Picnic on Nearside

THIS IS THE STORY of how I went to the Nearside and found old Lester and maybe

grew up a little. And about time, too, as Carnival would say.

Carnival is my mother. We don't get along well most of the time, and I think

it's because I'm twelve and she's ninety-six. She says it makes no difference,

and she waited so long to have her child because she wanted to be sure she was

ready for it. And I answer back that at her age she's too far away from

childhood to remember what it's like. And she replies that her memory is perfect

all the way back to her birth. And I retort...

We argue a lot.

I'm a good debater, but Carnival's a special problem. She's an Emotionalist; so

anytime I try to bring facts into the argument she waves it away with a

statement like, "Facts only get in the way of my preconceived notions." I tell

her that's irrational, and she says I'm perfectly right, and she meant it to be.

Most of the time we can't even agree on premises to base a disagreement on.

You'd think that would be the death of debate, but if you did, you don't know

Carnival and me.

The major topic of debate around our warren for seven or eight lunations had

been the Change I wanted to get. The battle lines had been drawn, and we had

been at it every day. She thought a Change would harm my mind at my age.

Everybody was getting one.

We were all sitting at the breakfast table. There was me and Carnival, and

Chord, the man Carnival has lived with for several years, and Adagio, Chord's

daughter. Adagio is seven.

There had been a big battle the night before between me and Carnival. It had

ended up (more or less) with me promising to divorce her as soon as I was of

age. I don't remember what the counterthreat was. I had been pretty upset.

I was sitting there eating fitfully and licking my wounds. The argument had been

inconclusive, philosophically, but from the pragmatic standpoint she had won, no

question about it. The hard fact was that I couldn't get a Change until she

affixed her personality index to the bottom of a sheet of input, and she said

she'd put her brain in cold storage before she'd allow that. She would, too.

"I think I'm ready to have a Change," Carnival said to us.

"That's not fair!" I yelled. "You said that just to spite me. You just want to

rub it in that I'm nothing and you're anything you want to be."

"We'll have no more of that," she said, sharply. "We've exhausted this subject,

and I will not change my mind. You're too young for a Change."

"Blowout," I said. "I'll be an adult soon; it's only a year away. Do you really

think I'll be all that different in a year?"

"I don't care to predict that. I hope you'll mature. But if, as you say, it's

only a year, why are you in such a hurry?"

"And I wish you wouldn't use language like that," Chord said.

Carnival gave him a sour look. She has a hard line about outside interference

when she's trying to cope with me. She doesn't want anyone butting in. But she

wouldn't say anything in front of me and Adagio.

"I think you should let Fox get his Change," Adagio said, and grinned at me.

Adagio is a good kid, as younger foster-siblings go. I could always count on her

to back me up, and I returned the favor when I could.

"You keep out of this," Chord advised her, then to Carnival, "Maybe we should

leave the table until you and Fox get this settled."

"You'd have to stay away for a year," Carnival said. "Stick around. The

discussion is over. If Fox thinks different, he can go to his room."

That was my cue, and I got up and ran from the table. I felt silly doing it, but

the tears were real. It's just that there's a part of me that stays cool enough

to try and get the best of any situation.

Carnival came to see me a little later, but I did my best to make her feel

unwelcome. I can be good at that, at least with her. She left when it became

obvious she couldn't make anything any better. She was hurt, and when the door

closed, I felt really miserable, mad at her and at myself, too. I was finding it

hard to love her as much as I had a few years before, and feeling ashamed

because I couldn't.

I worried over that for a while and decided I should apologize. I left my room

and was ready to go cry in her arms, but it didn't happen that way. Maybe if it

had, things would have been different and Halo and I would never have gone to

Nearside.

Carnival and Chord were getting ready to go out. They said they'd be gone most

of the lune. They were dressing up for it, and what bothered me and made me

change my plans was that they were dressing in the family room instead of in

their own private rooms where I thought they should.

She had taken off her feet and replaced them with peds, which struck me as

foolish, since peds only make sense in free-fall. But Carnival wears them every

chance she gets, prancing around like a high-stepping horse because they are so

unsuited to walking. I think people look silly with hands on the ends of their

legs. And naturally she had left her feet lying on the floor.

Carnival glanced at her watch and said something about how they would be late

for the shuttle. As they left, she glanced over her shoulder.

"Fox, would you do me a favor and put those feet away, Please? Thanks." Then she

was gone.

An hour later, in the depths of my depression, the door rang. It was a woman I

had never seen before. She was nude.

You know how sometimes you can look at someone you know who's just had a Change

and recognize them instantly, even though they might be twenty centimeters

shorter or taller and mass fifty kilos more or less and look nothing at all like

the person you knew? Maybe you don't, because not everyone has this talent, but

I have it very strong. Carnival says it's an evolutionary change in the race, a

response to the need to recognize other individuals who can change their

appearance at will. That may be true; she can't do it at all.

I think it's something to do with the way a person wears a body: any body, of

either sex. Little mannerisms like blinking, mouth movements, stance, fingers;

maybe even the total kinesthetic gestalt the doctors talk about. This was like

that. I could see behind the pretty female face and the different height and

weight and recognize someone I knew. It was Halo, my best friend, who had been a

male the last time I saw him, three lunes ago. She had a big foolish grin on her

face.

"Hi, Fox," she said, in a voice that was an octave higher and yet was

unmistakably Halo's. "Guess who?"

"Queen Victoria, right?" I tried to sound bored. "Come on in, Halo."

Her face fell. She came in, looking confused.

