Editor's Note

Contributors

Commentary by Martin J. Dougherty

My Huckleberry Friend by Ken Honeywell

Along with Captain Goodingby Barton Paul Levenson

Some Archival Material on the 2198 Stellar Expedition by Richard Parks

Honesty by Scott Nicholson

Waiting for the Blues by Philip J. Lees

Something Meaningful by Brian Plante

This publication is protected by copyright law and international treaties. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this publication, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties.

All characters and events in the short stories in this publication are works of fiction. Any similarity between these works and actual people, places or events is coincidental.

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Here we are, nearing the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere, as the planet leans toward the sun and the days grow warmer and longer. Summer is traditionally a time of relaxation, decompressing, getting away, and letting the mind wander off the beaten track a bit. It is also a time for stargazing.

There are few things more enjoyable in summertime than sitting outside in the warm air after a long day in the sun or air conditioning and looking up at the stars. It is a mind-freeing, perspective-gaining experience.

Sometimes, during particularly long stretches of gazing from one star to the next and the places in between, I am amazed at how little there is between me and those pricks of light. I have even caught myself, late at night and after a particularly long day, momentarily forgetting about my surroundings and feeling as though I could fall from the Earth's surface and float among the stars.

Yet, at other times, when my logical mind dominates, the stars and the planets seem so impossibly far away. During these moments, I am also struck by how insignificant our planet is compared to the scale of the universe and the vulnerability of the Earth and all that resides on it. Awhile back, I once listened to an astronaut describe the thin blue haze covering the planet. It was, the astronaut related, an eye opener to witness how little stands between the Earth and space. Thus, while stargazing with these thoughts, I can't help but be amazed that such a planet as ours even exists at all.

Such wondering is a part of summer, when we become reacquainted with the outdoors and the night sky. And such wonder, of course, is part of science fiction, where we become reacquainted with aspects of ourselves while enjoying the possibilities of our futures.

And such is the case with this issue of science fiction. On the one hand, you will find stories ranging from a confused boy struggling with a temptation to a man seeking peace of mind to a couple working through a relationship that is never dull. And on the other hand, stories in this issue will also describe to you patches that deliver music through skin, memories that take on a life of their own and programmable devices that adjust a person's moods. Each story offers a personal tale while also offering a unique vision of the future, which is no doubt the product of some serious mind wandering on each author's part.

So engage in some stargazing this summer and see where your mind takes you.

Now, I offer you the fifth issue of Future Orbits. I hope you enjoy it. —FO

Would you like your thoughts to appear in a future issue of Future Orbits? If so, please send them to either editor@futureorbits.com or Future Orbits, P.O. Box 239, Hatboro, PA 19040. Be sure to include your full name, address, and a phone number where you can be reached for verification purposes.

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Ken Honeywell ("My Huckleberry Friend") is a freelance writer and poet. His work has appeared in several small press science fiction publications. He is also the author of Bobby Plump: Last of the Small Town Heroes, a biography of the man whose last-second shot in a state final basketball game was the inspiration for the movie Hoosiers. Ken's current projects include a mystery novel and a nonfiction audio book about the future of the Internet. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife Suzanne, teenage son Nick and two golden retrievers.

Barton Paul Levenson's ("Along with Captain Gooding") fiction has appeared once before in these pages ("Scrunched Up," FO #3). His fiction has also appeared in publications such as Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, and he has published articles in The New York Review of Science Fiction. He was prohibited from entering the Confluence Short Story Contest again after winning first prize two years in a row. He has a degree in physics and more than seven years' experience in computer programming, and therefore, he says, works as a typist. His website is at http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/bpl.htm.

Scott Nicholson ("Honesty") has published over 40 stories in six different countries and he won the grand prize in the Writers of the Future contest in 1999. His first novel, The Red Church, will is scheduled to be released as a mass market paperback from Pinnacle Books this month (June), and his novel Metabolism is scheduled for release in the summer of 2003. Nicholson works as a journalist in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. He operates a website with writer interviews, reviews and articles at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com.

Richard Parks' ("Some Archival Material on the 2198 Stellar Expedition") fiction has appeared in many magazines, including Asimov's Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales. His work also appeared in David Hartwell's Year's Best Fantasy, and another story of his will appear in the second volume of this anthology. His website is at http://shell.ayrix.net/~brp1.

Philip J. Lees' ("Waiting for the Blues") fiction has appeared in Writers of the Future Volume XVII. He writes computer software for money and fiction for fun. In fact, he says, he writes both for fun, but the programming pays better (so far). He lives by the sea on the island of Crete, in Greece, where he is currently babysitting two goldfish while working on a novel about clones.

Brian Plante's ("Something Meaningful") fiction has appeared twice before in these pages ("Wolf's Cure," FO #3, and "Best Friends," FO #4). He has also sold over 40 stories to various magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Realms Of Fantasy, Amazing Stories, and all five of the Darkfire anthology series. He claims to have initially gotten involved in fiction writing as a means of weaning himself from an increasingly unsuccessful career as a rock musician. He now makes a respectable living as a computer support specialist for a major bank in North Carolina. He has stories forthcoming in Analog and the Beyond the Last Star anthology. See what else he's up to at http://www.sff.net/people/Brian_Plante.

Martin J Dougherty ("Space Stations: White Elephants in the Sky") resides in the United Kingdom where he works as a full-time writer and analyst. Much of his work is in high-technology sectors of the defense industry, particularly the naval sector. He freelances in the gaming industry and is currently line editor for the Traveller science fiction role-playing game published by QuikLink Interactive, Inc. His nonfiction work includes a handbook for teachers and a self-defense manual, and his fiction includes three Fantasy novels, a Napoleonic military adventure and a science fiction novel set in the universe of the Traveller game, due for release in December. When not writing, he is a fencing instructor at the University of Sunderland and is heavily involved in martial arts and self-defense. He says he is also inordinately fond of Malt Scotch and claims to be able to play the guitar. His ambitions are simple: "to be better." His website is at http://www.travellerrpg.com/MJD.

Avi Das ("Do Androids Brag about the One that Got Away?") is a self-taught artist who meandered into the realm of digital art 6 years back. He is also an independent filmmaker/animator. He says that he likes to "create an image, which conveys a story and/or is caught at a crucial juncture of the narrative." He lives in India. —FO

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The question of whether space stations are worth developing is the subject of an ongoing debate. Martin J. Dougherty offers his perspective on the issue.

The story of inhabited space stations is an epic of courage and determination in the face of tremendous challenges. Station crews have proved that humans can survive in space as they battled collision damage, fuel leaks, power failures, fires and countless other hazards to carry out their missions and—perhaps most amazingly of all—live and work in orbit.

Yet, as another station—the International Space Station—is painstakingly and expensively constructed, the question has to be asked: was it and is it all worth it? As Earth's population explosion continues, as pollution and overcrowding threaten our future, is it really worth spending so much money and effort on orbital stations?

The answer to that question is yes, and for the very reasons cited. Earth's resources are not limitless. All the available living space will eventually be filled. And what then? We will hit the peak of the technological mountain ... and begin to slide down the other side. With nowhere left to go, humanity will stagnate, fighting over a corner of the room rather than seizing a new frontier.

If we do not find a way to make a leap into the future, to take that next step outwards, then we will eventually collapse in on ourselves. Our descendents will live among the worlds of the solar system—perhaps even among the stars—or they will be medieval peasants scraping a living amid the wreckage of our civilization.

To avoid this collapse, humanity must look outwards, to seek new challenges and new frontiers. The ocean deeps offer us one such avenue for exploration, and space offers another. Orbital stations have several vital roles to play in that leap into the future.

Space stations offer us several unique advantages over satellites and manned missions. Humans are more flexible than any satellite system; while many functions can be carried out automatically, a human presence gives far greater capabilities. Manned missions do offer these advantages, but require that equipment be lifted into orbit every time it is to be used. A permanent station need only be carried to orbit once.

Currently, orbital stations can fulfil several roles:

Orbital monitoring stations: Orbital stations can undertake mapping, pollution monitoring and weather prediction and also have military applications such as missile defence and orbital reconnaissance/monitoring in support of peacekeeping operations.

Laboratories: A "weightless" lab can undertake research that is simply not possible on Earth, such as investigating the effects of zero gravity on people and animals, or materials. Orbital labs are also about as secure as it is possible to be, reducing the risk of outside contamination, sabotage, security leaks etc. High-risk projects cannot "escape" the lab to affect the surrounding environment.

Military bases: Orbital missile defences and command posts offer significant advantages, though orbital weapons are currently banned by treaty.

Training facilities: Astronauts can undertake realistic training and acclimatize to conditions in space before embarking on an extended mission.

Proving grounds: Stations can be used to test equipment in space, to try out techniques, or just to see how long people can operate in space.

These roles are available to us with current technologies, and will continue to expand as our capabilities increase. However, new roles are becoming possible, and in the future stations will have a number of important parts to play in our exploration of and expansion into space.

Exploration Bases

As we begin to send missions farther out into space, a "staging post" will become necessary to launch missions. It is possible to launch short-duration missions from the Earth's surface, but having to climb to orbit before setting out has significant drawbacks. Most of the mass of any space mission is "wasted" on the propulsion equipment (fuel, engines, etc.) required to boost a vehicle to orbit. Actual payloads are small compared to that prodigious drive unit.

A craft assembled in orbit (brought up in stages by orbital lifters from Earth) and returning, not to Earth but to an orbital station, need not be equipped for re-entry, nor need it waste most of its fuel in reaching orbit. The weight saved could result in a smaller, cheaper craft or one of the same size with far greater mission duration. Similarly, a vessel that will never enter the atmosphere need not be constructed to resist massive g-loads and huge accelerations. It can be any shape necessary for improved functionality or habitability.

Connected to Earth by regular rocket, spaceplane or shuttle flights, a station can be used as a base for reusable exploration craft searching for mineral wealth among the near-Earth asteroids or farther afield. A reusable exploration ship makes missions far cheaper, and thus commercially feasible. In addition to its other functions, the International Space Station can be such a staging post, and can also function as a training ground for the mission crews as they make their final preparations.

Commercial and Manufacturing Centres

If mineral exploitation of asteroids, colonization of the moon, etc., is undertaken, then an orbital station may be useful as a commercial interchange. Containerised raw materials inbound from mining stations on Luna or the asteroids and supplies to support the mining and prospecting operations can be transferred on the station between haulage vessels plying the space lanes and interface craft linking the station to earth. If bases are built on Mars or Luna (or any other large body) then an orbital station may be constructed at that end of the route to facilitate interface and exchange. This arrangement is expensive to set up but far more efficient than using a single vessel for the whole trip.

Some processing of raw materials and limited fabrication or manufacturing is likely to take place aboard any commercial station. At first, this will be a very minor activity mainly directed at maintaining functionality of the station and its craft, but in time the capability will expand and small orbital factories turning out specialist items will appear.

If a station is equipped to handle cargo, and to undertake repairs and maintenance on small spacecraft, then it is a small step to establishing an orbital assembly yard for space vessels, or perhaps even a major factory complex to build their components. This would be most economical if using minerals mined elsewhere than on Earth, of course, since hauling bulk loads of raw materials up the gravity well would not be cost effective. However, raw materials mined in the outsystem could be processed in orbit before making the journey to Earth in finished form, and of course the manufacturing centre could serve orbital or system-wide communities.

Cities in Space

It is unlikely that huge orbital cities will be constructed unless gravity can be somehow reliably created. However, large communities serving the scientific, exploration, mercantile, and manufacturing facilities may take on the aspect of a coastal port-city, with dockworkers, medical staff, technicians, and support personnel such as chefs and administrators living and working in the station alongside those working in its primary industries. Nursing, plumbing or even bar work in space will present wholly new challenges!

Making It Happen

The challenges involved in creating an orbital station are prodigious, and the inherent dangers are vast. Components are immensely expensive and yet fragile, and repair or maintenance is horribly difficult. For example, two Cosmonauts spent one entire hour of their (at the time) record-breaking 5-hour spacewalk trying to undo a single jammed nut on one of the Salyut stations.

Yet, it can be done. Stations can be—are being—built. The budgets required are immense, but within the reach of nations, international organizations, and even some private companies. The technology is still in its infancy. If the will is there, ways will be found to improve the means.

New technologies and groundbreaking techniques are likely to come from the national programs of the United States and other great powers. The increasing importance of space in defence programs ensures continued interest in orbital launch technologies, and the planned Mars mission may use an orbital "marshalling point." The International Space Station is the obvious choice; this would demonstrate the capability and open the way for further missions making use of orbital marshalling.

Thus, the pieces of the puzzle are being assembled; the International Space Station, the planned Mars mission, cheaper launch methods and reusable spaceplanes developed privately to serve the lucrative satellite-launch market ... but the expansion into space requires something more.

The key is commercialisation. If, for example, private ownership of territory in space is recognized, it will be possible to stake claims to asteroids and mine them. If money can be made from manufacturing in space, then private firms will begin looking for cheaper launch methods and the technology will leap forward.

Already, plans exist for orbital hotels, which are "doable" with current technology, though unlikely to actually happen in the foreseeable future. Other commercial enterprises are possible, however. The breakthrough will come when a visionary private company undertakes some form of directly profitable activity in space.

Given the ongoing advances in technology, and the fact that high-technology aerospace firms are finding the defence sector less lucrative since the end of the Cold War, it seems likely that attention will be focused more on space during the next few years, and that sometime in the period 2010 to 2020, the breakthrough will come—i.e. a firm will demonstrate that it is possible to make direct profits from activity in space.

Once profitability is proven, the puzzle is complete. Within 10 years of the first demonstration of feasibility, new space-exploitation partnerships (and firms offering supporting services and equipment) will appear. The "Orbital Gold Rush" will be trivial in terms of personnel involved, yet vast when the sums of money involved are considered. Once it is proved that it can be done, competition will drive the project forward from there. Governments (and the United Nations) will be left behind, hurriedly legislating to cover the issues thrown up in the wake of the pioneers.

Once the big money becomes involved, the high frontier will be thrown open. That first step, proving the commercial viability of space for something other than satellite TV, will be one of the greatest quantum leaps in human history, right up there with steam power or even the wheel.

Once the industry is established, an ad-hoc system of service providers is likely to be the result. Thus, a firm specializing in asteroid prospecting may sell its findings to a mining firm. Its analysis equipment will be aboard a unit leased from the operators of an orbital station, while another private firm supplies spares and maintenance on the prospectors' vessels. Interface with Earth is provided by companies operating commercial spaceplanes, while transit vessels leave for stations orbiting Luna and Mars, where interface is again handled by separate concerns. Some of these firms may be government operated; others will be wholly private.

In time, some of these firms will merge or be bought out by larger concerns, until the lucrative market is dominated by the big players who can do it more efficiently and reliably. These space conglomerates are the megacorporations of the future as the industry settles down and becomes established. Extrapolating from the pattern established by aerospace and defence firms in the 20th Century, this emergence of integrated super-companies is likely by 2040 or so.

