was just about to break. I opened the notebook and wrote out a will, divided my possessions among my siblings and friends. Making out a will was a way of trying to hold onto my self, to indicate that I still knew who I was and what was mine.

That afternoon my sister Lee visited me. I had named her my executor. I dreaded the thought of living in a coma and said I didn't want extreme measures to be taken to keep me alive if I couldn't be revived. She went out to the desk and informed them of this.

Then we talked and listened to Jamine Wilson in the next bed on his phone. He talked about buying hot iPods. He called a woman and told her to bring him burgers and fries from McDonald's.

He lived in a halfway house to which he didn't want to return. A social worker came by and informed him that he would have to be out of the hospital the next morning. He ignored her.

"Where are you now,” he asked the woman on the phone. “Can't you get on the subway?"

My sister left when they came to take me downstairs for X-rays. They gave me barium and recorded its progress through my digestive tract. I was there for hours, lying flat on a cold metal slab while they took each series of shots, resting, sleeping sometimes on the metal slab, until it was time for the next pictures.

It reminded me of the esoteric forms of modeling. Hand models, foot models; unprepossessing people with one exquisite feature. “Intestine model, that's me,” I told the technician who smiled and didn't understand.

I dozed and saw a screen that read, “An example of his early modeling work.” And there I was, very young, in Frye boots and jeans and leather jacket, a kerchief tied around my neck but with my hands cuffed behind me. It looked like some S&M scenario I might once have posed for. But the setting was the Southwest of that dream.

Then they woke me up and took some more X-rays.

When I got back to the room, Jamine's hospital lunch was untouched beside his bed. I had taken nothing by mouth for days. He looked up at me dark and angry. Our eyes met and for a moment I saw a bit of myself: the kid in the nightmare, the one who'd ended up in this hospital with his memory gone. And I think, maybe, he saw something similar.

"Where are you now?” he asked someone on the phone, then said, “You were there five minutes ago."

Some time later, his caller finally arrived, whizzing down the hall on a motorized wheelchair, the McDonald's bag on her lap. She was Hispanic with eyes that looked hurt or afraid.

She maneuvered her chair next to the bed. The two of them ate. He chewed noisily, talked while he did. “I was so scared,” he said. “When I saw all the blood. And it took so long for them to call for help."

The cell phone rang and he talked to someone. Shortly afterward a girl and a guy in their late teens came down the hall on their chairs. These were his friends from the halfway house. They seemed oddly impressed by whatever had happened to him.

Before the evening was over there were five wheelchairs in the room and I realized that Jamine too must have one. I was surprised by how quiet and lost everyone but Jamine seemed. At some point they were told they had to leave. My roommate turned off his phone and went back to sleep.

The room, the ward, the floor, the hospital grew silent.

"The place ran with ghosts,” Randall, an old queen I knew when I was first in the city, had said about the very classy hospital uptown where he had been for major heart surgery.

"They came and talked to me at night, taunted me. An awful man I lived with when I was young and stupid and new to New York was cruising the halls like it was still nineteen twenty-five. He was a cruel bastard, physically abusive, and I'd walked out on him. He told me he was waiting for me, that sooner or later he'd have me again."

Randall liked to have me stay at his place once or twice a week. It was an easy gig. He really got off on having a young guy around. Give him a chance encounter in his own apartment with a twenty-two-year-old in jockey shorts and he was happy.

"I know when I pop off, that awful sadist will be waiting for me, and I'm afraid,” he said.

I smiled like he had made a joke and he shook his head and looked sad. He died at that hospital a year later and I felt bad. He'd been good to me, generous, kind. I liked him well enough then but I really understood him now.

Deep in the night the cop and I stood at the window and looked at the very late traffic flowing south on Seventh Avenue. I could tell by the car models that it was the late 1960s. The constant flow of traffic downtown was like the passage of time.

"We can do it, you know,” he said. “Bring you back forty years to face trial."

"For what?” I asked. “What crimes did I ever commit that were worth that kind of attention?"

"Look at yourself.” Again the screen came up and it was the three guys whose faces I could almost remember and myself all in boots and jeans and leather vests and kerchiefs around our neck. Like musicians on an album cover imitating desperados.

The one farthest away from me handed a cloth bag to the next guy who handed a smaller brown paper package to the guy next to me who handed me a white packet and I turned and handed a glassine envelope to someone not in the picture: like a high school textbook illustration of a drug distribution system.

"A kid died from something you sold,” the cop said. The screen showed a girl, maybe eighteen, sprawled on the floor of a suburban bedroom with a needle in her arm and a Jim Morrison poster on the wall.

"None of that ever happened,” I said. “I never did anything like that."

"We don't plant this stuff. It was inside you. Back in nineteen sixty-nine a family wants vengeance,” he replied.

I saw myself from behind kneeling with my hands tied at my back. All around on the sand, my clothes lay in strips where they'd been cut off me. My belt and my boots were tossed aside; the kerchief I'd worn around my neck was now tied over my eyes. Behind me the three other guys all hung by their necks from the branches of a tree.

The cop said, “You'll wish they'd hanged you too. What the family wants to do will make what happened to that black kid in your room a joke."

Then I saw myself frontally. Mutilated and bleeding to death into the sand, my mouth open in a silent scream.