"What do you think?" she said, turning slowly to give me a look from all sides.

All of them were good because—as if I needed anything else—her mother had let

her get the full treatment: fully developed breasts, all the mature curves—the

works. She had been denied only the adult height. She was even a few centimeters

shorter than she had been.

"It's fine," I said.

"Listen, Fox, if you'd rather I left..."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Halo," I said, giving up on my hatred. "You look great.

Fabulous. Really you do. I'm just having a hard time being happy for you.

Carnival is never going to give in."

She was instantly sympathetic. She took my hand, startling me badly.

"I was so happy I guess I was tactless," she said in a low voice. "Maybe I

shouldn't have come over here yet."

She looked at me with big brown eyes (they had been blue, usually), and I

started realizing what this was going to mean to me. I mean, Halo? A female?

Halo, the guy I used to run the corridors with? The guy who helped me build that

awful eight-legged cat that Carnival wouldn't let in the house and looked like a

confused caterpillar? Who made love to the same girls I did and compared notes

with me later when we were alone and helped me out when the gang tried to beat

me up and cried with me and vowed to get even? Could we do any of that now? I

didn't know. Most of my best friends were male, maybe because the sex thing

tended to make matters too complicated with females, and I couldn't handle both

things with the same person yet.

But Halo was having no such doubts. In fact, she was standing very close to me

and practicing a wide-eyed innocent look that she knew did funny things to me.

She knew it because I had told her so, back when she was a boy. Somehow that

didn't seem fair.

"Ah, listen, Halo," I said hastily, backing away. She had been going for my

pants! "Ah, I think I need some time to get used to this. How can I...? You know

what I'm talking about, don't you?" I don't think she did, and neither did I,

really. All I knew was I was unaccountably mortified at what she was so anxious

to try. And she was still coming at me.

"Say!" I said, desperately. "Say! I have an idea! Ah... I know. Let's take

Carnival's jumper and go for a ride, okay? She said I could use it today." My

mouth was leading its own life, out of control. Everything I said was

extemporaneous, as much news to me as it was to her."

She stopped pursuing me. "Did she really?"

"Sure," I said, very assured. This was only a half lie, by my mother's lights.

What had happened was I had meant to ask her for the jumper, and I was sure she

would have said yes. I was logically certain she would have. I had just

forgotten to ask, that's all. So it was almost as if permission had been

granted, and I went on as if it had. The reasoning behind this is tricky, I

admit, but as I said, Carnival would have understood.

"Well," Halo said, not really overjoyed at the idea, "where would we go?"

"How about to Old Archimedes?" Again, that was a big surprise to me. I had had

no idea I wanted to go there.

Halo was really shocked. I jolted her right out of her new mannerisms. She

reacted just like the old Halo would have, with a dopey face and open mouth.

Then she tried on other reactions: covering her mouth with her hands and wilting

a little. First-time Changers are like that; new women tend to mince around like

something out of a gothic novel, and new men swagger and grunt like Marlon

Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. They get over it.

Halo got over it right in front of my eyes. She stared at me, scratching her

head.

"Are you crazy? Old Archimedes is on the Nearside. They don't let anybody go

over there."

"Don't they?" I asked, suddenly interested. "Do you know that for a fact? And if

so, why not?"

"Well, I mean everybody knows..."

"Do they? Who is 'they' that won't let us go?"

"The Central Computer, I guess."

"Well, the only way to find out is to try it. Come on, let's go." I grabbed her

arm. I could see she was confused, and I wanted it to remain that way until I

could get my own thoughts together.

"I'd like a flight plan to Old Archimedes on the Nearside," I said, trying to

sound as grownup and unworried as possible. We had packed a lunch and reached

the field in ten minutes, due largely to my frantic prodding.

"That's a little imprecise, Fox," said the CC. "Old Archimedes is a big place.

Would you like to try again?"

"Ah..." I drew a blank. Damn all computers and their literal-mindedness! What

did I know about Old Archimedes? About as much as I knew about Old New York or

Old Bombay.

"Give me a flight plan to the main landing field."

"That's better. The data are..." It reeled off the string of numbers. I fed them

into the pilot and tried to relax.

"Here goes," I said to Halo. "This is Fox-Carnival-Joule, piloting private

jumper AX1453, based at King City. I hereby file a flight plan to Old

Archimedes' main landing field, described as follows..." I repeated the numbers

the CC had given me. "Filed on the seventeenth lune of the fourth lunation of

the year 214 of the Occupation of Earth. I request an initiation time."

"Granted. Time as follows: thirty seconds from mark. Mark."

I was stunned. "That's all there is to it?"

It chuckled. Damn maternalistic machine. "What did you expect, Fox? Marshals

converging on your jumper?"

"I don't know. I guess I thought you wouldn't allow us to go to the Nearside."

"A popular misconception. You are a free citizen, although a minor, and able to

go where you wish on the lunar surface. You are subject only to the laws of the

state and the specific wishes of your parent as programmed into me. I... do you

wish me to start the burn for you?"

"Mind your own business." I watched the tick and pressed the button when it

reached zero. The acceleration was mild, but went on for a long time. Hell, Old

Archimedes is at the antipodes.

"I have the responsibility to see that you do not endanger yourself through

youthful ignorance or forgetfulness. I must also see that you obey the wishes of

your mother. Other than that, you are on your own."

"You mean Carnival gave me permission to go to the Nearside?"

"I didn't say that. I have received no instruction from Carnival not to permit

you to go to Nearside. There are no unusual dangers to your safety on Nearside.

