ROB CHILSON

THIS SIDE OF INDEPENDENCE

THEY WERE TAKING UP Kansas in big bites.

Geelie hovered above, detached, observing Stark night cloaked the world under a
shrunken sun, save for the pit, where hell glared. Magma glowed in the darkness
where the rock, hectares wide, crumbled in the gravitor beam. Shards of the
world upreared, uproared, black edged with glowing red, and lofted into the
groaning air, pieces of a broken pot. The bloody light spattered on the
swag-bellied ships that hung above--crows tearing at the carcass with a loud
continuous clamor. Pieces of the planet fell back and splashed in thunder and
liquid fire, yellow and scarlet. Old Earth shuddered for kilometers around.

The glare, the heat, the tumult filled the world. But from a distance, Geelie
saw, it was reduced to a cheerful cherry glow and a murmur of sound, lost in the
endless night. In her long view, Kansas was a vest sunken plain of contorted
rock, dusted with silent snow under a shaded sun.

"Aung Charah in Tigerclaw to Goblong Seven," Geelie's speaker said.

"Goblong Seven to Aung Charah," she said.

"Geelie, take a swing around the south side of the working pit and look at the
terraces there. I think the magma is flowing up on them."

"Hearing and obedience."

Kansas was a hole walled with stairsteps of cooled lava, terraced for kilometers
down to the pit of hell. As fast as the rock froze, it was tom off in
hectare-sized chips, to feed the hungry space colonies.

Geelie swung her goblong and swooped down and around the work site. She peered
intently in dimness, blinded by the contrast. The magma was definitely crawling
up on the lower terrace of cooled rock.

"It's slow as yet, " she reported, sending the teleview to Aung Charah.

"We'll have to watch it, however, or we'll have another volcano. Check on it
frequently," he told her.

"Hearing and obedience," Geelie said. She leaned forward to peer up through the
windscreen.

The Sun was a flickering red candle, the cherry color of the magma. As she
watched, it brightened; brightened; brightened again, to a dazzling orange. Then
it faded, paused, recovered--briefly showed a gleam of brilliance that glimpsed
the black rock below, streaked with snow. Then it faded, faded further, almost
vanished.

The Sun was a candle seen through a haze of smoke. But each drifting mote was a
space colony with solar panels extended, jostling in their billions jealously to
seize the Sun. One by one, the planets of old Sol had been eaten by the
colonies, till only Earth was left, passed into the shades of an eternal night.

And now the Old World's historical value had been overridden by the economic
value of its water, air, and rock. Also, its vast gravity well was a major
obstacle to space traffic.

Noon, planetary time, Geelie thought.

She took her goblong in a long sweep around the work site, occasionally touching
the visual recorder's button. Her Colony, Kinabatangan, was a member of The
Obstacle-Leaping Consortium; she was part of Kinabatangan's observer team.

A gleam of light caught her eye, and she looked sharply aside. Ease, she
realized. Puzzled, she looped the goblong back again more slowly and sought for
the gleam. She found it, but it immediately winked out.

That was odd, she thought. A bright light, yellow or even white--surely
artificial--on the highlands to the east. That was disputed land, it was not yet
being worked. Perhaps, she thought, observers had set up a camp on the planet.

She called Aung Charah and reported, got permission to check it out. "If I can
find it," she said. "The light is gone again; door closed, perhaps."

"I'm having Communications call; I'll keep you informed," Aung Charah said.

She acknowledged and cruised as nearly straight as she could along the beam
she'd seen. Presently the land mounted in broken scarps before her, vaguely seen
in the wan bloody light of the Sun. Vast masses of shattered rock, covered with
snow or capped with ice, tumbled down from the highlands. Missouri, that was
what its uncouth name had been, Geelie saw, keying up her map.

At this point there'd been a great sprawling city, Kansas City by name, more
populous than a dozen colonies. The parts which had straggled over the border
had been mined and the once vertical scarp had collapsed. East of the line,
everything this side of Independence on her map had fallen into the hole that
was Kansas.

"Aung Charah in Tigerclaw to Geelie in Goblong Seven," said her speaker.
"Communications reports no contact. We have no report of anyone in that area.
Behinders?" Dubiously.

"Unlikely. However, I am checking. Goblong Seven out."

It was three hundred years since stay-behind planetarians had been found on the
mother world. Considering how bleak it now was, Geelie considered them extremely
unlikely, as by his tone did Aung Charah.