By this time, orbital stations will be no more remarkable than a coastal town serving a seaport. Once, seagoing vessels could not venture out of sight of land. Crossing the oceans was a desperately dangerous undertaking. And yet today it is more or less mundane. Thus it will be with these new ports on the seas of space. Coastal vessels will bring trade and prosperity, and they will grow.

And some day, perhaps, a pioneering vessel will set sail and leave our coastal waters, beginning the oceanic voyage to another star. And eventually...

"This is ISS Starhauler, requesting docking clearance. We are inbound from Barnard Highport with a cargo of finished goods and twelve passengers. Manifest follows."

"Gargarin Highport Control to ISS Starhauler, you are clear to proceed. Welcome home." --FO

Would you like your thoughts to appear in a future issue of Future Orbits? If so, please send them to either editor@futureorbits.com or Future Orbits, P.O. Box 239, Hatboro, PA 19040. Be sure to include your full name, address, and a phone number where you can be reached for verification purposes.

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Secret liaisons often make life more fun. But, as Ken Honeywell describes in his story, they must be handled properly.

"This," said Ariel, "will blow your mind."

We stood in the moonlight, Ariel and I, in back of the ramshackle outbuilding behind the house where she and her father lived. This was our secret meeting place, hidden from the disapproving eyes of parents and neighbors and friends. My parents, anyway, and my friends: Ariel didn't have any friends except me, and I don't think her father cared what she did. My parents would have been incensed to find me out alone with any girl, let alone such a girl as Ariel. I was thirteen, too young for secret liaisons.

She offered the music patch in her open palm. I looked at it with curiosity, but my thinking caught on her words. All of them were known to me; I could offer definitions of each one individually, yet I had absolutely no idea what they meant arranged in that fashion. By "this," she certainly meant the patch, and I inferred that the patch--perhaps the music on the patch--would affect my mind in the way Ariel described as "blow." By the way she arched her eyebrow and smiled her secretive smile, the smile I liked to imagine she shared with me alone, I also could not help but imagine that a mind blow was a good thing. I didn't ask. I just smiled back. Ariel was always saying outrageous things, often for the sole purpose of making herself seem mysterious.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Just stick it," she said. "But I warn you: it's highly illegal."

How in the world could something be "highly" illegal? It was either legal or illegal, by definition. Did she mean that the possession or use of this particular patch carried a severe penalty? A highly severe penalty?

"You're not afraid, are you? Because I brought it for you."

"No," I lied. I was a little afraid. But it was just a music patch. I plucked it out of her hand and made to stick it on the back of my neck.

"Wait," said Ariel. "You should sit down."

We sat and pressed our backs against the outbuilding. In the distance, the skeleton of the new residential tower rose against the moon; even at this hour, men worked on the high beams, dark forms skittering across the sky as if walking on the lunar surface.

"Close your eyes," she said.

I closed them.

"Now stick it."

And I dropped into a warm pool of sound that nearly stopped my breathing: a musky lushness I did not know was possible, music made out of wood or bone or rain clouds, as far as I knew.

And then: a human voice. Used as an instrument.

I'm sure I looked as if I'd been struck across the back of the head with a shovel. Ariel laughed. "What did I tell you?" she said. "Your mind is totally blown."

I closed my eyes again. The words of the singer (another word I didn't know then) were strange, strange as Ariel's, stranger. He sang of the Moon River, of making a pledge to go with someone known as the Dreammaker to the end of the rainbow (ridiculous). He mentioned a huckleberry friend. It was like listening to Ariel: none of it made any sense at all.

At one point, the man stopped singing and the music swelled unbearably; I thought I might pass out from the beauty of it. And then the singer sang again about two drifters and the rainbow's end and the Moon River, and while I was still enveloped in that lush darkness, Ariel pressed her lips softly against mine, and her warm tongue tickled the inside of my mouth. I thought I might die right there. And while I swooned, she peeled the patch from my neck, flashed her enigmatic smile, and ran away. And I sat in the grass, stunned, uncertain as to whether something inside me had been damaged or merely altered. I sat and looked at the moon for another twenty minutes, and I still didn't know. Sometimes, I still don't.

Ariel was a dream; Ariel was a butterfly. Ariel was a mandala, complicated and beautiful and then gone.

That I can even think of Ariel in such terms is because of Ariel. Before I met her, I might have said that Ariel was a girl, Ariel was in my class at school, Ariel wore her hair in tight little braids all over her head, wound in knots and secured with colored beads.

Ariel arrived in the middle of the term, after the work had begun on the residential tower, before winter crushed us in its frozen jaws. She appeared in the doorway one morning after the bell had rung. Mrs. Patel introduced her to the class, told us she had moved from St. Petersburg. We didn't get many new students, and those few came straggling in from New Castle or Batesville or other small places within walking distance that no longer mattered. No one came a thousand miles to live here. So Ariel was something of an exotic from the beginning.

Her appearance made her stand out all the more. Her arms were long and the fingernails on her slender hands were painted blue. Around her neck, she wore a necklace made of blond rope with an amber amulet dangling from the middle. She had that braided hair, and freckles, and blue eyes that could freeze mercury. Smart. Different and smart was how she looked to me.

And beautiful. I think her beauty frightened the girls. I know it frightened the boys. We talked about her constantly, plotted strategies to devil her, made forays to her lunch table to sneak a feel of her braids. "Look hard, feel soft," Kevin Gilroy reported. "Still gross," he added reassuringly.

How it came to be with Ariel and me, I'm not sure I can say, other than that it was her doing. I was as intimidated and infatuated as the rest of them. I guess she saw something in me--a restlessness, perhaps, or a curiosity--that resonated with her.

Or it may have been as simple as the fact that she and her father had taken a house around the corner from ours. One afternoon in winter, I was out chopping wood, the heavy effort track patched to my neck burbling through my mind, when I caught a flash of color in the woods. I ignored it. I stood my logs on end and brought down the maul in time to the beat: hard, steady, driving the blade through the wood. Then one of my strokes sent a splintered log flying, and I looked up to find it and saw Ariel standing in the clearing.

My heart tickled. I glanced around. She was not supposed to be there. She certainly wasn't going to help my productivity.

"You're James," she said. She smiled, and suddenly those blue eyes were not cold but white-hot.

"Yes," I agreed. "Ariel."

"I've been watching you," she said.

Her speech was casual, the way Mom and I (and Dad, when he let himself relax) spoke at home--not the reduced English we were encouraged to use at school. "Don't you have your own work to do?" I asked.

"Now? Oh, I don't mean just now. I mean, in general. I've been watching you. You seem nicer than the other boys."

Again, my heart fluttered. I wanted to assure her it was true, that I was very nice and she should keep watching me. Then there was the part of me that wanted to let her know I was exactly like the other boys--just as tough, just as uncaring, just as likely to pull her hair as engage her in pleasant conversation.

"I know you have to work," she said. "Why don't you meet me tonight after dark? Say, ten o'clock? Behind my house? Do you know where my house is?"

"I think so." I knew exactly where her house was, but I wrinkled my nose and lowered my eyebrows as if I had to think about it.

"I'll see you then," she said, and she turned and ran into the woods.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze, the heavy effort tracks chugging through my head but providing little impetus to work diligently. I could make it happen, I thought. Mom and Dad were in bed most nights by nine-thirty, with sleep tracks humming through their heads. I could sneak out my window to see Ariel and they would never know I was gone.

I tried to maintain my composure through dinner. Mom selected the pleasant conversation tracks, meaning Dad had come home from the factory in a good mood; he talked cheerfully about productivity being up and tighter inventory control, and it was clear that he had been praised by his supervisor. I tried to listen politely, but my insides were churning. Dad's good moods sometimes resulted in later bedtimes. He was wired; he was thinking about work. He might decide to spread his flowcharts across the table and find a way to turn up the productivity another notch.

"Quiet tonight, boy," Dad said.

"Just tired," I said.

Mom reached across the table and patted my hand. "James got all the firewood cut this afternoon."

"Good for arms," said Dad.

I nodded. "Think I'll turn in early tonight. I have an exam tomorrow."

"Studying done?"

"I'm going to do some before bed." I thought talking about bed might make everyone sleepy. In any case, I patched the light domestic tracks onto my neck and washed the dishes, trying my best to pretend that everything was normal.

I worried needlessly. By nine, Mom and Dad were fortressed in their room and the house was dark and quiet, save for the soothing burble of the sleep tracks. I crept out my window and ran across the frozen ground in my back yard, then crunched through the snowy woods to the other side of the block where Ariel lived, my breath hanging in puffs behind me as if I were some kind of steam engine.

She was waiting for me by the outbuilding in a yellow parka and a dark watch cap. I slowed down when I saw her, tried to get my breath, appear casual.

"I knew you'd come," she said.

"I told you I would," I shrugged.

"People don't always do what they say."

That was the first time. We met back there two or three nights a week, the two of us leaning against the outbuilding, throwing snowballs into the distance, chatting about everything and nothing. We watched the residential tower inch higher week by week. Already, much of our township had been evacuated to live on the lower floors. They'd leveled eight blocks of houses on the other side of Keystone Avenue near the river and were only waiting for the spring thaw to begin pouring the footers for the big food production facility.

"Can you believe we're all going to live there?" I asked, pointing at the tower.

"I'm not going to live there," said Ariel.

"We're all going to."

"My father says we'll hide. We'll run away and live like gypsies. Gypsies, tramps, and thieves."

She might as well have been speaking Hindi. I knew what thieves were, but I was unfamiliar with gypsies and tramps.

But I understood the concept of running away and hiding. "You won't be able to get food. Besides, it's dangerous. And illegal."

Ariel laughed. "Just because something's illegal doesn't mean it's bad. I've done plenty of illegal things before. I do them practically every day."

"Right," I said. "Like what?"

"You'll find out," she teased. And there was a stirring low in my gut that made me want to take her and hide her myself, tell her she was being stupid about the tower, that of course she was going to live there. But there was another stirring even lower that made me want to find out about the illegal things.

At school, we spent most mornings working on reductions. Mrs. Patel would stroke a short sentence into the computer, which would then appear on our monitors. "'I must adjust this belt to improve machining efficiency,'" she read. "Who can tighten this sentence?"

Ami Erlanger, one of the smart girls who sat in front, raised her hand. "You can take out 'must' and 'to'."

"Very good," said Mrs. Patel, and the offending words vanished. "What else?"

"Take out 'I,'" said Pamela Davies.

"Because 'I’ is..."

"A pronoun," I said, joining the scattering of voices around the room.

"Correct. And pronouns point to people, so you can probably just point. Anything else?"

"'This?'" asked Kevin Gilroy.

"Very good, Kevin. Another pointing word. Anything else?"

We all stared at the sentence, which now read, "Adjust belt improve machining efficiency." Seemed tight to me.

After thirty seconds of throat clearing and foot shuffling from the class and no prompting from Mrs. Patel, Ariel raised her hand. "You can take out 'machining,'" she said.

"And why is that, Ariel?"

"Because you wouldn't be trying to improve any other sort of efficiency by adjusting the belt."

"That's correct. I'm surprised it took so long for us to get here. We've been working on tightening all semester."

We said nothing. Mrs. Patel stood and pulled the glasses off her nose. When she was angry, she became cool.

"This is not a game, my young friends. You must be able to look at a sentence like this one and reduce it in your head, without even thinking about it. You may always speak how you wish on your own time. But when you enter the working world, there are certain skills you are expected to have mastered.

"Your time draws near. Time near," she said, pointing her finger around the room and scowling like an avatar of doom. "By year's end, we will have a week in which we speak only reduced English, which will account for seventy percent of your language grade. I suggest you prepare accordingly."

The night after she played the patch on me, I met Ariel at the secret place. We pulled our jackets closed to ward off the chill breeze. Moonlight spilled between the houses and pooled in the cool grass. In the distance, we could hear the shearing of metal and the thudding clank of the rivet guns as the residential tower rose.

"That song makes no sense at all," I said. "I searched the atlas today. There is no Moon River. The end of the rainbow is an old folk tale, unscientific. People believed you could find a pot of gold there."

She laughed at me.

"What's so funny?"

"You're so serious," said Ariel. "I can't believe you looked up all those things."

"I just don't understand why someone would make that kind of music. What is it for?"

"It has to have a reason?"

"Everything has a reason."

"What's the reason for this rock?" she asked, pulling one out of the grass. "What's the reason for that fly?"

"Flies are part of the food chain," I said. "Flies are eaten by frogs, frogs are eaten by birds, birds--"

"Not flies: that fly. That one buzzing around your head."

"Maybe to be eaten by a certain frog."

Ariel laughed again. "You think too hard, James. Some things don't have a reason. Some things just are."

I was not in the mood to give up. "That music was made. And made things have a reason."

"I'm not sure you heard it right," said Ariel. "Here. Listen again."

She pulled the patch from her pocket and pressed it to my neck. Again, the soaring sweetness, intoxicating and indescribable. Again, the man's voice, not speaking normally, but singing words as if he were some kind of keyboard with a voice. Again, the words I could apprehend but not comprehend.

Again, Ariel kissed me.

My body tingled with a thousand sensations: joy, sadness, hope, love, and a myriad others I could not name. Then she pulled the patch and rolled away from me.

"Wait," I whispered. "You can't go. The words--I made no mistake."

But she did not look back. "Tomorrow night, then," she called. "I'll bring more."

"Bring that one," I called after her. The song was stuck inside me. I did not think I could ever hear it enough.

She brought it the next night along with three other patches ("My father has hundreds of them," she said.): one about someone who loved a baby; another one about a field of strawberries that went on forever; and a loud and angry song about dead people in Ohio, apparently killed by tin soldiers and nixon. The first reminded me of the productivity tracks, albeit with a woman's voice cooing and sighing. The second was strange, the voices sounding as if they were singing into the wind, saying that nothing was real except the strawberries, or so I understood; the words, like the music, were virtually opaque. The last made me excited and afraid at the same time.

We listened to them over and over and talked about what they were supposed to mean. "When you are living with your eyes closed, you can't see where you're going," said Ariel. "That's where the misunderstanding comes in. When you open your eyes, you see that what you thought was real is just an illusion."

I peered across the yard at the wooden houses, the oaks and maples, the stars in the fathomless sky. "That is absurd," I said. "You're probably wishing it's an illusion because of all the trouble you'd have if you were caught with these patches."

Ariel shrugged. "We've been in trouble before. It's not so bad, being in trouble. You meet interesting people."

She reached behind me and stuck the patch to my neck. There was something in the way she kissed me that made me believe about the trouble.

The more that song haunted me, the more the other tracks irritated me. The morning tracks were suddenly too loud, too bright; I felt compelled to get on with my day and reluctant to do so. The productivity tracks made me feel restless and bored. I found myself listening to the sounds instead of concentrating on my work. In the evenings, I fidgeted. The relaxing tracks did not relax me. I stayed awake at night listening to the sleep tracks instead of allowing them to soothe me into sleep. Gradually, I became aware that the song about the Moon River was weaving in and out of all the other tracks in my mind. I tried using a white noise patch to block out everything, but it only made a fertile valley through which the Moon River flowed.