That woke me and I lay in my hospital bed in the first dawn light. But I had trouble shaking the dream.

Greenwich Village was partly an Irish neighborhood in the days gone by and Saint Vincent's still reflected that. My nurse that morning was Mary Collins, an old woman originally from Kerry with a round unlined face, the last of the breed. I'd established my credentials, told her about my grandparents from Aran.

After the policeman had mentioned that initial report, I'd asked Mary Collins about the nun I'd talked to. She looked at me and said, “You saw Sister Immaculata. I haven't thought about her in years. They said she roamed the halls and talked to the patients. Some of them she comforted, others she frightened."

"But she was real."

She shrugged. “Well, when I first worked here, they told stories about catching glimpses of her. But I never did."

Behind the curtains around the other bed, Nurse Yang spoke quietly to Jamine. “No matter what our health issues, we need to eat healthy food. Try this orange juice."

"I'm not hungry."

"Try it for me.” And we heard him slurp some orange juice.

"She has the patience of Job,” murmured Mary Collins and turned to leave.

I said, “There's this guy I keep seeing in my dreams. He looks like a cop, shows me all kinds of things, threatens to drag me back to face punishment for crimes I never committed."

Nurse Collins paused. In the silence, I heard Margaret Yang say, “Would you try this cereal?"

"His name wouldn't be McGittrick would it?” Mary Collins asked.

"I don't know."

"Immaculata and McGittrick both—ah you are a rare one! If that's how it is, tell him to back away. While you're a patient in this hospital, you're ours, not his.” She winked and nodded at me and I guessed she was doing for me what Nurse Yang was doing for my roommate.

Word came that my surgery was scheduled for that night. The exact time was not set. Jamine was on his cell phone. He was due to be released from the hospital that afternoon and sent back to his halfway house. I wondered about the pain he didn't seem to be feeling and the desperate moment that had left him partially castrated.

Lying there, I thought of people I knew who had come out of surgery with hallucinations attached to their brain like parasites.

A few years before, an old professor of mine was not doing well after heart surgery. He was incoherent. Things hung in the balance and then with his eyes shut and seemingly unconscious, he said quite clearly, “Surgeon Major Herzog of the Israeli Air Medical Brigade orders you to get off your asses and get me cured."

"Herzog straightened things out,” my professor told me a few days later when he had rallied and begun recovery. “The first time I saw him was shortly after the operation. I came to and he was standing in full uniform at the end of my bed reading the computer screen. He told me I was someone they needed to have alive and he was going to save me. Then he changed some of the instructions on the screen."

No one on the staff had ever heard of Surgeon Major Marvin Herzog. The doctors attributed the now rapid recovery not to a series of crisp orders and clandestine changes in the patient's treatment but to the body's wonderful will to live.

A week or two later when I visited him at home, my professor told me, “Doctor Herzog said last night that usually they don't let people like me see him. But he thinks I can handle it. He explained how his unit oversees everybody who's under anesthesia...."

As he went on, I had realized he was still talking to his imaginary Doctor and maybe always would.

Finally I was wheeled out for more X-rays. When I came back hours later, doctors, nurses, and Jamine's social worker were in attendance. His motorized chair, a shabby, beat-up item, had been brought into the room. When he was helped into it, he screamed with pain. A hurried conference took place out in the hall. The patient was helped back into bed.

Late that night, he was still there, talking quietly into his cell phone. It had been arranged that he was to be sent, not to his halfway house, but to a rehab facility. He seemed pleased. Was it for this that he or someone else had used the knife?

McGittrick had noticed him. Was that a first sighting, like Immaculata observing me all those years ago?

That night I waited at the window feeling very small and lonely and watched the taillights of the cars as they rushed into the past.

A woman I know underwent a long and intense operation for cancer. During the hospitalization that followed she was well taken care of by the hospital nurses and orderlies and seemed to love them.

She walked with help immediately after the operation as you're supposed to. Everyone was amazed at how quickly she moved, looking around impatiently, fascinated by the other rooms on the floor—the vacant ones with their empty beds, the locked doors that led to conference rooms and doctors’ hideaways.

Later, when reminded of this, she remembered nothing of her treatment. All she could recall was a movie being made night after night in which her body was used to portray a corpse. The ones making the film were criminals, threatening and intimidating her. The hospital workers were helping them. This went on all during her time in recovery.

She wanted to walk as quickly as possible, she said, so she could escape. Her fascination with the rest of the floor was because those were places that figured in the dreams. She pretended to love the staff because she was terrified of them.

By daylight she found them drab and ordinary, devoid of the desperate drama they held during her nights.

Then someone calling my name interrupted me. Word had come that the surgical team was ready and the gurney was on its way.

I went back to my room and the gurney was there. As I was loaded aboard and my IV pole was strapped to its side like a flag, I saw my godchild Antonia, twenty years old, but tiny as a child, come down the hall. Somehow she had gotten into the hospital at that late hour.

In that wonderful place, it was quite all right with everyone that she accompany me down to surgery. “You'll have to leave before they begin the procedure,” one of the nurses told her.

Off we went and the attendant sang as we rolled along and told me that I was going to be fine. Then deep in the hospital, far into the night, we were in the surgical anteroom. One of the young doctors who had operated on Jamine was part of the team.