She cruised slowly over the tumbled mounds of snow-covered rubble that marked
the old city. Kilometers it extended, and somehow Geelie found that more
oppressive even than the vast expanse of riven rock behind her. She could not
imagine the torrents of people who must have lived on this deck. The average
Colony had only a hundred thousand.

She peered into the dimness. The rubble showed as black pocks in the blood-lit
snow. Presently she came to hover and pondered.

Possibly she'd seen a transitory gleam off a sheet of transpex or polished rock
or metal in the old city, she thought. But the color was wrong. No. She'd seen a
light. Perhaps there were commercial observers here from a different consortium
-- not necessarily spying on The Obstacle-Leaping Consortium. There might be
many reasons why commercial observers would want to keep secret.

Infra-red, she thought. The oblong wasn't equipped with IR viewers, but Aung
Charah had given her a pair of binox. She unharnessed and slipped into the back
for them. And a few minutes later she saw a plume of light against the chill
background.

It leaked in two dozen points from a hill of rubble a kilometer away. Geelie got
its coordinates and called Aung Charah to report.

"I'm going to go down and request permission to land."

"Of course this `Missouri' is not part of our grant," Aung Charah said. "They --
whoever they are -- will probably have a right to refuse. Do nothing to involve
us legally."

"Hearing and obedience."

Geelie sloped the oblong down, circled the mound, presently found a trampled
place in the thin snow and kicked on her lights. Aiming them down, she saw
footprints and a door in an ancient wall made of clay brick, a wall patched with
shards of concrete glued together. The mound was a warren, a tumble of broken
buildings run together, with forgotten doors and unlighted windows peering from
odd angles under a lumpy, snow-covered roof.

She sent back a teleview, saying, "I wonder if this is an observers' nest after
all."

"Any answer on the universal freqs?"

"One moment." She called, got no answer. "I'm going to lend without formal
permission and bang on the door."

"Very well."

Geelie landed the oblong, leaving its lights on, and slipped into the back. She
pulled her parka hood forward, drew on her gloves, and opened the door. A breath
of bitter cold air entered, making her gasp. Ducking out, she started for the
door.

Movement caught her eye and she looked up, to see a heavily bundled figure
standing atop a pile of rubble by the wall.

"Hello!" she called.

"Hello," came a man's voice. He was not twice as thick as a normal human, she
saw -- he was simply wearing many layers of cloth against the biting cold.

Geelie exhaled a cloud of vapor, calming herself. So crudely dressed a man had
to be a behinder -- and who knew how he would react?

"I-I am Geelie of Kinabatangan Colony, a member of The Obstacle-Leaping
Consortium. Permission to land?"

"What? Oh, granted. That would be you, working over there in Kansas?" His tone
was neutral, if guarded. His accent was harsh, rasping, but not unintelligible.

"Yes."

"What brings you here? Will you now begin on Missourah?"

"No," she said. "missourah," carefully pronouncing it as he had, "is disputed by
a number of consortiums and wrecking companies. It will be years before they
have settled that dispute."

"That's good to hear," said the other, and moved. With a dangerous seeming
scramble, he slid down from the rubble pile.

Confronting her, he was a head taller than she, and very pale, a pure caucasoid
type, in the light from her oblong. He even had the deep blue eyes once confined
to caucasoids, and his beard was yellow.

"Name's Clayborn," he said, proffering his hand. "Enos Clayborn."

She squeezed and shook it in the european fashion. "Pleased to meet you, U --
er, Mr. Clayborn."

"Won't you come in out of the cold?" he asked, gesturing toward the door.

"Thank you." She followed him gratefully. The bleakness more than the cold
chilled her.

The door opened, emitting a waft of warm air that condensed into fog. Geelie
stepped in, inhaling humidity and the smell of many people, with an undertone of
green plants. It was like, yet unlike, the air of a Colony; more people, less
plants, she thought; not so pure an air. She was standing in a vestibule with
wooden walls covered with peeling white paint; overhead a single square
electrolumer gave a dim yellowish light.

Clayborn fastened the door behind her and stepped past her to open the other
door, gesturing her through it. Pushing her hood back, Geelie opened her parka
as she entered a room full of tubs of snow, slowly melting; piles of wooden
boards; piles of scrap metal; shelves full of things obviously salvaged from the
ruins; an assortment of tools. Beyond this was yet another door, opening into a
large, brightly lit room full of furniture and people.