So I had no choice but to approve your flight plan." It paused, significantly.

"It is my experience that few parents consider it necessary to instruct me to

deny such permission. I infer that it's because so few people ever ask to go

there. I also note that your parent is at the present moment unreachable; she

has left instructions not to be disturbed. Fox," the CC said, accusingly, "it

occurs to me that this is no accident. Did you have this planned?"

I hadn't! But if I'd known...

"No."

"I suppose you want a return flight plan?"

"Why? I'll ask you when I'm ready to come back."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," it said, smugly. "In another five minutes

you'll be out of range of my last receptor. I don't extend to the Nearside, you

know. Haven't in decades. You're going out of contact, Fox. You'll be on your

own. Think about it."

I did. For a queasy moment I wanted to turn back. Without the CC to monitor us,

kids wouldn't be allowed on the surface for years.

Was I that confident? I know how hostile the surface is if it ever gets the drop

on you. I thought I had all the mistakes trained out of me by now, but did I?

"How exciting," Halo gushed. She was off in the clouds again, completely over

her shock at where we were going. She was bubble-headed like that for three

lunes after her Change. Well, so was I, later, when I had my first.

"Hush, numbskull," I said, not unkindly. Nor was she insulted. She just grinned

at me and gawked out the window as we approached the terminator.

I checked the supply of consumables; they were in perfect shape for a stay of a

full lunation if need be, though I had larked off without a glance at the

delta-vee.

"All right, smart-ass, give me the data for the return."

"Incomplete request," the CC drawled.

"Damn you, I want a flight plan Old Archimedes-King City, and no back talk."

"Noted. Assimilated." It gave me that data. Its voice was getting fainter.

"I don't suppose," it said, diffidently, "that you'd care to give me an

indication of when you plan to return?"

Ha! I had it where it hurt. Carnival wouldn't be happy with the CC's

explanation, I was sure of that.

"Tell her I've decided to start my own colony and I'll never come back."

"As you wish."

Old Archimedes was bigger than I had expected. I knew that even in its heyday it

had not been as populated as King City is, but they built more above the surface

in those days. King City is not much more than a landing field and a few domes.

Old Archimedes was chock-a-block with structures, all clustered around the

central landing field. Halo pointed out some interesting buildings to the south,

and so I went over there and set down next to them.

She opened the door and threw out the tent, then jumped after it. I followed,

taking the ladder since I seemed elected to carry the lunch. She took a quick

look around and started unpacking the tent.

"We'll go exploring later," she said, breathlessly. "Right now let's get in the

tent and eat. I'm hungry."

All right, all right, I said to myself. I've got to face it sooner or later. I

didn't think she was really all that hungry—not for the picnic lunch, anyway.

This was still going too fast for me. I had no idea what our relationship would

be when we crawled out of that tent.

While she was setting it up, I took a more leisurely look around. Before long I

was wishing we had gone to Tranquillity Base instead. It wouldn't have been as

private, but there are no spooks at Tranquillity. Come to think of it,

Tranquillity Base used to be on the Nearside, before they moved it.

About Old Archimedes:

I couldn't put my finger on what disturbed me about the place. Not the silence.

The race has had to adjust to silence since we were forced off the Earth and

took to growing up on the junk planets of the system. Not the lack of people. I

was accustomed to long walks on the surface where I might not see anyone for

hours. I don't know. Maybe it was the Earth hanging there a little above the

horizon.

It was in crescent phase, and I wished uselessly for the old days when that dark

portion would have been sprayed with points of light that were the cities of

mankind. Now there was only the primitive night and the dolphins in the sea and

the aliens—bogies cooked up to ruin the sleep of a child, but now I was not so

sure. If humans still survive down there, we have no way of knowing it.

They say that's what drove people to the Farside: the constant reminder of what

they had lost, always there in the sky. It must have been hard, especially to

the Earthborn. Whatever the reason, no one had lived on the Nearside for almost

a century. All the original settlements had dwindled as people migrated to the

comforting empty sky of Farside.

I think that's what I felt, hanging over the old buildings like some invisible

moss. It was the aura of fear and despair left by all the people who had buried

their hopes here and moved away to the forgetfulness of Farside. There were

ghosts here, all right: the shades of unfulfilled dreams and endless longing.

And over it all a bottomless sadness.

I shook myself and came back to the present. Halo had the tent ready. It bulged

up on the empty field, a clear bubble just a little higher than my head. She was

already inside. I crawled through the sphincter, and she sealed it behind me.

Halo's tent is a good one. The floor is about three meters in diameter, plenty

of room for six people if you don't mind an occasional kick. It had a stove, a

stereo set, and a compact toilet. It recycled water, scavenged CO2, controlled

temperature, and could provide hydroponic oxygen for three lunations. And it all

folded into a cube thirty centimeters on a side.

Halo had skinned out of her suit as soon as the door was sealed and was bustling

about, setting up the kitchen. She took the lunch hamper from me and started to

work.

I watched her with keen interest as she prepared the food. I wanted to get an

insight into what she was feeling. It wasn't easy. Every fuse in her head seemed

to have blown.

First-timers often overreact, seeking a new identity for themselves before it

dawns on them there was nothing wrong with the old one. Since our society offers

so little differentiation between the sex roles, they reach back to where the

differences are so vivid and startling: novels, dramas, films, and tapes from

the old days on Earth and the early years on the moon. They have the vague idea

that since they have this new body and it lacks a penis or vagina, they should

behave differently.