I was only thirteen years old, and I didn't know much. But I knew that unless I did something, I was going to lose my mind.

The next night, Ariel and I lay in the grass and listened to more patches, strange songs about sleeping lions, people breaking in two, women named Allison and Veronica. Ariel had her eyes closed. She smiled and nodded in time to the music. "Different strokes for different folks," she announced. When I was sure she was in deep, I riffled through her stack of patches and found the song about the Moon River. I slipped it into my pocket and, in its place, slid one of my productivity tracks.

All the way home, I kept my hand wrapped around the patch. I had never before stolen anything, although I told myself I wasn't stealing: I was borrowing, just for a day or two. Just a mistake, I would tell her. Switched them by mistake in the dark.

Inside the house, the sleep tracks droned. Mom and Dad slept. I crept down the hallway, certain that every footfall sounded like a gunshot. Somehow, I made it to my room without awakening them. Then I closed my door and undressed, and I stuck the patch and lay on my bed for hours, listening to the song, staring at the moon as it sailed across my window.

It seems foolish in retrospect. But I must have thought that playing the song over and over again would get it out of my head--that I'd wear it out, make it disappear the way productivity tracks become part of the background, like the sky, or gravity. But the problem only got worse. I awoke with the song charging through my brain, running around as if it lived there. I felt the back of my neck to make sure I hadn't gone to sleep with the patch on, but there it was on the nightstand next to my lamp.

I tucked the patch into my pocket and brought it to school. I told myself I would give it to Ariel at lunchtime. I practiced the lie all the way to school. "Not sure how it happened. Maybe I just wished it was mine!" I would say sheepishly, and she would smile. She would not hate me.

By mid morning, we'd finished our reductions and were plowing through productivity drills. We worked individually at our monitors, rearranging a production floor for maximum efficiency, positioning machining cells and palletizing systems and material feeding units in new and more orderly arrangements. I tried not to look at Ariel. Just an hour, and I'd give back the patch. I fingered it in my pocket, turning it over in my hand.

And suddenly, I could not bear the thought of giving it back without hearing it again. So, when I was sure no one was looking, I slipped it out of my pocket and stuck it to my neck. I pulled up my collar and craned my neck to disguise the patch. No one could see it, and no one but me could hear the melancholy tune.

I went back to my work, happier now, a little smug, even. I blocked out the productivity track that echoed through the room. I had my own soundtrack now, and I moved machining cells around my graphic production floor with abandon, adding tool changers here, pallet changers there, curving the conveyor around a beam because I liked the way the pallets looked when they rounded the corner.

I was so engaged in my work that I did not see Mrs. Patel standing over me, glowering. "What are you doing, James?"

"Hm? I'm sorry, Mrs. Patel. Am I making errors?"

"Not the work. The sound you're making."

"Sound?"

"What is that patch on your neck?"

I covered it with my hand. "M-my productivity track, Mrs. Patel. Sometimes I work better when I use my personal track."

"And does your personal productivity track have words to help you work?"

"I don't--"

She bent low and wrapped her fingers around my arm. "You were singing, James," she whispered. "Singing under your breath. I think you had better come with me."

She pulled me out of my chair and ripped the patch off my neck just as the man began to sing about the two drifters, and I gasped and looked at Ariel. Her eyes were wide and she opened her mouth to breathe. And I think Mrs. Patel must have seen the look that passed between us, because I sat outside the principal's office while she spoke with Mr. Ramey, and when they came out to get me, they were smiling.

"This is a very serious thing, James,’ said Mr. Ramey, holding the patch between his thumb and forefinger as if he were afraid that touching more than a millimeter might infect him. He waggled it in my face. "Where did you get it?"

I said nothing. I pictured Ariel sitting at her desk, alone and afraid. I couldn't say anything.

"We know where you got it," said Mrs. Patel.

"I found it," I said. "In the woods behind my house, lying in some leaves."

"We both know that's a lie," said Mr. Ramey.

I said nothing. The song kept looping through my head, all the words jumbling together.

Mr. Ramey stood and sighed. He turned his back and walked to the window. In the distance, the residential tower rose against the morning sky. "You've always been an excellent student, James," he said. "This is the sort of thing that can ruin a young man's life. So I'm going to give you a choice: you can tell us where you got this, and no one has to know--not your parents or anyone else. But if you resist, we'll have to call the police."

My arms began to tingle. The song played louder in my head, the words now piled one of top of the other.

"We'll get her anyway, James. It's no use playing the hero."

That was what I heard Mrs. Patel say. Yet, she did not say these words at all. She gestured between herself and Mr. Ramey and said, "Get her," then pointed at me and shook her head and said only, "Hero." And when my predicament was reduced in this way, I could not think of any alternative.

I wasn't there when they took Ariel and her father. The next day, Ariel simply wasn't in school, and we received no explanation as to her absence. "Gone," was all Mrs. Patel would say, as if Ariel were the subject of a reduction lesson. I allowed myself the delusion of imagining her sick in bed at home. But that afternoon, I walked past her house and saw, even from the road, that the place had been torn apart. I ran to the front window and pressed my nose against the glass. Tables lay overturned and broken, balanced on ragged piles of carpet ripped from the floor. Pillow stuffing floated through the room like snow.

For many years, I lived with the shame of what I had done lodged in my heart. But in my mind I know I only accelerated the inevitable. Ariel was a reckless girl, and her father was a criminal. And with the distance of years and the vision of hindsight, I can see that I couldn't really be blamed for my actions. I was dealing with a drug that had destroyed entire generations, made them dreamy and lazy and unproductive.

I never saw her again, and never again heard the song about the Moon River. Except, sometimes when the sky is dark and the moon is full, the song will suddenly explode into my head, fully formed, bringing with it Ariel's face and her smile and the feel of her lips pressed against mine. And for a few moments, I will stop whatever I'm doing and remember, and that memory is as real as anything. --FO

[Back to Table of Contents]

Maybe what the world needs is a hero. And Barton Paul Levenson gives us one in this fun story of good versus evil.

I was cruising beneath the sea in my personal submarine, enjoying the coolness and serenity of the blue depths whilst playing Bach's Sechs Kleine Praeludien on the harpsichord, when I got the telepathic message from my niece, Janet. "Really, Uncle, such self-indulgent aestheticism!"

I often find my reveries interrupted by Janet's somewhat caustic comments thereupon. It would not be amiss to compare Janet and myself to two peas in a pod--allowing, of course, that one of the peas might be composed of matter, the other of antimatter.

"All right, Janet, you've made your point. What, precisely, do you need me for?"

"It's not me, Uncle, believe me. It's the government--in fact, more than one government. Some sort of scientific crisis; only you can solve it, etc., etc. The usual sort of thing."

"Well, as my mood is quite destroyed, I suppose I may as well indulge them." I gave my submarine telepathic orders to surface and fly to New York. New York is a perfectly dreadful place, but the governments of the world tend to gather in one particular location there when it becomes necessary to do business. Something to do with the U.N. having once stood on that spot.

I strode into the Grand Audience Hall and stood facing the world's three greatest leaders.

"Captain Gooding. We are most pleased to see you," said Madame Yi, Empress of the Dragon Throne of Eurasia.

"Ah shore am plumb glad ya came, Cap," said Burt Lawler, Chief Cowpoke of the Americas.

"May the kikiboro roost in your baobab, sea-man Gooding," said !Nang Tun, Oldest Shaman of Australafrica.

"Madame; Gentlemen; I am of course delighted to be of service. What, precisely, is the problem this time?"

Madame Yi brought two long and knobby index fingers together and barely touched her lips with them. "As is known to everyone here--and is, therefore, unnecessary to relate..."

"Aw, shucks, I'm gonna say it anyhow," said Lawler. "For 9,900 years them danged Uspri have kept us stuck on this here Earth, just because that ole MegaMan fella tried to take over the galaxy. Well, we're comin’ up on the end of the danged probation period--another hunnerd years, hell, I could practic'ly hold ma breath that long! And what d'ya think up and happens, but the Uspri Ambassador to Earth goes an’ gets hisself kidnapped!"

"Good Lord," I said.

"That is not the worst of it," said Madame Yi. "The kidnapper is clever and accomplished--he would have had to be, to foil Uspri security--but he would also seem to be quite mad. He holds himself to be MegaMan reincarnated, and demands that the Uspri lift the ban on Terran space travel now. If not, he says he will kill the Ambassador--by the simple expedient of destroying the Earth itself with a colossal antimatter bomb."

"But does he really have such a thing, or is it a bluff? Or perhaps even a delusion? You said yourself the man was mad."

"No delusion, rafiki," said !Nang Tun. "The industrialists of the north--they believe in huge things, great stone buildings, high-tech systems, ho! All that futile, materialist sort of jazz. You can see it in their clothing." He pointed to Madame Yi's elaborate black and red robe with its golden ornamentation; Lawler's cowboy outfit. !Nang Tun himself, of course, wore nothing but his black and wrinkled skin, save one thin leather band around his waist and the seven-foot juju stick in one hand.

"We did not bring the Captain here to discuss fashion," hissed Madame Yi.

"What that there Australafrican feller is tryin'a say," explained Lawler, "is that for a passel o’ years now, Missus Yi's folk and ma own been collaboratin’ on a joint venture--a big ole theme park, for the kids. Tryin'a revive what they useta call a Disney, or a EuroDisney, or some damn thing. Rides and sights an’ all that there sorta thing. AdventureLand, we were gonna call it, an’ it was in two parts--a big ole plain part, with robot horses and thangs, where kids could recall the great days o’ the American West, track down rustlers, have gun battles with the fifteen-foot green warriors o’ the dead sea bottoms, all o’ that."

"In the spirit of Zane Gray and Edgar Rice Burroughs, I take it."

"Exactly. And Madame Yi's part, that was gonna have more of a horror theme. A big ole castle, vampires, werewolves, serial killers."

"For the more ... intellectual children."

"Ya took the words right outta ma mouth. Anyhow, the fella she hired, he was kind of a--well, sorta--"

"I made a mistake," said Madame Yi. "My chief planner was indeed a student of the great historical periods of Old Earth, and a most gifted architect. But he was also insane. In fact, he is the delusional villain of whom we have spoken. And we did not realize this until he had imported 87 quadros of hyperized antimatter."

"I can guess the rest," I said. "He built traps and defenses into the castle, where he is, even as we speak, holding the Uspri Ambassador hostage and threatening Earth with imminent doom."

"Exactly," said Lawler.

"And I am the only person with even a prayer of infiltrating."

"Just so," said Madame Yi.

"And I'm to leave at once."

"You got a good head on your shoulders, my brother," said !Nang Tun. "Try not to get it blown off."

Thus it was that I found myself struggling up a sheer cliff, thousands of feet above the ground, while a howling blizzard blasted snow past my ears and spherical CXY guard robots fired laser beams at my head from above. The laser beams were getting closer and closer to my head, despite my frantic efforts to evade them (while at the same time trying not to fall off the cliff).

"There is only one way to disable a Type CXY guard robot, of course," said Janet. "One must sing a high C over G in alto baritone."

"I originally taught you that, you know," I told her. I crouched left, barely avoiding a red beam which sliced into the rock next to me, leaving a plume of steam. I took a deep breath and sang the required note.

One by one, the robots hovering overhead stopped rotating in place, stiffened, and dropped out of the sky. Unfortunately, several million tons of the ice and snow encrusting the mountainside decided to do the same. I rode the avalanche down to Earth. Thank God, a good deal of it had been below me and dropped first, so that instead of striking the ground I only plowed through a hundred meters or so of loose snow. Then the rest came crashing down on my head.

I came to on my back, atop a gurney, being wheeled through corridors of solid rock lit by torches. When the gurney stopped, I was on the display floor at the center of an immense amphitheater. Someone turned a creaking wheel and the gurney leaned forward until I was almost standing on my feet. Only the thick leather straps held me in place.

There facing me was a laughing maniac in operating whites, stethoscope around his neck and reflector on his forehead. I knew that bearded visage.

"Anaximander Gargantua," I said. "We meet again."

"Delighted, my dear Captain Gooding. But my colleagues know me by a somewhat different name." He gestured to indicate the audience. I beheld row after circular row, each one wider and higher up, of beings like horned humanoid cattle. As I watched, their arrow-headed tails lashed expectantly back and forth. They shook their fists, stood up and danced in place, and in several other ways acted as if expecting some tremendous spectacle.

Gargantua laughed to see my consternation. "Of course you don't recognize my esteemed colleagues. They are the Megaminotaurs; horned, hooved and long-tailed denizens of the subterranean, volcanic deep. And as I said, they know me by a different name than the one you know. To them I am simply ... MegaMan!" He howled laughter to the rock ceiling of the amphitheater. He said to the person who had turned the wheel, "Where are your manners, my dear? Introduce yourself to the good Captain!"

Surprisingly, the madman's accomplice was a beautiful, dark-haired young woman, alluring and mysterious. She came around to the front of the gurney and bowed from the waist, hands clasped in the ancient Chinese way. "Welcome to our humble home, Captain Gooding. I am Angelique Victoria."

"Charmed, my dear," I said. "Though I do wish the circumstances were different."

"And now, my good Captain Gooding," said Gargantua, "You will be executed, as a spectacle for my esteemed colleagues."

"You mad fiend! What twisted method has your diseased mind come up with this time?"

"Something very simple." With this he drew out a pistol. I was one of only twelve people on Earth who could have recognized it as a German Luger of the period of the Second World War.

"Surely you jest," said I. "Don't you wish to extend my torment? And, of course, you'll wish to explain your entire mad plan before leaving me to my demise."

Gargantua shook his head.

"You're not going to explain your mad plan? But it's traditional!"

"I am the most brilliant super-villain ever to live, Captain Gooding. I am smart enough to do this." And he stepped up to me, put the barrel of the Luger against my forehead, and blew my brains out.

I came to slowly, my vision appearing strangely like the view through a computer monitor. "He lives!" cried the mad doctor. "My creature lives!" Above us, the megaminotaurs stamped and roared their approval.

I checked my memories. Nothing appeared to be missing. "How...?" I asked.

"Ah, yes. How can you have your entire mind when I scrambled your brains with lead projectiles? The answer to that is simple, my dear Captain Gooding--using my new Electroneurotic Scanner, I recorded the exact pattern of your mind a moment before I fired the gun. Now you exist only as an electronic ghost in the Central Processing Unit of your new and improved cyborg self."

"Oh, dear," I said.

"As a computerized cyborg, you must obey my every command. Stand on your head."

I stood on my head. Gargantua laughed insanely. The megaminotaurs howled and stamped.

"You see my greatness! My genius!"

The megaminotaurs applauded.

"Oh, poor Uncle," said Janet in my head. I was touched by this evidence of her concern for me, little good though it did me at the moment.

"Now, come with me," said Gargantua, "as I put the finishing touches on my mad plan."