"Enos is ba -- Enos has brought someone!" "Enos has brought a stranger!" "A
strange woman!" The exclamations ran through the room quickly, and a couple of
people slipped out. Moments later, they and several others returned.

"Folks, this is Geelie of -- of --?" Clayborn fumed to her.

"Kinabatangan Colony," Geelie said. Old people, she thought. "Observer of The
Obstacle-Leaping Consortium."

"Those are the ones mining Kansas, " Clayborn said. "Geelie tells me that they
won't start mining Missouri" (pronouncing it differently, she noticed) "for
quite a few years yet."

Clayborn in his mid-twenties was the youngest person in the room, she saw. The
next youngest were four or five hale middle-aged sorts with gray in their hair,
perhaps twice his age, and ranging up from there to a frail ancient on a couch,
big pale eyes fumed toward her and a thin wisp of cottony hair on a pillow. A
dozen and a half at most.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, marveling.

"Forever," said one of the white-haired oldsters drily. "We never been anywheres
else."

Geelie smiled back at their smiles. "I am awed that you have survived," she said
simply, removing her parka and gloves.

"This is our leader, Alden," said Clayborn pulling up a chair for her.

"The last hundred years was the worst," said Alden.

The behinders, having overcome their shyness, now crowded forward and Clayborn
introduced them. Geelie bowed and spoke to all, shook with the bolder ones. When
she seated herself, one of the women handed her a cup on a european saucer. She
looked at them with awe, reflecting that they must be a thousand years old.

"Brown," she heard them murmur. "Brown. Beautiful -- such a nice young woman.
Such beautiful black hair."

She sipped a mild coffee brew and nodded her thanks. "The last hundred years?"
she said to Alden. "Yes, it must have been."

For over nine hundred years Earth had been in partial shadow and permanent
glaciation, but the Sun still shone. Then the greedy colonies broke their
agreements and moved massively into the space between the Old World and the Sun.
Earth passed into the shadows, and shortly thereafter they began to disassemble
it.

"'Course, our ancestors laid in a good supply of power cells and everything else
we'd need, way back when Earth was abandoned by everybody else," Alden said. "No
problems there. But how much longer will the air last?"

"Oh, maybe another hundred years," she said, startled. "Freezing it for
transport is a slow process."

"And the glaciers? They came down this way back when the Sun shone bright."

Geelie smiled, shook her head. "It's so cold now that even the oceans are
freezing over, so the glaciers can't grow by snowfall. Also, frankly, the
glaciers were the first to be mined; that much fresh water was worth plenty. Of
course the oceans are valuable too, and they have been heavily mined also."

"The snowfall gets thinner every year," said Clayborn "We have to go farther and
farther to Bet enough. Soon we'll be reduced to thawing the soil for water."

Geelie's response was interrupted by the discreet beeping of her wrist radio.
She keyed it on. "sung Charah in Tigerclaw to Geelie in Goblong Seven," it said
in a tiny voice, relayed from the "oblong.

"Geelie to Aung Charah," she said into it. "I have received permission to land
and am with a group of native Earthers."

"Behinders," said Alden drily.

She flashed him a smile and said, "Behinders, they call themselves."

"Er -- yes," said Aung Charah, sounding startled. "Er -- carry on. Aung Charah
out."

"Hearing and obedience. Geelie out."

"Carry on?" Alden asked.

Geelie sobered. She had been excited and amazed at meeting these people and had
not thought ahead. "Well," she said. "He represents the Consortium and dares not
commit it. You are not his problem."

"We never thought of ourselves as anybody's problem," said Alden mildly. "More
coffee?"

Geelie bowed to Lyou Ye, who stood to respond, then reseated herself behind her
desk and frowned.

"Behinders," she said. "They must be the very last. It's been what, three
hundred years since any have been found, that lot in Africa." She looked sharply
at Geelie." "sung Charah is right, they're not our problem. They live in
`Missouri,' however it's pronounced, outside our grant. They're the problem of
the Missouri Compact."

"But those people won't settle their disputes for years, possibly decades," said
Geelie. "We can't just let these behinders die."

Lyou Ye glanced aside, frowning, and tapped her finger. She'd come a long way,
Geelie knew, in a short time. A very beautiful woman, ten years older than
Geelie, with waving masses of dark red hair and the popular tiger-green eyes
contributed by gene-splicing, she was commonly called Ma Kyaw, "Miss Smooth."
But she was intelligent and fully aware of the power of public opinion.

