Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 1 Num 3
Novel
1932-0930-03
978-1932-0930-01
10.1125/Baen.1932093003
Baen Books
Eric Flint

Science Fiction
2006 by Eric Flint
2006-10-01
US English (en-us)

Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 1 Num 3

by
Eric Flint

Table of Contents

Jim Baen's Universe
Vol 1 Num 3: October 2006

Credits, Issue 3

Written by Jim Baen's Universe! Staff

Jim Baen's Universe, Volume 1 Number 3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this magazine are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Jim Baen's Universe

A Baen Publishing Enterprises Publication
Jim Baen's Universe
P. O. Box 7488
Moore, OK 73153-1488

ISSN: 1932-0930

"All the Things You Are " Copyright © 2006 by Mike Resnick
"The Old Woman In the Young Woman" Copyright © 2006 by Gene Wolfe
"Every Hole is Outlined" Copyright © 2006 by John Barnes
"A Time to Kill" Copyright © 2006 by S. Andrew Swann
"The Man Who Wasn't There" Copyright © 2006 by Gregory Benford
"Little Sips" Copyright © 2006 by Barbara J. Ferrenz
"Great Minds" Copyright © 2006 by Edward M. Lerner
"The Power of Illusion" Copyright © 2006 by Christopher Anvil
"Protection Money" Copyright © 2006 by Wen Spencer
"Baby Girl" Copyright © 2006 by Jon Skovron
"Femme Fatale" Copyright © 2006 by Jason Wittman
"Gnome Improvement" Copyright © 2006 by Rebecca Lickiss
"A Hire Power" Copyright © 2006 by J. Simon
"Travails With Momma, Episode 3" Copyright © 2006 by John Ringo
"Fish Story, Episode 3" Copyright © 2006 by Dave Freer, Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
"The Men in the Mirror" Copyright © 2006 by Steven Ray
"Songbird" Copyright © 2006 by Jeremiah Sturgill
"Devil May Care" Copyright © 2006 by Jason Kahn
"Doing a Slow Turn" Copyright © 2006 by David Brin
"Terraforming: A Bumpy Road Ahead" Copyright © 2006 by B. B. Kristopher
"A Matter of Fact" by Rudyard Kipling was first published in 1892
First electronic publication: October 2006

STORIES

All the Things You Are

Written by Mike Resnick
Illustrated by Pamelina H.

You wouldn't think they'd be so dumb. Here they were, in the biggest spaceport in the country, with hundreds of holo cameras covering every inch of the place, and these three jerks actually think they're going to get away with robbing the currency exchange.

Okay, so they got a couple of ceramic pistols past our security devices and reassembled them in the men's room, and all right, another one managed to sneak a couple of steak knives out of one of the restaurants, but hell, did they think we were just going to sit on our hands and let them waltz out with their loot?

I hadn't seen much action during my four years in the space service, and after all those months of intensive training I'd almost been hoping for something like this. I'd been at OceanPort for three weeks, and was wondering why they even bothered with a live Security team, since their automated systems were so efficient that they discouraged anything worse than spitting on the floor.

Well, now I knew.

The men with the pistols were holding the crowd at bay, and the guy with the knife had grabbed a girl—not a woman, but a kid about twelve years old—and was holding the knife at her throat.

"Don't move on them," said the voice in my ear. "We've got to get the girl away from them unharmed, and we can't have them shooting into the crowd."

That was Captain Symmes. He was just spouting the routine and stating the platitudes: they've been identified, we can trace them wherever they go, they're dead men walking, so don't endanger any bystanders. If we don't nail them here, we'll nail them somewhere up the road. They have to eat, they have to sleep; we don't. Whatever they think they're going to escape in, we'll sugar their gas, rupture their jets, fuck with their nuclear pile. (I kept waiting for him to say we'd also put tacks in their track shoes, but he didn't.)

"Show yourselves, but don't approach him," said Symmes' voice. "If they're going to take a shot at someone, better us than the civilians."

Well, it was better us if we remembered to put on our bulletproof longjohns. Most of us had, and the ones who hadn't were too frightened to say so. An enraged Captain Symmes could be one hell of a lot more formidable than a ceramic bullet from a homemade pistol.

I stepped out from my station, and found myself about fifty yards from the trio. The crowd parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses, and they slowly made their way to the door. Then something caught my eye. It was a well-dressed middle-aged man, not fat or skinny but not especially well-built. While everyone else had moved away, he had simply turned his back and taken just a step or two.

Damn! I thought. It's too bad you're not one of us. You could just about reach the son of a bitch with the knife.

And even as the thought crossed my mind, the man spun around, chopped down on the knife-holder's arm, and sent the weapon clattering to the floor. The little girl broke and ran toward the crowd, but I was watching the man who'd freed her. He didn't have any weapons, and he sure didn't handle his body like an athlete, but he was charging the two guys with the guns.

They turned and fired their weapons. He went down on one knee, his chest a bloody mess, then launched himself at the nearer one's legs. The poor bastard never had a chance; he picked up four more bullets for his trouble.

Of course, the bad guys never had a chance, either. The second they concentrated on him, we all pulled our weapons and began firing—bullets, lasers, long-range tasers, you name it. All three were dead before they hit the floor.

I could see that Connie Neff was running over to the girl to make sure she was okay, so I raced up to the guy who'd taken all the bullets. He was in a bad way, but he was still breathing. Someone else had called for an ambulance. It arrived within two minutes, and they loaded him onto an airsled, shoved it in the back, and took off for Miami. I decided to ride with him. I mean, hell, he'd risked his life, probably lost it, to save that little girl. Someone who wasn't a doctor ought to be there if he woke up.

OceanPort is eight miles off the Miami Coast, and the ambulance shuttle got us to the hospital in under a minute, though it took another forty seconds to set it down gently so as not to do any further damage to the patient.

I'd pulled his wallet and ID out and studied them. His name was Myron Seymour, he was forty-eight years old and—as far as I could tell—retired. Still had the serial number of the chip the military had embedded in him when he enlisted. The rest was equally unexceptional: normal height, normal weight, normal this, normal that.

He didn't look much like a hero, but then, I'd never seen a real bonafide hero before, so I couldn't actually say what they looked like.

"Good God," said an orderly who'd come out to the ship to help move Seymour to the emergency room. "Him again!"

"He's been here before?" I asked, surprised.

"Three times, maybe four," was the reply. "I'll swear the son of a bitch is trying to get himself killed."

I was still puzzling over that remark when Seymour went into surgery. He came out, heavily sedated and in grave condition, three hours later.

"Is he going to make it?" I asked the same orderly, who was guiding the airsled into a recovery room.

"Not a chance," he said.

"How much time as he got?"

He shrugged. "A day at the outside, probably less. Once we hook him up to all the machines we'll have a better idea."

"Any chance he'll be able to talk?" I asked. "Or at least understand me if I talk to him?"

"You never know."

"Mind if I stick around?"

He smiled. "You're walking around with a badge, three lethal weapons that I can see, and probably a couple of more I can't see. Who am I to tell you you can't stay?"

I grabbed a sandwich in the hospital's restaurant, called in to OceanPort to make sure I wasn't needed right away, then went up to the recovery room. Each of the patients was partitioned off from the others, and it took me a couple of minutes to find Seymour. He was lying there, a dozen machines monitoring all his vital functions, five tubes dripping fluids of various colors and consistencies into arms, an oxygen tube up his nostrils, bandages everywhere, and hints of blood starting to seep through the dressings.

I figured it was a waste of time, that he was never going to wake up again, but I stuck around for another hour, just to pay my respects to the man who'd saved a little girl's life. Then, as I was about to leave, his eyelids flickered and opened. His lips moved, but I couldn't hear him, so I pulled my chair over to the bed.

"Welcome back," I said gently.

"Is she here?" he whispered.

"The girl you saved?" I said. "No, she's fine. She's with her parents."

"No, not her," he said. He could barely move his head, but he tried to look around the room. "She's got to be here this time!"

"Who's got to be here?" I asked. "Who are you talking about?"

"Where is she?" he rasped. "This time I'm dying. I can tell."

"You're going to be fine," I lied.

"Not unless she gets here pretty damned soon." He tried to sit up, but was too weak and sprawled back on the bed. "Is the door unlocked?"

"There isn't any door," I said. "You're in the recovery ward."

He looked genuinely puzzled. "Then where is she?"

"Whoever it is, she probably doesn't know you've been wounded," I said.

"She knows," he said with absolute certainty.

"Was she at the spaceport?"

He shook his head weakly. "She wasn't even on the planet," he said.

"You're sure you don't want me to ask at the desk?"

"You can't. She doesn't have a name."

"Everyone's got a name."

He uttered a sigh of resignation. "If you say so."

I was starting to feel sorry I'd stuck around. I wasn't bringing him any comfort, and his answers weren't making any sense.

"Can you tell me anything about her?" I asked, making one more attempt to be helpful before I packed it in and went home.

I thought he was going to answer, he certainly looked like he was trying to say something, but then he passed out. A couple of minutes later all the machines he was hooked up to started going haywire, and a couple of young doctors raced into the room.

"Is he dead?" I asked.

"Out!" ordered one of the doctors.

They bent over the bed, going to work on him, and I figured I'd only be in the way if I stayed there, so I walked out into the corridor. Before long they emerged from the room.

"Is he dead?" I asked again.

"Yeah," answered one of them. "Were you a friend of his?"

I shook my head. "No. I just brought him here from the spaceport."

The doctors walked down the corridor, going to wherever doctors go when they've lost a patient, and a couple of orderlies showed up with an airsled. One of them was the one I'd spoken to before.

"I told you he wouldn't last a day," he said. "Why do these guys think they can charge into a stream of bullets or lasers and come away in one piece?"

"These guys?" I repeated.

"Yeah. This is the second one this month. There was this guy, maybe three weeks back. He stumbles upon a bank robbery, and instead of calling the cops he just lowers his head and charges these four armed guys." He exhaled deeply and shook his head. "Poor bastard never got within twenty yards of them."

"Was he D.O.A.?" I asked.

"Close to it," replied the orderly. "He was sure someone was coming to be with him, and was desperate to make sure everyone at Admissions knew where to send her."

"Her?"

"I think it was a her." He shrugged. "I could be wrong. He wasn't making much sense. I thought he couldn't remember his name for a couple of minutes. Turns out he was right and I was wrong. Daniel Daniels. Funny name." His companion started shifting his weight uneasily. "If you don't have any more questions, we've got to schlep this guy down to the basement for an autopsy. We were on our break, but we're a little short-handed this week."

I stepped aside to let them go into the room, and decided it was time to return to the spaceport. But just for the hell of it, I stopped by Admissions before I left and asked if anyone had inquired about Seymour.

No one had.

* * *

When I got back to my office, I was still curious, so I had the computer hunt up with little there was on Seymour and on Daniel Daniels. Seymour was easy; born and raised in Miami, went to college here, spent nine years in the space service, honorably discharged after getting shot all to hell in a firefight on Kobernykov II, informally known as Nikita. Came back home, got a real estate license, and was selling beachfront property until two years ago, when he suddenly seemed determined to prove he was either a hero or bulletproof or both. Since then he'd tried to throw his life away three different times; the first two times the hospital made him keep it, this time they didn't.

Daniels was harder. There were actually four Daniel Daniels living in Miami at the start of the year. You'd think their parents would have had a little more creativity. Two were still around. One had died of relatively natural causes at the age of ninety-three. And then there was the one the orderly had told me about.

He was thirty-three years old. Dropped out of school at sixteen, signed a couple of minor-league soccer contracts, got cut both times, joined the space service when he was twenty, served seven years, got out on a medical discharge, and had been going from one menial job to another ever since.

I checked the medical discharge. He got it after catching some serious flak on Nikita. He recovered physically, but he'd been seeing a shrink for depression for four years before the night he tried to take on a gang of teenaged hoods and got turned into an animated cinder for his trouble. It took them a year to put him back together with a brand-new epidermis—and damned if he didn't go out and do something equally suicidal a month later. Even the police weren't sure what happened—they found him after all the shooting was over—but he was filled with so much lead of so many different calibers that he had to have taken on at least six armed men.

And that was it: two unexceptional men who had nothing in common but the town they lived in and the planet they'd served on, each willingly faced certain death for no apparent reason—and then, when they were saved, went right out and faced it again.

I was still pondering it when Captain Symmes called me into his office to give him my report. I told him what I'd observed, which matched all the other reports, and then figured I was done.

"Just a minute," he said as I was turning to leave.

"Sir?" I said.

"You accompanied him to the hospital. Why?"

"I was hoping he might be able to tell me why he willingly put himself at such risk," I answered. "I thought maybe he knew something about the men we killed."

"And did he?"

I shook my head. "We'll never know. He only regained consciousness for perhaps a minute after surgery, and then he died."

"I wonder what the hell made him do it?" mused Captain Symmes.

"I wondered, too," I said. "So I ran computer checks on him and on Daniels . . ."

"Daniels?" he said sharply. "Who's Daniels?"

"Another man who threw his life away the same way," I said. "But the only things they had in common were that they lived here and they both saw action on Kobernykov II."

"Kobernykov II," he repeated. "Is that the one they call Nikita?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, that's interesting," said Captain Symmes.

"What is, sir?" I asked.

"About two years ago I was running security at Marsport, and the same kind of thing happened. Four men were robbing one of the restaurants there, and this guy, he was just waiting for his flight to Titan, decided to take them out single-handed. They shot him before he got close to them. We nailed all four of them before they could harm anyone else, but the man had taken too many bullets and energy pulses. He died a few hours later." Captain Symmes paused and frowned. "I had to fill out a report, and that meant I had to find out who was killed. The reason I'm mentioning it at all is because he spent some time on Nikita."

"Medical discharge?"

"Yes," he answered. "Curious, isn't it?"

"Very," I said. "Do you know if that was the first time he'd risked his life like that?"

"No, I don't," said Captain Symmes. "I assume you have a reason for asking?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

"Give me a minute and I'll check the record. Like I said, it was two years ago."

He activated his computer, instructed it to pull up the file in question, then told it to run a biographical search on the dead man. Eleven seconds later it had the answer.

Creighton Mortenson Jr. had willingly faced what seemed like certain death on four separate occasions. Only after he'd miraculously survived the first three did Fate finally deliver on its promise at MarsPort.

"Captain," I said, "what would you say if I told you that Seymour and Daniels had also tried to throw their lives away prior to actually succeeding at it?"

"I'd say that something very interesting must have happened to them on Nikita," he said, and instructed his computer to produce a readout of Kobernykov II. He studied it for a moment, then shrugged. "It's about three-quarters the size of Earth, lighter gravity, a bit less oxygen but breathable. During the war with the Patruka Alliance we found they were using Nikita as an ammunition dump, we landed a small party, we blew the ammo dump, each side suffered serious casualties. The few survivors were scattered all the hell over; we found them over a period of maybe three weeks, and eventually they rejoined their main units. There's some plant and animal life there, but no humans and no Patrukans."

"I wonder what the hell went on there," I said. "Most men who get shot up in wartime don't ever want to experience it again—and here were three men who went out of their way to walk into enemy fire or its equivalent again."

"Have your computer hunt up the survivors and ask," he said.

When I went back to my office I filed my report, then tried to find the survivors of Nikita, as Captain Symmes had suggested. The Patrukan War was over, so all the documents and records were declassified, but it didn't help much. We'd sent in a covert team of thirty men and women. It was an exceptionally bloody action. Twenty-five died on Nikita, and the other five—which included Seymour, Daniels and Mortenson—were wounded pretty badly. Evidently they'd become separated, and each managed to survive on his own until a rescue mission arrived a few weeks later.

I tried to track down the other two survivors. They'd both courted Death until it inevitably caught up with them.

There was nothing in any of their histories to indicate that they were either exceptionally brave or exceptionally foolish. Except for Daniels' depression, none of them was being treated for any emotional or psychiatric problems. As far as I could tell, none of them kept in touch with any of the others after they were discharged from the service.

And within six years of the firefight on Nikita, every one of them was dead, having placed themselves in what could only be termed suicidal situations until even the best surgeons and hospitals could no longer keep them alive.

I reported my findings to Captain Symmes the next day. I could tell he was as fascinated as I was.

"What do you suppose could have made them throw their lives away?" he mused. "And if they were so damned set on dying, why didn't they just put a gun to their heads?"

"There's one way to find out, sir," I said.

He shook his head. "I can't send you to Nikita," he said. "We're OceanPort security, and Nikita is more than a thousand light years from here."

"But if there's something on the planet that caused this behavior . . ."

"Forget it. If there was anything in the food or water or air, the space service or the navy would have found it."

But I couldn't forget it. How do you forget a bunch of totally dissimilar people with one brief shared experience who suddenly act in the same, totally self-destructive manner?

Each evening when I got off work I'd go back to my quarters and try to find out more about the planet and the survivors. The problem is that there simply wasn't much to find. They'd been there for three weeks, maybe four at the outside, there were only five of them, the planet had been deserted by the Patruka Alliance after the battle, and no one had been back since.

And then I thought of the one line of inquiry I hadn't considered before. We were no longer at war, so I wrote a couple of Patrukan historians and asked them if they could supply any accounts, not of the action on Nikita, but on the whereabouts of the survivors.

It took a week before I got an answer, but finally one of them, a being called Myxophtyl—at least that's the way my computer translated his name—informed me that of the four survivors, two had died of natural causes, and two had died heroically, one saving a child who had wandered into the enclosure of a herd of vicious carnivores at a local zoo, the other trying to protect a Mollute who somehow offended a crowd of Patrukans that had instantly turned into an ugly and bloodthirsty mob.

"It didn't just affect humans, sir," I reported to Captain Symmes the day after I heard from the historian. "Whatever's on that planet affected everyone."

"I know that look," he said. "I'm as interested as you are, but as I told you before, I don't have the authority to send you there."

"I've got vacation time stored up," I said.

He checked his computer. "Your vacation's not for five months."

"Then I'll take a leave of absence."

"Think it through," he said. "Nothing on that planet harmed anyone. Do you really want to go there, bore yourself to tears for a week or two, come home, and then one day decide to prove that you're invulnerable to bullets and lasers?"

"No," I admitted. "No, I suppose I don't."

I thought it was the truth when I said it, but with each day I became more obsessed with what could have turned otherwise normal men into weapon-charging suicides. And in the back of my mind I kept coming back to Captain Symmes' question: if they really wanted to die, why not just put a gun to their heads, or take an overdose? And then I remembered Myron Seymour lying on his bed in the recovery room. He didn't want to die; he wanted to see this woman he was sure would somehow know he was in the hospital. Okay, he may have been fantasizing about the woman, but he wasn't fantasizing about wanting to live.

I'd never thought of myself as obsessive, but as the next three weeks sped by I found myself obsessing over the mystery of what happened on Nikita, and finally I couldn't stand it any longer. I told Captain Symmes that I was putting in for a one-month leave of absence, and that if I didn't get it I was fully prepared to quit my job.

"Don't be foolish," he said. "That's an awfully big step to take, just to chase a fantasy. Besides, I already reported your findings to the navy and the space service. I'm sure they'll look into it."

"I'm sure they will, too," I said. "Just not necessarily in our lifetimes."

"What are you talking about?"

"We've got ten or twelve minor wars going on right now," I said. "They've got more important things to do than examine a planet that nobody's set foot on in six years."

"I gave them all the details," said Captain Symmes. "If they think it's important, they'll get out there pretty damned fast."

"And if they find whatever it is that caused this behavior, they'll make it Top Secret and won't declassify it for a century," I shot back. "I want to know what happened."

"I'm not going to talk you out of this, am I?" he said after a long pause.

"No, sir, you're not."

"All right. You've got a month, starting tomorrow." He handed me a small cube. "There are no direct flights. This'll get you free passage on any ship owned by Earth or its allies."

"Thank you, sir," I said.

"The codes will vanish in exactly thirty days, so don't stay any longer than that unless you're prepared to pay your passage back."

"I appreciate this, sir."

"You're a good security man," he said uncomfortably. (Praising people always made him uncomfortable.) "I don't want to lose you."

"You won't," I promised him. "I'll be back in less than a month with the answers to what happened."

"Good health," he said.

"Not good luck?"

"I think you might be luckier if you never find what you're looking for," said Captain Symmes seriously.

* * *

The non-traveler tends to think that between FTL speeds and wormholes you can get anywhere in the galaxy in a day's time, but of course it isn't so. Wormholes go where they want to go, not where we want them to, and even when you're traveling at multiples of light speed it's still a big galaxy. It took me a day to get to Antares III, where I changed ships and proceeded to Buckingham IV. I laid over for a day until I could transfer to a ship that took me to Mickeleen, and from there I had to charter a private ship for the last leg of the journey.

"I want you to burn this location into your mind," said the pilot when the small ship touched down on Nikita. "I'll be here in exactly ten days. If you're not at this spot, I have neither the time nor the inclination to embark on a one-man planetary search, which means you'll be stranded here, probably for the rest of what remains of your life. You got that?"

"Got it," I said.

"You sure you have enough supplies?" he asked, looking at my pack.

"Food and water for twelve days, just to be on the safe side."

"If you're not here ten days from now, there won't be anything safe about it," he said. "It could be decades before another ship touches down here."

"I'll be here," I assured him.

"You'd better be," he said.

Then the hatch closed and he was gone, and I was alone, the first human to set foot on Nikita in six years.

I felt good. Hell, at 82% of Earth's gravity, everybody feels good. This was exactly the kind of world they used for recuperating heart patients. The oxygen content was a little light, but the gravity more than made up for it.

The world itself seemed pleasant enough. There was a brownish, grasslike ground cover in most places, a few clusters of oddly shaped trees here and there, and a type G sun that provided plenty of daylight without making Nikita uncomfortably hot. I saw a few small, rodentlike animals peeking at me from behind shrubs and trees, but when I turned to get a better look they ducked into their burrows.

I knew there was water on the planet. There were a pair of freshwater oceans, and a quartet of snow-topped mountain ranges that produced rivers with their runoff. My research told me that it smelled bad and tasted worse, but that it was drinkable. I had no idea if there were any fish, but I suspected there were. One thing we've learned since first reaching the stars is that life not only takes the strangest forms, but sprouts up in the oddest places.

According to my charts, I was about four miles from the site of the conflict, which is to say, the ammunition dump. I was retracing the steps of our team. They'd actually started on the far side of the planet, maybe three thousand miles away, and taken a high-speed aircar here under cover of night, but they'd gone the last few miles on foot.

I looked for signs of a camp, but then realized that a covert attack team wouldn't make a camp, but would just continue to their target before they were spotted.

The ground was level, not overgrown at all, and I just kept walking until I came to it. It wasn't hard to spot. There was a raw crater close to five hundred yards in circumference and maybe forty feet deep, the remains of the ammo dump. Evidently the rescue ships on both sides couldn't handle both the living and the dead; there were skeletons of both men and Patrukans littering the place, picked clean by small animals and even smaller insects. The Patrukans' bones had a blue-green tint to them; I never did find out why.

I walked the area. It must have been one hell of a battle. There was absolutely no place to hide, nothing to duck behind. A night attack shouldn't have made any difference: if the Patrukans had FTL ships and pulse cannons, they sure as hell had all kinds of vision aids that could turn night into day. I remember once, when I was a kid, standing at the top of Cemetery Ridge and wondering how Pickett ever got his men to charge up the long, barren slope where they were just sitting ducks; I felt the same way looking at the site on Nikita.

The other thing I wondered about was how surviving this kind of battle could give anyone a taste for charging men with loaded weapons or otherwise risking their lives. They should have been so grateful they lived through it that all they wanted to do was celebrate each day they were still alive.

Those were my first impressions. Then I began analyzing the site as a soldier. You wouldn't want to get too close to the dump, because you didn't know what was in it or how big an explosion it would make. And you didn't want any survivors picking your team off, so you'd have tried to surround the place so you could shoot any Patrukan who lived through it. The crater was more than a quarter of a mile across, so you'd want your men stationed perhaps a mile and a half across from each other, or given the accuracy of their weapons, maybe even farther. Say, two miles or a bit more.

I studied the area again. Okay, from a minimum of a one-mile radius, and a distance of more than a quarter mile from each other along the circumference, I saw how they could have gotten separated. If you're wounded, your first inclination is to retreat to safety, not to stay within range and seek out your teammates. Then, once you felt you were safe, you couldn't be sure all the enemy were dead, and your wounds were starting to stiffen up or worse, and the last thing you'd do is go looking for the other survivors.

So each of the five men was essentially on his own until the rescue team arrived, and it hadn't arrived for another week. Did they have a week's supply of food and water? If not, could they live off the land? Did they have any medication at all? How badly were they wounded, and how had they managed to survive? I didn't know, but I had ten days to figure it out.

Then I reminded myself that that was just the first part, the easier part, of the problem, and that I had a little less than ten days to figure everything out.

The sun started dropping lower in the sky—the planet had a nineteen-hour day—and I decided that I'd better make camp while I could still see. I pulled my stationary bubble out of my pack, uttered the code words that activated it, waited a few seconds for it to become a cube seven feet on a side, and tossed my pack into it after removing some rations. I ordered the door to shut, then picked up a few branches, gathered them into a pile, and set fire to them with my laser pistol. I tossed three H-rations into the flames. They'd roll out of the fire when they were properly cooked, and I decided to eat them without any water or beer, as I sure as hell didn't want to run out of drinkables in seven or eight days and have to partake of the nearby river.

I looked out across the barren plain, wondering why sentient life hadn't taken hold here as it had on so many hundreds of similar worlds. Nature always seemed to find a reason to endow one or two species with brainpower, no matter how weird or unlikely they looked. But there had been no reports of any sentience on Nikita. In fact, though the Patrukans mentioned larger animals, the human attack party hadn't seen anything bigger than the little rodentlike creatures I'd seen, but that made sense: no carnivore is willing to risk getting injured unless the odds are greatly in his favor, because an injured carnivore will usually die of hunger before he heals enough to hunt again. So when they saw the aircar, or even the men themselves, any large predator would have steered clear of them.

Or did it make sense? There were five badly wounded men scattered around the landscape, hardly in any condition to defend themselves, and yet they went unmolested until the rescue ship arrived. That implied that the Patrukans were wrong and there weren't any large carnivores, but I couldn't buy it, because life gets bigger on a low-gravity world, not smaller.

I decided it could wait for tomorrow. What lived on Nikita didn't have anything to do with what I'd come here to learn, and I certainly wasn't going to go looking for large carnivores in the dark.

My attention was taken by each of the H-rations crying "Done!", one after the other, and rolling up to my feet, where each in turn popped open.

I started on the Ersatz Stroganoff, finished it off, then attacked the Mock Parmesan. By the time I was done I was too full to eat the third one, and ordered it to close itself again.

"I will be safe for sixteen Standard hours," it announced. "After that I will self-destruct so that no one becomes ill from my contents. The self-destruction will be silent and will not adversely effect any men, even if one is holding me at the time."

It fell silent and clamped shut.

I looked up and saw Nikita's three moons, all of them quite small, racing across the sky. I'd been stationed on Earth for a couple of years, and I'd gotten used to our own large moon making its stately way across the sky. I'd forgotten how fast the smaller moons can travel.

I dictated the day's experiences, findings and thoughts into my computer. Night fell while I was doing so, and when I was finished I decided to take a little walk to work off my dinner. I left the fire burning so I wouldn't stray too far and could easily find my way back. then headed off to my left.

When I'd gone half a mile I decided I was far enough from my makeshift camp, and began walking in a large circle around the fire. I'd circled it once, and was circling it a second time when it went out, and I figured I'd better go back and get a few more branches to start it up again. I'd covered about half the distance and was passing a thick stand of trees when I heard a hideous alien roar behind me.

I turned to face whatever it was, but something was already leaping through the air at me. The moons were on the far side of Nikita, and I could barely see its outline. I ducked and turned, and the bulk of its body sent me flying through the air. I landed about six feet away, felt my leg give way and heard the bone snap. I rolled over once and reached for my laser pistol, but it was too quick. I still couldn't make it out, but it didn't seem to share that problem. Claws raked deep into my arm and the pistol fell from my hand. Then it was on top of me before I could even reach for my sonic weapon. Teeth raked my face and neck. I reached out, seemed to find a throat, and did my damnedest to hold it at bay, but it was a losing battle. The creature was on top of me, and I could tell it weighed at least as much as I did. It kept pressing forward, and my blood-soaked right arm was starting to go numb. I brought my unbroken leg up hard, hoping it was a male and that it had testicles, but it didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever.

I could feel hot breath in my eyes and on my cheek, and I knew I had about four seconds left before it overpowered me—and then, suddenly, it was yelping in pain and fear, and it wasn't atop me any more.

I listened for the snarling of something even bigger—something that would turn its attention to me next—but whatever was attacking my attacker was absolutely silent.

Then there was a high-pitched screech, and I could hear the creature race off. Then my momentary savior turned to me, just as one of the moons came up over the horizon. Blood was streaming down into my eyes from a gash on my forehead, and the moon wasn't very big or very bright, but I could see something approaching me, could hear the rustle of its feet across the grass.

I finally got my good hand on my sonic pistol and held it unsteadily in front of me.

"Stay back!" I mumbled.

I fired a shot, but even in my semi-conscious state I could tell it was well off target. I tried to steady my hand and fire again, but then everything went black. My last thought was: What a stupid way to die.

* * *

Except that I didn't die. I don't know how long I was unconscious—maybe nine or ten hours, because the sun was high in the sky when I woke up.

"Don't try to stand," said a lilting female voice in perfect, unaccented Terran. "I had to splint your leg."

I rubbed some crusted blood from my eyelashes, and noticed that my right arm was heavily bandaged. A damp cloth began dabbing at my eyes, and I was able to focus on the person who was holding it.

She was a pretty young woman, in her early twenties, certainly under thirty, with a slender body, long red-brown hair, high cheekbones, and light blue, almost colorless, eyes. She looked familiar, but I knew I'd never seen her before.

"Who are you?" I asked weakly.

"My name is Rebecca," she said with a smile. "And you are Gregory Donovan."

"I thought I left my ID in my bubble."

"You did."

"Then you opened it," I said, frowning. "It's only supposed to open to my voice command."

"I haven't opened it," she said. "Now try to rest."

I was about to argue with her, for she was obviously lying, but suddenly all my energy vanished and I lost consciousness again.

* * *

It was very late afternoon when I awoke the next time. Rebecca was sitting on the ground, staring at me. I got to take another look at her, and decided that she was more than pretty—she was gorgeous. I couldn't find a single feature I'd improve.

She was dressed in an immaculate white blouse and khaki slacks that fit her like a glove, which seemed as unlikely as being cared for by a beautiful Terran-speaking girl on a planet that supposedly had no sentient life forms.

"Welcome back," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Rested," I said. "What kind of shape am I in?"

"Your arm is badly infected, your leg is broken in three places, and you have some serious wounds around your face and neck."

"What the hell happened?" I asked.

"You were attacked by a . . . the closest I can translate it into Terran would be a Nightstalker. It's the largest carnivore on Nikita."

"It can't be," I said. "Something bigger drove it off."

"Trust me, Gregory," said Rebecca. "The Nightstalker is Nikita's largest carnivore."

I was too weak to argue, and it didn't make any difference anyway. Something had driven the Nightstalker off, and I didn't much care if it was a bigger carnivore or an enraged microbe.

"How long have you been here, Rebecca?" I asked.

"With you?" she said. "Since last night."

"No, I mean on Nikita."

"All my life."

I frowned. "My computer didn't say anything about a human colony here."

"There isn't one."

"You mean you were stranded here as a child?" I asked. "Were your parents with you?"

"My parents lived here," she said.

"Are they still alive?" I said. "I've got a ship picking me up in nine days . . ."

"No, they aren't alive."

"I'm sorry. Well, at least the ship can take you and me off the planet."

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

I thought about it for a moment. "Not really. I'd like something to drink, though."

"All right," she said. "The river's just a quarter mile away. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"They say the water's pretty awful. I've got water and some electrolyte mixtures in my bubble."

"If you prefer," she said.

"See?" I said accusingly. "I knew you'd been in my bubble."

"I told you: I haven't entered it."

"If you're telling the truth, then you won't be able to get into it now. It's programmed only to respond to my voice pattern uttering the proper code words."

"I will get them and be right back," she said.

And sure enough, she was back just a minute or two later carrying three containers. I chose the one that would give me the quickest energy boost and tried not to think about how she got the bubble to let her in.

"I think you should eat in another hour, Gregory," she said. "You need strength to fight off the infection. I'll go through your supplies in a few minutes and see what you have." She flashed me a smile. "I'm a very good cook. Maybe I can figure out how to combine your H-rations to make them taste like duck in orange sauce."

"Why did you say that?" I asked.

"It's your favorite, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," I replied. "How did you know?"

"You just look like a duck in orange sauce man to me."

"What the hell is going on here?" I demanded. "You know my name, you know my favorite food, you can get a voice-coded bubble to open to you, you know how to splint a leg and patch me up, and you speak without an accent."

"Why are you complaining?" she asked. "Would you rather I had left you broken and bleeding on the ground? Did you want me to bring you water that you find all-but-undrinkable? Should I find H-rations that you hate?"

"No, of course not," I said. "But you're not answering my questions."

"Yes, I am."

"Here's another," I said. "What the hell are you doing here in the first place? It's a big planet. How did you happen to find me just in time to save my life?"

"Serendipity," said Rebecca.

"Serendipity, hell," I said. "And while I'm asking questions, what saved me last night?"

"I did."

"You patched me up," I said. "What saved me? What drove the Nightstalker off?"

"Is it important?" asked Rebecca. "You're alive. That's what matters."

"It's important to me," I said. "I don't like being lied to."

"I haven't lied to you, Gregory," she said. "Now be quiet and let me check the wounds on your arm and neck."

She walked over and knelt down next to me. There was a sweet smell about her, almost a perfume, that seemed to suit her exactly. She examined the gashes on my neck, and although they were badly swollen and clearly infected, her cool, sure fingers didn't hurt at all.

"It's still seeping," she said, getting to her feet. "I've treated your dressings with native herbs and leaves that promote healing. I'll change them after dinner."

"What kind of dressing are you using, and where did you get it out here in the middle of nowhere?"

She pointed to a satchel a few feet away. "I'm always prepared."

A wave of dizziness spread over me, and I spent the next couple of minutes trying not to fall over on my side. I don't remember what happened next, but when my head cleared she was sitting next to me, steadying me with her body. It felt good, and I pretended I was still dizzy so she wouldn't move away. I think she knew it, but she stayed there anyway.

"How long before I can walk?" I asked at last.

"I'll make you some crutches in three or four days," she said. "After all, you'll need some practice if you're to get to your contact point in time for the ship that's picking you up."

"So I'm stuck here for three days, maybe four," I said unhappily.

"I'm sorry," she said sympathetically. "I'll try to make you as comfortable as possible, but you're very weak and your temperature is dangerously high. I'm afraid you're not going to be able to see much of the planet."

"What makes you think I'm here to explore Nikita?" I asked sharply.

"Why else would you have come?" replied Rebecca. "I'll help you into your bubble tonight. You'll have to stay there; you're too weak to move any farther than that."

"I know," I admitted with a sigh. "It's going to be a boring few days. I wish to hell I'd brought some disks to read."

"We can discuss our favorite books," she offered. "It will make the time pass more pleasantly."

I don't know why I was surprised that she read—I mean, hell, everybody reads—but I was. "Who are your favorites?" I asked.

"Cisco, Jablonski, and Hedburg."

"You're kidding!" I exclaimed. "Those are my favorites too! At least we'll have something to talk about after dinner."

And we did. We talked for hours, and not just about books either. I'd never felt so comfortable with anyone in my life. We talked about hopes and dreams, about regrets, about everything. It was amazing: she seemed to mirror my every thought, my every secret longing. And when we'd fall silent, it wasn't an uncomfortable silence, the kind you feel you have to speak into; I was just as happy to look at her as listen to her. She'd grown up on an alien world thousands of light years from Earth, and I knew almost nothing about her: where she lived, what she had done with her life prior to saving mine, even her last name—and yet my last waking thought was that I was already a little bit in love with her.

I don't know how long I slept. I woke up when I felt Rebecca applying some salve to the gashes on my cheeks and neck.

"Don't move," she said gently. "I'll be done in another minute."

I held still until she was through, then opened my eyes and realized that we were inside my bubble.

"I'm surprised you could drag me in here without help," I said. "I must really have been out of it, not to wake up while you were moving me."

"I'm stronger than I look," she said with a smile.

"Good," I said. "Give me a hand up, and let me hobble out into the fresh air."

She began reaching out for me, then froze.

"What's the matter?"

"I'll be back in ten minutes," she said. "Don't try to stand without me; you could damage your splint."

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Are you all right?"

But she had already run off into the nearby stand of trees, and I lost sight of her.

It was puzzling. The only logical explanation was that she'd eaten something rotten and she was going off to be sick, but I didn't buy it. She'd run too gracefully, and she'd shown no discomfort, not the least little bit, prior to leaving.

I decided to try getting up on my own despite her orders. It was a disaster. The way my leg was splinted I simply couldn't do it. As I tried to position it, I realized that the bandages were soaked and foul-smelling. I rubbed a finger against them, then held it up. It wasn't blood, just something yellow-greenish. I didn't know whether that was a good sign or a bad one.

That's some carnivore, that Nightstalker, I thought. I wondered why it hadn't taken over the planet. Then I realized that except for Rebecca, who wasn't native to Nikita, I hadn't seen anything much larger than a raccoon or a possum, so maybe it had taken over the planet. It seemed a reasonable conclusion, but I'd served on just enough alien planets to know that reasonable and right often had very little to do with each other.

Then Rebecca was back, as immaculate as ever. She took one look at my leg and said, "I told you not to try standing up without me."

"Something's wrong with it," I said. "It smells bad, and it's wet."

"I know," she said. "I'll fix it. Trust me, Gregory."

I looked into her face and found, to my surprise, that I did trust her. I was alone and possibly dying a zillion miles from home, being tended with leaves and herbs by a girl I'd known for only a few days, and I trusted her. I had half a notion that if she told me to walk off a cliff I'd have done it.

"While we're discussing health," I said, "how's yours?"

"I'm fine, Gregory," she said. "But I'm flattered to know you were worried about me."

"Of course I was," I said. "You're the person who's keeping me alive."

"That's not why you were worried," she said.

"No," I admitted, "it's not."

There was a momentary silence.

"Well, are you ready to hobble outside?" she asked. "I'll help you to that tree. You can prop yourself up against it when you sit, and the branches and leaves will shade you from the sun. It can get very warm here at midday."

"I'm ready," I said.

She took my right hand in both of hers and pulled. It hurt like hell for a minute, but then I was on my feet.

"Lean on my shoulder," she said as she helped me turn toward the bubble's entrance.

I half-hopped, half-hobbled through it. The tree was some forty feet away. I'd gone about half that distance when my good foot went into some kind of rodent hole, and I started falling. I reached out, grabbing for her blouse, and then the strangest thing happened—instead of grabbing cloth, my fingers slid down her naked skin. I could see the blouse, but it wasn't there. She pivoted, trying to catch me, and my hand came into contact with her bare breast, slid over her nipple, down a naked hip and thigh, and then I hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud! The pain was excruciating.

Rebecca was beside me in an instant, positioning my leg, putting her hands under my head, doing what she could to comfort me. It took a good five minutes for the burning in my leg and arm to subside, but eventually it did, at least enough for me to consider what had happened.

I reached out to her shoulder, felt the cloth of her blouse, and ran my hand down the side of her body. The texture of the cloth changed when I got to her slacks, but there was no naked flesh—yet I knew I hadn't hallucinated it. You hallucinate after you're in agony, like now, not before.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" I asked.

"You fell."

"Don't play dumb with me," I said. "It's unbecoming in someone as smart and lovely. Just tell me what's happening."

"Try to rest," she said. "We'll talk later."

"You said yesterday that you wouldn't lie to me. Did you mean it?"

"I will never lie to you, Gregory."

I stared at her perfect face for a long minute. "Are you human?" I asked at last.

"For the moment."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I am what I need to be," she said. "What you need me to be."

"That's no answer."

"I am telling you that right now I am human, that I am everything you need. Isn't that enough?"

"Are you a shape-changer?" I asked.

"No, Gregory, I am not."

"Then how can you look like this?"

"This is what you want to see," she said.

"What if I want to see you are you really are?" I persisted.

"But you don't," she said. "This"—she indicated herself—"is what you want to see."

"What makes you think so?"

"Gregory, Gregory," she said with a sigh, "do you think I created this face and this body out of my imagination? I found it in your mind."

"Bullshit," I said. "I never met anyone who looked like you."

A smile. "But you wish you had." And a pause. "And if you had, you were sure she would be called Rebecca. I am not only everything you need, but everything you want."

"Everything?" I asked dubiously.

"Everything."

"Can we . . . uh . . . ?"

"When you slipped you caught me off-guard," she answered. "Didn't I feel like the woman you want me to be?"

"Let me get this straight. Your clothes are as much of an illusion as you are?"

"The clothes are an illusion," she said, and suddenly they vanished and she was standing, naked and perfect, before me. "I am real."

"You're a real something," I said. "But you're not a real woman."

"At this moment I am as real as any woman you have ever known."

"Let me think for a minute," I said. I stared at her while I tried to think. Then I realized that I was thinking all the wrong things, and I lowered my gaze to the ground. "That thing that drove the Nightstalker away," I said. "It was you, wasn't it?"

"It was what you needed at that instant," she answered.

"And whatever pulls the leaves down from the treetops—a snake, a bird, an animal, whatever—that's you too?"

"You need a mixture of the leaves and the herbs to combat your infection."

"Are you trying to say that you were put here solely to serve my needs?" I demanded. "I didn't think God was that generous."

"No, Gregory," said Rebecca. "I am saying that it is my nature, even my compulsion, to nurture those who are in need of nurturing."

"How did you know I needed it, or that I was even on the planet?"

"There are many ways of sending a distress signal, some of them far more powerful than you can imagine."

"Are you saying that if someone is suffering, say, five miles away, you'd know it?"

"Yes."

"More that five miles?" I continued. She simply stared at me. "Fifty miles? A hundred? The whole damned planet?"

She looked into my eyes, her face suddenly so sad that I totally forgot about the rest of her. "It's not limited to just the planet, Gregory."

"When you ran off for a few minutes, were you saving some other man?"

"You are the only man on the planet," she replied.

"Well, then?"

"A small marsupial had broken a leg. I alleviated its suffering."

"You weren't gone that long," I said. "Are you saying that an injured wild animal let a strange woman approach it while it was in pain, because I find that very difficult to believe."

"I did not approach it as a woman."

I stared at her for a long moment. I think I half-expected her to morph into some kind of alien monster, but she just looked as beautiful as ever. I visually searched her naked body for flaws—make that errors—some indication that she wasn't human, but I couldn't find any.

"I've got to think about all this," I said at last.

"Would you like me to leave?"

"No."

"Would it be less distracting if I recreated the illusion of clothing?"

"Yes," I said. Then "No." Then "I don't know."

"They always find out," she said. "But usually not this quickly."

"Are you the only one of . . . of whatever it is that you are?"

"No," she replied. "But we were never a numerous race, and I am one of the very few who remains on Nikita."

"What happened to the others?"

"They went where they were needed. Some came back; most went from one distress signal to another."

"We haven't had a ship here in six years," I said. "How did they leave the planet?"

"There are many races in the galaxy, Gregory. Humans aren't the only ones to land here."

"How many men have you saved?"

"A few."

"And Patrukans?"

"Patrukans too."

I shrugged. "Why the hell not? I suppose we're all equally alien to you."

"You are not alien," she said. "I assure you that at this moment I am every bit as human as the Rebecca of your dreams. In fact, I am the Rebecca of your dreams." She flashed me a smile. "I even want to do what that Rebecca wants to do."

"Is it possible?" I asked curiously.

"Not while you have a broken leg," she answered, "but yes, it's not only possible, but natural." I must have looked doubtful, because she added, "It would feel exactly the way you hope it would feel."

"You'd better bring the clothes back before I do something really stupid that'll mess up my arm and leg even worse," I said.

And instantly she was clothed again.

"Better?" she asked.

"Safer, anyway," I said.

"While you're thinking deep serious thoughts, I'll start making your breakfast," she said, helping me to the shade of the tree, then going back into the bubble to find some H-rations.

I sat motionless for a few minutes, considering what I had learned. And I came to what seemed, at least at the time, a surprising conclusion. She was my dream girl. She was drop-dead gorgeous—to me, anyway. We shared dozens of interests, and she was as passionate about them as I was. I felt comfortable with her, and knowing that she was really something else didn't disturb me half as much as I'd thought it would. If she was Rebecca only when I was around, that was better than never having a Rebecca at all. And she cared for me; she had no reason to say so if it wasn't true.

She walked over and handed me a plate filled with soya products that were designed to look and taste like anything except soya products. I put the plate on the ground and took her hand in mine.

"You don't shrink from my touch," I noted, stroking her arm gently.

"Of course not," she said. "I am your Rebecca. I love your touch."

"I don't shrink from yours either," I said, "which is probably a little more surprising. I'm sitting here, touching you, looking at you, smelling the nearness of you, and I don't give a damn who you are or what you look like when I'm not around. I just want you to stay."

She leaned down and kissed me. If it felt like anything other than being kissed by a human woman, I sure as hell couldn't tell the difference.

I ate my breakfast, and we spent the morning talking—about books, about art, about theater, about food, about a hundred things we had in common. And we talked in the afternoon, and we talked in the evening.

I don't know when I fell asleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night. I was lying on my side, and she was curled up against me. I felt something warm and flat on my leg, not a bandage. It seemed to be . . . sucking is a terrible word; extracting . . . some of the infection from my leg. I had a feeling that it was some part of her that I couldn't see; I decided not to look, and when I woke up in the morning she was already gathering some firewood for warming my breakfast.

We spent seven idyllic days together at that campsite. We talked, we ate, I began walking on a pair of crutches she made. Four times she excused herself and ran off, and I knew she'd picked another distress signal out of the air, but she was always back a few minutes later. Long before those seven days were up I realized that, despite a broken leg and a shredded arm, they were the happiest days I'd ever spent.

I spent my eighth day with her—my ninth on Nikita—making my way slowly and painfully back to the spot where the ship would pick me up the next morning. I set up my bubble after dinner, and crawled into it a couple of hours later. As I was starting to drift off I felt her lie up against me, and this time there was no illusion of clothing.

"I can't," I said unhappily. "My leg . . ."

"Hush," she whispered. "I'll take care of everything."

And she did.

* * *

She was making breakfast when I awoke.

"Good morning," I said as I emerged from the bubble.

"Good morning."

I hobbled over and kissed her. "Thank you for last night."

"I hope we didn't damage your wounds."

"If we did, it was worth it," I said. "The ship is due in less than an hour. We have to talk."

She looked at me expectantly.

"I don't care what you are," I said. "To me you're Rebecca, and I love you. And before the ship arrives, I've got to know if you love me too."

"Yes, Gregory, I do."

"Then will you come with me?"

"I'd like to, Gregory," she said. "But . . ."

"Have you ever left Nikita before?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "Whenever I sense that someone with whom I've been linked is in physical or emotional pain."

"But you always come back?"

"This is my home."

"Did you visit Myron Seymour after he left Nikita?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" I said. "Either you did or you didn't."

"All right," she said unhappily. "Either I did or I didn't."

"I thought you were never going to lie to me," I said.

"I'm not lying, Gregory," she said, reaching out and laying a hand on my good shoulder. "You don't understand how the bond works."

"What bond?" I asked, confused.

"You know that I look like this and I took this name because I was drawn irresistably to your pain and your need, and found the name and the image in your mind," she said. "We are linked, Gregory. You say that you love me, and probably you do. I share that emotion. But I share it for the same reason I can discuss your favorite books and plays—because I found them where I found Rebecca. When the link is broken, when I'm not in contact with you any more, they'll be forgotten." A tear rolled down her cheek. "And everything I feel for you this minute will be forgotten too."

I just stared at her, trying to comprehend what she'd said.

"I'm sorry, Gregory," she continued after a moment. "You can't know how sorry. Right now all I want is to be with you, to love you and care for you—but when the link is broken, it will all be gone." Another tear. "I won't even feel a sense of loss."

"And that's why you can't remember if you made it to Earth and saved Seymour?"

"I may have, I may not have," she said helplessly. "I don't know. Probably I never will."

I thought about it. "It's okay," I said. "I don't care about the others. Just stay with me and don't break the link."

"It's not something I can control, Gregory," she replied. "It's strongest when you need me most. As you heal, as you need me less; then I'll be drawn to someone or something that needs me more. Perhaps it will be another man, perhaps a Patrukan, perhaps something else. But it will happen, again and again."

"Until I need you more than anyone else does," I said.

"Until you need me more than anyone else does," she confirmed.

And at that moment, I knew why Seymour and Daniels and the others had walked into what seemed near-certain death. And I realized what Captain Symmes and the Patrukan historian Myxophtyl didn't know: that they hadn't tried to get themselves killed, but rather to get themselves almost killed.

Suddenly I saw the ship overhead, getting ready to touch down a few hundred yards away.

"Does anyone or anything need you right now?" I asked. "More than I do, I mean?"

"Right this moment? No."

"Then come with me for as long as you can," I said.

"It's not a good idea," she said. "I could begin the journey, but you're getting healthier every day, and something always needs me. We'd land at a spaceport to change ships, and you'd turn around and I'll be gone. That's the way it was six years ago, with the human and Patrukan survivors." Her face reflected her sorrow. "There is so much pain and suffering in the galaxy."

"But I need you even if I'm healthy," I said. "I love you, damn it!"

"And I love you," she said. "Today. But tomorrow?" She shrugged helplessly.

The ship touched down.

"You loved each of them, didn't you?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I would give everything I have to remember."

"You'll forget me too, won't you?"

She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. "Don't think about it."

Then she turned and began walking away. The pilot approached me and picked up my gear.

"What the hell was that?" he asked, jerking a thumb in Rebecca's direction—and I realized that he saw her as she truly was, that she was linked only to me.

"What did it look like to you?" I replied.

He shook his head. "Like nothing I've ever seen before."

* * *

It took me five days to get back to Earth. The medics at the hospital were amazed that I'd healed so quickly, and that all signs of infection were gone. I let them think it was a miracle, and in a way it was. I didn't care; all I cared about was getting her back.

I quit my job at OceanPort and hired on with the police department. They stuck me behind a desk for a few months, until my limp disappeared, but yesterday I finally got transferred to the vice squad.

There's a major drug deal going down tonight: alphanella seeds from somewhere out in the Albion Cluster, ten times as powerful as heroin. We'll be mounting a raid in about four hours. The buyers and sellers both figure to have plenty of muscle standing guard, and it's likely to get pretty hairy.

I hope so.

I've already locked my weapons away.

* * *

Mike Resnick is the author of many books and stories.

The Old Woman In the Young Woman

Written by Gene Wolfe
Illustrated by Emily Tolson

He had been walking all day. Twice the wandering trails he followed had led him into ruined towns; in each case he had halted and spent an hour or so poking through such rubbish as nature had not yet buried. In neither case had he found anything worth keeping. Knives that would not rust were found in ruined towns, sometimes. Or so some said. Long Tom, who would have liked one, had never found one or even seen one.

To the people who had lived in those towns, he had given not a moment's thought. The roofs of their houses had fallen, and the walls were falling. The broad, black pavements were crumbling. The people who had made them had died long before he was born. He had never met anyone who had spoken to one of them, and he never would.

His belly was empty when he came to the village. The little buckskin pack in which he sometimes stored food held only an old pair of stockings. The slender rifle he bore was heavy on his shoulder, its weight reminding him over and over again that he had not had a decent shot all day. That rifle would no longer feed a cartridge when he pulled its lever down, but he rarely needed a quick second shot.

Up the hill along a path that was a little too wide and clearly marked to be a game trail. Through blackberry brambles on which not one berry was ripe.

Then, the crest of the hill.

Long Tom put down his rifle, setting its curved brass butt-plate almost carefully beside his right moccasin, and looked down at the tiny village in the valley. Six cabins, he thought, or it could be seven. Smoke rising from three chimneys. The cabins looked too poor to offer much comfort to a traveler. Too poor, although one was a trifle bigger than the rest and had an outbuilding. A little barn, or perhaps a woodshed.

* * *

Inside that larger cabin, young Emmy sat at old Miz Emily's bedside, listening. Listening, but the words came slowly, punctuated with much labored breathing. The wide spaces between those words had room for a great deal of dreaming, and Emmy was a practiced dreamer. Someday—some happy day very soon—Miz Emily would be close to young again. Miz Emily would rise from her bed and once more do all the things she now did only in her stories. She would bake bread, can, and heal.

"A brain," Miz Emily told Emmy, "spiles faster 'n a fish." She shut her eyes, and the breath whistled through her toothless old mouth. "Brain's the worst part of a man . . . Or a woman, either . . . You can't hardly never save it."

Emmy nodded, rapt.

"Ol' Sheller Shapcott . . . He wasn't hardly cold. I shot in my heart-get-up . . . Best I had. His heart . . . She galloped again . . . You see, Emmy?"

Emmy nodded as before.

"Never moved . . . Never spoke. Horse's alive, only nobody riding."

Still nodding, Emmy cocked her head, conscious of a new sound. Someone was tapping on the front door. She rose.

A faint smile touched Miz Emily's lips. "Somebody's sick. You see who."

Emmy hurried away.

Outside, Long Tom, who had been knocking with his knuckles, had changed to the handle of his knife. He was about to resume knocking when the door swung back.

The girl was young and small, with the sort of plain, smooth face that promises beauty (although not prettiness) to come. Her blue eyes widened at the sight of Long Tom, and her small lips formed an O.

Tom removed his cap. "I'm a man that needs a place to stay tonight, ma'am. There's rain comin', which you can feel if you breathe deep. Just a place out of the rain, and a bite to eat, if you can spare. Cornpone or what you got. Tell your ma?"

"I don't have no ma." The girl's voice was scarcely audible. "Never did."

Long Tom nodded and smiled. "You the lady of the house, ma'am?"

"Miz Emily." The girl reached a decision. "She said let you in." She stood aside.

Long Tom entered, still smiling. "I don't believe we've met proper, ma'am. Tom Bright's my name. Long Tom's what most folks call me. Guess you can see why." He held out his hand.

The girl's touched it; hers was far smaller than his but just as hard, the hand of a girl who scrubbed, cooked, and swept, Tom thought, from kinsee to kaintsee. "I'm Tom Bright," he repeated, "'cept you can call me anythin' you'd like. Long Tom or whatever."

The girl's hand had closed on his.

"Lazy, mebbe. Lazy's good. There's lots of folks call me that."

At last she smiled, and her smile stirred to life something in him he knew at once would never die.

"Hungered, Tom? Didn't you say you was? Stew for supper tonight, an' I got it on a'ready. Be fit to eat 'fore long. You could sleep by the fire, mebbe? I do, only in Miz Emily's room, you know. Case I got to git her somethin'. We got our own li'l fire in there, an' it's God's own blessin'."

"Your pa won't mind?"

The girl shook her head. "Ain't never had none, Tom. Ain't nobody here 'cept us. Miz Emily an' Emmy. I'll have to show you to Miz Emily, Tom. It's only polite. You come along. We got to see if she's wakeful."

Tom sighed. "If she don't want me, I'll go, Emmy. There won't be no trouble."

"She'll cotton to you," Emmy told him. "It's certain sure. There aplenty for us to be feared of without our bein' feared of you."

Hand-in-hand they walked through the big front room, a lofty room redolent of venison stew. A clean and orderly room that had, somehow, something of the air of the ruined towns. It might, perhaps, have been the high, stained table.

It might also have been the bags of rags, or the three lofty cabinets along one wall, locked cabinets of hardwood black with years, somber and silent.

Emmy motioned him back and opened the door of another room enough to put her head through. "Comp'ny, Miz Emily. Name's Tom Bright an' seems a well-favored man. You want to see him?"

Apparently Miz Emily did; Emmy turned and waved.

Going in, Tom saw the oldest woman he had ever set eye on sitting propped up in bed. Her white hair was almost gone, her cheeks fallen in, and her nose and chin so long they nearly touched. Only the eyes, blue eyes that seemed as young as Emmy's, remained alive in her ruined face.

"Long Tom's what they call me, ma'am." Tom touched his forehead. "I'm headed west, Miz Emily. There's land there that ain't so pizzoned as 'tis 'round here. So I hear tell. The folks is dead, mostly, like here. Only the land's better. So I'm goin' to claim a real good piece for my own."

The aged head nodded the merest fraction of an inch. For an instant, Tom thought he saw the dry lips twitch in what might have been a smile—or almost anything else.

"So I'm jest passin' through," he finished lamely. "I'd slept out in the woods like I done last night, only there's rain in the air, you know. So I seen your place here, all these houses, an' this's the biggest so I thought it'd have more room most likely. I'll work, if you got work to do, or else be gone at sunup. I'll go now, if you say to. Only Emmy said I got to talk to you."

"Goin' to farm, Tom? Know how to?"

Tom nodded. "Yes'm. My pa had a farm, an' me an' Cy, we worked it. Only us, out toward the end, you know. Then pa passed. Cy, he said we'd split. Only there wasn't enough for it. I want a couple fields an' medders. Enough for a horse an' a milk cow fer sure."

His own eyes had sunk in dream, although he did not know it. "Corn an' a garden, too. Chickens an' mebbe a pig. Got to have a sight of good land for all that."

"Like him, Emmy?" Miz Emily's voice shook. "Can see you do. Wouldn't have brought him to me if you didn't."

Emmy nodded.

"Got a wife, Tom? Girl back home?"

Looking stricken, Tom shook his head.

"Don't let that pretty face fool you, Tom. Emmy's a hard worker."

Tom managed to say, "I know it, ma'am."

"Smart, too. Smart as a whip."

"I . . . I ain't much, ma'am. I ain't much, an' I couldn't—"

Emmy made a tiny noise.

"Well, I ain't." Tom swallowed. "An' you got to take care of your grandma, Emmy. Only I guess I could, mebbe, stay on a bit . . . If you'd have me."

Miz Emily cackled. "She ain't my granddaughter, Tom. She's me."

Tom stared at her, then at Emmy. And found he could not tear his eyes from the latter.

"'Splain, Emmy. I'm that tired."

"There's a man here . . ." Emmy groped for words. "A neighbor, you know. Pen Perry's his name. He found a real pretty bush one time. Had pretty flowers all over it, an' he wanted two. Wanted one for each side of his door."