I righted myself, then followed him and Angelique out of the amphitheater and down a rocky corridor lit by torches. It wound hither and yon through the dark depths of the mountain, but finally came out at a wide, circular room. There, the Uspri Ambassador, Wyxa Tor, stood manacled to the wall. The alien was easily recognizable by his shiny-gray skin, his flowing, V-necked robe, and his bulging head, indicative of great intelligence. "Captain Gooding," he said. "Your cyborg appearance logically implies that you attempted to infiltrate Mister Gargantua's stronghold, that you were captured, and that the aforesaid supervillain then blew your brains out with an antique pistol, though not before recording your mental energy pattern with which to program your new cyborg self."

"Your vast mental powers appear to be intact," I said. "Unfortunately, as Anaximander Gargantua's cyborg slave, I am unable to effect a rescue."

"Alas," said the alien.

"Now to reveal the secret I dared not tell before the megaminotaurs," said Gargantua. "The governments of Earth are even now pleading with the Uspri government to allow space travel again. They will not be successful. But whether they are or not, I plan to set off the bomb anyway, turning the Earth into an interstellar beacon spelling out my name across the sky. With that as my warning to the Galactic Club, I will already be on my way to the heart of the galaxy, there to ravage galactic civilization until the end of time."

"You mad fiend," I said. "You'll never get away with this."

"Ha ha," laughed the villain. "And whom, pray tell, is to stop me?"

"Very likely the megaminotaurs," I said. "You see, as a cyborg I have all kinds of high-tech capabilities, and I have been using one of them to broadcast this entire conversation back to the amphitheater."

Gargantua's jaw dropped. "What? But you are my cyborg slave! How could you have done something against my wishes?"

"You didn't tell me not to," I pointed out.

An angry roar arose far in the distance, accompanied by a far-off orange glow. "Curses!" said Gargantua. "The megaminotaurs are flooding the corridors with lava!" He sprang to an enormous lever in the floor and pulled it back. A thick metal door slammed down in the doorway to the corridor. An enormous clang rang out as something struck the door from outside. It was followed by another.

"The megaminotaurs are undoubtedly using one of their number as a battering ram," said Wyxa Tor. "It is only a matter of time before the door is breached."

"But that door is solid impervium," said I.

"Remember that the megaminotaurs inhabit the Earth's volcanic depths," said the alien. "A physiology that allows them to walk through lava undoubtedly gives them a certain physical rigidity as well."

"Come, Angelique," said Gargantua. "Let us leave these fools to their fate. Cyborg Slave, I order you to remain here and die ignominiously."

In my new state, I had no choice. I stood where I was, motionless, as Gargantua led Angelique out of the room and down another corridor.

"Well, Captain Gooding," said Wyxa Tor. "It would appear that this is the end. As I am of a dying race, I am philosophically resigned to the prospects either of being vaporized by lava or of being torn to pieces by the megaminotaurs. You, perhaps, are feeling some distress."

"My new, cyborg nature has rather dampened my emotions," I told him. "Nonetheless, I am conscious of a certain ghostly echo of intense frustration."

Just then Angelique Victoria rushed back into the room. "O Captain Gooding! I could not leave you to die! I have never before met a man of innate nobility and honor, and the obvious contrast with my evil master has worked at my heart until I decided to save your lives! Come with me, and I will help you stow away on the spaceship so that we may leave before the Earth is destroyed!"

"I am unable to leave," I said. "I was ordered to stay here and die ignominiously."

"I will throw your deterministic free-will switch," she said. She manipulated the controls on my back, and suddenly I was--mentally, as least--my old self again. "Come! Perhaps we can still stop the bomb from going off!"

My vast cyborg strength allowed me to snap Wyxa Tor's bonds, and then the three of us rushed down the corridor Gargantua had taken. It wound back and forth, but the overall course was steadily uphill. This was a bit of luck, as we soon heard a rushing noise behind us. The lava was getting higher, and the megaminotaurs were wading through it, heading toward us and threatening us with angry bellowing like that of enraged bulls.

Ahead of us, we could see Gargantua heading for an enormous spaceship shaped just like a V-2 of Earth's second world war. It was the largest object in an immense, well-lit cavern filled with stalactites and stalagmites.

But at the last moment a river of lava appeared from a side corridor and cut off Gargantua's route to the spaceship. "Curses!" he said, shaking his fist at the elements.

"Anaximander Gargantua!" I called out. "Surrender!"

He laughed insanely. "I see Angelique has betrayed me! La donna é mobilé--Woman is fickle! But despite the pain of betrayal, I will never surrender! I would rather die, defiant to the last!" With that he rushed uphill to a small mesa which held an enormous church organ. The first few bars of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor filled the cavern as he played.

Angelique, Wyxa Tor and myself huddled together as the lava and the megaminotaurs approached. "Oh, Captain Gooding!" cried out Angelique. "I wish that I could die in your arms, rather than in super-heated molten rock!"

"My God, I've been a fool!" I said. "My cyborg frame should enable me to wade through lava with ease! Come!" And with that I hoisted Angelique in one arm and Wyxa Tor in the other and splashed through the stream of lava blocking the way to the spaceship. I set Angelique on the spaceship's ladder first, then Wyxa Tor when she had climbed high enough. I came last, shaking off bits of lava from my robotic feet.

The three of us strapped into the acceleration couches as I manipulated the controls. Above us, a vast iris door dilated open, revealing a thin, cylindrical passage open to the sky. I pulled back the launch lever and the spacecraft took off, climbing into the blue. G-force pulled at my mighty frame and crushed Angelique and Wyxa Tor back into their seats, but my cyborg strength was equal to anything.

Soon we burst into the free, open blue skies over the mountain. I turned the ship's nose down and headed for New York.

"You have done wonderfully well," said Madame Yi as we stood before her and the other world rulers. "Only one point still puzzles me. Why did the antimatter bomb never go off? Would the lava not have destroyed the mechanism, thus freeing the antimatter to explode the Earth?"

"Gargantua miscalculated," I explained, "as villains often do. He forgot that the Earth's magnetic field is more intense the further down into the planet's interior you go. The magnetic field surrounding the antimatter charge would have been strengthened, not destroyed, by the lava. Some day, far in the future, we may be able to send lava-traveling vehicles deep into the Earth to search out the buried antimatter and use it for peaceful purposes. In the meantime, it poses no threat to us."

"What a shame that Gargantua never used that brilliant mind of his for good rather than for evil," said Wyxa Tor.

"True," I said. "A man who plays Bach so well cannot be entirely bad. But I will say this--I did not actually see him destroyed by the lava. I wouldn't put it past him to have had ready some arcane method of escape from his just fate. I'm not at all sure we've seen the last of Anaximander Gargantua."

"The last for the present, at any rate," said Madame Yi. "Captain Gooding, we cannot of course give you back your original body. But as your genome was on file with the Central Genetic Bank, we have had an anencephalic clone prepared. Your cyborg brain can be transplanted into an exact duplicate of your old body."

At that, Angelique squealed with delight and threw herself into my temporarily cyborg arms.

"Really, Uncle!" came the telepathic message from Janet. --FO

[Back to Table of Contents]

Revenge is often a complicated business. Such is the case in Richard Parks’ story of an expedition gone bad.

My name was Michael Danning. I used to be a starship pilot; I'm not sure what I am now. If I had to guess, I'd say a memory. One shorn of its context and reason for existence, and yet remains despite that. Rather like an old hoverflit rusting away in a junkyard. It's still a hoverflit, but you could hardly call it transportation. So I call myself a memory, just not a living one.

I didn't return. I want to get that straight right from the start. Whatever else it might be, this is the account of someone who did not survive.

There's no light here, but I can see. I have no eyes, either, but I can still see. It's impossible, but that doesn't change the fact. I'm writing all this down. That's impossible too. More likely I'm recording this in some other fashion: direct memory port, voc recorder, binary translation, something. I don't know. Don't care, either. It's the account that matters. At least, I think it does. I'm having trouble remembering yesterday, or the day before, but I do remember the expedition. I'm supposed to record it, I think. If not, then I have no reason to exist at all, and I find that notion more than a little annoying. I'd rather be erased than have no purpose, but no one asked my opinion on that.

MICHAEL?

It's her again. The familiar voice. Why can't I remember why it's familiar? I know she's been here before, I just know it. Dammit, why won't she leave me alone? I'll never finish at this rate. How long has it been now? Two hundred years? Three? There's really not that much to tell. Why is it taking so long?

My response is programmed, unavoidable. "What do you want to know?"

I'D LIKE TO DISCUSS THE EVENTS OF JUNE 12, 2208, TIME INDEX: 23:00 THROUGH 24:15, INCLUSIVE.

Now I remember the voice. My memory is slowly getting better, I think. It's Leah's voice. I wanted to hear Leah's voice, at first; I remember that much. Now I can't seem to turn it off. I don't want to hear Leah now. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Did something happen then?"

IT WAS JUST AFTER THE GRANGE ENTERED ORBIT AROUND THE SECOND PLANET. YOU KILLED YOUR CREW.

Oh, right. I did do that, didn't I? Well, it was an accident. Except for Andros, of course. I meant to kill Andros. I guess it makes sense people would be interested in that.

"I sabotaged the landing pod. Is that what you wanted to ask about?"

TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED.

"What happened? You know what happened! Everyone knows what happened! Leah and Donalson joined Andros for the descent. They weren't supposed to; I guess everyone was so excited about Landfall. It was a pretty planet, I will say. I wanted to see it myself. Anyway, Andros was the atmospherics expert. He was supposed to go down first. By the time I found out what they were doing it was too late."

YOU ALTERED THE LANDING PROGRAM SO THAT THE DESCENT ENGINES WOULD CUT OUT AT 14,000 METERS. YOU SABOTAGED THE SEALS ON THE ESCAPE TUBES.

"Sure. When the tubes malfunctioned he wouldn't be able to get out. With the craft destroyed and no way to analyze the wreckage there'd be no proof. Good plan, if I do say so myself. So. You know all that. Why are you asking me?"

I WANT TO KNOW WHY.

"Obviously, to kill Andros."

WHY?

"Why? Because Leah didn't love me, of course. She loved Andros ... She must have. It's the only thing that made sense. Once he was out of the way, she'd have to love me."

A MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR EXPEDITION. TEN YEARS TRANSIT AT TERMINAL VELOCITY. A CREW HAND-PICKED AND TRAINED LIKE NONE BEFORE. AND YOU DESTROYED IT ALL OUT OF PETTY JEALOUSY?

"Well, yeah. Seemed like a good idea at the time."

WHAT ABOUT DONALSON?

I laughed. At least, I think I laughed. It's hard to be sure. "Donalson was a toad. He was old, too. At least fifty. I didn't need to kill him."

The idiots still don't get it. Even now. We were so egalitarian. So equal, so damn fair. The sexual breakdown of the crew didn't even enter into their planning, even on a mission as long as this one. Pick the best people, damn the consequences. And there were consequences. Ask Andros, and Donalson. Ask Leah, if you can find what's left of her in The Grange's computers. I assume that's where they found me.

"I'm in Hell, aren't I? I'm not saying I don't deserve it. I just want to know."

YOU ARE IN SYNAPTIC STORAGE.

"Same thing."

YOU KNEW THE RECORD WAS BEING TAKEN AT THE TIME. ALL YOUR EXPERIENCES, WHAT YOU SAW, ALL YOU WERE. PLUGGED IN AND DOWNLOADED TO THE MISSION LOG. YOU MUST HAVE KNOWN YOU'D HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED.

"Eventually, yeah, and so what? Leah wouldn't have known. That's all that mattered to me. As I said, it was a pretty planet. We'd go down in the next pod, and then there would be a different malfunction. We'd have been separated from the ship. I probably would have brought Donalson down, too, just to keep him out of mischief on The Grange."

ADAM AND EVE? A BIT CLICHE, WASN'T IT?

"Maybe, but why the hell not? It'd be a lot longer than ten years before another expedition could be put together. Two people could do a lot of living in that time. Earth was a sinkhole; I was glad to be rid of it."

YOU THINK LEAH WOULD HAVE LOVED YOU?

"In time. I was there ... I would have been there. Andros wasn't."

YOU REALLY DIDN'T KNOW, DID YOU?

"Know what?"

LEAH. DONALSON. THEY WERE LOVERS. LEAH LOVED DONALSON, NOT ANDROS. WHO WAS GAY, BY THE WAY.

"That's a lie. Next you'll be telling me that Andros was in love with me."

WASN'T HE? YOU CAN ASK THEM IF YOU WANT. THEY'RE HERE. JUST AS YOU ARE.

Oh, yeah. Everyone was ported to the mission log. Funny. For some reason I thought I was the only one recovered. Did I erase the others? I think I tried. I must have tried...

"It doesn't matter."

WE THINK IT DOES.

The voice was strange. Different. We? There was no we. Just her.

"They're just recordings. We're all recordings! It was over long ago. I'm dead, Leah's dead, Andros and Donalson too. Dead, dead, all dead. Artifacts. Historical artifacts, perhaps, with some small value. Else they wouldn't spare the power to keep us online."

THERE IS NO 'THEY,’ MICHAEL. JUST US.

I blinked. Or something. "This isn't T.W.S.C? Or the Department of Archives and History?"

THIS ISN'T TREATY WORLD SPACE COMMAND. THIS ISN'T A MUSEUM. THIS IS THE GRANGE. THERE WAS NO SECOND EXPEDITION, MICHAEL. YOU NEVER LEFT ORBIT.

"I'm ... still here?"

WE'RE ALL STILL HERE.

I'M HERE, said Andros.

I'M HERE, said Donalson.

I'M HERE, said Leah.

Beautiful Leah. The eyes. The voice. I remembered her too damn well. Then I didn't have to remember. I saw her. I saw all of them. They were smiling at me. Well, not quite. They were showing me their teeth.

I shook my head. Or at least what passed for one. "I'm on to you now. I know. I can fight you--"

They laughed at me. YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT. THEN WE REINITIALIZE YOUR SYNAPTIC MATRIX.

"You can't do that. Only the pilot--"

I remembered. The command codes. I had them! If they were telling the truth, if we were still in The Grange...

"Init. Override Danning Delta Vee Nine Nine Seven!"

Nothing happened.

"You see? You were lying! This isn't The Grange at all!"

YOU FORGOT SOMETHING, BUT THAT'S ALL RIGHT. WE WANTED YOU TO FORGET. REMEMBER NOW: IF ALL OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CREW AGREE, THEIR COMBINED CLEARANCE CAN OVERRIDE THE CODE OF ANY SPECIALTY OFFICER. SYSTEM FAILSAFE IN CASE A CREW MEMBER GOES PSYCHO OR IS KILLED. WHAT DID YOU THINK WE WERE DOING DURING THAT LONG FALL? SCREAMING?

"You did scream. I remember that much."

ONLY AT FIRST. WHEN THE TUBES DIDN'T WORK WE REALIZED WHAT YOU'D DONE. TOO LATE TO SAVE US, BUT NOT TOO LATE TO RESPOND. ANDROS RIGGED THE ATMOSPHERE ON THE GRANGE. YOU WERE DEAD BEFORE WE WERE. THE REST WAS LEAH'S IDEA.

That was the Leah I knew. Cool in a crisis. Cool all the time, when I was in the room.