He and the others seemed like college students as they joked with Antonia and me while we awaited the surgeon who was late. Then she was there in her red jacket and dress and greeted us all.

I thanked Antonia for being with me as they hooked me up. I held onto the image of her, as everyone smiled at me and I was gone while wondering if I was ever coming back.

When I awoke a young man with a shaved head said, “Good morning, Richard, you're in surgical recovery, my name is Scott Horton and I'm a nurse. How do you feel?"

"Like I've just been hit by a truck but haven't felt the pain yet,” I said, and he grinned, nodded with approval, pleased I was coherent enough to attempt a joke.

Just before I had awakened, in the moment between darkness and light, I had been in the vast space with only the light of the hospital patients’ computer screens revolving around me like suns in galaxies.

In the way it happens in dreams, I knew these were all the unconscious patients in all the hospitals in the world. Together we formed an anima, an intelligence. Most of us were part of this for a few hours, for a day sometimes. For a few it was for months and even years.

The policeman looked up from the computer with his white crewcut, his battered nose, his cigarette.

"Someone told me your name is McGittrick,” I said.

"If that name pleases you....” He shrugged.

"In other words I'm making you up as I go along."

"Somewhere inside you knew someone oversaw the intersection of one world and the next. First you put a face on that one. Now you've found a name for me. Mostly I don't deal personally with people in your situation. I don't have to because they aren't aware of me.

"We could keep you in a coma for as long as you live. Instead we are sending you back a changed man,” he told me. “You'll never be able to forget what you've seen and you'll never again accept the waking world as the real one."

I had been going to ask him what he wanted. Instead, I had awakened to find Nurse Horton.

In the bright early morning in the hospital, he showed me a new button on my IV stand. “You press that when you feel any discomfort and the painkiller is injected directly into your bloodstream,” he told me. “You can do that at five-minute intervals whenever you feel you need to. I'll be back to see you very shortly."

I held his arm and said, “Please don't go away. I saw this guy just before I came to. The nurse upstairs called him McGittrick. He said they were using my mind while I was unconscious, that he could keep me in a coma for as long as I lived."

He smiled. “Well, you tell McGittrick to back off. You're my patient. We have you now and we're not letting go. We're going to get you cleaned up and I'd like you to walk a little some time today."

An orderly came in and took my temperature. One of the young doctors who had assisted in the surgery came by. “Things went very well. We're confident we removed the obstruction. We opened you up along the old cancer surgery scar. We didn't find any cancer this time."

Another orderly took blood. Scott returned and the two of them helped me sit up and put my feet over the edge of the bed. “You're doing great,” he said and the orderly agreed. I slid off the bed and my feet found the floor.

The orderly pushed the IV stand. Scott held me. I walked around the room. The sun was shining outside.

"I think I can do this by myself,” I said. They made me take hold of the handle bar. I pushed it out the door and into the hallway and back again.

"Very good,” they told me and I lay down on the bed. I was sitting propped up when my sister and brother-in-law came in. My surgeon dropped by in her red suit and talked with us. Everyone seemed very pleased.

When I was alone, Scott brought me some paper and a pen that I asked for. He sat with me for a little while, told me that he was thirty-three years old. That he came from a town outside Boston and lived now in Chelsea within walking distance of the hospital. I wondered who he lived with but didn't ask.

I wrote Scott a rambling thank you note/love letter and added at the end of it, “People who have hallucinations after operations sometimes don't seem to come all the way back. Part of them gets lost. The hallucination can be at least as good, as powerful and compelling and meaningful as real life. Especially since real life is as a patient, the victim of a disease. The hallucination is so engrossing that they don't want to leave it behind. I'm afraid that will happen with me."

Scott had gone off duty by the time I finished writing. I spent a very bad night in the recovery ward. People were waxing the floor, cleaning the walls. The nurses were slow to respond. Being awake was a nightmare.

Then McGittrick was with me. “You're not supposed to talk about what I've told you, asshole,” he said. “That other time, you wrote that book about the world where people dying of cancer could become gods. But you made it Science Fiction and anyway nobody read it so that was okay.

"That young nurse who thinks he's so tough? ‘We have you now and we're not letting go,’ he says. When his time comes he will be ours and he won't even know it's happened."

"What's the point of all this?” I asked.

"You know how people when dying feel themselves drawn toward some kind of glowing light? They find it comforting. Well, those globes floating in the flickering brain, the warm light of death and the promise of peace is you and all the other assholes hooked up to machines, each contributing his or her little bit. Last night you were part of the light dying souls were drawn toward. That's one of the things we do."

"Why an old cop, why not an angel with a fiery sword?"

"You don't believe in angels. You have a thing for the law. Your kind usually shows that by being bad and getting caught. The cuffs go on and you swoon. You were too bright to get a criminal record. Our reports say you have promise."

"Before the operation you were threatening me with mutilation. Now...."

"I'm going to offer you my job."

"Right,” I said. “But you don't exist. You told me so."

He seemed a bit amused. “That's not as big a deal as you make it seem."

"And the phony charges?"

"Could also not be a big deal. That depends on you."

Then he was gone and it was morning. The door of my room was open, the cleaning crew had departed and the hospital was waking up. Pain had begun to gnaw at my guts. I hit the button, waited a few minutes, and then hit it again.