I recognized the character she had fallen into; I'm as interested in old culture

as the next kid. She was Blondie and I was supposed to be Dagwood. The

Bumsteads, you know. Typical domestic nineteenth-century couple. She had spread

a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and set two places with dishes, napkins,

washbowls, and a tiny electric candelabra.

I had to smile at her, kneeling at the tiny stove, trying to put three pans on

the same burner. She was trying so hard to please me with a role I was

completely uninterested in. She was humming as she worked.

After the meal, I offered to clean up for her (well, Dagwood would have), but

Blondie said no, that's all right, dear, I'll take care of everything. I lay

flat on my back, holding my belly, and watched the Earth. Presently I felt a

warm body cuddle up, half beside me and half on top of me, and press close from

toenails to eyebrows. She had left Blondie over among the dirty dishes. The

woman who breathed in my ear now was—Helen of Troy? Greta Garbo?—someone new,

anyway. I wished fervently that Halo would come back. I was beginning to think

Halo and I could screw like the very devil if this feverish creature that

contained her would only give us a chance. Meantime, I had to be raped by Helen

of Troy. I raised my head.

"What's it like, Halo?"

She slowed her foreplay slightly, but it never really stopped. She propped

herself up on one elbow.

"I don't think I can describe it to you."

"Please try."

She dimpled. "I don't really know what it's all like," she said. "I'm still a

virgin, you know."

I sat up. "You got that, too?"

"Sure, why not? But don't worry about it. I'm not afraid."

"What about making love?"

"Oh, Fox, Fox! Yes, yes. I..."

"No, no! Wait a minute." I squirmed beneath her, trying to hold her off a little

longer. "What I meant was, wasn't there any problem in making the shift? I mean,

do you have any aversion to having sex with boys now?" It was sure a stupid

question, but she took it seriously.

"I haven't noticed any problem so far," she said, thoughtfully, as her hand

reached down and fumbled, inexpertly trying to guide me in. I helped her get it

right, and she poised, squatting on her toes. "I thought about that before the

Change, but it sort of melted away. Now I don't feel any qualms at all. Ahhhhh!"

She had thrust herself down, brutally hard, and we were off and running.

It was the most unsatisfactory sex act I ever had. It was not entirely the fault

of either of us; external events were about to mess us up totally. But it wasn't

very good even without that.

A first-time female Changer is liable to be in delirious oblivion through the

entire first sex act, which may last all of sixty seconds. The fact that she is

playing the game from the other court with a different set of rules and a new

set of equipment does not handicap her. Rather, it provides a tremendous erotic

stimulus.

That's what happened to Halo. I began to wonder if she'd wait for me. I never

found out. I looked away from her face and got the shock of my life. There was

someone standing outside the tent, watching us.

Halo felt the change in me and looked at my face, which must have been a sight,

then looked over her shoulder. She fainted; out like a light.

Hell, I almost fainted myself. Would have, but when she did, it scared me even

more, and I decided I couldn't indulge it. So I stayed awake to see what was

going on.

It looked way too much like one of the ghosts my imagination had been walking

through the abandoned city ever since we got there. The figure was short and

dressed in a suit that might have been stolen from the museum at Kepler, except

that it was more patches than suit. I could tell little about who might be in

it, not even the sex. It was bulky, and the helmet was reflective.

I don't know how long I stared at it; long enough for the spook to walk around

the tent three or four times. I reached for the bottle of white wine we had been

drinking and took a long pull. I found out that's an old movie cliché; it didn't

make anything any better. But it sure did things for Halo when I poured it in

her face.

"Get in your suit," I said, as she sat up, sputtering. "I think that character

wants to talk to us." He was waving at us and pointing to what might have been a

radio on his suit.

We suited up and crawled through the sphincter. I kept saying hello as I ran

through the channels on my suit. Nothing worked. Then he came over and touched

helmets. He sounded far away.

"What're you doin' here?"

I had thought that would have been obvious.

"Sir, we just came over here for a picnic. Are we on your land or something? If

so, I'm sorry, and..."

"No, no," he waved it off. "You can do as you please. I ain't your ma. As to

owning, I guess I own this whole city, but you're welcome to do as you please

with most of it. Do as you please, that's my philosophy. That's why I'm still

here. They couldn't get old Lester to move out. I'm old Lester."

"I'm Fox, sir," I said.

"And I'm Halo." She heard us over my radio.

He turned and looked at her.

"Halo," he said, quietly. "A Halo for an angel. Nice name, miss." I was wishing

I could see his face. He sounded like an adult, but he was sure a small one.

Both of us were taller than he was, and we're not much above average for our

age.

He coughed. "I, ah, I'm sorry I disturbed you folks... ah," he seemed

embarrassed. "I just couldn't help myself. I haven't seen any people for a long

time—oh, ten years, I guess—and I just had to get a closer look. And I, uh, I

needed to ask you something."

"And what's that, sir?"

"You can knock off the 'sir.' I ain't your pa. I wanted to know if you folks had

any medicine?"

"There's a first-aid kit in the jumper," I said. "Is there someone in need of

help? I'd be glad to take them to a hospital in King City."

He was waving his arms frantically.

"No, no, no. I don't want doctors poking around. I just need a little medicine.

Uh, say, could you take that first-aid kit out of the jumper and come to my

warren for a bit? Maybe you got something in there I could use."

We agreed, and followed him across the field.

He led us into an unpressurized building at the edge of the field. We threaded

our way through dark corridors.

We came to a big cargo lock, stepped inside, and he cycled it. Then we went

through the inner door and into his warren.