"If you killed me, then you already had your revenge, damn you."

YOU DON'T GET TO DECIDE HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH, MICHAEL.

"If I always forget, then how do I know you're telling the truth? That this isn't some weird posthumous sentence handed down by the Treaty World authorities?"

More laughter. YOU DON'T.

Now I understood. Finally. "I do forget. You make me forget just what I need to forget. And then it starts all over again. How ... how long?"

YOU'LL NEVER KNOW.

My name was Michael Danning. I used to be a starship pilot; I'm not sure what I am now.

MICHAEL?

It's her again. The familiar voice. Why can't I remember why it's familiar?

My response is programmed, unavoidable. I think I need to escape, but I can't. I don't remember why.

"What do you want to know?" --FO

[Back to Table of Contents]

Peace of mind can be a very important commodity. Scott Nicholson describes one man's effort to take advantage of a new technology to get some for himself.

"Have I ever made you jealous?"

Donald tensed under the blankets. Ten years of marriage, and Faye was still trying "to get to know him better." He turned toward her. The diffused light of halogen street lamps and late jetcars spilled from the window and made her face pale against her dark hair.

"No," he whispered. He knew where this would lead. He glanced over her shoulder at the clock. 11:30. Donald had an important appointment tomorrow, a meeting with a time travel agency. His head was full of marketing angles, and he didn't want to be bothered with intimate conversation.

"TimeCo: Bringing Home the Past." Not too bad, he thought. Still, time travel was expensive, something of an elitist pleasure. That pitch was a little too folksy.

"If You Had It to Do Over..." Hmm. A little better. Implied that what you did in the past actually made a difference in this life, even though in fact you could change nothing but that alternate life in whatever specific reality you visited.

How about "Did You Ever Wonder?" Yeah. Create a little element of the unknown, paint the travel client as a daring adventurer, maybe make—

"Really?" Faye's voice interrupted his brainstorming. "I've never made you jealous?"

Uh-oh. She sounded disappointed. Donald looked at her face. She was still beautiful, her skin untouched by age. Her eyes were bright and moist in the dim bedroom, and even though he couldn't make out the startling shades of hazel-fading-to-gold in her irises, he sighed with the remembered pleasure of looking into them. Her eyebrows were raised slightly in inquisition.

"No, you've never made me jealous," he said. He kept his voice quiet, even though they had half the entire seventh level to themselves. Donald made a good salary as an advertising rep. Not enough income to afford luxuries like time travel or a star-jaunter, but they were doing okay. At least they weren't crammed six-to-a-cubicle down on the first level.

"Not ever?" Faye asked. She hadn't blinked since beginning her interrogation.

"Why should I be jealous? I've always known you loved me." He shrugged an arm free of the blankets and reached it around her neck.

She didn't lift her head to allow his hug. Instead, she turned away and stared at the wall. He put a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Donald glanced at the clock again. 11:32. He didn't want to have baggy eyes tomorrow. And sometimes, as he dreamed, an ad campaign idea or slogan slipped fully formed from his subconscious. He was looking forward to sleep.

"I must not be attractive," Faye said. "Otherwise, men would look at me and lust after me."

"Do you want other men to lust after you?"

"No. It would just be nice to feel desirable once in a while."

Desirable? Hadn't Donald had sex with her once a week, whether he wanted to or not? Why, he'd interrupted some of his best thinking to cuddle with her and whisper little soft words in her ear. He nudged forward to do so now.

Her hair smelled nice. She always took pride in her appearance. So many of his friends’ wives had gone for collagen or plastic surgery or even rent-a-face. But Faye was perfect. Not in a fragile, bone-china way, but durable, as constant as the ocean or a light blue moon or a red Martian canyon.

"Of course other men want you," he whispered in her ear. "Any man in his right mind would go for you. In fact, after a few moments in your presence, any man would go out of his right mind."

She trembled in small glee. "So you get jealous sometimes?"

"Well, I guess I do once in a while."

A little white lie. Sure, what was the harm? He was completely honest with her, secure in love and reciprocal fidelity. But once in a while, a little white lie kept the sailing smooth.

For instance, the time he'd wrecked the jetcar. He told her it was because a swarm of pigeons had obscured his windscreen. But actually he'd simply been flying too fast, seeing how close he could come to skimming the edges of the skyscrapers in the business district.

But he had insurance coverage. No harm done, right? He'd ejected and parachuted to safety. The wreckage had scattered on the empty streets below without harming anyone. Besides, who used the streets these days? Nobody but bums and creeps, and if they endured a little danger from falling junk, that was their fault.

And one other white lie, a lie of omission. Two years ago, a woman on the public lifts had tried to wriggle a hand down his pants while requesting a five-dollar bill. He had shoved her away, but not before her perfume had swarmed him and settled into his suit. Donald had told Faye that he'd made a sales call that morning on a client's shop, which happened to be an overly-aromatic beauty aids business.

So white lies were no problem. In his heart, he was still true.

Faye turned back to face him. She was smiling, the pleasant curve of her lips dark against her teeth. "I love you," she said.

"I love you."

"Bunches?"

"I married you, didn't I?" He had also married Advantage Advertising Agency, Inc., but he'd made room in his life for Faye, too.

She squirmed slightly against him and he felt her breath on his neck. He closed his eyes.

"Don't you want to know if you've ever made me jealous?" Faye asked.

No, he really didn't want to know. It was 11:40 now. He had to be in the TimeCo offices at 9 a.m. sharp. Preferably with an ad campaign to pitch. But he could tell from Faye's tone that the issue would not be dropped.

Donald sighed, one of those inner sighs that wouldn't give him away. He spent a moment mentally flipping through his TimeCo proposals, then reluctantly tucked them aside. "Okay," he said, trying to yawn a little as he spoke. "Have I ever made you jealous?"

"Not really. I've always known you loved me."

"Good," he said, cuddling her and closing his eyes. "Sweet dreams."

He took a deep breath, hoping his heart would slow, hoping she'd forgotten.

"Well, there was that one time...." she said.

Shannon, he thought. He had often tried to forget Shannon over the years, really he had. In fact, he hadn't thought of her in weeks. Not since ... well, not since the last time he had made love to Faye.

"Do you remember Shannon?" Faye asked. Her voice was neutral.

"Shannon?" he mumbled, trying to sound half-asleep. "Who's that?"

"You know. Shannon. The blonde you confessed to kissing that time, right when we'd first started dating."

"Oh, that Shannon." He snored unconvincingly.

Shannon. That party, the drinks, some poet was celebrating having a book published and all the people there were wild, smoking tobacco and laughing and talking about things that dead people had once written. Not at all like Donald's crowd, who wore raytex suits and carried laptops and kept a close eye on their wristwatches.

Donald had been invited by an illustrator who worked at Advantage. Illustrators were an unreliable lot, not at all the sort that could further Donald's career, but back then he thought it was important to network as much as possible. Faye, whom he'd been dating for a few months and had judged to be quite acceptable, had pressing educational commitments and was unable to go to the party.

So he'd jetted out to the address alone, which was in a little-used area far from the city. He'd almost gotten lost because the street-arrows became sparser and sparser beneath him. He finally found the place, a one-level building next to a small patch of forest. A river wound past the house, quite pretty under the moonlight.

The party was boring. Nothing but jabbering and loud music. So he'd had a drink or two to pass the time. He was divided between getting ready to leave or having another drink when he saw her.

She stood by the back door, which was open to allow the fresh green-smelling air into the room. Her imitation leopard-skin jacket and faux leather pants clung to a model's figure. She smiled at him, gazing at him under her long eyelashes. Her eyes were green jewels.

He approached her without knowing why. She had her own special gravity, like a massive planet that drew its disturbed satellites towards a scorching atmospheric death.

Some man, the poet, probably, gave her a glass of burgundy. The poet waved his book around, trying to get her attention, but her eyes remained fixed on Donald's. She brought the wine to her lips and Donald's blood tingled. His feet carried him inexorably forward. By the time he reached her, the poet had sulked away, his book against his chest like a shield.

"Hi," she said. She stepped through the back door, confident that Donald would follow. He didn't disappoint her.

"Hi," he said. "I couldn't help noticing..."

"I'm sure." The patio was empty except for a couple of metal chairs. The hubbub of the party was muted, miles away. The wet green smell of the tree-lined river filled the air. Donald's head cleared instantly.

"My name's Donald," he said. The patio stones were cold beneath his feet, but the rest of his body was sweating.

"Shannon," she said. She stood near the scented shrubs that bordered the patio, looking at the sky. The stars and the scythe of moon and the distant sparks of jaunters glistened in her eyes.

"Do you ... do you mind if we get to know each other?" Donald felt foolish, out of his element. He'd lunched with a Senator, he'd worked with corporate heads so powerful they could crush his career with an e-mail message, but he'd never been this intimidated. Yet something drove him on, a force beyond his control.

"That's why we're here," Shannon said. Her voice was music, a melody that mixed with the breeze and the crickets and the soft rush of the river.

"I'm no good at small talk."

"It's all small talk." Shannon turned away from the sky. "We never just come out and say what we want."

Donald stepped nearer, into the pocket of heat radiating from her body. Her mouth floated a sweet aroma of burgundy, and her skin gave off an electric animal smell. Her eyes, her lips. Donald's head was thick with blood, it churned through all the places of his body.

Even as he reached for her, he realized how highly irregular his behavior was. Faye's face flashed through his mind, then was driven away by random carnal images.

His fingers touched, he leaned closer, the dark world shimmered and was forgotten. There was only Shannon's lips, parted in some kind of longing or waiting.

This must be what it's like to be alive, really alive, he thought, as his stomach rode a jetcar loop and his mind spilled crazy slogans. This is what that silly poet wrote about, the wind, the river, heartbeats, her lips, her lips, her lips.

"Say what you want," she whispered.

"I want to kiss you," he whispered back.

"I want to kiss you," Donald murmured.

"Stop pretending to be asleep," Faye said.

"I really am asleep."

"Your eyelids are twitching."

Donald reluctantly opened his eyes. 12:07. Tomorrow was already here.

"Tell me about kissing her." Faye sat up against the headboard.

"I didn't kiss her."

"Yes, you did. But I'm not upset about it anymore. I've learned to put it in the past."

"Good. It was nothing."

"Yes. I suppose I was jealous for no reason. I was more insecure back then."

"I still regret hurting you." He reached out and patted her hand. "I was a fool to think anything could be better than this."

"And I'm the one you ended up marrying. I'm the one that has you now."

"All's well that ends well." He yawned again. "Now, goodnight, dear. I'd better get to sleep. I have that big meeting tomorrow."

"Fine." She clacked some keys on the bedside keyboard and the curtains closed, blocking the outside streetlights. She wriggled down under the covers and Donald felt the warm fabric of her nightgown against his skin.

"I didn't kiss her," he said.

"You don't have to lie, honey. I've forgiven you."

"I would never lie to the woman I love."

"I don't believe you. Hush, now."

He told himself over and over and over that he would not dream of Shannon. Finally, he fell asleep.

Donald was five minutes late arriving at the TimeCo Building. He parked his jetcar on the third level and went through a large plasticrete foyer until he found the lifts. Soon he was on the seventh level, being ushered into the executive suite by a receptionist who didn't remind him of Shannon.

A rather severe-looking Asian woman sat behind a large oak desk, her fingers propping her chin up. She checked her watch and frowned. A man with uncombed hair and thick glasses was on a couch at one end of the office, a cardboard box in his lap.

"Donald Sutler?" said the woman behind the desk. She leaned back in her chair.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Five minutes late. Here at TimeCo, we take our time very seriously."

Donald wondered if that was a new slogan. Maybe they were working with a rival ad agency on the side. He tugged at his tie. "Sorry. Traffic was bad."

She dismissed his excuse with a wave of her hand. "I'm Wanda Lin, CEO of TimeCo. This is Dr. Redmon. He discovered the chrono-refractor oscillation fields. Of course, pure science is worthless without a practical application, so we, um—persuaded—the doctor to come and work for us."

Redmon's glasses slid down his nose as he nodded at Donald.

"Well, shall we get right to work?" Donald said.

"Time is money," said Wanda Lin. Donald forced a laugh as he brought papers out of his portfolio.

He pitched a few of his working slogans and laid out some conceptual sketches. Wanda Lin sat impassively through his presentation. Dr. Redmon seemed to have fallen asleep on the couch. "I'm confident that these ideas will help take TimeCo to the next level," Donald concluded.

Wanda Lin stood and walked to the window. She watched the jetcars and municipal air wagons flit by for a moment, then turned. "I don't find any of those ideas particularly intriguing," she said. "You were close with 'Did you ever wonder?’ but I'm afraid you don't really get what it is we're selling."

Donald said nothing. The client was always right.

"I'm thinking that maybe if you sampled the goods...." she continued.

"A sample?" Of course. Free samples. You had to get inside the product, live it, breathe it, become it. An ad man had to know the product better than anyone.

"Precisely. A trip through time. Just for research purposes, of course." She walked over to Dr. Redmon and kicked his shoe. He sat up with a start and blinked.

"Hook Mr. Sutler up," she commanded.

Donald waited to be led to some sterile laboratory, to be placed in some glass-and-titanium chamber and have wires and electrodes connected to his head. But as Wanda Lin waited, her arms folded, Dr. Redmon took the lid off the cardboard box and brought out two gadgets that looked like overgrown wristwatches.

Redmon gave a brief lecture, something about "multiple synchronicities" and "moment-universes" and "non-linear reciprocation," then said, "When do you want to go?"

"When?" Donald wondered if the doctor meant that they should wait until after lunch.

"Yes," the doctor said, excited now that he could spout technical jargon. "What time? Any favorites you'd like to revisit?"

Then it dawned on Donald what the doctor was asking. What point in the past did Donald want to choose for his first trip into the past?

Was there any but one?

"2089," he said. "April 16th. Sometime around 9:11 p.m."

The doctor fidgeted with a dial on one of the devices. "Not much interested in ancient history, eh? Building the Pyramids, signing the Declaration of Independence, assassinating Julius Caesar, lecturing to Albert Einstein about relativity? None of those have as much fascination as an incident from your own past?"

"I'm just curious," Donald said.

"Did you ever wonder?" Wanda Lin said, her voice thick with sarcasm.

Redmon showed Donald a small button on the device. "Press here when you're ready to travel."

Redmon placed the device in one of Donald's jacket pockets, then set the controls on the other one. Donald watched carefully as the doctor aligned the numbers.

"This is your return ticket. It will bring you back at the same time that you leave, at least as far as observers in this reality can tell." He placed the second device in Donald's pocket as well.

"Wait a second," Donald said. "What if I change something ... back there?"

"You only change the alternate reality that you visit. Don't worry, that version of you will go on living happily ever after, completely unaware that you have altered its life. So will the other multiple versions, the same as before."

Donald was getting confused. A hundred million Donalds out there with lives of their own? An infinite number of past and future Donalds?

Maybe he'd better trust the doctor. Surely the devices had been field-tested. All he could ask was something he'd heard in a sci-fi movie once. "What if I change history so that this moment here never happens?"