Scott walked by and I called him. He had just come on duty. He had other patients but he stopped for me. “How are you?

"Bad night.” I wanted to tell him about the men endlessly cleaning the floor and the smell of ammonia but I didn't.

"Did McGittrick talk to you again?"

"Sorry I bothered you about that. I feel stupid.” What I was sorry about was having brought him to McGittrick's attention.

"It's why I'm here. We're going to get you ready to return to your ward. I want you to walk before then."

Later when he was watching me push my IV stand around Recovery, I asked him, “Does everybody in this hospital know about McGittrick?"

He grinned. “If they worked with Mary Collins they do. I started out with her."

When they came to take me back upstairs Scott said good-bye and I knew it was unlikely I'd ever see him again. Unless, of course, I took McGittrick up on his offer.

When I returned to the twelfth floor, I was in a new room all by myself. Jamine was gone. Even Nurse Yang, busy with her current patients, barely remembered him. That's how it would be with me.

I hit the painkiller button, got up and walked. I needed the pole to lean on a little. Nurses and orderlies nodded their approval. I was a model patient, a teacher's pet.

When my phone rang it was my godchild Chris planning to come in from Ohio and stay with me after I got out of the hospital. Friends came by. Flowers got delivered. I fell asleep, exhausted.

It was getting dark when I awoke and there was commotion and a gigantic man was wheeled in. “Purple,” he said. “Don't go far from me, girl.” My new roommate had a private healthcare worker. He called her Purple which wasn't her name and which made her quite angry.

He sang Prince songs. He called people by names he'd given them. He told me he was an architect who had stepped through a door in a half-finished building he'd designed and fallen two floors because there was no floor on the other side. All the bones in his feet had been shattered. It took the healthcare worker and all the orderlies on the floor to help him change his position in the bed.

At one point I dozed off but awoke to hear a Jamaican orderly whom he called Tangerine saying, “I do not have to take this. I will be treated with respect. My name to you is Mrs. Jackson."

"Oh, Tangerine!” he cried in a despairing voice.

I hit the pain button, got up and walked to the window overlooking Seventh Avenue. In the night, the streetlights turned from red to green.

McGittrick's face danced on the window in front of me. A computer screen on a nearby station counter faced the window and was reflected on the dark glass.

When I turned to look the computer screen was blank. I turned back and the face was there. It might have been the drugs or I may have been asleep on my feet. But as hard as I looked, McGittrick remained.

Then Jamine's face appeared on the screen. McGittrick said, “He stands out kind of the way you did, flirting with death but afraid of it. Bear in mind that if you don't work for us, someone else will—maybe him."

"What exactly would I do?"

"Be around; make sure all is running as it should. Be a cop,” he said. “Think it over."

"Okay. But when I sleep from now on, you have to stay out of my dreams."

"You're not dreaming. It's just easier to reach you when you're asleep. But we'll give you a little time to consider."

When I came back into my own ward, the nurses at the desk, as if they sensed something about me, looked up as I passed by. When I went into my room the architect was crooning a song to his caregiver who was telling him to shut up.

They stopped when they saw me and I wondered if I was marked somehow.

"Look,” I said, “I'm recovering from major surgery. I need to sleep.” They stared at me, nodded, and were quiet. I hit the painkiller button and hit it again every few minutes until I drifted away.

I awoke and it was morning. The architect, quite deferentially, asked if I had slept well. “I made sure all these ladies kept very quiet so you could rest and get better."

This guy was a harmless lunatic with none of Jamine's vibes. I thanked him.

Then Mrs. Jackson helped me wash up and I was taken for X-rays. When I returned the architect was gone, brought to another ward for physical therapy, Nurse Collins said.

She was on duty and had come in to check on me. “You're doing well,” she said. “They didn't get you this time."

"Who was Immaculata? Who is McGittrick?"

"I don't think she was any kind of angel and I don't think he's a banshee because I don't believe in them. Ones like that lurk in the cracks of every hospital there ever was. Most places they don't even know about it anymore. But they still have them. Give them the back of your hand."

I'd begun feeling that if I performed certain tasks—walked rapidly three times around the floor, say, then I was practically recovered.

That night I paused on my rounds and looked out the window. The Greenwich Village crowds on a Friday night in spring reminded me of the rush of being twenty and in the city. I thought of Andre and how I'd lost him just before I got sick.

McGittrick was reflected in the window. “You know,” he said. “That guy that got away might still be with you if you'd been well when his friend called. We can let you replay that scene.” Cops offer candy when they believe you're beginning to soften and cooperate. But they still can't be trusted.

"I enjoy the sweet melancholy of affairs gone by,” I said. “I'd like to be with Andre as if nothing ever happened. But I'd know that wasn't true and wouldn't be able to stand it.” As I headed back to my room, I said, “Thanks, though."

As I hit the pain button, a young guy who'd had an emergency appendectomy was brought into the room. He lay quietly, breathing deep unconscious breaths. I passed into sleep remembering moments when someone with whom I'd made love fell into slumber like this just before I did.

The next morning was a Saturday. A resident and a nurse came in and drew a curtain around my bed. They detached me from the catheter, pulled the feeding tube out of my throat and out through my nose.