It was quite a place, more like a jungle than a home. It was as big as the Civic

Auditorium at King City and overgrown with trees, vines, flowers, and bushes. It

looked like it had been tended at one time, but allowed to go wild. There were a

bed and a few chairs in one corner, and several tall stacks of books. And heaps

of junk; barrels of leak sealant, empty O2 cylinders, salvaged instruments,

buggy tires.

Halo and I had our helmets off and were half out of our suits when we got our

first look at him. He was incredible! I'm afraid I gasped, purely from reflex;

Halo just stared. Then we politely tried to pretend there was nothing unusual.

He looked like he made a habit of going out without his suit. His face was

grooved and pitted like a plowed field after an artillery barrage. His skin

looked as tough as leather. His eyes were sunk into deep pits.

"Well, let me see it," he said, sticking out a thin hand. His knuckles were

swollen and knobby.

I handed him the first-aid kit, and he fumbled with the catches, then got it

open. He sat in a chair and carefully read the label on each item. He mumbled

while he read.

Halo wandered among the plants, but I was more curious about old Lester than

about his home. I watched him handle the contents of the kit with stiff, clumsy

fingers. All his movements seemed stiff. I couldn't imagine what might be wrong

with him and wondered why he hadn't sought medical help long ago, before

whatever was afflicting him could go this far.

At last he put everything back in the kit but two tubes of cream. He sighed and

looked at us.

"How old are you?" he asked, suspiciously.

"I'm twenty," I said. I don't know why. I'm not a liar, usually, unless I have a

good reason. I was just beginning to get a funny feeling about old Lester, and I

followed my instincts.

"Me, too," Halo volunteered.

He seemed satisfied, which surprised me. I was realizing he had been out of

touch for a long time. Just how long I didn't know yet.

"There ain't much here that'll be of use to me, but I'd like to buy these here

items, if you're willin' to sell. Says here they're for 'topical anesthesia,'

and I could use some of that in the mornings. How much?"

I told him he could have them for nothing, but he insisted; so I told him to set

his own price and reached for my credit meter in my suit pouch. He was holding

out some rectangular slips of paper. They were units of paper currency, issued

by the old Lunar Free State in the year 76 O.E. They had not been used in over a

century. They were worth a fortune to a collector.

"Lester," I said, slowly, "these are worth more than you probably realize. I

could sell them in King City for..."

He cackled. "Good man. I know what them bills is worth. I'm decrepit, but I

ain't senile. They're worth thousands to one what wants 'em, but they're

worthless to me. Except for one thing. They're a damn good test for findin' an

honest man. They let me know if somebody'd take advantage of a sick, senile ol'

hermit like me. Pardon me, son, but I had you pegged for a liar when you come in

here. I was wrong. So you keep the bills. Otherwise, I'd a took 'em back."

He threw something on the floor in front of us, something he'd had in his hand

and I hadn't even seen. It was a gun. I had never seen one.

Halo picked it up, gingerly, but I didn't want to touch it. This old Lester

character seemed a lot less funny to me now. We were quiet.

"Now I've gone and scared you," he said. "I guess I've forgot all my manners.

And I've forgot how you folks live on the other side." He picked up the gun and

opened it. The charge chamber was empty. "But you wouldn't of knowed it, would

you? Anyways, I'm not a killer. I just pick my friends real careful. Can I make

up the fright I've caused you by inviting you to dinner? I haven't had any

guests for ten years."

We told him we'd just eaten, and he asked if we could stay and just talk for a

while. He seemed awfully eager. We said okay.

"You want some clothes? I don't expect you figured on visiting when you come

here."

"Whatever your custom is," Halo said, diplomatically.

"I got no customs," he said, with a toothless grin. "If you don't feel funny

naked, it ain't no business of mine. Do as you please, I say." It was a stock

phrase with him.

So we lay on the grass, and he got some very strong, clear liquor and poured us

all drinks.

"Moonshine," he laughed. "The genuine article. I make it myself. Best liquor on

the Nearside."

We talked, and we drank.

Before I got too drunk to remember anything, a few interesting facts emerged

about old Lester. For one thing, he really was old. He said he was two hundred

and fifty-seven, and he was Earthborn. He had come to the moon when he was

twenty-eight, several years before the Invasion.

I know several people in that age range, though none quite that old. Carnival's

great-grandmother is two twenty-one, but she's moonborn, and doesn't remember

the Invasion. There's virtually nothing left of the flesh she was born with.

She's transferred her memories to a new brain twice.

I was prepared to believe that old Lester had gone a long time without medical

care, but I couldn't accept what he told us at first. He said that, barring one

new heart eighty years ago, he was unreconstructed since his birth! I'm young

and naive—I freely admit it now—but I couldn't swallow that. But I believed it

eventually, and I believe it now.

He had a million stories to tell, all of them at least eighty years old because

that's how long he had been a hermit. He had stories of Earth, and of the early

years on the moon. He told us about the hard years after the Invasion. Everyone

who lived through that has a story to tell. I drew a blank before the evening

was over, and the only thing I remember clearly is the three of us standing in a

circle, arms around each other, singing a song old Lester had taught us. We

swayed against each other and bumped foreheads and broke up laughing. I remember

his hand resting on my shoulder. It was hard as rock.

The next day Halo became Florence Nightingale and nursed old Lester back to

life. She was as firm as any nurse, getting him out of his clothes over his

feeble protests, then giving him a massage. In the soberness of the morning I

wondered how she could bring herself to touch his wrinkled old body, but as I

watched, I slowly understood. He was beautiful.