"Very well, if you can find a Colony willing to sponsor them, I'll authorize
shipping to lift them out, " Lyou Ye said abruptly. "It won't take much,
fortunately, by your description. Declining population ever since the Sun was
shaded, I take it, with only this `Enosclayborn' in the last generation. They'd
have ended soon enough. You found them just in time for him," she added. "He's
probably still a virgin."

"I'd personally like to thank Geelie for all the time and trouble she's put in
for us, her and all her folks," said Alden.

Geelie flushed with pleasure as they applauded her.

"Now, I'll just ask for a show of hands," Alden continued. "All them that's in
favor of flyin' off into space to a colony, raise your hand."

Geelie leaned forward eagerly.

There was a long pause. The behinders fumed their faces to each other, Geelie
heard a whisper or two, someone cleared a throat. But no one looked at her.

Alden stood looking around, waited a bit, then finally said, "Don't look like
there's anybody in favor of the city of Independence movie' into a colony. But
that don't mean nobody can go. Anybody that wants to is naturally free to leave.
Just speak to me, or to Miss Geelie here."

Shocked, horrified, Geelie looked at them. Someone coughed. Still no one looked
at her. She fumed a stricken gaze on Enos Clayborn. He looked thoughtful but
unsurprised. And he had not raised his hand.

So silent was the room that the purring of a mother cat, entering at the far
side with a squirming kitten in her mouth, seemed loud.

Alden fumed to her. "New ideas, like flyin' space, sometimes is hard to take in,
" he said kindly. "We had since yesterday to talk it over, but still it's a new
idea. Enos, you might take the little lady back to Gretchen's nest and give them
kittens a little attention."

Enos smiled at her, and faces were fumed from the cat to her, smiling in-relief.
"She's bringing her kittens out," Geelie heard them murmur. "They're old enough
for her to introduce them around."

Numbly she followed the tall young man back through the warren of abandoned
passages to the warm storage room where the cat had her nest.

When he evidently intended merely to play with the kittens, she said, "Enos, why
-- why didn't they vote to go?"

"Well, we're used to it here. As Alden said, it takes time to get used to new
ideas." He handed her a kitten. "This is the runt -- the last born of the
litter. We named her Omega -- we'll give them all shots in another month or two;
she'll be the last cat born on Earth."

Absently she took the purring kitten, a tiny squirming handful of fur. "But
you'll all die if you don't go!"

"Well, we'll all die anyway," he said mildly. "Ever notice most of us are old
folks? A lot aren't so far from dying now. They'd just as soon die in a place
they know. We've been here a long time, you know."

"But -- but -- you're not old! And your parents, and Alden's daughter Aina, and
Camden--"

"I wouldn't know how to act, anywhere but here," he said mildly. He smiled down
at the proudly purring mother cat.

GEELIE, LYOU YE, and Aung Charah sat in the small conference room.

Lyou Ye grimaced. "So that was their reaction? I'll admit it wasn't one I'd
foreseen. All the other behinders in history agreed to go. Some of them signaled
to us."

Geelie shifted her position uneasily, cross-legged on a pillow, and nodded
unhappily. "I even offered to send them to a european Colony, so they'd be among
familiar-seeming people, but that didn't help."

Aung Charah shook his head. "We're Betting a lot of publicity on this," he said.
"The newsmedia are not hostile yet. But what will they say when the behinders'
refusal becomes known?"

Lyou Ye frowned. "They'll blame us, depend upon it. Have any of them interviewed
the behinders?"

Aung Charah shook his head. "They have to get permission from the Missouri
Compact, which is very cautious. These planetarians have rights too. Invasion of
their privacy...." He shook his head again.

"If we leave them here to die, we'll certainly be blamed," said Lyou Ye. "I'm
tempted to order Consortium Police in to evacuate them forcibly."

Geelie sipped her tea, looking at "Ma Kyaw." That's your sort of solution, she
thought. Direct, uncompromising, get it done, get it over with. And somebody
else can pick up the pieces, clean up the mess.

"Alden would certainly complain if that were done," she said, speaking up
reluctantly. "The media attention would be far worse. Violation of planetary
rights...they may even have some claim to the old city of Independence. The
Missouri Compact may legally have to wait for them all to die to mine that part
of its grant."