Rain rattled the cedar shakes of the roof.

"So he dug it up an' split it. I seen that. Seen him hackin' it into two with his hatchet. He planted the halves an' had him two bushes. You know 'bout that, Tom?"

"Sure thing. We done it."

"People can do it, too. 'Cept it's way harder for us."

From the bed, Miz Emily said, "I done it once. Made me a girl folks called Emma. Only she was me, and grown from little bits of me."

Emmy said, "She's a medicine woman, Tom. Miz Emily's a medicine woman."

"Soon's she'd growed big 'nough," Miz Emily continued, "I harvested. Took the eyes and the liver and kidneys. That was what I needed, and I buried the rest proper."

Tom said nothing; he was looking at Emmy.

"You'll be wonderin' how I set my new eyes in once the old was out. There's a lady in Swinton. Miz Pris, they call her. I help her, and she helps me."

"It's her heart this time, Tom. Heart an' lungs, too." Emmy touched her chest. "I'm growin' the new in me now. 'Fore long I'll be big 'nough. Next year, Miz Emily tells."

"It don't seem right," Tom muttered, "puttin' the young woman in the old one."

"Ever'body needs Miz Emily, Tom. There's folks sick all the time, sick er leg broke er shot. They got to have her, an' she's got to have me."

Miz Emily's breath wheezed before she spoke. "Pretty soon I seen I was going to need more, so I done it again. I missed Emma, too, and she'd been a great, great help to me. So I done, and here's Emmy that's been the same. She's a good girl through-and-through, Long Tom Bright. Don't you never forget it. She's me, too, just like my Emma was. Don't never forget that either."

She coughed. "Emmy . . . Emmy, honey, you come here. I'm going to do something I never done before, Emmy. Going to 'cause I got to. Hold out your sweet hand."

Emmy did, and Miz Emily laid a large key in it. A brass key, green with years. "That what you got's the key to the big cab'net I never did let you into." Miz Emily paused. "You open her up. Top shelf. A-ways in back."

She paused to breathe, the close air of her bedchamber whistling in her nostrils.

"Top shelf," Emmy repeated dutifully.

"In back, Emmy honey. It's a li'l blue bottle. The best medicine I got. Back corner."

She gasped for breath. "Tom. Long Tom. You hear all this?"

"Yes'm."

"You fetch it down for her. I don't want her standing on no chair."

Together they returned to the big front room, shutting the door quietly behind them. "That's her medicine-woman cab'net," Emmy whispered. "I never did open it before. She'd have me go 'way when she got somethin' out. I never did s'pose I'd hold this key."

The antique key turned smoothly in the lock; the highest shelf was high indeed, but not so high that Tom had difficulty in seeing the bottles and boxes that stood on it.

"Li'l blue bottle," Emmy told him. "Back in the corner's what she told. Way in back."

He found it and took it out. "No writin' on this one."

Emmy nodded. "Didn't want nobody that come stealin' to know what was in there, I guess. Them medicines . . . A body can't find 'em no more. Not nowhere."

"Out west, mebbe." Tom spoke mostly to himself. "Ain't so many lookin' out there."

Emmy took the bottle, and they returned to Miz Emily.

"Not so many lookin'," she said. "That's wise. You remember what all you said this day, Tom Bright. You, too, Emmy. Don't forget, nor let him forget."

Emmy nodded silently and returned the key.

"My medicine, Emmy? What I sent you for?"

Emmy handed her the blue bottle. A tear coursed down Emmy's cheek as she did, but neither of them commented on it.

No more did Tom, although he took a half step back.

"I'm weary with talking." Miz Emily coughed. "Only I got to talk more. I'll try to get it over quick."

Lean, blue-veined fingers drew the cork of the blue bottle. "I'm not going to tell you to do your duty, Emmy. You will, I know. Do your duty by Tom or whatever man you find. Do your duty by whatever children you get."

Emmy nodded vigorously. Hearing her stifled sobs, Tom laid his hand on her shoulder.

"There's a-many a man, Tom Bright, that never finds him a good woman. You got one here. Terrible young yet, but she'll get over that. There's no man that's as wise as a wise woman."

Tom nodded. "I've heard."

"She's not. Not yet. You got to be the steady one for now."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Build you a cabin when you've got that land. Make it li'l but solid. Won't be nobody but you to protect it, so it's got to be li'l. When there's more, you can make it bigger."

"Like you said, ma'am. That's the best, I know."

Nodding, as it seemed, wholly to herself. Miz Emily raised the blue bottle to her lips.

Emmy shrieked.

Miz Emily might not have heard her; Tom watched her swallow and fall back among her pillows.

Like a rabbit frozen by the serpent's eye, Tom saw the blue bottle roll slowly to the edge of the bed. The thump as it struck the floor freed him to kneel beside Emmy and—hesitantly, awkwardly—lay his rifle aside and put his arms around her.

So they remained as second after second ticked past, until someone began knocking on the door through which Tom had entered the house.

Emmy rose, wiping her eyes with the heels of both hands. "I'll see," she gasped. "Y-you stay right here."

He did, but listened through the half-open door of the bedchamber.

"You heard me cry out, Miz Ledbetter." The voice was Emmy's.

Tom could not hear the reply.

"She's tooken bad. Real bad. Asked me to fetch her medicine for her, which I done."

A woman's voice murmured, though Tom could not make out the words.

"You wait till she's better, Miz Ledbetter. She wouldn't want nobody to see her like she is now. Didn't want me to, even. Only you're gettin' soaked."

Nodding, Tom went to the bed and picked up Miz Emily's right arm. It was not yet stiff, but there was no pulse. He straightened her legs and crossed her arms on her chest.

When Emmy returned, he said, "She's gone. Reckon you knew 'fore me."

"My heart knowed." Emmy sighed. "I jus' kept sayin' no, no, no inside myself. Only my heart knowed soon's the bottle passed."

"Wasn't till that bottle fell that I did, Emmy." Tom looked for the blue bottle then, but he had kicked it under the bed.

"You didn't know her like me."

"I reckon not."

"I know the folks 'round here, too." Emmy sighed again. "They goin' to say I kilt her, Tom. They been prophesyin' it."

"You didn't."

"Don't matter now." Emmy shrugged. "It's what's said that does the work. Kill me for it, if they can."

"Have to kill me first," Tom told her.

"You sure, Tom?"

He nodded solemnly, and she embraced him, her smooth chestnut hair well below his chin.

When they parted at last he said, "We got to bury her, Emmy. Wouldn't be decent not to."

"Think you can wrap her up an' tie her tight, Tom?"

"Now?"

Emmy nodded. "Won't nobody see us carry her out back, 'cause of the rain. You want to eat 'fore we do it?"

He shook his head.

"Nor me, Tom. I'll feel better when she's been put under proper an' prayed over. Stew'll keep. It ain't but simmerin'. Where's the key?"

They found it among the bedclothes.

"Put it in her hand, Tom. She'd like it. Put it in there an' we'll tie her up."

Rolling the shriveled body in its blankets required no more than a minute. When it was done, Emmy carried in rags he tore to strips.

"Her bandages they was," Emmy murmured. "They're bandagin' her this day."

"She died for you," Tom told her.

"I died for me," Emmy corrected him.

He carried the long bundle like an infant in his arms when they left the house. Emmy, leading the way, bore the too-large spade with which she had dug Miz Emily's small garden that spring.

So it was that they passed through the clearing and into the trees, and at last entered another clearing, a place where no one lived. There, in the rain, Tom built a deep house for the dead woman, and laid her in it while Emmy wept, and heaped the sodden clay upon it.

Together they knelt and prayed aloud, their strong, young voices muted by the rain.

* * *

Back in the house that had been Miz Emily's, they hung their clothes before the fire and ate venison stew with home-baked bread. "Like seein' me like this?" Emmy asked.

He nodded, and she said, "Knew you would."

She smiled when her bowl was empty. "Don't have to wash no dishes. Been a long time since I've et an' didn't have to do up afterward. You got anything to take west 'cept your rifle an' what you got in your li'l pack?"

He shook his head.

"Have a look around. You see anything we might need, you take it." She went to the third cabinet, the one Tom knew he would never forget. Its door swung back, and she said, "I'll take from here. Much as I can carry, anyhow. I don't have much else."

"How'd you do that? Git it open?"

"You think I locked it again?" She smiled. "You git dressed, hear? I'll git dressed, too. I see what you're thinkin', Tom, plain as pikestaff. I'm thinkin' the same, only they'll say I kilt her once they learn, an' we ain't got time."

* * *

Neither of them was slow, and they got a start of a day and more; but when the little food Tom had carried away—for there had been but little in the larder—was gone, he had to hunt.

Even so, almost a week passed before they heard the distant crack of a rifle and the deathly whisper of the bullet that showered them with twigs and leaves.

Tom ordered Emmy back (a distance that she took as one-and-a-half paces) and waited until he had a clear view of the head and shoulders of their nearest pursuer. His rifle spoke. That man's hands flew to his face, and he fell.

The shrill, cracked voice of an old woman sounded behind him while he was reloading: "You there, Pen Perry? Answer me! Slim Ledbetter? Speak up!"

There was a silence before someone called, "I'm here, Miz Em'ly."

"That man Tom shot—"

The old voice shook, and Tom himself turned back to look at Emmy.

"Through the head, is it?"

"Yes'm."

Another man said, "Ain't cold yet, Miz Em'ly."

"That don't matter. I can't help him. You bury him proper, hear? Get him under and go back where you belong."

There were no more shots. They had walked almost until dark when Tom said, "I been wonderin', Emmy. It ain't—only I hope you'll tell."

"How I talked like her?" Emmy giggled. "I been listenin' to her all my life. Be a shame to me if I couldn't sound the same."

He shook his head. "I seen that right off. 'Bout that blue bottle. You knew what 'twas."

"Not till I handed it over I didn't." The giggle was gone. "When I handed it over, I seen her eyes an' knew."

"Them medicines you got. The shiny li'l knives. I was wonderin' if you know how to use 'em."

"'Course I do!"

Soon after, her hand found his. "She was me, Tom. An' I'm her. You got to remember it."

* * *

Gene Wolfe is the author of many books and stories.

Every Hole is Outlined

Written by John Barnes
Illustrated by Laura Givens

The ship was at least fourteen thousand years old in slowtime and more than two thousand in eintime, but there were holes in its records and the oldest ones were in no-longer-accessible formats, so the ship estimated that it was more like eighteen thousand slowtime, three and a half thousand eintime. It had borne many names. Currently it was 9743, a name that translated easily for Approach Control no matter where the ship went in human space.

In the last two centuries of eintime, the ship's conversation with most ports had been wholly mathematical. Synminds chattered about physics and astronomy to get the ship into a berth, and about prices and quantities and addresses afterward, and the human crew had not learned a word of the local language, despite their efforts, except such guesses as that the first things people said probably were something like "hello," and the last things something like "good-bye," and in between, perhaps, they might pick up equivalents of "may I?" and "thank you."

This had little immediate impact on the ship's operation except that mathematical worlds had no entertainment, or at least none they would sell to the ship's library; the long-run concern was that the mathematical worlds tended to begin waving off all ships and not communicating at all, after a time, though strangely some of those dark worlds would sometimes begin to talk and call for ships again, after an interval of a few centuries slowtime.

But the problem for this evening meal was both shorter-run than procuring entertainment for the ship's library, and much longer run than the gradual darkening of the worlds. They needed a new crew member, and they were having a real supper tonight, with cooked food, wine, and gravity, to discuss how to get one.

9743 needed a crew of four to work it, when it needed working, which was only for system entries and system departures because the law of space required it, and for PPDs (the business and navigation sessions held whenever predicted prices at destination shifted enough to require considering a course change) because the crew were the stockholders and synminds were required to consult them. Normally they would work the ship for half a shift for PPDs, but sometimes traffic density close to a star was high enough to engage gammor restrictions for as much as a light-day out from the port, and then 9743 had to have crew in the opsball for more than one shift.

Therefore, for the very rare case of needing more than one shift, the ship usually carried eight people: Arthur and Phlox, who were married and were the captain and first mate; Debi and Yoko, the two physicist's mates, who shared a large compartment with Squire, who was the physicist; Peter, the astronomer, who was too autistic to sleep with anyone or even to talk much, but a good astronomer and good at sitting beside people and keeping them company; and Mtepic, the mathematician, whose wife Sudden Crow, the mathematician's mate, had died two years ago in eintime.

In slowtime it had been ten and a half years ago, but ship people have a saying that no one lives in slowtime. By "no one," they mean almost everyone.

Arthur and Phlox had thought that Mtepic might be too old for another wife, but he surprised them by saying he thought he might have another twenty years of eintime left and he didn't want to spend it alone.

There was actually only one possible conclusion. They would have to buy someone from a slave world. That was a bad thing, but not hopelessly bad—rather common in fact. Debi, Peter, Sudden Crow, and Arthur had all been slaves, and at least Debi and Arthur felt strongly that buying a slave into a free life, though morally questionable, was usually good for the slave.

The others had been adopted as infants, raised to age four or five on 9743, and then sent through slowtime on a training ship to rejoin the crew when they were adults. All seven of them, whether born slave or free, agreed that it was better to be raised as ship people right from the start.

But they had had no plans for coping when Sudden Crow had died at fifty-one, without warning, from weightless calcium heart atrophy and overweight. 9743 was at least two years eintime from anywhere with freeborn babies available. They would have had to acquire the baby, tend it till it was four or five years old—a long time for a cargo ship to put up with a child, for ship people don't like to be around other people very much, and children must have attention all the time.

It would constrain them for several voyages—first to a world with adoptable freeborns, then to a shorthaul pair (two inhabited star systems within six or seven light years of each other) with a training ship orbiting one of them. That shorthaul pair would need to be four to five years eintime away, between twenty-one and twenty-seven light years distance at the 98.2%c that 9743 usually traveled.

At the shorthaul pair 9743 would then have to hand the child over to the training ship, work a shorthaul shuttle back and forth, then return, rendezvous with the training ship, and pick up the former four year old as a trained teenage crew member. It would add up to decades of running badly off the isoprofit geodesic.

They could have afforded that, but the nearest shorthaul pair was Sol/Alfsentary, which was nearly five years eintime away from the nearest system that sold babies. This could all add up to as much as seventeen years eintime before the teenaged crew member came back aboard to keep Mtepic company.

Mtepic was eighty-one and if he died anytime soon, they would not have a mathematician at all. Phlox and Debi, both of whom had math as a secondary, would have to cover, and the whole ship would have to assume the risk of having rusty, less-capable mathematicians filling in.

Besides, the best isoprofit geodesic available for adopting and training a freeborn baby had miserable numbers—long hauls and low profits throughout. A slave would be better, surely. And it was not so bad for the slave, they all assured each other.

The slave market at Thogmarch, the main inhabited world in the Beytydry system, was only six light years away, and their cargo would take only a small loss there, one that 9743 Corporation could easily absorb and infinitely cheaper than the costs of dealing with a depressed mathematician. The medical synmind was confident at 94.4% that Mtepic was depressed. Besides, Mtepic said he was, and thought it was because of the loneliness. The synmind concurred with 78.5% confidence that a new mathematician's apprentice would help lift Mtepic out of it, but the crew were all sure that estimate was low—medics hate to make predictions of any kind about enfleshed intelligences.

9743 had some spare mass to feed to the shielder, and they could safely boost up to 98.65%c and reach Thogmarch in a little less than an einyear. If they radioed now, the message would arrive at Thogmarch almost seven weeks before the ship itself did, so that they could have a buyers and sellers ready for cargo switch on arrival, and have dealers lined up to sell them an apprentice mathematician with the sort of personality that could learn to like ship life.

"And 9743 has never bought a slave who wasn't grateful for a chance to stay on after manumission," Arthur said, finishing his long, slow reprise, which had begun with the appetizers and was now finishing in the wine after dessert. "Life here compared to what they have dirtside is a lot better."

Arthur was fond of explaining things that everyone already knew, which was utterly typical. Captains are notorious for spending much time explaining unnecessarily.

Even ship people say so, and for them to say that is saying something, for ship people are all that way. They like to let the talk be slow and affectionate and thorough. They acquire a habit of listening to things they have heard many times before, and already know by heart, just to indulge the person who needs to speak; and, so that the ears of the others stay friendly, most of them learn not to talk very much except at formal occasions.

"Mostly," Peter said, startling them all because he spoke so infrequently, "We allow them some dignity and privacy." He meant the slaves, of course, though he might have meant anyone on the ship. "And by the time the first voyage is up they don't miss home, which anyway gets far enough into the past that it becomes hard to return to." He drank off a glass of the chilled white wine; they had turned on the gammors for an extra hour this week, to enjoy a sit down meal in the conference room, because this was a matter that needed some serious attention. At 98.1%c, with a course change imminent, a quarter g of acceleration for a few hours of sitting and talking would have little effect on anything. "I'm for," Peter said.

"We're not at voting yet," Debi corrected him, a little fussily, which was how she did everything.

Squire rubbed her shoulders; it never made her less fussy but they both enjoyed it. "We know what he means, though. This is something that has always worked so far. We find a teenager with very high math aptitude and very low interpersonal attachment. Slavers are cruel; we are merely indifferent. If she doesn't have too much need for interpersonal attachment, she may even think we are kind—you do want a girl, right, Mtepic?"

"Yes, a girl."

Squire gestured like a man who would have liked to have a blackboard. "Well, then, life on the ship is better than being beaten and used and ordered about; a bit of respect and dignity often works wonders."

Phlox was nodding, and when she did, people usually felt that the vote had already been taken, and the thing approved. Everyone, even Arthur, said she would be a better captain, once he died. She rested her hands together in a little tent in front of her, nodded again, and said, "When we manumit her, she will want to stay with us. They always do. So this plan will get us a new mathematician's mate who can eventually become our mathematician. It is not as kind as adopting a freeborn baby and having a training ship raise the baby as a free member of the ship's company, and it is not as easy as working an exchange with another ship would be if there were another ship to do it with. But it is kind enough, and easy enough. So we are going to settle on doing it. Now let us enjoy talking about it for some more hours."

Everyone nodded; ship people are direct, even about delaying getting to the point, and they like to know how new things will come out, before they start them, because they so rarely do.

* * *

In the young woman's file, Mtepic had read that Xhrina had been born a shareworker's daughter on Thogmarch, and her sale forced when she was two, by her parents' bankruptcy. Her records showed that because she had intellectual talent but great difficulty learning social skills, she had been little valued on Thogmarch. The slaver who owned her had slated her for some post where her ability to endure humiliation over the long haul would be an asset; he had in mind either an aristocrat with a taste for brutalizing women, or a household that wanted to boast of its wealth by using human beings instead of robots to scrub floors and clean toilets.

Mtepic, as not only the person who would be working and living with her, but also the most empathetic person on board 9743 (according to the medic-synmind's most recent testing), had been sent dirtside to decide whether to buy Xhrina, and as he sat in the clean-air support tank his major thought was that he would take her if at all possible, rather than endure planetary gravity for much longer.

His bones were old and space-rotten. Though he was strapped up against the interior supports of the tank, and a small man, there was still far too much weight.

Xhrina spoke a language with a distributed grammar and numerous Altaic and Semitic roots, so the translator box worked tolerably well, and with her aptitude, she was unlikely to have any trouble learning Navish, once she was aboard. Mtepic thought her voice was surprisingly musical for someone so discouraged and unhappy. After he outlined what would happen if 9743 bought her, and made sure the translator had made it clear to her, he asked, "Do you want us to buy you, then?"

She trilled a soft trickle of sweet soprano sibilance. The translator box said, "This property had not yet realized there was any choice with respect to the subject at hand, my-sir."

"Officially there is not. Unofficially, we don't like slaving; 9743 has never carried slaves and never will. As you may know, slaving planets all enforce the Karkh Code on ships carrying slaves, so we cannot manumit you until you have performed satisfactory service for thirty years. But the Karkh Code operates in slowtime; in eintime, time as we experience it, you will be a slave for less than seven years, perhaps much less. And as much as we can manage it, within the limits of the Karkh Code, you will be a slave in the eyes of the law only. We won't ever treat you as a slave." He had to put that through the translator to her a few times, and they went back and forth again until he was sure she understood the deal.

"And my-sir still makes it have a sounding, correction, gives it an aura of, as if it were this property's choice, my-sir, and this property is trained not to make choices where my-sir has the right to choose."

He went at it a sentence at a time, forcing himself to be patient with the translator, which had the uncaring stupidity one would expect of a synmind.

The first critical sentence Mtepic communicated was, "If you ask that we not buy you, we will buy someone else."

Next, because it might matter to her, whether or not she was allowed to think it did, he spent a while explaining that, "Once you are on board, you will be expected to share a bed with me—my demands are minor, at my age, mostly that you keep away loneliness. Other crew will probably not want sex from you, being happy as they are, but if they do you will comply; our computer must show that for the Karkh Code manumission."

She seemed to accept that too easily and he didn't want her to think that was the main issue, so then he worked on getting her to understand that "you will not be coming aboard as a bedmate. Your main job will be to learn enough mathematics so that you are qualified as a mathematician's mate by the time we reach a port where we are legally allowed to free you with a universal manumission so that you will not be in danger if you change ships, or disembark and then travel again. At that port, you can leave our company if you like, or stay in the crew as a shareholder." That was actually easier to say, because the synmind was designed to understand contracts.

Then he got back to the main point, again, and this time it seemed to go faster. "If you ask that we not buy you, we will buy someone else. We do not want you to be unwilling."

"It is forbidden for this property to consider whether this property is willing for anything my-sir wills, my-sir, and I cannot know how this property will feel if this property is ever permitted to consider it, my-sir." She smiled when she said that; perhaps to let him know that she could only speak the formulas, or that the translator would only translate into the formulas, but that she accepted what he was saying, was that it? Or perhaps something in all this appealed to her sense of humor? In either case, he liked her for that smile.

Mtepic breathed deeply and let the thousands of mechanical fingers lift him straight, and the neurostimulators sharpen his perception and ease his discomfort.

Xhrina's skin was brown; the slavers had genetically modified her for almost pure-white hair; her nose was long and slim and her jaw and teeth perfectly formed. Her eyes were dark and almond-shaped. He thought that as little as twenty years ago, he would have felt physically attracted. Now, just turned eighty-three, he was attracted by what he could get through the censoring translator: that she didn't seem to want to exaggerate or over-promise, and clearly had an opinion she was trying to express.

He gave her another angle on it, just to make sure. "We think, based on your psychological evaluation, that you are suited to shipboard life, and you will be living like a free crewmember as soon as we leave the dock here." That seemed to go right through.

"If this property may ask, is crew life like freeborn life, my-sir?"

"You can always accept a payout and leave at the next port. Of course you have to be on the ship until we reach a port, and if you did decide to leave the ship after your first couple of voyages, you would have to move into a hospital for rehabilitation if you wanted to move permanently to a planetary surface." That thought reminded Mtepic of how painful the high gravity was, and so he decided to press the offer a little more. He just hoped he correctly understood her quirky smile still struggling through her slavery-deadened face. "I would like you to come with us," he said. "I am asking you. I could buy you and make you. I prefer that you say yes." And trying to think of what else he had to offer, he said, "My first order to you, as soon as you are on the ship, will be that you address no one as 'my-sir,' but speak to us all as equals."

She grinned at him as if on the brink of outright laughter. "Then if it pleases my-sir, this property wants to be bought by my-sir, my-sir."

He was fairly sure that was not what she had said, but surely it had been some form of yes. He didn't trouble to conceal his sigh of relief.

A few hours later, at her welcome-aboard dinner on 9743, once she had been assured that now she would never be returned to Thogmarch, she used an uncontrolled translator to explain, "I was always going to say yes, but the translator didn't want me to know I was being asked to say it because I wasn't supposed to have any choices or respond to them if anyone offered me any. Once I figured out what it wasn't translating, of course I said yes—it was such a pleasure to be asked. And I beg Mtepic's forgiveness, for having kept you upright for too long in that uncomfortable tank." And she favored him again with that extraordinary smile.

* * *

Two years eintime, eleven slowtime, on their way to the Sol system; the earlier PPDs had flipped because at Thogmarch they had acquired cargo b–Hy-9743-R56, which was forecast to be at peak value at Sol almost exactly at arrival time. Xhrina's Navish was fluent and she was already well into group and ring theory, and apter than her test scores showed. Mtepic had turned eighty-five the day before, and Xhrina had been disappointed that no one wanted to have a party for him this year (she'd only been able to get two of them to participate the year before), so she'd held one for just the two of them.

She had learned to find it comforting when his fragile body pressed against her in the sleepsack, his skin so soft and dry that he felt like a paper bag of old chicken bones, and she was pleased to indulge his liking for going to bed at the same time; when he died, she would miss his company, but he would probably live for many more years; many ship people lived to be 110.

On the rare occasions when he still wanted any sort of sex, he would gently wake her and ask very politely. She understood that he was determined that she should forget that she was a slave, but Xhrina believed in rules, and would not stop being a slave till she was manumitted, though she was delighted to be ordered to behave like a free person, because the pure autophagy of it made her laugh. They often argued about that in a good-natured way, as he insisted on knowing what she thought and she attempted to tell him only what he wanted to hear, and they enjoyed their mutual failure.

She doubted whether she would ever love anyone, but if she did, it would have been very convenient and not at all a bother or a danger to have loved Mtepic.

When his age-knobbed knuckles brushed down her naked back she turned to let him touch her where he liked, but he placed a finger on her mouth and breathed, "Come with me" in her ear.

He slipped from the sleepsack and swam to his clothes. It was dim in the compartment with only the convenience lights on. As she popped from the sleepsack, he smiled at the sight of her, as he always did, and pushed her coverall bag toward her. She caught it and dressed as she had learned to do, in one movement, like his but swifter because she was young.

He beckoned her to follow him, and opened the hatch into the main crewpipe. They swam in silence up the center of the crewpipe to the opsball. She had only been there the four times that 9743 had needed working: first while they were kerring up the gravity well of Thogmarch, second as they kerred three light-weeks up the gravity well of Beytydry, once before they picked their next destination and turned the main gammors loose to leave Beytydry orbit, and then just two weeks ago for the PPD as budgets, prices, positions, relative velocities, and predictions changed.

That last time, just two weeks ago, Xhrina had been able to follow the discussions, though not really participate in them. Still, she appreciated that Mtepic was a very good ship's mathematician. It had made her bend harder to her studies, for to be an excellent ship's mathematician seemed a very grand thing to her, partly because it was clear that all the other ship people respected it, and mostly because it was what Mtepic was.

But this fifth time in the opsball, they were the only ones. He did not turn on the lights; they sneaked in as if to steal something.

She didn't ask.

She had come, in two years eintime with him, to trust Mtepic. Sometimes she asked herself if she wasn't just being a very faithful slave, but generally she felt that she was trusting like a free person, that Mtepic and she were friends like free people, and Xhrina was secretly very proud of that.

So she didn't ask. She just floated beside Mtepic on one side of the opsball. Since he seemed to be very quiet, she tried to stay even quieter.

Presently the surfaces all around them began to glow, and then the image of the stars shone round the opsball, just as if the human crew were about to commence operation, but perhaps a tenth as brightly. For a moment the display was Dopplered, and there was a blue pole that contained a crunched-down vivid blue Cassipy with Sol and Alfsentary in it, and a red smeared-out Leyo and Viryo, but in less than a second the display corrected.

Mtepic and Xhrina floated in what looked exactly like the dark between the stars, warm and comfortable in their crew coveralls. It was so beautiful with no working screens pulled up that she wondered why the crew did not do this all the time. Perhaps she could get permission to float here among the pictures of the stars, now and then, on her off-awake shift?

She had lost count of the breaths she had slowly drawn and released as she watched the projected stars creep along the surface of the opsball when from one side of the opsball, where Leyo was crawling slowly across, a pale white glow like a broken off bit of the Milky Way burgeoned from a blurry dot to a coin of fog and thence into a lumpy fist of thin white swirl. The swirl swelled into a cloud of particles, then of objects, which surged to swallow the ship and closed around them like a hand grasping a baby bird.

The particles were now as large as people—they were people—translucent and glowing, many of them gesturing as if talking, but not to each other, more as if they had all been abstracted from some larger conversation. The vast crowd converged around the ship, and then all of them were gone except for the dozen who passed right through the wall and into the opsball.

How was that possible? Xhrina wondered. The opsball was buried deep in the center of the ship, 750 meters of holds, lifemachines, quarters, and engines in all directions around it, but the translucent figures, glowing perhaps half as bright as the brightest stars, seemed to merge directly from space outside the ship into space inside the ship.

The pallid figures, mere surfaces and outlines of people, filled the dark sphere. They all took up crew stations as if they were where they belonged, reaching for the opsball surface and calling up workscreens before them, drawing them with their fingers or spreading them with their hands just as regular crew did. The one nearest her was a woman whose strangely patterned coverall had sleeves for both legs and arms, slippers for the feet, and gloves on the hands; Xhrina wondered what sort of ship it was that necessitated so much clothing. That woman seemed to be an astronomer, by what Xhrina could see over her shoulder to her screen, but the graphics were labeled in a language that was not written like Navish.

Directly in front of her, a man who wore coat, shirt, and pants like people in prestellar Earth stories tumbled slowly, pointing and gesturing as if he were the captain. Through his dim translucent sheen, Xhrina could see a nude young woman whose head was half-missing, simply gone behind the ears with brains spilling down her back. Despite that, the young woman was working at a very large screen, apparently trying to estimate a vast matrix and not liking what she saw, redoing and redoing; the screen looked like the math software that Xhrina herself used. As she watched, the naked woman beat on the screen with her fists; Xhrina wondered if the problem was what was on the screen, or the lost parts of her brain.

All round the mathematician and his apprentice, the ghosts worked their ghostly screens, seeming as unaware of each other as of the living beings. They went on working—laughing, cursing, pounding, all without a sound—until the gentle, sweet whistle of Second Shift sounded through the ship. Then they faded through the walls of the opsball, dimming to darkness, and the stars dimmed to nothing after them.

Mtepic brought the running lights up. "Breakfast?"

"Surely," she said. "Perhaps we should nap again after?"

"We're bound to be tired," he agreed. If he was disappointed that she asked no questions, he did not indicate it.

* * *

Xhrina had twice celebrated Mtepic's birthday—the first time with Peter and Yoko who were good-natured but baffled about it, the second time just the two of them the night before they had seen the ghosts. From this, Mtepic deduced that she would like such a thing herself, and checked her bill of sale to find when her birthday was (she had never been told, and Mtepic did not think she should have to see her bill of sale unless she asked).

At one shift close, he surprised her with the news that she had just turned twenty-four, and also with the sort of gifts ship people give: her favorite meal, a small keepsake produced in the ship's fabricator, and time set aside to sit with her and watch a story he knew she'd like.

She had already known that Mtepic thought that she had a great deal of mathematical talent and believed she would one day be a fine ship's mathematician, and she knew too that he liked to have her around him. But still it was a surprise to Xhrina to realize that he also just wanted to do things that would make her happy. No one had ever appeared to care about that before, at all. It took her by surprise, put her a little off balance, but she considered the possibility that she might like it.

By her twenty-sixth birthday, after their five months of slowtime in the port orbiting Old Mars, 9743 was bound for Sigdracone, where she was to be manumitted. By now she was quite sure that she liked Mtepic's kindness and concern for her happiness, and as his health began to fail little by little, she realized that she was glad to be taking care of him, which he only needed occasionally so far, and to be there when he was afraid, which was rare but sometimes severe.

After much thought she concluded that she had been very damaged by the things the slavers had done to her, and guessed that this taking care of Mtepic might be as close to love as she would ever feel. Though she did not miss sex much, she wished he were still well enough to enjoy it; though he was sometimes crabby, and nowadays he slept a great deal, she liked to sit or float where she could have a hand on him, or an arm around him, constantly, as if he were her blanket and she were two years old.

His mind, when he was awake and not in pain, seemed as fine as ever, and she was grateful for that. She was glad she had said she wanted to come along, and everyone knew without saying that she would be staying on the ship, and would probably qualify to be ship's mathematician as soon as Mtepic died or became senile, though no one mentioned the inevitability of either of those to her. Ship people are indifferent, usually knowing nothing of each other's feelings, and not caring even when they must know, but even they could tell that she would miss Mtepic terribly and that the title of ship's mathematician would mean little to her compared to the loss of the only friend she had ever had.

Friend, she thought. That's what Mtepic is to me. I thought he might be, and how nice to know it now, while I can appreciate it.

They were about halfway there; it would be about two years or so eintime until they would lock themselves into the support field caskets so that every cell wall in their body could be held up against the hundred and fifty g acceleration of the gammors running flat out; three days later they would stagger out hungry and tired. Xhrina had been through all that now three times, and had no dread of it; as far as she was concerned, going from gammors down to Kerr motors meant minor discomfort followed by the most enjoyable meal and nap she was ever likely to have.

But for the moment that was still two years eintime, more than a decade slowtime, in the future. They had little to do but think and learn. Learning was fun: Xhrina had already passed her mathematician's mate's exam with highest distinction, and was well on her way to qualifying as a ship's mathematician.

As for thinking, Xhrina often thought about recursion. She thought it was interesting that she didn't always know what she liked, and she thought that everyone must have the same problem, for the only people she knew well were her shipmates, and they were impossible to know well, perhaps because they did not know what they liked, either.

She particularly liked the way that thinking about how it was possible not to know what she herself liked made her thoughts turn into circles and whorls and braids, spiraling down into the first questions about how she knew that she knew anything, as if descending into dark empty singularities; as her thoughts would vanish at the edge of those absent unthinkable thoughts, they marked the boundary as surely as the glimmers of vanishing dust and atoms at the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole.

Sometimes for a whole day she would keep track of which thought led to which thought and count how often, and by what diversity of paths, thoughts returned to the surfaces and boundaries of the unknowable. She could have flicked her fingers across any flat surface to make a work screen, recited her data into the air, and played to her heart's content with the grafsentatz. But when she was working on the recursivity of her thoughts, she preferred to hang in the dark in the opsball, and bring up stars for their current position/time (she could have brought them up for anywhere/anywhen, but she always chose current position and time). She always brought them up to just bright enough to see once her eyes adjusted.

Then she would slow her breathing and heartbeat, and wait for the perfect calm when her chi settled into tan tien, and see only in her mind's eye the screens, matrices, graphs, and equations, and endlessly devise graphs to portray, and statistics to measure, the recursion and circularity of her own thoughts, and consider whether thoughts about recursion should be intrinsically, or just accidentally, more or less recursive than other thoughts, and watch as all those thoughts drifted down onto the unknown, unknowing surfaces of those first known-to-be-unanswerable questions.

When she was finally cool and beautiful inside, she would softly ask the opsball to let the stars dim out, watch them till the last star was gone from the blackness, then swim back to Mtepic's quarters, where she would often find him sleeping fitfully and uneasily, drifting all over the compartment because he had fallen asleep outside the sleepsack. Then she would bathe him and rub him till he fell asleep smiling, and curl up against him for lovely, deep, dreamless sleep. The nightmares of her childhood were mostly gone now, and no more than pale shadows when they returned.

* * *

In the Sigdracone system, she still had enough of her gravity-bone to stand up and raise her hand, down on the surface of Aloysio, and receive her freedom under the open air. She wasn't quite sure why she chose to do that. It all seemed so harsh and uncomfortable and when she returned to the ship, it felt as if she really received her freedom at the dinner they had for her. Though they treated her just as they always had, as an equal, it mattered to her that now they were supposed to.

She affirmed and they voiceprinted it, making Xhrina a shareholder in 9743, backvested with all the equity that she had built up in the trust fund they had kept for her, while she had not been allowed to own property in case the ship had to touch base, and face a books inspection, on a Karkh-Convention world. They drank a toast.

The slowtime people at Aloysio wanted a total cargo changeover, something that only happened once in a century or so of eintime. An organization that the translators called the "Aloysio Museum of Spiritual Anger Corporation" bought the whole cargo, and sold 9743 an entirely new cargo: 1,024 cubes, sixty meters on a side, with identifier strips on every face.

None of 9743's ship people had known in a long time what ships carried, except that they never carried slaves, because they refused to, or any living thing that needed tending, because none of them wanted to learn how. So they knew the containers in the hold had nothing alive, or at least nothing actively alive, in them.

Other than that they knew nothing; over the slow correspondence of decades between ship people on other ships, there was an eternal argument about why no crew knew what was in the cargo. Some said it was because in the wars of fifteen thousand years ago, a tradition had been established that no ship people were ever to be responsible for anything they carried. Others said it was simply that the hundreds of thousands of cultures in slowtime changed so much and so fast compared with ship people that no one could have understood what the cargo was anyway. And still others said that the people on the worlds did not trust ship people not to steal it if they knew what it was, but most people said that was the silliest of all ideas, since anyone knew that the most valuable thing on a ship was hold space, and who would want to keep cargo and never be able to use the hold space again? Or who would buy or sell something when all contracts were broadcast openly, and it would be obvious to anyone that it was stolen?

Actually even if she had known, she would not have cared what was in the cargo. She did know where the cargo was going—that was what a mathematician did, after all—and she liked that very much. The ship would be making a very long haul, out into the north polar section of the Third Pulse worlds, where the inhabited stars were too distant to have ancient names because they had not been naked-eye visible from Earth, and so had been named for abstract qualities by the Second Pulse surveyors; she loved the idea that the suns all had names like Perspicacity, Charity, and Preternaturalness. And it would be six years eintime before their next system entry, perhaps more if the PPDs broke right.

On her twenty-ninth birthday, they were outbound and life had settled into the most comfortable of routines; after the small gifts and the warm feeling of attention, she rubbed Mtepic to sleep—he was just a soft, thin cover on lumpy bones, anymore, she thought—and drifted off herself, glad Mtepic had been there for her first birthday as a free person, hoping she could complete her mathematics preps and qualify for ship's mathematician while he could congratulate her for it.

* * *

Mtepic's soft palms and fingers pressed for one light instant on her shoulder blades. "It's strange how it happens on birthdays."

She glanced at the clock; she and Mtepic had been asleep for five hours since they had celebrated her birthday. Xhrina turned and held him in a light embrace; he sometimes woke up, now, talking to people he had been talking to in dreams, and she didn't like to startle him.

He embraced her in return, firmly and strongly, and now she knew he was awake, just starting in the middle as he tended to do. She waited to see what he would do or say. After a sigh—he liked holding her and she knew he might have been glad to do it much longer—Mtepic said, "There will be ghosts in the opsball tonight. I am going to watch them again. Would you like to come with me?"

"Of course," she said. "Does it happen on everyone's birthday?"

"Just mine, I thought. But now yours. Dress quickly. There's never much warning. We must be there and silent before the ghost-power lights up the opsball."

They dressed, swam through the main crewpipe, and entered the opsball.

Everything that evening was as before, except that the ghosts were different. First the Dopplered stars, and then the corrected stars, dimmer even than when Xhrina came in here to meditate. The fast moving cloud made of ghosts zoomed silently up out of the Southern Cross to surround them in less than a minute. The ghosts in their thousands swarmed around the outside of (the ship? the opsball? But the opsball was 750 meters inside the ship, and yet the twenty or so ghosts who came inside seemed to merge directly from the projected stars to their positions in the opsball).

This time Xhrina mostly watched two young men, apparently twins, trying to solve what she thought must be an equation, though on each side of the equals sign there was only a rotating projection of a lumpy ellipsoid in several colors.

Or perhaps it was a game. They were both laughing very hard about it, whatever it was, and Xhrina liked the way they threw arms around each other and rested their heads on each others' shoulders, then went back to their game or problem or whatever it was, sitting left shoulder to right shoulder, making little blobs of multicolor swim off one blob and across the equals sign to stick to the blob on the other side. Whenever they did that, both blobs would reorganize into different colors and shapes, and the two of them would clap, together, rhythmically, silently, as if to an unheard song.

A teenaged girl that Xhrina thought might have been a daughter or some other relative to the smashed-headed woman from last time—or was it the same woman at an earlier stage of life?—was working her screen, whose language looked like some late Konglish derivative, with a gymnast's concentration.

Another woman, old and stout with jowls, thin short gray hair like velvet, and something rough and wrong with the skin of her neck, wore a military uniform that could have been Late Brazilian Empire, Old Lunar Mexico, or Old Taucetian Guinea; somewhere in the First Interpulse, anyway, around the time of the Trade and Momentum Wars, because she looked just like the characters in a story, with bank codes on her sleeves, Mahmud boots, and a vibratana in a back scabbard.

Xhrina looked more closely, flapping her hands very gently to move herself toward the older woman in the military uniform. Bank trademarks on the shoulders; an admiral, then. Skull-jewels, gold with ruby eyes, in her pierced lower lip; four of them, four battle victories. The bank's symbol had the ancient dollar and yen signs, crossed, in two pairs, on either side of a balance, which could be any of the dozens of military-and-financial-services companies in any of the three millennia of that era.

The admiral was worried, her fingers gliding over a screen that kept changing its display but always showed a cluster of white points surrounded by a swarm of red points, sometimes labeled in the blocky letters of ancient Romantisco, sometimes connected by varicolored lines, sometimes with little translucent spheres around them and clocks ticking beneath them, sometimes in a view that tumbled and rotated to show the shape that the whole formation made in space.

She kept touching the white dots like a mother cat checking her kittens. Abruptly Xhrina understood; the squadron was bunching together to try to make a run through the closing bag, and the admiral didn't want to lose any of them. It was a classic situation, so common during those wars; the red dots were ringoes, robot ships that came in at a single target at 100 g, expending their entire magazines at the target and fuel supplies in acceleration, trying to ram just as they ran empty.

Once a ringo locked on and cranked its gammor to full power, they just kept coming, everything about them bent toward pure raw violence, game pieces intended to sacrifice at one to one, but they knew that they were too valuable to throw way on a bad risk, so they would not lock on until they decided they were close enough for a high probability of a kill. The admiral was trying to get her squadron out of a bag of ringoes, losing as few as she could manage. It did not look like that number would be zero, and it would be many hours before the brief burst of their violent escape, so she could choose to save any ship, but not all of them.

A very overweight, brown-skinned older woman dressed in a sleeveless coverall like Xhrina's own opened an application that Xhrina knew well. Xhrina gently paddled through the air to see better what the woman was doing and found that she was bumping up against Mtepic, paddling over from the other side.

He floated, reflecting the glow of the ghost in front of them. His rounded, reflecting surfaces—forehead, nose, knuckles, knees—glowed gray in the dim light; these seemed to shrink back, as if he were falling back away from the ghosts and the stars beyond them, into utterly lightless dark.

Across Mtepic's face, shoulders, and chest, a tangle of bright-glowing filaments emerged as if rising through his skin, like noodles in a colander slowly surfacing from boiling water.

The filaments broadened, stuck to each other, filled in gaps between. The dense, glowing web merged into the pale white shape of a newborn baby, like a bas relief just a centimeter or so above Mtepic's ghost-lit wrinkled old skin. The baby stretched and yawned. Its light washed over Mtepic's gray, still form and seemed to suck the color out of even his red coverall, leaving his lips blue-gray as dried mold.

The baby's tiny feet on apostrophes of legs barely reached the bottom of Mtepic's ribcage, but its head was almost as big as his. The arms, ending in hands too small to fully wrap Xhrina's thumb, reached out to fathom space around the baby but did not extend as far as Mtepic's slumped-in shoulders on either side. But the puckered face opened in a toothless, radiant smile of pure What? How? What's all this? Then the vast, deep eyes, clear and wide, focused on Xhrina, and the tiny soft mouth twisted and folded in the expression with which Mtepic always favored her best jokes. She could not help smiling back.

Not knowing why, she placed the palm of her right hand on the baby's chest, ever so gently, as if sure it would sink through to the sleeping Mtepic. She was surprised that the baby's chest was warm, damp, and firm under her hand for that instant.

Then she realized the baby was male, for a stream of phosphorescence poured wet and warm onto her sternum, making a glowing patch on her coverall, and she glanced down to see that the ghost baby, if that was what it was, had no more bladder control than a real one.

It was so unexpected that she giggled, carefully not making a sound but letting her chest convulse, and under her palm she felt the baby's chest pulse with the baby's giggle, sharing her delight. Her hand sank a tiny fraction forward, and the baby was gone. Her palm lightly pressed Mtepic's chest, where his heart thundered and his breath surged in and out as if he had worked too long and hard in the gym again, as he did so often despite her gentle scolding. His bony old hands closed around her strong young fingers, and he smiled at her, squeezing her hand.

For the rest of the night they held hands as they watched the laughing twins, the motherly admiral, the fat mathematician, and the rest of the ghostly crew. At last the shift chimes sounded, and the ghosts faded away, and then the stars. "Lights up slow," she said, and the opsball appeared around them, its surfaces matte gray, shut-down and inert, the same old opsball it was for months and years at a time.

"Breakfast in our quarters and a long talk?" she asked.

"Surely! And I am so pleased."

"At what?"

"You said 'our quarters,' not 'your quarters.' That is the first time in six years."

"It was important to you? I would have said it much sooner if I had known it mattered."

"It was important to me that you say it without my asking. And it was not important at all, at first, but it is now." They swam through the irising door of the opsball. "And when it became important, I began to count. You wouldn't laugh at my silly senility?"

"You are not senile and I would not laugh at you."

"Well, then, as it became important, I calculated backward to your arrival, and then began to count, and so I know that it has been 2,222 days eintime since you came aboard, and this is the first time you have said 'our quarters.'"

"Other people might find something odd in that number," she said, "all those twos."

They swam into their quarters. Mtepic flipped over like a seal resting at sea, hands on his belly. "Other people might find something odd in that number, but you and I know about numbers, eh?"

"Exactly so," she said. "In octal it is merely 4,256, and in duodecimal an even less meaningful 1,352. 32,342 in quintal is about as close as you can get to meaningful expression in any other base, and that's not very meaningful. And I would say that if meaning is not invariant we can ignore it."

"Except when we can't, of course?"

That struck them both as funny, for reasons that they knew no one else would understand, and they laughed as they filled out their breakfast order, and filed their official intention to serve their shifts on call in their quarters that day.

Mtepic's sweet tooth had grown ever stronger as he aged. His favorite breakfast was now a fluffy, sweet pancake spread with blueberry jam and wrapped around vanilla ice cream, and as he slowly ate that this morning, he seemed to relish it more than ever. "Well," he asked, "what would you like to know?"

"Was it real?"

He pointed to her chest; the damp spot still glowed.

She ran a finger over it; the very tip of the finger glowed for an instant, and then faded.

"How does it work?" she asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't even know why I wake up knowing there will be ghosts. Or why it was so important to show them to you, or why I want to see them, myself." He took another bite of his pancake and caressed it in his mouth until it dissolved; she waited until at last he said, "I would have gone, you know. That ghost was Sudden Crow, my wife before you—not that you are my wife, though the offer is open if you want it, it meant a great deal to her, but you've never seemed to care."

"I don't. 'Not slave' is all the title I ever wanted, and you gave me that, and you know I'll be with you as long as you live—maybe I should say as long as you want to stay. But you almost . . . left? Do you miss Sudden Crow?"

"Not very much, to tell the truth. She was bad-tempered and sometimes rough with me. I wouldn't mind saying hello again but I hope I wouldn't have to spend any time with her as a ghost. Thirty years of combined time on this side was enough."

"Do you say 'this side' because it feels spatial?"

Frowning, he thought, and then at last shook his head. "More like the sides of a game or a question than the sides of a segment or a surface." He pondered more, then took another delighted bite of his breakfast. "Really, your friendship is one good reason to stay on this side, more than enough reason all by itself, but this breakfast could be another, and when I think of all the other things I still enjoy, I can understand why so few people want to go before they have to. It was just that seeing her there, somehow I knew how I could go, if I wanted to go. And the old body is such a nuisance, you know, sometimes, it gets so sore and itchy and hurty. So I did want to, just for that moment, but now I'm glad I didn't."

"Do the ghosts come aboard often?"

"You've been with me the last two times. Out of six in all. Five on my birthdays, now one on yours. And I've never told anyone else, but I knew you were the right one to see it. I've searched through all twenty-seven thousand years of star trader history, and records from more than a million ships—traders but also slavers, military, scout, and colony—and though there are many accounts of ghosts, most are just fiction, labeled as such, and many of the rest seem to be merely some bit of culture that came loose from its old moorings in some folktale and washed up in the star trader culture. And 9743 itself records the ghosts but doesn't perceive them; they are there on camera recordings but if you ask 9743 to look for the ghosts in all its thousands of years of recordings of the opsball, it won't see any ghosts, and it can look right at a camrec full of ghosts and does not perceive them, it only sees an empty, dark opsball."

"So they are aphysical. But they record physically. What do you suppose they are?"

"A very expressive hole in spacetime?" Mtepic shrugged. "Most star traders commit bodies to space at peak velocity. Most of us run at 98%c or higher. Once the body is outside the protection of the forward shield, the atoms and dust in interstellar space erode it, and it loses velocity, though not quickly. And of course it is far above galactic escape velocity. Except for the very few that run into stars or black holes or comets, all the bodies committed to space must still be out there, some as much as thirty thousand light years away if you allow for burials during the First Pulse when there was little or no trade.

"You could picture each corpse as a long pathway, sweeping atoms and ions and molecules and dust out of interstellar space, shaped very much like the dead person at this end in time and space, and as the interstellar medium punches them full of holes and breaks them down, trailing off into just a cloud of nucleons at a far end somewhere way outside the galaxy and some millions of years in the future. Perhaps something aphysical flows back along the path they make, and—'crystallizes'? 'condenses'? maybe just 'organizes' is the word for what it does, around any passing seed or nucleus or whatever you would call a thing a ghost organizes around. Maybe where a large number of pathways run close together, they entangle like spaghetti, and express as a ghost swarm when something that can appreciate their meaning comes along. That would explain the association with birthdays. Birthdays are meaningful even though they're so drastically different in slowtime and eintime and depend completely on when you got on the ship, and where it goes, and how long an Old Earth year was at the moment they standardized it. So maybe ghosts annucleate around meaningful things like ships and birthdays. It makes a certain kind of sense. Meaning is aphysical, and ghosts are aphysical. Then again, what do physical beings like us know of aphysics?"

"But none of that would explain the baby coming out of your chest, or that the baby was you, or that we both remember it, let alone that I've got a patch of spiritual pee right over my heart."

"Was I a baby? I wondered why I felt so strangely proportioned, and so small, and had no teeth. Well, that is certainly data to add to the puzzle."

"Why should there be ghosts or spirits on a starship?"

"Why not here as much as anywhere? And for that matter, why should there be ships? Robot-only starships are just slightly less likely to reach their destinations, but it would be so easy to factor that into the price, and it would be more profitable to send containers one-way and just accept some losses at the other end. As it is 9743 pays for an immense amount of space and mass to keep us alive. So why are we here? Why is there even an economy? We make everything on the ship by transmutation and molecular assembly—we never 'pick up supplies' though we sometimes buy new goods to record them for later manufacture—and we know the people in slowtime are centuries or millennia ahead of us—so why is there cargo for us to carry?"

"You think that has something to do with the ghosts," Xhrina said, not a question, just trying to stay with him; clearly he had been thinking about this for a long time, had worked out the perfect presentation in his mind, wanted to have it produce perfect understanding—it was the way he had taught her mathematics. She knew he liked it when she understood at once, and she knew this might be her only chance to understand.

"I think it's another void in spacetime. Once pretty much everyone human traded, going way back to Old Earth. For some reason it paid to trade between the stars. The ships began to move. Now they just move, bodies in motion remaining in motion, and the trading just happens. Maybe. Maybe we're all just the ghosts of what humans used to do. Three-quarters of the star systems we traded in at one time or another now just wave us off, new ones come on line, and old ones reactivate after centuries of slowtime. Who can say what goes on out there?"

"Is it possible that the slowtime people on the planets are all just crazy, or perhaps playing at things because there's nothing real left?"

"The slowtime people might ask the same things about us. We could just liquidate, and move into a nice orbital resort where they'd pamper us silly for the rest of our lives."

"I would hate that."

"So would I." Mtepic smiled shyly. "Do you think it would be all right for me to have another pancake like that last one?"

"You've been losing weight," she said, "and I worry about your appetite. You can have ten as far as I'm concerned. And actually, being very concerned, I wish you would."

"Let's start with one, but I'll keep the offer in mind. And you're right, I haven't been taking very good care of myself, and for some reason, now I feel like I want to, at least for a while."

She prepared it for him, not because he couldn't do it himself, and not because she had to. She pointed that out as she served it to him, and he said, "You see? Part of what makes it good is all the things it's not."

She thought about that for a while and she said, "So the ghosts are not hallucinations. And they're not physical as we understand it or the machines would be able to see them, rather than just record them. And you think maybe they're where the bodies—well, the traces of the bodies—are not."

"Except that Sudden Crow destroyed that theory," he said. "She always was good at destroying theory. Part of why she was a good shipmate."

"She hurt you," Xhrina said, surprised at her own vehemence. "You said she was rough with you."

"True. But I was not as fragile then as I've become, and besides she was a valuable member of the crew. And of course so are you, and getting more valuable all the time, and you are very good to me. You fill up a space different from the one she vacated."

"I'd better," she said. "I wouldn't want to fill her place, at all." And because she had said it a bit too vehemently, and the two of them were looking at each other awkwardly, she hurried on with the first question she could think of. "Why did you say Sudden Crow destroyed your theory about the traces of the bodies in spacetime?"

"Because she was buried in space about a year and a half out of Aydee-to-Ridny, outbound. Her pathway couldn't have come anywhere near here."

"But she was on this ship. Her path before she was dead included it. What if it doesn't matter as long as you can describe the path, or the place where the path was? Suppose that, and maybe—"

"But it might be too hard if we suppose that," Mteptic objected. "It doesn't restrict things enough. Why don't we see everyone's ghost all the time?"

"'Mathematics is how we find the logical implications of the boundaries of things, and the whole history of mathematics is the story of working with fewer and flimsier boundaries,'" she said. "You said that to me the very first time I sat down to learn algebra. Maybe we don't see them often enough because there aren't enough boundaries to produce them, or because we live inside so many boundaries, or . . . well, we don't even know what the boundaries are, do we?"

"Hard to evaluate the boundary conditions," Mtepic agreed. "But as far as I can see, it's all holes and voids. There's some odd thing in the slowtime world, some place we fill, though we don't know what it is. Empty spots left in crews and on ships when people die, and the holes in space they make when we throw their bodies away, and the big emptiness of space itself, and every hole is outlined, and every outline means the hole—and, well, you must think I'm senile by now, surely."

"I don't," she said. "Oh, I don't. You know I don't. Can I make you another pancake?"

* * *

In Mtepic's last few years, they talked more. She liked that. She had received the last promotion she could get while he was alive, to mathematician's-mate-pending-mathematician. That forced her for the first time to think of the succession. She decided that however she acquired her apprentice (she rather hoped to buy one out of a slave world, she would feel good about freeing someone as she had been freed), she would consider looking for someone who would talk. Many ship people didn't, for weeks or months at a time.

That was another guess of Mtepic's, that ship society was where the surrounding slowtime societies were dumping their autistic people and those whose mathematical gifts were no longer needed because they had synminds. "Sort of a featherbedding asylum for mathematicians," he would say, coughing and laughing as she bathed, dried, and rubbed him. She would always laugh too, just because it was Mtepic and she felt how close he was to crossing over to the other side, and she expected to miss him then, and wish she could hear his jokes again.

The night after her thirtieth birthday, she awoke knowing that there would be ghosts in the opsball, and felt Mtepic waking within the circle of her arms. Xhrina dressed them both quickly and gently towed him with her, as she had had to do for the past few months, since his limbs had grown too feeble and shaky to keep him stable as he swam in the air.

It was as before, with a new swarm of ghosts, and in the middle of it, the baby emerged from Mtepic; she held the baby for a long moment, and kissed the tiny mouth tenderly, and then watched it sail off, giggling and tumbling, into the stars, until it was just a star itself, and then gone. She towed Mtepic's remainder back to their quarters; for reasons she did not understand, she didn't want to tell her shipmates that he had died in the opsball.

They might have been surprised at how dry her eyes were, and how perfect her composure, when they buried Mtepic's body in space on the next shift, but ship people are never very surprised at anything human, for they don't understand it and lose the habit of being curious about it.

* * *

Treo often floated with her in the dark opsball now. "It's a big promotion," he said, "and an honor, and you would make a good captain. I admit I'm delighted with the idea of being ship's mathematician without having to wait for you to die." That was the longest speech he had made, and Xhrina found it faintly ironic that he made it as they floated in the opsball, where normally they were most silent.

It was not a normal occasion; Phlox had chosen to die voluntarily after Arthur's death, and would be doing it after she said her goodbyes tonight, so they were replacing a captain and a first mate. The crew had chosen Xhrina as captain, with Officer-Apprentice Chang to be brevet-promoted to first mate, if they wanted the positions.

Xhrina thought Chang would be all right as a first mate; he was young and should ideally have had a few more years as an apprentice, but she reckoned that he would have them by the time she died, and would still be a young, vigorous, apt-to-be-successful captain. It was a good match all around.

They were far out in the Sixth Pulse systems now, newer worlds with more cargo to send and receive, out in the thinly populated fringes of the human sphere. So there could have been very few of those pathways of the dead that Mtepic imagined, but when they jettisoned Phlox's body, Xhrina felt something; and the next day was her fiftieth birthday, and she felt it more strongly; so that night she was unsurprised to awaken and feel that it was time to see ghosts in the opsball. It had been a long time since she had seen ghosts, only twice since Mtepic's death, and this was the first time since Treo had come aboard. She woke him, told him to dress and be quiet and to hurry.

The blue-to-red Dopplered stars became plain white stars, the swarm of ghosts arrived, and as Xhrina was just beginning to watch with wonder, and celebrate being here for such a thing again, Treo cried out in fear, having seen Phlox swim through the hull and take up her navigation station, and all of it vanished.

That settled Xhrina's mind. She took the captain's cabin, and shared it with Chang, from then on, letting him rub her back because he seemed to like to do it and it did feel good, and occasionally relieving him sexually, though he was much more attracted to the second physicist's mate, Robert, who was unfortunately not interested in sex at all, or at least not any kind that Chang offered.

Xhrina didn't exactly give up on any idea of love, but it was a long time before she trusted Chang as more than a mere colleague and convenient bed companion, so long that she got to know him too well, and settled for trust without love. It was an even longer time before she saw ghosts again.