That morning I ate liquids for the first time since I'd been there. Everything tasted awful. I forced myself to eat a little Jell-o, drink clear soup and apple juice because that was the way to get better.

Dale, my roommate, cast no aura, had no vibes that I could feel. He was twenty-seven, a film editor who had collapsed in horrible pain on Friday night. He was getting out later that day. His insurance paid for no more than that.

After ten days in the hospital, I was a veteran and showed him how to push his IV rack, how to ring for a nurse.

Mark came by. I told him, “When I wrote, Feral Cell, I had the narrator drink blood. Blood of the Goat binds him to the alternate world, Capricorn. Blood of the Crab binds him here. As one world fades the other gets clearer. What I was writing about was being sick. It's like this other country. You get pulled in there without wanting to and have to haul your ass out."

He said, “Remember first coming to the city and how hard it was to stick here? Like at any moment the job, the apartment you were sharing, the best friend, the lover would all come loose and you'd be sucked back to Metuchen or Doylestown or Portsmouth. Kind of the same thing."

The roommate was on the phone. “It felt like a bad movie, waking up and finding all these people staring down at me. The guy in here with me is this amazing Village character."

He was still on the phone when his lovely Korean girlfriend came in with his clothes. She took his gown off him as he stood talking and dressed him from his skin out. It bothered me that he was getting out and I was still inside. As they left, he turned, waved good-bye, and grinned because he was young and this was all an adventure. I had more in common with Jamine than with this kid.

That evening, I was served a horrible dish of pasta and chicken but it was a test of my recovery and I ate a bit of it.

That night McGittrick said, “If it's not love that interests you, how about revenge? Ones who screwed you around when you were a kid? You wrote a story about that. We can go deep into the past. You could go back and make sure they never did that to anyone else."

I shook my head. “The one I most wanted to kill was myself. It took a long time to untangle that. This is who I am,” I told him. “I'm turning down your offer."

He smiled and shook his head like my stupidity amused him. On the screen, I knelt blindfolded in the desert. “Did you forget about that?” he asked as I walked away.

Sunday morning, as I tried to choke down tasteless jelly on dry toast, a guy named John was brought in to have kidney stones removed. He was tall, thin, and long-haired, almost my age. “I was born on Bank Street, lived in the Village my whole life,” he told me.

There was something in the face with its five o'clock shadow and hawk nose that looked familiar. He was an archetype: the guy who held the dope, the guy who hid the gun, the guy who knew how to get in the back way. He was like Jamine. Like me.

It was confirmed that I was going home the next day. At one point that afternoon my niece walked with me around the floor. When we came to the window on Seventh Avenue, I looked around and realized there was no way that a computer screen could be reflected from the desk onto the glass.

"Thank you,” I told Margaret Yang later. “You people gave me a life transfusion."

"We just did our job. You are an interesting patient,” she said. That night when I stopped and looked out, the traffic was a Sunday night dribble without any magic at all.

The next morning, I awoke with the memory of a visitor. The night before I had opened my eyes and seen Sister Immaculata. “I'm disappointed,” she told me. “That you aren't willing to give others the same chance that was given to you."

"What chance was that?” I asked.

"You were a stumbling wayfarer,” she said. “We helped you survive in the hope you would eventually help us."

"What is it that you do?"

"Hope and Easeful Death,” she said with a radiant smile and I realized that I trusted cops more than nuns.

That morning they disconnected me from the last of my attachments. The IV pole was wheeled away.

John was about to go down to the operating room. He would spend this day in the hospital and then be released the next.

"You ever go to Washington Square Park?” he asked. “Look for me around the chess tables in the southwest corner."

Then my friend Bruce was there, pulling my stuff together, helping me get my pants on, tying my shoes for me. I was in my own clothes and feeling kind of lost.

Nurse Collins was on duty, “Good luck,” she said as I passed the desk for the last time. She looked at me for a long moment. “And let's hope we see no more of you in here."

The taxi ride home took only a few minutes. The flight of stairs to my apartment was the first I had climbed in almost two weeks and I had to stop and rest halfway up.

I'd thought that when I got out of the hospital I would magically be well and had a hundred errands to do. Bruce insisted I get undressed again and helped me into bed.

"When what they gave you in there wears off,” he said, “you will feel like you've been hit by a fist the size of a horse."

He filled my prescriptions for OxyContin and antibiotics, bought me food we thought I could eat, lay on my couch and looked at a book of Paul Cadmus's art he'd found on my shelves. I dozed and awoke and dozed some more. People called and asked how I was. A friend brought by a huge basket of fruit.

Bruce taped the phone extension cord to the floor so that I wouldn't trip on it. More than any other single thing, that spelled old age and sickness to me. It struck me as I fell asleep that Bruce was HIV positive and taking a cocktail of drugs to stay alive, yet I was so feeble he was taking care of me.

The second day Bruce came by in the morning, watched to make sure I didn't fall down in the shower, helped me get dressed and went with me for a little walk. The third day I got myself dressed.

Late that night, I looked at myself in the mirror. It was a stranger's face, thin with huge eyes. This was a taste of what very old age would be like. I missed the large ever-present organization devoted to making me better. My life felt flat without the spice of hallucination and paranoia.