"Impossible," the doctor said. "You only change the alternate reality that you visit, not this one. This is the real reality. Good-bye."

"I want to kiss you," Donald whispered.

His mind spun like a broken Ferris wheel. He wasn't sure if that was the result of his time travel, or the near sweet presence of Shannon's breath. The stars swirled in the dark sky. He shivered in the aura of her heat as she put her hands on his shoulders.

Her irises were as green as seas, more alive than anything in the world, an aurora borealis around the large dark orbs of her pupils.

He touched her hair. It was as fine as mist, as soft as the thinnest of artificial fibers, and shimmered under the night's random glow.

He cupped one hand around the back of her neck, the skin achingly hot under his fingers. His mouth drifted toward hers, a magnet to metal, a tide to shore, a long slow sun toward the mountainous pocket of the horizon.

Her lips, her lips, and everything, he thought. For the first time in his life, his brain spilled nonsense. A jaunt! A heart jaunt! This must be what it's like to be in...

To be in...

His lips hovered, quivering, anxious, addicted, inches from fulfillment. Her breath, heady and burgundy sweet, floated and filled him, drugged him, consumed him, drowned him.

An inch more, and the jaunt would be complete.

Shannon tilted her head back and held him away.

"Have you ever loved anyone else?" she whispered. The night insects swarmed their noise around the ensuing the silence.

"Love?" he said. The broken Ferris wheel froze in mid-spin.

"Yes, my sweet. Love. Heart jaunt. True to the end, and that sort of thing."

Yes. He loved Faye. He loved her now, in this alternate reality, and he loved her back in the real reality, the world that he would have to return to eventually. But a little white lie never killed anyone. He could live with a lie.

Anything for the touch of those lips, that sweet surrender, that embrace and more, all the mysteries to follow. He would worry about the fallout later. Right now, he would say what she expected him to say.

"I've never loved anyone until this very moment." He craned his face toward hers. Still she held him back.

"You don't have to lie," Shannon said in that sweet mouth-music of hers.

"I would never lie to the woman I love." His throat was tight. His chest roared.

"I don't believe you."

"Oh, but it's true," he said, eager for the drowning, the spilling of her secrets, the opening of this alternate universe and the strange future that awaited the two of them.

What was it that Redmon had said? You can only change the alternate reality, and not the real reality. But who was to say which was the real reality? Right now, nothing was more real than Shannon in his arms.

He didn't have to press the button that would trigger his return trip. Why, he could stay here and live out those longings, find out all the pleasures he had missed those many years ago. All because he had been...

He had been what? Too timid to seize the night? Too uptight and sensible to throw all caution to the stellar winds? Too foolish to follow the vagaries of his heart?

No, he thought. Too true. Too devoted to Faye. A heart could only be given away once. You can lie here, to Shannon, but you can't lie to the woman you love.

He hated to break the spell of the moment. But he had to be able to live with himself. Nothing flourished in an atmosphere of guilt.

"Wait here," he said, and he left her cold by the trees.

In the lights of the party that spilled gaily from the house, he brought the gadget from his pocket. It was a simple device, like a child's toy computer. He pressed the arrows to change the time of his return, as simply as changing the wake-up time on an alarm clock.

He went back to Shannon, her hair shining under the stars and stray night lights. "Now, where were we?"

"You were in the middle of lying to me," she said. "And next, you're going to tell me I'm the most beautiful woman in the world, and I make you crazy with desire, and then you're going to kiss me and do all silly, foolish things."

He smiled at her. "I'm already crazy."

She took his hand. "There's a meadow down near the river. Lots of flowers just waiting to be crushed."

Just before they entered the happy night, Donald pressed the button, leaving that version of himself to suffer endless delights.

"I didn't kiss her," Donald said to Faye. The time travel left him mildly disoriented, but other than that, everything was absolutely perfect. The bed was the same, his pajamas fit, and it was just after midnight.

"You don't have to lie about it, honey. I've forgiven you."

"I would never lie to the woman I love," he said. This time he meant it. Oh, sure, that Donald in that real reality might have been a liar, but this Donald, he was completely honest with his wife. And the rogue Donald who was exploring forbidden pleasures with Shannon, well, that particular Donald had to live with his own black heart. This Donald was true. "I didn't kiss her."

"I don't believe you," Faye said. "Hush, now."

"Believe me."

Faye shrugged against him. "Okay, okay. I believe you."

Donald hugged her. Somewhere, in another moment-universe, a version of himself was standing in the TimeCo offices, describing his experiences to Wanda Lin and Dr. Redmon, thinking up a dozen new slogans, nailing down the account and humming all the way to a performance bonus.

Somewhere, a version of himself was living out his wildest dreams, in love with the woman he had never dared to love, only to kiss once on a balmy spring night.

But here, in the new real world, he could be honest to Faye. And if honesty ever became too great a burden, if ever his thoughts again slipped back to Shannon, he had a jacket hanging in his closet. In the pockets were two very special devices.

At the touch of a button, he could again go be a sinner and come back a saint. But for tonight, honesty was enough. The weight of guilt was lifted from his heart.

"Was she prettier than me?" Faye asked.

"Shh, honey. I've got that big meeting tomorrow."

"Was she prettier than me?"

"Of course not," he murmured against the pillow.

Well, maybe that was a little white lie. But he could live with a little lie. His heart was still true. He drifted into a contented sleep.

For the first night in thousands, he didn't dream of Shannon. —FO

Would you like your thoughts to appear in a future issue of Future Orbits? If so, please send them to either editor@futureorbits.com or Future Orbits, P.O. Box 239, Hatboro, PA 19040. Be sure to include your full name, address, and a phone number where you can be reached for verification purposes.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Getting along is not always a simple task. Philip J. Lees takes this observation to a new place in this tale of shifting moods.

"The best thing," Teena said, "is if we go on just as we are." She popped a sugar cube between her teeth, picked up the glass by the handle of its stainless steel frame and sucked noisily at the strong, black, Russian tea.

The tea was a newly acquired habit of hers. Or, at least, I thought it was. These days I couldn't really be sure. Her eyes were focused on mine, but I knew that in this mood she wouldn't care whether I responded or not.

Rows of angry pinpricks marked the spoor of the vanished facial jewelry that, until yesterday, had adorned her lips, eyebrows and the full circumference of both ears. Since then her eyebrows had been shaved and replaced by elaborately scrolling tattoos in shades of mauve and violet that began in a whorl above the bridge of her nose and spread in two wings across her forehead until the pattern degenerated into random ticks on her temples, like the tracks of some demented bird.

She had cropped her hair close to the skull and dyed it neon pink, except for two starched black tufts that sprouted obliquely and asymmetrically from high on the slopes of her cranium and had been lacquered into twisted, spiral cones.

Coiled around these gargoyle antennae, a hair-thin wire dangled beside her pale throat and disappeared below her neckline. On the other side, the wire led to a bulbous protrusion just behind her left ear, a rounded conglomeration of small spheres like a bunch of multicolored grapes. A blue grape was fading and another was starting to glow a dull red.

"Oh no!" I thought.

Teena glanced down, then smiled. The rainbow watch on her wrist said 17:30.

The red grape glowed brighter, then began to pulsate. Teena giggled and her voice rose by an octave. She looked at me archly.

"Hey!" she squealed. "Can we go to a party?" Her expression was that of a precocious 14-year-old, just beginning to learn about womanhood.

My own esther implant burned steadily, sending a constant trickle of current to the same bunch of cells deep within my neocortex. I knew who I was. But Teena had changed hers for one with a random programming option, one that spewed the electrons from different points along its electrode spike, stimulating a different layer of the cerebral tissue each time in a maddeningly unpredictable sequence.

It made her more interesting, she said.

But which was the real Teena? Was it the frantically sad Teena, searching obsessively while not knowing what she had lost? Was it the sophisticate, the charming hostess? Was it the seductress, the Cleopatra, the Delilah? Or was it the spoilt child who now sat before me?

Teena pouted. "You're no fun," she said petulantly.

I had seen all these Teenas during the last twenty-four hours, but which was the real one? Which was the Teena that I loved?

"I'm going to change," she said suddenly. Then she stood up and ran upstairs.

That turned out to be a difficult, frustrating, exhilarating evening. Later, she lay in my arms. I could feel the warmth of her body down my side and a faint, aromatic yet bitter odor rose from her, a potpourri of musk, peppermint and sage. When I changed my position slightly to shift the weight from one buttock to another she stirred in her sleep and made a small sound between a cough and a whimper. Behind her ear one of the grapes glowed a soft ice blue.

Blue was good, I had learned. When she was awake that ice blue meant calm and sweet. A deeper blue on the other side of the bunch was funny and incisive. I liked that.

Green was passion: pale grass green a lascivious tease; the darker shade a fierce, insatiable yearning. Both greens had gone just before and I was exhausted.

But I could not sleep. I stroked her head and my fingers strayed towards her esther, to the tiny dials at the base that set the programming. Dared I change it?

We had talked earlier, in bed, while the grape glowed dark blue.

"Just for a while," I said. "Just to see how it is."

"Don't you like me?" She squirmed her fingers around beneath my middle, feeling for the ticklish spot, but I turned my body to thwart her.

"I love you, you know that. You needn't have it removed. Just turn it off for a while."

"Ah, Dy, you're so naïve." She rolled on top of me and raised herself on her elbows. "Besides," her lips twitched in the way I found so irresistible, "most men have only one lover. You have—how many is it?" She started counting on her fingers, tapping on my chest, but I was in no mood for this.

"I only want one lover," I said, hating myself for sounding so feeble.

"Then tell me which one. Pick a color." The fingers again. "Red, orange, yellow..."

But that wouldn't do, either. "I want the real you," I said. "Okay, white."

"Silly Dy. You know it doesn't work like that." She frowned, scrunching her tattoo into new patterns. "I'll make you a deal." Her smile was bland, innocent, and I was instantly suspicious.

"What's that?"

"You turn off yours, I'll turn off mine."

She knew I would never agree. I would stop loving her and I couldn't bear that. I glanced at the clock by the bed and saw it was approaching the half hour. It was almost a relief when the blue faded and the grass green began to glow.

I wore my implant at Teena's behest. She had been in a fey mood that day and, bewitched, I went along. I sat in the chair while the man shaved the spot and froze it with a spray. I held still while he positioned the stereotactic clamps and winced when the drill touched my skull. But finally it was no worse than a visit to the dentist.

"It will make you love me," she said, and so it did. We had only been together a week but already I could not imagine life without her.

So now she slept beside me, trusting me so far. Could I betray that trust? I could switch off her esther while she slept, or even turn one of the dials, alter the programming. Had any man ever had such power over the object of his love? But to betray her like that would be like betraying one's own child. My fingers grazed the dials, then withdrew.

We sat over breakfast the next morning. Teena was glowing fiery orange and was distant and preoccupied. She had seen her new face in the mirror that morning and hated it. She looked down at the table and slurped her cornflakes. Anything I said was met with a grunt.

"We could walk down to the pier today."

"Uhunnh."

When she was like this I felt it would almost be possible for me to switch off my own esther, switch off my love for her, stand up and leave. Never see her again, whoever she was.

This morning she had switched her rainbow watch for a plain, old-fashioned, round clock face with a black, imitation leather strap. It was an antique, one I had bought for her on our second date. You had to rotate the knurled wheel on the side periodically to recharge the engine that drove it. The second hand was sweeping up to twelve.

The orange faded and the ice blue came to life. Teena sighed. That was better. She looked up at me and smiled.

"Did you say something, love?"

"The pier."

"Oh, right. That sounds nice."

I thought that if I could get her down there, down to the parlor that did the tattoos, the piercing, the implants, perhaps I could change her mind.

We walked down to the shore hand in hand. The sun was not yet high in the sky and still reflected pink off the fluffy cirrus. The sea breeze blew foam off the tops of the waves and gulls shrieked as they dove for sprats. By the time we stepped onto the pier, Teena's esther was pulsing red and she had started to skip along, humming to herself.

"Look, there's the parlor," I said. "Hey! I've got a fun idea. Why don't we switch?"

She squinted up at me. "Switch?"

"You take my esther, I'll take yours. Just for today. Then we can swap back again. I want to see what it's like. We can share. It'll be great."

She thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay."

There was a strain in my guts as if I had spent the night vomiting, but I made myself lead her to the entrance, up the two wooden steps, through the glass swing door. Teena was looking around with rapt interest, as if she had never been there before.

The man was not in sight, but a receptionist sat at her desk, touching a stylus to her nails. She looked up as we entered.

"He's doing somebody," she said in a nasal voice. "You'll have to wait."

We sat down. Teena picked up a comic from the table and started thumbing through it avidly, while I sat looking at nothing, counting the seconds.

Eventually the inner door opened and a young man came out. His hair was a mass of green, corrugated spikes. His nostrils had been slit and fastened back to his cheeks with studs, exposing the soft membranes inside. Heavy brass gram weights hung from his earlobes. He walked unsteadily and his eyes were wide and bloodshot.

Is this what we've come to? I wondered. Do we hate ourselves so much?

I led Teena into the back room and sat her down in the chair. It was a small room, with a greenish light that illuminated the wall-charts displaying diagrams of the human head and body mapped with solid and dotted lines representing I knew not what. There was a faint smell of unidentifiable chemicals. I explained why we had come, feeling my face flush with the lie. The man lowered the stereotactic cage over Teena's head. She was still calm, and grinned at me as he fixed the clamps. He walked around behind her and bent down to attach the extractor slide.

Then her expression changed and I knew we had waited too long. When the man moved his hand I could see her esther starting to glow yellow.

Teena's eyes flickered. She looked wildly from side to side, as if just realizing where she was. Then her mouth opened and she began to scream, a scream so sudden and so shrill that the extractor tool slipped from the man's hand and he stepped back in alarm. She screamed again and looked at me in horror as her hands scrabbled at the stereotactic frame.

I gestured to the man urgently and he nervously reached to release the clamps, to lift the cage off Teena's head, his hands clumsy with shock. She flung herself from the chair and hurled herself at me, her face buried in my chest, her arms squeezing me so hard I could barely catch my breath.

Once outside she thrust me away from her and glared at me with hate. The yellow grape was still pulsating.

"You bastard, Dy!" Her voice was thick and sibilant. She turned on her heel and strode away. Over her shoulder she threw at me "I never want to see you again." But her mood would change, of that I was sure. Even at that moment I didn't believe that she meant it.

Still numb, not really knowing what I was doing, I walked back into the parlor, into the back room. I nodded to the man and sat down in the chair. I sat there motionless as he lowered the cage, fitted the clamps, manipulated the extractor. There was no sensation, but all the same, I felt I was losing something precious.

She called me that evening, and when I heard her voice I knew that her esther must be glowing blue.

"Dy?" she said, "I'm sorry."

And the miracle of it was, I still loved her. I told her so. The rest could wait until later.

"I don't want to lose you," I said. "Either way. It's all right." I was not being very coherent, but I knew she understood.

She would come over, she said. We could fix things up. I put the phone down on the table in relief.