* * *

Of the old generation, only she, Peter, and Squire were left on her eighty-fifth birthday, and Squire spent all of his time sleeping in his life support tank now, though when roused he seemed coherent enough in a querulous sort of way. 9743, by vote of the crew (a vote Xhrina had very carefully nurtured into happening) had been renamed Ulysses, a name it had last had 290 years eintime before. Xhrina could not have said why she preferred that.

There was a Seventh Pulse underway, carrying the human frontier out past 150 light years from the home system, and at great distances, now and then, they detected the sonic boom of near-lightspeed bodies of a kilometer or more across, pressing so fast through the interstellar medium that their bow shock was too much for the thin trace of plasma and shook it hard enough to make microwaves. "The new colony ships move much faster than the old," Captain Xhrina observed, at the table with everyone. She had insisted on establishing a tradition of birthdays, real birthdays for everyone, even looking up some old traditions so that everyone wore funny hats, and they served fish, and sang a song called "Years and Years" in ancient Konglish.

"I would like to see one more new part of space before I pass on," she said. "There may just be time for that if we do this, and there is something in it for all of you. It will make our reputation forever as traders; the name of Ulysses will be known, and that would please me, and I hope it would please you.

"Sixty years ago, according to radio, the Sol and Alfsentary systems were known to be open, so we could make one stop on the way. My plan would be that we would take only half a hold of cargo—we probably can't even get that, nowadays, anyway, there doesn't seem to be much at any port—and then stuff the empty holds with extra mass, which we could feed into the shielders, and we could run at ninety-nine-four instead of our usual ninety-eight-two. That would mean eintime would be about one ninth of slowtime, instead of one fifth, and we could be back to the center in about seven years eintime. Switch cargos and pick up more mass there, head out again, and run at ninety-nine four for a hundred twenty years of slowtime, so that we get all the way into the Seventh Pulse worlds on the other side. The corporation could afford to do it a hundred times over; I'd just like to take a chance on being there at the end of that voyage, and if we make it there, we will have made a name for ourselves, forever, among star traders. No other reason."

Treo would vote with her; he always did because he feared that she thought he was a coward, though she had never said so. And his mathematician's mate Fatima would vote yes along with him. Peter would probably vote yes just because he found all port calls distressful and would like the idea that he would probably die before they made their first stop. With her vote, that was fifty-fifty; she thought Chang had liked the idea when she explained it to him, but with Chang it was hard to tell about things. The other three tended to think that the economic models that slithered and hissed through Ulysses's computers, paralyzing everything with their venom of marginal returns, were gods to be propitiated.

"Call the question?" Sleeth, the second physicist's mate-pending-first, said. That was conventional because she was juniormost voting member; it also fit Sleeth, because she was young and bouncing with energy in a crew of old, tired people. Most of the crew muttered that she was annoying except Squire, who said it outright whenever he was out of the tank, and Robert, the first physicist's mate, who said it coldly, as if it were the atomic mass of oxygen or the orbital velocity of a planet.

To compensate, Xhrina made no secret that Sleeth was as much her favorite now as when she had come aboard as a too-noisy-for-ship-people two-year-old. As the captain grew older, she had felt more and more that Sleeth was the only person, besides Xhrina, who liked to get things done. So this calling the question was natural, aside from being a duty.

The vote wasn't even close—only Squire and Robert voted against. Sleeth said apologetically to her cabin mates, "I'd like to be from a famous ship, and these runs around on the surface of the Sixth Pulse are getting dull."

It seemed to Xhrina more likely that Sleeth, who was barely twenty, but had come back from the training ship when only twelve, had been living too long with an angry husk in a tank, and a cold man who never spoke (did Robert use her roughly? Xhrina had asked Sleeth, more than once, and Sleeth had said no in a way that Xhrina thought meant yes, but please don't do anything). This looked to be Sleeth's first little step to saying that she would not be pushed around by Robert and Peter, and it made Xhrina glad in a way that she had not felt in a while.

That night, when Chang crawled into the sleepsack beside Xhrina, he said, "When we approach the home system, and you wake knowing that there are ghosts in the opsball, don't wake me. I'm afraid of them and I don't want to know about them."

"All right," she said. "Have you been reading my diary?"

"Yes," he said, "it's my right as first mate to read anything you write, and I don't like to ask. And I asked Treo and he told me how frightened he was, and I went back and looked at all your birthdays, and Mtepic's, and saw the ghosts on the recordings. It made me so afraid I have had a hard time sleeping since. So don't take me with you. I don't want to see ghosts." More gently, he said, "You might talk to Sleeth about it. She's always been your little shadow, and she would face the fear just for love of you."

"Thank you," she said, "I will." And Xhrina turned her back on him, to enjoy his warmth but not to talk any more. I suppose I would have faced the ghosts for love of Mtepic, she thought, but I wanted to see them anyway, though I didn't know it until he showed them to me. I hope it can be that way with Sleeth.

* * *

On the night of her ninety-third birthday, Xhrina rolled over and touched Sleeth, who had been her sleepsack partner for some years now. "Ghosts," she said, "finally."

"I'm glad," Sleeth said, awake at once, and they turned up the lights and dressed quickly.

She wasn't sure that she really was glad. Sleeth and the captain had talked of ghosts at least every few shifts for the last five years, and Sleeth had come to realize that her first time seeing ghosts would be the captain's last. She had forced herself to seem happy and cheerful about the impending visit of the ghosts all through the annoying too-long layover around Old Earth's moon, as well, and now that the time was here, she hadn't really had time to think through what she wanted to feel, or ought to feel, and was stuck with just feeling what she felt—which was a mystery.

She had heard so much from the captain about Mtepic, and ghosts, and all the theories about ghosts, because the captain only needed to work an hour a day or so during the layover, while they found whatever cargo they could. The synminds of Old Earth and Ulysses at last found a small load, but did not seem to be able to explain what was in the containers, except that it was something that it was not inconceivable that someone in the new Seventh Pulse worlds out toward the Southern Cross and Sentaru might want 120 years from now.

The captain had not cared, so Sleeth had not cared. The scant cargo meant that their holds had had that much more room for a load of U238, depleted uranium, not for atomic power as in ancient times—they might as well have taken hay, oats, and water, and would have if nothing denser had been available—but because it was a conveniently dense supply of mass to be torn to nucleons and shot out the bow by the shielder, to clear a path through the interstellar medium for them. With the extra mass, they were able to run at 99.7%c, which meant almost 13 years of slowtime to one year of eintime. Ulysses would be some sort of legend, now, for sure.

But, Sleeth thought sadly, the end of the legend will not be Captain Xhrina bringing Ulysses to the port of Summer, the port that they had been aiming for since their last PPD and change of course about a year eintime ago.

Xhrina and Sleeth had talked of ghosts, many times, and Sleeth longed to see them, with Xhrina; but she would miss their conversations about them, and it seemed sad that she would have no one to talk about this first time with. But then apparently Mtepic had seen them five times alone, and who knew how many others saw them and never talked about it at all?

Still, Sleeth had always imagined that when at last she saw them, she would be able to talk about them with Captain Xhrina. She had been ship-raised, and because of the way the schedules had worked out, had only been on a training ship for six years, about half what was normal, so that she had spent a great deal of time following Xhrina around when she was younger, and then more time tending her later. Xhrina had always been her one real friend.

Sleeth knew she would miss the captain dreadfully, but she didn't think she should say so, with the captain's eyes alight with joy; once they were in the opsball, it was easier, waiting in the dark, because Sleeth could just let her tears quietly flow.

It was all as Sleeth had heard it told, so many times.

As the ghosts neared, Xhrina bounced and fidgeted as if she had a tenth of her years. When the slender, small ghost that had to be Mtepic—though now strong and young—swam through the wall into the opsball, the glowing baby emerged from her head and chest in just two heartbeats, formed fully in the air, and held its arms to Mtepic, who swooped in and scooped up the newborn Xhrina. Just a few seconds, the first time I ever saw the ghosts, and it was all over, Sleeth thought sadly.

As if he had heard her thoughts, Mtepic, still cradling the fiercely glowing ghost-baby, turned back, and smiled a warm knowing smile at Sleeth.

To everyone's surprise—even to the surprise of Mtepic's ghost—ghost-Xhrina, newborn and toothless, huge-eyed face wide with glee, in the ghost-mathematician's now-strong and young arms, waved bye-bye to Sleeth, in a way so like any other baby that Sleeth giggled, aloud, and all the ghosts but Mtepic and Xhrina fled as the stars began to fade.

Grinning, Mtepic raised a finger to his lips—Shhh!—and so did Xhrina, and they both waved bye-bye once again before they were gone into the field of stars, which faded after them, leaving Sleeth laughing in darkness.

* * *

John Barnes is the author of many novels and short stories.

A Time to Kill

Written by S. Andrew Swann
Illustrated by Christoff Koelzer

Marine Lieutenant David Abrams was a sniper with the 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company. He had the highest operational success rate of any U.S. soldier in the Iranian theatre, and coalition-wide there was only a single Scotsman with the SAS who had a better record.

And, right now, he was curled up on the floor in a dank cell somewhere in western Jerusalem where the only light came from a small opening high on one wall.

Occasionally he would cough up a mouthful of blood and phlegm from where the militia guards had battered in the left side of his chest. He was lucky to be alive; the ceramic insert in his Kevlar vest had probably kept the blows from being immediately fatal.

They had beat him, stripped him naked, and thrown him in this cell wearing only his dog tags. They had his rifle, of course. And they had the gadget.

What was left of the gadget anyway; he had heard the casing shatter when the guards fell on him. The scientists had warned him that breaching the containment isolating the strange quantum mechanism meant it would collapse into the non-space from which it was formed . . .

No going back even if his captors meant to spare him.

He was long past going back anyway.

He coughed up more bloody phlegm, wondering exactly how he would be executed.

Light from the hallway blinded him as the door opened. David blinked up at a rough silhouette and wondered if this would be his executioner.

David's visitor spoke in a rough, almost unintelligible accent, "You speak Hebrew?"

David laughed at the incongruity.

His visitor continued in Hebrew. "Do you understand me? Do you know why you're in this cell?"

"Waiting for you to kill me."

"Do you have any conception of what you've done?"

David looked into the shadowed face and tried to see an expression. He felt dizzy. Probably blood loss. "One bullet, I thought. One bullet and the gadget and there could be peace . . ."

"Peace?" his captor spat, as if it was the only word he could understand.

* * *

"Lieutenant Abrams, how would you like to be the man who ends this war?"

The man asking him the question was the secretary of defense of the United States.

It was the third week of the thrust toward Tehran, and David had been called back to the States by orders signed by the President herself.

Now he sat in meeting room, deep in the bowels of an unnamed DARPA campus in the Nevada desert. He faced the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the secretary, and a trio of scientists.

"What do you want me to do, sir?"

The secretary handed David a thick briefing book. "This is your target."

David opened the folder and saw a familiar bearded face. He looked up at the secretary. "But he's already dead."

* * *

The intel was perfect. The gadget dropped behind some sand dunes in the Afghan desert, 2000 yards from his target. It was frigid night, and the gadget was a weird weight on his back, pulling him like a gyroscope.

David staggered from the sudden change in orientation. Moments ago he had been standing on the concrete floor of an empty hangar in the DARPA complex. His feet now sank into sand, and he had the adrenaline shock of realizing that he was alone, in enemy territory.

He froze, praying his sudden appearance had gone unnoticed. It had; the desert night was quiet around him. After getting his bearings, he carefully lowered himself to his stomach and crawled with his weapon to just within sight of the impromptu camp. He brought his weapon to bear and looked through the scope, into the open tent.

The reality of what had happened didn't strike him until he saw Osama bin Laden's face in his crosshairs, laughing at something the Saudi prince with him was saying.

It wasn't until that moment that David truly believed what the scientists had told him. He really was in the Afghan desert in the year 1999. He really was here before 9/11, before the war in Afghanistan, before the invasion of Iraq. Before an unmanned drone invaded Iranian airspace to take Osama bin Laden out with a GPS-guided missile and spark the war with Iran.

In the words of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "The gadget gives us the opportunity to revise that particular decision and eliminate OBL at a place chosen to be of maximum advantage to the United States and our allies."

For the first time in his career as a sniper, David's hand shook.

But only after he had pulled the trigger and OBL's laughing face melted into a red mist.

The shot echoed through the desert, followed by the popcorn sound of automatic weapons fire, interspersed with the occasional shout of Arabic.

He managed to press the red button that would take him back to the DARPA testing fields, a few milliseconds later than when he left.

* * *

Of all the consequences of eliminating OBL from the historical equation, David hadn't thought of the DARPA complex itself. Somehow, an irrational part of his brain half-expected to see the scientists, the chairman, and the secretary all there to greet him and to tell him what the last decade had wrought.

At first he thought that the gadget had dropped him in the wrong place and time, but his GPS locator placed him in the right area in Nevada. And the right time, a couple of seconds after he left.

But the DARPA complex was gone, and in its place was a sand-swept airstrip and a couple of dilapidated buildings that hadn't seen use since the sixties.

"I guess the project started after 1999 . . ."

David shook his head, a little mystified why killing bin Laden would prevent development of the gadget. But it began him thinking about other consequences.

No DARPA project and he never would have gone on the mission to hit OBL. That meant there was another David Abrams out here somewhere. Someone with his name, his face, but who had a completely different history since 1999. Would he have joined the Marines if 9/11 never happened? Was there any part of his life left?

David was prepared to die for his country, but somehow, this was worse.

* * *

He had to walk to the nearest town, carrying his weapon, preparing to be challenged at any moment by MPs or civilian police. He didn't know what would happen if he was picked up. He wasn't AWOL, but the only orders he had were signed by someone who might not even be President now.

He made it to a small diner, by the side of the road.

David always kept a few twenties in a pocket sewn under his vest. Never knew when American currency would come in handy. Good thing too. He was hungry.

He pushed his way into the near-empty diner.

The man behind the counter looked up and stared. "Good lord, where'd you come from?"

David, shook his head. "Long story. Can I get something to eat?"

"Sure." The man waved away his twenty. "Your money's no good here." He turned around and called out, "Sarah, get out our best steak dinner, got a serviceman here."

David took a seat at one of the barstools, fighting the weird gyroscope of the gadget. It was awkward, but he didn't want to set down a one-of-a-kind hundred billion dollar piece of equipment.

The man looked at him. "You're not the National Guard out of Vegas?" He looked a little surprised.

"No, Marines. Third Force Reconnaissance Company, out of Mobile."

"Uh huh . . . just got a truckload of National Guard, two days ago, heading for Ground Zero. That where you going?"

David shook his head, unsure of what the man had just said.

Ground Zero?

He must have taken silence as assent. "Thought so. I been telling everyone that there had to be some of those rag-head bastards running around here. How the hell else could they get a nuke into Vegas. You take a few out for me huh?"

David could only nod.

A steaming T-bone slid in front of him.

"On the house. Anyone who puts his life on the line for his country eats free here."

"Thanks." David looked at the meal. A nuke in Vegas? How the hell could . . . Taking out OBL should have been a death blow to al Qaeda.

David looked up and saw a TV, tuned to CNN.

"Can you turn that up?"

"Sure."

David ate mechanically in silence as he listened to what a balls-up failure his mission had been.

It wasn't just Vegas.

It was Vegas, New Orleans, and Chicago. The nukes were from Iran. At least that was the excuse for leveling Tehran and a dozen other cities. And Saddam had plowed into Iran, lobbing chemical shells, with tacit approval of the U.S. Casualty figures were reaching a two million. Ten times the war David had left.

Not counting the ones in the States.

No one had seen the attacks coming. Just like 9/11. But it was 9/11 with a decade more planning in the shadows of the Middle East.

* * *

The first time he saw the gadget, it was hard to believe they wanted to send something so fragile looking on a military mission. It didn't look like it, but it was the result of an effort that made the Manhattan project look like a couple of kids working in their dad's garage.

A cube of electronics connected to a metal framework holding a sphere that resembled a silver Christmas ornament the size of a bowling ball. It would fit into a canvas envelope that would strap to David's back instead of a normal pack.

"This is really a time machine?"

"Yes, it is," said one of the scientists.

"And it can go anywhere?" David asked.

"With some limits."

"What limits?"

"The coordinates where the device coalesces cannot co-occupy a point where the probability wave has—"

"In English?" David asked.

The scientist paused, taking a moment to phrase his explanation. "Any one device can't go to a point in time between any two points it has already traveled to."

* * *

The decade between OBL's corpse falling in the Afghan desert, and an Islamic nuke exploding in Vegas, was now inaccessible to the gadget. But the results were so catastrophic, David had no choice but to try to fix what he had done.

But there were only so many bullets, and he had to choose wisely.

* * *

Western presence in Saudi Arabia was one of the main driving factors behind OBL and his followers. If the U.S. hadn't come to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, they would lose their focus. The U.S. would not become involved in what was really a regional conflict.

So, if Iraq never invaded Kuwait . . .

David jumped a decade before his assassination of OBL, to Baghdad in 1989. And this time it is Saddam's face that evaporates in his crosshairs.

* * *

He knew the DARPA complex would not be there. And he knew his appearance would cause alarm, especially if he had achieved his goal and there was no longer an ongoing war. So this time he appeared after nightfall, inside a library in his home town.

He had night-vision equipment, so he was able to navigate through the green monochrome library, to the periodicals.

He picked up a newspaper and held his breath.

"Oh God. What did I do?"

He tore through more newspapers, magazines, and found the ugly history. An Iraqi civil war in the 90's, ignored by the U.S., eventually leading to an Iran-dominated Shiite theocracy that extended from Afghanistan to the gulf; one that ignored Kuwait, and chose to invade the Saudi peninsula.

The U.S. had no choice but to repel that aggression. Now, not only was the U.S. footprint on Saudi soil, M1–Abrams tanks were rolling through Mecca.

The level of terrorism in the U.S. over the past twenty years made the Gaza strip look like a frat party. Muslims were being herded into camps like the Japanese during WWII. Shiite clerics were disappearing into a black hole somewhere. Mosques were completely shut down, or being operated with government observers.

And over the past ten years, the casualty count rivaled that of the nuke attack.

* * *

Iran was the problem; really, the Islamic revolution there.

If there wasn't a dictator to revolt against. If a power shift happened in time to give the clerics and the students some hope that they'd have a voice in the government without a revolution. If the U.S. wasn't in a position to give the shah sanctuary and become the Great Satan.

By 1976, the shah was going to die soon anyway.

* * *

There's a law of unintended consequences . . .

* * *

The library was gone. David appeared in a lot of broken weed-shot asphalt. His old neighborhood was unrecognizable. Buildings abandoned, burnt out, boarded up and wrapped in graffiti. The sounds of gunfire and sirens echoed in the distance.

The GPS couldn't lock on any satellites. As if they weren't there anymore.

But he knew the area. He recognized the Shell station that had been there since he'd been a kid. It was boarded up too, and spray-painted over the plywood were the words "No Gas."

David shook his head and started looking for a newspaper.

* * *

He didn't stay long enough to discover all the details, but he got enough to understand how this history went wrong. No Iranian Revolution and no hostage crisis. Jimmy Carter might have a second term. Alter the U.S. attitude to the Soviets and the U.S.S.R. puts a little more effort into their push into Afghanistan. The Russians suffer an even worse military catastrophe—after cutting a swath of destruction through an Iran weakened by a succession of military coups.

Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya—a cauldron of civil wars spread out from the Russian invasion. The Soviet Union cracked apart, but not peacefully. The Israelis now occupied Sinai, all of Lebanon, part of Jordan. They were forcefully expelling the entire Palestinian population.

No the U.S. wasn't at war. But a third of the world was, and the U.S. was spiraling into a depression.

* * *

No, the root of it was the use of terror as a political tool. If it wasn't for the PLO, and Munich, things might have been different.

The next bullet was for Arafat in 1968.

* * *

Unintended consequences . . .

* * *

Palestinian refugees, without even a vague hope of repatriation, begin revolting against the Arab governments whose land they sit on. The weak Arab governments don't allow them a place in their countries. Eventually, like a malignant pearl, a fascist pan-Arab state grows around the violence of the of the refugee camps.

The next Arab-Israeli war is fought with nukes.

* * *

No Nasser, no Suez War, no Six-Day War. No Israeli occupation. In 1955 the Egyptian leader is cut down by David's bullet. . . .

* * *

Over half a century is too much history to glean from a newspaper, but bombs were going off in Tel-Aviv, and Damascus. UN forces were in the Sinai and Jordan, and a communist regime in Syria was refusing to dismantle its nuclear program.

* * *

If the British didn't abandon control of Palestine too early . . .

* * *

If there wasn't a Holocaust or WWII . . .

* * *

If the Ottoman Empire never fell . . .

* * *

If there wasn't the split between Sunni and Shiite . . .

* * *

If . . .

* * *

"Peace," his captor spat, as if it was the only word he could understand. The guard repeated, "Who are you? Why did you do this?"

"My name is Lieutenant David Abrams, United States Marine Corps Third Force Reconnaissance Company, Serial Number . . ." David repeated the mantra in English.

"Bah. Nonsense." The man threw him down and David coughed up more blood. "The man has lost his sanity."

A third man ran into the cell, "Josephus! The Romans are here for him. What should we do?"

Josephus rubbed the bridge of his nose and a grave expression shadowed his face, as if he could see the centuries of violence awaiting them all.

"Josephus?"

"We give them what they want. We give them the man and his unearthly tools, and hope the blood of Pilate's assassin will be enough to keep them from slaughtering us all."

Josephus looked down at David, who had lapsed into unconsciousness. "Peace?" He spat the word like a curse. "You'll have yours in the grave, like everyone else."

* * *

S. Andrew Swann is the author of many books and stories.

The Man Who Wasn't There

Written by Gregory Benford
Illustrated by Phil Renne

The security 'bots zoomed around the looming mosque like supersonic butterflies in the cold air. Jean watched them with his infrared eyes as their tiny plumes darted over the bare zone, blazing high tech fireflies. They patrolled silently over the wide plaza, watching for movement up and down the spectral bands.

Sentinels of Islam hovering in a suburb of Paris. Around the butterfly buzz hung a weekday midnight silence.

"Merde du jour," he muttered. The Islamic Front could afford the butterflies. They fed on endless money from the Saudis and Iranians. All part of the campaign to restore Islam to Europe after the regrettable Christian Era.

Not restored by the sword, of course—they were hopeless on a battlefield. But now, in softened consumerist Europe, their shopworn push-pull strategies of terror and political demand still worked. Islamic Front had plenty of followers in the immigrant masses. Their code of strict secrecy—talk and you die, unpleasantly—made them potent. Against them the French government deployed lawyers. Thinking of them, he spat on the floor of the apartment he had rented.

"Ready, Ajax?" He got a coded blip in answer—OK.

Time to move. Nobody knew where the Front would strike next with bombs, kidnappings, violent protests. Plus the usual rhetoric about being repressed. Very effective.

They had made such claims back in Lyon, after a street brawl on Montclair Boulevard. That was years ago, just as the Front started to use advanced technologies. All cameras, videos, and other recording systems near Montclair Boulevard had been blank, so the Front could claim that the fighting and the car bomb that followed were the work of others. So it had gone now for years, an arms race of technologies.

Unless, of course, the plans of the Islamic Front could be tapped. But that meant getting in fast, silent, deadly. Tonight.

Inside the shadowy compound ahead, the Head was at work. Under the shield of the looming mosque, he sent agents forth. He hid behind some holy name, but French Intelligence had pinpointed the Head's movements, and now was the time to strike. Remembering Montclair Boulevard.

Jean said softly, "Take out the microwaves."

Silently, the side teams did.

The details registered in his left eye, fed from his wearable computer. The Front was using the minarets at the square's corners to mount their detectors. Jean could see their snouts peeking out of the corbelled designs that wrapped around each artfully curved dome atop the minarets. The surveillance cameras were the usual IR motion sensing type. But they were all connected to a central security center—the usual control-freak arrangement. They could be defeated by intersecting their microwave links, saturating them, blowing the electronics down the line.

Jean ordered the teams to open up. Soundless beams lanced instantly into the broad square of the compound. They were aimed at receivers, jamming the link back to the security center that squatted down on the mosque's roof.

Simple, really—flood them with a high power noise spectrum signal. Their cameras looked in all directions, their sensors wide open in the winter dark—so they could be attacked from any direction, jammed from any angle. Thank God—whichever version you liked, Jean thought—the Front hadn't thought to use laser links—easier to find, but far harder to block or saturate.

"Their links are cut," came a whispered comm message from a nearby apartment, diagonally across the square.

"Now the security 'bots."

Microwave pulses transfixed each of the fireflies darting around the mosque square. Short bursts of microwaves flooded their diodes. The butterflies abruptly tumbled to the cobblestones.

He rasped in a short breath and beeped Ajax into action. "Send in the silver," Jean said. His buddy Ajax was in a silver suit, though why it got that name Jean never knew.

He switched to another spectrum, far beyond the visible, and searched for Ajax. Silver suits were layers of optical fibers and sensors, ever-watchful in all directions. There—

Ajax was a shifting blob of shimmering blue light in Jean's UV goggles, well beyond what ordinary cameras could capture. Each square centimeter of the silver suit took incoming light and routed it through chips, moving the image—say, of a wall—around the body, on its way to the directly opposite side of the suit. There another optical fiber emitted the same image in the same direction. It was as though the ray had passed through Ajax's body. Any guard looking toward the suit saw only the wall, as though nothing stood between them.

The silver suit gave Ajax invisibility. Jean watched as the blob flexed and moved across the Islamic Front's broad open plaza, toward the shadowy, looming mosque. He reached the first barrier, a cluster of concrete blocks, and just walked around them. Up in the minarets Jean could see shifting shadows. The guards had noticed that their gear was down.

"Here comes the glare," he sent on comm.

Searing light swept the compound. Spotlights on the minarets and the main mosque sent blaring beams into every corner.

Good coverage, Jean noted. Not that it would do them any good.

Because Ajax was inside by now. "I got it ," Ajax's voice whispered in his ears.

Meaning that he had used the tap-and-read gear strapped to his wrist. It sent an electric charge wave—what's this?—through a lock and used the rebound signal to figure out the lock's codes. The information was buried in the door, so it had to be user-reachable. Almost like a dog waiting for the right signal from its master to go fetch a ball.

Well, Jean thought, the ball was in play now. "Follow on," he sent, and two more silver suits started across the compound's square. They came in from the sides. He could see them moving fast, wrinkled UV ghosts.

The guards up in the minarets had their hands full, scanning the square and seeing nothing. Not even their motion sensing cameras could see anything through the smoky frequencies. What about visible?

Shouts echoed across the square. Getting the reserve house guard up from their beds.

Time to get serious. "Blow their electrical."

Microwave bursts curled through the chill air. They were vectored in on the mosque's power source, where their standard external current hookup met their in-house generator. Throw the diodes there into confusion, blowing most of them with thirty kilowatts of bursty microwaves, and kiss your amperes goodbye.

The spotlight glare vanished. The minor mosque lamps went too. Louder shouts.

Jean was already running out of the apartment building. His IR took in the sputtering of random gunfire from the minarets. They were shooting blind, chunking rounds into the cobblestones. It was easy to avoid their sweeps.

But that gave his side all the excuse they needed. Snipers in nearby buildings took out the men in the minarets within seconds.

Halfway to the mosque, all fell silent. He could hear his own whooshing breath, it was that still.

The main gate was still locked but the side door yawned. He went through into utter blackness, dark even to him in IR.

In his left eye he received Ajax's map of the interior. It was made by a satellite, integrating the GPS feedback from Ajax and figuring out the implied mosque geometry.

Here—down a corridor and around a small high-roofed room like a chapel. Two men milled around in the room, shouting to each other. One fumbled to turn on a flashlight and Jean punched a button on his right wrist. It sent a skreeee he heard in the microwave spectrum. That caused flash-over of the filaments in flashlight bulbs. Sure enough, the tall, swarthy man could not get the flash to light up. Jean slipped by him.

They were saying something in French but Jean didn't bother to figure out their panicked sentences as they flung their arms about. He skirted around them and down a hallway. More men there, armed but blind. The place reeked of sour sweat and fear.

Ajax had left boot prints that showed up in crimson in his high-UV spectrum. He followed them through a room crammed with computers, all dead now, and down a long corridor lined with AK-47s in steel wall racks.

Jean had his automatic out in his right hand but didn't intend to use it. The flash would give the enemy momentary light.

"Found the Head," Ajax sent.

"How is he?"

"Holed up in a safe room, looks like."

"Blow it."

"Already set up to. Punched a hole through at the top, wide enough for the percussion grenade."

"Go."

The boom rocked down the hallway and slapped Jean in the face. As he ran up to it he could see the massive door was skewed on its hinges. Ajax was a shimmer in Jean's goggles, planting a second charge. They wedged it into place at the top hinge.

Angry shouts came from behind them. Another silversuit came up, firing backward with a silenced pistol. The shouts stopped.

They all trotted down the corridor and Ajax hit his hand-held trigger. The blast was deafening. Fragments embedded among the carbon fibers of his body armor.

Jean stepped through the yawning frame, a smell of something burnt curling up into his nostrils. Six bodies were slammed against the walls, clad in kaftans. Blood trickled from their ears. He had to check three before he was sure that they had the Head. The leathery face was contorted, gray foam oozed at the mouth, and Jean reflected that this did not look like someone who had ordered the deaths of thousands. Now it was just a shriveled little man.

The third silversuit was a surgeon, his ID patch glowing in the UV. Jean pointed and the surgeon knelt beside the Head.

"Pretty bad," the surgeon said.

"Dead?"

"Not yet, but he may have injected himself." Up came the sleeves of the kaftan and there was a plain needle mark. "Damn."

"How long have we got?" Jean asked.

"Maybe ten minutes."

Out came the tool kit and quick hands started to work.

It took only five minutes. Jean stared at the Head's face and thought about Montclair Boulevard. Then they started out, carrying the body in a sling.

There was fighting outside but it died down. He monitored the operation on a screen in his left eye lens, watching the support troops come in from all sides. Green motes circled and lit on the mosque grounds—choppers and ultralights. Some automatic weapons fire rose to greet them. The return fire lanced down, computer-directed by robot guns in mini-aircraft.

It had been easy enough to take out the Islamic Front guards. Just attacking was simple, but experience showed that you got very little information that way. Jean had learned from Lyon, where the Front had many tendrils. Yet they had few ways to trace the Byzantine network that decades of immigrant communities had established.

The Front had learned that they could keep no database without risking its loss, so the only systematic memory was carried around in a few leader's heads, encoded and rote memorized. So there was only one way to get it.

They hauled the body out on a stretcher. Halfway out the one thing they could not defend against struck Ajax—low tech.

Ajax had the lead. A small bomb cut through him. It may have been triggered to his passage, armed sometime in the last few minutes.

Jean could see Ajax was gone. He used hand signs to get them moving again. He put Ajax out of his mind for now, a habit he had learned since his brother's death.

Army troops were securing the rest of the mosque, small arms rattling far down the hallways. There were still no lights and everyone worked in the IR, moving carefully.

The chopper waited just outside, squatting on the square with its ultra-rotors purring. Jean went with the surgeon. There was a lot of medical gear in the chopper bay and the specialists got the body into it while they lifted off. Jean looked out across the square at the maze of running men and bodies, the scene moving in an eerie hush except for the working machines.

Half an hour later he got to see the results. They had the entire top floor of a hospital. Jean went into the bare white clean room wearing whites and stood at the end of the operating theatre. They were all quiet here, too.

The Head was talking, in its way. The body lay spread out, heart machine chugging, the lungs heaving to the steady stroke of a breather-driver. The Head was certainly dead but the cowl of leads blossoming from his shaved skull was working. There were subtle ways to drive synapses, forcing memory to make its connections.

On the screens around the operating theatre the data flowed like syrup. Images, faces, cross-correlations like thickets of yellow-green vines. The entire Islamic Front was there, layered and bunched in cords and streams.

"This guy was a real savant," a specialist said nearby. "Look how his memory was organized—like a multi-layered filing cabinet."

"Too bad he used it to store such merde," Jean said. He saw flicker across the screen a scene retrieved from the Head's recollections, the farmer's market in Lyon. Off to the left were the maple trees of Montclair Boulevard, where Jean's brother had been torn to shreds by the car bomb.

Swimming up from cloudy, static-filled memory came the scene before the explosion, too, frozen in dead memory. The car, moving forward into the crowd, seconds before the detonation. The point of view swiveled and there in the room were the faces of the plotters, three bearded ones.

Jean memorized them in a moment. He turned and walked out, getting ready for the next attack, knowing now who to look for and thinking again of Montclair Boulevard.

* * *

For James Benford

Gregory Benford is the author of many novels and short stories, and has edited a number of anthologies.

Little Sips

Written by Barbara J. Ferrenz
Illustrated by David Maier

The little boy sat on the examination table, swinging his bare feet. His mother played with his downy hair as she spoke to the doctor. "I can't think of anything we've done differently."

"No over-the-counter medicines? New cleaning products? Herbal medicines?"

The mother shook her head each time. "No, nothing. Maybe he got better on his own. Maybe he never had it in the first place."

Miracles and spontaneous cures weren't on the top of Dr. Fellows' list of possibilities. And he knew his diagnosis had been correct. "Mrs. Allen, Cody has. . .had hydrocephalus. I wouldn't have scheduled him for the shunt today if I wasn't sure. Maybe the pre-surgery antibiotics knocked out an infection we weren't aware of. Maybe. . .I don't know. Let's watch him closely. We can reschedule if we have to."

She caressed the back of the toddler's head. "Do you think it'll come back?"

"I. . .I don't know," he said leaving the examining room.

Mrs. Allen picked up Cody's clothes to dress him, again touching his head. She put the clothes down. "What's this?" Parting the child's hair, she looked at the clear crusty spot at the base of his hairline. "Honey, what have you gotten into?" She scraped it away with her fingernail.

* * *

Grant Fellows returned to his office in the lower level of the neurobiological research department of the university hospital. He was glad the rest of the staff had gone to lunch. He would have to tell them it was true, the little boy's hydrocephalus that had distorted the shape of his head and disturbed his physical and mental development had gone poof. Marianne had taken the mother's call. Even though they all thought it was a case of maternal nerves before the surgery, his colleagues and the interns ribbed him about his "misdiagnosis." Grant tossed the folder onto the desk and sat. Routine infantile water on the brain wasn't his area anyway. He was more interested in the recent rash of cases of spontaneous intracranial hypotension.

Fourteen, so far, with more coming in every week. When it started over a year ago, the cases weren't surprising. Poor health and dehydration were responsible for all kinds of maladies. Heart disease, tuberculosis, and the little tears in a weakened brain pan that allow the drip, drip, drip of cerebrospinal fluid until the brain no longer floats on a liquid cushion but sinks into the lower opening of the skull. Grant understood how nasty and painful the deaths had been as each of the homeless were brought in from the dark sewers around the water treatment plant. Spontaneous intracranial hypotension wasn't commonly seen in the down-on-their-luck alcoholics who lost all interest in food and water in their eternal search for another drink, but it wasn't unheard-of. A group of kooks protesting the plant blamed the deaths on the treated water and pointed out the low magnesium levels of the victims reported in the newspaper. They weren't influenced by the expert opinions stating that cause of death was known and had nothing to do with deficient magnesium, which is epidemic in the U.S. population and pronounced in alcoholics. They were tree-huggers and all progress was bad to them.

When the schizophrenic bag ladies who didn't drink and the babies living with their indigent mothers in abandoned cars began coming in, he felt he had at the very least a journal article and at best a major research study with federal funding. Then all hell broke loose. Middle class Joes and soccer Moms and socialites succumbed—their brains were leaking fluid like a '68 Chevelle.

The phone rang. He heard quick footsteps from the door as Marianne ran in to answer. A minute later, she leaned into his office. "Boss, there's another one. Up in the ER."

* * *

Grant heard the screams before he pushed through the double doors of the emergency room. He pulled aside the curtain and stepped carefully to avoid the vomit splashed across the floor. A young woman writhed in pain, her hands gripping the sides of her head.

As he approached the patient, a voice called out behind him.

"Hey, you! Nobody goes in there without talking to me first."

"And who the hell are you?" He turned and saw a petite woman wearing an ill-fitting discount catalog pantsuit.

She flipped a badge open. "Detective Wilding, city police. Who are you?"

He rolled his eyes and called to one of the nurses. "Will you get this person out of here?"

"Wait a minute, bud." Wilding grabbed his arm. "Are you a doctor? They've got three in there already."

"So now they've got one more. Get out of my way." He tugged his sleeve from her grip and stepped toward the patient. She was alive, but just barely. Dr. Fulton, the neurosurgeon on call, rolled her over and attempted a hasty epidural blood patch on her spine as the nurse attached the IV to rehydrate her. This one had a tiny spinal puncture like nine of the others. The emergency treatment was going to be too late. She was dying. Grant checked her nose for encrustations and finding none, determined that fluid was not coming from a tear in the subdural meninges. CSF leaks without known origins, like head trauma or spinal taps, often started in the lower brain and drained into the nasal sinuses. The girl seemed well-nourished and in good health otherwise. Why wouldn't she have seen a doctor as the headaches increased as the fluid decreased? Why didn't any of them?

Grant reviewed the chart, staying until the young woman, SIH Case #15, was declared dead and the attending physician understood that the corpse was to be removed to the neurobiology research unit for autopsy before being released to family. He called down to his office and instructed one of the interns to grab the parents for a standard interview to make sure they had a full history. As the life support monitor was shut down and the team wandered away for the attendants to come in and clean up, he stepped through the curtain only to be face-to-face with Detective Wilding.

"Fellows. You're the one I should be talking to," she said.

"Maybe, but why should I talk to you? This isn't a police matter." He continued walking to his office. Wilding followed, almost skipping to keep up with his long stride.

"You're the dry brain guy, right?"

He smiled. "That's one way of putting it."

"So you could be a suspect."

He stopped. "What?"

"I thought that might get your attention, Sparky." She took a small notebook and pen from her pocket. "Tell me, doctor, what kind of medical expertise would it take to withdraw a lethal amount of spinal fluid?"

Grant couldn't help laughing. "You've got to be kidding. You think there's a mad spinal tapper out there?"

"A serial killer. I don't see what's so funny."

He rubbed his chin as he searched for words she would understand. "This is a medical mystery not a criminal mystery. Yes, we're seeing more cerebrospinal leaks than usual and the mortality rate is higher than expected but this is a known medical condition. That's why I'm doing my research. To find out why. What gave you the idea that there was something intentional happening here?"

"Some researcher you are. Haven't you seen the pattern? He's working his way up Water Street."

Each case from the first to the girl on her way to his autopsy room appeared on a city map in his mind. A cluster where Water Street dead ended at the treatment plant, then block by block into downtown. "Holy shit," he whispered.

* * *

The detective pushed aside Grant's folders and spread a map on his desk. She pointed to the icon for the water treatment plant. "After the seventh death down there, we were called in to move the winos out. I didn't think much about it until last June when the city attorney's nephew died from a spinal leak and an under-the-table investigation was requested. I was told it was an untreated spinal leak and it just happens sometimes. The CA wasn't happy to hear it but what could he do? Then I remembered that they said the bums all died from dry brains. I looked for a connection." Wilding took her pen and connected the dots on her map. "Angela Timsbury lived right here on Water Street East."

"Who?" Grant asked.

"The girl who just died. She had a name, you know. And parents and a little brother. She was nineteen years old. She studied sociology at the community college. Her boyfriend's name is Gerald and she liked to play basketball."

Grant refused to feel guilty about his ignorance of personal information. The survivor interview would pick up some of it and who cares what her boyfriend's name was? "The transients were malnourished and dehydrated and at high risk for SIH. We've been collecting data on the more recent cases. Case 15, Angela, is the second healthy one to expire from low CSF. Usually the symptoms of orthostatic headache, uh, headache when standing up, and violent nausea are so severe that treatment is sought early. The body only has about 150 milliliters—less than a cup—of CSF at any one time and replaces it two or three times a day. It's not easy to get what you call dry brain."

"Unless somebody's sucking it out."

"Like a vampire?"

"More like a murderer with medical know-how."

Before Grant could tell her she was jumping to an absurd conclusion, his phone rang. "Neuro. Grant speaking."

The voice on the line was timid. "Dr. Fellows, could you come down here? I was prepping 15 and. . . Could you come down and look?"

He could hear the intern breathing. "Well, what is it?"

"I'd rather you look. I'm looking at it but I'd feel more comfortable if you saw it, too."

Grant sighed. "I'll be there in a few minutes. Don't touch anything."

"What is it?" Wilding asked.

"A nervous intern, the bane of the university research scientist."

* * *

The student in his white lab coat stood at the door as Grant entered, Detective Wilding behind him. The nude body of Angela Timsbury lay on the stainless steel table.

"What's your name?" Grant asked

"James." The student swallowed. "Ellicott. James Ellicott, that is. Doctor." He tugged at his tie.

Grant shook his head. "All right, Ellicott, what's so amazing that I have to see it right now?"

Ellicott hurried over to the body. "I don't know if it's amazing. I just thought it was kind of, you know, funny. Well, not really funny. Peculiar. Yes, peculiar."

"Shut up, Ellicott." Grant looked at the girl's face. A pretty face without the dried vomit on the chin. "So?"

"Here, doctor." Ellicott turned the body on its side. "These bruises on either side of the spinal puncture. What does that look like to you?"

Grant noticed that Wilding had sidled up beside him. He bent down for a closer look at the gray marks on the skin straddling the backbone. Bruises often come to the surface after the blood settles to the lowest point and lividity sets in. They were irregularly shaped.

Wilding gasped. "Little hands!"

Ellicott smiled with relief. "That's what I thought!"

The bruises did look like two-inch hands had dug their fingers deep into the skin around the tiny wound. Grant's scientific mind immediately filed the observation under preposterous. Wilding and Ellicott looked at him expectantly. He cleared his throat. "It could be anything."

"Like what?" Wilding asked.

Grant scowled. "I don't know. She fell on something. Probably the same thing that punctured her spine."

"Doctor, wouldn't that kind of injury also cause bleeding?" Ellicott asked quietly.

Wilding headed for the door.

Grant followed her. "Where are you going?"

"I have an investigation to work on."

"Wait a minute." Grant walked with her to the exit. "What are you going to investigate? Baby vampires with spinal tap needles?"

"If that's what it takes," she called as she continued to the parking lot. "You coming?"

He shook his head. Somebody with sense had to be part of this. "Slow down, dammit!"

Wilding laughed.

* * *

Angela Timsbury's mother and father clutched each other's hands as they sat on their living room sofa, staring at the police detective and doctor. Grant felt as if they didn't understand a word Wilding was saying.

"I'd like to know what Angela was doing before she became sick," Wilding told them.

They didn't move.

"I'm trying to find out what happened."

Mrs. Timsbury blinked. A tear ran down her cheek.

Grant pulled his chair up to the sofa and took Mrs. Timsbury's hand. "Was Angela home when she got sick?"

She nodded and pointed up.

"May we have a look?"

She nodded again. Mr. Timsbury sobbed.

"Thank you." Grant motioned Wilding to follow him upstairs. The first door they came to looked like a teenage girl's room. The bed was unmade and clothes were tossed everywhere.

Wilding picked up a bra from the lampshade. "It could be a crime scene."

"The only crime here is slovenliness." Grant looked around. "You're the cop. What are we looking for?"

She shrugged. "Little footprints maybe."

They split up, looking at the mattress covered with clumps of dried puke, the shelves with romance novels and a stereo, the closet with more clothes on the floor than on the hangers. Wilding picked up a framed photograph of Angela with her arms wrapped around a lanky, grinning boy. "I got a question for you, doc. How do you explain the holes in the victims' backs?"

He grimaced at a pile of dirty underwear in the corner. "The holes, as you call them, are usually the size of a pin prick or not visible at all. It's been widely believed that bone spurs on the spinal column puncture the central canal but my research has shown microscopic evidence of an external epidermal opening. There's a reason why the intracranial hypotension is called spontaneous. No one has found a valid cause."

Wilding hunched down to study the carpet. "So people are springing leaks and the entire medical profession doesn't know why."

"You'd be surprised by how much we don't know." Grant wandered into the connecting bathroom. "Wilding, come here!" He walked to the open window and crouched to get a better look at the thick clear substance smeared on the wall beneath.

"Looks like snot." Wilding came up behind him, removing a small plastic bag from her pocket.

"It goes all the way outside."

"Or it came inside." Wilding scraped a small amount of the mucus into the baggie and sealed it shut. "Maybe the lab can tell us what this is. It'll take a few days at best."

Grant turned. "I've got a lab."

"It's all yours. Why don't you do whatever it is you do and I'll go down to the treatment plant."

"I'm going with you. We'll drop off the specimen with Ellicott. He can call when he's finished."

"Stop scaring him, then, or he'll never call."

* * *

The lights of the city were a half mile away. Wilding scanned the ground with her flashlight. Chain link fence topped with razor wire surrounded the plant. Beyond the parking lot, a culvert led to the storm drain that had been home to the men and women who died first from cerebrospinal fluid leaks.

Grant stopped as he realized where Wilding was going. "We're not going down there, are we?"

Without hesitating, she called back, "You don't have to."

He quickly caught up with her. "What do you expect to find?"

"The source of the snot." She climbed down the embankment and followed the culvert into the eight-foot-tall storm drain. Their footsteps echoed in the blackness. A faint smell of wood smoke and BO served as a reminder of the people who had lived and died here. The white cone of the flashlight moved methodically over the space, illuminating clothes and other belongings left behind. Grant felt very much out of his element. They moved slowly as the detective inspected side to side. Well into the tunnel, surrounded by the dark, the light no longer showed signs of past residents. Grant heard something hit the metal behind him. He swirled around and strained his eyes to see. Wilding brought the flashlight up and shined it toward the entrance. A figure shifted to the side.

"Who's there?" Grant's shout was answered with silence.

Wilding pushed past him, holding the flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. "What did you expect? 'It's only me, the killer.'"

He felt ashamed of how frightened he was as he stayed close behind the tiny woman with the big weapon. As they approached the relative light of the opening, she whispered, "Stay here." He did as she said, even though he really didn't want to be left behind in the dark. He watched as her small shape moved away.

"Police!" she called. "Step out where I can see you!"

A moment later the figure was framed by the night sky beyond. "Who's that behind you?" a man's voice shouted.

"None of your business! Who are you?"

"You're a cop? You're kind of puny for a cop."

She tucked the flashlight under her arm and held up her badge. "I'm Detective Amy Wilding, city police. Now who are you and why are you here?"

He put his hands up. "I live up the road. My name's Jackson. The cops run all these fellas off a few months ago and I've kinda been keepin' an eye on the place. I saw you and whoever that is hidin' back there come in. That's all."

"Come on out, doc!" She pushed Jackson away from the storm drain and patted him down. Grant caught up with them as they climbed out of the culvert and into the parking lot.

Wilding took out her notebook. After taking down the man's full name and address, she asked, "What do you know about the deaths down here?"

"Who? Me?" He pulled off his baseball cap and ran his hand through his thin hair. "I don't know nothin' about that. Poor folks, all dying like that. It's a shame. I used to come down and talk to 'em about the old days before they built the treatment plant." He laughed sadly. "They used to call me crazy but a couple of them seen for themselves when they went down the culvert to take a dump."

"What did they see, Jackson?" Wilding asked.

Grant's cell phone played Beethoven's Fifth.

"The sprites!" Jackson replied cheerfully. "Water sprites!"

"Dr. Fellows," Grant said into the phone. Ellicott gave him the composition of the mucous sample. "Good work, James." He closed the cell. "Detective, I need to talk to you."

"Just a minute, Doctor. Do you drink, Mr. Jackson?"

"Nothin' but good ol' well water. I won't have nothin' to do with that crap from the treatment plant. Used to be sprites all over in the old days. Everybody saw 'em out by their wells. Then they brought in the city water and the sprites mostly disappeared."

Grant held up his phone. "I have the results."

"Mostly disappeared?" Wilding asked.

Jackson giggled and rubbed hands together. "Down in the woods, right down here." He pointed. "There's an abandoned open well, used to be for watering the cattle in the field."

"Will you shut up?" Grant shouted.

Jackson's face fell serious. He bunched his fists. "Who you telling to shut up, fancypants?"

Wilding stepped forward as Grant retreated. "Doctor, just because I have two ears doesn't mean I can listen to two people at once," she said. "Mr. Jackson, if I go to this well, will I see the sprites?"

He stuck out his tongue at Grant. "I'll tell ya, little miss. You might see 'em; you might not. They're a little bit invisible."

Wilding muttered an expletive. "Invisible. Great. Doctor Fellows, what did your boy have to say?"

Before he could speak, Jackson said, "Wait a minute. You come with me. I'll show you. Can't guarantee nothin' but if they're there and you look real careful, you just might catch a glimpse."

"Okay, Mr. Jackson. It's the doctor's turn."

"Ellicott tested the sample," Grant said, shooting the most evil look he could muster at Jackson. "It was composed primarily of water, glucose, and proteins."

"And that means what?" Wilding asked.

"It was similar in composition to human mucous secretions."

"You mean it was snot."

"Yes and no." He realized he was sounding like Jackson. He quickly continued. "It wasn't snot. It had more solids, so it was much thicker. More like cartilage. And it had a high mineral content unlike snot. More like cerebrospinal fluid. It was especially high in magnesium."

Wilding held out her hands. "What the hell are you saying?"

Grant rubbed his chin. "I don't know. I don't know what it is. Maybe Ellicott screwed up."

"So where does this leave us?"

He didn't have an answer. He suddenly felt very foolish standing in the woods at night with the police detective and Andy of Mayberry. He didn't belong here. He should be back in his lab, using science to find answers. Not crawling around sewers and listening to some rube blathering about fairies in his well.

Wilding pocketed her notebook. "You finished for the night, Doctor? I can drop you at your car at the hospital."

"Yeah, I think so. Where are you going?"

"I'm going to follow the dots up Water Street and stop by each vic's home."

Jackson stepped forward, waving his arms. "Y'all can't go yet! You gotta come see the sprites! It's the perfect time. They don't come out in the daylight. It's not far. The well's just down here a piece."

A connection clicked in Grant's head. Untreated well water is often high in magnesium. The pseudo-snot and CSF are high in magnesium. His data hadn't shown significant mineral deficiencies across the board, only in the homeless, but none of the cases had the recommended levels of magnesium. Maybe the water treatment was a factor. Until a few years ago, the area was rural and even city hall had well water. He couldn't recall any research tying compromised neural systems to any specific nutritional element but it was something to look into. He clapped Jackson on the back. "Let's go take a look at your gremlins, Mr. Jackson."

"They're sprites," he said.

Wilding stared at him, her mouth dropping open.

"Coming, detective?" He enjoyed her reaction.

She leaned in close to him as they followed Jackson back into the culvert and into the scruffy stand of trees and undergrowth. "What are you doing?"

He smiled. "I'm getting a water sample from the well."

"That's important?"

"I don't know. I'm just following a lead." He stumbled over a root.

* * *

"Here it is, kids!" Jackson announced joyfully. "Find yourself a stump, have a seat and watch."

Grant stepped through the weeds toward the concrete structure. Wilding had given him one of her zipper bags.

"Whoa, hoss!" Jackson grabbed his shoulders. "You don't want to go near there."

"Why not?"

"City people," Jackson said. "Didn't your mama teach you nothin'? You don't mess with the sprites. They bite."

Grant walked back to Wilding. "You don't suppose there's a wild animal back here, do you?"

"Who knows?" she whispered. "The guy's obviously some kind of a nut." Aloud, she said, "Mr. Jackson, we've got it covered here. Why don't you go home?"

"No, that's okay, little miss. I'd like to see a sprite. I ain't seen one in years. Just sit and wait. Keep your flashlight down and when you hear something in the brush, shine that light right at it." He flumped down onto a log.

Wilding sat beside Jackson. Grant leaned against a tree, fuming because he wanted to get the water sample and get the hell out. What felt like hours, but was actually minutes, passed. The stars peeked through the treetops. Crickets chirped. The loam beneath the underbrush smelled of mildew.

Something moved by the well.

Before he could speak, Wilding shushed him. She shined the light onto the base. Grant wanted to say that it was probably a rat but he knew she would shush him again. He waited as she turned off the flashlight, leaving them in total darkness. A moment later, at the hint of a rustle in the dry leaves, she flicked it on.

The light reflected on the shiny surface of a foot-high creature, standing upright, looking straight at them. In the second before it darted away, Grant saw a face that was almost human.

Jackson danced around them. "Did ya see it? Did ya see it? Hoo-ee!"

"What the hell was that?" Wilding shouted.

Grant found himself speechless. He saw the creature in his mind as he tried to rationalize it. All of this talk of imps and such influenced his perception. The light shined on a skunk or a woodchuck, that's all.

"What the hell was that?" Wilding shouted again.

"Sprite! Sprite!" Jackson sang as he danced.

Grant felt as if he were a bit actor in a bizarre play. He had to do something normal. Something scientific. He took out the baggie and walked toward the well.

"Be careful, boy," Jackson said menacingly. "If'n the sprite don't get ya, you might just fall into that old well."

"I'm taking a water sample."

"Hope you have long arms. That well hasn't been used in years. The only water might be thirty or so feet down."

Grant wanted to go home. He wanted to go home now.

Wilding appeared to have composed herself enough to approach him and take his arm. "Let's get out of here, doc." As they walked away, she called over her shoulder, "Jackson, I'd go home and lock the door if I were you." She didn't speak again until they were inside the car in the plant parking lot. She started the engine. "You saw what I saw. I know. That wasn't human. And it wasn't an animal."

Grant cleared his throat. "It was a second. A split second. We couldn't tell what it was. We need more data."

"Doctor, use your gut, your instinct. That could be our spinal fluid sucker. The size fits with the hand bruises and the damn thing looked like it was made of Jello."

"Earlier today you thought it was a serial killer in a medical profession. By the way, don't detectives travel in pairs like nuns? Don't you have a partner?"

She put the car in drive and pulled onto Water Street. "I'm working this unofficially."

Grant laughed. "Your superiors thought you were crazy, right?"

She took her hand off the steering wheel long enough to show him her middle finger.

As they drove into town in silence, Grant tried to organize in his mind what he had learned this day. Babies can spontaneously recover from hydrocephalus. Healthy young women with little brothers and boyfriends named Gerald can die suddenly from a condition that's usually not fatal. A strange gooey substance high in magnesium could be residue from a CSF-sucking sprite.

Even though he was trying to be facetious, he couldn't help but think it made sense. If the creature required high levels of magnesium and could no longer get it from the well water, it would look for another source. The river feeding the treatment plant would be too fast moving for a small creature. The homeless in the storm drain filled that need until they were moved out. Then it headed up the street and found healthy people with higher levels of magnesium. And little brothers.

Wilding pulled into the hospital parking lot.

"Stop the car!" Grant yelled. "Turn around!"

She slammed on the brakes, throwing them both forward into their shoulder harnesses. "What?"

"The Timsburys. They have another child. The brother. What if it's still in the house?"

Wilding spun the car around and stepped on the gas.

* * *

Mr. Timsbury's grief had subsided enough for him to be outraged. "Leave us alone! Our daughter is dead. We just want to be left alone!"

"We only need a minute, Mr. Timsbury, please." Wilding inched into the doorway. "Is your son home?"

"He's gone to bed. He doesn't want to see anyone."

Grant stepped forward. "I'm a doctor, Mr. Timsbury. A neurologist. I was in the emergency room when they brought your daughter in. Angela. I'd like to give your son a brief examination. What's his name?"

"Matthew. Matt. Is what Angie had contagious?"

"No, but I need to see Matt now. You can take me up to his room."

Mr. Timsbury opened the door and led them up the stairs. He tapped on the door opposite his daughter's. "Matt? Open the door, son."

When there was no response, Wilding reached in front of him and threw the door open. The light was off and Grant could see a shape on the bed. "Matt!" he shouted as he flipped on the light switch.

A boy lay motionless face down on the bedclothes, his pajama top pulled over his head. Crouched on his back, a clear gelatinous creature turned to face them. Its eyes were slits; it had no nose. A needle resembling an icicle protruded from an O-shaped mouth. A high-pitched wail emitted from the creature as it slid off the child and under the bed.

Wilding pulled her gun. Grant grabbed her wrist. "No. That won't work. Mr. Timsbury! Get Matt out of here. Call 911." He closed the door behind the father carrying his son.

Wilding pulled the covers off the mattress and knelt on the floor to see the cowering sprite. "What should we do with it?"

Grant thought about the composition of the sample sent to the lab. "Don't let it get away. I'll be right back." He stopped at the door. "And don't let it get near you!"

He heard the ambulance siren as he ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. He flung the cabinets open, tossing anything in his way onto the floor. He found what he was looking for and ran back to Matt's room.

As he slipped in the doorway and pushed the door closed with his shoulder, he saw Wilding sitting on the floor, both hands gripping a translucent leg.

"I got it! I got it!" she shouted. "Look! It's missing a chunk. Angela must have put up a fight!" As she smiled at him, the creature twisted around, jumping on her chest, and injected the needle into her neck.

"Amy!" Grant strode forward and tore open the pound bag of salt and dumped it over the sprite's body. It dropped away from the detective and howled as it melted into a foul-smelling puddle. The needle was the last feature to liquefy.

Grant knelt next to Wilding and examined her wound.

She coughed when she tried to talk. Clutching her throat, she managed to ask, "How did you know to do that?"

He wrapped his arms around her. "It works on slugs."

* * *

The new lab equipment took up so much of the space that Grant kept one of the covered aquariums in his office. He had gotten into the habit of reaching over and tapping on the glass without looking up from his work whenever it got noisy. It had taken him a week to realize that little Cody Allen lived on Water Street. He had to go back to the well in the woods at night to capture one of the sprites. Amy insisted on going with him. He knew he wouldn't get any federal funding with just a proposal. He had to show them that these creatures really do exist.

Marianne leaned into the doorway. "Doctor Fellows, are you here for Detective Wilding?"

"Very funny," he said. The staff was having way too much fun with his newly found love life. He could see Amy standing behind her. Marianne covered a laugh as Amy entered the room.

"Okay, doc, it's quitting time." She walked over to the aquarium. "What's this?"

"It's my new little buddy."

The sprite shuddered as it fed on the rhesus monkey with an enlarged head, face down on the aquarium floor, eyes wide with terror.