The next day my godson Chris came to stay with me. That year we both had works in nomination for a major speculative fiction award. The ceremonies were to be held in New York City.

We were in different categories, fortunately. It was on my mind that if I could attend the ceremonies and all the related events, it would mean I had passed a critical test and was well.

Chris was shocked at first seeing me, though he tried to hide it. When one person is in his sixties and sick and the other less than half his age and well, their pace of life differs.

He adapted to mine, walked slowly around the neighborhood with me, sat in the park on the long sunny afternoons, ate in my favorite restaurants where to me the food all tasted like chalk now, read me stories.

The awards that weekend were in a hotel in Lower Manhattan. All the magic of speculative fiction is on the pages and in the cover art. The physical reality is dowdy. Internet photos of the book signing and reception show Chris happy and mugging and me fading out of the picture. Like those sketches Renaissance artists did of youth and old age.

As the awards ceremony dragged on I realized I'd be unable to walk to the dais if I won. I needn't have worried. A luminary of the field, quite remarkably drunk, after complaining bitterly that he for once hadn't been nominated, mangled all names and titles beyond recognition, then presented the award to the excellent writer who won. When it was over I rode home in a cab and went to bed.

Chris was nice enough to stay on and keep me company. One day as we walked into the park I saw John, my last roommate at the hospital. Looking as gray and thin as I did, he sat at a chess table in the southwest corner of Washington Square. The chess players share that space with drug dealers and hustlers.

I said hello. He nodded very slightly and I realized he was at work and that he was a spotter.

The spotters are paid to warn dealers if the heat is on the prowl or tip them off that a customer is at hand. I glanced back and saw John watching me.

One evening I took Chris to see a play that was running at a theater around the corner from my place. As we walked down narrow, old Minetta Lane, kids on motorized wheelchairs rolled past the Sixth Avenue end of the Lane.

For a moment I saw Jamine. Then I wasn't sure and then they were gone.

One day on the street we found a guy selling candid black and white photos that his father had taken fifty, forty, thirty years ago on the streets of Greenwich Village. One shot taken from an upstairs window on West Tenth Street and dated 1968 showed the Ninth Circle Bar with young guys in tight jeans and leather jackets standing on the front stairs. I felt a rush of déjà vu.

That night on a website I saw that scene again, the street, the stairs, the figures. But this time there was a close-up. The kid in the center of the group was me. The other guys were my partners in crime from the dream.

I clicked the mouse and the next picture came up. It was a figure in a motorized wheelchair rolling up Minetta Lane toward the camera. My face was a twisted mask. My hands were claws. I was ancient and partially paralyzed: the ultimate nightmare.

"You see how long we've been keeping an eye on you. And how long we'll keep it up,” McGittrick said and I awoke in the dawn light.

That evening when Chris and I kissed good-bye at Penn Station and he went off on the airport train, I felt the most incredible loneliness and loss. He'd been sharing his energy and youth with me and now I was on my own again.

Back downtown, I sat on a bench in Washington Square in the May twilight. Dogs yapped in the runs. As the light went away a jazz quintet played “These Foolish Things."

McGittrick stood studying me. “Why,” I asked, “was it necessary to screw my head around as you've been doing?"

"Think of it as boot camp. Break you down, rebuild you. Would the you who went to sleep the night before you got sick have sat in a public park having this conversation?"

"How did you get into this racket?"

He smiled, “Immaculata recruited me. Said I was a restless soul that wouldn't be happy unless I got to see a little more of life and death than others did."

"And now?"

"I'm ready to move on. You'll understand when you're in my place."

My guts, where they had been cut open and stapled back together, still hurt a little. I'd pretty much tapered off the medication but I needed to go home and take half an OxyContin tablet.

I arose and he asked, “Would you rather talk to Sister Immaculata?"

"That's okay. You're less scary than a nun."

"You've got a while to decide,” he said. “But not, you know, forever."

I nodded and continued on my way. But we both knew how I'd decided.

Dowland wrote:

Sad despair doth drive me hence,

This despair unkindness sends.

If that parting be offence,

It is I which then offends.

I had seen death and didn't want to die. Maybe I was a restless soul or maybe I was too big a coward to face death all at once and forever.

From a little reading I'd done, some research on the Internet, I knew that injury or illness actually can change a personality. What I'd always feared had happened. The one who had gone to sleep that night a few weeks before had awakened as someone else.

And I now was different enough from the one I had been that I didn't much care about that person who now was lost and gone.

Abraham, Daniel: The Curandero and the Swede (nvlt) Mar 6

Aikin, Jim: An Elvish Sword of Great Antiquity Jan 132

Andrews, Graham: Curiosities JuJ 258

Barnard, Bryn: Cover ApM

Bash, Kent: Cover Feb

Cover for “Hell of a Fix" Dec

Bauman, Jill: Cover “Gray Dawn" Mar

Bertolini, Max: Cover Jan

Bisson, Terry: Corona Centurion™ FAQ JuJ 82

Farewell Atlantis Dec 69

Bloch, Robert: That Hell-Bound Train (rpt) Mar 63

Bowes, Richard: I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said (nvlt) Dec 225