The best thing to compare old Lester to is the surface. There is nothing older,

or more abused, than the surface of the moon. But I have always loved it. It's

the most beautiful place in the system, including Saturn's Rings. Old Lester was

like that. I imagined he was the moon. He had become part of it.

Though I came to accept his age, I could still see that he was in terrible

shape. The drinking had taken a lot out of him, but he wouldn't be kept down.

The first thing he wanted in the morning was another drink. I brought him one,

then I cooked a big breakfast: eggs and sausage and bread and orange juice, all

from his garden. Then we were off and drinking again.

I didn't even have time to worry about what Carnival and Halo's mother might be

thinking by now. Old Lester had plainly adopted us. He said he'd be our father,

which struck me as a funny thing to say since who the hell ever knows who their

father is? But he began behaving in the manner I would call maternal, and he

evidently thought of it as paternal.

We did a lot of things that day. He taught us about gardening.

He showed me how to cross-fertilize the egg plants and how to tell when they

were ripe without breaking the shells to see. He told us the secrets of how to

grow breadfruit trees so they'd yield loaves of dark-brown, hard, whole wheat or

the strangely different rye variety by grafting branches. I had never had rye

before. And we learned to dig for potatoes and steakroots. We learned how to

harvest honey and cheese and tomatoes. We stripped bacon from the surface of the

porktree trunks.

And we'd drink his moonshine while we worked, and laugh a lot, and he'd throw in

more of his stories between the garden lore.

Old Lester was not the fool he seemed at first. His speech pattern was largely

affected, something he did to amuse himself over the years. He could speak as

correctly as anyone when he wanted to. He had read much and remembered it all.

He was a first-rate engineer and botanist, but his education and skills had to

be qualified by this fact: everything he knew was eighty years out of date. It

didn't matter much: the old methods worked well enough.

In social matters it was a different story.

He didn't know much about Changing, except that he didn't like it. It was

Changing that finally decided him to separate himself from society. He said he

had been having his doubts about joining the migration to Farside, and the

sex-change issue had been the final factor. He shocked us more than he knew when

he revealed that he had never been a woman. I thought his lack of curiosity must

be monumental, but I was wrong. It turned out that he had some queer notions

about the morality of the whole process, ideas he had gotten from some weirdly

aberrant religion in his childhood. I had heard of the cult, as you can hardly

avoid it if you know any history. It had said little about ethics, being more

interested in arbitrary regulations.

Old Lester still believed in it, though. His home was littered with primitive

icons. There was a central symbol he cherished above the others: a simple wooden

fetish in the shape of a plus sign with a long stem. He wore one around his

neck, and others sprouted like weeds.

I came to realize that this religion was at the bottom of the puzzling

inconsistencies I began to notice about him. His "do as you please" may have

been sincere, but he did not entirely live by it. It became clear that, though

he thought people should have freedom of choice, he condemned them if the choice

they made was not his own.

My spur-of-the-moment decision to lie about my age had been borne out, though

I'm not sure the truth wouldn't have been better. It might have kept us out of

the further lies we told or implied, and I always prefer honesty to deception.

But I still don't know if old Lester could have been our friend without the

lies.

He knew something of life on Farside and made it clear he disapproved of most of

it. And he had deluded himself (with our help) that we weren't like that. In

particular, he thought people should not have sex until they reached a "decent

age." He never defined that, but Halo and I, at "twenty," were safely past it.

It was a puzzling notion. Even Carnival, who is a bit old-fashioned, would have

been shocked. Granted, we speed up puberty now—I have been sexually potent since

I was seven—but he felt that even after puberty people should abstain. I

couldn't make any sense out of it. I mean, what would you do?

Then there was a word he used, "incest," that I had to look up when I got home

to be sure I'd understood him. I had. He was against it. I guess it had a basis

back in the dawn of time, when procreation and genetics were so tied up with

sex, but how could it matter now? The only place Carnival and I get along at all

is in bed; without that, we would have very little in common.

It went on and on, the list of regulations. Luckily, it didn't sour me on old

Lester. All I disliked was the lies we had trapped ourselves into. I'm willing

to let people have all sorts of screwball notions as long as they don't force

them on me, like Carnival was doing about the Change. That I found myself

expressing agreement with old Lester's ideas was my own fault, not his. I think.

The days went by, marred by only one thing. I had not broken any laws, but I

knew I was being searched for. And I knew I was treating Carnival badly. I tried

to figure out just how badly, and what I should do about it, but kept getting

fogged up by the moonshine and good times.

Carnival had come to the Nearside. Halo and I had watched them from the shadows

when old Lester's radar had picked them up coming in. There had been six or

seven figures in the distance. They had entered the jumper and made a search.

They had cast around at the edge of the field for our tracks, found them, and

followed them to where they disappeared on concrete. I would have liked to have

listened in, but didn't dare because they were sure to have detection apparatus

for that.

And they left. They left the jumper, which was nice of them, since they could

have taken it and rendered us helpless to wait for their return.

I thought about it, and talked it over with Halo. Several times we were ready to

give up and go back. After all, we hadn't really set out to run away from home.

We had only been defying authority, and it had never entered my head that we

would stay as long as we had. But now that we were here we found it hard to go

back. The trip to Nearside had acquired an inertia of its own, and we didn't

have the strength to stop it.

In the end we went to the other extreme. We decided to stay on Nearside forever.

I think we were giddy with the sense of power a decision like that made us feel.