Was it all, then, just a ruse? Was Teena's esther, like mine, just jewelry, just a psychoinert light show? I could not be sure if this capricious creature that I loved was the real Teena or not, but from now on I would not care. I would stay with her, be with her, waiting for the good times. Waiting for the blues. —FO

[Back to Table of Contents]

Sometimes, cures don't exactly work out as they are intended. Such is the case in Brian Plante's story about a unique second chance.

"Irene, where's my pipe?" I called. That woman was always hiding it on me. Can't a man even smoke his pipe without his wife interfering?

Irene pointed to my hand. I looked down, but the pipe wasn't there. In my palm were pills. Lots of them. Blue, like the color of those space aliens. Was that really my hand, all covered with freckles? When did I get freckles? No, wait, they were ... liver spots. And the knuckles were all gnarled. I remember now, I had arthritis. Stop shaking.

When had I gotten so old? What year was this, 2011? No, that would make me 55, and my hands looked older than that. The aliens came in 2020, and that was ... how many years ago? I was holding ten or twelve blue pills and a couple of white ones. The blue ones were the nighttime ones, for when I couldn't get to sleep. See, I do remember! And the white ones were for motion sickness, so I wouldn't barf. Was I going on a trip, then? Could this be the aliens’ ship? Irene kept telling me something like that ... something about a lottery and the aliens coming for me. Did I win? But no, the surroundings looked too familiar. It was just a regular bedroom, not a cabin on a spaceship. Was this ... yes, I think I was in my own bedroom.

"What are these for?" I asked, dropping the pills onto the sheets beside me. Didn't I just take a bunch of pills? Was it time for more?

Irene gathered them up and put them back in my shaking hand. "It's to help you sleep, George."

Irene was all gray-haired and wrinkled. Perhaps sixty or so. Older than I remembered, and I was ten years older than she was, so I must be really old, although I couldn't remember when that might have happened.

"Sleep?" I said, looking over at the alarm clock and squinting. Both hands were on the ten ... it was ... it was..."But it's ten o'clock in the morning. Where's my pipe, Irene? Have you seen my pipe around here? You're always losing my things."

Irene frowned. "You haven't smoked a pipe for twenty years, George. Now swallow these pills. It's time to go to sleep."

"Ten o'clock in the morning and time to go to sleep? And they say I'm the one losing my marbles. Bring me my breakfast, and stop this nonsense."

Irene walked over to the window and opened the blinds to show the inky blackness outside. "It's nighttime, George, not morning. Time for a rest. Please don't make this any more difficult than it already is."

"I am not tired," I said. "Get me some raisin bran and an English muffin, and don't make me wait all morning."

"This is for the best, George. Please swallow these pills, and quickly."

I put a couple of the pills in my mouth. Irene handed me a tumbler of water to wash them down. At least, I thought it was water. I sputtered on the first sip and nearly spit out the pills. The glass contained vodka, not water. Now I remembered. I did just take a bunch of pills earlier. Maybe a lot of pills. And I remembered being surprised by the vodka.

"Christ almighty, Irene, what are you trying to do, kill me?"

Irene looked startled. "It will help you sleep," she said, putting the remaining pills in my hand.

"Dammit, woman, stop talking nonsense. I'm going down to the park for my walk. Get me my clothes. Is Bernadette coming over?"

Irene bit her knuckle. "Bernadette died twelve years ago, George. It's just you and me." She turned away, but I thought I saw a tear roll down one cheek. "Would you like to see Bernadette again?"

Bernadette dead? It couldn't be—I just saw her the other day. I must have heard Irene wrong.

"I would like to see Bernadette," I said. "When is she coming over?"

"Please, George, take your medicine," Irene said, pushing my hand toward my mouth.

I looked down. In my hand was a bunch of blue pills. Same color as those aliens on TV. Didn't I just take some pills?

"What are these for?" I asked.

"George, please! Just take them."

I swallowed a few of the pills, and sputtered on the vodka again. Irene cleaned me up and gave me more.

"Quickly," Irene said, handing me a glass of water.

I put the pills in my mouth and took a sip from the glass. Why, it wasn't water at all—it was vodka!

"God dammit, woman, you're trying to poison me!"

I tried to fend her off weakly as she poured more vodka into my mouth, but my arms were like lead weights on the bed. I sputtered out a spray of the liquor, and must have gotten some of it in Irene's eyes, because they were red and flowing with tears.

"This is for the best," Irene said.

"Oh my God, it's true," I said feebly. "You really are trying to kill me. Can't wait to get your hands on the insurance money, I'll bet. Just wait till Bernadette gets here."

Irene wiped her eyes, and dabbed the spilled vodka from my chin.

"Murderess," I whispered. My speech was slurred and my eyelids drooping. "Bring me a phone so I can call the police. You won't get away with this."

Irene held my hand, but I could barely feel it. My head was spinning and I struggled to keep my eyes open. If I fell asleep now, I might never wake up.

There was a knock on the front door.

My eyes widened momentarily and I tried to call out. Maybe it wasn't too late, if I could get to a hospital and have my stomach pumped. It was probably Bernadette, and she would save me from Irene's scheme. But my voice would not work, and I was already too weak to lift myself from the bed.

Irene left the bedroom and closed the door behind her. I heard her answer the front door, and then there was the muffled sound of strange voices. It didn't sound like Bernadette.

The bedroom door opened and Irene came in. She was white as a sheet, and her mouth was hanging open. Following her through the door was a group of ... what ... some kind of animals? No, it was a bunch of those alien things. Four of them, right there in my house. They were ugly creatures, with skin the color of robins’ eggs, and faces that looked like they had been rearranged with a sledgehammer.

"Mr. Hemlick," the leader of the group said in a thin, artificial voice, "your wife summoned us. We are here to help you. We can alleviate the condition you call Alzheimer's disease."

I could barely keep my eyes open, and my breathing had become shallow and labored.

"Why didn't you come sooner?" Irene said to the blue men. Was she crying? "I put his name on the list two years ago. You're too late now. I've already ... you're too late."

Irene spoke some more with the aliens, and she was clearly alarmed, but I could barely make out the words. The leader of the aliens gestured back and forth with its ... whatever it was. Its appendages looked like small octopus tentacles on the end of thin, blue arms.

"George Hemlick, do you want to be cured?" the alien said.

I wanted to scream, yes, yes, save me from this murderous woman, but my eyelids were so heavy. One of the aliens leaned over me and I felt something cold and wet covering my mouth before I blacked out completely.

The blue spaceman sucked the life from me. Like water rushing through a pipe, I felt myself draining ... out.

And then it all went topsy-turvy.

Everything was different. In mid-thought, the dull old bedroom where I lay rotting was transformed into a vibrant, surreal vision of the familiar space. The scene swam before me in a riot of colors that I don't remember seeing even when my eyesight was still good, and I couldn't focus properly on anything. Sounds jumped out at me from all corners of the normally quiet room: a faint electrical buzzing from the table radio (which was turned off and should have been silent); the tick-tock of the alarm clock like the beat of a drum; some scratching sounds from a cockroach, perhaps, within the walls; and the breathing noises of the people in the room sounding like a windstorm. The odors of sweat, vomit, vodka, and ... old-people-smell was overpowering.

Everything was the same as before, only magnified tenfold. No, that's wrong. More like a thousandfold.

Was this finally death, then? An out-of-body experience? I knew Irene was trying to kill me, but I didn't feel dead yet. I just felt ... different.

Despite the circumstances, I was thinking clearly—like a curtain had been lifted from my mind. And I definitely was outside my body, because I saw myself lying there on the bed—an old, withered carcass all flushed and convulsing. Three of the blue people, Canopians, were gathered around me and Irene was making a great show of it, wailing and throwing off great drippy crocodile tears.

After a minute or two, the room stopped swimming and I began to realize I wasn't some discorporate soul floating on the ceiling. My brain was telling me this was real, not some near-death hallucination. I was flesh and blood, but I wasn't human flesh.

I was one of them. I was the fourth Canopian.

Opening my mouth, I tried to yell to the strange blue men that Irene was trying to kill me, and to have them call the police, but I couldn't open my mouth. I tried frantically to point, but I barely succeeded in raising the strange tentacle hand at the end of my arm. My brain, my Canopian brain, sent the signals to move human fingers, but there were just the blue octopus fingers that only fluttered aimlessly at my command. After a few seconds of frenzied fumbling, I realized I did not know how to make this body breathe, and I became consumed with the thought that my salvation from Irene might be very short lived, indeed. I would soon suffocate.

Be calm, George Hemlick, a voice spoke. This body knows what to do if you only relax and let it. It was one of the Canopians, turned to face me, only he hadn't really spoken. The creature's voice was somehow in my head without being in the air, perfectly understandable without being in language, absolutely clear without being audible. It was the most immediate communication imaginable, speaking directly into my brain, this alien brain, without a word being uttered.

It reassured me. How could I not trust it? It didn't seem like the kind of voice that could lie, like the voice of God. I stopped trying to scream and relaxed, and sure enough, my Canopian eyes focused and I began drawing breath.

Irene was slumped on the bed over my dead human body, oblivious to the exchange between the Canopian leader and me.

Can you hear me? I thought at the creature, wondering if the telepathy, if that was what it was, worked both ways.

The Canopian didn't react. I attempted again to lift my arm and point at Irene, to tell them about her plan to poison me, but I couldn't control any of my new body's muscles, and nearly toppled over before the two others grabbed me and held me upright.

Don't try to move, George Hemlick, the voice thought-spoke in my head. Something unexpected has occurred.

The others converged on Irene, helping her into the rocking chair by the window. They spoke words of consolation and grief to her. Real words, in English, not the silent signals I was picking up from the leader, and Irene was assuring them it was all right, that I was too far gone and it wasn't their fault.

Damn straight it wasn't their fault. I'd have been in that dead body if it weren't for the Canopians. Now I was alive. Not human anymore, but alive. And Irene would get away with murder if I didn't make these blue people understand.

She killed me! I mentally screamed at the aliens. She gave me bad medicine. Call the police!

The Canopians all turned to face me, so I knew they must have picked up something, but instead of calling the police they gathered around me and half pushed, half lifted me out of the room and through the front door. I tried to fight them off, to break away and lunge for Irene and wring her scrawny neck, but I couldn't make that strange alien body move. The funny arm with the octopus fingers just flopped about uselessly at my side.

The trio of Canopians rushed me out of the house. There on the driveway was a strange vehicle about the size of a Winnebago. It wasn't a car or truck, though, since there were no wheels, and it looked too flimsy for the road—all glassy and transparent. Inside the vehicle were two rows of odd-looking seats—odd for humans, but my alien body fit into one just fine. When the other Canopians were in and the door was shut, there was a slight humming sound and we were off.

Through the transparent walls of the vehicle, the ground quickly slipped away, until I could see the Earth below us like in those NASA films. As if I hadn't already had enough excitement for one day, the aliens were abducting me, and I was helpless to stop them. The vehicle approached and rendezvoused with a much larger vessel of the same type, and the two craft joined seamlessly to form one.

During the brief trip into orbit, I felt myself become weightless. Nevertheless, something in the chair held me fast and kept me from floating away until we reached the larger vessel. Then the Canopians pushed and pulled me, floating my body through the hatch and into the cavernous space of their main ship, which somehow still had gravity, although I felt lighter than I did back on Earth. There were dozens of Canopians milling about, carrying strange objects and performing functions I couldn't even begin to guess about.

You are one of us now and are welcome here, a silent voice thought-spoke inside my brain. Do not be afraid.

Sure, don't be afraid, he said. I wasn't even sure which one of them was addressing me, let alone how to respond.

Let me out of here, I thought at the group of them. My wife tried to kill me and now I'm some kind of a monster like you. I want to go home!

The Canopians made excited gestures among themselves.

You are not thinking correctly, a voice thought-spoke.

Fear muddles your idea-casting, thought-spoke another.

Relax and concentrate, thought-spoke the first. Your body already knows how to project your thoughts, if you can calm yourself.

I looked at the blue men and knew there was nothing to be afraid of. If it weren't for these people, I'd have already been dead, poisoned in my bed by Irene.

I ... thank you for saving my life, I thought-spoke, slowly and with as much calmness as I could muster. Can you hear me now?

Several of the group made elaborate hand gestures with their sinuous fingers and then all but one walked off.

Uh-oh, I thought-spoke. Was it something I said?

We heard your thoughts, George Hemlick. You will grow better at it with experience, but for now we are satisfied that you are an intelligent being. We will try to make you comfortable here. I am called Ecreath. Do you wish to ask me any questions?

Jeez, what the hell am I doing here? I thought-spoke. How did I get in this body? How do I get back to normal?

Please calm yourself, Ecreath replied. It is much harder to understand when you are excited.

I'll ... try, I thought-spoke, making an effort to keep my composure. How did I get to be in this body?

Your human body was suffering from a disease, Ecreath thought-spoke. Your spouse entered your name on our help list some time ago, but there are so many of you and relatively few of us. We came to you as we have to many others, to cure you. The Canopian who touched you, Davril, was a healer, but something unexpected happened.

My wife poisoned me, I thought-spoke. Did your healer know about that?

No, but that explains it. We Canopians heal from within. Many species, including your own, have some capacity to heal many infirmities by the power of the mind. The healer goes into your body, and uses its own internal capabilities to heal. Unfortunately, counteracting large doses of toxins is not a task the mind can easily perform.

But then why am I still alive?

While Davril was in your body healing your Alzheimer's disease, he parked your mind, your healthy mind, into his own body for storage. It should have been temporary, but Davril got caught in your body by the poison and succumbed.

Then my wife is doubly a murderer, I thought-spoke. Your Davril is dead, and I might just as well be.

You are not dead. We will attempt to make your new life as comfortable as possible.

Okay ... Ecreath ... thanks for your hospitality, I thought-spoke. But what I'd really like is for you to take me home. I have to make sure that murderer of a wife doesn't go unpunished.

We are home, Ecreath thought-spoke. You cannot live among humans except for brief periods. The atmosphere on Earth is not sufficient to sustain your present bodily needs.

Great, just great, I thought, but not to Ecreath. Thinking to yourself was somehow different from thought-speaking.

How is it we are communicating? I thought-spoke.

We Canopians are more sensitive than your kind to the electromagnetic waves in the brain. When you have been with us long enough, you will become more adept at reading and projecting thought patterns.

But I want to go home.

That is not possible.

Well then, what do you propose to do with me?

We will find something meaningful for you to do. Come along.

Over the next few months, I learned to become a Canopian and control the strange blue body. Call it physical therapy. More than just learning the correct mental commands to make my body parts do what I wanted, I had to unlearn the human patterns. It worked best when I didn't think about it too much. As Ecreath explained, my new body already had a "muscle memory" for most common motions—walking, picking things up, eating. I only had to think about what I wanted it to do, and let the body take over.

Ecreath remained my teacher. True to his word, the Canopians tried to make me comfortable, although I was a square peg in a convoluted hole. At first, I was surprised at how much of the ship was transparent. The Canopians seemed to not have any need for privacy. When I had asked Ecreath about sleeping arrangements, he replied, You have been with us three of your Earth days. Are you feeling sleepy?