Cady, Jack: The Night We Buried Road Dog (rpt) Feb 70

Causo, Roberto de Sousa: Curiosities ApM 258

Chappell, Fred: Shadow of the Valley (nvlt) Feb 5

Châteaureynaud, Georges-Olivier: Icarus Saved from the Skies AuS 140

Cheney, Tom: Cartoons Jan,ApM,AuS

Competition # 77 ApM 255

Competition # 78 OcN 319

Connolly, Lawrence C.: The Others (nvlt) AuS 146

Cotham, Frank: Cartoons OcN

Cowdrey, Albert E.: Seafarer's Blood (nvlt) Jan 62

Paradiso Lost (nvla) JuJ 86

The Private Eye (nvlt) AuS 193

Bandits of the Trace (nvlt) OcN 51

de Lint, Charles: Books to Look For Jan-Dec

Di Filippo, Paul: Plumage from Pegasus Mar,ApM,OcN

Disch, Thomas M.: The Brave Little Toaster (rpt) ApM 52

Doherty, Paul: see Murphy, Pat

DuBois, Brendan: Illusions of Tranquillity Dec 126

Duncan, Alexandra: Bad Matter Dec 49

Emshwiller, Carol: The Perfect Infestation Jan 53

Logicist OcN 96

Ench, Cory and Catska: Cover AuS

Ferrara, Patricia: Rising Waters (rpt) Jan 89

Finlay, Charles Coleman: The Minutemen's Witch (nvlt) Jan 6

The Texas Bake Sale Feb 53

Garfield, Henry: Stratosphere ApM 159

Gilbow, S.L.: Andreanna ApM 143

Gilman, Carolyn Ives: Economancer (nvlt) JuJ 209

Goulart, Ron: I Waltzed with a Zombie (nvlt) OcN 232

Haldeman, Joe: Never Blood Enough OcN 222

Hand, Elizabeth: Books Feb,AuS

The Far Shore (nvlt) OcN 9

Hardy, David A.: Cover “Retro Rocket" OcN

Harris, S.: Cartoons ApM,AuS,OcN,Dec

Hughes, Matthew: Hunchster AuS 87

Hell of a Fix (nvlt) Dec 81

Irvine, Alex: Dragon's Teeth (nvlt) Dec 9

Jacobs, Harvey: The Man Who Did Something About It Dec 211

Jennings, Gary: Sooner or Later or Never Never (rpt) JuJ 171

Jesby, Edward: Sea Wrack (rpt) ApM 167

Jonik, John: Cartoons AuS

Kessel, John: The Motorman's Coat JuJ 33

Kushner, Ellen: "A Wild and a Wicked Youth" (nvlt) ApM 117

Kuzminski, Tina: The Goddamned Tooth Fairy (rpt) AuS 94

Laidlaw, Marc: Quickstone (nvlt) Mar 86

Langford, David: Curiosities Mar,OcN

Lee, Rand B.: Three Leaves of Aloe (nvlt) AuS 173

Lee, Yoon Ha: The Unstrung Zither (nvlt) Mar 40

The Bones of Giants (nvlt) AuS 116

Long, Bill: Cartoons Jan,Feb,Mar,ApM,AuS,OcN,Dec

Longyear, Barry B.: The Monopoly Man Jan 98

MacIntyre, F. Gwynplaine: Curiosities Jan, Dec

Maio, Kathi: Films Jan,Mar,JuJ,Dec

Martinelli, Patricia A.: Curiosities AuS 258

Masear, Arthur: Cartoons Jan,Mar,ApM,JuJ,AuS,OcN,Dec

McMullen, Sean: The Spiral Briar (nvlt) ApM 11

The Art of the Dragon (nvlt) AuS 7

Meddor, Michael: The Boy Who Sang For Others Jan 123

Miller, Ron: Cover “Formation of the Earth" JuJ

Milosevic, Mario: Winding Broomcorn Feb 132

Mirabelli, Eugene: Catalog Feb 142

Moriarty, Chris: Books Jan,JuJ

Murphy, Pat, and Paul Doherty: Science ApM,OcN

Nadler, M.: Cartoons JuJ

Oberndorf, Charles: Another Life (nvlt) OcN 274

O'Driscoll, Mike: The Spaceman (nvlt) JuJ 230

Oltion, Jerry: All in Fun Jan 82

Partridge, Ron: Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot—LXXI OcN 273

Person, Lawrence: Curiosities Feb 162

Reed, Kit: The Blight Family Singers Dec 142

Reed, Robert: Shadow-Below (nvlt) Mar 122

Firehorn (nvlt) JuJ 6

Mermaid OcN 197

Rickert, M.: The President's Book Tour OcN 259

Rini, J.P.: Cartoons Jan,Feb,AuS

Ross, Deborah J.: The Price of Silence (nvlt) ApM 198

Ryman, Geoff: Blocked OcN 105

Sallis, James: Books ApM,Dec

Shanahan, Danny: Cartoons JuJ,AuS

Shepard, Lucius: Films Feb,ApM,AuS,OcN

Halloween Town (nvla) OcN 129

Silverberg, Robert: The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar (nvlt) OcN 71