Lyou Ye grimaced again. "I suppose you're right."

Aung Charah set his cup down. "Media criticism won't hurt the Consortium if we
leave them here. The criticism we'd get if we violate their rights might affect
us adversely. Investors--"

Lyou Ye was a "careerman." She nodded, frowning, lips pursed.

Geelie looked around the room, so unlike the comfortably cluttered warren in
which Enos lived. In one wall, a niche with an arrangement of flowers,
signifying This too shall pass; the woven screen against another wall, with its
conventional pattern of crows over tiny fields curving up in the distance; the
parquet floor with its fine rich grain; the subtle, not quite random leaf
pattern of ivory and cream on the walls; the bronze samovar and the
fantastically contorted porcelain dragon teapot, the only ornate thing in the
room.

Enos was right, she thought. He would not know how to live in a place like this.

She thought of the world that was all he had ever known, a place of
snow-powdered rock and brooding, perpetual night, a red-eyed Sun blown in the
wind. A bare, harsh, bleak place without a future. For him, in the end, it could
only mean tending the old "folks" as one by one they died, and then the
penultimate generation, the generation of his parents, as they also grew old. At
last he would be left alone to struggle against the darkness and the cold until
he too lay dying, years of solitude and then a lonely death.

"There's no help for it," said Lyou Ye broodingly. She looked at Geelie. "You'll
have to seduce Enosclayborn."

Geelie swept snow from a rock onto a dustpan, dumped it into a bucket.

"Don't get it on your gloves," Enos said. "It's a lot corder then it looks."

"How much do you have to bring in each day?"

"Not much; I usually overdo it. I enjoy being outside. The air is clean and
cold, and I can see so far."

Geelie shivered, looking around the lands of eternal night. "Doesn't the shaded
sun bother you?"

"It's always been like that." He looked around at the dim, tumbled landscape,
emptying his bucket into the tub. "It's always been like this. Okay, that should
be enough. Take the other handle and we'll carry it in."

In the vestibule they put the tub of snow in the row of tubs, and shed their
parkas. Despite the slowly melting snow here, it seemed warm and steamy after
the sharp cold air outside. Still, remembering the bleak world without, Geelie
shuddered. She would have moved close to Enos even if she had not planned to do
so. He put an arm around her, not seeming particularly surprised.

"You'll soon get used to it yourself," he said tolerantly.

"Never," she said, meaning it, cuddling close, her arms around him. She lifted
her face for a kiss, nuzzling her breasts against his chest.

Enos put his palm on her cheek and pushed her gently aside. "Let's not start
something we can't finish," he said.

Geelie blinked up at him, uncomprehending. "In your room -- or the kittens' room
-- out in the passages--" Independence was a maze of warm, unused, and private
passages.

He cupped her face with both hands and looked fondly at her. "Thank you very
much, Geelie, for your offer. I will treasure it all the days of my life. But
your place is in Kinabatangan, and mine is here, and we should not start
something we cannot finish."

The pain of rejection was like a child's pain -- the heavy feeling in the chest,
the sharp unshed tears. Then came a more poignant grief --grief for all that she
could not give him, that he would not take from her.

"Enos!-Enos!" she said, and then her sobs stopped her speech.

"O Geelie, Geelie, " he said, his voice trembling. He held her close and stroked
her hair.

ALDEN CAME AND SAT beside her in the cozy common room of Independence, where she
sat watching Jackson Clayborn and Aina Alden play checkers. "You look a little
peaked," he said quietly.

She slid her chair back and spoke as quietly. "I suppose so."

"Enos will be back soon enough. He's lookin' through his things for something to
fix that pump in the hydro room. Enos'd druther fix things and tinker around
than play games like that." But he was looking inquiringly at her.

"Well, someone has to keep things going," she said wanly.

"Ye-ah." Alden drawled the word out, a skeptical affirmative. "Someone does,
though we got a few hands here can still tend to things." Abruptly he said, "By
your face and your attitudes, these last few days, I reckon you ain't persuaded
Enos to go with you?"

Geelie looked sharply at him. "No," she said shortly.