Grant recorded the time as the creature withdrew its transparent needle from the limp victim. As the sprite hopped off the monkey's back, it belched, sending little bubbles through its body. It almost disappeared as it hid in the glass corner.

"He's curing monkey hydrocephalus now," Grant said, "but the little snot'll be curing babies and car accident victims in a couple of years."

Amy grimaced, then leaned in for a closer look. "Does he have a number or a name?"

Grant smiled. "He has a name all right. I call him Jackson. Hoo-ee!"

* * *

Barbara Ferrenz is the author of "Worse Than Death."

Great Minds

Written by Edward M. Lerner
Illustrated by Paul Campbell

"It's very much as I expected," the intruder said without preamble.

Entering my cozy den, I had encountered him seated in my massive leather wingchair, shoes up on my broad mahogany desk, savoring one of my Cuban cigars. A snifter of brandy rested on the leather blotter, within his easy reach. The aroma was Napoleonic.

As I was unsurprised to find him. "Please, don't get up."

"You're very gracious." He grinned. The smile was world-famous: toothy, and slightly off-kilter. I saw it every morning in the mirror. Not that there weren't differences. There always were: in haircut, clothing style, glasses instead of contacts, whatever. I found his sideburns curiously short. "I mean considering."

Considering, as we both knew, he was here to take my life. Leather squeaked as his feet swung from the desk and he straightened his posture. Getting down to business. "The greatest minds of the millennium could not reach a common understanding what the math meant." Meaning: He couldn't have been expected to figure it out.

He was a whiner, a self-justifier—for which I was grateful. That character flaw was the only reason I was still here. He was also wrong. Proof by counterexample: I had decided I would solve the puzzle. Eventually, he had made the same choice. And, in our own times, in our respective ways, each of us had been successful.

His over-rehearsed rationalization tumbled out. "Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein, Pauli, von Neumann, Schrödinger, Planck . . . them and more. Giants. You know the list. They never agreed on the physical significance of the math. Who was I to hope to understand the reality underlying the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics?"

Meaning: He lost hope, and somehow it became justifiable that I should pay the piper.

"And so for a long time, I gave up. I denied the problem. My career went another way." He paused for a sip. "But for years, for decades, I could not help but wonder. Every day, billions of transistors demonstrated some underlying truth to the theory. Quantum mechanics describes something. I had to know what."

His non-smoking hand, when not busy with the consumption of my best brandy, darted from time to time to pat something unseen in his coat pocket. It seemed to give him confidence.

"And so you returned to physics." I had never left it.

He admired the many plaques and photos gracing the darkly paneled walls of the room. "And so I realized, I decided, what you had much earlier. The Copenhagen Interpretation—that certain physical specifics go beyond being unmeasurable, that to even inquire about them represented a misunderstanding of the physical universe—was, if true, an explanation inherently unprovable.

"What was provable, if true, was another explanation altogether: the Many Worlds Interpretation. If I could detect other universes, show that events happened in all possible ways, not just in whatever random way 'the wave function collapsed' without cause or explanation in ours, the great QM debate would be resolved. But among the myriads of myriads, for which other universe would I aim? And what evidence of that other place would be unambiguous?"

His nervous pocket-patting was growing more frequent. If my suspicions about the device in that pocket were correct—and who better than I to understand my visitor's thinking—I did not have much time. "And then you realized . . . if MWI were true, there must be other universes in which another you"—such as me—"had stayed the course." My eyes followed his to the Nobel Prize certificate and medallion in their softly illuminated, velvet-lined display case.

Because you got greedy. You saw you need not settle for fame beginning at age fifty-five—my present age, hence your own. You could do better. Much better. By switching places, you could seize the fruits of fame from another you who had proven the MWI years earlier.

Do you think you are the first me to have had that realization?

Below his line of sight, I clicked my heels twice. The radio beacon thus triggered activated the mechanism hidden within my/his chair.

* * *

There are universes without number. Among the myriads is one where a different quantum outcome was enough to change the career of an unknown microbe. Newton died there in the great plague of 1665, at age twenty-three. The development of physics was, as a result, greatly impeded. Onto that parallel, low-tech plane of existence now materialized a new occupant.

I am not a cruel man. I sincerely hope my recent visitor—and the dozen earlier versions of me—enjoy their opportunity to make real advances in physics.

* * *

Edward M. Lerner is a physicist, computer scientist, and curmudgeon by training. Now writing full-time, he applies all three skill sets to his science fiction. His web site is www.sfwa.org/members/lerner/

The Power of Illusion

Written by Christopher Anvil
Illustrated by V. Shane

Colonel Valentine Sanders of the Interstellar Patrol passed a hand over his close-cropped iron-grey hair, leaned forward at his desk, and did his best to speak politely and persuasively:

"Sir, I just don't think I should put this off onto someone else. I wouldn't feel right about it."

He heard his voice come out with a quality suggestive of a crooked dealer in used spaceships. To expect anyone to miss that would be asking too much.

Just across Sanders' desk, where the bulkhead normally presented its neutral grey surface, was the convincing electronic image of a lean broad-shouldered man wearing the same style of uniform as Sanders, but with two stars at the lapel in place of Sanders' silver eagle. He, too, spoke politely, but with a frown that was becoming more pronounced as the conversation wore on.

"Val, you do understand, regardless who does it, it's against regulations to intervene on a planet classified as, in effect, alien?"

Sanders gave up on persuasion and tried stubbornness. Now, at least, he sounded natural. "Whose regulations, sir?"

"And this planet is so designated."

"By whom, sir?"

"By PDA, of course."

"Then, sir, Planetary Development Authority is insane. And I don't remember any regulation of ours that forbids intervention, provided we use some sense when we do it."

"PDA makes the rules for new planets. As for their being insane, that may well be—but why do you say it?"

"There are two intelligent races on this planet. One is so much like us that we can forget trying to find a difference that means anything. Their hearing and vision are unusually sharp, but that's it. The other race has a shorter average build and a kind of close dark hair or fur; people who have never been off their own home world might think the furred race is alien. Yet, when they're not killing each other, the two races trade, and interbreeding produces fertile offspring. The planet is earth-type. They even have rugged quadrupeds that look like and serve the function of horses. How does PDA see this place as an 'alien planet'?"

"No doubt they've got some esoteric reason."

"But does that make it so?"

"No. It also doesn't change regulations."

Sanders, feeling as if he were making his way across thin ice over deep water, again tried hard to sound reasonable:

"Sir, Planetary Development is bound by regulations. So is the Space Force. This tends to make their actions predictable. Yet they both can go on operating by the book, because every large-scale thug, racketeer, and confidence artist, human or alien, also has us to contend with. The rules of the Interstellar Patrol aren't known, and can't be worked into their calculations. Sir, if we adopt PDA's regulations, how do we do our own job?"

Sanders thought this was reasonable. He didn't see how anyone could object to it. But the expression on the General's face told him he had miscalculated somewhere.

"Now you're explaining my job to me, Colonel?"

"No, sir."

"That's what it sounds like to me."

"Well, sir—if we're bound by PDA's regulations—"

"There is such a thing as judgment."

"But—if we follow the same rules—"

"PDA obeys them slavishly. We use them voluntarily."

"If we use them 'voluntarily,' then we can suspend them at will. Sir, I think we need to suspend this rule that any planet they think is alien is automatically off-limits."

"So I gather. Look, Val, I have here your requisition for all this theatrical equipment, and an H-class ship and crew. This came in along with a mess of routine housekeeping stuff—glance at it, initial it, and forget it—but this requisition adds up to a traveling magic extravaganza, to be used on a planet listed by PDA as 'alien-inhabited.'"

"Sir, they aren't aliens. But if we follow PDA's rules, the planet could end up alien."

"What do you mean?"

Sanders decided to try taking the offensive. "Sir, are you aware that this planet is part of a star system so close to the border between Stath territory and ours that the Stath can use it to test us? That collection of murderous overgrown weasels can run rings around PDA. PDA thinks aliens are there? They are. But they aren't either of the races that inhabit that planet. The aliens there are the Stath!"

Sanders had expected the General to at least be startled. Instead, he looked faintly bored, and irritated.

"Spare me the red flags, capes, and picadors, damn it, and get to the facts. Naturally I know where the planet is, and of course the Stath can use it to test us, if they don't mind getting another bloody nose or broken jaw out of it. How does this answer the question?"

"Sir, that's the point."

"Look, Val, the point is that on the basis of some need I don't understand, and which has yet to be explained, I am to provide equipment, plus scarce personnel, for a peculiar junket that will take my Chief of Operations completely off the scene for who knows how long! Meanwhile, PDA is getting into what looks like the mess of the century, and I expect the yell for help any time. When it comes, I'll need everyone I can lay my hands on."

"Yes, sir. But—"

"But when I try to find out what this is all about, what happens? It turns into a philosophical discussion on accepting the rules of other organizations, followed by a shocker revelation that the Stath would like to eat us alive. Is that supposed to be news? This isn't an answer. It's a smoke screen."

"Sir, the main problem is that the Stath are working a stunt that PDA is too blockheaded to understand."

"That's the main problem, eh? All right. Specifically?"

"This planet has two races. The clearly human race has a feudal society. The other is a collection of warlike tribes. There's a wide river that separates them, and though they raid some, they usually respect each other's territory."

"I get the picture. What of it?"

"For several years, the Stath have been visiting the less obviously human part of the planet, disguising the visits as emergency landings, treaty-approved mapping missions, navigation errors, and so on. This spring, the furred race crossed the river, and, using weapons they never had before, started slaughtering the humans."

For the first time, Sanders could see his superior's interest. "And you think the Stath are behind it?"

"Yes, sir. While PDA piously bars us from the planet, the Stath are already there. That pack of bloodthirsty weasels backs a local race, and in return gets a useful ally in disputed territory. And having got away with this stunt, they will have a lower opinion of us in the future. Who knows what they'll try next? Sir, to obey PDA's regulations could be an expensive proposition. This is exactly the kind of thing we're meant to take care of."

Abruptly, it dawned on Sanders that, with the argument all but won, he had just said a few words too many.

The General nodded slowly, and looked up.

"Then why is this the first I've heard of it?"

"Sir, I just found it out myself—and only because of unusual circumstances. PDA didn't mention it, because they haven't caught on."

"Look, Val—Why didn't you make a little more noise? Why just send me this requisition?"

There was the catch. As Sanders had just said, this was the exact kind of thing the Interstellar Patrol was meant to take care of. Why, then, hadn't he handled it as usual? Of course, he knew why, but he desperately did not want to mention that. Sanders, who rarely acted impulsively, was even worse at explaining an impulsive action than the average person, who at least had a little more practice at it.

But the General was still waiting, with rapidly evaporating patience, for an explanation.

Inspiration failing to provide a way out, Sanders still had to say something. And improvising plausible-sounding excuses was another skill Sanders lacked. In horror, he heard himself say:

"Well,—I—ah—Sir, I just didn't want to bother you—with—ah—"

Across the desk, the strongly built uniformed figure leaned forward. The silver stars glinted. Sanders felt like an onion whose outer layers were rapidly being stripped away.

"Val—"

"Sir?"

"Why are you approaching this backward?"

"I—Ah—"

"We have here a legitimate request which you present to me hind-end first. There has to be some reason. The most obvious is to conceal something. Say, you want to go yourself, but don't want to explain why. A routine requisition might just slip through unquestioned. Val, do you have some personal interest in this mess?"

"Sir, I—"

"Well?"

Sanders could feel the perspiration trickle down.

"I—Ah—"

"It must be even worse than it looks. All right, let's have the whole thing. Have you been on this planet? What are the 'unusual circumstances' that told you what's going on there? Is there an extra booby trap somewhere in this sink-hole? Let's have it, and from the beginning, for a change."

Sanders, pinned in his superior's searchlight gaze, with an effort began to talk.

"A long time ago, sir, a ship crashed on this planet. There was apparently just one survivor—" He hesitated.

"Just keep going, Val. A ship crashed. There was one survivor. I follow that. Go on."

Sanders took a deep breath. "The survivor was a baby in a safety cradle. The ship was on fire when it crashed, and there was the danger that it might explode. A second ship followed it down, but couldn't get there before the first ship blew up."

"Were you there?"

"Yes, sir. In the second ship."

"All right. I follow it, so far. Keep going."

"The father of the baby and the crew of the second ship rushed to the wreck, searched the remains, and found no survivors. After they had given up hope, there walked through the smouldering debris a local chief or king, carrying the cradle. He had risked his life, and gotten the baby out just before the explosion."

The General opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking. He nodded slowly.

Sanders said, "The crew of the second ship took the safety cradle. The father was overcome with emotion. He took the guard ring from his hand, and put it on the hand of the local chief."

"A guard ring?"

"Yes, sir."

There was a lengthy silence. It was this detail, which Sanders could not even explain to himself, that he had wanted to avoid mentioning.

The General stared at Sanders. "The father, of course, was a member of the Interstellar Patrol?"

"Yes, sir."

"He was a member of the Patrol when this happened?"

"Yes, sir."

"Was he aware of the PDA rule that no technological device is to be introduced onto an unclassified planet?"

"Yes, sir."

"This ring was not dropped, or lost inadvertently, in which case—"

"No, sir. It was placed intentionally on the chief's hand."

"In full awareness of the technological nature of the guard ring, and of the rule barring exactly such actions?"

"Yes, sir, and in full awareness that the rule was a rule of PDA, and not a rule of the Interstellar Patrol."

"This ring was, of course, a technological device of the Interstellar Patrol? Granted that there are other outfits—including the Stellar Scouts—that have devices disguised as jewelry—rings, pins, belt buckles, bracelets, watches, and so on. This was one of ours?"

"Yes, sir. It was one of ours."

"What justification for this could there be, bearing in mind that the guard ring was equipment of the Patrol, not the property of the person giving it away? Incidentally, where did this guard ring come from?"

"From an agent of the Patrol who had passed away—a retired member on a partly settled planet."

"Passed away how?"

"By natural causes, sir."

"This ring had not been issued to the member who gave it to the local chief?"

"No, sir."

"Had the ring been collected on orders to turn it in?"

"No, sir. It was being brought back voluntarily."

"I see. Was the transaction reported?"

"No, sir, it was not."

"Why not?"

"It might have been disapproved."

"I see . . . How long ago did this happen?"

"About twenty-three years ago, sir."

After a silence, the General cleared his throat. "You'll have to report it, Val. Never mind the details. Just state to me verbally that you do now report it."

Sanders, caught off-balance, hesitated, then said, "Yes, sir. I do now report it."

"Disposition of the guard ring is approved. This local king is obviously a capable individual, well suited to be an involuntary agent of the Patrol on the said planet, allowing for the possibility of subterfuge by the neighboring Stath. Now, what happened? Did the baby survive?"

"Yes, sir."

"And is now where—and what?"

"He's grown up, sir. A second lieutenant."

"In what organization?"

"The Interstellar Patrol, sir."

There was a brief pleasant interval as the General smiled. Sanders understood the reaction. In the Patrol, perpetually shorthanded, each recruit was precious.

"Well, now I can understand, at least. But Val, if there's anything more technological than a guard ring—"

"Sir, PDA wouldn't know one if they saw it."

"Granted. But we know what it is. All right, now, let's see. We not only have the Stath, and the local invasion, but this guard ring, introduced into this tinderbox years ago. Is there anything more?"

"That's most of it, sir. When the patrol ship took off, an outphased watch satellite was left in orbit, just in case. It would note landings on the planet, and could, to some extent, at our signal plant spy devices, so we could learn more if we needed to."

"This satellite transmitted reports at intervals?"

"No, sir. There was no interest in the place then. The satellite was set to send any accumulated information on our transmit signal. Since there was no suspicion of what the Stath were doing, no transmit signal was sent—until the guard ring alerted the communications net about three weeks ago."

"Three weeks?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's the unusual way you became aware something was going on?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. Now, let's be sure there's no misunderstanding. This guard ring was keyed to the person whose finger it was put on?"

"Sir, there wouldn't be much point giving a guard ring inactive. It was keyed."

"You know guard rings have been taken out of general use?"

"I didn't think they ever were actually in general use. I know they're dispensed with great caution."

"But this local king on this barbarian planet has been walking around all this time with this ring on his finger?"

"Sir, I don't know. The signal we got recently shows no change in identity, so he was wearing it then."

"In the meantime, it could have been traded back and forth for cattle, or nubile girls, for all we know?"

"Yes, sir. But I think he would have kept it, and worn it. We know he has it now."

"What style is this ring? Is it a plain regulation type, or an ornamental ring?"

"Ornamental, sir. The control crystal appears to be a large gem—like a star sapphire—until it's activated. There's a lion to either side of the gem. The setting looks like gold."

"Then he probably has worn it. Well, I don't know what the damned Stath gave their fur-bearing allies, but I can scarcely wait to find out what happens when they run into this ring."

Sanders kept his mouth shut. Right there was the reason he was anxious to get to the planet.

The General cleared his throat.

"Has the invasion got to this local king yet?"

"Not yet, sir. When we got the alert on the communications net, we sent the transmit signal to the satellite, and that's when we found out the Stath had been visiting the planet. Then we had to learn all we could in a hurry."

"I can imagine. We didn't know any of this before?"

"No, sir. Supposedly, PDA was taking care of it."

"PDA doesn't understand how the Stath think. So, this requisition you've sent in—All this theatrical equipment, an H-Class ship and crew—this was to try to recover this guard ring?"

"No, sir, it was to stop the Stath from taking over, through their local allies. Of course, in the process, that would hopefully keep the device from becoming fully activated."

There was a little silence, during which Colonel Sanders had time to consider how many different organizations would have had him drawn and quartered by now. Yet the General, who had had him in just the right position for a verbal beheading, or worse, instead had buried the really deadly question with a harmless one, then legitimized the impulse Sanders still couldn't explain to himself: Why had he put the guard ring on the local chief's hand? He could remember no calculation, no reasoning, no thought; he had just acted, and become aware of it afterward, as if he were a spectator in his own life. How did anyone explain an impulse? Then a clearing of the throat warned him the questioning wasn't over yet.

"How close is this invasion to our—ah—involuntary agent on this planet?"

"I think we might just have time to get there before he's hit. We've flooded the place with subminiaturized spy devices, and been pretty well swamped with information we haven't had time to digest. There's even a local prophecy of what sounds like our intervention on the planet."

"You've located the opposing forces?"

"Yes, sir, that's clear enough. Though there aren't two equal forces. The invaders heavily outnumber the defenders."

"Okay. I'm approving your requisition. I don't think we should fool around with this, whatever PDA might think. The planet may be near the boundary, but it's in our territory, and the mental processes of the Stath are as you describe them. We can't let them get away with this. However, these local inhabitants on both sides are also people, and the less gratuitous slaughter we inflict, the better."

"We aren't planning to use force alone, sir. With luck, we may be able to get by with something else, that PDA should incidentally find it harder to detect, or to understand if they do detect it."

His superior smiled. "All this theatrical equipment?"

The colonel nodded. "Yes, sir. Illusion. Of course, to use that effectively, we have to know how the people on this planet think, so we have to watch them closely."

* * *

The Chief stood by the stone parapet atop one of the high central towers of the fortress dominating the river valley. He stood a little apart from his remaining advisors, looking down over the lower walls and towers as, across the valley, the morning sun flashed on the shields and breastplates of the heavily armed troops, once his own, but now under the command of traitors, who were emerging in large numbers from the forest that rimmed the valley.

The same sun made visible the thinness of the numbers of defenders on the massive walls of the fortress. And, beyond the stone fortress itself, he could see the emptiness in his outermost works of earth and timber, where behind the pointed upright logs of the palisade built out on the rightmost side of the fortress, to menace the flank of any hostile approach, no-one waited to break the enemy's first attack.

Arion, the Chief's long-time friend and advisor, spoke quietly. "There is Summa's standard. Among the first."

The Chief's eyes, no longer young and sharp, sought out across the valley the red and orange banner, and spotted it coming in where an intervening slope still held off the sun. Briefly, his gaze blurred with emotion.

Marron, the state councillor, spoke in a wondering voice. "Who would have thought he could be bought?"

There was a murmur from the troops on the walls below, as the numbers of traitors and hirelings was made clear in the glitter and flash of the armor emerging from the forest.

Then, carrying clearly in the early morning stillness, came the low good-natured voice of Tarvon, the War Leader, second in command only to the Chief:

"The more traitors for us to kill, men. And if they should win, we are no deader if ten times as many come to do the deed."

Tarvon's voice soothed the Chief, inside, where the blows of life had left their unseen wounds. Most of the nobles were gone, turned traitor, and with them the clever luminaries of the court. But Tarvon, greatest of the great, was loyal. True, the hosts needed to properly embody his skill were turned traitor, bought, or fled, but his presence alone must weigh on those who approached. The Chief could almost hear the warnings of the approaching sergeants and captains:

"Tarvon is there, still with the King. Look right and left, men. Steady. We are fighting Tarvon, remember. Keep closed up, there!"

Arion spoke sharply.

"Hold that bolt! Wait till they're closer!"

The Chief glanced to his left, saw the flatbolt catapult on the open top of a tower, and the shame-faced crew that manned it.

Tarvon spoke again, his voice low and good-humored:

"Wait till they're closer, men. For now, just watch the show. They're trying to come forward, but their feet want to go to some other place."

The Chief noted the hesitation in the advancing host, and smiled despite himself. Though more were emerging from the forest, those in front had slowed. Seen from this viewpoint, the left of their line had actually halted, and a few there visibly drew back. It would pass, but for now it was pleasant to look upon.

For an instant, the Chief could see the scene from the enemy side. The sun, flashing impressively on their shields, was also glaring directly in their eyes, blinding them. The stone fortress on its rocky height before the river dominated them below in the valley, its massive walls rising menacingly high above them. And there before them waited their own King, justly angered by their treason, along with his shrewd councillor, Arion, and mighty Tarvon, whose mere presence on a battlefield was said to change a mob into an army, and an army into a conquering host.

What greeted the traitors was silence and menace, with God alone knew how many of the loyal, lances and swords ground sharp, with uncountable stocks of arrows and heavy bolts. Hidden high on and within the walls, unseeable in the glare of the sun, were the huge kettles of smoking oil that could blister and cook an attacker inside his armor. Behind the wooden outerworks of the palisade, there could be massed horsemen jostling in impatience to throw open the gates and kill the turncoats.

Out in the open, conscious of their treasonous cause, burdened down by their heavy armor, and weary already from the march here, the approaching troops were showing no enthusiasm for the fight, however it might profit their leaders. And, of course, they had worse if more vague worries.

The Chief absently fingered the intricately formed ring on the third finger of his right hand. His thumb slid over the cool smooth surface of the blue star jewel, then across the golden lions recumbent beside the blue star to the left, and to the right. The contact took his mind back to a night long before, when he had seen the flash streak down across the sky, wavering flames at its head, and realized that a star traveler was here and in trouble.

He had overruled the cautious Arion, ridden out in the night, and crossed the river, to find on a wooded hill a burning shell of metal—What metal could burn?—and his retainers had fallen back in fear.

With Arion trembling beside him, he had dared the dying flames and briefly entered the wreck, to see a charred corpse amidst the twisted shapes, and there, in clouds of white smoke, cold where he touched it, the Chief found a kind of closed cradle, with a baby moving fretfully under the cradle's transparent cover.

The Chief had put his cloak between his hands and the frosted surface, and carried the cradle out, and down the far slope of the hill. He had set it down, and Arion was bent at the closed cover when there had come from the wreck on the far side of the hill a dazzling burst of bluish whiteness, and the trees atop the hill were thrown flat with a rending crash, their budding leaves and outer twigs aflame.

Inside the cradle, the baby apparently saw Arion's face in the brief glare, smiled, and swung its hands to thump the inner surface of the cover.

Already, a second brightness was descending rapidly from the sky, there were the sounds of approaching voices, and then an anguished cry from the hill.

Arion had said, "These come to save the first, but are too late."

"Then we have good news for them." The Chief bent to pick up the cradle.

Arion said, "Their affairs are dangerous. Best we keep the child and raise him as our own. You have saved him, at least."

"He isn't ours. Call to them!"

"My voice will not function."

"Nor mine. But my legs will." The Chief picked up the cradle, and went back up the hill. Arion and the rest of the reluctantly following courtiers saw him outlined in the fading bluish glare, saw two figures in strange armor take the cradle, saw another figure in armor come and clasp him, heard a low voice rough with emotion, the words unrecognizable, then the armored figure had stepped back, and raised its hand in salute, and the Chief had come back down the hill like a man in a dream, and spoke to Arion.

"The baby was theirs. But for some reason, I miss him."

"Let us hope you get no hurt from this. My skin burns from those flames."

"And mine, too. The river is still cold. Let's see if it will draw the heat."

Arion and the Chief had bathed in the river until their teeth chattered, and to the touch their flesh felt like the flesh of a corpse in wintertime. But the next day, their burns were mild, and now the word of what the Chief had done had begun to work its magic, as his awed followers told of the flaming metal of the wreck, the magical cradle, the child, and the Star Man's clasp of affection and brotherhood. Now, too, the startled Chief made a discovery. On his right hand was a golden blue-star ring, and the wise men outdid themselves in interpreting this visible evidence of the Star Men's favor.

The Chief said privately to Arion, "The talk of these wise men can be as hard to follow as the gabble of drunkards. Does it make any sense to you?"

"No. To believe the half of it would be more dangerous than it was to go into that wreck. I trust none of it—and least of all that the ring is a 'crystallized omen of good fortune and invincibility.'"

"Let's hope our enemies believe that."

"That would be useful. But the ring is very beautiful, that is certainly true."

"There is a strange thing. Any other ring I have had is either too tight, or else at times it is loose. The fit of this is perfect. I can hardly tell it is there."

Arion examined it carefully. "It was formed by craft far beyond ours. Would that I had had the courage to go back up that hill with you. Perhaps I would have one like it."

"Here. Wear it if you like."

"No, it is yours. Anyway, I am not jealous. I have baubles as pretty as that. I only regret that I lacked the courage."

But all that time had passed, and now they stood together by the parapet, and the Chief thought to say to Arion that he had lacked no courage to stay beside him in this disaster. But at that moment, the wavering ranks of shields and armor across the valley were roughly broken from behind by a rush of unarmored alien horsemen.

Even at this distance, the Chief could recognize them by the thick short dark hair or fur that covered brow and cheek and throat. Seeing that, he could imagine that he saw their eyes, with a glint of craft and cleverness. On the walls, his men straightened.

Down below, the enemy rode in, spreading across the valley, undeterred by the menace of the fortress, no doubt content that they had conquered others like it, and could conquer it, too.

Tarvon's voice, reinforced by the low tone of his trumpeter's signal horn, warned the defenders, "Hold your bolts—Wait for the command—Let them get closer."

Behind the aliens, the armor again began to move, perhaps unaware that they had hung back. Pressing forward at the head was the red and orange banner.

The voice of Tarvon, the War Leader, was quiet but clear: "Catapult crews, see the traitor lead the way? He is the one in front, with fresh painted royal bearings on his shield. He is to be tyrant once we are dead—That's how they bought him. Hold your bolts till he is near. Wait till you hear the King's warhorn. Let Evertrue speak for us, who are loyal. Then, when Evertrue does speak, put the wax plugs in your ears so you can have your minds on the job. Then aim careful, and work fast."

The Chief gauged the height of the sun, looked down at the alien horsemen, coming straight for the wooden outerworks. He watched these horsemen, their drawn knives glittering as they rode to the base of the palisade, vanished from sight, then their flexible lines and hooks briefly appeared atop the palings, caught, then the lithe hairy forms were up on the wall, glancing over, and as suddenly they dropped onto the high footwalk, inside. The gates were opened, and the others rode in.

Down in the valley, Summa's men were rushing closer, losing their order in their haste. The other armored troops were coming on much less quickly; but Summa, who should be most loyal, must now prove his new loyalty to the invader.

The horsemen, meanwhile, having taken the wooden outerworks, were making no further attempt. Some sat grinning atop the palisade, speculatively eyeing the walls. Others, out in the valley, seeing no effective resistance, were coming forward now at a casual walk. From the direction of Summa's men, the Chief could actually hear a small excited voice:

"They've run away. There's no-one there!"

The Chief smiled, noted the angle of the sun, the men waiting at the catapults, and, behind him, the bare pole atop the massive tower. Everything must be done now, in order. He kept his voice low and even, the first time today his men would have heard him:

"Raise the war flag."

He turned, waited a few moments:

"Ready at the catapults."

He heard Tarvon's murmured repetition, then the trumpeter raised his signal horn, and he saw the men at the catapults stand ready to loose their first bolts.

With the sun behind it, its long ends like claws, the climbing flag would be a cheerless message to all but the grinning hairy aliens below. To them, all this was nothing but foreign play-acting. But the Chief could see the flashing line of armor in the valley waver, as at a blow, and he turned to two pages wearing dark green and leather, and spoke quietly. "Lift up the voice-thrower."

They lifted a long wide-flaring instrument, and held it on their shoulders.

Down there, Summa and his men were approaching the already captured palisade, perhaps to man it, releasing the aliens for other jobs, perhaps to try to take the fortress by entering the hidden tunnel that opened behind the outerworks.

The Chief drew a deep breath and spoke carefully and forcefully into the mouthpiece:

"Hear me, men of Summa! I, your King, before Almighty God sworn to defend this land and people, now strip from your traitor baron all right and power to command! The penalty for his treason is death!"

The Chief turned from the voice-thrower, keeping one hand on the shoulder of the nearest page, to warn him not to move, looked back at the main central tower, looming behind them, and spoke clearly:

"Let Evertrue speak!"

At once, a tone like a sound made of silver hung in the air, subtly turning, riveting the attention. Down below, the traitors' armored foot troops came to a halt, banging into one another. The mounted aliens, coming on at a walk, looked up in surprise. The aliens atop the palisade stared in wonderment.

Beneath the tone, as if somehow acting on a different level than those hearing the tone and held by it, there was a low creak of cord drawn tight, a metallic scrape, a sudden jarring snap and hiss as a metal-tipped bolt streaked out flat through the air, a thump as the parts that launched it struck the pads from whence they were hauled back with a clink of gears and iron dogs that drew the mechanism tight again as the next bolt was put into place—then a cry from below.

Atop the open towers, the men at the catapults, their ears blocked with wax, straightened and bent. The sounds of the catapults were repeated again, and again, dominated by the clear tones of the warhorn, whose silver note seemed to hang in the air, than vanish, still holding the minds of the hearers, involuntarily seeking to find it.

Abruptly a shout rose up from below:

"The Baron's down! Baron Summa's down!"

There was another shout:

"Evertrue has killed him!"

The Chief had time for a brief ironical thought that it was not Evertrue, but a bolt from a catapult that had done the job. Then he had drawn another breath, and spoke intently into the voice-thrower. The voice-thrower magnified his words in the sudden stillness:

"True men, will you fight for Right?"

From some one of the towers came the carrying voice of the chaplain, praying for the penance of those who had fallen into evil ways, calling upon them to repent while time still remained.

Through the minds of those below—except the aliens—there would now be moving a grim familiar prophetic chant:

"Above them rear the walls of stone.

The war flag climbs upon the wind.

The warhorn speaks in silver tone.

The traitor to the earth is pinned . . ."

Arion said, "They've passed the word up. Summa is dead and his men are milling around."

The Chief drew a deep breath, and spoke into the voice-thrower. He kept his voice even, but it came out like thunder:

"Men of Summa! Your place is at the palisade! You are stronger than the enemy there!

"Now is your chance! ATTACK!"

There was a shout from below. The armored men, already near, rushed the palisade with its wide-open gates. Tarvon's voice rang out. The aliens atop the palisade, some still watching bemused as if they were spectators, were struck by a hail of arrows from the walls and towers. Out in the valley, the long glittering line of those who had other treasonous leaders stood as if paralyzed. The mounted aliens for a long confused moment looked on as if baffled to understand what was happening.

The Chief noted the distance of the long line of armored troops still far from the fortress, remembered their weary and hesitant approach, noted now the movement among them of their traitorous leaders, doubtless steadying them with threats and offered rewards. He wanted those men back in the fortress, manning the walls and watchtowers, and he wanted them as a starving man wants food. He could sway them, could challenge the hold of the aliens and their own treasonous leaders—but he could only do it effectively once.

Down below, there was the sharp blast of a whistle. The Chief saw an alien horseman race forward, carrying a pole with one red and one yellow pennant whipping in the wind. The alien horsemen came awake, raced toward the palisade. The entire floor of the valley seemed suddenly in motion.

Tarvon's voice carried, his tone pleasant.

"Catapults, set your aim by the west marker! Line your shots up abreast, straight to the front. Let's get a few horses down. Archers, cover the palisade. Aim careful—those are our men coming in now! Men of Summa, welcome! Man the palisade! We'll cover you!"

The sound of the catapults was almost continuous. The dark heavy bolts blurred out, the horses reared and fell, the air filled with arrows, and beneath the fusillade the armored men of Summa crossed the front of the fortress, and fought their way into the palisade. They were scarcely inside when the palisade wall was freshly topped with loops and hooks, and the invaders pulled themselves up, but now Summa's armored men were atop the footwalk, and more than a match in closing fighting on the wall.

The Chief looked around. The fortress, barely manned, lacked lookouts, and nothing would be more natural than a party of furry invaders with ropes and grappling hooks coming down the river in boats, and up the rocky slope on which the fortress stood, to attack it from behind. But from here, at least, there was nothing in sight yet.

Arion, apparently with the same thought, was looking around, away from the battle, while Marron now pointed excitedly toward the valley.

Out there, more and still more horsemen were coming, but the host of armored men under traitor command stood stock still. Arion turned, and saw them. His voice was surprised. "They're uncertain."

Once again, the Chief saw it as it would seem to those below—except the aliens. He saw the high walls, and above them the war flag; he heard still in memory the silver tone; he saw the archtraitor struck down, heard the chaplain's call for repentance, heard the King's command, and saw before his eyes the troops of Summa change sides. He saw the invaders knocked from their horses, saw them picked off from the palisade, and in the distance heard the voice of Tarvon direct the battle. Those armored hosts might well be feeling desperately which side they should be on.

Marron pointed. "Could we not sway them, too?"

Arion glanced at the Chief, who shook his head.

Marron said, "The warhorn—"

The Chief said quietly, "Summa's men were close. These are still far away. Their armor is heavy, and they are already worn from the march here. Summa had just been struck dead. Their leaders are still with them. The men might try to obey, but they could not. Moreover, the aliens must not become accustomed to the warhorn. And Evertrue must speak only when the time is right, when its orders are possible to obey, and when hopefully the enemy is confused and uncertain."

"But the men hang back. Their leaders are traitors, but the men are loyal. If we could call them in—"

"At any moment the enemy main force may come onto the field. From the accounts, what we see here is only the beginning of them. Then our men out there would be slaughtered. Evertrue must give the order only when the men can obey it. They cannot obey now. We will wait."

Arion said, "Look, the palisade is ours!"

Down below, the armored troops of Summa had finished the enemy resistance inside the palisade, manned the wall and shut the gates. The mounted aliens swirled outside like waves against a rock. Here and there, ropes or hooks topped the sharp-pointed logs, and hairy warriors climbed up, to be enthusiastically struck down by the heavily armed defenders.

The Chief watched thoughtfully. So far, these aliens were not unbeatable fighters. Save for bribery and treason, the fortress would still be secure.

Just then, there rode rapidly over a rise before the forest, a squat horseman surrounded by pennant-bearers. This new arrival turned his horse, and in a flash he and the pennant-bearers crossed the front of the armored troops, followed by uncountable numbers of armored men.

The Chief glanced briefly at Marron. Above the thunder of all those hooves, his voice could not be heard, and even Evertrue would be made faint, while the size of the alien force would intimidate or crush opposition. If he had managed to bring those armored troops actively into the fight, they would now be destroyed. A single glance at Marron's look of horror showed that Marron realized it.

Below, the valley filled with onrushing horsemen, some of whom spread out to go up and downstream, no doubt to work their way through the rocks toward the sides of the fortress. A fresh cloud of dust now betrayed the arrival of something new—riders leading separate short teams that pulled carts.

Tarvon called out, "Catapults! Let's fool these newcomers! Drop bolts at three quarters pull, aimed at those carts."

Below, the carts were coming to a stop, were disconnected from their teams, and rushed forward by small groups of men pulling at the tongues and sides of the carts.

The Chief, watching, considered the disconnected rumors that had preceded the arrival of these conquerors. In these rumors, thunder, earthquakes, and lightning bolts shared the credit for the speed of the conquests with dragons that belched fire, and iron falcons that plunged from the sky. If anything as commonplace as carts had been mentioned, he could not recall it.

Below, the carts were stopped and swung around. From some were removed, with heavy effort, curious objects like very deep black iron cooking pots. From others came odd-shaped lengths of wood or metal. But then, from the fortress, the bolts reached out, and fell short. The bearers, setting up their curious objects, glanced up, watched, took fresh holds on their heavy burdens, and moved them in closer.

Tarvon called, "Catapults! Elevate! At three-quarters pull! Try again!"

Again, the bolts failed to make the distance. The aliens showed brief grins as they set up their odd-looking devices. They worked fast and smoothly. Already, there were puffs of smoke.

Tarvon said, "Catapults, from left to right, divide the target! Full strength! Strike at will!"

From the aliens' curious devices down below, things like black large-size children's balls were blurring up into the air.

Now the catapults, too, were in action. The iron-shod bolts flashed out.

The Chief, frowning, looked up, and it went through his mind that no fortifications, of whatever strength, had stopped these outlanders yet. For generations, they had been held beyond the line of the North River, and, save for raids, they could not come south, though in return few who raided their territory had come back to tell of their deeds. But now that had changed.

Now, they came south, through counties, duchies, and kingdoms, and nothing stopped them. With the plunder from one conquest, they bribed the faithless of the next conquest, slew the loyal, took their goods, and bribed the faithless of the next, creating a huge empire subject to them alone.

This went through the Chief's mind, along with the knowledge that, great though their numbers were, even such numbers could have had the work of half-a-year at the least to subject Great Keep, just below the North River, while Pinnacle Rock, inaccessible, with walls that were said to be a hundred feet high, could have held out as long as the food in its storehouse and the water in its cisterns. Both were lost before swift-riding messengers could bring help from the south.

Looking up as the black balls dropped, it once again came to the Chief that there was something else, and these black balls could be part of that something else. He seized Arion roughly.

"Below! Get to shelter, quick!" He turned to the pages. "Set down the voice-thrower! Follow Lord Arion!"

He saw that Tarvon must already have gone below, glanced around for Marron—balanced whether he should follow—

There was the beginning of a great wind, the start of a loud noise. A redness briefly surrounded the Chief. There was the start of another wind, the beginning of a heavy thunder. The redness faded. Again, the wind began, and the thunder. Dazed, he could not count the beginnings of the roar and the times the redness rose to shut it out. Then again the redness faded, and this time there was no wind, and no roar.

Beside him, Marron lay on the floor, half-turned, a black dart sunk in his head, the blood oozing out around it. Other black darts were in his body, or on the stone floor, and embedded in the mortar between the stones.

Half the crew of the catapult on the open top of the tower were stretched out, bleeding, while the others held their hands to their ears, stunned.

He looked far out, to see the crew that had worked the weapons that had dealt this slaughter. The bolts from the catapults had reached them. From behind, others were coming forward.

There was a cry from down below. "Tarvon! They've killed Tarvon!"

The Chief, stunned at Marron's death and the sudden loss of Tarvon, kept his countenance unchanged, straightened, saw the voice-thrower with two holes knocked in its sides; but it should still work. Resting the end on the parapet, he spoke into the mouthpiece, toward the men at an exposed catapult:

"All right, men, This is the King. Let's take a few more of them with us, for Tarvon. Crank up that catapult, and see who you can hit, around those black pots."

The remaining men looked around at him, their eyes wide, then raised their hands in acknowledgement, and bent to the work.

He turned the horn, calculated its aim.

"Archers, this is the King. Pass the word. When those black pots spit out those black balls, take cover behind stone, with stone overhead. Those balls burst apart into iron darts. But the stone will stop the iron. Pass the word."

There was a shout as the archers, dazed from the shock, noise, and sudden losses, recognized his voice, and went back into action. As he repeated the warning to other of the defenders, the fortress, temporarily silenced, again began to work ruin on the exposed hosts below. At the voice-thrower, the Chief straightened, drew a deep breath, and then saw the squat alien seated down below on horseback.

For an instant, they were looking directly at each other. The Chief was not certain how, with that fur on his face, it was possible for the alien leader to have any visible expression at all. But a look of intent wonder was clear on the alien face right now.

The Chief turned the voice-thrower toward another flat-topped tower. "Catapults, Tarvon's trick worked, but they're trying to get new men to those heavy pots. Let's pick off the men, and see if we can wreck the pots."

The heavy bolts flashed out again, and there came a cheer. Looking down, he could see one of the pots, burst into pieces where a bolt had hit it head-on. As he watched, another bolt slammed over the top of another one of the pots, missing it by less than an arm's reach.

If that aim could be maintained, it might conceivably be possible to wreck every one of them. If not, the aliens were certain to sneak in after dark to drag them off, and next time use them from out of range of the catapults. But, if they could all be destroyed now—

Obviously thinking the same thing, the enemy chief below gave a command. Messengers left his side to race through swarms of horsemen, who rushed toward the spot. Then another of the pots burst into fragments. The angle of the bolt indicated the crew of the main central tower, and the Chief turned toward them.

"Good work! Let's make them pay!"

There was a visible increase in the bombardment. The alien horsemen converging on the spot made a momentary confusion in which everyone there was in somebody else's way. In such a crowd, a bolt that missed one target might strike another. Men were thrown to the ground. The horses screamed and plunged. The thrown men were trampled under the horses' hooves. Fresh bolts slammed into the panicked mob.

The enemy leader sent new messengers to the spot.

The Chief, looking down on this chaos, balanced the odds if he were now to give the word for a sortie, but he shook his head. Even with Summa's men massed behind the palisade, he lacked the numbers.

Down below, the ruinous shambles was sorted out. At heavy cost, the remaining pots were dragged back out of range, the struggling panicked horses were killed, and the dead and wounded carried off.

The Chief used the voice-thrower. "Good work, men! They don't have quite as many of those things as before!"

The men were grinning. From below, fresh bolts were carried up. The captains were studying how best to take cover when the next bombardment of black balls should drop out of the sky. On the walls and towers, the dead and wounded were being carried below.

Down below, some of the hairy horsemen were shaking their knives at the walls—a change from their easy manner at the beginning.

Arion spoke close by.

"They're closing in—coming up the rocks from behind with sacks the size of grain bags. I've got archers picking them off, but the angle is steep, and we can't hope to hit them all."

"Sacks?"

"Leather sacks."

"At the north and south walls, or along the river?"

"All three. Naturally, they're having more trouble on the river side."

"What have they got beside the sacks?"

"Hammers, picks, bars—We don't know what there is inside the sacks, but the whole thing looks like some kind of working party. The ones that are armed seem to be just in case we should go out and attack the working parties. We don't have the men. But we're a lot better off than we were."

"Best we bring most of Summa's men inside, to help man the walls if need be. But for now keep a strong force near the main gate. We may want to hit the enemy once they're back inside the palisade."

"It's being done. Tarvon gave the orders just before he was hit."

"When these alien working parties get close enough, let them have a little oil."

Almost as he spoke, there was a terrible scream from somewhere behind and below.

Arion said drily, "I've already given the word."

"I wonder—what can they do with sacks?"

"What could they do with pots?"

"Yes . . . Look at them down there. They're waiting."

Below, the alien horsemen, from a safe distance, were looking up. Amongst them, some archers vainly tried to send their shafts up to the walls, then occasionally darted into motion as answering shafts came close. But there was no rush to get near the walls. Long ladders had been brought up, but no-one was using them. At a respectful distance, the peculiar deep pots were again being set up, so there would be that to live through before long. The Chief considered the situation.

"Where could we put our catapults, except at the tops of the flat-roofed towers?"

Arion frowned. "There's no other place right for them. We can't very well shoot them out an arrow slit. Maybe on the walls, here and there. But that's no better."

"What hit Tarvon?"

"He'd gone below, and crossed the covered bridge to West Two tower, to look out. One of those balls burst overhead, and the pieces smashed through the roof of the tower."

The Chief glanced at the conical roof of the tower called West Two, directly in front and on a lower level than where he stood. The tower was low enough not to block the view of the battlefield from here, but Tarvon, having gone below, would have found it in the way, and crossed the covered bridge to it, to get a better view.

"We'll have to reinforce the roofs." The Chief could see the holes plainly, along with a number of darts stuck in the cone-shaped roof. "The darts broke through the weathered shingles. Where they hit the timbers, they didn't go through."

He glanced up, to see the sun still well up in the sky.

"I don't see how they're going to take us before dark. By dawn, we can have some of these roofs reinforced."

From down below, toward the upstream side of the castle, there was a piercing scream, then another.

More hot oil, no doubt.

But if enough of the enemy were that close—

The stones jumped underfoot. There was a roar, and the sound of a crash, of an avalanche, and another heavy crash shook the fortress.

From the distance, a black ball blurred up into the air, followed by another, and another.

The Chief noted that the bulk of the enemy remained unmoving. He called to the exposed catapult crews. "Get below! Quick!"

The crews dove for the trapdoors.

He looked around.

A huge cloud of dust was rolling skyward from the wall along the river. At a second glance—

Arion said, "The wall's gone!"

"It can't be!"

"Look at the end tower. See those few rocks sticking out? That's all that's left! Look further. There's the wall again. In between, a big length has gone down!"

"You're right!" The Chief glanced up, and grabbed Arion. "Quick! Get below!" He thrust him toward the steps, saw out of the corner of his eye the concerted movement on the field, toward the fortress. He looked up, wincing as he glimpsed the black balls dropping. He lifted the end of the voice-thrower, calculated where below, under cover, his men should be.

"Archers! Put some arrows in that crowd! In that pack, anywhere you hit will do good! When they're close, tip some oil on them!"

He glanced around, to see that Arion had gotten below. There was the first rush of wind, the start of a roar, then a redness that cut out wind and sound, a flash as if he saw the scene around him briefly through a closing door, another roar, cut off by the redness, and another—

He was standing, one hand on the parapet. Below, the whole valley was alive with rushing horsemen. Behind him, there was a roar, a crash, an uprush of dust. He turned to the voice-thrower, saw it was holed from end to end, useless. He looked down, saw the enemy chief sending off a messenger, who rode hard toward the face of the fortress that looked upriver. Closer at hand, he saw the hook of a ladder over the outer wall, saw a hairy face rise up—

From the slit of a nearby tower, an arrow flashed. The climber, struck in the throat, toppled from the wall. The ladder was still there.

A warrior in armor stepped out of a tower in the wall, briefly studied the ladder, and swung an axe. The ladder dropped from sight. The warrior stepped back into the tower.

The Chief looked up, saw the sun still well overhead. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a blurred motion. The black balls were dropping in again, one after another.

It came to him then, looking at the black balls coming, and down at the voice-thrower, shot full of holes, that he must be dead, his body lying somewhere on the stone floor, or perhaps fallen over the parapet to down below, but he did not yet know it.

His consciousness, seated in his soul, looked out the eyes of his soul, and for now he could see, but surely not act in the world, because his worldly body could not be alive after this. And the teaching of those who had studied the matter was that the real man was in the soul, which, like the rider of a horse, at least in theory mastered and controlled the body, with its wild impulses and sudden unruly nature.

Uneasily, he rubbed his left hand across the Star Men's ring, felt the hard facets, glanced at it in surprise, saw the two lions risen up, their forepaws outstretched, their claws out, the ruby gemstone glowing as if lit from within.

There was the beginning of a wind and a roar, cut off by redness, and this time he was thinking: Did rings have souls? Did, then, a blue star gem have the soul of a ruby? Was a gold standing beast the soul of one lying down? No. It made no sense.

Then it followed that he was still alive, and since he could not possibly live through what had cut through the voice-thrower, killed half the catapult crew, and smashed through the roof of West Two to kill Tarvon—since he could not possibly have lived through that, it followed that he had not lived through it—something had kept it from him.

And since no known thing had powers that could have kept it from him, something of unknown powers had kept it from him. It could only be the ring, given him by the star traveler, in gratitude for a baby's life.

Just as an arrow could strike down the fiercest predator from a distance, the Chief thought, just as the enemy's sack of unknown substance could bring down the fortress walls, and just as these clearly impossible things were done by routine once understood, though they seemed like magic until understood, so the ring, like a beautifully decorated bow, was much more than an ornament.

Then once again the world was there, and the redness gone. The remains of the voice-thrower were scraps of metal against the parapet. The floor was covered with chips of stone and bits of mortar mingled with the black darts. There were black darts stuck upright in the mortar, and lying on the stone floor like hail after a storm.

From below, faintly to his deadened ears, came a muffled sound of hooves, then a ringing silence.

Looking down, the Chief saw the horsemen drawn back, like a tide that has pulled back from a shore in a huge wave, in order that it may smash more heavily against the rocks in its next blow.

The Chief, frowning, saw the enemy messengers, with their pennants, grouped around the squat alien leader, who was looking directly at him.

From behind, there was a rush of feet on the steps. Arion's voice was breathless.

"The river wall is breached at ground level! There's nothing but a pile of rocks they can climb over!"

The Chief looked around, but could not see through the dust.

Arion said, "The wall is all down between the middle tower and the northeast tower. But we've got archers to pick them off as they climb in over the rubble. Thank God we've got plenty of arrows!"

Looking back toward the river, it dawned on the Chief that this latest catastrophe was partly concealed by the massive bulk of the main central tower. But that tower must be as vulnerable as anything else. He looked back at Arion.

"They're not in anywhere yet?"

"No."

"Is the main gate still unhurt?"

"Yes, but the outer entrance, through the palisade, is partly blocked with fallen rocks. The tunnel entrance is clear, but the tunnel is too narrow to put men through in a hurry."

"Good. Now tell me, what's this?"

Arion stood beside him, looking down where the aliens had withdrawn.

Arion's voice was wondering. "Why should they—"

"Look at their faces."

The aliens' hairy faces as they watched the fortress were marked by three openings—two where their eyes looked out, and one where their mouths split into what appeared to be grins of anticipation.

Of all the aliens, only a few, here and there, appeared somber. Amongst them, squat and stolid, the Chief saw the alien leader, watching him with a look that was alert, and almost fearful.

In a brief flash of comprehension, it came to the Chief that just as he had unleashed carefully timed strokes against the waverers under Summa's banner, so the alien chieftain worked to a similar pattern in guiding his attack. And where his own alien men saw no reason to fear the outcome, the alien chief was conscious of a break in the accustomed pattern.

In this brief flash of insight, the Chief seemed to look up at the fortress, to see through a hell of fire and iron a single motionless figure which stood upright, unaffected, to counter blow with blow, waiting, knowing in advance the sequence of strokes that must follow, biding his time to let loose the final blow.

The stone floor of the tower jumped underfoot. There was a roar from all around them. Clouds of dust, on all four sides, rolled skyward.

Unbidden, the prophetic chant came to him:

"The alien host that bought our spears

With magic dust brings down our walls.

Still know, the trumpet has no fears.

Through smoke and flame, our duty calls."

The Chief looked back at the massive bulk of the central tower, looming through the rolling clouds of dust. He raised his voice, but kept it even as he called out:

"Let Evertrue speak!"

Back there, somewhere, was the trumpeter. Let him quaver just the slightest, and there would be a false note. The pattern that so far gripped the loyal might break. The prediction of the chant would be shown false. The alien pattern would prevail.

The silver tone spoke, over the noise and the dust.

The tone turned in the air, flawless, riveting the attention, holding the listeners motionless.

Then it was gone. The ear still sought for it, but found it only in memory.

The dust, slowly, blew away.

The Chief caught his breath.

The outer walls were down.

It was not just one part of a wall now. Looking around, it was clear why the enemy had pulled back. No-one would want to be close when those heavy rocks came down. The towers of the walls, here and there, still stood. Behind the rubble—and the Chief could see now that that rubble in places rested on structures that had not wholly collapsed—the towers behind the collapsed walls still stood. But the effect on the mind of the crash of those walls should have been crushing—except for the tone of the warhorn, and the remembered words of the prophetic chant.

Looking down across the wisps of dust still trailing from the collapsed heaps of masonry, the Chief could see the unmoving aliens in their hosts, and their squat leader somberly studying the fortress. From somewhere to the rear came a roar, a faint jar, and a heavy crash of falling rock, as some blast, that should have taken place earlier, joined in belatedly.

Illogically, the Chief felt cheerful. This time, there would be no holding the aliens at the wall. The wall was no longer there. They would get over the rubble, into the courtyard, would succeed in using their magic on the inner walls and towers—if they lived. But many of them would never make it through the hail of arrows that would greet them. And many who got in would never emerge from this place on their own feet. The Chief, foreseeing the attack, drew his sword.

There was a motion amongst the mounted enemy hosts, as if they sensed the order to attack just as the Chief had sensed it, before it came. But faintly across the gap between the enemy and the fortress, strewn with dead horses and the bodies of the enemy, there came a snarling repetition of sharp commands.

The enemy line of soldiers on foot, backed by a heavy mass of horsemen, had begun to move forward, but now stopped, and even, with much jostling, drew back.

The Chief, prepared for an attack, sensed what had happened. In the fortress, even in the rubble of the fortress, a determined defence might inflict untold casualties. The enemy chief had no desire to expend his strength in a killing match in a rock heap where his horses were worthless, and his tough but lightly armored troops were at a disadvantage.

The command to close for the kill, once given, could not easily be withdrawn. His war machine could be wrecked here against an unshaken enemy whose leader watched smiling from above, plainly looking forward to the finish fight at close quarters. And how did that leader still live after the bombardment that had burst around him? The alien chieftain sensed a trap, and suddenly turned on his horse to shout a fresh command.

Watching intently, the Chief realized with a shock that the pattern still held. That, in fact, so far from the aliens breaking it, it was coming to dominate them, through the mind of their leader. He turned to Arion.

"We have another voice-thrower, don't we?"

"Yes, in the armory downstairs."

"We may need it."

"I'll get it."

A moment later he saw the armored figure being brought forward, and realized that the alien leader was already working to free himself from the dilemma. As the Chief watched, an alien on horseback was leading one single man in armor slowly and reluctantly toward the fallen outer walls. A brief clatter beside him told the Chief that Arion had brought the voice-thrower. Down below, somewhat more than halfway to the fortress, the armored figure stopped, and called out. His voice seemed small, but clearly audible:

"Will you parley?"

The Chief sheathed his sword, and the click carried. He raised the voice-thrower, and his voice seemed unnaturally loud:

"What do they say?"

"They offer terms."

"So do we."

"Give your word of loyalty to their chief—their king—and pay the equal of one tenth of the yearly crop's worth to his collector. If you give your word, he will leave at once, and you may settle matters here as you choose."

The Chief spoke as much for his men, who would be intently listening, as to the enemy leader. He spoke also for those to hear whose leaders had been bought by the enemy, and who would just have heard their new hairy ruler offer their lives freely as part of the barter.

The Chief spoke carefully. "Tell him we thank him for his offer, but our word is pledged in an ancient oath that must be upheld by all those who are true. And we do not need to yield. We are at the center of our strength, and his force, though great, is not sufficient to break it.

"But he is far from home, and behind him for many days' march, there is no-one he can trust if he should have ill-fortune. There is no-one back there bound to him by blood, love, or loyalty. Save his own men here, there is no-one at his command but those who are cowards, who are unwilling, or whose loyalty could be bought. Here, if he attacks further, we will break his strength, and he will see what, in the final clash, false hirelings and those betrayed into his service by their own false leaders are worth. But we will make an offer of our own. Will he hear it?"

There was a silence, then, with an effort, the armored figure spoke: "He will hear it."

"Tell him that he has won so far by new and subtle means of unleashing force. Tell him that there are still subtler means that can lift men to the stars, set metal aflame, blot out the lightning and silence the thunder. His coming has been foretold by prophecy, and he who would defeat the prophets in their power must take care, lest unwittingly he fulfill the prophecy instead. We offer that he may withdraw now, and we will let him go with no further hurt. Neither will we, if he leaves at once, summon those whose loyalty will cast aside bribery and betrayal to join the true cause at our first call. We know their real feelings.

"We decline his offer, and remind him that he knows the subtle might of the stars. We call upon him to soberly weigh our offer, while there is still time."

The armored figure raised its gauntleted hand in salute, and the Chief returned the salute, knowing now which side this warrior wished to be on. He watched the armored figure return to the alien chieftain, saw the hairy interpreters confer with both, to clear up points that might be uncertain. There followed a silence, in which the predicament of the alien leader was clear enough to the Chief.

Obviously enough, to the alien ruler and perhaps a few of his leaders, some new power was in evidence here. Otherwise, the King who had just spoken from the fortress would have been killed in the first bombardment. Worse, this King was said to have friends amongst the star men, so the possibilities for unpleasant surprises were practically unlimited. On the other hand, the outer walls were down, and to turn back now, with his army convinced that one last assault would take the place—that would breed doubts as to his judgment and his courage, and be possibly even worse than a defeat.

The Chief, looking down, saw the enemy chief look up. Even at this distance, he could read a message of angry irresolution in the alien's gaze.

Briefly, despite himself, the Chief smiled. Suddenly, another part of the chant came to him:

"Look, a streak is drawn across the sky,

In answer to our King-Chief's cry.

Now see the enemy stand silent by,

As a mightier host comes marching nigh."

Down below, they were all looking up.

The Chief glanced up as a peculiar traveling thunder crashed and rumbled overhead.

There in the sky hung a long narrow cloud, at the head of which, like an armored forefinger, was a glittering something—a star ship!

The Chief felt his breath stop, but with an effort kept a grip on his sense of reality.

What was happening, so far, fit the chant with unvarying trueness. But prophecies had been known to fail before.

Arion spoke at his shoulder, his voice awed.

"They've come!"

The Chief spoke in a low voice. "They can see us from down there, and you aren't the only one with eyes as sharp as a bird of prey. Keep your own features impassive, and let me know how their ruler looks to you. He's the squat one, in the center of that group of messengers with pennants."

Arion said more soberly, "With all that fur on his face—H'm—To me, he looks stubborn, but none too easy in his mind."

"That's what I thought. Now, how do we take advantage of this?"

"But do we need to? Certainly it's the star men come to help us?"