Skillingstead, Jack: The Avenger of Love ApM 98

Snodgrass, Melinda M.: A Token of a Better Age (nvlt) AuS 61

Springer, Nancy: You Are Such A One AuS 50

Iris Dec 177

Sterling, Bruce: Esoteric City (nvlt) AuS 227

Sullivan, Tim: Inside Time (nvlt) Dec 184

Thomas, Sarah: The Economy of Vacuum Dec 163

Thompson, Jessie: Snowfall (rpt) AuS 219

Van Gelder, Gordon: Editorials Mar,ApM,AuS,OcN,Dec

Varley, John: Retrograde Summer (rpt) JuJ 60

West, Michelle: Musing on Books Mar,OcN

White, Sophie M.: Obsolete Theories (poem) AuS 86

Whitlock, Dean: Changeling (nvlt) Jan 137

Wightman, Wayne: Adaptogenia (nvlt) JuJ 144

Wilhelm, Kate: Shadows on the Wall of the Cave OcN 304

Wright, John C.: One Bright Star to Guide Them (nvlt) ApM 222

BOOKS-MAGAZINES

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20-time Hugo nominee. The New York Review of Science Fiction. www.nyrsf.com Reviews and essays. $4.00 or $40 for 12 issues, checks only. Dragon Press, PO Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570.

Spiffy, jammy, deluxy, bouncy—subscribe to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. $20/4 issues. Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060.

Latest from RAMBLE HOUSE: The Triune Man by Richard A. Lupoff and Automaton, a 1928 essay on robotics. www.ramblehouse.com 318-455-6847

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The Visitors. $14.95 Check/MO

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Nyssa goes to the dogs. Read all about life in the kennel, circa 2075. “Rundog” by J.O.Quantaman. www.bbotw.com/product.aspx@ISBN=0—7414-4306-11

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MISCELLANEOUS

If stress can change the brain, all experience can change the brain. www.undoingstress.com

Support the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. Visit www.carlbrandon.org for more information on how to contribute.

The Jamie Bishop Scholarship in Graphic Arts was established to honor the memory of this artist. Help support it. Send donations to: Advancement Services, LaGrange College, 601 Broad Street, LaGrange, GA 30240

CASTING CALL: The Look of Love 2. Need: one woman who sees with her heart, not her eyes. Tuesday, Feb. 29. Central Park, NYC. Noon.

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Written a Book?

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A Science Fiction Webzine. Alternative Coordinates: www.ac-mag.com. $2.00 an issue. Always a free story. Printable version available.

New novel! The Whacking Of Maddy Exotica: A Sci-Fi Satire. It's the 25th century and Maddy Exotica rules with an iron fist and velvet skin. Check Amazon.Com.

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F&SF classifieds work because the cost is low: only $2.00 per word (minimum of 10 words). 10% discount for 6 consecutive insertions, 15% for 12. You'll reach 100,000 high-income, highly educated readers each of whom spends hundreds of dollars a year on books, magazines, games, collectibles, audio and video tapes. Send copy and remittance to: F&SF Market Place, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030.

Micromégas, a native of a planet orbiting Sirius, is a physically normal member of his species: 120,000 feet tall. Nearly 450 years old, he is on the brink of adulthood. Intellectually, though, he towers over his brethren: Micromégas has written a book that offended the Sirian censors, who banish him for 800 years. By riding sunbeams and comets, and manipulating the laws of gravity and magnetism, Micromégas jaunts through the Milky Way.

Attracted to Saturn's pretty ring (singular), he takes a closer look. The Saturnians are dwarves (merely 6,000 feet high) but they possess 72 different senses. Micromégas and an inquisitive Saturnian investigate a faint glimmer nearby, much smaller and dimmer than Saturn. En route to the dimmer glimmer, Micromégas observes that Mars has two moons (a fact not verified by humans until 1877).

The glimmer turns out to be a dungheap (Earth), inhabited by creatures so tiny that Micromégas mistakes a whale for a tadpole, and he perceives humans as talking atoms. He observes a war between 100,000 atoms wearing hats and 100,000 atoms wearing turbans, for possession of a lump of mud (Jerusalem). One atom quotes Aristotle, because Aristotle's writings are so incoherent that they must be very wise. Another atom, quoting Thomas Aquinas, vows that all the suns and stars were made solely for the benefit of the atoms inhabiting this dungheap. Micromégas gives the talking atoms a philosophy book containing all the knowledge that can be known with certainty. Its pages are blank.

—F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

The year 2009 was a bit bumpy around here, as we switched to our current bimonthly schedule and celebrated our sixtieth anniversary. We're hoping for smooth sailing in 2010. (By the way, you sharp-eyed readers have probably noticed already that this issue is listed as being only the December issue. We did that just to get our schedule in line with the calendar. Our next issue will be the Jan./Feb. 2010 issue.)

To kick off the new year, we're going to bring you “Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance” by Paul Park. This astonishing novella is partly a family memoir and partly a work of speculative fiction. It's definitely not like many other stories we've published.

We've also got several new fairy tale concoctions in the pipeline, including “The Frog Comrade” by Benjamin Rosenbaum and “The Secret Lives of Fairy Tales” by Steven Popkes.

Other stories in our near future include Richard Chwedyk's new “saur” story, Marc Laidlaw's latest adventure of the bard Gorlen, Albert Cowdrey's new look at the history of the South, and works by newcomers Lokiko Hall and Alexandra Duncan. Use the card in this issue or go to www.fandsf.com to subscribe so you won't miss any issues in the coming year!