So we covered up our doubts with backslapping encouragement, a lot of giggling,

and inflated notions of what we and old Lester would do at Archimedes.

We wrote a note—which proved we still felt responsible to someone—and taped it

to the ladder of the jumper; then Halo went in and turned on the outside lights

and pointed them straight up. We retired to a hiding place and waited.

Sure enough, another ship returned in two hours. They had been watching from

close orbit and landed on the next pass when they noticed the change. One person

got out of the ship and read the note. It was a crazy note, saying not to worry,

we were all right. It went on to say we intended to stay, and some more things

I'd rather not remember. It also said she should take the jumper. I was

regretting that even as she read it. We must have been crazy.

I could see her slump even from so far away. She looked all around her, then

began signaling in semaphore language.

"Do what you have to," she signaled. "I don't understand you, but I love you.

I'm leaving the jumper in case you change your mind."

Well. I gulped, and was halfway up on my way out to her when, to my great

surprise, Halo pulled me down. I had thought she was only going along with me to

avoid having to point out how wrong I was. This hadn't been her idea; she had

not been in her right mind when I hustled her over here. But she had settled

down from all that lunes ago and was now as level-headed as ever. And was more

taken with our adventure than I was.

"Dope!" she hissed, touching helmets. "I thought you'd do something like that.

Think it through. Do you want to give up so easy? We haven't even tried this

yet."

Her face wasn't as certain as her words, but I was in no shape to argue her out

of it. Then Carnival was gone, and I felt better. It was true that we had an out

if it turned sour. Pretty soon we were intrepid pioneers, and I didn't think of

Carnival or the Farside until things did start to go sour.

For a long time, almost a lunation, we were happy. We worked hard every day with

old Lester. I learned that in his kind of life the work was never done; there

was always an air duct to repair, flowers to pollinate, machinery to regulate.

It was primitive, and I could usually see ways to improve the methods but never

thought of suggesting them. It wouldn't have fit with our crazy pioneer ideas.

Things had to be hard to feel right.

We built a grass lean-to like one we had seen in a movie and moved in. It was

across the chamber from old Lester, which was silly, but it meant we could visit

each other. And I learned an interesting thing about sin.

Old Lester would watch us make love in our raggedy shack, a grin across his

leathery face. Then one day he implied that lovemaking should be a private act.

It was a sin to do it in front of others, and a sin to watch. But he still

watched.

So I asked Halo about it.

"He needs a little sin, Fox."

"Huh?"

"I know it isn't logical, but you must have seen by now that his religion is

mixed up."

"That's for sure. But I still don't get it."

"Well, I don't either, but I try to respect. He thinks drinking is sinful, and

until we came along it was the only sin he could practice. Now he can do the sin

of lust, too. I think he needs to be forgiven for things, and he can't be

forgiven until he does them."

"That's the craziest thing I ever heard. But even crazier, if lust is a sin to

him, why doesn't he go all the way and make love with you? I've been dead sure

he wants to, but as far as I know, he's never done it. Has he?"

She looked at me pityingly. "You don't know, do you?"

"You mean he has?"

"No. I don't mean that. We haven't. And not because I haven't tried. And not

because he doesn't want to. He looks, looks, looks; he never takes his eyes off

me. And it isn't because he thinks it's a sin. He knows it's a sin, but he'd do

it if he could."

"I still don't understand, then."

"What do you mean? I just told you. He can't. He's too old. His equipment won't

function anymore."

"That's terrible!" I was almost sick. I knew there was a word for his condition,

but I had to look it up a long time afterward. The word is crippled. It means

some part of your body doesn't work right. Old Lester had been sexually crippled

for over a century.

I seriously considered going home then. I was not at all sure he was the kind of

person I wanted to be around. The lies were getting more galling every day, and

now this.

But things got much worse, and still I stayed.

He was ill. I don't mean the way we think of ill; some petty malfunction to be

cleared up by a ten-minute visit to the bioengineers. He was wearing out.

It was partly our fault. Even that first morning he was not very quick out of

bed. Each lune—after a long night of drinking and general hell-raising—he was a

little slower to get up. It got to where Halo was spending an hour each morning

just massaging him into shape to stand erect. I thought at first he was just

cannily malingering because he liked the massage and Halo's intimacy when she

worked him over. That was not the case. When he did get up, he hobbled, bent

over from pains in his belly. He would forget things. He would stumble, fall,

and get up very slowly.

"I'm dying," he said one night. I gasped; Halo blinked rapidly. I tried to cover

my embarrassment by pretending he hadn't said it.

"I know it's a bad word now, and I'm sorry if I offended you. But I ain't lived

this long without being able to look it in the eye.

"I'm dying, all right, and I'll be dead pretty soon. I didn't think it'd come so

sudden. Everything seems to be quittin' on me."

We tried to convince him that he was wrong and, when that didn't work, to

convince him that he should take a short hop to Farside and get straightened

out. But we couldn't get through his superstition. He was awfully afraid of the

engineers on Farside. We would try to show him that periodic repairs still left

the mind— he called it the "soul"—unchanged, but he'd get philosophical.

The next day he didn't get up at all. Halo rubbed his old limbs until she was

stiff. It was no good. His breathing became irregular, and his pulse was hard to

find.

So we were faced with the toughest decision ever. Should we allow him to die, or

carry him to the jumper and rush him to a repair shop? We sweated over it all

lune. Neither course felt right, but I found myself arguing to take him back,

and Halo said we shouldn't. He could not hear us except for brief periods when

he'd rouse himself and try to sit up. Then he'd ask us questions or say things

that seemed totally random. His brain must have been pretty well scrambled by

then.