"I was afraid of that," he said, low. Startled, Geelie leaned toward him. "Did
you think I was fightin' you? No, I was hopin' you'd persuade him. God knows you
got persuasions none of us can offer. We can't offer him nothing. "

Passionately she whispered, "Then why won't he come with us? All he says is that
his place is here -- and after that he won't say anything! Why? "

Alden's response was slow in coming. "I suppose he can't say why because he
don't know how. Why he should feel his place is here, I don't know. My place is
here; I'm an old man. But he don't listen to me any more than he does to you."

He shook his head. "If he stays, what'll he have? All he'll have is
Independence, as long as he lives -- the man from the Missouri Compact explained
that. That's all. I guess," slowly, "for him, that's enough."

The kitten, Omega, jumped from Geelie's arms and began to investigate the room,
not having sense enough to stay away from Lyou Ye. She was "Miss Smooth" no
longer, stalking about the room and visibly trying to contain her anger.

"A flat refusal! I can't believe he refused you. Do you realize there've been
over seven thousand Colonies offering them a place to live -- over five thousand
offering to take the whole group. And we can't get even the young one to leave
Earth! What is wrong with him?"

"He says his place is there," said Geelie, nervously watching the kitten prowl.

"He's been brainwashed by those old people," Lyou Ye said.

"Not intentionally," Geelie said. "I discussed it with them, and they prefer to
stay, but they would be happy to see Enos go. They know there's no future for
him there."

"And for some uncommunicable reason, he thinks there's no future for him with
us," said Lyou Ye, more calmly. She shook her head, ran her hands through her
mass of auburn hair. "I suppose he's been unconsciously brainwashed from birth,
knowing that he was the last one, that he was going to take care of them and die
alone, and he's accepted that. It won't be easy to break that kind of life-long
conditioning. Well." She shook Omega away from her ankle and fumed to Geelie.

"Your tour as Observer is almost up. Would it be worthwhile to extend it and
give you more time to work on him?"

Geelie put her hand to her chest. "No," she said, and cleared her throat. "No,
it would not be worthwhile. I...can do nothing with him."

"We'll send somebody else, but I don't have much hope. These cold-hearted euros
can be so inscrutable." Lyou Ye sat and examined Geelie. "You're right. It's
time we got you away from Earth," she said gently.

The weather in Kinabatangan was clear and calm when Geelie resumed from Earth.
She pulled herself to the bubble at the axis and looked down at the tiny,
idyllic fields and villages below, past the terraces climbing the domed end of
the vast cylinder. She could have walked down the stairs, but took instead the
elevator. At Deck level she was met by her cousins and siblings, the younger of
whom rushed her and engulfed her in a mass hug, all laughing and babbling at
once, a torrent of brown faces.

Half-floating in a golden mist of warmth, brilliant sunshine from the
Chandelier, and love, Geelie let them lead her between the tiny fields and over
the little bridges. She breathed deep of her ancient home, air redolent of the
cycle of birth and death. They came presently to her small house in the edges of
Lahad Datu. Frangipani grew by its door and squirrels ran nervously across its
roof. A flight of harsh black crows pounded heavily up and away from the yard,
where the tables were.

They'd spread a feast for her, and she ate with them and listened while they
told her of the minute but important changes that had occurred in her absence.
As she floated in this supporting bubble of light and warmth, Kinabatangan came
back to her. All was as if she had never been away.

Her lover had found another, in the easy way of Kinabatangan, and that night
Geelie slept alone. And in sleep she remembered again the bleak black plains of
righted Earth, and the man who inhabited them, who had chosen to wander alone
forever under a frozen Sun.

She awoke and had difficulty remembering whether she was in Kinabatangan,
dreaming of Independence, the half-seen land of Missouri stretching stark around
it -- or in Tigerclaw dreaming of Kinabatangan. She looked around the tiny room
with its paper walls, its mats, the scent of frangipani in the air -- she was in
Kinabatangan, in her own little house, on her own mattress on the floor, and it
was over. All over.

Omega yawned, a tiny pink cavern floored with a delicately rough pink tongue.
The kitten was curled on the other pillow. Geelie reached for her.

"Oh! You little devil," she cried, flinging the kitten aside.

Startled, Omega had bitten her hand, and now stood in the middle of the room,
looking at her with slit eyes.

Furious, Geelie leaped from her bed. But she could not stand, all the strength
went out of her legs and she sank to the floor, sobbing. "Omega, Omega, I'm
sorry, s-sorry." Grief as great as for a planet tore at her.

Omega crept cautiously over and sat staring up at her, watching Geelie weep.