"How do we know that? Is that the first star ship we've ever seen pass overhead?" The Chief kept his voice low. "Even if it should be the star men, how do we know they can help?"

"It fits the chant—the prophecy."

"It fits part of it, but let's not take leave of our senses just yet. How about that line that goes, 'The fallen walls with iron ghosts are manned'?"

"True . . . Unless it means, which is true, when those walls fell that we lost heavily . . . But, at least, we'd gotten the best part of Summa's men safe before the collapse, and they didn't get hurt. They're all loyal. The rot only touched the Baron."

"Now look, down there."

Down below, the armored figure came forward again. This time, with the visible streak across the sky overhead, he saluted before speaking.

"Chief and King, the alien knows of the prophecy, but he wants proof it is true."

The Chief glanced at the collapsed outer walls, considered the men lost in that collapse, and considered also the form of address, 'Chief and King.' That meant acceptance as both head of the clan and ruler. The armored figure below was now leaving no doubt as to which side he was on. To his natural loyalty was added, no doubt, an earnest desire to be on the right side when the forces of Justice proved mightier than the aliens. This same emotion might very naturally be shared by the bulk of the armored troops betrayed into the alien service by their self-seeking or overawed leaders.

The chief raised the voice-thrower.

"Tell him," he said carefully, "to open his ranks between the fortress and the landing place of the star men, and he will have proof. Tell him that, if he had attacked earlier, the star men, in their might, would have come onto the battlefield while his men were enmeshed in the ruins of the fortress."

The armored go-between glanced around, obviously uncertain just where the star men had landed. Overhead, the streak was still plainly in evidence, but, as usually happened, the star ship itself had disappeared. Certain wise men, the Chief remembered, surmised that the star ship, as one means of travel, used a mysterious fire which left its smoke behind it, but also, they thought, the star ship could glide, like a hawk, so that the fire was only lit at intervals, and hence the track of smoke appeared only now and then.

Down below, the armored figure looked up hesitantly and then asked, "The landing place?"

The Chief carefully raised his arm to point. The direction in which he pointed was not seriously inconsistent with the path of the streak overhead, and it incidentally would open up a route for the body of armored troops outside, whose leaders the aliens had bought, who were much closer now, and who by now might earnestly want to be on the right side when the rest of the prophecy came true. Those armored troops could make a big difference in the price the enemy had to pay to win—if those troops could be brought to change sides.

Arion cleared his throat.

"I think they have something to try to hear our words with."

The Chief noted a thing like a voice-thrower, the wide end now aimed roughly at him, the narrow end just being taken from the ear of someone near the alien chieftain.

The Chief nodded. "Look."

The enormous horde of mounted aliens was now separating, as half-a-dozen messengers on horseback moved through the ranks. But, the Chief noted, the path they made was curved to miss the armored troops. And yet, if those armored troops should move forward—

"Shrewd," said Arion. "I wonder—"

A small voice, oddly accented but understandable, reached them from below:

"Prove your prophecy."

Down there, one of the hairy translators lowered a voice-thrower.

The Chief considered the situation. In the little group around the alien leader, his couriers waited for orders. In the sky, the streak was still plainly visible, but spreading, and before long would begin to fade away. There was an intense and waiting silence in the motionless host below. This tension couldn't last forever. It would break, in one way or another.

The Chief turned to look back at the central tower, and was jarred as if by a physical blow. Back beyond the tower was the reflected glint of light on the river. Though he knew that the outer wall of the fortress was down, he hadn't expected to see the river. But the dust was settled, and there was nothing there now to cut off the view. He drew a deep slow breath, then faced the tower, and spoke slowly and clearly.

"Let Evertrue sound the Assembly."

When he turned back to face the aliens, he could feel the loss of the fortress wall behind him. It was as if his back were naked, exposed to whatever blow might be aimed at it.

Then the silver tone hung in the air, turned, fell and rose, its message more complex than before.

Across the field, the armored troops began to move. Down below, a single armored figure separated itself from the enemy messengers and interpreters, to walk with steady pace toward the fortress. Across the field, the entire mass of armor was thrusting its way into the wide cleared aisle, turning, the low-voiced commands clearly to be heard, even the rattle and clink of metal, with the sun glittering on the armor and the unsheathed weapons.

At once, two alien couriers raced up the cleared aisle. But the mass of the aliens, still held in the trancelike grip induced by Evertrue's clear silver tone, did not move as the tone rose, fell, and then faded insensibly away.

The armored troops were coming now, massed and purposeful, straight down the aisle toward the fortress. As they came, they threw up the visors of their helmets to stare, desperately earnest, toward the fortress and the two unmoving figures who looked down upon them from its high tower.

The Chief drew his breath carefully, looking from the approaching troops to the plainly baffled alien leader. However the alien might have been affected by Evertrue's tone, he could hardly guess the effect of that particular call to assemble by the colors. Neither could he tell by the purposeful advance whether conceivably an attack on the fortress was in progress, or an open changing of sides in the teeth of his own superiority.

The Chief let the uncertainty stretch out till he saw the alien leader turn to a messenger. Then he turned back toward the central tower and spoke very clearly.

"Let Evertrue sound the Welcome."

A cheerful call climbed into the air.

A shout of mingled relief and exultation burst from the armored troops as they realized they were welcomed back into the fold. They could have been treated as traitors, and once close enough, greeted with bolts, arrows, and taunts of contempt.

The Chief, feeling the sudden increase in strength like a man waking from a nightmare, reminded himself the odds were still none too good, and he had now the problem of getting these reinforcements into the fortress. The outer walls were mostly down. The mounted men among them could never get across that shambled of tumbled blocks. The palisade still stood, but from here he could see that its normal entrance, ordinarily dominated by the outer wall, was buried under a wreck of fallen masonry. But to judge by the clear ground that he could see, the main gate of the fortress still stood, and almost certainly the tunnel was undamaged.

Once inside the palisade, the way into the fortress, through the main gate or the tunnel, should be clear. But exactly how could he get these troops inside the palisade?

The leaders of the approaching armor were evidently contending with the same problem, and the called orders and direction of march showed that they intended to try to get in as close to the normal entrance as possible, over the fallen blocks, or through a gap in the palisade where the blocks had thrown down the upright logs.

The Chief glanced at Arion.

"We have to hold the palisade. Otherwise, the aliens will be over the outerworks and hit our men as they come in."

"Summa's men are still handy. I'll send the main body through the gate. The tunnel's too slow. Then I'll be back."

Down below, as if caught in a dream, the invaders stood unmoving. Then the alien leader, possibly uncertain at first what the shout of the armored troops had meant, turned sharply to the men around him. The messengers raced out with signal flags. The massed enemy horsemen gave a sudden roar, and surged forward.

Down below, the armored men, caught between the collapsed wall and a host of attackers, turned to fight. Behind them, on the palisade, armored men appeared. The mounted aliens were greeted from the fortress with flights of arrows and heavy bolts. But before the fight could be truly joined, from the far distance came a remote but clear golden tone.

This tone climbed, turned in the air, climbed again. It wasn't Evertrue, but it had Evertrue's ability to pin the mind, to stop the thoughts.

The clash below died away, everyone staring into the distance, no-one certain what this meant.

The Chief turned back toward the main central tower.

"Let Evertrue sound the Welcome!"

The passage of the chant rang in his head:

"Shall Evertrue call for help in vain?

No! Where was one, there shall be twain!"

The silver tone rose behind him.

From the distance, the golden tone responded, note for note.

Out there now, he could see dust drifting up, in the distance.

A quick glance showed him the alien chief, rapping out orders. Messengers raced over the field. The enormous host of horsemen moved like a single living thing, and now the enemy had changed position, and was drawn up with his main body facing to the west.

And there, passing across the flank of the enormous host of aliens, came a glitter and flash, and now the Chief could make out a small band—At once, even at this distance, he recognized the strange armor—that marched with solid unvarying tread straight for the fortress. The armor told him it was the star men. But now, for the first time, he felt a touch of fear.

They were few.

They had come. Years, decades, in the past, he had helped them. Across what unknown spaces the call had reached them—it must have gone out in some way from the ring—he could not know. But they had not hesitated. They were here.

But they were few.

Here seemed the first break in the accuracy of the prophetic chant, and the Chief damned himself for having felt relief. There was a tradition that the star men might, occasionally, mingle in human affairs—but that when they did, they would not openly use the tools and weapons of their full power. How had he imagined that the trouble was over because the star men had come? They had come to share the danger with him, that was all.

With equal illogic, he at once felt cheerful.

Let the aliens consider the meaning of such courage.

Arion, beside him again, and watching intently, gave a low exclamation.

"What?" said the Chief.

"I was," said Arion, "frightened at first by the smallness of their numbers. Now—"

"The aliens are not hastening to the attack."

"No," said Arion drily.

The Chief's vision, less sharp than Arion's, now revealed to him a curious fact. Where the little group of star men in armor walked, dust rose from the contact of their feet with the ground. That, at first, seemed natural. What was curious was that the dust continued to rise after the armored men had passed.

Looking from that compact little group, back across the field to the distant point where they had emerged from the forest, an unvarying drift of dust was rising still, fresh and none too thin.

Leaning forward at the parapet as the Star Men approached, the Chief caught his breath. He had begun to notice the details.

Before the staring motionless aliens, the armored men moved with a briskness unusual for men in armor. To move with such ease suggested that they bore a light weight. Yet, behind each of them in the packed dry earth, there stretched a line of footprints, and these footprints, looked at even from this distance, appeared to be two or three inches deep.

The only conclusion the Chief could reach was that the few men approaching in glittering armor were no ordinary warriors. Each individual must be bearing a weight of metal far beyond that of any normal armor. That they bore it so lightly could only suggest the strength of giants.

There was a movement in the close-packed ranks of the watching aliens, as if those in front, closest to the star men, and best aware of their nature, sought to draw away, while those behind, and hence less afraid and more curious, tried to get a better look. Only the alien leader and those close around him stayed truly unmoving.

Now the star men were passing the alien chief, and as if in greeting, salute, or possibly just out of exuberance, they did something that caused those around the alien leader to suddenly draw back, openly staring. For an instant, the Chief could not grasp it.

The star men were marching in unison, the left foot of each striking the ground at the same time. At this distance it was possible to hear the good-natured rhythmic chant with which they kept the beat of their pace. Their shields as they marched, hung on their left arms, while their right arms bore short thick spears slanted back across their right shoulders—save for their leader, who carried a naked broadsword in his right hand.

Except for the thickness of the spears and the size of the sword, there was nothing unusual in any of that. But as they passed the alien chief, the leader of the star men gave what appeared to be a greeting or salute with his sword—there was no menace in the gesture itself—and his men behind him at once changed their hold on shields and spears to the sound of a clashing of arms so harsh, loud, and ringing that it briefly left the Chief, looking down, feeling faint and dizzy.

There below, the Star Men marched, and as the right foot of each struck the ground, the shields were abruptly on their right arms, and the spears slanted back across their left shoulders, and the marchers enthusiastically banged the butts of their spears—the long sharp points thrust straight up in the air—twice against the shields.

Then, as their left feet struck the ground, the shields were again on their left arms and the spears on their right shoulders, and again there was a mighty ringing clash as the butts of the spears were banged twice on the shields. It happened so fast there was no way to see how it was done, yet it was done good-naturedly, exuberantly, as a boy tosses a ball and catches it in his hand.

And now something that had no doubt already dawned on the massed aliens dawned on the Chief. That deafening volume of sound could never have come from so few men. He took another look.

Down there, the dust was still rising where the Star Men marched, and now they were close enough so the Chief could get a better look behind them. Coming along in back of them were another set of fresh footprints, and another, and another—until it dawned on him that while he could see only a few men, the sounds, the visible dust, the trampling of the dirt—all the indications were of an uncountable host of fighting men in massive armor, and of such might as to bear such armor lightly. And most of these men could not be seen.

They were still passing the near end of the aliens, who were drawing back, and now they tossed their spears in the air and caught them. Now they clashed their spears on their upraised shields, making a clanging noise that hurt the ears at this distance. Then the head of the column was approaching the fallen walls, and there appeared ladders, and the ladders were swung up, so that the upper ends leaned forward as if against walls still there to receive them.

The sun was now low enough so that, even holding up his hand to protect his eyes, the glare was dazzling. Leaning forward, the Chief peered again at the ladders. They were up above the collapsed masonry, to where the walls had been before they had been brought down, and the ladders remained solidly upright, but now bent slightly as if unseen weight bore down upon them.

Now, passing the alien host as the sun descended, came different prints in the soil, and the Chief recognized the dust and the hoofmarks suggesting a formidable host of armored knights, invisible like the rest, that drew up outside the walls and faced the enemy.

At the fallen walls of the fortress, fresh lines of footprints reached the ladders, and there was the clang of metal, the scuff of feet, the clink and rattle of an uncountable host coming up the ladders and along the walls, spreading out on the vanished battlements ready for the fight—if anyone here should care to make a fight—and there was nothing wrong with it anywhere save that there were no walls, no battlements, no outer towers there to defend, but that did not trouble the Star Men. From them, now, there came a clash of spears on shields that traveled from the walls back up the dusty trail to echo from hill to hill from the fortress down the valley up into the forest and out of sight in the distance.

The sun was now low in the west, and the Chief peered down at the enormous and motionless host of silent alien horsemen. Amongst these horsemen, he located the enemy chief, looked at him steadily, and the enemy chief slowly turned his head and looked back. Written in the slowness with which he turned his head, and in the wideness of his eyes, was an acknowledgement of defeat. Solemnly, the Chief looked back, feeling no triumph but only a great relief as the prophecy completed itself.

Before the motionless and wide-eyed aliens, the dust was still rising. The earth where the Star Men passed was churned and pitted to such a degree that the entire surface looked beaten down below the general level of the fields to either side. From time to time, a good-natured clashing of weapons on shields broke out somewhere among the invisible marching host, to travel in both directions, and roll and echo like iron thunder, back and forth, from the walls to the valley, to the forest and back again.

Each time, this clashing was louder, and the sound now from atop the walls, as the walls would have been before they fell, was such as could have been equaled only by a solid mass of troops, shoulder to shoulder drawn up on the battlements three or four deep. And now a none too subtle change was there to be heard in the clash and shout and the gathering steady throb of drums—The sound was no longer so good natured. It began to carry a threat. It began to suggest the gnashing of the teeth of innumerable large and hungry beasts of prey.

The Chief looked down at the leader of the aliens.

The alien chief looked back. Then he glanced around.

The dust no longer rose from the beaten ground before him.

Abruptly the mounted messengers with their pennants raced in either direction along the front of the silent mass of horsemen. How it was done, the Chief couldn't grasp, but abruptly the huge mass moved, almost as one man, and with a pound that seemed to shake the earth, they went across the fields, over the hill, up the far side of the valley into the forest, and away.

They were gone.

The Chief exhaled slowly, and thanked God.

Arion gripped his arm.

The Chief turned.

There before him in the fading light was the armor he knew from long ago. The voice, too, was familiar, and this time the words were in his own tongue:

"We star men, as you call us, differ among ourselves, as you differ among yourselves—But there are those among us who believe in paying our debts. Your ring is like a knot in a net made of strands of force, and this force can defend you, while waves moving along the strands can travel at speeds well above that of light. So we learned of this trouble and came to try to repay you."

The Chief said carefully, "I have no way to thank you. Any debt is more than repaid." He twisted off the ring, and held it out.

The voice from the armored suit was warm, but no hand reached out to take the ring.

"Perhaps we have repaid our debt, but such things are hard to measure. And there is more to it."

A second figure in armor stepped forward to clasp the Chief's arm. The voice was like the first, but less deep:

"I was in the cradle that you saved from the wreck. This is my first chance to thank you."

"When," said the first voice, "we find those who do what is right, we remember them. We cannot be truly friends, because of such things as disease, and differences in customs and skills. But it is a pleasure to help, albeit that our help is at times mostly illusion. But there is a part that is real, as our gratitude is real. You risked your life for us, and we have not forgotten."

When they were gone—and their departure was a simple thing compared to their coming—the Chief saw that his friend, Arion, was standing apart, tears rolling silently down his cheeks. It struck the Chief with a pang, and he felt, found the ring again where it had been, on his finger, and was about to twist it off to try to comfort his friend; but Arion held out his own hand, where on his finger a wide silver band showed a lion seated, with two tiny bright white stones for eyes.

"The young Star Man," said Arion. "When he passed, he clasped my hand. He said, 'For courage,' and afterwards this ring was there. It soothes my soul, but it isn't right." He began to twist at the ring. "I showed no courage. I was afraid to go back to that burning ship."

"You were with me when we saved the boy. It is that that counts."

"When you saved him, not I. And I would not have given him back. I was afraid. I do not deserve this ring."

"H'm," said the Chief. "It is a ring from the Star Men, Arion. Who knows what power it may possess. It should not be lost."

"Then you take it," said Arion. "I am ashamed to cry, but I cry only that I do not deserve it."

The Chief turned the new ring in his hand, but did not put it on. Neither did he put it in the small leather pouch at his belt. He examined it, and then looked up.

"It is very pretty."

Arion did not reply, but nodded miserably.

"Arion," said the Chief, "I am not only your friend since childhood. I am also your Chief and your King. As you know, I have the power to reward those who deserve it. Now that you have given this ring into my care, I have, I think, the right to reward someone who has been true to his duty, who has courageously stood with me against hosts of alien horsemen so thick they covered the ground. So courageous as not even to think of this as courage. I am speaking of you."

"But that was my duty."

"It was also courage, beyond any doubt. Cup your hand so we do not lose this over the edge. If you had wavered, who knows who else would have gone over to the other side? The younger star man said, 'For courage.' He spoke truly."

Arion, eyes wondering, took the ring in his cupped hand, hesitated, then put it on. He smiled, looking at it, then looked up. "It eases a hurt, from long ago."

"Perhaps he sensed it." The Chief looked around at the wreckage in the moonlight. "Would that we had the skills of the Star Men. To rebuild this—" He paused.

Arion shook his head.

"We can never rebuild this, except as a monument."

"True. It would be useless against such weapons. In the future, our fortresses must be different."

They went down the steps to where the newly lighted torches smoked and flared in their brackets against the blackened stone of the tower. Tomorrow, they would start to think about correcting such of this terrible wreck as could be made right.

But, he thought with relief, at least, now, there could be a tomorrow, and at that thought, he felt also a flood of gratitude to the Star Men. Where, he wondered, were they now? What inconceivable deeds did they perform, up among the stars?

* * *

Colonel Valentine Sanders, speechless, watched his son, Lieutenant Colin Sanders, say earnestly to the General, "Sir, for weeks we've been immersed in the records from the spy devices. These are real people! It's impossible not to act toward them as we would toward our own people."

"Listen," said the General, "you were sent down there to straighten out that mess, not to compound it. To have one guard ring down there is bad enough. Why did you have to deliver another one?"

"Sir, we've seen the records of what happened down there. For more than twenty years Arion has been blaming himself that he didn't show courage when, in fact, he did. Besides, he helped rescue me. And, whatever the psychologists say as to how soon a person can remember things, I can remember Arion's face—I must have seen him when the ship blew up. When I met him, I was overcome with emotion."

The General said, very carefully, "I wonder if this is one of those sins of the fathers that is passed on unto the seventh generation? Just where did this guard ring come from?"

"Sir, from my uncle. He said that in thirty years, he'd really never felt the need to use it. Now that I was in the Patrol, Uncle Basil thought maybe I could use it."

Colonel Sanders looked blankly at his son.

The General looked equally blank. "Val, do you have a brother in the Patrol?"

The Colonel shook his head. "No, sir. I'm afraid not."

There was a considerable silence, as the General stared at the Colonel, while the younger Sanders looked on in puzzlement. Finally, the General said, his voice sounding a little hoarse, "You don't mean—"

Colonel Sanders said hesitantly, "Basil is a Stellar Scout, sir."

The General gave a grunt, as if he had come down a staircase in the dark, and stepped off with one more step still at the bottom.

Colin said, "But what's wrong with that, sir? They scout the planets ahead of the classification teams, ahead of the colonists—They're even ahead of the trapminers and freebooters. The Stellar Scouts are the most advanced outfit there is!"

The General managed a sketchy smile.

Colonel Valentine Sanders growled, "They're advanced in a different way than we are. They use the newest equipment available."

Colin began to ask what was wrong with that, then noted the expressions of his two superiors, and kept quiet.

The Colonel went on. "Ask Basil about his friend, Barnes, some time. Barnes spent a chunk of his life imprisoned on a planet in the Forbidden Zone, back before it was the Forbidden Zone. He wound up there courtesy of several pieces of exceptionally new equipment."

The General said carefully, "Very few people in their right senses use experimental equipment on a day-to-day operational basis. We ourselves use new equipment, when we think it's proven, and now and then we get a black eye or a broken arm out of it. But the Stellar Scouts, if they see something that looks interesting, will raid the research lab for it. I have it on good authority that Stellar Scout ships have gone through the middle of territory controlled by commerce raiders, and the raiders have come boiling out to surrender to the Space Force. Anything to keep away from the Scouts. Years ago, the Scouts had a thing that fired 'holes'—If they aimed it at you and pulled the trigger, chunks of your ship would vanish and reappear unpredictably all through adjacent volumes of space. They still use it—though with a little more discretion."

Colin Sanders blinked. "The chunks reappear unpredictably all through the adjacent space?"

"Right. Including, now and then, the space occupied by the ship using this weapon."

Colin grappled with this revelation.

The General added, "A little imperfection in their equipment won't stop the Scouts. They're used to it."

"I—I see, sir. But the guard ring—"

Colonel Valentine Sanders said thoughtfully, "What was it Basil said? That in thirty years he hadn't really found the need for it? He'd had it thirty years and hadn't tried it out yet?"

"Yes, and now I was in the Patrol, I could have it."

The General growled, "Generous of him."

Colonel Sanders nodded. "Aren't they always generous?"

The General said, "And if he had it for thirty years—"

"Then it's almost certainly one of their early models." The Colonel looked back at his son. "You see, Basil had it for thirty years. And he never used it. As you've pointed out, the Scouts get in dangerous spots. Why hadn't he used it?"

"I don't know. Unless—" Colin hesitated.

"Unless what?"

Colin said indignantly, "Unless he was nervous with it and wanted someone else to try it out first?"

The Colonel nodded. "The first time they go out, when they're still new to the Scouts, little more than recruits, they tend to use all this wonderful stuff. Once it blows up in their faces, provided they survive, they get wary. When two Stellar Scouts get together, what do you suppose they spend the first few hours doing?"

Colin said angrily, "Comparing notes on the equipment?"

"Exactly. And there may be items they both left strictly alone. It looks as if you've passed along one of those."

"But, if that's so—What about Arion?"

The General said, without enthusiasm, "What about him?"

"Sir—We can't leave him with this—this experimental guard ring—"

"Now you've given it to him, how do you take it back?"

Colin looked blank.

Colonel Sanders said, "It is keyed to him, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. Otherwise, what would be the point?"

"All right. Considering what a guard ring is, how do you or anyone else now take it away from him? If you try to do that, you'll activate it. Then what?"

"That's true . . . Still, he'd give it back if I asked, wouldn't he? And I could replace it with a more reliable—"

The General shook his head. "One involuntary agent on that planet is plenty."

Colin said bleakly, "Poor Arion." He hesitated, then said miserably, "I meant well."

Colonel Sanders said, "Arion seems level-headed. He shouldn't wind up imagining he's a god because of the power of the device. And until it's activated, there should be no great risk. Then, who knows? It might even work as it should. Seeing who made it, probably the greatest risk is to these hairy invaders. And it could be quite a risk. The Stellar Scouts don't pull their punches."

"What if, some day, the wrong person should get it?"

The General said, "Why do you suppose we try to keep track of these things? Why does PDA have the rule against technological devices? Sure, it could make trouble. Lots of it."

Colonel Sanders said, "If Basil offers you anything else, think twice. He means well, too. But, just incidentally, you end up testing the thing for him."

"At least, there was no warning against it in that prophetic chant—and I don't understand that chant, either. How could anyone predict what would happen?"

"Well—When a given culture finds a method that seems to work—that they have the right talent to use—they tend to standardize it, and skip the rest. There may be another method that works, but they pass it by. We used to have prophets. But science seemed more useful and reliable, so we've put more effort into it, and developed it. You have to be prepared for these differences. We even have them from one generation to another."

The General nodded. "There used to be a good deal of wisdom in proverbs. Our ancestors relied on them as guides."

Colin said unhappily, "I could have used one for this situation."

"No problem," said the General, "I'll adapt one for you. A little late; but it might still be useful."

Colin blanked his face and stood straighter, in preparation for what he sensed was about to hit him.

The General thought a moment, then smiled benevolently, though he spoke with real feeling:

"Beware of nearly anyone who comes bearing free gifts. Yourself included."

* * *

Christopher Anvil is the author of many books and stories.

Protection Money

Written by Wen Spencer
Illustrated by Carol Heyer

Tommy Chang had no sympathies for the humans of Pittsburgh. Every time he heard someone complaining about how dangerous the city had become with the war between the elves and the oni, he wanted to punch the speaker in the face. Pittsburgh had never been safe—not for his half-oni kind. He'd grown up a slave to his brutal oni father; his money controlled, his family held hostage for his good behavior, and his every action watched.

Tommy had wanted freedom, so he had thrown in with the elves during the last big battle. Somehow everything had changed, yet stayed the same. The city was under martial law, so the elves were controlling his cash flow. His family had to register as known oni dependants. And the arrival of a summons from the viceroy meant that the elves were keeping track of his moves.

If Tommy was currently free, then somehow, he'd confused freedom with starvation. He didn't want to go talk with the viceroy at his enclave, but the elf owed him money that he desperately needed. At his knock at the enclave gate, a slot opened and elfin eyes studied him with suspicion.

"I'm Tommy Chan. The viceroy sent for me."

The slot closed. When the gate opened a few minutes later, armed elves filled the courtyard beyond. Most of them were common garden variety laedin-caste soldiers, but sprinkled among them were the holy sekasha-caste warriors, with spells tattooed down their arms in Wind Clan blue.

Tommy figured it would go like this, but it was still hard to ignore the fear racing through him and calmly step through the gate. He raised his hands carefully as the gate clanged shut behind him.

"I'm a half-oni." They were going to find out one way or another, and he didn't want to give them an excuse for killing him. "The viceroy ordered me here."

"Weapons?" One of the sekasha-caste warriors asked.

Tommy surrendered over his pistol and knife. They searched him for more. He hadn't been stupid, so there was nothing for them to find. As a final humiliation, they had him take off his bandana and reveal his cat-like ears. No one who wasn't family or half-oni had ever seen his ears before. Tommy locked his jaw on anger; he'd vent his annoyance when he knew he was safe.

Windwolf, the viceroy and head of the Wind Clan for the Westernlands, waited in a luxurious meeting room. With cool elegance, the elf noble wore a white silk shirt, a damask cobalt-blue vest, and black suede pants. That was elves for you—everything had to be done with polished style. Windwolf acknowledged Tommy with a nod.

"This wasn't necessary," Tommy said. "You could have mailed me a check."

"I wanted to talk to you. Sit."

Tommy considered all the alert and heavily armed sekasha. The holy warriors were considered perfect, thus above the laws made by common elves, and free to kill anyone that annoyed them. So far a Pittsburgh policeman and elf nobles had fallen under their blades.

While the sekasha bristled with swords, guns and knifes, the viceroy seemed unarmed. Tommy had seen the elf blast down buildings and set oni troops on fire with a flick of his fingers; Windwolf didn't need knives or guns—he was a living weapon.

Tommy took a chair. "So talk."

Windwolf laid an envelope onto the table.

Tommy studied the thick, white envelope as if it was a trap. He couldn't see the strings attached, but he was sure they were there.

"That is for the damage I did to your family's restaurant." Windwolf said.

Tommy's grandfather Chang had started the business in a time when Pittsburgh existed solely on Earth and oni were only an Asian myth—a "myth" that infiltrated all levels of the Chinese government. When Pittsburgh started to shuffle between Earth and Elfhome, it was the unexpected side effect of the "mythological" oni trying to return home to Onihida. Unlike the other two worlds, Earth had no magic, and was a place to flee. Lightly populated Elfhome, however, represented a great prize and invasion plans were laid. The oni's first step was to find Chinese people who had family members in Pittsburgh. The Changs were the first family enslaved, thus Tommy was the oldest of the half-breeds.

For twenty-eight years, working in great secrecy, the oni sought a way to bypass Earth and invade Elfhome directly. That summer, they nearly succeeded. Pittsburgh was embroiled in open warfare as royal elfin troops washed the city in blood and Fire Clan red. Sick of oni enslavement, and knowing that Windwolf was key to the elves' defense, Tommy risked everything to save the viceroy's life and hide him at the Changs' restaurant. Then the stupid elf fuck picked a fight with oni warriors, blowing out the storefront and structurally weakening the building to the point that it collapsed.

But it worked as Tommy hoped. The oni stranglehold on him was broken, and Windwolf crossed the half-oni off the elves' "kill on sight" list.

"This is not stake money," Windwolf tapped the envelope between them. "But a repayment of what I owe you."

"Which makes us even." Tommy wanted that clear even though he wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not. There was some degree of security inherent in having Windwolf in his debt, but the elves were making it clear that their protection came at a cost.

"The question is now, what does the half-oni intend?"

"My family wants to rebuild." Tommy left the envelope on the table, waiting for the outcome of the conversation. "We have a good reputation in Oakland, so we would stay in the same place."

He used "want" to indicate desire, not concrete plans, as lying to elves was a dangerous thing to do. He wasn't sure, however, if the elves approved of his more lucrative but illegal operations.

"I have spoken with Director Maynard, and the Earth Interdimensional Agency will help you move to Earth, if that is what you want. Through the EIA, the UN has set up extensive programs to help the humans dislocated by Pittsburgh's move to Elfhome. Those programs can apply to the half-oni."

Tommy shook his head, locking down on a flare of anger. Remember the sekasha. "Moving to Earth would be a serious step down for my people. We don't know shit about Earth. The only people that know us over there are oni. And I know Earth history enough to know that the UN could completely dick us over—'relocating' us to whatever hellhole no one else wants."

"I see."

"There's no golden promised land for us. Let someone else chase that shit. We know the score here."

"Very well. Here you will stay."

When Windwolf said it that way, it sounded ominous.

"Are we done here?" Tommy asked.

"We elves had our own cruel masters, the Skin Clan, who we turned against. We know that good can come from evil, which is why we're allowing the half-oni to live, but not without conditions."

Here it comes, Tommy thought. "Those being?"

"All of the half-oni must allow themselves to be known to us, so we can weed them from the oni. We are still set on our course to eliminate the oni from our world. The EIA are urging us to detain them and have them deported to Earth. Whatever is decided, the half-oni will be spared only if they reveal themselves."

"And have a Star of David sewed onto their sleeves?"

"The oni invaded our world. If we are not ruthless in our actions, the oni will take Elfhome from us by merely breeding like mice and overrunning us. We are sparing the half-oni because we believe you have inherited compassion and the capability of honor from your mothers."

Tommy flinched, as always, at the thought of his mother. His father had murdered her when he'd grown tired of her. Tommy valued his life, so he chose to find it lucky that his father continued to see him as useful. "You don't have to convince me that oni are filthy pigs."

"The half-oni will also have to conform to elfin culture. You will form households under the Wind Clan."

"Why not the Stone Clan or the Fire Clan?"

Windwolf raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Has the Stone Clan offered?"

So Prince True Flame of the Fire Clan was so unlikely that it wasn't even a question. "Not yet, but rumor has it that Forest Moss on Stone is quite insane, and capable of anything."

"Yes, I suppose that's the truth. I would not recommend him."

"Because he's insane?"

Windwolf shook his head. "I don't know if he is as insane as he makes out to be; it might be a ploy he's found useful. I believe, however, that the Stone Clan sent Forest Moss here because they saw him as expendable. If that's true, he does not have firm backing by his clan. Nor does he have sekasha, which leave any household he builds vulnerable."

"Ah." Tommy fought a flash of respect for Windwolf. The elf was shrewd. Unfortunately, that could work to Tommy's disadvantage.

"This is repayment." Windwolf tapped the money on the table. "If you wish to establish a household under me, I will advance you stake money. You would be under my protection."

Tommy had lived under the oni 'protection' long enough to know that was a two-edged sword. "I'll need time to think about it."

Windwolf nodded. "We're lifting martial law today. Do what you will, but know that the offer is still on the table."

* * *

Tommy collected the money, his bandana, his knife, his pistol and his freedom, in that order. With the money stuffed into his jeans' pocket, he rode his hoverbike up to Mount Washington. There he sat, smoking a cigarette, looking down at the city. He spent years taking calculated risks trying to free himself from his father, Lord Tomtom, leader of the oni. Looking back, it was odd which ones led to this moment.

The most unlikely was staying silent when his father started looking for a man by the name of Alexander Graham Bell. Tommy knew Bell was really a teenage girl genius who went by the name of Tinker and ran a metal salvage company in McKees Rocks. He saw her and her cousin, Oilcan, every week at the hoverbike races. Knowing what his father would do to Tinker if he found her, Tommy went to her scrap yard to kill her. He told himself it was the merciful thing to do.

Tinker been working on an engine, but greeted him with a smile, a cold beer, and a blithe assumption that he cared about the inner workings of big machines. She was so small and trusting. He'd waited until she leaned back over the engine and wrapped his hand around her slender neck. . .

And realized he was rock hard with excitement. He was getting off on the idea of killing someone who, with her pulse pounding under his thumb, only looked at him with mild confusion. It was like the monster that was his father suddenly woke inside him and stretched against the limits of Tommy's skin. It wanted out to fuck with something that had been beaten to bleeding and then kill it. Like Lord Tomtom had done to his mother. Like his father had tried to do to him.

Tommy jerked his hand back off her neck and wiped it against his pants, wanting it clean. He wasn't his father. He refused to be.

Three months after he'd fled his heritage and Tinker's scrap yard, she killed Lord Tomtom, blocked the oni invasion, and kept Tommy from being beheaded. Of all his little rebellions, he would have never guessed that the most important had been wrapped around that small life. Knowing how close he came to killing her made him worry about what he should do next. It was so easy to misstep.

He took out the cash and counted it. The insurance adjustors had been generous. His family could rebuild the restaurant and still have a small nest egg. But it did nothing for the other families that looked to him for protection. He employed all the half-oni that couldn't pass as human, making sure they could make ends meet without risking being discovered. His father's warriors had always controlled his cash flow; his oni watch dogs had stripped Tommy bare before they fled. Then the elves locked down the city, shutting down his businesses. What little he had hidden away had been drained just keeping everyone fed.

If he took care of just his family, he lost the ability to do anything for the half-oni. With the loss of that power base, he would be less able to defend his family. It was a self-defeating loop. The more he tried to protect his family alone, the less he would be able to do it. Any disaster would put them at the elves' mercy. They'd go from being owned by the rabid oni to the being controlled by the rigid elves. Slavery, no matter who was the master, held unknown terrors of helplessness.

But if he used the money to restart his businesses, then it was more than enough to keep them free of elfin entanglements. The most profitable was the hoverbike races. Now that martial law had been lifted, racing could start again. Carefully managed, he could grow the seed money.

And money meant freedom.

* * *

John Montana ran a repair shop and makeshift gas station out of the old McKees Rocks Firehall. He also captained Team Big Sky, which had ruled the racing season until the elves locked the city down. The firehall's three tall garage doors were open to the summer night as Tommy pulled up on his hoverbike. John had a car up on the end rack. Surprisingly, his younger half-elf brother, Blue Sky, was with him. The boy was, however, practicing drawing a wooden sword and bringing it up into a guard position. It confirmed the rumors that the elves had discovered that the boy's father had been a Wind Clan sekasha and taken custody of him. Apparently they'd given John visitation rights to the brother he had raised like a son. How good of them.

John came out from under the car and greeted Tommy with a cautious look and a nod. "Blue, I'm getting hungry. Can you heat up the food you brought home from the enclave?"

Being a good kid, Blue immediately put away his sword. Blue was seventeen years old, but because of his elf heritage, he was as small and naïve as a twelve year old. "Is Tommy staying for dinner?"

"No, he's not." John mussed Blue's hair and then gave him a little push to get him moving. He waited until the boy had left before asking, "What do you want?"

Did John know that Tommy was half-oni? Of all the people in Pittsburgh, he might know, since Blue was coming and going from the Viceroy's enclave. It was hard to tell, as John had always been protective of his little brother around him.

"Elves lifted martial law," Tommy said.

"I heard."

"I'm setting odds for this weekend." Tommy leaned on his handlebars, keeping to his bike out of grudging respect for John. The man had always done right by his brother, even though he wasn't much more than a kid when they'd lost their mother. "Is Blue riding?"

John nodded. "The sekasha figured out fast that taking everything from him would only break him."

Was it good of the elves to be worried about breaking their possessions? The oni never did. Did it make the elves more compassionate, or just more careful with what belonged to them? "Letting him come back here is also to keep him from breaking?"

John pressed his mouth into a tight line, as if he'd said more on the matter than he wanted to.

"If I was you, it would piss me off." Tommy pressed for more information, wanting to know what is was like to have elves control your life. "Them taking him like that."

"Didn't say I was happy about it." John lowered the rack, dropping the car down to the garage floor. "But some of it makes sense. He likes to fight. It's why he likes to ride. And since we don't have any family here on Elfhome; they'll take care of him if something happens to me. He's going to be a kid for a long time; probably longer than I'm going to be alive."

Trust John to still be thinking of what would be best for Blue Sky even while the elves were rubbing his nose in shit. What made humans so damn noble and oni so monstrous? Was it because the oni greater bloods had bred the lesser bloods with animals? Tommy didn't like to think what that made him, but he couldn't deny the cat-like ears hidden under his bandana. And did those ears mean he could recognize nobility, admire it, but never contain it?

Tommy distracted himself by starting up his hoverbike. He had dozens of teams to visit. "Still think it sucks."

* * *

Since Windwolf had reduced their warren to rubble, Tommy had hidden his family away at an industrial park on the South Side. The building was large enough to hold them all, had running water and toilets, and was easily defended by a handful of people. After the luxury of the enclave, it was also very dirty and ugly. His cousin, Bingo guarded the main door. He slid the massive door aside to let Tommy ride his hoverbike into the cavernous warehouse, and then pulled it shut and threw the bar.

"Glad you're back." Bingo pulled the door shut and threw the locking bar. "I've been getting calls all day. People are asking if we're taking bets."

"I've been out to the teams." Tommy fished out his wordpad and handed it to Bingo. "Call Mason at the Post-Gazette and give him the list of teams that will be racing. Tell him we'll be starting to take bets tomorrow morning."

There was a brittle crystalline crash from the back of the warehouse. Tommy reached for his pistol then stopped as he realized Bingo looked only mildly disgusted by the noise.

"What's that?" Tommy asked.

Bingo shouldered his rifle. "Numbnuts got Aunt Flo knocked up last time he boinked her—just before Windwolf turned him into an oni candle."

"Shit, again?"

His cousins were all mildly terrified of Aunt Flo, even though their oni blood made most of them nearly two feet taller than her. The more the oni humbled her, the more she would rage at his cousins. Tommy suspected her fury was the main reason she'd survived where his mother hadn't. If he didn't stop her, she was capable of breaking all their dishware. Sighing, he headed to the back of the warehouse.

They had salvaged what they could from the restaurant, including the dishes. They had nailed up shelves to the back wall and stacked the survivors there. Aunt Flo had worked through rice bowls and was now throwing bread plates.

"Stop that," Tommy snapped. "We'll need those to start up the restaurant again."

She flinched away from him, shielding herself with the plate.

"I'm not going to hit you." Tommy wanted to though, just for thinking he might. She read the anger on his face and continued to quail. "Throw the last one, and then clean up the mess."

Reassured that he wouldn't act, she let loose her anger again. "I didn't want another baby!" She flung the plate against the wall. It shattered, its pieces raining down to a pile of broken china. "I'm sick of babies! You could have stopped him!" She turned to flail harmlessly at him. "You stood there and let him finish and then you killed him! You should have just killed him when he first walked in!"

He caught her wrist and controlled himself so he didn't hurt her, despite his growing anger. "He had his warriors with him. Did you want us all dead just to save you from. . .what? Doing what he'd done a hundred times before? We're free of oni now. This time, you can go to the human doctors and have an abortion."

The fight went out of her and she started to cry, which only made him angrier, because he'd been helpless to protect her in the first place. It had been Windwolf that killed the oni, not him. She clenched the front of his shirt with both hands, seeking comfort from him as she sobbed. The herd of his younger cousins thundered pass, all shrieking loud enough to wake the dead, the one in the lead with some treasured toy that all the rest wanted.

God, he needed a drink

* * *

There were a billion things that needed his attention if the races were to happen. He and his cousins worked out how much of the seed money had to go to operating expenses and how much could be risked in betting. They would need to pay wages, stock the food concessions, and put aside tax money. True, they'd double their amount with the admission fees, but the money had to be spent upfront first. Lastly, some cash had to be spent immediately so that various families didn't starve before race day. Luckily the entrance fees covered the purse money for the winners, so that money didn't need to be held in reserve. They set the starting odds, downloaded the spreadsheet to Tommy's workpad, and made sure their phones all worked.

"Remember, your cap is five hundred." Tommy paced the room. "Anything above that, call me first. We have to watch our bottom line closely on this one, so call in after every bet. The elves are jumpy; keep your guns out of sight. Watch your back. Remember that there are some oni still out there loose."

"Danny. Yoyo. Zippo. Quinn." He tapped the chests of the teenagers as he passed them. "You're to guard the warren. If the elves know where we are, the oni might too. They might raid us for food, money, and sex. Call Bingo if you see anyone suspicious. He'll be stationed closest to the warren. If you're raided, don't give them any reason to kill you. Remember, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

"This is just like before—only this time, we're doing it for ourselves."

* * *

All day his phone rang, giving Tommy a constant barometer of Pittsburgh to be entered into his spreadsheets. True there were some names he recognized as die-hard gamblers. They carefully weighed the odds, dispassionate in their choices. The rest of the city, however, bet with their hearts.

The elves bet on Blue Sky without exception. They believed the holy sekasha-caste were perfection made flesh, and having seen the half-elf race, Tommy wasn't sure if he'd quibble with that.

The human population splintered into a multitude of factions. The younger crowd that thought of Elfhome as their world bet on Team Tinker or Team Big Sky. John's team had the most recent wins, their custom-modified Delta hoverbike, and their "perfect" rider. Team Tinker was still a strong contender even though Oilcan wasn't as aggressive a rider as Tinker used to be. Team Tinker had the experience and the only other Delta. While the team was all humans, Tinker had been magically transformed into an elf and married to Windwolf which tainted the team through association.

The older humans didn't bet on either of the top two teams. They saw Pittsburgh as still a city of Earth and men. They supported the underdogs, if they bet on the next layer of teams. Then under that, came bets on teams connected to certain political ideology, or someone just had a lucky feeling for, but usually only to place, not to win.

He was out at the race track, when he realized that his phone had stopped ringing. He took it out and checked on the signal strength. "Trixie, is your phone working?" he asked the half-oni in charge of the food concessions.

She took hers out and glanced at it. "Huh, no signal."

He went up to the track office and picked up the landline. It was dead too.

Trixie had followed him. "What do you think it is?"

"The oni might be attacking town." He swore. "Last thing we need is to have the elves slap martial law back on."

"Well, we'll be eating hotdogs for the next two weeks."

He picked up the microphone to the race track's PA system. "I'm heading into town, do we need anything out here?"

There was a call from somewhere near the concession booths.

"What was that?" Trixie's hearing was as human as her ears appeared.

"Toilet paper." Tommy tied his bandana back into place and headed out to his hoverbike.

* * *

"I've been trying to call you." Babe held out a list of bets.

"All the phones are down." Tommy entered the information into his spreadsheet. Babe had only taken four bets, one at the five hundred dollar cap for Team Providence to win. It was a fairly new team made up of tengu, having only run a half-dozen races, and never even placed. None of Tommy's information suggested that they could pull a win off. They were such a longshot that the large bet required an immediate adjustment to the odds. "Shit, what a hell of a time for the phones to go down."

He didn't recognize the name: Kenji Toshihiko. Most the Japanese in town, though, were part of the tengu. "I don't like this taking bets blind. Spread the word: I'm closing the books."

Abby had a five hundred bet for Team Providence. And Syn too. Tommy swore and ran numbers right there. If all of his cousins had taken bets at their cap, locking in the same longshot odds, and Team Providence won, then his family were going to be royally screwed. Not only did it take out all the money they set aside to cover the bets, it also would eat up all the money that the race would bring in with admissions.

He checked his phone. It was still dead.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." Tommy punched Syn in fury.

"We'll just call the bets off." Syn scrambled out of the way of a kick.

"We can't!" Tommy shouted. "The fucking anal elves and their frigging honor! A bet is a promise to them! If we welshed on the bets, they'd be all over our asses because they know we're half-oni!"

"Someone is suckering us!"

"Don't you think that I know that? I'm going to fucking find them and kill them. Spread the word. No more bets!"

* * *

Whoever planned the strike against them had done it with great precision. It had only taken an hour to close down the books but the damage had already been done. Twenty bets, all at cap, all made within minutes of the phones going dead. Ten thousand dollars with a payoff of half a million dollars.

"The bets are to win," Bingo pointed out as they gathered at the warren.

"Because to 'show' and 'place' gave lower odds," Tommy snapped.

"How the hell do they expect Team Providence to win?" Bingo said. "Team Big Sky was creaming everyone before the elves locked the city down. And there's Team Tinker, and Team Banzai and Team Eh?"

Tommy had talked to all the teams. They assured him that they were all racing. Some of them might have been lying, in on the scam, but not Team Tinker nor Team Big Sky. They were tied too closely to the honorable elves to cheat, and they were the favorites to win. "Whoever the hell they are, they've got something else planned then. They're going to cheat somehow. We've got to find out how."

* * *

They stormed the garage of Team Providence first. The building was completely empty of everything, even dust.

"We just not let them race!" Syn said as Bingo sniffed around the room, trying to find a scent.

Bingo shook his head. "They waited until the Post Gazette listed the teams. We provided the list after the teams all paid the entrance fee. The elves would see that as a contractual promise. . ."

"Fuck the elves." Tommy snarled. "Okay, so to hit all of us at once, there had to be at least twenty of them. Was any of them part of Team Providence?"

His cousins shook their heads.

"Thirty tengu. We only need one. One little bird to sing."

* * *

The tengu had at one time had been humans that lost their way onto Onihida through natural gateways. Gathered into one mountain tribe, they were conquered by an oni greater blood, who merged the survivors with the crows feeding on the dead. Typical oni stupidity—use what was at hand and not worry about the consequences. Thus the tengu were clever with languages, attracted to bright and shiny things—and tended to flock together against their enemies. Like Tommy, the tengu had thrown in with the elves during the last battle, and won their limited freedom.

The Four and Twenty was the tengu bar in town. On a Friday night, it was crowded with tengu. Wading into it would have been an invitation for a full out war, with a good possibility of the tengu they wanted not even being in the crowd.

Tommy didn't have his father's talent, who was able to make groups of people see anything he wanted them to see. Lord Tomtom's ability to pass an army invisibly through a crowd was the reason his father had been chosen to oversee the invasion of Elfhome. Tommy couldn't completely mask a moving object from multiple watchers. With stage props, dark lighting, and concentration, though, he could pass as someone else in a crowded space.

He tore up one of his T-shirts to match the backless style favored by the tengu. With matte black paint, they painted a close approximation to the spell that was tattooed onto the back of every tengu. His black hair needed no work, but he wore a hat to pull low, to cover the fact his nose wasn't a large hooked beak.

He startled Bingo at the door on his way out.

"Tommy?" Bingo sniffed a few times to verify his scent. "Why Riki?"

"He has some influence, so I'm going to use it. Besides, I can nail him cold." Riki Shoji was the nephew of the tengu spiritual leader, Jin Wong. The oni had used him to control the tengu. They had worked with Riki during the summer, serving as a go-between as he spied for the oni.

"How are you going to know he's not in the Four and Twenty already?"

"You're going to sniff around the outside first. Still remember his scent?"

"Yeah, I can do that."

* * *

Four and Twenty was in the Strip District, giving Tommy reason to suspect that the tengu village was north of Pittsburgh. Tengu would fly in out of the dark on wings of glossy black feathers. With a word, they would cancel the spell that created their wings and walk into the bar. While Tommy masked them from the tengu coming and going, Bingo sniffed around both the front door and the back.

"Riki doesn't seem to be here, Tommy." Bingo drifted back into the shadows across the street. "Be careful. If you need me, just yell."

The bar was crowded, but dim. Tommy avoided the bar. The people sitting there looked in too many random directions, and the mirror behind the bartender doubled his danger. Tommy slipped back to the corner of the room, trying to keep focused on his appearance while listening in to the conversations that he passed. He found an empty table without hearing one mention of racing. He wished he could take the hat off; it was muffling his hearing. Still, he could make out conversations that the various parties thought were under the general level of noise. He focused on each discussion around him in turn.

In the corner booth, four males were discussing the weather report for the next day. They made travel arrangements without indicating where they would be heading, but Tommy listened with interest. There were few places in Pittsburgh where tengu would find driving easier than flying. The racetrack was one. He didn't recognize any of them, but as three got up to leave they called the fourth by name. Kenji. Babe's cap bet was placed by a Kenji Toshihiko. Was it the same person?

Tommy caught Kenji as he counted out money for the tab. He slid into the booth and put out his leg, trapping the tengu into his side. Tommy said nothing, only glared; waiting to see if this male knew Riki.

Kenji's eyes went wide. "Shoji, what are you doing here?"

"I've been worried about how things are going." There, nice and vague.

The tengu male got a slightly guilty look on his face that he banished away. Oh, what is this? Something that Shoji—and ultimately—the spiritual leader wouldn't like?

"The city is a powder keg." Tommy poked at the tengu's conscious. "One little thing and it's going to blow to pieces. If it does, I'm afraid a lot of our people will be hurt."

"Most of our people don't go into the city," Kenji said.

"The race tomorrow is sure to pull some of them." Tommy said.

Again, another guilty look.

"I heard what you've done and I don't like it," Tommy said.

"Does your uncle know?"

"Not yet."

"It's only the one time. The only ones hurt by the phones going down were the oni brats. It was the only way to sucker them into a big payoff. They wouldn't have taken a big bet at the long odds, and with each small bet, they would have adjusted the odds down."

Damn right he would have. Unlike the people making the bets, Tommy didn't gamble. Only outright fraud like the tengu could have forced him into losing money. He controlled the urge to rip Kenji's throat out. He still had to find out how they planned to win the race.

The waitress came to collect Kenji's bill.

"Let's talk about this where we will not be overheard." Tommy let Kenji led out the door, concentrating on keeping his appearance through the crowds. Once outside, he caught hold of Kenji's arm and urged him toward where Bingo was hidden. His cousin gave a wolfish grin but stood silent as Tommy kept him invisible from the tengu. Once they were past him, Bingo quietly followed.

"You're putting our people's safety on the line to cheat on a race?" Tommy talked to distract Kenji as he led the tengu even father from the bar, where cries of pain wouldn't be heard.

"We checked carefully. The rules allow you can switch out bikes up to the last minute."

They'd found a loophole. Tinker had invented the hoverbikes, and up till now, was the only one that understood the blend of magic and technology enough to improve on the basic design. It was such common knowledge when Tinker sold one of her custom Deltas, Tommy could easily adjust the odds.

"I don't see how you're going to get your hoverbike past the oni brats." Tommy hated using the words to describe himself. He spat them out in anger.

Kenji mistook his tone. "The dogs won't be able to do anything. It took careful manipulations, but the sekasha from the Fire Clan will be there—seeing what the newly found baby sekasha does in his spare time. We're going to show up just before the first race, wipe everyone off the track with our bike, collect our winnings and leave."

With the sekasha unintentionally protecting them every step of the way. If Tommy didn't get to the bike before they got to the track, there would be no stopping them without getting the elves involved.

Kenji finally noticed that they'd walk for several blocks into a warehouse district. He laughed nervously. "Are we walking back to the Nest?"

"Here's far enough." Tommy pinned the tengu to the wall. "Where's the bike?"

Kenji looked at the hand pinning him, seemingly still unaware he was in danger. "I don't know where they moved it to."

Was he telling the truth? "Who would know where it is?"

"Look, you shouldn't even get involved in all this. It could get messy. We didn't want to get you or Jin pulled in."

Behind Tommy, he heard Bingo shift with a scrape of boot on pavement. Kenji glanced toward the noise and went stiff with alarm.

"It's an oni brat!" Kenji cried and tried to push Tommy aside.

"Yes." Tommy lifted his head and dropped his illusion. "It is. Now, tell me, where's the bike, or this will get messy."

* * *

Unfortunately, they had to get very messy, but without learning anything useful. If Kenji knew where the bike was stored, he took the information to his death. After what they'd done to him, however, Tommy doubted that the tengu had ever known. At first light, they dumped his body into the river.

Tommy knew that his father would have raided the tengu village, taken hostages, and executed them for the surrender of the bike. He couldn't. Even if he could bear to be that much like his father, the elves were watching him too closely. He'd be putting every half-oni in Pittsburgh at risk.

He didn't know what to do. The race would start in a few hours and he didn't know where the bike was being stored. The tengu had outwitted him so far at every step, so staking everything on a chance to intercept it and destroy it would be stupid. He needed to act, not react. He had no proof that the tengu had defrauded him, while, for all he knew, this was a clever trap, forcing him to betray himself by cheating.

No, he needed a plan, one that the elves couldn't object to. Kenji had admitted that the tengu's bike could outstrip the Delta in speed. Speed wasn't everything.

* * *

Tommy's luck was good for once. John and Blue Sky were at the Team Big Sky's pit at the race track, keeping to their habit of showing up early. The only sign of change was a basket of food from the enclave instead of their normal lunch of hot dogs and sauerkraut from the concession stands. John eyed him with faint suspicion as Tommy crossed the race track.

"I need help," Tommy said.

"You?" John said.

"Yes. I put up all the money to rebuild my family's restaurant to back my bets." Tommy went on to explain how Team Providence had disrupted the phones in order to defraud him. "They have a new bike. It's faster than yours. They plan on blowing you out of the water and bankrupting me."

"It's not my problem," John said.

"They'll take everything I own, including this race track. These bigoted frauds will be running the races; screwing people over whenever they feel like it. You think you don't trust me—but if you really didn't, you wouldn't be letting your little brother race here. I run a clean track. For the last five years, I've kept this kind of bullshit out. You might be scared to let me anywhere near Blue Sky, but you've always felt this place was safe for him."

John studied him, the line of his jaw tight.

Blue came to lean against his brother. "There's nothing wrong with Tommy; he's just trying to protect his family."

"He does it by hurting people," John said.

Blue shrugged. "He likes to fight. And so do I. John, what's the point of me racing today if I'm not trying to win?"

John looked down at his little brother and then sighed. "Give me a minute to think." He paced the pit for a minute. "Most of the racing bikes are stripped down so that they're lighter. The Delta has a beefed up power plant and Blue is one of the lightest riders, so we've never stripped down the Delta."

"We should tell Oilcan about this," Blue Sky said.

"What?" Tommy was surprised that Blue would be willing to share an advantage.

"It is only fair," Blue said. "Oilcan could have stripped down his Delta to get an edge on me, but he's been keeping the playing field even."

Ah, yes, the honorable thing. "We need to keep it quiet, or the tengu will strip their model too."

"Oilcan can be trusted," Blue said.

It went against Tommy's grain to trust anyone. Part of him, though, envied Blue's easy faith in someone. Having another team on a more equal footing, though, would be to Tommy's advantage.

"Fine, tell Oilcan," Tommy said. "Let him know that we have to keep it secret."

Blue nodded and dashed off.

John took out his drill and started to dismantle his Delta.

Blue Sky came back a few minutes later with a spell stencil. "Oilcan gave this to me. Tinker designed it. It goes on the handle bar. It gives a bike a more aero-dy-namic profile. . .whatever that means. He was going to use it this race to try and gain speed on me, since I'm lighter than him."

* * *

A few minutes before race time, the tengu team arrived, bike intact. Tommy wasn't sure how they slipped it past the various traps his cousins had laid outside of the race track, but it didn't matter. It was here, and he was out of time. Everything rode now on Team Big Sky and Team Tinker.

Blue pulled on his racing leathers and mounted the Delta.

John caught his brother's chin and made the boy look at him. "You do not take unnecessary risks. This is just a race. It is only money. Your life is more important than either one of those. Do you understand?"

Blue glanced to Tommy.

"It's only money." Tommy forced himself to say.

Blue pulled on his helmet, started up the Delta and swung it out onto the race course.

Oilcan came out of the Team Tinker's pit, his Delta as bare as John's. While he was bigger than Blue Sky, Oilcan was a compact man. Both teams were in Wind Clan Blue, near twins as they slid up into their starting gates. Oilcan looked in Tommy's direction, giving him a long, unreadable study. As Windwolf's in-law, Tommy realized, Oilcan was another person who might know his secret.

Team Providence brought their bike out last, trailing the pack. It was a standard street frame and enlarged power housing. The rider was a tall, lean male with a tengu nose in the team's bright red color. He frowned at the stripped Deltas as he took his gate at the end.

There was a moment of near quiet with only the deep rumble of the engines as the clock counted down the last second. Then the horn blared and the gates dropped open and the hoverbikes leaped forward. The crowd roared. Blue Sky darted into lead position with Oilcan on his flank, and a second later the tengu surged forward out of the pack to close the distance. The lead three flashed around the corner into the first series of jumps. The last bike cleared the gates. As the gate crew moved to swing the gates out of the way, Tommy crossed the track and swung over the retaining wall. He wanted to watch from the stands in order to see the full racecourse.

It was clear that his bike gave the tengu the advantage. In the straights he pulled ahead, only to lose the lead again and again to the more experienced Blue Sky and Oilcan on the smaller bikes. He was shifting too much power into his lift drive to make each jump, stealing too much from his spell chain that provided the speed. Blue Sky had the lead, shaving the clearance of his jumps down to fractions of the inch. Oilcan kissed down each time, seconds behind him, but with nearly a foot in on his landings.

"Yes!" Tommy hissed. His nails bit deep into his palm as he clenched his fist tight. If the two could hold out the entire race, they might win.