"You kids aren't really twenty, are you?" he said once.

"How did you know?"

He cackled, weakly.

"Old Lester ain't no dummy. You said that to cover up what I caught you doin'

so's I wouldn't tell your folks. But I won't tell. That's your business. Just

wanted you to know you didn't fool me, not for a minute." He lapsed into labored

breathing.

We never did settle the argument, unless by default. What I wanted to do took

some action, and in the end I didn't have it in me to get up and do it. I wasn't

sure enough of myself. So we sat there on his bed, waiting for him to die and

talking to him when he needed it. Halo held his hand.

I went through hell. I cursed him for a vacuum-skulled, mentally defective,

prehistoric poop, and almost decided to help him out in his pea-brained search

for death. Then I went the other way; loving him almost like he loved his crazy

God. I imagined he was the mother that Carnival had never really been to me and

that my world would have no purpose when he was dead. Both those reactions were

crazy, of course; old Lester was just a person. He was a little crazy and a

little saintly, and hardly a person you should either love or hate. It was Death

that had me going in circles: the creepy black-robed skeletal figure old Lester

had told us about, straight out of his superstition.

He opened one bleary eye after hours of no movement.

"Don't ever," he said. "You shouldn't ever. You, I mean. Halo. Don't ever get a

Change. You always been a girl, you always should be. The Lord intended it that

way."

Halo shot a quick glance at me. She was crying, and her eyes told me: don't

breathe a word. Let him believe it. She needn't have worried.

Then he started coughing. Blood came from his lips, and as soon as I saw it, I

passed out. I thought he would literally fall apart and rot into some awful

green slime, slime that I could never wash off.

Halo wouldn't let me stay out. She slapped me until my ears were ringing, and

when I was awake, we gave up. We couldn't make a meaningful decision in the face

of this. We had to give it to someone else.

So twenty-five minutes later I was over the pole, just coming into range of the

CC's outer transmitters.

"Well, the black sheep return," the CC began in a superior tone. "I must say you

outlasted the usual Nearside stay, in fact..."

"Shut up!" I bawled. "You shut up and listen to me. I want to contact Carnival,

and I want her now, crash priority, emergency status. Get on it!"

The CC was all business, dropping the in loco parentis program and operating

with the astonishing speed it's capable of in an emergency. Carnival was on the

line in three seconds.

"Fox," she said, "I don't want to start this off on a bad footing; so, first of

all, I thank you for giving me a chance to settle this with you face-to-face.

I've retained a family arbiter, and I'd like for us to present our separate

cases to him on this Change you want, and I'll agree to abide by his decision.

Is that fair for a beginning?" She sounded anxious. I knew there was anger

beneath it—there always is—but she was sincere.

"We can talk about that later, Mom," I sobbed. "Right now you've got to get to

the field, as quick as you can."

"Fox, is Halo with you? Is she all right?"

"She's all right."

"I'll be there in five minutes."

It was too late, of course. Old Lester had died shortly after I lifted off, and

Halo had been there with a dead body for almost two hours.

She was calm about it. She held Carnival and me together while she explained

what had to be done, and even got us to help her. We buried him, as he had

wanted, on the surface, in a spot that would always be in the light of Old

Earth.

Carnival never would tell me what she would have done if he had been alive when

we got there. It was an ethical question, and both of us are usually very

opinionated on ethical matters. But I suspect we agreed for once. The will of

the individual must be respected, and if I face it again, I'll know what to do.

I think.

I got my Change without family arbitration. Credit me with a little sense; if

our case had ever come up before a family arbiter, I'm sure he would have

recommended divorce. And that would have been tough, because difficult as

Carnival is, I love her, and I need her for at least a few more years. I'm not

as grownup as I thought I was.

It didn't really surprise me that Carnival was right about the Change, either.

In another lunation I was male again, then female, male; back and forth for a

year. There's no sense in that. I'm female now, and I think I'll stick with it

for a few years and see what it's about. I was born female, you know, but only

lasted two hours in that sex because Carnival wanted a boy.

And Halo's a male, which makes it perfect. We've found that we do better as

opposites than we did as boyfriends. I'm thinking about having my child in a few

years, with Halo as the father. Carnival says wait, but I think I'm right this

time. I still believe most of our troubles come from her inability to remember

the swiftly moving present a child lives in. Then Halo can have her child—I'd be

flattered if she chose me to father it—and...

We're moving to Nearside. Halo and me, that is, and Carnival and Chord are

thinking about it, and they'll go, I think. If only to shut up Adagio.

Why are we going? I've thought about it a long time. Not because of old Lester.

I hate to speak unkindly of him, but he was inarguably a fool. A fool with

dignity, and the strength of his convictions; a likable old fool, but a fool all

the same. It would be silly to talk of "carrying on his dream" or some of the

things I think Halo has in mind.

But, coincidentally, his dream and mine are pretty close, though for different

reasons. He couldn't bear to see the Nearside abandoned out of fear, and he

feared the new human society. So he became a hermit. I want to go there simply

because the fear is gone for my generation, and it's a lot of beautiful real

estate. And we won't be alone. We'll be the vanguard, but the days of clustering

in the Farside warrens and ignoring Old Earth are over. The human race came from

Earth, and it was ours until it was taken from us. To tell the truth, I've been

wondering if the aliens are really as invincible as the old stories say.

It sure is a pretty planet. I wonder if we could go back?