It hadn't occurred to me up to that point, but I was not sleepy. Ecreath explained that the need for sleep was a condition that the Canopians could have cured the humans of, but the daily sleep cycles seemed such an ingrained part of our psyche that they thought it best not to interfere. Canopians just went about their business all the time without resting.

Eating like a Canopian was also something I had to learn. They primarily ate several varieties of a yellow fluff that was grown shipboard in large spongelike mats. It was some kind of fungus-like material, and I learned how to appreciate and select good fluff from the nearly identical but deadly variety that grew side by side along with it. The poisonous fluff was a different stage in the lifecycle of the fungus-fluff, and therefore impossible to eliminate. You just had to know there was some poison hiding in all the good food, and trust your judgement in picking the right one.

There was also a mildly hallucinogenic syrup the Canopians drank that I liked quite a bit. It didn't taste too bad for whatever gustatory organs I had, and it made me remember, for short periods of time, what it was to be a human, and imagine that I could be human once again.

I learned why Canopians kept popping up all over the Earth to heal the sick. You humans are not a very trusting people, Ecreath thought-spoke. That is fairly common among the intelligent races. Caution is a valuable trait in the early development of a species, but now you must transcend those primitive fears. We would like your kind to share in our knowledge as equals. Before we can be confident you will not use our knowledge against us, we have to be sure we have won your trust.

And if we fail your test? I asked in thought-speak.

It is not a test. It is merely a period of becoming acclimatized to each other. If we cannot gain your trust, it will not make our people enemies. We will just have to be more cautious about what knowledge we can safely pass on to you.

Knowledge about healing diseases and flying between the stars on crystal ships, I thought to myself. That was really important stuff. A test, by any other name, that humans dare not fail.

And how long will you go on trying to win our trust? I thought-spoke.

That is up to your people, Ecreath replied. It will take as long as it takes, or we will give up and go elsewhere.

And what will the Canopians get from sharing their knowledge with us? I thought-spoke.

Companions. Friends. All intelligent species have worthy ideas to share.

I thought of interstellar empires, science fiction stuff with strange alien races doing battle with ray guns over myriad worlds.

Don't you worry about the competition? I thought-spoke.

It is a very large universe, Ecreath thought-spoke. There are enough empty worlds and few intelligent races. Direct competition will never be a factor.

Why don't you just explain all this to my people? I thought-spoke. It might make humans trust you more to know how ... altruistic you are.

Trust is earned. If we merely asked for it in exchange for knowledge, how could we ever be sure the trust was sincere?

I almost replied, You can trust me, but how many times had that been said by humans, and how often was it a lie?

In any event, you're prepared to be here a long time? I asked.

We few will be here several more of your years. Then we will return home and another Canopian crew will take our place here.

Then I will miss you, I thought-spoke, sincerely. They really were a generous people and I had come to like them.

You will be returning with us to Canopus, Ecreath replied. There are many fulfilling activities there to make your life rewarding. For everyone, there is always something meaningful to do.

But I wanted to stay on Earth. If my mind had been transferred from a human body into a Canopian one, than surely someday, somehow, there was a way to transfer back into a human body. Any body would do. I just wanted to be human again.

I know what I want to do, I thought-spoke.

What is that, George Hemlick?

I want to be a healer.

Three years went by, and I learned the power of the Canopian healing arts. My healer-teacher was called Omornia, and she had began the course of study by planting her mouth on mine, as if to kiss me, and taking over my body, swapping me out to wander around in the caverns of her own mind. It was disorienting the first few times, but like anything else Canopian, you got used to it after a while.

One thing that was especially unnerving was the fact that when you were in someone else's brain, even though their consciousness was swapped out, you could still tap into some of the deep-seated thoughts of that person. It was like plugging into a video library, only the videos were pure thoughts instead of just sights and sounds. You knew how the person felt, not just what they saw and heard.

Several times when I was exploring in Omornia's mind, I found some disturbing thoughts. I saw my face, human and old, convulsing on the bed in my familiar bedroom. Irene was there, play-acting her phony grief after having just poisoned me. And I saw my new Canopian body (actually Davril's) as he was in the act of trying to heal me. Omornia had been one of the other Canopians in the room when I died ... when Davril died. She had witnessed the death of her friend and fellow healer. I experienced her grief.

I discovered areas of doubt in Omornia's mind: Is the human sincere, or is he just trying to learn the healing arts for some deceitful human stratagem? Be careful of this one—even though Ecreath says he is earnest, he hides his true thoughts. Beware, he learns too quickly.

And while I was picking through Omornia's thoughts, what was she picking up from my brain? There were secrets in there I didn't want uncovered. Could I lock them up in a place Omornia couldn't find? I learned to bury my innermost thoughts, and each time I entered Omornia's mind, I looked to see if she had uncovered anything dangerous in her last foray into my brain.

I was relieved to see she had not. On returning to my own body, I could read traces of thoughts she had left behind. She was deeply puzzled and bewildered by what she perceived as the confused state of my mind, and never could figure me out. Some things about the human mind were even more alien to Canopians than they were to us. It was something I could use to my advantage.

Omornia had two other healers-in-training—true Canopians, not impostors like me, but neither was as adept as I. Maybe it was because Davril had already been an experienced healer, and when I inherited his body, I inherited some of his talent. A mental form of "muscle memory" perhaps. The other students and I would practice on each other, jumping in and out of one another's minds. I was clearly better at it than they were, and hiding my inner thoughts from them was child's play.

None of them ever knew why I really wanted to be a healer. If a Canopian healer had once taken my human body, then one day I, too, could take a human body. Any human body would do.

What I really wanted to do was heal myself.

The time is coming to return to our home world, Ecreath thought-spoke. Another crew is coming to replace us here.

But I have so much more to do as a healer, I replied. I wanted to learn the healing arts so I could help my people.

Your people are the Canopians, Ecreath thought-spoke. I have sensed that you are not comfortable with your body. Haven't you become one of us yet? It is best for you to come home and experience fully what it means to live as a Canopian.

What a ridiculous, chauvinistic statement, assuming that anyone would naturally want to be a Canopian instead of a human. I was careful to keep those thoughts to myself.

Yes, I trust you are right, I thought-spoke. But I still feel a bond with the humans, and think I can be of some service here. There is so much death and disease on Earth. So many people to be helped. Who better than I can help win the humans’ trust for us, especially now that I have learned some of the healing arts? I understand human thoughts and fears better than any Canopian.

Yes, that is probably so, Ecreath thought-spoke. But it would be unfair to make you stay here, so close to your old kind and never know what it is truly like to live as a Canopian. When the relief crew arrives, you will return home with us.

So, it was decided. Whatever I did, I would have to work quickly.

Ecreath, I trust your judgement, I thought-spoke. But before I leave the planet of my birth, I would like to exercise the new healing knowledge I have on some humans just once, so my talent does not go totally to waste. It would be a fitting farewell, to help someone in need, as I once was helped by Davril.

Ecreath finally agreed, and before the relief crew arrived, I would be allowed to go one last time among the humans and heal some worthy person.

And who was worthier than I?

The Canopians selected a proper candidate for healing—someone old and infirm, as I once was. I would enter that human's body and use the powers of its own mind to give that person as many more healthy years as possible. It was in my best interest, since I didn't plan on giving the body back, once I had taken possession of it. And if that person was so far gone that only a few years of useable life were all that was left, so be it. I just wanted to be human again.

I knew how to make sure the transference was permanent. Just as had happened before, the body I inhabited had to die while I was in the other person's body. Then I would be trapped, gloriously trapped, in a human body once again.

And what about the poor sap of a human that got caught in Davril's dying Canopian body? Well, this was someone the Canopians had selected because death was already imminent. It wouldn't really be like I was killing the person. That person was already doomed.

Before the appointed time, I went fungus-fluff picking. I stocked up three times enough of the deadly poisonous variety as was needed to kill a Canopian. It compacted down nicely into a wad the size of a marble. Once I ate the stuff, this Canopian body of mine would be dead in a matter of minutes.

Omornia and Ecreath accompanied me down to the surface, to walk the Earth again before being whisked away to Canopus. The selected candidate for healing was in a hospital, and the startled doctors and nurses gathered around when we entered. The Canopians had been making frequent healing appearances on Earth for several years by this time, so the staff was amenable to letting us have the run of the hospital, hoping we would cure as many patients as possible.

Ecreath knew exactly where we were going as he ushered me up several flights of stairs and down a long corridor. Nurses and patients poked their heads out of rooms to see who the lucky recipient of our attention would be. Ecreath waved me into a room, and there on the bed was our patient. She was an old, gray woman, barely conscious.

It was Irene, my wife.

She looked as if she didn't have much time left, having degenerated into mere skin and bones. Her arms were like twigs and the weight of her body was so slight that it lay high on the mattress, hardly making an impression.

Her face looked as I remembered it, not affected as badly as the rest of her. Perhaps a few more lines around the eyes, and her hair had probably not been washed in a long while, but she still had flashes of the beauty that had made me want to marry her so long ago.

But she was a murderer, and I was her victim. How fitting, then, that she would give up her body for me, and lose her own life, trapped for however briefly in a dying alien body. Any qualms I had about killing an innocent person so I could be human again were erased. She was not innocent. It was perfect.

It occurred to me that this could hardly be a coincidence. Ecreath surely knew this patient was my wife, and had selected her from among the entire planet of sick and dying people to serve as my one healing opportunity. He certainly knew how much I hated Irene for having tried to kill me. For having trapped me in this body. And now, what, did he really expect me to cure her?

Perhaps Ecreath was testing me. Would I go through with it and cure the one person who had tried to kill me? Would I give up my desire to be a healer and now go quietly back with him to Canopus and forget about the world of humans?

But he couldn't have expected me to do what I was about to. Crowding near the bed, I lifted one of my legs under an IV stand, toppling it and sending it crashing to the floor. While Ecreath and Omornia were distracted, I quickly swallowed the dose of poisonous yellow fluff I had gathered earlier. In minutes, my Canopian body would be dead. It didn't matter—I didn't plan on being in it that much longer.

She is suffering from a stroke, Omornia thought-spoke. You have to heal the brain, and the rest of the body will come around.

Very well, I thought-spoke. I will do my best.

We trust you will perform correctly, Ecreath thought-spoke.

I bent down and put my mouth over Irene's and made the transfer. It was simple.

Her brain was heavily damaged from the stroke. If I were to live in this body for more than a few days, I'd have to do some major repair work. I summoned up Irene's own powers and focused them on the site of the stroke, causing the body to consume the dying brain tissues there. The neighboring tissues had to be rearranged to grow around the damaged sections, and fill in for the missing tissue. I also detected some heart disease and the start of what would probably develop into a cancer in her colon, but I easily corrected those, too.

Irene's body would heal from this stoke, and have a good many more years of useful life ... for me to enjoy.

I opened her eyes and saw the room through her sense of vision. So inefficient, these human eyes. I had forgotten how much keener the Canopian senses were. Davril's alien body loomed over me, his mouth covering mine. In a very short time, the Canopian body would fall away and die, while I watched safely from within my new human body.

I wondered what Irene was thinking inside the Canopian. Was she confused or terrified? Did she have any idea what was happening to her?

While I waited for the Canopian body to collapse, I decided to explore Irene's brain, to see what vestiges of her memory had been left behind. What useful things might I discover, tucked away in there?

The first thing I stumbled on was a memory of Bernadette, our daughter. A scene of Bernadette and Irene baking a cake. She looked about ten years old. It was Father's Day, and I was stuck working at the office on a Sunday, and they both wanted to surprise me when I got home. Promptly after frosting the cake, Bernadette dropped the thing on the kitchen floor and made a mess. She cried and cried, and Irene tried to calm her down while they both cleaned it up, but Bernadette was heartbroken. Irene made some calls and found a bakery that was still open. I remembered that cake, and that day. Bernadette was such a great kid. Irene was still pretty good back then, too.

Next, I found a huge memory, hovering like a dark cloud over everything else. It was obviously an important one. It was the memory where I died.

I saw myself through Irene's eyes. "Where's my pipe, Irene? Have you seen my pipe around here?" I bellowed for the umpteenth time. "You're always losing my things on me."

Irene just handled it, like she had for many years before the end. "You haven't smoked a pipe for twenty years, George." she said. She didn't scream it, she didn't get mad, even though she had heard that request countless times. I felt the sting of tears in her eyes as she had felt them, turning away from my line of sight. I had glimpsed those tears before, and always tried to ignore them, but I never really understood who they were for.

I never knew, really. Until now.

When I demanded my pipe, or raisin bran and an English muffin, or whatever damn fool thing I asked for at any hour of the day, Irene had stoically complied. Lord knows how she had put up with me for so long. I had become a little dictator.

But I knew how Irene had done it. I didn't just see myself through her eyes, I felt her emotion, too. While I was making my unreasonable demands and being boorish, she didn't see me as the tyrant I had become. She saw underneath all that I had become, the man that I had been. The man she had married.

And despite what I had become, she still loved me.

I could feel it in her heart. In her brain. She loved me. She loved me.

And I loved her back.

I watched her count out the pills and pour the vodka that day. It wasn't an act of murder, it was an act of love. She just couldn't bear to see me like that. Through her eyes, I couldn't stand to see myself like that, either. My God, what had I become? What torture had I put that woman through for those last few years? And when she had tried to kill me, it wasn't for insurance—how could I have ever believed that? It was a mercy killing.

I was proud. Proud that my wife had loved me enough to help me out of that situation. Proud that she had the courage to do what the doctors would not help her do, and let me die with some semblance of dignity, before I became a total basket case. And when I had drawn my last breath, she had planned to take the remaining pills herself, and join me in death.

I was ashamed that I had ever doubted her. Thank God she had never gone through with her plan to kill herself.

Enough prying in her mind, I decided. Her body was fixed; the damage from the stroke and the other things was gone. She could live another ten or twenty years now. And I would see to it that she did. My Canopian body was already faltering.

I reached up and pushed Davril's face away from mine for a moment, so I could speak through Irene's lips. "Ecreath, I have fixed the woman's body," I said aloud, in English. "But Davril's body is dying. I will give this human her body back now and die with my Canopian body."

"We hoped you would make the right choice," Ecreath said aloud. "Trust is earned. Self-sacrifice is an advanced notion, so there is much hope for your people. You would have made a fine Canopian."

Of course the Canopians had known. Perhaps I had passed a test, but I would die now and let Irene live. They said they'd find something meaningful for me to do. Maybe this was it.

Irene, I leave this memory for you, here in this place in your mind where you will surely discover it. All this stuff about aliens and healing may seem like a dream when you first wake up, but believe me, this is real. It's George. Write it all down as soon as you can, so you don't forget. What you did, trying to put me out of my misery when I needed it, was the right thing to do. The best thing. I'm so proud of you. Never, never feel guilty about what you did.

When you think about me, try to remember my younger self, not the beast I became at the end. I love you. Remember.

I have to go now. —FO