There was another straight after the jumps and the tengu pulled ahead, but slowed for the hairpin second turn. Blue Sky flashed past him, riding high up the wall to slip past him. Oilcan took back second, and then pushed into first as they went through the moguls, perfectly timing his liftoff to grab the most airspace.

Tommy pulled his eyes off the racers to check on the tengu pit. Their spotter was down off his perch, huddled with the rest of the crew. They knew they were in trouble. What would they do? Tommy watched them carefully. While the elves had accepted the tengu's claims of being humans crossed with crows, it didn't make them any less oni in Tommy's eyes. And oni were capable of anything.

The crew captain broke away from the huddle, talking on his headset, shielding the earpiece from the unending roar of the crowd. Tommy tried to read his lips, but couldn't tell which of the many languages in Pittsburgh that the tengu was using. The captain was repeating the word. What was he telling his rider to do?

The captain turned and looked not out at the riders, but up at the grandstand. He was talking to someone in the stands. No, he was looking too high. On the grandstand roof!

The leaders flashed in front of the pits and the captain gestured at them, and repeated the word. Tommy guessed the word—shoot.

Fury filled him, like a cold dark storm. He shoved his way through the crowd to the stairs down to the concession level. The dim cement hallway was empty of people and echoed with the wild cheering.

"I've got a shooter on the roof!" Tommy shouted at Trixie as he ran past her in the concession stand. "Get someone to back me up!"

He had to jump to grab the bottom of the access ladder and scrambled up it. A tengu male was crouched at the far lip of the roof, a rifle at his shoulder, aiming at the leaders. Tommy clenched his ability tight around the tengu's mind and willed him blind. The tengu lowered the gun, shaking his head as if trying to clear his vision. Tommy stalked forward, all need to hurry over, letting his fury carry him. The tengu got to his feet and cautiously backed away from the edge of the roof. Tommy grabbed the rifle and jerked it from the tengu's hands. Changing his grip on the rifle, Tommy swung it like a club.

"This!" The stock hit with satisfying solidness. "Is!" His hit smashed the tengu to the ground. "My!" The tengu's nose disintegrated in a spray of blood. "Track!"

The tengu writhed on the ground, trying to escape him. Tommy pinned him in place with his foot, reversed the rifle and placed the tip of the barrel at the center of the tengu's forehead. He released his hold on the tengu's mind, letting him see the rifle. "And no one fucks with what is mine."

The roaring of the crowd grew, indicating that the race was nearly done. The tengu team would be free to look for their missing shooter, and the grandstand would be swarming with idle race goers, hanging out between races. If he killed the tengu, there could be hell to pay. He kicked the tengu in the temple, knocking him unconscious. Bingo scrambled up the ladder to join Tommy on the roof.

"Don't kill him, but get him down off here." Tommy turned to watch the end of the race.

The leaders were coming around the last turn. Blue was tight and low, leaned so close to the inside wall it seemed like it had to be peeling off his jacket. Oilcan was tucked close behind, his spell chain nearly touching Blue's lift engine. The human flicked out as they hit the straight, moving to try and pass the half-elf. The tengu whipped around the curve and poured all his power into speed and surged forward. Oilcan continued to slide right, blocking him. The tengu tried to shift left and Blue darted into his path. They roared toward the finish line, the lead two weaving a dance to keep the tengu blocked.

Team Big Sky won. Team Tinker took second. Team Providence took third.

* * *

Oilcan stopped Tommy before he reached the tengu team. "Don't hurt them, Tommy. This has been bad enough for the racing. Don't take it any farther."

"This is their gun. They were going to use it on you and Blue."

Oilcan's eyes widened at the blood splattered rifle, but still, he shook his head. "You beat them. If you take it farther, it's only going to look bad on you." He indicated the sekasha in the stands.

Tommy flung the rifle into the tengu's pit. "Clear out and don't come back. All tengu teams, from here on out, are banned from the race. All tengu are banned from the race track. They are banned from every place that I have influence over. I offered a fair race and fair odds and you tried to grind that into the mud, and I will not deal with you again."

"Do you think we care?" the captain asked.

"Take your dishonor back to your flock. Tell your shame to Jin. Then tell me if you care."

It took a minute, but then it dawned on the male that in Pittsburgh, with the elves holding a sword's edge to the throat of all that was non-elf, he and his cohorts had just fucked themselves over royally.

* * *

Windwolf arrived while Tommy was working in the money room, totaling up the day's take.

"What are you doing here?" Tommy saved his work and closed the windows on his workpad.

"I heard there was trouble here today," Windwolf said.

"Nothing I couldn't handle."

The tengu team had slunk away, taking their unconscious shooter with them. The races continued without incident and no surprises in the betting. Between the attendance fees and concession receipts, they covered all their expenses and made a good profit. All in all, a good day.

Windwolf tilted his head, as if utterly confounded by Tommy. "Why do you fight the idea of forming a household beholden to me so much?"

"Why do you expect me to put my life into your hands? Because you were humane enough to recognize the truth—that we're more human than we are oni? That we hate the oni as much as you do? Why should that be enough to make you our master?"

"Part of the new treaty, all of Pittsburgh must become part of the elfin culture. The half-oni must form a household."

"We are a household."

"And be part of a clan."

"Because you refuse to trust us unless we're your slaves? We're good and honorable people." He had realized today that he had always had, at his core, that human nobility that he recognized in John. For years he had run a fair race for no other reason that it seemed the right thing to do.

"It is the elfin way: those who serve are protected, those who protect are served."

"The elfin way is wrong. You have no right to be my master. You're no better a being than I am, and you don't have my trust, and I don't owe you anything. I will not enslave myself and my entire people just because you say I have to."

"Yes, you owe me nothing. But I owe you my life. I do not seek to enslave you, but to protect you from my people and the others that would harm you."

"I will protect my people. I always have. And I always will."

* * *

Wen Spencer is the author of many books and stories.

Baby Girl

Written by Jon Skovron
Illustrated by Liz Clarke

There was a knock on the door and it wasn't good. It couldn't be good. What knock at 2 am when you were taking a bath ever was?

Cobalt hooked an arm over the edge of the bathtub, pulled himself up a little and listened to the knock. Insistent yet reserved—a hard knuckle knock. Water dripped from his fingertips and fell on the bath-mat with a rhythm that counterpointed the knock perfectly. Cobalt curled his hand up to stop the drip. He hated when different natural rhythms started to sync up. It always meant something unnatural was about to happen.

The knock came again, no more hurried, but hard enough to make the hinges wince.

"Goddamn," said Cobalt and launched himself from the tub, water streaming down his lean, scarred, and naked body. He was tired. It had been a long and unpleasant day and all he'd wanted was a nice quiet bath. He snatched his pants from off the floor and stepped in them and out into the hallway. Beads of water gleamed on the dark brown of his bare chest and shoulders. His wet bare feet squeaked slightly on the hardwood floors.

The knock came again, steady and measured but with a little more clip.

His eyes roved around the studio apartment, looking for anything that might serve as a weapon.

The knock came again, and this time plaster trickled from the door frame in spurts.

"Who is it?" he yelled as he slipped into the kitchen.

"Opportunity," came a high-pitched voice.

"Ha ha," said Cobalt as he rummaged around in a drawer near the stove. He pulled out a twelve inch chef's knife. It would have to do, since he'd left his machete in the car.

The door shuddered looser with each knock.

"Okay, okay," said Cobalt. "I'm coming."

Without further hesitation, he walked smoothly to the front, raised the knife, released the deadbolt, and opened the door.

Out in the building hallway stood the neighbor's kid, Eric. But no, it wasn't the neighbor's kid at the moment. Those chocolate brown eyes looked up at him wide and feral with ancient and hardened wisdom. They were not the eyes of a child.

"Oh," said Cobalt. "Shi—"

In one swift motion the boy backhanded the knife from Cobalt's grip and shoved him stumbling backward. Cobalt's wet feet slipped out from under him and he landed flat on his back. The boy jumped into the air and landed hard with both knees on his chest, then pinned Cobalt's head flat against the ground.

"Get off me!" said Cobalt, his face mashed against the floor, knowing there was no point in struggling.

"Cobalt Jackson!" said the boy. "Is you the Hoodoo man?"

"Shit, I hate that name."

"You prefer Root doctor?"

"What I would prefer," said Cobalt as he rolled his eyes up at his captor, "is that you tell me what the fuck you want and then get out of that poor kid's body before you damage it."

"Will ya listen ta me?"

"I promise," said Cobalt. "I always listen. That's my fucking problem."

"A'rit, then." The boy jumped backwards gracefully into a crouch.

Cobalt sat up and rubbed the side of his face. Then he looked at the crouched figure that was usually a very shy and well behaved little boy.

"Well?" he said at last. "Got a name?"

"John."

Cobalt laughed. "Sure it is."

"Waz that mean?"

"It means you don't remember your real name. Your African name. It means that ole Massa couldn't be bothered to tell one slave from the other so he just named them all John. How long ago did you die?"

"I don't know. I guess a while. Things look lots different."

"Yeah, I'll bet they do," said Cobalt. "So, did you ever get free as a mortal?"

"Yessa," said John. "'Scaped up nawth to Ohio wit a few othern. Found me a job an' everythin'."

"So before Emancipation, then," said Cobalt as he pulled himself to his feet. "So what'd you want, John? Revenge on ole Massa? Sorry, man. He's probably been dead as long as you have."

"I don't care 'bout other dead folks," said John, his little boy head shaking with adult weariness. "I gots a wrong to rit afore I can go on. And I need yer help t' do 'um, Conjour Man."

"Yeah?" Cobalt leaned back, one hip on the edge of the small mail desk in the hallway. "What wrong you need righted?"

"The Devil done stole my woman."

"Huh," said Cobalt. His face was a mask of cool nonchalance, but his hand opened the junk drawer of his mail desk and rummaged around until he found the emergency pack of smokes shoved in the back. His eyes still on John, he lit one and inhaled deeply. They were a little stale, but the roughness felt good. Felt right. Finally, on the exhale, "The Devil, huh?"

"Tha's rit."

"Took your girl."

"Yessa."

"Is she dead?"

"Nossa."

"You sure?"

"Sure as I am dead."

"Fair enough." Cobalt took another hard drag. "So you want me to save your girl from the Devil?"

"Yessa."

"I've never met the Devil."

"I can tell," said John.

"How's that?"

"Ya gots the wrong idea 'bout 'em completely."

"Which part am I wrong about? That he's stronger than me?"

"No, he's defn'ly stronger."

"That he's smarter than me?

"No, he's smarter than ya fer shore."

"That he's a tricky sonofabitch who can't be trusted any further than I can throw him?"

"Oh, no, tha's all true too."

"Well, which part am I wrong about, then?"

"That he cain'ts be beat."

"And how do you know that?"

"'Cause I done beat 'em."

"No shit," said Cobalt.

"Tha's rit. See, when I was alive, I was a gambolin' man. One night I was playin' cards with a stranger and when he won all my moneys, he said we could gamble with life isself. Now, I thought fer sure my luck was about to turn."

"Of course you did," said Cobalt.

"And anyways, I was a pretty tough fella so I figured worse come ta worse, I could lick 'em in a fight. So I said shore, double or nothin' on my life. It wasn't until after he'd won that hand that he told me he was the Devil."

"Cause the horns and tail didn't give it away?"

"He was in disguise."

"Uh huh."

"And I might of had some low wine too."

Cobalt shook his head. "Too drunk to recognize the Devil." He took another drag.

"Can I get some of that tobacah?" asked John.

"Those aren't your lungs," said Cobalt. "So, no, you can't." But he put the cigarette out so as not to torture him. Then he said, "So he killed you and took your girl?"

"No, I 'scaped alrit, 'cause of my woman. It was our love that saved me. It was our love that gave me the ability to beat that ole Devil."

"So what happened?"

"Well, we got away. But 'ventually, I gots careless. Didn't stay on my toes. The Devil shore does hold a grudge and he was a waitin' to catch me sleepin'. And shore enough, he did. Comin' back from work on the side of the road. Horse and buggy lost control and done squarsh me flat."

"And when you died, since he couldn't take your soul, he took your girl?"

"Yeah," nodded John. "Somethin' like that."

"So why are you coming to me now? Sounds like you've waited a long time before making your move to get her back."

"I hadda find out how to git to 'em."

"You mean, how to get to Hell?"

John looked at him with a steadiness and clarity that was common among spirits but which Cobalt never quite got used to seeing. "Conjure Man, we alls in Hell rit now."

"Bullshit," said Cobalt. "But you sure ain't helping by running around possessing innocent kids."

"You know hows it is," said John. "Hard to find a mind open and flexible 'nough to let ya in, even for a little while."

"I hear that a lot," said Cobalt. "So you will let this kid go if I help you?"

"A'course." John nodded vehemently. "I'm just borrowin' his mouth sos we could talk. I don't mean no harm to nobody but that Devil."

"Alright, then," nodded Cobalt. "I'll do it."

John beamed at him and it was so open and excited that for a moment Cobalt thought the spirit had already left. But then the boy's face grew serious once again and said, " 'Twon't be easy. Ya gots to light nine candles and pray fer twelve hours so as to prepare yerself, then ya gots to travel upriver blindfolded holdin' a mixture of salt, white mustard seed, and cayenne pepper in yer mouth."

"Uh," Cobalt winced.

"An' don't fergets ta bring a baby coal-black heifer for when that ole Eagle gets hungry."

"Wait, what eagle?"

"An' when ya gets there, whatever ya do, don' mention me."

"I'm still on the eagle part," said Cobalt.

"Oh, an' ya prob'ly want ta bring a broom."

"What? A broom?"

"If ya do all that, I think ya'll be jus' fine." Cobalt could see John letting go of his grip of the boy all of a sudden. "Now hold on a minute!" he said. "I need some more details!"

"And don't fergit," said John as he began to slump against the wall, "the name a my woman," his head began nodding and his voice warbling, "Salome."

"Aw hell," said Cobalt as he caught the boy's body from falling to the floor. A moment later, the boy's eyes fluttered and looked up at Cobalt in bewilderment."Mister Jackson?" said Eric.

"You're alright," said Cobalt.

"What happen?"

"You were sleepwalking," said Cobalt. "About scared the life out of me. Com'on. Let's get you back home."

Eric blinked and struggled to his feet. He looked exhausted, which was typical for someone who'd just been mounted by a spirit. "I had a really weird dream."

"Oh yeah?" said Cobalt, gently guiding him towards the front door. "What about?"

"This really pretty woman who lived inside a big pit of fire."

"Scary, huh?"

"No," Eric shook his head. "It should have been scary, but it wasn't at all. It was kinda nice." Then he sniffed the air and said, "Are you smoking again, Mister Jackson?"

"Now and then," admitted Cobalt.

"My momma says those things are going to be the death of you."

"If I'm lucky," said Cobalt. "Only if I'm lucky."

* * *

The next morning Cobalt went to pay Angelface a visit. While Cobalt didn't exactly think John had been lying, he got the distinct impression that things had been left out. Most obviously, the details of how John actually managed to defeat the Devil. Also suspicious was the fact that John had been heavily addicted to gambling and drinking, which was unusual for someone as happily in love as he claimed to have been with Salome. Then, of course, there was the name itself. Salome? What parent named their kid after a Biblical erotic dancer? But if anyone could confirm John's story, it was Angelface.

He ran a guitar shop down on Carson Street in the South Side. He was kind of a local celebrity, much like Cobalt was in Oakland and Squirrel Hill. He was the guy that people went to when they ran out of other options. Liked by a few, feared by many. And usually treated with disdain until needed. Especially Angelface.

There are many truths that are hidden, about love, innocence, hope, mortality, God, and magic. And the thing was that the majority of these truths were hidden by a person from themselves because they either didn't want to know the answer or they didn't like the answer. Everyone lies to themselves. In fact, lying is such a natural part of human nature that it was said that no matter who they were, anyone whose mouth was cut sideways would tell a lie. The thing was, Angelface's mouth was cut vertically. He was a Truthsayer, incapable of lying, even about the secrets of the Universe itself. If anyone could parse out the real truth behind John's story, it was him. Besides, Angelface owed him a few favors.

Cobalt parked his crappy old blue Buick across the street from the store, turned up the collar on his jacket and hustled through a chill spring rain. The shop door beeped cheerfully as he entered the humid warmth and saw Angelface behind the counter strumming absently on a vintage Stromberg archtop guitar. A tall, gaunt white guy with solemn gray eyes, his shoulder-length blond hair wasn't looking so good anymore since his receding hairline. When he saw Cobalt, the ends of his mouth curved to the right, which Cobalt knew was a smile.

"Hey, CB," he said in a deep baritone.

"Yo, Angel," said Cobalt. "How you doing?"

They clasped hands tightly for a moment, then Cobalt said, "No time to chit chat. Gotta call in a favor."

"Okay," said Angelface. "What do you want to know?"

"Got a new client last night. A spirit named John."

"Bad idea," said Angelface. "Deads never pay well."

"I know," said Cobalt. "I'm a softy for the souls of slaves."

"But not soft enough to trust 'em completely," said Angelface. "Which is why you're here."

Cobalt smiled. "As always, you know me."

"I pity you, CB, 'cause most times I feel like I'm the only one who does."

Cobalt shrugged. "Man of mystery. That's me."

"Well, what's your question?"

"It's about the Devil."

"Oh," said Angelface. The corners of his mouth curved to the left. "It'll be tricky to weed out the truth then, cause that Devil likes to blend the two together till they're almost indistinguishable. In fact, I might even be inclined to say that where the Devil's concerned, there's no such thing as truth and lies, just things said and things done."

"Yeah, great," said Cobalt. He tapped impatiently on the glass counter top. "Can you tell me how this client, John, beat the Devil?"

"Love," said Angelface.

"Yeah, I got that. But I want some details."

"Something about a contest," said Angelface.

"Yeah, yeah, a card game."

"No," said Angel. "That was earlier. This was some kind of impossible task that John had to do...if he did it, the Devil said he'd spare his life."

"But if it was impossible, how'd he do it?"

Angelface shook his head and shrugged. "Love. Or something a lot like it. That's all I know for sure."

"Well, can you at least confirm how I can get to Hell?"

Angelface grinned. "Try shooting yourself in the head."

"Ha, ha," said Cobalt. "I meant a way where I can come back."

"There are many ways," said Angelface. "Too many to list off."

"Okay, well, how about upriver blindfolded with a handful of salt and pepper in my mouth?"

"That would work," said Angelface. "How you gonna do it?"

"Take a motorboat up the Allegheny."

"How you gonna keep from crashing into stuff?"

"You tell me."

"I'll follow you out and guide you on the radio."

"Sounds good to me." Cobalt nodded.

"Just watch out for the Eagle."

"Yeah, John mentioned something about an eagle. Is it that dangerous?"

"Every entrance to Hell has a guardian," said Angelface. "They're all dangerous."

"But if I bring a live black calf to feed it, will that be enough?"

"If the Eagle gets the calf, you'll get by."

"That was a careful answer," said Cobalt, his eyes narrowing.

"Yeah," said Angelface. "So be careful."

* * *

They met back up that night at a small, private pier on the riverbank near the Strip District. Rain was coming down hard and dirty. Angelface stood on the dock wearing a yellow rain slicker with the hood pulled up, partially to keep his precious golden locks dry, partially to shield casual observers from the shock of seeing his face. He watched with amusement as Cobalt struggled down the steps from street level with a thrashing calf in his arms, his face grim and pinched.

"Have fun getting that?" Angelface asked when Cobalt drew near.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a live completely black calf in this town?"

"Yeah, actually. I do." said Angelface.

"Yeah, yeah," said Cobalt. "Help me get this poor little critter in the boat so I can slap you silly."

They took a line and roped the calf's legs together, then left it laying on its side in the bow of the small motorboat that Cobalt had borrowed from an old client.

"You ready?" asked Angelface.

"Why you think I'm so cranky?" snapped Cobalt. "I been fasting and praying, lighting candles and drinking every shit-tasting charm potion I know. I could run a goddamn marathon while smoking a carton of cigarettes right now."

"Okay," said Angelface. "I'll keep with you by radio for as long as I can."

They both eased their boats clear of the dock and out into the river. Then Cobalt took a white strip of cloth that he had treated with holy water and blessed earlier that day. He tied it carefully across his eyes so that nothing but the merest hints of light and dark were visible. The effect of helpless disorientation was immediate: the boat rocking, the calf thrashing and mewling, the rain hissing, his blood pounding in his temples.

"How you doing, CB?" crackled over the radio.

Cobalt fumbled until he found the receiver. "Why am I doing this again?" His voice sounded hoarse.

"Cause you're a crazy motherfucker."

"Right," said Cobalt. "I guess that's good enough." Then he let out on the throttle and the boat began to pick up speed as it cut upstream.

The outboard motor grated against his ears and tickled the back of his throat. He could almost taste the engine fuel on his tongue. The boat seemed to pitch in every direction, buffeted by wind and rain and current.

"How'm I doing, Angel?"

"Just fine, CB. Nothing in your way."

"But am I going straight?"

"Of course. You haven't turned the wheel, have you?"

"No, but this wind feels like it's knockin' me all over the place."

"You're fine," said Angelface.

"Alright." Cobalt reached into a pouch in his pocket and grabbed a fistful of the salt, mustard seed, and cayenne pepper mixture he'd made earlier that day. Before he could give it any thought, he quickly dumped it into his mouth. When the powder hit his tongue, his throat constricted then expanded, unsure whether to swallow or vomit. He took a deep breath through his nose to calm himself. He willed himself to disregard the taste and the burn, to concentrate on something else. Anything else.

The rain was coming down harder now, leaking into his blindfold, stinging his eyes, and chilling him to the core. Water slapped against the metal siding, sending laser-zap vibrations up and down the length of the boat. The calf's breathing came in ragged gasps and its hooves clanged against the nearby bucket seat. And there was something else...a smell that cut like a dart through the scent of rain and river muck and grass and spring pollen and even the burn of the salt and pepper to his nose. It smelled like someone had lit a match in front of his face. Then it was gone. He gripped the wheel tighter. The hiss of the rain on the surface of the water came in waves now, like an ocean, back and forth, in and out, crescendo and decrescendo. The boat dipped side to side, slapped its edge on the water like clapping wet hands. The calf kicked and flailed, its hooves clanging against the metal rail like a bell and its fearful wails shimmering like a chime. The motor chugged along with a constant drone, a bass line, but popping on every second and fourth beat and the calf hit the seat on the fourth and the rain filled the down stroke on the one and three and it all started coming together like fingers in folded hands . . . duba-DAT-bing-doo duba-duba-DAT-bing duba-DAT-bing-doo duba-duba-DAT-bing...

"Oh, fhi . . ." said Cobalt.

"Uh, CB," came Angelface's voice over the radio. "I think—"

The blast of sulfur hit Cobalt square in the face. His nose hairs dissolved as he let go of the wheel and stumbled back. The boat pitched wildly, banging, pounding. He heard the calf on its feet now, clambering around, somehow loose, mooing pitifully and the rain came down with tropical storm strength, pounding on his head and shoulders like pebbles. Loud cracks and he didn't know . . . were they lightning? Was the boat coming apart? He almost tore off the blindfold but then the boat pitched forward and he fell backward. He flailed about on the floor of the boat, trying to regain his footing in the collecting puddles. Then something slammed into his chest, nailed him to the side of the boat. The calf. It pressed its hooves into his chest, and pain flashed but he didn't scream because the powder mixture was his protection and so he clenched his teeth and his tears blended with the raking rain that seemed to be getting hotter. When had the calf gotten so heavy? Its voice was much deeper too, and no longer afraid but now enraged, hot breath blowing on his face. In the background, the rain sound dipped, staggered, became uneven, raindrops hitting raindrops like a civil war of heavenly water until it was a different sound entirely—a trembling, screaming, vengeful sound of madness that built up and made Cobalt want to scream with it in terror, and all the while the cow pressed down harder and harder.

Then a slap.

A screech.

Silence.

And Cobalt was free.

He ripped the blindfold off and saw an eagle the size of a prop plane carry off the cow. It flew into clear skies streaked with the red of a setting sun. His little boat was no longer in the Allegheny River, but instead in a vast ocean, calm and crystal. The air was humid and the setting sun raked his skin with heat. Nothing else was in sight except a single beach island dotted with one palm tree and a crumbling shack of a house.

He spat out the powder and rinsed his mouth with water. It wasn't salty but he didn't swallow any of it. If he had reached the correct destination, then it seemed best not to take a chance on drinking the waters of Hell.

The motor had stopped at some point. He gave it a few tries, but it wouldn't start so he gave up, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, unhooked the emergency oar from the side of the boat and began to row. He stood at the bow and worked the wooden oar for hours with deep, smooth strokes, inching his way towards the island. During all that time, the sun never quite set, but lingered fat and red on the horizon, laying its heat on him like dead weight. Sweat trickled down his brow and he was thirsty. He looked at the crystal clear water beneath . . . but, no, he didn't drink it. He pushed himself on and on, his head down, his face pinched with fatigue, and his mouth tasting like a dust pit.

Then there was a quiet scrape on the bottom and the boat jerked to a halt. But Cobalt didn't. He pitched forward over the bow, somersaulted with all the grace of a rag doll, and landed flat on his back in the sand. The landing knocked the wind out of him so he just lay there gasping for air and staring at the blood red sun through teary eyes. So much for the element of surprise. So much for an impressive entrance. He expected the minions of Hell to leap on him immediately. But nothing happened. Once he'd caught his breath he stood up and looked around. Nothing on the island but the palm tree and the wooden shack. No animals, no plants, and no demon spawn.

Not quite sure what else to do, he dusted the sand from his pants and shirt, then walked to the shack. He stood staring at the knotted driftwood door for a full minute before he made up his mind and knocked.

"Who's there?" boomed a voice like molten lava."Uh . . . it's Cobalt Jackson."

There was a long pause. Cobalt shifted his weight uneasily.

"No shit," the voice said at last with something leaning towards a mild amusement that could none the less melt steel. "Hoodoo PI is here?" There was a creaking sound, like someone leaning back in a chair. Then, "It's the fuzz, woman. You better open the door."

The door creaked open.

Cobalt nearly went insane.

The creature that stood before him defied reality. Its limbs twisted and knotted back in on themselves in infinite coils and loops that went nowhere yet stretched from horizon to horizon. Worms and maggots writhed from every orifice, swallowing each other as they were swallowed themselves. The eyes were bottomless pools of diseased and putrid coagulated blood and what might have been a mouth sucked in hope and happiness like a psychic vacuum.

"Oh . . . shit," stammered Cobalt like an idiot. "The Devil!"

"Naw," said a voice from behind the creature. "That's just my wife. Hey, Molderina! Move over and let the man come inside."

The creature shuffled placidly aside to reveal a small, cramped but cozy cabin, complete with potbelly stove, kitchen/dinette, and wrought iron framed bed. Lounging in the corner in a rocking chair next to the stove was the Devil. Extremely tall and incredibly thin, his entire body was shaggy and pitch black except for flickering red eyes and a grin so wide it extended past the boundaries of his face. In his mouth were row upon row of fanged teeth. Flopping to the side of the chair was a strangely lumpy short tail. No, wait. Not a short tail. A long penis.

"Well, come on in, Conjure man. You've come this far, haven't you?"

"Uh . . ." Cobalt shuffled numbly inside, trying not to flinch at the Devil's wife. "Sorry about the mix-up."

"It's alright," waved the Devil. "But ain't she something?"

"She sure is," agreed Cobalt. "Have a seat, Detective," said the Devil. He motioned to a very short stool next to him.

Cobalt looked at it and almost said no thanks he'd rather stand. But he suspected this was probably a test of some kind. How much cool did he have? Well, he'd show that fucking Devil he had all the cool necessary. So he sat down on that little stool and pretended like he didn't mind the Devil leering down on him. He also pretended it was comfortable.

"So," said the Devil, "what brings you to the corporate offices of Hell?"

"Corporate offices?"

"Well, this ain't the customer-facing end of the operation. Trust me, when you die and go through the main gates and all that stuff, it's a whole lot more impressive. This is just where me and my little family hang out when we aren't working hard to corrupt humanity or punish the wicked."

"Your family?"

"Me, Molderina here, and our daughter."

"Daughter?" said Cobalt.

"Yeah, she's just getting off her shift in a minute or two. Now, what brings you to my humble home?"

"Well, uh Devil, now that you mention it, this isn't just a social call . . ."

"It never is," said the Devil and sighed tragically, then his grin returned.

"I'm actually here to collect somebody that I gather is being held here without just cause and against their will."

"Is that so?" said the Devil, not seeming in the slightest bit alarmed or surprised. "Well, Officer Hoodoo"

"Please," said Cobalt. "If you don't like Cobalt, just call me CB."

"Alright, CB," said the Devil. "Now, first off, I have to say that I'm both impressed and disappointed in you."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. See, I'm impressed that you're so bold and brave to confront me head on like this. Direct. To the point. Just the way I like it."

"Oh, yeah?"

"You bet. But I'm a little disappointed because I was always given to understand from various sources that you actually had a brain inside that head."

"Well . . ."

"No, no. There's no point in disagreeing now. Cause regardless, I'm just going to have to kill you. After all, I can't let you go and tell people about me and my family. You'll ruin the surprise for everybody."

"Wait a minute. Isn't there some kind of traditional . . . contest or something?"

"Hmm. A contest. I don't stand much on tradition, but I do love a contest . . ."

Then, as the Devil scratched his chin in contemplation, the front flap of the potbelly stove flipped opened with a clang. A petite female foot emerged, followed by curved calf and delicate little knee, then a sculpted thigh and a perfect ass, a narrow waist, a matching leg, then a sleekly muscled back, an elegant neck, well-kept but wild dreadlocked hair, perky breasts and a face like a wise and naughty angel. And all Cobalt could do was stare stupidly and say, "Lisa Bonet in Hell?!?!??!"

"No," said the Devil. "But interesting choice."

"Huh?"

"She appears as the viewer's ultimate desire."

"Uh . . . oh," said Cobalt. He rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably. "Yeah . . ."

"She's just getting off her shift. CB, meet my daughter, Salome."

In Cobalt's head: Bells. Whistles. Sirens. Alarms.

"Hi," said Salome with a smile like a burst of sunshine after a thunderstorm.

"Huh-huh . . . hi," said Cobalt.

"Good to see you, honey," said the Devil, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "Now, if you'll excuse us . . ."

"Of course," said Salome, once again smiling so that Cobalt simultaneously felt the urge to cry and leap with joy. "I'm just going to get cleaned up." Then she opened the front door and walked out into the sand.

"Now," said the Devil. "Where were we? Ah yes . . . a contest."

"Uh, yeah," said Cobalt. Why the fuck hadn't John told him that his woman was the Devil's daughter? Wait, he already knew the answer to that. Because Cobalt wouldn't have taken the case. His stomach was heavy and his throat was thick as he said, "A contest."

"And if you win, I'll let you live, I'll let you leave, and I'll let you take this poor wronged person, whoever they are, with you."

"Sure," said Cobalt, forcing himself to level out. It was salvage time. He doubted that Salome would even be interested in coming with him but at this point he was just trying to save his own life. "Name it."

"Just a simple thing," said the Devil.

"Uh huh," said Cobalt, his eyes narrowing.

"Just sweep up the dust under the bed," said the Devil.

Cobalt looked at the standard-sized metal frame bed. There was a bed skirt so he couldn't exactly see under it, but how bad could it be? "That's it?"

"With this," the Devil produced a broom the size of a tooth brush.

"Oh," said Cobalt.

"And you only have until sunrise."

"I knew it couldn't be that easy."

"Tell you what, I'll even sweeten the deal, just 'cause it amuses me and, all in all, I think you're pretty cool. You do this, and I will not only give you a Get-Out-Of-Hell free card, I'll give you a back up, so that next time you come back snooping into something you won't have to worry."

"Interesting," said Cobalt. "Assuming I ever need to come back."

The Devil just smiled, then said, "Fair enough?"

"I guess," admitted Cobalt.

"Excellent," said the Devil. "Well, you'd better get started." He turned to Molderina. "You too, dear. You're late for your shift." The shambling, rotting mass of chaos nodded, walked over to the refrigerator. She opened the freezer door and somehow pulled her immense bulk inside and shut the door behind her without the least bit of trouble.

That was when Cobalt began to suspect what he was really in for.

"Well?" said the Devil. "Time's a wasting."

Cobalt took the tiny broom and walked resolutely to the bed. He got on his hands and knees, lifted up the bed skirt, and stuck his head under the bed.

* * *

And he stood in an empty room the size of a football field fringed in massive curtains. He realized those were probably the bed skirts. All around him, dust lay in heaping piles swirling and eddying like snow drifts. He stared at his toothbrush, then again at the towering drifts. He remembered only now that John had suggested somewhat offhand that he might want to bring a broom. The fucking bastard knew about this too. He could have been a little more explicit. He also could have been straight up with him about the whole thing. In fact, he could have just never knocked on Cobalt's door in the first place.

It was at that point that Cobalt sat his ass down on the dusty ground and abandoned himself to a little hopeless despair.

"Don't cry, Cobalt," said a steamy, lilting voice.

Cobalt jerked his head around. It was Salome. He jumped to his feet and tried with no success to wipe some of the dust from his clothes. "Uh, hey, Salome . . ." he said.

"Why are you crying?" said Salome.

"Truthfully? Because if I don't somehow sweep up all the dust in this place with a goddamn toothbrush in the next four hours, your dad is going to kill me."

"Don't worry," said Salome.

"Oh, why? Is he just putting me on?"

"No, he means it," said Salome. "But here, you sit back down and have a glass of water and rest a bit. I'll take care of this."

"Well, now . . ." said Cobalt. "I don't—"

"Hush. Sit. Drink. Sleep."

And without question or thought, Cobalt did.

* * *

He awoke suddenly, abruptly, as one who hadn't realized he'd gone to sleep in the first place. He stumbled to his feet in a blind panic for a moment, then looked around. The floor was completely clean and Salome stood before him, radiant as ever except for a small spot of dust in her hair.

"Wow," said Cobalt. "You did it! You—"

"GODDAMN IT, GIRL!!!" came a thunderous voice and a thick cloud of sulfurous smoke appeared beside them.

"Quick!" shouted Salome. "We have to get out of here!" She grabbed Cobalt's wrist and pulled him hard.

* * *

Cobalt stumbled and nearly ran headlong into the hot stove. He swayed and tried to get his bearings coming from the vast empty space underneath the bed to the cramped, cozy cabin.

"Oh, shit," whispered Salome, all composure gone from her exquisite face. She wrung her hands and looked pleadingly at Cobalt. "Help me."

There was a quirk in Cobalt's nature that responded to a damsel in distress on a sub-cellular level.

"Do you want to get out of Hell?" he demanded.

"I want to go with you!" she said.

Cobalt's eyes flitted around the room until he saw something that seemed promising.

"He's coming!" said Salome.

A black cloud of smoke was pouring out from under the bed skirts now and roaring, "Why, why, why, why, WHY!!!"

"Come on," said Cobalt, took her hand, steeled himself, and jumped at the sink.

"Wait," he heard Salome say, "Not the—"

* * *

They were in a metal basin fifty yards in diameter. Cobalt skidded and flailed wildly as he tried to gain footing on a surface slick with water and rotting food. In the center of the basin was a massive drain, and disposal blades glinted menacingly from within its dark recesses. As he fought to stay upright, every movement made his shoes slowly slip closer to the drain with a bright squeak.

"We're so screwed," hissed Salome. She didn't seem to be having any trouble with her footing, but her arms were wrapped tightly around her torso, she was shivering violently, and she kept glancing fearfully up into the darkness.

"Is there any other way out of here?" he asked, his legs spread wide to keep from falling.

"Just that way," said Salome, and she pointed to the drain.

Then there was a harsh chuckle. Cobalt looked up and he could see a pair of giant burning red eyes as the Devil gazed down into the sink at them. Then Cobalt heard a soft click, like a light switch being flicked on. The basin began to rumble and Cobalt looked back towards the drain. The disposal blades began to turn faster and faster, until they were a threshing blur.

Then the Devil dissolved into black smoke again and poured into the basin. When he reformed, he had adjusted his size to match their own.

"You can just go ahead and fall to your messy doom, now, Conjure Man," he growled.

"Thanks but I think I'll stay right here," said Cobalt, trying to make it sound like a choice. His legs were burning from the tension required to keep himself in the straddle position. And underneath him, the disposal motor was making the basin vibrate so hard his feet were going numb.

"It's going to be a lot worse on you if you wait for me to get you," said the Devil. "Trying to kidnap my baby girl . . ."

"He didn't kidnap me, Daddy," said Salome. "I wanted to go."

"And you," the Devil turned towards her. "I am gonna make you wish you were mortal just so you could die, that's how bad it's gonna hurt." Then he stepped past Cobalt, his clawed hands reaching for her.

Cobalt took a deep breath, and through clenched teeth said, "I don't think so." Then he grabbed the Devil's massive penis and squeezed as hard as he could.

The shrieking sound that came out of the Devil's jaws reverberated through the metal basin like a steel drum. Cobalt's legs finally gave way and the only thing that kept him from falling into the shimmering disposal blades was his grip on the Devil's penis.

"Oh, I am gonna invent whole new levels of Hell for you," hissed the Devil. "Let go of me!"

"Stop the blades!" said Cobalt.

"I'm warning you—" said the Devil.

But his words transformed into a pathetic whimper as Cobalt pulled hard on his penis. The Devil raised one shaking hand and snapped his fingers.

* * *

They were back in the cabin. Cobalt stumbled and smacked his forehead on the front door.

"Go, Conjure Man!" snarled the Devil. "Now!"

Cobalt fumbled for the handle, hardly believing what he'd just heard. But as he was about to open the door, he heard a sharp crack and a high whimper. He stopped and turned back towards them. The Devil was slowly advancing towards Salome, a long black whip clutched in his clawed fist. Salome looked over the Devil's shoulder at Cobalt, her eyes mutely pleading, a long bloody welt on her upper arm.

"Goddamn," muttered Cobalt. Then he grabbed the poker by the stove and stepped in between them.

"Out of the way, Conjure Man," snarled the Devil. "I've given you your life back. You should take it and run."

"I'm taking Salome with me," said Cobalt.

"Boy, not only are you dumb, but you're rude. This here is family business. It ain't got nothin' to do with you."

"Call me rude, then," said Cobalt. Then he swung the poker with all his might and hit the Devil square in the forehead. But the Devil did not move except for his eyes, which crossed slightly as they gazed at the poker pressed against his brow. He frowned and the poker went white hot. Cobalt let out a yell and dropped it. Then the Devil hissed triumphantly and reached for Cobalt with a clawed hand while he drew back his whip with the other.

"Daddy, please!" said Salome.

The Devil froze, his hand a hair's breadth from Cobalt's face. "Baby girl . . ." he whispered. His face writhed with frustration.

"I'm sorry I got you mad, Daddy," said Salome.

There was a sound like a buzz saw on sheet metal and Cobalt realized that the Devil was grinding his teeth.

"Please, Daddy," said Salome. "Please let us go."

"Now why you gotta use the magic words!" groaned the Devil as he lowered his hands.

"Magic words?" asked Cobalt wildly, the adrenaline pumping through his veins suddenly useless.

"Please and sorry," the Devil spat the words out. He tossed his whip into a corner where it turned into a python and slithered away.

"You're kidding," said Cobalt.

"Hey," snapped the Devil, shaking a needle-sharp finger in his face. "You don't have kids so you don't know! I'm trying to raise a girl with manners, here. I expect her to honor words like 'please' and 'thank you' and 'sorry.' Now what kind of parent would I be if I didn't do the same? Consistency is the key to solid parenting."

"So you're going to let us go because she said 'please'?"

"And," said the Devil, as if this was direly important, "she apologized for her behavior."

"So, Salome" Cobalt struggled to contain his temper, "Couldn't you have done that from the beginning?"

"Well," said Salome, "I wouldn't have meant it then."

"I see," said Cobalt levelly.

"It was only your brave sacrifice that made me truly sorry that I had disobeyed Daddy. Because I'd rather be stuck in Hell forever than see you damned unjustly."

"But what I don't understand" said the Devil, wringing his hands in frustration, "is why you want to go with this tiny mortal into his tiny, smelly little world when you already know damn well how it's going to end?"

"I don't know how it's going to end," she said, her eyes wide and her lower lip trembling. "Every mortal is different. You've said that yourself a million times."

"I meant that every mortal has different things that would torment them for eternity."

"But if it's true for that, it's true for everything. And I just need a break from Hell, you know?" She gently took his massive clawed hands in her own. "Daddy, there's other things in creation worth doing besides tormenting souls and I want to do some of them before I settle into the family business. Why can't you let me have some time on my own?"

"You had some time on your own, remember?" said the Devil. "And how did that go?"

"But I've learned so much since then! It's been hundreds of years. How long is it going to take for you to trust me again?"

The Devil stared at her for a long time. Then he turned back to Cobalt and on his face was a grimace, a wincing, pleading, loathing, wrathful grimace which was one step away from biting his head off. "I hope you have kids one day. Then you'll understand. So take my heart, my daughter. My baby girl. Take her away from me just like the last one did. You'll use her just like the last one did, and then you'll break her heart. Just like the last one. And I'll have to come and get her and wipe away her tears."

"Wait a minute," said Cobalt. "I think you've got the wrong idea—"

"Thank you, Daddy!" squealed Salome. "Thank you thank you thank you!!!" She threw herself into his arms and then spun around and grabbed Cobalt by the arm. "Come on, let's go! Quick before he changes his mind and uses your intestines for Momma's knitting!" And she began to drag him towards the exit.

"Conjure man!" said the Devil.

Cobalt's heart went icy. He turned around slowly, thinking it was all another trick and now he was going to die. But the Devil just stood there in his cramped cabin, his dark shaggy body heaving with emotion, his eyes pulsing with fire.

And he said, "You know, you mortals have got me all wrong."

"Oh?" asked Cobalt. "How's that?"

"I was never an angel," said the Devil. "I never led no rebellion in Heaven and I never fell." His face curled up into a sneer, then. "This is how He made me. This is how I'm supposed to be." Then he snorted through his nose with a bitter laugh. "Now what does that tell you?"

* * *

The motor still didn't work on the boat, but it didn't seem to matter. Salome just told Cobalt to close his eyes, the boat lurched slightly, and then the hot, salty smells of that tropical place changed suddenly to the rusty cold of Pittsburgh. He opened his eyes and saw that they were floating down the Allegheny River once again. It was early morning and the sun was still warming up as it lit guardedly along the golden supports of the river's many bridges. On the left, the downtown area glittered like a façade, and on the right, houses and bungalows perched atop the hills that overlooked the dockyards. It was brash, noisy, and dirty, and Cobalt couldn't help but sigh in relief.

"Where do we go now?" asked Salome. "Will you take me to your home? Share with me your mortal life?" Her eyes seemed to throb slightly, and it felt like a magnetic field hovered between them and Cobalt leaned unconsciously towards her, his lips buzzing for her kiss. Strange possibilities flickered through his head, hopes and desires. . . .

But then, over her perfect shoulder, he spotted a small powerboat with a tall, ugly, long haired white guy in it. And a different possibility occurred to him. One which was at once so wrenchingly full of loss and so thrillingly full of potential that he shivered.

"What is it?" asked Salome.

"I'd like you to meet somebody," said Cobalt. "A good friend of mine."

Salome turned just as Angelface pulled up along side of their boat.

"You guys need a—" And then he saw Salome

"Uh, Salome," said Cobalt. "This is Angelface. Angelface, this is—"

"Oh!" she breathed. "An angel! I've never known an angel!"

Cobalt almost corrected her, but stopped himself. Instead, he just smiled.

"Nice to . . . uh . . . meet you," said Angelface, his eyes flickering over to Cobalt in confusion. Looking for guidance.

"How lovely you are, Angelface!" said Salome.

That stopped him. He stared at her for a moment, then said. "Who are you?"

"I'm Salome, daughter of Hell," said Salome. "Do you love me?"

He looked at her for a while longer and then his mouth curved to the right in a wide smile. "Not yet," he said truthfully. "But I don't think it'll take long."

* * *

Angelface towed their boat back to the pier. As they disembarked, an old lady stepped down on to the dock with startling agility.

"I knows ya could do 'em, Hoodoo Man!" said John through the old woman's lips. "I weren't worried none at'all." Then he looked appreciatively at Salome. "And damn, girl, if you ain't jus as purdy as eva'!"

"You're still here?" asked Cobalt, surprised. "Usually when the wrong's been righted, the spirit is free to go."

John grinned and there was a hint of malice in it. "Now, was ya still thinkin' I was a normal ole spirit? Afta' what ya jes been through? Ya mean ya act'ly believed alla tha' 'Yessa' and 'Nossa' stuff? Boy, ya head muss be empty as tha' ole Devil's heart!"

"John?" said Salome, her normally musical voice suddenly flat and cold. "Is that you in there?"

"Sho' is, girl," said John.

"You shouldn't be in there," she said. "You should be back in Hell where you belong."

"In Hell?!" said Cobalt.

"Now that I meet him," said Angelface, "I coulda told you right away you'd been hoodwinked."

"Not much help now," muttered Cobalt.

"John," Salome said sternly. "How could you have escaped?"

"Now, girl," said John, and his old woman lips curled up into a sneer, "didja' think I done live with ya fer a whole lifetime an' not learn a thing a' two? I wuz always watchin' ya when ya was don' ya magics. See, I's got my own power now, an' I ain't neva gon' leave this ole worl'."

"It was always about power, wasn't it?" asked Salome. "You never loved me."

"Girl, was' this nonsense you be talkin'?" snapped John. "Don' fugit we married. So shuddup an' come ova' here afore I beat you dumb."

"Salome, you don't have to take that shit," said Cobalt. "This is—"

Salome held up her hand.

"It's okay," she said. "This is exactly what Daddy was worried about. But I really have learned from my mistakes." She turned pointedly to Cobalt and Angelface. "Would you guys mind stepping back and looking away for a minute? This is something I'd prefer you don't see until we know each other a little better."

"Um—" said Cobalt.

"Well—" said Angelface.

"Please," said Salome.

They both nodded, took a few steps back, and turned around.

Cobalt heard Salome say in a chiding voice, "Now, John. You really want to be with me that badly? Well, I got just the place for you."

Then he heard John gasp. Then his breathing came hard and fast and he whispered hoarsely, "No, no, no, no." There was a loud scream that was cut off abruptly by a strangely chilling vacuum sound. Then there was silence.

"Okay," he heard Salome say. "You can turn around again."

She was now easing an exhausted old lady onto a nearby bench.

"Lord, Lord, Lord," wheezed the old lady. "I feel like I done run a mile!"

"You're okay, granny," said Salome. "You just rest now. Get your strength back."

The old woman turned to look up at Salome and her eyes widened. "Oh my Lord!" she cried. "Mister Sidney Poitier! Is it really you? What are you doing in Pittsburgh, Mr. Poitier?"

"Just passing through," said Salome, completely unruffled. "And I saw that you needed some help."

"Well, don't that beat all," said the old woman, her face shining with pleasure. "Helped to a seat by none other than Sidney Poitier. I think I could die happy now."

"Now, now," chided Salome. "I think you got some time before that happens."

Cobalt turned to Angelface. "What do you see when you look at her?"

Angelface smirked. "Think I'm gonna tell you? I'd never hear the end of it."

"Huh," said Cobalt. "Fine. Well, I won't tell you either, then."

"Oh," said Angelface, "I already know what you see." Then he started to humming the theme to "A Different World" quietly to himself.

"Haha," said Cobalt sourly.

"Now, Mister Poitier," the old lady was saying. "Please forgive me for bein' so familiar, but you look jes as young and dashing as when you was in the movies."

Salome smiled. "It's the love of my fans that keeps me young."

"Say," said Cobalt to Angelface. "What happened to John, anyway?"

"Not sure you want to know, CB," said Angelface.

"Believe me," said Cobalt. "After what that punk ass bitch put me through in the past twenty-four hours, I wanna know."

"Well, Salome swallowed his soul."

"So what does that mean, exactly?"

"Well, contrary to popular literature, souls are not digestible," said Angelface. "Not even for Hellspawn. So she'll probably pass him. In a few centuries."

* * *

Jon Skovron's stories have appeared in such places as ChiZine, deathlings, and Lynx Eye Magazine. You can find other samples of his work, along with reviews, columns, and essays, on his website jonnyskov.com or his blog.

Femme Fatale

Written by Jason Wittman
Illustrated by KarlA. Nordman

When I first met Molly Flammare, I hadn't heard any of the stories they told about her. She was definitely a dame to tell stories about—later, when it was all over, I heard any number of them told in darkened bars, or around barrel drum fires, by men with nothing better to do than sit with their buddies, or their shot glasses, and spin their dreams—though, when Molly was the subject, the dreams often turned into nightmares. But I was new in Minneapolis, so for me the subject of Molly Flammare was a blank slate. I think that was a blessing: for that reason, I could see her for what she was. And the reality was enough to put any story to shame.

I was fifteen. I'd been orphaned a couple years back, Dad taken by the Germans at Omaha Beach, Mom by tuberculosis. But I wasn't going to any orphanage, so I left Chicago for Minneapolis and took to playing my dad's trumpet at the corner of Lake and Garfield. Apparently I had talent, 'cause people threw me enough coins every day to buy a hamburger at Charlie's Diner, and sometimes a lot more than that. So I kept playing, and things were looking up. But then Johnny Icarus sent some punks to pay me a visit.

They were just kids, high-school dropouts with too much time on their hands. They came to me on a July morning when people had yet to come out in full force, and there were only a few nickels in my hat.

"How you doin', kid?" said one. I looked around, and smelled trouble right away. There were four of them, surrounding me on all sides.

"Who wants to know?" I asked, trying to sound tough.

"Johnny Icarus," said the same kid. "That's who."

"Never heard of him."

The kid shrugged. "He's new to this town. But he wants to make a good impression here, really wants to help people. In fact, he looks at people like you, and he sees someone in need of . . . protection."

I stifled a groan.

"How much?"

The kid smiled. "Cut to the chase. Johnny Icarus likes that. Well, just for today—" He reached for my hat. "—we'll only take what you got right now. But our going rate is ten per—"

I kicked him in the face, picked up my hat, and ran like hell.

Maybe that was stupid. What was really stupid was running away from Charlie's Diner, where Charlie could protect me. But there was nothing I could do about that, and as I ran it became clear I was falling right into their trap.

Three more kids ran up to head me off. I ducked down an alley—where four more kids waited for me.

I stood there, clutching my trumpet. They would probably just rough me up; I could survive that. But they would trash the trumpet too, and that was my only way to make a living. Where would I get a new one? Charlie? I didn't think he could afford it. And what would I do next time this happened?

"Hey," said a voice from the other end of the alley. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

A man stood there, holding a two-by-four. By his clothes, I guessed he was down on his luck. But it looked like he knew how to use that two-by-four, and I was taking any help I could get.

The gang leader whipped out a switchblade. "You think you can take on all of us?"

"What the hell." The newcomer tapped the two-by-four in his palm. "I got nothing to lose."

I braced myself. I still didn't like the odds—but then something happened that made the odds irrelevant.

Suddenly, the sunlight dimmed—looking up, I saw storm clouds that looked like they'd been there forever. A cold wind blew through the alley, and I shivered like it was the dead of winter.

"Leave them alone, boys," said a woman's voice from the other end of the alley, opposite from Mr. Two-by-four.

Peering into the wind, I saw her for the first time.

She was tall. Good God, she was tall, the kind of tall that had to duck through doorways. The way she stood said she knew exactly what she was doing. But her face didn't say much of anything. It was hidden under the brim of her hat.

She stood in the alleyway like the cold and wind weren't even there.

The gang leader hesitated, weighing his options. He decided on the safe route.

"L-look, ma'am, we . . . we don't want any trouble . . ."

"'Course not." She had a deep voice that could hold a stadium's attention with a whisper. "The only one who wants trouble is Johnny Icarus. That's his name, right?"

No one said anything.

"Beat it," she said. "And tell Johnny that Molly Flammare sends her regards."

And those kids beat it, like the proverbial bat out of hell.

She just stood where she was. She might not even have been looking at us. The wind still screamed in our faces, and the brim of her hat still kept her face in shadow. Then, without a word to either one of us, she left the alley. And just before she turned the corner, she reached up with one hand, made a sweeping gesture at the sky, and it was sunny again.

Sunny again. Just like that.

I looked at Mr. Two-by-four. We both wore the same expression, like the rug had been pulled out from under us. Then I ran after Molly Flammare.

I'd half expected her to be nowhere in sight when I came onto the street. But there she was, strolling down Lake, her burgundy dress standing out against the gleaming concrete. She walked pretty slow, but the length of her stride meant she was already a long ways down the block.

"Ma'am?" I shouted, running to catch up. Behind me, I heard the footsteps of Mr. Two-by-four. "Ma'am?"

She turned as I practically skidded to a stop beside her.

Her clothes said money. They also said autumn, like she was ready for a walk in a windy park in October. Her burgundy skirt hung below her knees. Her matching jacket had sleeves hanging to her wrists, and she wore black leather gloves. The front of her jacket was unbuttoned to her waist, revealing a black turtleneck sweater. Her hat, wide-brimmed and worn at a tilt, sat on a mane of hair the color and shine of polished wood.

Her face was a mask. Not really a mask, but it didn't show anything to anybody unless it really wanted to. Looking back, I realize that her face was just another part of her clothing. It was a way of protecting herself against the world around her.

"I . . . I just thought I should, uh, thank you for helping us out back there . . . um . . . we really appreciate it. Thanks. Ma'am."

I got the jitters under her gaze, like I was back in school reciting Tennyson to the teachers. But when I was done stammering, she gave me a smile. It was a beautiful smile, warm and honest, but sad, the kind of smile that's directed at memories.

"You play a good trumpet, kid." She reached down and took it from me, turning it over in her hands. "Sometimes I can hear you from my apartment uptown." She looked at me. "What's your name?"

"Tommy," I said. "Tommy Gabriel."

"Gabriel." She smiled at the trumpet. "How appropriate."

I didn't know what she meant by that, but if she was smiling, I was happy.

She gave the trumpet back, and looked at Mr. Two-by-four.

"How about you? What's your name?"

"Blatta, ma'am." A tired voice, dead tired. "Jimmy Blatta."

Something about that name made her look at him long and hard. When she asked, "You play anything?" I got the impression she was buying time to think.

"No, ma'am," said Jimmy Blatta. "I'm just a soldier, back from the war, looking for a job. If you could tell me where to find one, I'd be grateful."

Molly looked him over a moment longer, then made up her mind. "You stood up for the kid. I like that. Here's a little something for your trouble." She handed him a ten-dollar bill, and a box of matches. "I own a supper club on Lyndale. The address is on the matchbox. Go there around five and ask for Louis. He'll set you up with something."

Jimmy Blatta took the matchbox, and the ten-dollar bill, and the clouds left his face just like Molly had waved her hand again. "Thanks," he said.

Molly looked at me. "Might not be a good idea for you to play on the street for a while. How'd you like to play for me?"

I gaped at her like an idiot. "You mean . . . at the club?"

"Sure." She smiled, and handed me another matchbox and ten-dollar bill. She probably guessed I hadn't even seen a whole ten dollars before, and figured what the hell. "Have Jimmy bring you along at five. I'll have Louis set you up too." She tugged the brim of her hat. "Later, boys."

I stopped her. "Ma'am?"

She looked back. "What?"

"How . . ." I shrugged. "How'd you do all that back there?"

She smiled.

"You wouldn't understand, kid. Most of it's just smoke and mirrors anyway. See you at the club."

Then she walked away, slowly, but her legs carried her far with each stride.

* * *

I treated Jimmy Blatta to lunch at Charlie's. I figured I owed him that much, even though it was Molly who saved my bacon.

Charlie's Diner was your typical greasy spoon, but it was the closest thing to a home I'd known since leaving Chicago. The first thing you noticed walking in was the smell of burgers on the grill. I never smelled burgers like that anywhere else—Charlie said he had his own special way of cooking them, but he wasn't telling anyone, not even me. The walls were decorated with recruitment posters with leggy dames telling you to join the Army, or the Navy, or the Air Corps. ("You know, I joined the Navy because of that girl," a guy told me once. "Spent the war on a submarine with ninety other poor slobs.") And the radio was always on. Charlie turned it way up whenever Judy Garland started singing.

From the look Charlie gave me when I paid him, you'd think he never saw a ten-dollar bill either. But when he heard who we got it from, he nearly dropped our burgers.

We watched as Charlie carefully put our plates down, then gripped the counter with both hands. It was a minute before he looked up and asked, "How'd you two get mixed up with her?"

We told him. Hell, we'd been waiting to tell him. When we finished, Charlie nodded like he'd heard that story before. Then he leaned real close and whispered, "Boys? Trust me on this. You don't want to get involved with Molly Flammare."

I wanted to ask why not, but that was a stupid question. I'd seen what she could do with my own eyes; even a kid like me could tell she was dangerous. But Jimmy was older. He knew what questions to ask.

"They tell stories about her, don't they?" he said.

Charlie laughed, but he didn't think the joke was funny. "You better believe it. You hear them mostly at two AM, when people come to the diner for a place to hide. You can't believe all of them, though." He picked up a newspaper, and began paging through it. "Some stories say one thing, others say something else."

"So tell us the one that happened to you," said Jimmy.

Charlie didn't look at him. He didn't look at the newspaper either.

"C'mon! Nobody gets that scared at a bunch of stories! What'd she do to you?"

Charlie stood where he was, not looking at us, or the paper. Finally, he put it down, and took a deep breath.

"You're right," he said. "You're both new here, and you really should know about this. Okay. Here's what happened.

"I had a brother once. His name was Eddie. Wasn't much of a brother, though. Hell, he wasn't much of a human being. Guy just didn't know how to stay out of trouble. And consequences didn't mean a damn thing to him. He was in and out of jail I don't know how many times, and when he got out, he went right back to the same old routine.

"A couple years ago, I heard that he'd raped some girl who wasn't even out of high school yet. The cops came here and asked me where he was. I told them I didn't know, and that was true. I said I would call them if I found out, and that was true. And wouldn't you know it, not even two hours after they left, here comes Eddie, parking his car up front and sauntering through the door like he was king of England.

"I told him I was going to call the cops. He knew I wasn't kidding, so he ran back to his car. I reached for the phone, but by then it was too late—for Eddie, I mean. Because Molly was waiting for him.

"That thing you saw her do in the alley? That's nothing. They say lightning won't hit you if you're in a car, but it hit Eddie. Because Molly wanted it to.

"She sprung for the funeral afterward. Nothing fancy, but respectable. But it had to be closed casket. All that was left of Eddie was some black stuff that looked like it was scraped off a barbecue grill. Parts of that car glowed red an hour after she left."

An eerie silence fell over the diner. It was Jimmy who broke it.

"Look, Charlie, I know he was your brother and everything, but it sounds like he had it coming. I mean, so Molly has a mean streak for those who deserve it. That doesn't make her a monster."

Charlie shook his head. "There's other stories, remember? And not all of the stories are true, but they all . . . feel like the truth, you know what I mean? And one thing they all say—" He wagged a finger. "—is that anyone who gets involved with Molly Flammare winds up dead."

Jimmy and I looked at each other, then back at Charlie.

"Maybe not like Eddie," Charlie went on. "But dead is dead. She's like a spider!" He held up a hand with the fingers curled. "Sitting in her web. Waiting for flies to buzz too close."

Then he realized what he was doing, and pulled himself together. He picked up the newspaper again, and paged through it. "Look, what you do is your business," he said. "But I'm giving you free advice here, and I'm advising you to stay away from—"

Then he saw something in the newspaper, and went white as a sheet.

The paper fell from his hands. He stared at us wide-eyed, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

"Smoke break," he finally got out. "I need a smoke break." He reached under the counter and brought out a pack of cigarettes. Then he took off through the back door like greased lightning.

Jimmy went around the counter and picked up the paper to see what had spooked Charlie.

"Oh, God," Jimmy said. "Look at this."

I saw a full-page ad showing the silhouette of a woman leaning against a wall, a woman who could only be Molly Flammare. The ad read:

Don't worry about them, Charlie

They're not the ones I'm after . . .

. . . and neither were you.

MOLLY'S

SUPPER CLUB

27th and Lyndale

open till 2 AM

By the way . . .

. . . your metaphor's a little off.

* * *

In the end, Jimmy and I went to Molly's. The way we saw it, Charlie's brother only got what he deserved, and we hadn't done anything like that. And Jimmy really needed that job.

Not that we didn't have misgivings. Anything that spooked Charlie like that was something to look out for. So Jimmy and I agreed to mind our p's and q's around her.

Molly's Supper Club was about what you'd expect—big and classy, like Molly herself. You felt like you had to be in a tuxedo just to be there. If you stood on the marble floor, you could see your reflection staring right back at you. If you stood on the carpet, you felt your feet sink an inch deep.

A guy came out to meet us, saying his name was Louis. "And you must be Tommy!" he said, ruffling my hair. I hated it when people did that. "Be with you in a second, I gotta set your friend up here." He shook Jimmy's hand. "Mr. Blatta, sir. Molly told me what you did for Tommy here. You're a real stand-up guy."

"I try to be."

"I understand you were a soldier in the war?"

"I was in the Army. Medically discharged."

"Which unit?"

"Eighty-seventh Infantry."

Louis nodded. "My son was in the Fifty-third. Didn't come back."

"I'm very sorry to hear that, sir."

"Yeah, well. Anyway, Molly asked me to set you up with a job. You up to waiting tables?"

"You know what they say about beggars and choosers."

"Good answer. It's not a bad job; you're on your feet most of the time, but the tips are decent. I'll get you into some threads." He pushed Jimmy towards the kitchen door. "Be with you in a minute, Tommy! Go ahead and take a look round!"

So I was all alone with the tables and the chairs and the bandstand on the stage. I hadn't been in a place that quiet in years.

I went up and stood at center stage. They would probably just make me another member of the band, but I could dream, couldn't I? Here I could be the center of attention. No cars roaring by, no talking, just me and my trumpet, and the spotlight.

I stood there, looking around. Then I raised my trumpet, and I played "Moonlight Serenade."

For those few minutes, I was the only person in the world. Playing the trumpet took no effort at all. There's never any effort when you're doing what you want to do, what you're meant to do. At least you don't notice it. I closed my eyes, and while the song lasted, there was only me, and the soaring notes.

I let the last note linger, keeping my eyes closed as the memory of the song soaked into the walls, and into me. And when I opened my eyes, there was Molly Flammare standing in a doorway.

The light shone behind her, so I couldn't see her face. But there was a smile in her voice as she said, "You're hired, Tommy."

I ducked my head. "Thanks, ma'am."

Then Louis and Jimmy came in through another doorway, Jimmy decked out in a brand-new monkey suit. "What do you think, Tommy?" he said.

I grinned. "Looking good, Jimmy." In the back of my head, though, I got a little worried. Was I going to have to wear one of those things?

"Kid, was that you playing that trumpet?" Louis asked.

"'Course it was," said Molly as she sauntered into the room. "You think I'd tell you to hire just any old bum off the street?" She stopped in front of me, and looked me up and down. Standing on the stage, I was almost at eye level with her.

"You got anything in his size?" she asked Louis.

"No, ma'am. We'll have to buy one custom made."

Molly smiled, and ruffled my hair. "Don't worry, kid. The suit's on me."

* * *

That's how I started my new job at Molly's. I met the band a couple hours later. They listened to me play, and just like that, I was one of the boys.

We played five nights a week, with Sundays and Mondays off. The monkey suit drove me nuts at first, but I got used to it. Having all those people looking at me also took some getting used to, but I learned to shut them out of my head and focus on the song. In time, I learned to enjoy myself.

And boy did Jimmy Blatta's prospects improve. He became the go-to guy on the staff, he worked so hard. He was just glad to be working, able to put money in his pocket and food on his plate. We didn't get much chance to talk during work, but we would nod at each other across the room on occasion. There was one time he seemed a bit under the weather—I found him in the restroom splashing water on his face—but other than that, he was fine.

Molly gave both of us apartments in the same building. This made me a little nervous—I was making more money than I'd ever dreamed of, but could I afford an apartment in this building?—but Molly said it was on her. I wondered if she was worried about Johnny Icarus—and then he showed up at our front doorstep.

I'd walked into Jimmy's room one day to say hi, and I saw him at his window, which looked down at the front of the club.

"Hey, Jimmy—"

"Sh!" he said, and beckoned me to the window.

I looked down and saw Molly, standing in front of the entrance like she was guarding it. In front of her, climbing out of a shiny black limousine, stood three men dressed in pinstripe suits and red ties.

The two on either side had fists the size of cement blocks, maybe to compensate for the lack of a neck. The one in the middle was the kind of big that had to step sideways through a door. His huge head swiveled slowly from side to side, looking at everything as if he owned it. But Molly wasn't impressed one bit.

"This is an exclusive club, Johnny," she said. "You're not welcome here."

So that was Johnny Icarus?

"Not welcome here?" Johnny echoed, indicating his limo and his bodyguards with a sweep of his gut. "Am I missing something? Rest assured, madam, I simply come here for mirth and merriment—and let me add that I am a generous tipper."

Molly shook her head. "It's a question of reputation. I don't like the way you operate. Stop muscling in on the mom and pop businesses, and we'll talk. Until then, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Johnny glared at her. "Are you telling me how to do business?"

"In this town, you're damn right I am."

Johnny took a step toward. "Now see here—"

Molly thrust her fist into the air, and a thunderclap boomed so close I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"Let's see if that improved your hearing," Molly said as the cold wind blew around her, and storm clouds boiled overhead. "I don't like what people tell me about you. Until I do, you're not getting into my club."

One of Johnny's goons took a step toward Molly, but Johnny waved him back.

"You haven't hurt anybody yet, Johnny, so I'm still going to give you a chance. Either stop leaning on the mom-and-pops, or leave town. The sooner the better."

Johnny Icarus held himself very still. He held his gaze on Molly, but she looked right back at him.

Finally, Molly won the stare-down. Johnny looked to his two goons and jerked his head toward the limo. They entered it, and drove away.

A lot of people were telling that story the next day, believe me. But as time wore on, and nothing happened, we soon forgot about it.

We learned a little more about Molly herself, too. Every so often she would come down to the club, not every night, but enough so we wouldn't miss her. She had this special table reserved just for her; no one could sit there even when she wasn't around. It had a ticker bolted to it, like the kind investors use to keep track of their stocks. Only it didn't keep track of stocks as far as anyone could tell. Most of the time it didn't even work, even when Molly was there. But every two or three days, it would start ticking, and spit out a foot or two of tape.

When Molly wasn't there—usually around the daylight hours—me and Jimmy Blatta would take a look at it. It wasn't any language I'd ever seen. I thought it might be Chinese, but Jimmy said that wasn't it. We even asked Louis about it once, but he said he didn't know either.

When Molly was there—she'd be sitting at her table, listening to the band—she would pick up the tape and look at it. Then she would get up and leave the club. No one knew what she did during those times, not even Louis, or if he did know, he wasn't telling. Me, I liked to think it was that ticker told Molly I was in trouble with those boys in the alley. When she came back, sometimes she was in a real bad mood. And when that happened, me and Jimmy always noticed it was raining outside.

But that only happened once in while. Most of the time Jimmy was happy to have a job, I was happy to play trumpet, and Molly sat at her table.

One night when the place had closed, Jimmy was busy wiping tables, I was sitting on the stage with my trumpet, when Molly walked in. She wore white this time, white skirt and jacket over the black turtleneck and the black gloves, and for no reason I could think of, this seemed like a special occasion. "Evening, ma'am," I said, but she had her eyes fixed on Jimmy.

She walked up to him. He stopped wiping the table, and looked up at her.

"Hi, Jimmy."

"Ma'am."

"Working hard?"

"I suppose so."

She took his hand. "Sometimes you work too hard. Come here."

And she led him onto the dance floor.

I was floored. I'd never seen Molly do anything like this, or heard of it. On their nights off, sometimes the boys in the band would look into their bottles and wonder out loud what sort of man would get hitched up with Molly Flammare. He would have to be Superman or Captain America, or else he'd have to settle for living in Molly's shadow, because more than anything else, Molly had guts—and class. Somebody wondered if Louis was Molly's man, but I'd never seen them look at each other that way.

But then, never in my wildest dreams did I think she would have an interest in Jimmy Blatta.

"Tommy," Molly said. "Play a little something for us."

It took me a moment to pick my jaw up off the floor. Then I raised my trumpet, and began to play.

It was just like my first day at Molly's, only this time, even I wasn't there. It was just the song, and Jimmy Blatta, and Molly Flammare, and it was like they were flying.

You'd think a man dancing with a woman who stood head and shoulders above him would look pretty funny, but not here, not with Molly. It might have been that Jimmy was a pretty good dancer—when the band was doing practice sessions, I'd seen him do some pretty neat moves with a mop, just for laughs—but it might have been Molly too. I wouldn't put it past her to know how to give a man his dignity. Like I said, Molly had class.

When the song was over, I put down my trumpet, only then realizing how tired I was. Molly and Jimmy came down to earth, not saying anything, just looking at each other.

Molly reached up with a gloved hand, and caressed his cheek. "Good night, Jimmy," she said. Then she walked out of the room.

Jimmy stood there for I don't know how long. I watched him. It looked like he was about to cry.

"Jimmy?" I said. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm . . . look, kid, no offense, just beat it, okay? I need to be alone for a while."

I said, "Okay, Jimmy," and I left the same way Molly had gone.

When I entered the hallway, I saw Molly waiting at the elevator.

All of a sudden I wondered if this was what Charlie meant when he said everyone who got close to Molly wound up dead. Was she starting on Jimmy now? Was she luring him to her web, only to . . . what?

Maybe I should have done my wondering someplace else. Because Molly turned and saw me.

"What's on your mind, Tommy?"

I stood there with my mouth open, just waiting for any flies who might want to set up shop.

"I . . . uh . . . nothing, ma'am. Good night."

"Tommy." She sat on the leather-cushioned bench behind her. "Come here."

I did. God only knows why. My feet moved like they had minds of their own, and there I was, standing in front of Molly.

"Talk to me."

But I couldn't talk. What the hell could I say?

"Ma'am . . . Look, you really got to Jimmy back there, all right? He can barely think straight. And I consider him a friend, ma'am. And I'd hate to see him . . ."

That's all that would come out. But it seemed to be enough.

"You're right to be worried," said Molly. "Some dames will do that sort of thing just so they can rip a man's heart out. Some guys will go straight through hell and not think twice about it, but get them by the heart, and they wish they were dead. But that's not why I did it, Tommy. Jimmy's come across some hard luck, and I thought he deserved a little more than he's got. He wants to be something, Tommy. More than that, he wants to be the right kind of something. And when—"

She stopped herself. I have no idea what she was going to say.

What she said instead was: "Don't worry about it. Whatever's going to happen to Jimmy, it's not going to come from me."

The elevator opened, and Molly stood up.

"Good night, Tommy."

* * *

Things went back to normal after that. Well, sort of. To say nothing had changed between Jimmy and Molly would be lying. When they passed each other in the club or in the hallway, she would give him a smile and a "Hi, Jimmy," and he would say, "Ma'am," in tones of hushed reverence. Once I even caught them talking in the elevator lobby. I couldn't hear what they said, but Jimmy's face told me he had something big on his mind. Then Molly reached up and caressed his face with that gloved hand of hers. I heard her say, "Later, Jimmy." Then the elevator opened, and she went up to her apartment.

But on this day in particular, Molly wasn't anywhere in the building. The foot or so of tape hanging from the ticker on her table gave us some clue as to why she'd gone.

"Why do you keep looking at those things?" Jimmy asked me. "Nobody can read them except Molly."

I shrugged. "Just curiosity."

"Hey, we haven't been to Charlie's in a while. What do you say we go and see how he's doing?"

"Sure." It was our day off, and I was itching for something to do. "I'm in the mood for a burger."

We walked, since we weren't in any hurry, and it was a nice day out. We weren't paying that much attention. If we had, we might have noticed somebody following us.

When we came in, Charlie acted like it was Christmas morning. He shook our hands, asking how we were doing and grinning to beat the band. We asked for a couple hamburgers, and he said sure, it was on him. We'd come in the dead hours before the lunchtime rush, and he had nothing better to do.

"So . . . you still working at Molly's?" We could tell it was still a touchy subject with him.

"You bet, Charlie," Jimmy answered. "Nothing's happened to us, either. Life at the diner been treating you good?"

"Can't complain," said Charlie as he plunked a couple Cokes on the counter. "Business has been pretty steady. But I hear—"

The front door jingled, and in came Johnny Icarus and his two goons. Behind Johnny stood a kid. It was the same kid who cornered me in that alley when I first met Molly.

Johnny pointed at me. "This the kid, Joey?"

"Yes sir, Mr. Icarus. That's him."

"Young sir," said Johnny as his gut swiveled to face me. "I will thank you to come with us."

"What do you want with him?" said Jimmy.

"I believe he works at a certain establishment," said Johnny, "called Molly's. I wish to ask him a few questions about the proprietor."

"Then ask them here," said Jimmy, "or ask me. The kid doesn't know anything that I don't."

"Look, gentlemen," said Johnny as he spread his hands, "I'm willing to make it worth the boy's while. I'll give him anything he wants, chocolate bars, baseball cards, I'll even pay for his hamburger—"

"Kid? You want to go with him?"

"No."

"Then he ain't going!" said Charlie as he raised his shotgun.

Poor Charlie didn't stand a chance. He should have known they wouldn't turn tail and run at the sight of a lousy shotgun; he should have just started blasting. But he hesitated, and that gave one of Johnny's boys enough time to take out a gun and shoot Charlie between the eyes.

Jimmy took his Coke bottle by the neck and smashed it on the edge of the counter. Then he jumped at the guy who'd shot Charlie and drove the sharp edges into his throat.

That left the other guy. He had a gun too, and he shot Jimmy in the back.

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I ran to Jimmy and shook him, calling his name over and over, crying my eyes out. Then I felt Johnny Icarus's hand on my shoulder.

"As I stated earlier," he said, "I wish to ask you a few questions regarding your employer."

* * *

They stuffed me in a car, and kept my head down. The goon Jimmy killed must have been the one who usually drove, because this guy damn near flipped us over a couple times. When we stopped, we were in some sort of warehouse. They took me to a little office in the corner, and sat me on a chair across from some guy reading a newspaper. When he put it down, I found myself looking at a priest.

"Father Jacques," said Johnny Icarus. "Here is young Mr. Gabriel, as promised."

Father Jacques mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. "I'll get to work on him right away," he said.

Now, I've heard of mob lawyers, mob accountants, even mob doctors. But a mob priest?

Johnny left, and the priest started asking me questions. What books does Miss Flammare read? What sort of furnishings does she have in her apartment? Have you ever seen a pentagram, either in her building, or on her person? I asked him some of my own questions, like what the hell was a pentagram? He stared at me a moment, then he got up, knocked on the door and asked for a pencil and paper. When he got them, he sat at the desk and drew a five-pointed star with a circle around it. He was real nervous about it, too.

"That's a pentagram," he said. "Have you seen it?"

I shook my head. "No."

He tore up the drawing, and crossed himself.

Then, there was a knock on the door. Mopping his forehead, Father Jacques got up and answered it. I saw Joey reading a newspaper before the priest shut the door behind him.

Seeing that newspaper gave me an idea. Father Jacques had left his paper on the desk. I grabbed the paper and started looking through it.

There was a full-page ad on page three:

You're finally catching on, kid.

Still got that box of matches I gave you?

MOLLY'S

SUPPER CLUB

27th and Lyndale

open till 2 AM

And don't touch anything metal.

A roll of thunder outside drove her point across real good.

I still had the box of matches in my pocket. But before I could figure out what to do, the door handle jiggled. I put the paper back, and sat down.

"Just give me five more minutes with him, Mr. Icarus," said Father Jacques as he came in.

Johnny closed the door without a word.

Father Jacques looked at me. I swear to God his eyeballs were sweating.

"Is there anything you can tell me?" he whispered. "Do you have any idea how she does what she does?"

I spread my hands. "Far as I can tell, she just . . . does it."

"Can you even tell me how she might be found?"

Thunder rumbled again. I jerked my thumb at it. "Sounds to me like she's coming for you."

He looked up like he was expecting lightning to come through the roof.

"Does she . . . treat you well?"

"If you're good to her, she's good to you. I wouldn't want to be the guy who killed Jimmy right now."

He settled down a little, thinking.

Then he asked: "Would holy water work against her?"

Something about the way he said it made me answer: "About as good as anything else."

He nodded, opened the door, and went through. "Mr. Icarus?"

He told Johnny that he had to get some holy water back at the church. Johnny said he would take Father Jacques there himself. I heard them leave in the car.

That left me with Joey and the goon who killed Jimmy.

Well, obviously I was supposed to start a fire. But with what? There was a wastebasket by the desk, but I didn't think that would be big enough. Then I saw the filing cabinet. Oh yeah, there were lots of papers in there. I struck a match and set a fire in all the drawers.

When the papers were good and burning, I called for help. When he heard me, the goon started swearing. He had to know I was up to something, but Johnny wanted me alive. So he opened the door.

"I'm gonna wring your little neck, kid!" he bellowed. And I got more than a little nervous. I knew Molly would save me, but I began wondering how. And when.

The goon took one step towards me. Then he stopped.

He looked at me like he was trying to remember something. Then he fell flat on his face.

A switchblade stuck out of his back. I looked up, and saw Joey.

I wondered what made him help me. Then I remembered.

"You were reading the newspaper."

Joey nodded, very slowly, like he was afraid he would fall apart.

"I'm . . . I'm very sorry for what happened to Jimmy and . . . and Charlie."

I didn't know what Molly said to him. Maybe I didn't want to know. I ran through the office door and out of the warehouse.

It was raining. I was just in time to see lightning strike not fifty feet away from me, and when I opened my eyes again, all four tires had been blown out on Johnny Icarus's car. It swerved in the mud, turning around a couple times and almost flipping over before it finally stopped. And there, about fifty feet beyond that, stood Molly, right in the middle of the road, like the wind, and the rain, and the lightning weren't even there.

Johnny climbed out of the car, dragging Father Jacques by his starched collar. He held the priest in front of him with one hand while the other held a Tommy gun.

"You crossed the line, Johnny." Even with all the wind and thunder, I could hear every word Molly said. "You shouldn't've done that to Jimmy and Charlie."

Johnny peeked over Father Jacques's shoulder. "You wouldn't hurt a man of the cloth, would you?"

Molly reached out with one hand.

"If I had to."

Father Jacques screamed as the lightning struck, and I flinched away again. But when I looked back, there lay Father Jacques face down in the mud, still screaming, still blubbering, still alive. A flaming pile of flesh was all that remained of Johnny Icarus.

Father Jacques pulled himself up to his knees. He folded his hands and prayed. He blubbered and shook so much he might have been saying "Now I lay me down to sleep" for all I knew. But he stayed there on his knees, still praying, until Molly walked up to him, and he looked at her.

"Get out of here," Molly said. "I don't ever want to see your face in this town again."

He didn't need to be told twice. He got up and ran, never looking back. Last time I saw him, just before he disappeared into the rain, he was still running.

Then I heard somebody else's footsteps. I turned and saw Joey running for it from the warehouse.

"Not you, Joey!" Molly shouted. "Come here!"

He stopped dead in his tracks. I thought he looked terrified before.

"I said come here, Joey!"

Slowly, staring straight at the ground, he turned and shuffled through the mud toward Molly.

Just then it dawned on me that I felt sorry for him. That was probably why I called out to him, "Joey."

He stopped and looked at me.

"If she wanted you dead, you would be."

And I walked with him to where Molly stood.

She knelt down and grabbed his arm.

"You've been hanging out with the wrong crowd, Joey. But that's going to change because you'll be working for me from now on. Meet me at the club at seven tomorrow morning, and I'll set you up with a job. And if you're not there at seven, I'll come looking for you. You got me?"

"Y-yes, m-ma'am."

"Look at me, Joey."

He didn't.

"Look at me!"

Then he did.

"Don't worry about it," Molly said. "Keep your nose clean, and you'll be fine." She stood up. "Now get out of here."

As Joey ran off, the whole thing came flooding back to me, first Charlie's death, then Jimmy's. I started crying again.

"I'm sorry, Molly. Guess we should've checked with you before going to Charlie's."

Molly shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Tommy. Even I can't be everywhere at once."

Then we heard a car engine, and we saw a pair of headlights followed by a beautiful silver-grey car with Louis in the driver's seat. Molly opened the door, leaned in, and said, "Take us to the hospital, Louis."

The hospital?

"You mean . . . Jimmy's still alive?"

Molly just said, "Get in, Tommy."

* * *

As Louis drove, Molly told me what happened: after Johnny left the diner, Jimmy dragged himself on his stomach, smearing blood all over the place, to the curb, where he managed to hail a cab. The cabbie wanted to take him straight to the hospital, but Jimmy said no, take him to Molly's. So that's what the cabbie did. When they got there, Molly was still gone, but Louis was there, and he knew how to get a hold of her. But he sent Jimmy to the hospital first.

When we arrived, Molly knew exactly where to go. A doctor stood waiting for us outside a hospital room.

"How is he, Danny?" Molly asked.

"He's lost a lot of blood, Molly. He won't last the night." He looked through the door. "'Course, he wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway."

"What do you mean?" I said. "What's he talking about, Molly?"

Molly only said, "Tell him, Danny."

Danny looked at me. "You know Mr. Blatta was in the Army, right?"

"Yeah. He said he was medically discharged."

"That's right. But he probably didn't tell you that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. They said he had about six months to live. So they sent him back home from Europe." Danny shrugged. "He never even saw combat."

Molly looked over to where Jimmy lay. "Can we talk to him?"

"Sure."

Jimmy looked even worse than I expected. I had no problem believing he wouldn't live to see the morning. But when he opened his eyes and tried to smile, he mostly succeeded.

"Tommy," he whispered. "You're okay. That's good."

"Yeah, Jimmy," I said. "I'm okay. And Johnny's gone now. Molly took care of him."

He looked at her.

"Molly . . ."

She shook her head. "Oh, Jimmy. You didn't have to prove anything. Not to me."

"Not to you, maybe. But there's some things a man's got to prove to himself, you know?"

Molly didn't say anything. It looked like she couldn't say anything.

"Molly . . . whenever I asked you . . . that question . . . you always said, 'later.'" He closed his eyes, and opened them again. "Can 'later' be now?"

Molly stood stock still. It was like time itself had stopped.

Then she said, "Sure, Jimmy. You can have it now."

And she took off her gloves.

This really spooked me, because I had never seen her do that before. She had smooth, milky-white hands that looked like they belonged on a statue. And she leaned over Jimmy Blatta, she placed her milky white hands on either side of his face, she lowered her lips to his, and they shared a long, slow kiss.

I stood there and watched. Again, it was like I wasn't even there. There was only Jimmy Blatta, and Molly Flammare, and they were dancing one last time.

When Molly pulled back, Jimmy's face had changed. He wasn't smiling, but it was really peaceful, like everything was going to be okay. Molly looked at that face, not saying a word. Then she bit her lip, and left the room in a hurry.

The doctor went over to Jimmy, and pulled the sheet over his head.

I looked at him. "Aren't you going to check his pulse or something?"

"He's dead, kid," said the doctor. "Trust me."

I looked at him a moment longer. Then I went into the hallway.

Molly sat on one of a row of chairs standing against the wall. She had her gloves back on. When I sat down next to her, she said, "Poor guy. Never had a chance. Just couldn't win for losing."

I didn't know what to say. But Molly went on talking without me: "And the only thing I could give him was . . ."

She waved a hand at the room we had just left, shaking her head. Then she began to cry.

I was only a kid. What could I say to her? "Come on, Molly. Don't cry," I said, and reached up to wipe away her tears—

Her hand clamped down on my wrist like a steel trap. It almost hurt. No. It did hurt.

"Never touch me, Tommy," she said softly. It was a gentle warning, a friendly warning, but still a warning. "No one can ever touch me."

It wasn't until then that I knew why Molly always wore gloves, why she dressed for autumn in the middle of summer. Only then did I know where those stories Charlie had heard came from. Only then did I understand the gift that she gave Jimmy Blatta.

I pried my wrist from her fingers. Then I took her hand, squeezing it through the glove. "We can do this, though," I said. "Can't we, Molly?"

She didn't say a word. But she did squeeze back.

We sat there forever in the hallway, holding hands, remembering Jimmy as the world went by without us. I have no idea how long we stayed like that, but when she was ready to face life again, Molly gave my hand an extra squeeze.

"Thanks, Tommy."

* * *

Joey got a job bussing tables at the club. The first month or so, he tiptoed everywhere, afraid of his own shadow, but then he learned to stop being afraid of Molly and start respecting her. Then he really turned his life around, and now he might actually turn out to be a decent human being.

I still play trumpet with the band. Sure, I could have moved on to bigger and better things. Hell, Armstrong came to town once and asked me if I wanted to play with him. Armstrong, can you believe it? But ever since Jimmy Blatta, I've noticed Molly feeling more and more down, and other than Louis, I'm about the only friend she has. And when I look at her when she's sad, I remember that the only time I've seen her truly happy is when I'm playing trumpet for her. There's no way I could take that away from Molly. So I stay at the club.

Still, I don't want from her what Jimmy did. I'm all right with just flying around her, admiring her for what she is, respecting her for what she does. I told that to Louis once, and he said I got the metaphor right.

Molly still has that ticker on the table, and she still does what it tells her, whatever that is. I think the city is her responsibility, and she's there whenever it needs her. But sometimes she needs something too, and when she does, I'm there for her.

It rains a lot more now in the city. Sometimes, at two AM when the club is closed, Louis and I hear thunder rumbling outside, and we know that Molly needs some cheering up. Then I walk onto the stage with my trumpet, and I wait there until Molly comes in, and she sits at her table without saying a word. Then I put the trumpet to my lips, and I play for Molly until she feels better, and she lets the moon come out from behind the clouds.

* * *

Dedicated to the memory of Claude Dziuk (1929-2005), my senior high school English teacher, who is now reading Shakespeare aloud in that big classroom in the sky. Jason D. Wittman

Jason Wittman is also a game designer.

Gnome Improvement

Written by Rebecca Lickiss
Illustrated by Alison Williams

"Gnome Improvement!" The heavy, almost cardboard, door hanger read in bright red letters on an emerald green background. "Bring good luck to your home and your family, brighten your lawn, and make your gnomes happy. We pick up and deliver your lawn gnomes to the Gnome Spa (TM), and return them refreshed, renewed, and revived. Call today!"

Marty stood in the summer-time shade of the overhang above the front step to his little slice of suburban heaven. Home, his castle, his retreat from his lousy job and idiot neighbors. He frowned at the door hanger, wondering if it was a joke of some kind. He held the paper close to his face to read the fine print at the bottom.

"Pick up, patching, painting, clear weather coating, and return included in offer. Pick up from front lawn only. No guarantees on exact dye shades for coloring. Not responsible for gnomes not on front lawn, major repairs, or gnomes who run away after service."

Lawn gnome maintenance. What would they think of next? Marty had to admit that his gnomes were sun-faded, and could probably use some paint and repair. The young gnome couple pushing the flower-pot wagon were chipped, and the colors on the old gnome sleeping under the tree had faded to pale pastels. At least half of the gnomes had originally belonged to his parents; he remembered some from his childhood. Perhaps he should call. He'd talk with Lisa, his wife, about it first.

* * *

The gnomes were gone for two weeks, leaving what appeared to Marty to be strange empty patches in the yard. He knew it was all in his head, but the yard just didn't look right without gnomes. The day the gnomes were dropped off, he and Lisa spent the evening arranging and re-arranging the gnomes.

Marty held the old sleeping gnome, examining it in wonder. He could almost see the weave of the cobalt blue shirt and deep red trousers, the painting was so realistic. Veins and age spots had been painted onto the old gnome's hands. Marty watched the old gnome for a moment, sitting in the dark, pungent bark-mulch at the base of the maple tree.

"Lisa, come here a minute." Marty moved to the other side of the tree, to examine the gnome from another angle. "This sounds stupid, but does it look like the old man is breathing to you?"

Laughing, Lisa walked over from where she'd been setting the flower-pot wagon up, to hug him. "They did a fantastic job. I'd swear the couple look like blushing newlyweds that just realized everyone knows what they were doing last night. And Big Frank looks like he's been to the gym."

Big Frank stood protectively, ax in hand, near the front door; as he had at Marty's parents' house through most of Marty's childhood. Marty's mother had always said with Big Frank outside she'd never fear the wolf at the door. Somehow the new paint job made Big Frank look like a gnome bodybuilder on steroids, just looking for an excuse to use the ax.

Marty smiled up at Lisa. "Yes. Definitely money well spent. They look like brand new gnomes."

Just then Mutt, the Jackson's dog from next door, squatted in their yard. Lisa and Marty ran at him, shooing him away.

Laura Jackson hurried over to grab Mutt's collar. "Sorry about that."

"It's all right," Lisa said. She whispered to Marty, "I think they trained him to come over here and do that."

It was an old complaint, and Marty quickly distracted her with the display of the lawn gnomes.

* * *

Three days later, as Marty stepped out of his car, returning home from work, he saw Laura Jackson leading Mutt out for a walk. She waved to him. "Hey, neighbor. How was work?"

"Fine. And yours?"

"Fine." Laura pulled on the leash. Mutt dragged behind her, obviously trying to go in the opposite direction. Laura frowned at him momentarily, before turning back to Marty. "I've been meaning to ask if you've been using some new fertilizer or weed killer or something on your lawn."

Marty looked at his yard. He'd mown over the weekend, but a few dandelions had sprung up, testifying that he hadn't put any weed killer down. "No. Why?"

"Mutt's been acting funny around your yard. He won't go near it, if he can avoid it." Laura stepped backward as Mutt lunged against the leash. "I just thought maybe he smelled something different."

"No, we haven't used anything, as a matter of fact." Marty stepped over onto the Jackson's yard, and crouched down by Mutt. Mutt sniffed and licked Marty's hand. "Well, he still likes me." He shrugged, and stood up. "Maybe some big Doberman's been marking my yard."

"Strange. Well, see you later." Laura waved as she walked off in the other direction.

It was strange. Now that he thought on it, Marty realized there hadn't been any dog piles in the yard since the night they'd arranged the lawn gnomes.

Big Frank had a strangely smug look on his face that Marty didn't remember being there. Marty glanced back at his neighbor's retreating back. Could it? Just in case, he leaned over, patted Big Frank's head, and whispered, "Good going."

* * *

A week later, he found Lisa by the flower-pot wagon when he came home. She grinned at him. "Where did you get the little girl gnome. She is precious."

"Little girl gnome?" Marty asked.

Lisa waved a hand. Standing just behind the couple pushing the flower-pot wagon was a small, cute, gnome girl. She looked shyly at a tiny rose she held in her apron. She was no taller than knee high to her mother.

Marty shook his head. "I didn't buy any new gnomes."

"Then where did she come from?"

They stared at the little girl for a while, before going back in the house.

By fall a line of four little gnome girls stretched behind the couple pushing the wagon. The shy one with the rose in her apron was the biggest, almost half the size of her mother. Feeling rather stupid, Marty took the couple back behind the house for a quick lecture on birth control.

* * *

The maple leaves turned red, and fell in a scarlet carpet around the tree. One night, as they were working in the yard, Lisa brushed the day's fallen leaves off the old man, and discovered the large crack, nearly splitting him in two.

They carefully wrapped him up, and Marty took him to the Gnome Spa the next day. He had to drive out into the countryside. He knew he'd found the place even before he saw the mailbox with the address.

Approximately two acres of rolling, tree-shaded lawn, enclosed in a white picket fence, contained hundreds of lawn gnomes. In the middle sat a small cottage, where a wizened old man stood on a porch, watching Marty approach with his blanket-wrapped bundle.

Finding himself unaccountably tongue tied, Marty gently unwrapped the bundle, and held the old gnome out for the man to examine. As the man ran a finger lightly over the old gnome's features, Marty stammered, "C-can you fix him?"

The old man shook his head. "Death comes to all things. I'm sorry." He leaned on his cane. "You'd best take him home, and dispose of him."

Marty and Lisa buried the old gnome under the maple tree. It seemed to Marty that all the gnomes looked sad, even the blushing couple pushing the flower-pot wagon.

As he raked the leaves the next weeks, Marty talked, very quietly, to the old gnome, telling him about work, and his dreams and hopes. He spoke to the other gnomes as he puttered around the lawn, but he mostly just said hello to them. He didn't talk to them like he did to what he thought of as the old gnome's grave.

It seemed to soothe Marty. His job went smoother, and he found himself earning an extra bonus. He told the old gnome about it, and mentioned he'd hoped for a raise too.

* * *

Marty had his raise by Thanksgiving, when Lisa surprised him with a gift.

"But what's it for? What occasion?" Marty asked as he opened the wrapping.

"Just because. Now open it."

Inside was a lawn gnome. A winking man caught in the act of raising his hat, possibly to a passerby. He wore a vibrant blue jacket and deep red trousers, with shiny black boots. A Gnome Spa (TM) tag was looped around his ankle with gold metallic string.

"I know he can't take the place of the old man," Lisa said. "But somehow he reminds me of him. And I thought he'd look cute out by the driveway."

They took the winking gnome outside, to a crisp, sunshiny fall day. The other gnomes stood in their places. After a few tries, they decided he belonged several feet back from the sidewalk, near the maple tree. He made the place look more welcoming and friendly.

"Welcome to the family," Marty whispered to him, and Lisa leaned down to kiss the top of his head.

* * *

Lisa stumbled at the front steps. Marty caught her arm, and steadied her. "Just a little further. As soon as we get in you go to bed. I'll bring your medicine."

Viral pneumonia the doctor had told them. Marty worried over Lisa as he helped her to their bedroom, and tucked her into the bed. In the kitchen he took the brown plastic medicine bottles out of the paper pharmacy sacks. He opened the cough syrup, and took a whiff. Not even the syrupy-sweet, artificially flavored cherry additives could overcome the nasty medicinal smell of the expectorant.

Carefully laying out measured doses of the medicine, one cup with the syrup and another with the pills, Marty prepared a tray to take back to Lisa. A glass of orange juice, a glass of water, and a small candy dish of nibblers completed his work.

After seeing that she'd taken her medicine, Marty left her to rest, and puttered around the house. At appropriate intervals he dished out more medicine, which Lisa frowned at before taking.

Marty woke up in the middle of the night, struggling against a great weight on his chest. He felt too, too weak to push it off. Managing to get his eyes open, he discovered he'd fallen asleep on the living room couch. The overhead light blazed down, but while Marty had heard that light could push things he didn't think it could crush his chest, though there wasn't anything else that might be doing it.

He fumbled his way to the kitchen, and found the thermometer. A quick check revealed he had a fever.

"A lot of good you are," Marty scolded himself. "How're you going to take care of Lisa if you've come down with it too?"

His last thought, as he sank to the floor, was that he probably ought to take some of her foul tasting medicine.

* * *

Tiny hands opened one eye, and Marty had a quick glimpse of very short, bearded, black garbed man with an old fashioned reflector on a band around his head, just above a pair of old fashioned eyeglasses. Whoever it was made some noises, rather like, "hmmm," "ahhh," oh," as he poked and prodded Marty.

Marty realized he should get up and check this out, but just couldn't work up the energy to do so. He opened his eyes, and watched the little man, who looked like the lawn gnome version of an old fashioned Victorian doctor, rummage around in a small, battered black bag. Marty closed his eyes and sighed. He must have been thinking about the lawn gnomes too much recently.

A small hand opened Marty's mouth, and poured a truly fetid liquid onto his tongue. Marty gagged, choked, and swallowed. Tears watered his eyes, and dripped from the corners. He sat up on the hard kitchen floor, leaning against the cabinet door, looking down on the lawn gnome doctor.

The doctor merely smiled up at him, patted his leg, and walked away toward the bedroom. Marty wanted to get up and follow, but felt himself drifting off to sleep.

* * *

"That had to be the strangest dream I ever had," Marty said, as he finished telling Lisa about his fevered hallucinations.

"Funny, I was having similar dreams." Lisa kicked the covers off, and sat up on the side of the bed. "A cute little doctor in old fashioned black clothes with a little black bag coming in here, and taking care of me. You don't think...?" The bed rocked gently as she stood up, and made her way wobbling toward the window. She pulled back the thick blue drapes, letting the bright sunshine stream into the room. "Oh, my."

Marty staggered over to stand by her at the window. There on the lawn, by the hedges under the window, was a tiny black carriage, with a little lawn gnome doctor sitting on the seat, wearing an old fashioned black suit, and beside the doctor was a small, battered black bag. Nearby, Big Frank guarded the front door.

"If we don't get a bill from the Gnome Spa," Marty said, "We'd better make a large donation to their gnome reclamation fund."

* * *

Rebecca Lickiss is the author of several books and stories.

A Hire Power

Written by J. Simon
Illustrated by K. Thor Jensen

Another Monday in the office, and it was going to be a bad one. She could tell. Liz sipped her coffee and grimaced. Stone cold. She didn't know how they did it. The stencil on her door read: "Liz Flaraherty, Inhuman Resources." Her computer had a virus scanner, a firewall, and a jingly bell to ward off demonic possession. Her stapler rarely stayed where she put it, though she never actually saw it move. All in a day's work.

The phone rang. She picked up—"Hello?"

"Divination support."

"I don't need support."

"You will."

Liz slammed down the receiver. This was bad. Tech support had a crystal ball, and they only called when something very bad was about to happen. On the other hand, if she avoided talking to them, she could put off the otherwise inevitable disaster . . .

". . . except that you can't," said Devon as he slipped into her office, "since we knew that would be your attitude and only rang the phone as a distraction. Sorry."

"All right. What's going to happen this time?"

He shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. Causality. You've got to actually do it before the me that was in the past can foresee the future you doing it and become the present me waiting for the present you to do what the future you did to summon the past me to fix the problem that hasn't happened yet."

"Did you, perchance, foresee a swift kick in the butt?"

He turned and pointed. There was a pillow stuffed down his backside.

"Damn you."

"Go on. Don't mind me. Go through your normal routine."

Liz reached cautiously toward the computer, eyes never leaving Devon. No reaction. With the delicacy of someone probing for mines, she touched her coffee mug. The stapler. The file cabinet. He just watched her.

"Give me a hint."

"Dinosaurs versus tanks."

"What?"

"You'll see."

"I don't need this," Liz groaned. Still watching Devon, she lifted the mail bin up onto her desk. It was locked seventeen ways with cold iron and had a gilded goat's skull on the top. It rattled ominously. Little paper fingers reached questingly under the lid.

"Isn't there supposed to be a blanket counter-animation on my office?"

"Dunno. Didn't foresee that problem. Were any error messages oozing from the walls in pentagrams of blood when you came in?"

"Listen, Devon, résumé golems may be made from paper, but they're strong. Just what problem did you foresee?"

There was a grating creak, a sudden jolt, and the mail bin's lock snapped right off. Hundreds of résumé golems swarmed out of the box, chortling and cavorting and shouting Employment Objectives in reedy little voices. Devon held up a shiny, brand-new lock. "That one," he said.

Liz rubbed her temples. Such an auspicious start to the day. Dozens of résumé golems danced in a fey ring on her desk, invoking the elder gods of Accounts Receivable. Devon shrugged and went about fixing the mail bin. Animate paper men climbed up her shoulders to whisper salary requirements in her ear.

"All right. That's it. Wally! Pedro!"

The two large paperweights on her desk quivered. At her command, they twisted to look at her, air bubbles pushing up to form bulging frog-like "eyes."

"Eliminate all résumés that have not graduated from an accredited hundred-year wizarding college," she decided. "I want archmaster-level experience with large distributed divinations,

WIZ-XP, QuikFetish, GolemPublisher, oh yes, and twelve years' experience with that time-travel cantrip that's going to be released next month."

The paperweights smiled, exposing ghastly maws dripping with molten glass, their eyes now glowing a dusky demonic red. Slithering along the desk, they began slurping and chomping and chewing their way through the clutter. Devon finished his work, glanced warily at the ongoing carnage, and hastily excused himself from the office. Finally, fourteen quiescent and eminently qualified résumés were in her hand—and one last envelope lay in the middle of the floor. Odd—usually the problem with Wally and Pedro was to stop them from eating things. As she watched, the envelope's printed address flowed and shifted into elegant script: "Just add water."

"I don't have time for this. Why," she asked rhetorically, "does everyone think I want to see their clever little tricks and gimmicks? Wally, Pedro! Destroy!"

The paperweights wobbled and gibbered, but did not advance. Liz groaned, dipped her fingers in cold coffee, and flicked a tiny droplet onto the paper.

THOOMP. Just like that, it expanded to the size of a small pillow. Curious despite herself, Liz flicked another drop onto it.

THOOMP-THOOMP-THOOMP. The paper doubled and redoubled in size until it was as big as a bed, and as thick. With a tearing sound, the oversized envelope opened and a blinking, bearded, bespectacled man crawled out.

"Archmage Argentus." He bowed. "Master of the arcane, keeper of dread secrets, proactive efficiency wizard nonpareil at your service."

He drew a glowing glyph in the air, and a little molten man dropped into Liz' coffee and began doing a credible breaststroke through the now-steaming liquid. Argentus snapped his fingers, and the creature vanished. "Kona elemental," he explained.

"Hmph." Liz blew on the coffee, sipped it. Whatever he'd done, it was good. Refilled to the top, too. "All right. That was kind of impressive. I don't suppose you have a gigantic expanding résumé in your pocket?"

The wizard shrugged. "That could, ah, be a slight problem. I've spent the past thousand years in a cave in England."

"Traditional. Enchanted sleep?"

He looked offended. "Writing a play, actually."

"A play? Just one? In a thousand years?"

Argentus glowered at her. "It was going magnificently well, thank you very much. A beautiful, poetic work of Old English. Then the vowels shifted. Hell of a thing, actually. Threw me for a loop. You don't know what it's like to labor for ages only to find everyone around you gabbling like buffoons."

"Try me."

"Well. I'd just about mastered the new way of speaking when this Shakespeare twerp came along and just happened to write about the same thing I was working on. Like no one else ever thought of star-crossed lovers getting bunged up in an accidental double suicide! But mine was funnier!"

"Ah," Liz said wisely.

"Anyway," Argentus said, "I kept at it. Re-worked the plot and crafted a play of truly masterful quality. By then, of course, Hollywood blockbusters were at their ascendancy and quality no longer mattered. Now I've got this slick little screenplay. Dinosaurs versus, er, tanks. It's a little rough." An addled look came into his eye. "But with a zombie cast and real dinosaurs, it would be amazingly cost-effective!"

Liz shook her head. "As much as I've enjoyed hearing about your personal life . . ."

"I have thirteen starving kids to support, too."

"Really?"

Argentus shrugged. "It could be arranged."

"Ah, right. But I'd rather hear about your powers and training. Why should I hire you?"

"Rather than tell you," the wizard grandly announced, "I will show you! Prepare to witness the mind-searing pleasures of hell itself!" He pulled himself up to his full height, beard bristling electrically, and shouted a word that seemed to echo to the corners of the universe. Liz blinked. She checked her watch. She glanced from side to side.

"So. Monday morning in my office is Hell. Somehow, I always suspected."

"No, no!" Argentus stamped his foot. "It's those damned bureaucrats! There are so many regulations these days, I can hardly conjure a piece of bread without a dozen forms and permissions. Bah! Like your soul would've been in that much danger!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Argentus, but I simply don't have a place for an enchanter whose knowledge is as out-of-date as your own."

"I'll start anywhere!" he said desperately. "I'll do anything! Look, I can make copies!"

Her coffee mug made a bubbling poink sound and turned into a dozen coffee mugs. Liz put her head in her hands.

"Unless you have four years' experience in an office environment . . ."

"You think that Argentus, master of stigmata, theurge of Thrain, demi-urge of Mystos, couldn't learn to use the fax machine?"

Liz started feeding the spurious coffee mugs to Wally and Pedro. They glowed appreciatively and began to purr. "To be perfectly frank," she said, "I don't think someone who goes around calling himself master of munchkins and bane of the universe—and means it—would make the best clerical assistant. Conjuring demons, intimidating customers, and loudly proclaiming one's superiority are expressly forbidden under line thirteen-B of the employee guidelines."

"Oh, really!"

"See for yourself."

Argentus scanned through the pamphlet she gave him. His eyebrows jumped a little. "No stealing souls on company time . . . internet strictly banned from orc-porn sites . . . Friday is Causal day and will be time-shifted to occur before Thursday . . ."

"Lines seventeen through twenty."

"Oh." He said nothing, but the pamphlet slowly crumpled and turned black in his hand, little bits of ash floating away until there was nothing left.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Argentus, but you're simultaneously over- and under-qualified for every position at this company. If you'd just spend a few decades learning NecroJava . . ."

The Wizard climbed into the big envelope on the floor and began closing it after him.

"Um . . . begging your pardon," he said apologetically, "but do you have any extremely large stamps?"

A note slipped under the door. It looked like Devon's handwriting. Not good.

"The door, Mr. Argentus. You could try using the door. Lots of wizards use doors."

He sniffed unhappily. "I'll bet your duct wizard doesn't."

"Our what wizard?"

"Duct wizard. The ducts and in-between spaces of a major company are far more comfortable than some damned drafty cave in England, and with all the snack machines for forage . . ." His eyes widened. "You mean you don't have a duct wizard?"

With a whooping cry, Argentus flew up through the air and smashed right through the ceiling of her office. Broken foam tiles showered onto her desk and, of course, into her coffee. There was a disturbing scuffle-scuffle-scuffle and the wizard had vanished somewhere into the guts of the building.

"Oh, by the fuzzy green nuts of . . . !"

Massaging her temples, Liz picked up Devon's note: "Do not, under any circumstances, let him know we don't have a duct wizard!!" Underneath, in smaller print: "P.S.: Now that we have a duct wizard, you'd better start leaving out an offering of Cheez-Lykes every Wednesday. Or else." Below that, even smaller yet: "P.P.S.: Don't invest in the zombie-dinosaur flick. Not after what Shakespeare's ghost is gonna put out three years from now."

Another Monday in the office, and it wasn't even noon yet. Liz coughed experimentally. Sure enough, she felt a sick day coming on. Tuesday would be fine. Tuesday she could handle. But today she was going to stroll through the arboretum, rent a crossbow, and frag a few smurfs.

Come to think of it, she felt better already.

* * *

CLASSICS

A Matter of Fact

Written by Rudyard Kipling
Illustrated by Kelley Hensing

And if ye doubt the tale I tell,
Steer through the South Pacific swell;
Go where the branching coral hives
Unending strife of endless lives,
Where, leagued about the 'wildered boat,
The rainbow jellies fill and float;
And, lilting where the laver lingers,
The starfish trips on all her fingers;
Where, 'neath his myriad spines ashock,
The sea-egg ripples down the rock;
An orange wonder dimly guessed,
From darkness where the cuttles rest,
Moored o'er the darker deeps that hide
The blind white Sea-snake and his bride
Who, drowsing, nose the long-lost ships
Let down through darkness to their lips.

The Palms.

Once a priest, always a priest; once a mason, always a mason; but once a journalist, always and forever a journalist.

There were three of us, all newspaper men, the only passengers on a little tramp steamer that ran where her owners told her to go. She had once been in the Bilbao iron ore business, had been lent to the Spanish Government for service at Manilla; and was ending her days in the Cape Town coolie-trade, with occasional trips to Madagascar and even as far as England. We found her going to Southampton in ballast, and shipped in her because the fares were nominal. There was Keller, of an American paper, on his way back to the States from palace executions in Madagascar; there was a burly half-Dutchman, called Zuyland, who owned and edited a paper up country near Johannesburg; and there was myself, who had solemnly put away all journalism, vowing to forget that I had ever known the difference between an imprint and a stereo advertisement.

Ten minutes after Keller spoke to me, as the Rathmines cleared Cape Town, I had forgotten the aloofness I desired to feign, and was in heated discussion on the immorality of expanding telegrams beyond a certain fixed point. Then Zuyland came out of his cabin, and we were all at home instantly, because we were men of the same profession needing no introduction. We annexed the boat formally, broke open the passengers' bath-room door—on the Manilla lines the Dons do not wash—cleaned out the orange-peel and cigar-ends at the bottom of the bath, hired a Lascar to shave us throughout the voyage, and then asked each other's names.

Three ordinary men would have quarrelled through sheer boredom before they reached Southampton. We, by virtue of our craft, were anything but ordinary men. A large percentage of the tales of the world, the thirty-nine that cannot be told to ladies and the one that can, are common property coming of a common stock. We told them all, as a matter of form, with all their local and specific variants which are surprising. Then came, in the intervals of steady card-play, more personal histories of adventure and things seen and suffered: panics among white folk, when the blind terror ran from man to man on the Brooklyn Bridge, and the people crushed each other to death they knew not why; fires, and faces that opened and shut their mouths horribly at red-hot window frames; wrecks in frost and snow, reported from the sleet-sheathed rescue-tug at the risk of frost-bite; long rides after diamond thieves; skirmishes on the veldt and in municipal committees with the Boers; glimpses of lazy tangled Cape politics and the mule-rule in the Transvaal; card-tales, horse-tales, woman-tales, by the score and the half hundred; till the first mate, who had seen more than us all put together, but lacked words to clothe his tales with, sat open-mouthed far into the dawn.

When the tales were done we picked up cards till a curious hand or a chance remark made one or other of us say, 'That reminds me of a man who—or a business which—' and the anecdotes would continue while the Rathmines kicked her way northward through the warm water.

In the morning of one specially warm night we three were sitting immediately in front of the wheel-house, where an old Swedish boatswain whom we called 'Frithiof the Dane' was at the wheel, pretending that he could not hear our stories. Once or twice Frithiof spun the spokes curiously, and Keller lifted his head from a long chair to ask, 'What is it? Can't you get any steerage-way on her?'

'There is a feel in the water,' said Frithiof, 'that I cannot understand. I think that we run downhills or somethings. She steers bad this morning.'

Nobody seems to know the laws that govern the pulse of the big waters. Sometimes even a landsman can tell that the solid ocean is atilt, and that the ship is working herself up a long unseen slope; and sometimes the captain says, when neither full steam nor fair wind justifies the length of a day's run, that the ship is sagging downhill; but how these ups and downs come about has not yet been settled authoritatively.

'No, it is a following sea,' said Frithiof; 'and with a following sea you shall not get good steerage-way.'

The sea was as smooth as a duck-pond, except for a regular oily swell. As I looked over the side to see where it might be following us from, the sun rose in a perfectly clear sky and struck the water with its light so sharply that it seemed as though the sea should clang like a burnished gong. The wake of the screw and the little white streak cut by the log-line hanging over the stern were the only marks on the water as far as eye could reach.

Keller rolled out of his chair and went aft to get a pine-apple from the ripening stock that was hung inside the after awning.

'Frithiof, the log-line has got tired of swimming. It's coming home,' he drawled.

'What?' said Frithiof, his voice jumping several octaves.

'Coming home,' Keller repeated, leaning over the stern. I ran to his side and saw the log-line, which till then had been drawn tense over the stern railing, slacken, loop, and come up off the port quarter. Frithiof called up the speaking-tube to the bridge, and the bridge answered, 'Yes, nine knots.' Then Frithiof spoke again, and the answer was, 'What do you want of the skipper?' and Frithiof bellowed, 'Call him up.'

By this time Zuyland, Keller, and myself had caught something of Frithiof's excitement, for any emotion on shipboard is most contagious. The captain ran out of his cabin, spoke to Frithiof, looked at the log-line, jumped on the bridge, and in a minute we felt the steamer swing round as Frithiof turned her.

' 'Going back to Cape Town?' said Keller.

Frithiof did not answer, but tore away at the wheel. Then he beckoned us three to help, and we held the wheel down till the Rathmines answered it, and we found ourselves looking into the white of our own wake, with the still oily sea tearing past our bows, though we were not going more than half steam ahead.

The captain stretched out his arm from the bridge and shouted. A minute later I would have given a great deal to have shouted too, for one-half of the sea seemed to shoulder itself above the other half, and came on in the shape of a hill. There was neither crest, comb, nor curl-over to it; nothing but black water with little waves chasing each other about the flanks. I saw it stream past and on a level with the Rathmines' bow-plates before the steamer hove up her bulk to rise, and I argued that this would be the last of all earthly voyages for me. Then we lifted for ever and ever and ever, till I heard Keller saying in my ear, 'The bowels of the deep, good Lord!' and the Rathmines stood poised, her screw racing and drumming on the slope of a hollow that stretched downwards for a good half-mile.

We went down that hollow, nose under for the most part, and the air smelt wet and muddy, like that of an emptied aquarium. There was a second hill to climb; I saw that much: but the water came aboard and carried me aft till it jammed me against the wheel-house door, and before I could catch breath or clear my eyes again we were rolling to and fro in torn water, with the scuppers pouring like eaves in a thunderstorm.

'There were three waves,' said Keller; 'and the stokehold's flooded.'

The firemen were on deck waiting, apparently, to be drowned. The engineer came and dragged them below, and the crew, gasping, began to work the clumsy Board of Trade pump. That showed nothing serious, and when I understood that the Rathmines was really on the water, and not beneath it, I asked what had happened.

'The captain says it was a blow-up under the sea—a volcano,' said Keller.

'It hasn't warmed anything,' I said. I was feeling bitterly cold, and cold was almost unknown in those waters. I went below to change my clothes, and when I came up everything was wiped out in clinging white fog.

'Are there going to be any more surprises?' said Keller to the captain.

'I don't know. Be thankful you're alive, gentlemen. That's a tidal wave thrown up by a volcano. Probably the bottom of the sea has been lifted a few feet somewhere or other. I can't quite understand this cold spell. Our sea-thermometer says the surface water is 44°, and it should be 68° at least.'

'It's abominable,' said Keller, shivering. 'But hadn't you better attend to the fog-horn? It seems to me that I heard something.'

'Heard! Good heavens!' said the captain from the bridge, 'I should think you did.' He pulled the string of our fog-horn, which was a weak one. It sputtered and choked, because the stoke-hold was full of water and the fires were half-drowned, and at last gave out a moan. It was answered from the fog by one of the most appalling steam-sirens I have ever heard. Keller turned as white as I did, for the fog, the cold fog, was upon us, and any man may be forgiven for fearing a death he cannot see.

'Give her steam there!' said the captain to the engine-room. 'Steam for the whistle, if we have to go dead slow.'

We bellowed again, and the damp dripped off the awnings on to the deck as we listened for the reply. It seemed to be astern this time, but much nearer than before.

'The Pembroke Castle on us!' said Keller; and then, viciously, 'Well, thank God, we shall sink her too.'

'It's a side-wheel steamer,' I whispered. 'Can't you hear the paddles?'

This time we whistled and roared till the steam gave out, and the answer nearly deafened us. There was a sound of frantic threshing in the water, apparently about fifty yards away, and something shot past in the whiteness that looked as though it were gray and red.

'The Pembroke Castle bottom up,' said Keller, who, being a journalist, always sought for explanations. 'That's the colours of a Castle liner. We're in for a big thing.'

'The sea is bewitched,' said Frithiof from the wheel-house. 'There are two steamers!'

Another siren sounded on our bow, and the little steamer rolled in the wash of something that had passed unseen.

'We're evidently in the middle of a fleet,' said Keller quietly. 'If one doesn't run us down, the other will. Phew! What in creation is that?'

I sniffed, for there was a poisonous rank smell in the cold air—a smell that I had smelt before.

'If I was on land I should say that it was an alligator. It smells like musk,' I answered.

'Not ten thousand alligators could make that smell,' said Zuyland; 'I have smelt them.'

'Bewitched! Bewitched!' said Frithiof. 'The sea she is turned upside down, and we are walking along the bottom.'

Again the Rathmines rolled in the wash of some unseen ship, and a silver-gray wave broke over the bow, leaving on the deck a sheet of sediment—the gray broth that has its place in the fathomless deeps of the sea. A sprinkling of the wave fell on my face, and it was so cold that it stung as boiling water stings. The dead and most untouched deep water of the sea had been heaved to the top by the submarine volcano—the chill still water that kills all life and smells of desolation and emptiness. We did not need either the blinding fog or that indescribable smell of musk to make us unhappy—we were shivering with cold and wretchedness where we stood.

'The hot air on the cold water makes this fog,' said the captain; 'it ought to clear in a little time.'

'Whistle, oh! whistle, and let's get out of it,' said Keller.

The captain whistled again, and far and far astern the invisible twin steam-sirens answered us. Their blasting shriek grew louder, till at last it seemed to tear out of the fog just above our quarter, and I cowered while the Rathmines plunged bows under on a double swell that crossed.

'No more,' said Frithiof, 'it is not good any more. Let us get away, in the name of God.'

'Now if a torpedo-boat with a City of Paris siren went mad and broke her moorings and hired a friend to help her, it's just conceivable that we might be carried as we are now. Otherwise this thing is—'

The last words died on Keller's lips, his eyes began to start from his head, and his jaw fell. Some six or seven feet above the port bulwarks, framed in fog, and as utterly unsupported as the full moon, hung a Face. It was not human, and it certainly was not animal, for it did not belong to this earth as known to man. The mouth was open, revealing a ridiculously tiny tongue—as absurd as the tongue of an elephant; there were tense wrinkles of white skin at the angles of the drawn lips, white feelers like those of a barbel sprung from the lower jaw, and there was no sign of teeth within the mouth. But the horror of the face lay in the eyes, for those were sightless—white, in sockets as white as scraped bone, and blind. Yet for all this the face, wrinkled as the mask of a lion is drawn in Assyrian sculpture, was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our bulwarks. Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, 'But the air-bladder ought to have been forced out of its mouth, you know.'

Keller came up to me, ashy white. He put his hand into his pocket, took a cigar, bit it, dropped it, thrust his shaking thumb into his mouth and mumbled, 'The giant gooseberry and the raining frogs! Gimme a light—gimme a light! Say, gimme a light.' A little bead of blood dropped from his thumb-joint.

I respected the motive, though the manifestation was absurd. 'Stop, you'll bite your thumb off,' I said, and Keller laughed brokenly as he picked up his cigar. Only Zuyland, leaning over the port bulwarks, seemed self-possessed. He declared later that he was very sick.

'We've seen it,' he said, turning round. 'That is it.'

'What?' said Keller, chewing the unlighted cigar.

As he spoke the fog was blown into shreds, and we saw the sea, gray with mud, rolling on every side of us and empty of all life. Then in one spot it bubbled and became like the pot of ointment that the Bible speaks of. From that wide-ringed trouble a Thing came up—a gray and red Thing with a neck—a Thing that bellowed and writhed in pain. Frithiof drew in his breath and held it till the red letters of the ship's name, woven across his jersey, straggled and opened out as though they had been type badly set. Then he said with a little cluck in his throat, 'Ah me! It is blind. Hur illa! That thing is blind,' and a murmur of pity went through us all, for we could see that the thing on the water was blind and in pain. Something had gashed and cut the great sides cruelly and the blood was spurting out. The gray ooze of the undermost sea lay in the monstrous wrinkles of the back, and poured away in sluices. The blind white head flung back and battered the wounds, and the body in its torment rose clear of the red and gray waves till we saw a pair of quivering shoulders streaked with weed and rough with shells, but as white in the clear spaces as the hairless, maneless, blind, toothless head. Afterwards, came a dot on the horizon and the sound of a shrill scream, and it was as though a shuttle shot all across the sea in one breath, and a second head and neck tore through the levels, driving a whispering wall of water to right and left. The two Things met—the one untouched and the other in its death-throe—male and female, we said, the female coming to the male. She circled round him bellowing, and laid her neck across the curve of his great turtle-back, and he disappeared under water for an instant, but flung up again, grunting in agony while the blood ran. Once the entire head and neck shot clear of the water and stiffened, and I heard Keller saying, as though he was watching a street accident, 'Give him air. For God's sake, give him air.' Then the death-struggle began, with crampings and twistings and jerkings of the white bulk to and fro, till our little steamer rolled again, and each gray wave coated her plates with the gray slime. The sun was clear, there was no wind, and we watched, the whole crew, stokers and all, in wonder and pity, but chiefly pity. The Thing was so helpless, and, save for his mate, so alone. No human eye should have beheld him; it was monstrous and indecent to exhibit him there in trade waters between atlas degrees of latitude. He had been spewed up, mangled and dying, from his rest on the sea-floor, where he might have lived till the Judgment Day, and we saw the tides of his life go from him as an angry tide goes out across rocks in the teeth of a landward gale. His mate lay rocking on the water a little distance off, bellowing continually, and the smell of musk came down upon the ship making us cough.

At last the battle for life ended in a batter of coloured seas. We saw the writhing neck fall like a flail, the carcase turn sideways, showing the glint of a white belly and the inset of a gigantic hind leg or flipper. Then all sank, and sea boiled over it, while the mate swam round and round, darting her head in every direction. Though we might have feared that she would attack the steamer, no power on earth could have drawn any one of us from our places that hour. We watched, holding our breaths. The mate paused in her search; we could hear the wash beating along her sides; reared her neck as high as she could reach, blind and lonely in all that loneliness of the sea, and sent one desperate bellow booming across the swells as an oyster-shell skips across a pond. Then she made off to the westward, the sun shining on the white head and the wake behind it, till nothing was left to see but a little pin point of silver on the horizon. We stood on our course again; and the Rathmines, coated with the sea-sediment from bow to stern, looked like a ship made gray with terror.

'We must pool our notes,' was the first coherent remark from Keller. 'We're three trained journalists—we hold absolutely the biggest scoop on record. Start fair.'

I objected to this. Nothing is gained by collaboration in journalism when all deal with the same facts, so we went to work each according to his own lights. Keller triple-headed his account, talked about our 'gallant captain,' and wound up with an allusion to American enterprise in that it was a citizen of Dayton, Ohio, that had seen the sea-serpent. This sort of thing would have discredited the Creation, much more a mere sea tale, but as a specimen of the picture-writing of a half-civilised people it was very interesting. Zuyland took a heavy column and a half, giving approximate lengths and breadths, and the whole list of the crew whom he had sworn on oath to testify to his facts. There was nothing fantastic or flamboyant in Zuyland. I wrote three-quarters of a leaded bourgeois column, roughly speaking, and refrained from putting any journalese into it for reasons that had begun to appear to me.

Keller was insolent with joy. He was going to cable from Southampton to the New York World, mail his account to America on the same day, paralyse London with his three columns of loosely knitted headlines, and generally efface the earth. 'You'll see how I work a big scoop when I get it,' he said.

'Is this your first visit to England?' I asked.

'Yes,' said he. 'You don't seem to appreciate the beauty of our scoop. It's pyramidal—the death of the sea-serpent! Good heavens alive, man, it's the biggest thing ever vouchsafed to a paper!'

'Curious to think that it will never appear in any paper, isn't it?' I said.

Zuyland was near me, and he nodded quickly.

'What do you mean?' said Keller. 'If you're enough of a Britisher to throw this thing away, I shan't. I thought you were a newspaperman.'

'I am. That's why I know. Don't be an ass, Keller. Remember, I'm seven hundred years your senior, and what your grandchildren may learn five hundred years hence, I learned from my grandfathers about five hundred years ago. You won't do it, because you can't.'

This conversation was held in open sea, where everything seems possible, some hundred miles from Southampton. We passed the Needles Light at dawn, and the lifting day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness of England—line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier. We waited an hour in the Customs shed, and there was ample time for the effect to soak in.

'Now, Keller, you face the music. The Havel goes out to-day. Mail by her, and I'll take you to the telegraph-office,' I said.

I heard Keller gasp as the influence of the land closed about him, cowing him as they say Newmarket Heath cows a young horse unused to open courses.

'I want to retouch my stuff. Suppose we wait till we get to London?' he said.

Zuyland, by the way, had torn up his account and thrown it overboard that morning early. His reasons were my reasons.

In the train Keller began to revise his copy, and every time that he looked at the trim little fields, the red villas, and the embankments of the line, the blue pencil plunged remorselessly through the slips. He appeared to have dredged the dictionary for adjectives. I could think of none that he had not used. Yet he was a perfectly sound poker-player and never showed more cards than were sufficient to take the pool.

'Aren't you going to leave him a single bellow?' I asked sympathetically. 'Remember, everything goes in the States, from a trouser-button to a double-eagle.'

'That's just the curse of it,' said Keller below his breath. 'We've played 'em for suckers so often that when it comes to the golden truth—I'd like to try this on a London paper. You have first call there, though.'

'Not in the least. I'm not touching the thing in our papers. I shall be happy to leave 'em all to you; but surely you'll cable it home?'

'No. Not if I can make the scoop here and see the Britishers sit up.'

'You won't do it with three columns of slushy headline, believe me. They don't sit up as quickly as some people.'

'I'm beginning to think that too. Does nothing make any difference in this country?' he said, looking out of the window. 'How old is that farmhouse?'

'New. It can't be more than two hundred years at the most.'

'Um. Fields, too?'

'That hedge there must have been clipped for about eighty years.'

'Labour cheap—eh?'

'Pretty much. Well, I suppose you'd like to try the Times, wouldn't you?'

'No,' said Keller, looking at Winchester Cathedral. 'Might as well try to electrify a haystack. And to think that the World would take three columns and ask for more—with illustrations too! It's sickening.'

'But the Times might,' I began.

Keller flung his paper across the carriage, and it opened in its austere majesty of solid type—opened with the crackle of an encyclopædia.

'Might! You might work your way through the bow-plates of a cruiser. Look at that first page!'

'It strikes you that way, does it?' I said. 'Then I'd recommend you to try a light and frivolous journal.'

'With a thing like this of mine—of ours? It's sacred history!'

I showed him a paper which I conceived would be after his own heart, in that it was modelled on American lines.

'That's homey,' he said, 'but it's not the real thing. Now, I should like one of these fat old Times columns. Probably there'd be a bishop in the office, though.'

When we reached London Keller disappeared in the direction of the Strand. What his experiences may have been I cannot tell, but it seems that he invaded the office of an evening paper at 11.45 a.m. (I told him English editors were most idle at that hour), and mentioned my name as that of a witness to the truth of his story.

'I was nearly fired out,' he said furiously at lunch. 'As soon as I mentioned you, the old man said that I was to tell you that they didn't want any more of your practical jokes, and that you knew the hours to call if you had anything to sell, and that they'd see you condemned before they helped to puff one of your infernal yarns in advance. Say, what record do you hold for truth in this country, anyway?'

'A beauty. You ran up against it, that's all. Why don't you leave the English papers alone and cable to New York? Everything goes over there.'

'Can't you see that's just why?' he repeated.

'I saw it a long time ago. You don't intend to cable, then?'

'Yes, I do,' he answered, in the over-emphatic voice of one who does not know his own mind.

That afternoon I walked him abroad and about, over the streets that run between the pavements like channels of grooved and tongued lava, over the bridges that are made of enduring stone, through subways floored and sided with yard-thick concrete, between houses that are never rebuilt, and by river-steps hewn, to the eye, from the living rock. A black fog chased us into Westminster Abbey, and, standing there in the darkness, I could hear the wings of the dead centuries circling round the head of Litchfield A. Keller, journalist, of Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A., whose mission it was to make the Britishers sit up.

He stumbled gasping into the thick gloom, and the roar of the traffic came to his bewildered ears.

'Let's go to the telegraph-office and cable,' I said. 'Can't you hear the New York World crying for news of the great sea-serpent, blind, white, and smelling of musk, stricken to death by a submarine volcano, and assisted by his loving wife to die in mid-ocean, as visualised by an American citizen, the breezy, newsy, brainy newspaper man of Dayton, Ohio? 'Rah for the Buckeye State! Step lively! Both gates! Szz! Boom! Aah!' Keller was a Princeton man, and he seemed to need encouragement.

'You've got me on your own ground,' said he, tugging at his overcoat pocket. He pulled out his copy, with the cable forms—for he had written out his telegram—and put them all into my hand, groaning, 'I pass. If I hadn't come to your cursed country—If I'd sent it off at Southampton—If I ever get you west of the Alleghannies, if—'

'Never mind, Keller. It isn't your fault. It's the fault of your country. If you had been seven hundred years older you'd have done what I am going to do.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Tell it as a lie.'

'Fiction?' This with the full-blooded disgust of a journalist for the illegitimate branch of the profession.

'You can call it that if you like. I shall call it a lie.'

And a lie it has become; for Truth is a naked lady, and if by accident she is drawn up from the bottom of the sea, it behoves a gentleman either to give her a print petticoat or to turn his face to the wall and vow that he did not see.

* * *

Rudyard Kipling died January 18, 1936.

SERIES

Travails With Momma, Episode 3

Written by John Ringo
Illustrated by Jennifer Miller

8: Love, Or At Least Chelo, Conquers All

One of the many oddities of the Heteran Central School was that there was no lunchroom. Instead, at spaced times, the children were permitted to go to the surface and buy food from vendors in kiosks.

Josh had just bought a chelo plate and was heading to an out-of-the-way spot to meet Doosam when he saw the pretty blonde girl from the bus sitting on a wall that circled one of the mounds. She was contemplating the inside of her lunch bag and frowning.

"Hi," Josh said nervously, holding the chelo in one hand and a choco-cola in the other. "Posh, Jime Arker . . ." He paused and cleared his throat. "I mean, Mime Posh Jarker . . ."

"You're Josh Parker," the girl said, smiling shyly.

"Yeah," Josh said. "That. Uhm . . . don't like your lunch?" he asked. "I've got chelo. We could trade. And a choco-cola . . ."

"Thanks," the girl said. "I accept. Want a seat?" She pointed at the one next to her.

"Sure!" Josh handed her the plate and bulb.

"I hate doing this to you," the girl said, setting the items down and handing over her lunch bag with a sigh of gratitude. "My mom thinks I like dorank sandwiches."

Josh contemplated the sandwich, which was spread with something purple, and then slipped it back in the bag as his stomach rumbled.

"I'm not all that hungry," he said, lightly. "So . . . what's your name?"

"Charli," the girl said, taking small bites of the chelo slice and following them with a bite of the steamed grains. "Charli Wright."

"That's a nice name," Josh said. "Uhm . . . I saw you on the bus . . ."

"Yes."

"And I noticed that you don't get dropped off at your house . . ."

"There are three kids that live on my street," Charli said softly. She had perfect, white teeth, Josh noticed as she nipped at the chelo. "The other two live on the east block but we all get dropped off on the corner. I only live a few houses up."

"I was . . . hmm . . . " Josh said, his voice suddenly cracking. "I was wondering if maybe you'd like somebody to walk you home?"

"Then you'd have to walk . . . well blocks home," the girl said, looking up at him shyly. And bright blue eyes. She had the brightest blue eyes Josh had ever seen in his life.

"That's . . . that's . . . that's . . ." Josh cleared his throat again and broke away from the hypnotic eye contact. "That's okay. I'll be fine."

"It's really cold out," Charli said dubiously. "I mean, it's just cold under the force-screen but it's really cold out there. The wind and all . . ."

"Not a problem," Josh said blithely. "By the way, why a force-screen?"

"Kidnapping," the girl replied in a scared little tone. "Some of the kids that go here, their parents are pretty rich. Or they're in the government and there are terrorists. So . . . force-screen. And armed guards."

"I've never noticed them," Josh said, his eyes goggling. "Are your parents . . . ?"

"No, silly," Charli said, smiling. And dimples. Just the cutest little dimples. "My mom's a systems engineer for Sclock-Buren. We're okay but we're not rich."

Just then there was a ping for the end of lunch and Josh stood up, holding out his hand.

"Thank you," Charli said, taking it as she stood up.

"You're welc . . ." Josh cleared his throat again. "You're welcome . . ."

* * *

The evil Nari terrorists had captured the painfully beautiful Charli . . . Charli Wright and were holding her to force secrets from her mother, the vital systems engineer for . . . some company.

But Josh Parker had figured out a way in through the air-ducts. Using his small size he was squeezing through the ducts and had just about gotten to the point where he could line up the evil Nari and blow them all away with his forty-watt plasma rifle, rescuing the bound and helpless Charli, when . . .

"Mister Parker!" Miss Hissberger snapped, slamming her meter stick on the desk with a sound like a plasma shot. "Vat are te factorsss of thisss eqvation?"

"I have no idea?" Josh said, trying not to cry. He used to like math.

* * *

Josh was sitting at the back of the bus when Charli boarded. He had run there from class and had already driven off one Nari with bared teeth.

"I saved you a seat," he said, waving at the center seat at the back as the bus took off.

"Okay," Charli said shyly. "But I usually sit where you're sitting. Would you mind?"

"No, not at all," Josh said, sliding over. As she slid past him her leg brushed his and he felt like the contact was liquid fire.

"Why do you sit there?" he asked curiously as the bus cleared the force-screen.

"Because this seat has a grab bar," Charli said quietly, reaching between her legs with both hands and wrapping them around the tube of metal. "And that one doesn't."

Josh felt himself lifting into the air and for a moment he hung there, perfectly balanced in zero gravity. That couldn't last, and it didn't, as the driver climbed upwards and Mr. Newton took over, slamming Josh into the floor of the bus at slightly more than one earth gravity.

He had the wind knocked out of him but his flailing arm wrapped around one of the legs for the seats and clung like a limpet, pulling him in to where he could wrap both arms around the anchor. Despite that his lower body was being flailed up and down and side to side, but it was better than flying through the air.

"This . . . isn't . . . oof . . . so . . . bad," Josh said, looking up at Charli. Nice legs, too. "Might just be the best seat . . . oof! on the bus."

"No," Charli said, her perfect brow wrinkling in perplexity. "This one is better. I'm not being flopped up and down on the floor."

"No," Josh admitted. "But . . . argh . . . I sort of . . . ooof . . . like it. Not . . . ow! . . . bad . . ."

When the bus grounded to drop off the first kid, Josh scrambled to his feet and regained his seat.

"Mind if I share your grab bar?" he asked. There was a curve of metal visible under her right thigh.

"Sure," Charli said, sliding over slightly.

He could just get two hands on the grab bar, his left wrist in contact with the outside of her leg. Again, his wrist seemed to be on fire. Which was weird since the bus was pretty cold.

They finally reached Charli's stop and he gestured courteously for her to lead, then followed her down the aisle.

"MOGROMP TOM TOW DAY!" the driver said angrily.

"I have no idea what you are gabbling about," Josh said, darting past an outstretched arm and jumping to the ground.

The driver gestured at him in a fashion Josh suspected was rude but the bus lifted into the air again. Josh thought about what his mother would say and checked his plant for her location. She was downtown, shopping, so he left a note to trigger when she got back, saying that he'd dropped by a friend's house around the corner and would be home right away.

The wind was bitterly cold and puddles were frozen on both sides of the street. There wasn't any traffic, though, so they walked down the street side by side.

"Are your hands cold?" Josh asked. His were freezing.

"Yes," Charli said holding one out.

When Josh took it, he knew what "freezing" really meant. Charli's tiny hands were so icy cold he was sure she was on the edge of frostbite.

"Christ," he said, worried. "Give me the other one."

"My house is just here," Charli replied, but she held out the other hand.

Josh wrapped both of them in his and they walked like that to the iris. Charli whistled at it and they both went into the entry foyer.

"Your hands are so cold," Josh said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Charli replied quietly.

"I'm worried about them," he said distractedly. "You should wear gloves, Charli." He held one of her hands in both of his, switching back and forth. The entry foyer was bitterly cold as well but at least it was out of the wind.

"I keep losing them," Charli said, her brow wrinkling again.

Josh suddenly untabbed his environment suit and thrust her right hand under his left armpit.

"There," he said. "I heard about this in a survival meme. It's the warmest place—" he suddenly stopped as he realized the motion had brought her exquisite face to within centimeters of his. Her eyes were wide and her lips parted. They stayed locked like that for just a moment and then Charli slid the other hand under his arm, inside his jacket, and pushed her lips up to his.

His nose was in the way and he twisted his head to one side. Charli twisted the same way and they bumped noses again with a muttered "'scuse me" from Josh. Twisted again, another nose bump. This was harder than it looked. Finally, Josh took her face in both hands, held it straight, turned to the side and kissed her.

The butterflies went berserk. While he'd been worrying about Charli's hands and where noses went they'd bunked off for a quick smoke but they were back and they'd brought lots of friends. His stomach dropped, his body went hot and then as cold as Charli's hands. The latter seemed to be warming up nicely and her arms were tracing a path of fire around his sides.

A delicate tongue flickered against his lips and he opened up his lips slightly. Her tongue pressed against his lightly and he suddenly was consumed by a need to explore the inside of her mouth in the most personal fashion possible. He wanted to know the inside of her mouth better than he knew the inside of his own.

He suddenly realized they were on the ground, grappling like a fight in the school yard, her arms and hands moving, his arms and hands moving, rubbing up and down each other's backs. Their tongues were having a fight, too, and Josh decided that something that he'd heard described one time was anything but gross. It was . . . unbelievable. More fun than . . . anything.

He couldn't tell how long the grappling, kissing, exploring, whatever it was, went on. They'd moved out of the entrance corridor and into a small fresher just off of it at one point. And both their coats had disappeared. But Charli suddenly broke away and frowned.

"My mom will be getting home soon," she warned, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

He checked his plant and realized that they'd been out of school for an hour. If his mom was home she was going to be going nuts despite the note he'd sent. But there wasn't a message for him and she hadn't tooled him so he was probably okay. He stood up quickly, offering Charli his hand. Hers had gotten very warm. He could understand why; he still felt like he was on fire.

"Charli . . . uh . . ." he said.

"We'll . . . see each other again," she said, smiling shyly. "You're . . . really nice, Josh."

"Thanks," Josh said. The coats were in a small closet on the other side of the foyer. He got his and shrugged. "I don't suppose I could . . ."

"Mom won't let me have guests unless she's home," Charli said. "You'd better get out of here before she catches us."

"Oh!" Josh shrugged on his coat hurriedly. "I'll . . . see you tomorrow, Charli."

"Yeah," she said, tooling the iris and giving him a peck on the cheek. "Tomorrow."

Josh stepped down to the street whistling. The air was freezing, the clouds were a solid overcast, dust and trash filled the air. What a perfect day.

9: Of Tooleck and Men

"Josh, we're having company for dinner."

Josh opened his eyes and frowned. "Who?"

"Some people I've met through the Heteran Woman's Club and a Tooleck couple. The male is a friend of your father's."

"Okay," Josh said.

"Josh," Jala said uncomfortably. "Among certain groups there's a phrase that . . . children are seen but not heard. Don't . . . pester them, all right?"

"Of course, Mom," Josh said in exasperation.

"They'll be arriving at nine. Take a shower before then and change clothes. Good clothes, it's semi-formal."

"Yes, Mother," Josh sighed.

"And brush your hair," Jala finished as the iris closed.

He had two hours. If they weren't even getting here until nine, that meant they wouldn't eat for days. It was just not fair. He closed his eyes and brought the book up again. In an hour he could probably just about finish it . . .

* * *

"JOSH!" Jala shouted. "Are you ready yet?"

Josh checked his plant and blanched, jumping to his feet. It was a quarter till nine. Hopefully the guests would be, as Mom put it, fashionably late.

He hurried to the fresher and pulled off his clothes, carefully setting the shower to ensure he got water and not one of the fifteen other substances it was capable of spurting. He took a fast shower, threw his robe on and darted to his room just as the iris pinged.

Two minutes later, in a pair of dress shorts and a polo shirt, he was out in the foyer, greeting the guests.

The first couple to arrive were the Tooleck. His mom was just taking their inevitable rellas and setting them on the couch.

"Josh, this is Grobney and Anoj Sveldonas," Jala said.

"Greetings," Josh said, bowing and offering the top of his head.

"What a charmin' boyo," Anoj, the female, said, bowing her head and bouncing her eyes on Josh's hair. Anoj had a thick accent, something like Norky but with more clipped vowels.

"Hello, Josh," Grobney said, holding out his three-fingered right hand. Grobney's accent was pure Fordoss, very high-class Tooleck. "I met your father in Basadab and told him I'd drop by and keep an eye on you and your mother. Since I've got five, seemed easy enough," he finished, giving a whistle of amusement.

Tooleck didn't normally shake hands, it was a Terran custom, but Josh took it and shook it politely. It felt like holding a bundle of mobile sticks.

"Would you care for a drink?" Jala asked, leading the way to the bar. There wasn't a bot so Josh stepped up and prepared to mix.

"The boyo's your bartender!" Anoj said delightedly.

"He can handle . . . simple mixes," Jala replied. "I'll take a Re'as Tsoonor on the rocks, Josh. Anoj? Grobney?"

"Sounds good," Grobney said. "Got used to Re'as whiskey on Melshop, don't you know? Only thing around. No rocks for me, Josh, I'll take it straight. Just a drop of a thimblefull."

"Here," Anoj replied. "I'll mix my own. I was a bartender when I met Grobney. I still remember him in his commando patterning. What a delight! Such a gentleman! Not that he was as much of a gentleman once I got off work!"

Josh mixed the two Re'as whiskeys and then watched in bafflement as Anoj picked up a highball glass and began pouring in a mixture that could be used as rocket fuel.

"Cheers!" she said when she was finished. The glass was full to the brim with a complex series of layers. She clinked glasses with the other two and then downed the contents of the tall glass in a single gulp. "Ah! That's hit the spot!"

Grobney had also downed his and held the glass out for a refill.

"A bit more than a thimbleful if you please, Josh," he said, waving his eyestalks. "It's a figure of speech, not a measurement. More . . . more. That's it," he finished, handling the glass that was nearly full to the rim. "To new friends!"

Anoj had topped her glass back up with AldeBasadab brandy. It was called "brandy" only because "Oh, My God!" was already taken. It wasn't pure alcohol, since then it couldn't have included all the byproducts that made it so . . . refreshing.

Jala led her guests into the livingroom and sat down, holding her still half-full glass in front of her like a talisman.

"You were down in Basadab when you met Steve, I believe, Grobney?" she asked politely.

"Oh, yes," Grobney said, whistling a tune. "Grand fellow. Fine engineer. Not my line, you know, foundations and stuff. I'm a geologist by training, though, and a mining engineer by profession. At the moment. Done a bit of this and a bit of that."

"Mining?" Josh asked curiously. He'd gotten a choco-cola bulb and was sipping on it. "Basadab is on an alluvial plain. There's . . . not much mining in the area."

"Deposits, old salt," Grobney said, bringing all five eyes around to consider Josh carefully. "Washed down from the Zaborg mountains. All sorts of veins and bits around there. Even found a bit of gold, what? Mainly looking for thoramite, of course. Planet's lousy with the stuff."

"They do most of that mining in the Zaborg, don't they?" Jala asked. "Not my area, of course, but that's what Steve told me."

"And mucks of it has run off over the aeons," Grobney replied, waggling his fingers. "Gets all over the place. Problem is finding pockets that are worth setting up to mine; that's why I'm having a look all over. Find a good pocket of thoramite and the company's in isardi, aren't they? Could be a pocket right under Steve's project, ey? Wouldn't want that to happen! We'd be all day trying to figure out which was the better portion."

"Oh, yes," Jala said. "Of course, I suppose they could move the project . . ."

"Not after they'd put all that time and money in," Grobney said. "That's why I had to have a look at the area. I'll be back as they move the dirt, of course, got to keep making sure."

"Bit like an archaeologist is our Grobney," Anoj said, waggling her eyeballs. "He knows about all these sorts of things. He even worked on the hypermissile project during the war!"

"Just a bit, deary," Grobney said, patting her carapace. "Non-technical, of course, physics is a bit beyond me. Not worth mentioning. So you were in Papua, were you, Mrs. Parker?"

"Yes, before we moved back to Bowan . . ." Jala said as the door pinged again. "Oh, I'd better get that . . ."

"You're in . . . fifth grade, Josh?" Anoj asked.

"Yes," Josh said, making a face.

"Don't enjoy it, much, ey?" Grobney said, waving his eye-stalks.

"Most of it is okay," Josh said. "But some of it I've had before and some of it is a couple of years ahead of what I'd be taking on Terra. And my math teacher . . ."

"Miss Hissberger?" Grobney said. "Bit of a Zimbot, ey? Good for drilling quadratics into young minds, though. Can't just use a plant, gotta understand what you're doing on those, what?"

"You know her?" Josh gasped.

"Say rather I know about her," Grobney said, waggling his eyestalks as two humans came into the room.

"Grobney knows everybody," Anoj said, standing up.

"Dirdja, as I live and spicule," Grobney said, extending his hand.

"Grobney, you old crab," the male of the two replied, shaking the Tooleck's hand, "you do get around, don't you? But I don't think you've met my wife?"

"The most wondrous Siti," Grobney said, taking the slight woman's hand and bowing over it. "Your husband has told me of your many fine attributes . . ."

"I bet he has!" Siti said, laughing. "Randy old goat's probably told you more than you want to know!" Siti was a short blonde woman with a cheerful face and skin that had been darkened by the sun.

"Anoj," Grobney said, "I don't think you've met Dirdja Muharrem? And his lovely wife, Siti."

"No," Anoj said, bowing. "Please to meet you."

Dirdja was as tall as his wife was short, dark complected with black hair going gray. He bowed to Anoj and then took the drink that Jala handed him.

"A fine company of rascals," Grobney said, raising his drink. "And rascalettes, I'm sure."

"Dinner should be ready shortly," Jala said, sitting down. "A roast. It said it was beef, but in Nari . . ."

"Shit," Siti snapped, pronouncing it "sheeee-it." "Probably dhan. If it is, we'll be chewing the rest of the night. No offense, Jala, I know you're new here. They passed off dhan to me as a 'beef roast' right after I got here. Beef my ass, you couldn't cut it with a laser torch."

"There's a thing you can do with dhan," Grobney said, taking a sip of his drink. "You slice it really thin, then you get a dozer bot to run over it several times. Then you burn it. Then you find something edible." He whistled through his spicules as the group chuckled.

"I have to admit I don't even know what dhan is," Jala said unhappily.

"Those flying beasts you see towing aircars around," Dirdja said, nodding. "The Nari used them for transport before the Tooleck started bringing in advanced technology."

"Been outrun by that Ortulians there, old chap." Grobney sighed. "And the Haron. Both of them are shipping more aircars and trucks here than Tooleck ever has. Cheap things, don't run very long, but they sell them and that's the point."

"It's not the only thing they sell," Dirdja said darkly. "They're selling hyper technology as well."

"Well, yes," Jala said, frowning. "I mean, the plant that Steve is working on is to build hyper engines."

"Wouldn't care to ride on top of one myself," Grobney said, rolling his eyes. "Most of the Nari can't find their tails with both hands."

"I heard a rumor that they were selling more than engine tech," Dirdja said, frowning. "Hypermissiles," he whispered.

"Dirdj, old boy," Grobney replied, waving a hand, "the Ortulians don't have hypermissiles. After the pasting they got from you chaps at the end of the war, they renounced them, didn't they?"

"The Haron have them, though," Dirdja insisted. "And who's doing most of the hyper work on that plant? Haron."

"Dirdj, my friend." Grobney sighed. "You're seeing ghosts. It's a common problem of the Terrans. No, don't stop me," he said, holding up a hand to forestall the response. "Terrans have only been out on the starlanes for a couple of hundred years. We Tooleck were banging around the galaxy when you were still putting that gasoline stuff in your cars and driving them on the ground. Seen it, been there. Owned most of it once upon a time and not that long ago. We've had generations living among these people and we know them in a way you Terrans simply don't. The Haron are a very insular species and they don't just pass around goodies like they're at a noraz party. Certainly not a secret like hypermissiles. Put it out of your mind."

"And on that note," Jala said. "Let's see if the roast is edible."

It was dhan.

* * *

Josh lay awake after the guests had gone, looking at the ceiling and wondering about what had been said at the party.

Hypermissiles were an important secret that very few species had managed to pierce. Towards the end of the Orion War, the Terrans and Tooleck had faced a very unpalatable choice. The Jootan had surrendered but the Ortulians, who were fanatically determined to die to the last squid, still held out. The planet had been cut off and heavily bombed, but penetrating the system defenses would have been immensely costly. So the Terrans brought out a secret weapon they had been working on for most of the war: the hypermissile.

Unlike most hyperdrives, the hypermissile could penetrate right into the depths of a planet's gravity well. And since it was in hyper, it couldn't be intercepted. Furthermore, it retained relativistic speed right down to impact. The Terrans had only had to fire a half a dozen, gutting a half a dozen Ortulian megalopoli, before the Ortulian emperor forced his military advisors to sign a peace treaty.

Since then a few other species had managed to figure out how they worked or had stolen the information from the Terrans. The Naro, the Haron, the Vesiot and the Tooleck all had them. There were rumors that the Adoo had them, as well. But that was it. The club was closed. Anyone with hypermissiles had the capability to wipe out an enemy's planet. By the same token, their enemy could wipe them out in return. So . . . nobody used them.

But if the club was opened up, if everyone started having hypermissiles, especially species that . . . weren't all that . . . controlled . . .

The galaxy could dissolve in war.

That was a big thought for a little kid, but he kept going.

If the Nari got hypermissiles, they'd probably give them to the Alyt who would use them on the Adoo. The Adoo would either respond with their own, if they survived the first attack, or the Terrans would, since the Adoo were their allies. That might bring the Vesiot empire into the war, since they supported the Alyt, and the Vesiot had a big fleet that could wipe Terra clean. Of course, the Terrans would wipe the floor with the Vesiot, too, but the damage would be done.

But it got worse. The Alyt had lots of terror groups. They could use them as terrorist weapons. Nobody knew where a hypermissile came from. They could drop them from outside a system and then disappear without a trace. One hypermissile could take out most of Bowan and really make it hard for the weather computers to keep up.

Everything from large-scale terrorism to planets wiped clean of life was possible if the Nari had hypermissiles.

And Mr. Muharrem thought that his dad was working on a hypermissile plant.

Josh couldn't figure out what to do about that by the time he drifted off to sleep, but the last vision he had was of Charli being . . . really happy that he'd saved the galaxy by stopping the Nari hypermissile project. Really happy. And her hands were warm . . .

10: Never Wrestle A Trekkie

Josh was sitting with Charli on a relatively warm sunny day. He'd figured out how to eat with his left hand so that he could keep his right free to make sure hers didn't get cold.

He'd also discovered how fun it was to feed a girlfriend, but they had to try to keep out of sight because kids could be unmerciful.

So they were sitting on the lip of one the mounds, facing the force-screen with most of the young beings scattered around behind them, when Doosam rolled around the edge of the mound.

"This is where you've been hiding," the Tr'k'k'ikil said. "You never sit with me anymore!"

"I'm sorry, Doos," Josh said, letting go of Charli's hand quickly.

"Josh has got a girlfriend!" Doosam caroled loudly. "Josh has got a girlfriend!"

"Doos!" Josh said fiercely. "Cut it out!"

"Josh and Charli sitting in a nem," Doosam sang. "B-R-E-L-K-G-N . . ."

"Cut it out Doos!" Josh shouted, standing up.

"What? You don't want the whole world to know?" Doos said, rolling closer. "Are you breeding yet? I hear Terrys can start breeding early—"

Josh let out a roar and leapt on the rock.

That was when he learned an important fact: you just don't try to wrestle a Trekkie.

Doosam was not a rock; he was a complex structure involving silicon and carbon-nanotube modules in a flexible matrix. He could change shape to anything from a plant to a table and even make a fairly good impression of a human. A small one. But gray.

When Josh landed on him the surface flexed and Doosam let out a howl that sounded like pain. But Josh's right arm disappeared into the matrix almost immediately and he could feel something grinding on it.

He kept pounding on Doosam with his left fist, getting nothing more than bruises, then pulled back to knee the rock as hard as he could. He got more bruises but Doosam let out a grunt so he did it again. The whole time his right arm felt as if it was being chewed.

Doosam suddenly rolled over, trapping Josh's legs and starting to chew on his left thigh. Josh let out a yell and, with strength he didn't know he had, pushed the rock off his legs and ripped his arm free. Then he jumped in the air and landed on Doosam with both feet.

This produced another grunt from the rock but Doosam quickly rolled out from under him, dumping Josh on the ground. Then he just as quickly rolled onto the Terran's face.

Josh couldn't see or hear anything and he couldn't get enough purchase to roll the rock off. His nose was squashed flat and he couldn't breath.

"Say icky-icky-wop-ping-too-don-allll," Doosam growled. "Come on, say it . . ."

"Ugga-ugga . . ." Josh grunted. "Ugga . . . mugafugmug!"

"What?" Doos said, rolling aside.

"I said," Josh replied, "I can't remember what you wanted me to say and I can't say it with rock in my mouth. But 'uncle,' okay?" Josh stood up and brushed the dirt off his clothes as well as he could. Charli had disappeared. With her lunch. His was covered in dirt from the scuffle.

"If you made me lose my girlfriend I am going to figure out a way to turn you into pebbles," Josh growled, dusting some of the dirt off his chelo and biting it. The grit ground in his teeth.

"Sorry, Josh," Doosam said, sounding honestly contrite. "I just . . . I don't have a lot of kids to hang out with, you know?"

"Yeah," Josh admitted. "But all you had to do was say so! Charli wouldn't mind. As long as you didn't, you know, make fun of us."

"But you're so funny!" Doosam said. "Going around with a long face, looking for Charli all the time . . ."

"I guess you . . . guys don't have that sort of thing?" Josh asked.

"Oh, well, we do," Doosam admitted. "But . . . it's different. You see, someday, I mean in a long time, I'll probably have to find a mate. I don't know what happens that way, exactly. But if I'm right about the hints I sort of . . . absorb him and then I make a bunch of copies that are part him and part me . . ."

"Wait," Josh said, carefully. "You said . . . him."

"Well . . . yeah," Doosam said.

"Does that mean . . ." Josh said, gulping, "you're a her?"

"Uh, yes," Doosam replied. "Is that a problem?"

Josh looked at the gray lump for a moment and then shrugged.

"No," he admitted, "I guess not. But . . . do most people know that?"

"No," Doosam admitted. "We don't . . . we look pretty much the same."

"Good." Josh sighed. "Don't let on. Getting my butt kicked by a rock is bad enough. Worse, much worse, if everybody knew it was girl . . ."

11: Of Thoramite and Cruisers

Teams at dyup slowly shook down and Josh started getting picked earlier and earlier, especially if he could be on the same team as Doosam. Their "flying Terry" combination was hard to beat. He didn't always get the ball, but he got it often enough. Of course, quite often it shifted in midair and he found himself accelerated to the ground rather than lifted, but no bones broken. So far.

Occasionally, still, he walked Charli home. It was six and a half blocks from Charli's house to his and those were some cold blocks to walk. But he always started out . . . warm and there were shops along the main boulevard that he could stop in. One was a general grocery selling Tooleck and Naro foods. He read a couple of the Galacta labels on Naro foods and decided that his dad was right; he really hadn't wanted to know. But sometimes, rarely, there was Terran food as well. Always massively overpriced but if a kid had to pay a couple of credits worth or rayel for a candy bar that wasn't made from worms, it was worth it.

There were other shops. A butcher, all the meat carefully unlabeled and most of it probably dhan, a baker where for a couple of rayel he could buy a loaf of flat Nari bread, hot from the oven. There were three types: nadorg, which was thin as a few sheets of plascrip stacked on top of each other; jumash, which was slightly thicker with small air-pockets inside; and tanari, which was still flat but leavened and was something like a pita. Of them all he prefered the tanari. He often arrived home munching on a flat loaf and, as his mother put it, ruining his supper.

There was even a store that had new, at least new to him, Galacta books for download. He had to be careful there, he could easily spend all his allowance and more on books. He discovered a wonderful comic adventure series about an ancient Nalo warrior that held out against the Yemnor for many years through the use of a magic potion. It was hilariously funny, especially as his history teacher drummed in some of the details of the rise of the Yemnor empire and he started to get more and more of the jokes.

There was a jewelry store as well, that sold implant jewelry for the Nari. But it also had other pieces for Terrans and Nalo and Sjoglun. Most of it cost far too much for Josh to afford but one time he picked up a thin silver chain with the birdlike beast of the Nari king carved on a small amulet.

The day agreed upon by Tooleck, Terrans and Nalo as "Year End" for Nari was approaching with all the celebrations that would be anticipated. There would be more dinner parties and gifts exchanged on Year End day. The necklace was for Charli and he hoped she'd like it.

There was going to be a party at school as well, a dinner, concert and dance for the children that parents permitted to attend. A "formal" they called it. Some of the kids from his class would be going and he sweated wondering if he dared invite Charli. It wasn't just a question of whether she would say yes but whether their combined parents would let them. Ten and eleven were young for what was, essentially, a date.

He arrived home to find, unsurprisingly, that "Uncle" Grobney and "Aunt" Anoj were visiting. They hadn't moved in by any stretch of the imagination but they seemed to spend as many evenings at the Parker residence as at their own.

He took off his coat and hung it up and then wandered in the sitting room where Uncle Grobney was poring over data on a pad with the tridee playing in the background. The show that was on was one of the few that Josh liked, a historical adventure about an ancient Tooleck king. The character was half legendary but the show, unlike most, placed him in the time period from which the legend probably arose. Josh had several books about him and he knew that most of the stories that placed the king in the late medieval period were just . . . wrong. This one was placed in the period shortly after the fall of the Yemnor empire and was as close to "correct" for the period as a show could be. It was called "Torath, King of the Tooleck" and he caught every episode he could. This one, though, was repeat and he more or less ignored it.

"What are you working on?" Josh asked, looking at the pad upside down. It was scrolling text with some Nari figures shown digging in a video box.

"Thought there'd be some pockets of thoramite in the delta," Grobney said in a satisfied tone. "Found this one not far from your dad's project.

"I don't get what's the big deal about thoramite." Josh sighed. "If it wasn't for thoramite, Nari wouldn't have anything to export." And he'd be back on Terra. Of course, he'd probably be back in Miss Smith's primary school with no Charli, but, on the other hand, he wouldn't be taking his life in his hands every day on the bus. "Isn't there anything besides thoramite to use to create hyperdrive?"

"No, unfortunately," Grobney said, leaning back and focusing all five eyes on him. "Have you studied atomic physics in school yet, Josh?"

"No," Josh replied. "Why?"

"Because it's the only way to explain thoramite," Grobney replied, waving his eyestalks in what Josh had learned was something like a smile or a chuckle. "You know that atoms are not whole, yes?"

"No," Josh said. "They're not?"

"No. An atom is composed of, at minimum, one electron and one proton," Grobney said, pulling out a sheet of plascrip and a stylus, putting a circle in the middle and surrounding it with another. "There are also neutrons, but I'll skip them for now. When you split an atom, you get nuclear fission." He pronounced it new-clear. "And that releases a good bit of energy. Ole E equals MC, ey? Both the Tooleck and the Terrans used that at one time or another in their development. However, it leaves radioactive material behind, and that has its own problems and dangers. If you strip the atom off you have plasma. You've heard of plasma?"

"Like plasma guns?" Josh asked.

"There are other uses," Grobney said, whistling a laugh. "But, yes, plasma guns use a substance called deuterium to create a self-sustaining toroid, a circle, that travels out until it strikes a solid substance, such as a Jootan in my personal experience, and detonates. Transfers a good bit of energy to said Jootan, or a door or a wall or one of your mates, and blows just about anything to gratack. But the point is, with plasma, that you have only protons and neutrons, the electron has been stripped off. With me?"

"Yes," Josh said, partially understanding.

"In most cases, this doesn't matter. But with thoramite plasma, when there's enough thoramite plasma in a particular area, what is called its 'critical mass,' it degrades, that means breaks down, into a field of zero point particles. But it's those zip particles that cause gravity and inertia and I'm not even going to try to explain them. But with that field, which can be manipulated, you can accelerate much faster than with any other substance in the galaxy. Thoramite is pumped through tubes of a special material that permit the thoramite to react when the tubes get at a precisely aligned distance. This generates the zip field; the zip field is manipulated for acceleration and when the ship reaches the speed of light the zip field opens a stable wormhole to another location. In the process, however, the thoramite is consumed by the reaction. So you have to have thoramite to drive the ships. And that's why thoramite is so important and anyone who has it has an economic edge."

"When we were flying over we had a problem with the warp core," Josh said. "They pulled it out and I was watching when they took the top off. It glowed blue."

"That's thoramite," Grobney said, nodding human fashion. "When the degradation occurs it transfers a bit of charge to the thoramite around it and excites the electron shells which then collapse and release that blue glow. Similar effect to, oh, a chemical light or any sort of light source you'd care to name."

"One spot on it was glowing really bright?" Josh asked.

"Uncontrolled reaction," Grobney said, whistling. "Vibration can make the tubes get out of line. You know what a millimeter is?"

"Yes," Josh said, "of course."

"Know what a nanometer is?" Grobney asked, his eyestalks waving. "It's smaller than a bacteria. That's how much tolerance there is in those tubes; it's measured in nanometers. So what happened?"

"There was a Nari—it was a Nari Spacelines ship we were taking from Tooleck to here—there was a Nari that wanted to fix it with tape."

"Space tape," Grobney said, "thousand and one uses. Technically impossible to use it to fix an uncontrolled reaction. Doesn't mean it hasn't been done, I did it once. But not something for the untutored, you know. What happened?"

"Big argument, Nari won," Josh said, swallowing. "He blew up."

"One of several possible outcomes," Grobney said, whistling in humor. "I take it the Toolecks didn't want to do it?"

"Not the way it looked to me," Josh replied. "Why wouldn't the tape work?"

"Oh, I didn't say it won't work," Grobney replied. "Just not a method for the untutored and definitely not one to be applied in a spaceport to a civilian vessel in its regular commerce. Very much an emergency field repair, don't you know? With the emphasis on emergency as in 'our ship broke down and there's a Jootan squadron closing in on us and we have to get out of here now.' The problem is the rate of reaction, you see? Too much reaction and the thoramite detonates, as you saw. Too little and it won't sustain the hyper tunnel. And if you get a hot spot like that, microbubbles appear in the material and degrade the zip effect. And the material that the released particles pass through have an effect. You have to get the reaction back to the normal mode and the only way to do that is either send the core back to the factory or figure out a way to mitigate the hot spot. Space tape actually increases the reaction rate, not decreases it. Slap it right on the hot spot and, well . . . boom."

"Is that what happened to you?" Josh asked.

"Close enough," Grobney said, waving his eyestalks. "Not something I can talk about, youngster. Not even in this day and age. Some secrets have to lie fallow for a long time."

"Like hypermissiles?" Josh asked. "Anoj said you worked on the hypermissile project?"

"A bit," Grobney admitted. "Early in the war I was an officer on a cruiser. That's where I got this," he added, rolling his carapace around and pointing to his back. "See the black spots?"

"Yeah," Josh said curiously. "And something that looks like a crack."

"Crack came later," Grobney admitted. "Cruiser was escorting a merchant convoy and we got jumped by a group of Jootan fast raiders. Came out of hyper right on top of us, must have gotten our course from a stealth ship. Battle alarms had barely sounded when we were hit with their missiles. One of the cores blew up and I caught a bit of shrapnel." He paused and his eyestalks seemed to extend as if looking at something a long way away.

"Mate of mine, Oyeke, we'd both joined the cruiser at the same time as subalterns. Saw him crawling up a tunnel. Power was out, plasma gushing, place was a madhouse, everybody scrambling to get out before the negamissiles went off. Oyeke was moving from hand-hold to hand-hold, working his way towards the lifeboats. Had both his legs gone right at the center joint. Vac-suit had sealed over them, but he was still blasting fluids into the vacuum. Plasma arc between me and him, nothing I could do. Then he let go of the hand-hold, got caught in the air that was being sucked out and drifted into the plasma . . ."

Grobney paused and then his eyestalks started moving again and three of them rotated to face Josh. "Anyway, I made it to the lifeboats and another cruiser picked us up a few days later."

"Gosh," Josh said. "Dad was just an engineer working on a camp."

"Oh, your father did a bit more than that," Grobney said, whistling in humor. "Bit more."

"What happened after that?" Josh asked. "To you, I mean."

"Well, punctured carapace takes a bit to heal," Grobney said, leaning back. "Was in the hospital a fair time. I'd taken my fifth year in physics before the war and my records showed that and that I had a . . . rather high intelligence score. Came a Terry to visit me, old chap, colonel but old even for that rank. Had some tests he wanted me to take. Well, I've always been good at tests and these were for memory, which I'm particularly good at. Took the tests, heard nothing more of it. Did some work running clerks, sort of thing I could do while the old carapace healed. Got asked to lunch by the same old duffer. Asked me a number of questions. I hadn't grown up on Tooleck, I'm from one of the colony worlds. Grew up with a drive rifle in my hand, you know, running around in the jungle and what-not. Seemed he knew all about that. Seemed he knew just about everything worth knowing about me, you know, the time I failed math in primary for example. Had a teacher a bit like your Miss Hissberger that time so I know how you feel. Finally asked me if I'd consider a posting that meant I'd probably get killed, but rarely get bored." Grobney paused and his spinctures whistled until he choked.

"Lord, but I was young. Thought I'd live forever whatever this old duffer had to say. Most of the time I was on the cruiser was nothing but boredom. Go across the Rift escorting a convoy of merchants, hoping to avoid the raiders, go back. Over and over. Very boring except when you're getting blown up. So I said yes. Dumbest one thing I'd ever done. He was right. Damned near killed me more than once, but I was rarely bored. Angry, unhappy, wet, cold, miserable, terrified, but rarely bored. If you're ever in the military, lad, there's a saying: Never volunteer for anything. It's important, remember it and heed it."

"What was it?" Josh asked. "What were you doing?"

"Well, maybe we'll talk about that another time," Grobney said, keying his pad. "We've both got homework to do, what?"

12: If You're Not Going to Like the Answer . . .

Josh stumbled off the bus and turned to face the driver.

The problem was that while the driver didn't speak Galacta, over the years of driving he had learned most of the major curse-words. And you could get in a lot of trouble for cursing at the driver.

The point was, though, that he could easily catch individual curse words. But, after much thought, Josh had come to the conclusion that if you spoke really fast he wouldn't catch it.

So he'd practiced. In available free time. He'd written down every curse word he knew, in three languages at this point, left out the Nari, and recited them. To the point that he could get out a string that was about twenty syllables long in under a second and a half. He'd timed it.

He pulled out a scrap of paper, cleared his throat and spoke.

"#@$(%)@@!&***()))@@!!#@%&((*&%$$@@(((($#!"

When he was done he nodded at the driver, who was waggling his feelers in puzzlement, and turned around to go in the tunnel.

That felt better. It didn't make up for five months' worth of bruises, but it helped.

He decided to keep the scrap of paper. It might come in handy again.

* * *

As Josh stepped into the surface tunnel his nose was assaulted by a strong stench of sulphur, something like rotten eggs but if so a whole air-truck must have crashed.

"Did the kunerac overflow?" he muttered, whistling the iris for the Parker apartment and holding his nose.

As he stepped in his home tunnel the stench got worse and increased as he descended the ramp.

Coming around the last bend he saw several Nari rubbing their tails on the wall and Dr. Reenig standing by, watching them.

"Hello, Dr. Reenig," Josh said, releasing his nose and trying not to gag. He realized the smell was coming from the wall which looked . . . wet.

"Hello, Josh," their landord said. If he had any problems with the smell it wasn't evident.

"Can I ask what's going on?" Josh said.

"The lining on the tunnel needed touching up," Dr. Reenig replied. "So I called in a crew to work on it."

As he was saying that, one of the Nari stopped smoothing the wall and leaned back. The esophagal opening under his labial extension opened and he gobbered up a chunk of what looked like purple plaster that hit the wall with a wet "smack." The smell intensified as the Nari flipped a tail up and started smoothing the material into the wall.

"Oh," Josh said, clapping a hand over his mouth and hurrying to the apartment iris. "Gotta go," he added in a muffled tone.

"Have a good day, Josh," Dr. Reenig replied, turning back to watch the workmen.

* * *

Josh leaned back from the fresher and spit out the mouthful of water, then spit again.

"Joosshh?" his mother called from the foyer. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, mom," Josh replied. "Must have been something I ate." He paused and thought about it for a second. "Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Don't go out of the house for a while. Dr. Reenig is having some work done. It's . . . not safe."

"Okay," Jala answered. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Fine," Josh said. "Just fine. But, I have got to learn to stop asking questions . . ." he added in a whisper. Then he pulled out his scrap of paper again.

* * *

John Ringo is the author of many novels, as well as a writer of short stories.

To read more work by John Ringo, visit the Baen Free Library at: http://www.baen.com/library/

Fish Story, Episode 3

Written by Dave Freer, Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis
Illustrated by Barb Jernigan

The Flashing of the Loch Ness Monster

This episode of the fishy tale borders on the hallucinatory. I'm not too sure if I should be telling you. Assassins from MA-6, the militant arm of the ancient pagan Brotherhood of the Angle, might come and dose my angling permit with a mixture of anthrax and mackerel oil. I've seen them stalking through the rain in their hooded ponchos armed with the folding chair of extreme prejudice. Still, the tale should be told and told to as many people as possible, so if I'm found clubbed to death by folding chair, showing signs of disgorger torture, and suspended from the ceiling by a Boca grip, everyone will know who killed me.

It all happened because, having listened in to the story of the Wandle Pike and the Tinta Catfish, the pub owner had invited a few foolish drinkers to stay on after closing time. That included myself, whom we can keep calling Ishmael for the moment, along with Sheila Rowen—she of the tattoos—MacParrot, Steven Speairs, Kevin Bagust and Dexter Guptill.

A lock-in, where, as guests in theory, we could avoid the evil that is closing time. A scanty half hour before and we'd all been part of that great mass of humanity engaged in the important activity of purifying the water by extracting the alcohol out of beer, using our own livers. It's a public duty, because alcohol can be toxic. It is one of the redeeming features of my fellow men that so many are willing, nay eager, to bravely perform this service to mankind.

The pub was empty now, except for us. I didn't think I'd ever seen the place with quite that few people in it. It echoed oddly, but we did our best to make up for it with vocal volume and the sounds of liquid moving.

"Well, then," said our host, whose name turned out to be James Watters. He was in possession of a very large glass, with a generous amount of golden liquor on the iceblocks in that glass. He subscribed to the glacial theory of inherited racial memory, to wit:

Iceblocks need lubrication, otherwise the sounds of the grinding of ice can cause subharmonics which instantly transport us to an ancient Europe covered in glaciers, and to the hunting of mastodons, and the harpooning of seals and walrus. It is therefore vital to your survival—and for the furniture—to keep the ice lubricated at all times. Being as Watters was of Congolese descent via the West Indies proves either that we know zip about the ice-age or that racial theories are a crock.

Watters must have had iceblocks in his throat too, judging by the way he was putting the scotch back. "I've heard tell of your little Wandle Pike."

Sheila bristled. "'Little!' I'll have you know—"

"But I think it might be that it has grown somewhat since then," he said smoothly. "It must be at least one and a half times that size now. An angler down Merton way hooked it last year."

The pride and, of course, the probity of Sarf Lunnon revivified, Sheila sat down again. "And?"

"Ah, it is a very sad story," said Watters, with a suitable expression of gleeful tragedy. "The angler slipped on the top of the embankment, just as he brought it to bank. Straight down the slope he went. A brave man and a fine angler. He kept the tension on the line somehow as he slid, raising his rod, with his badly mauled Rapala still in the pike's upper lip."

"Good fisherman that," said Steven approvingly. "Nearly as important as not dropping your beer."

"Normally yes," agreed James. "But not when you are falling onto that open mouth."

He paused, to save the iceblocks from friction again with another application of scotch, then tugged at his little goatee, shook his head, and said with an unholy sadness: "And never with your legs apart."

Glasses were arrested halfway to lips, as we all winced in unison.

"Still, it was his own Rapala that did the worst damage. The pike got away in the chaos. And it has a taste for man-flesh now," he said with ghoulish delight.

Steven snorted. "Man-flesh. Bloody hell. All we need is a dildo with hooks and we're in."

That was said with the sort of jeering bravado that I knew could only lead to one thing—us prowling sleazy sex shops at 2:00 AM in search of a large pink appliance, before heading, with a horrible déjàvu for the Wandle in a minicab driven by a khat-chewing illegal immigrant. It was the time of morning when ideas like that take root and flourish like weed at any new-clone Glastonbury concert.

"The vibration would give it a good movement in the water . . ." said Kevin thoughtfully.

"Which end do you attach a treble hook to?" I asked, in spite of myself.

Dexter shook his head. "Trebles are no good. You've got to put on short shank 2/0 for that sort of fish."

"Ach, those circle hooks maybe?" suggested MacParrot. "Ah saw thim on a programme about Ta-teatty."

"Tah-teatty?"

"Aye, named after the wimmen. Topless," he said nostalgically. "Ah think ut's somewhere near Majorca. I went there once. You have to wear dark glasses tae look at the view."

"Ah. Tahiti. Very close to Majorca," I said. MacParrot had an almost American knowledge of geography.

"Tahiti, yeah, they do use circle hooks there," said Kevin, displaying his ichthyological knowledge, "but that's only for deep water, where you get a lot of drag on the line and you can't strike. No, what you need is short-shank hooks. I have to agree with Dexter, even though that goes against my principles. You get better leverage on short-shanks. But I'd use something bigger than a 2/0."

"At least 5/0," said Steven, with all the confidence of the instant expert. "And you attach one fore and aft, I reckon."

"And how are you going to keep the water out, is what I want to know?" I was starting, belatedly, to think of excuses.

That silenced the eager chorus.

"A knotted-off rubber raincoat," suggested Dexter.

"They're built waterproof . . ." said Sheila and dived into her beer.

Alas, for the birth of a lure that could have changed the way the fishing tackle business was perceived forever, to say nothing of what it would have done to the term 'bloodworm' bait. . . .

"You've got it wrong," observed the barmaid, who had now joined the drinking crew and had her feet up on the table. Vicki Keith, her name was. "It was his thigh. I've seen the scars."

"You have?" asked Steven.

"Yes, and trust me, it wasn't worth it. There was someone who would claim a tadpole was the Loch Ness Monster."

MacParrot beamed and stood up, fumbling in his trousers as he swayed. "Ach! The Loch Ness Monster. Ah've got priff."

Dexter looked at the fumbling. "You filthy beggar. A course of antibiotics will sort that out."

MacParrot blinked. "Ma wallet. Ma wallet's missing!" he yelled.

"It's in your other hand, you drunken Scots blart," said Steven.

MacParrot stared at the tatty wallet as if it was a holy apparition. Shook his head in amazement. "Ach. I ha' sworn ah lost it. That someone ha' stolen the priff that'll mak ma fortune." He sat down again, a process mildly improved by his missing the chair. He retrieved himself from the floor and gained the comparative sanctuary of his seat. He put the wallet down, with exquisite care, into a pool of beer. Opened it, to reveal the usual joys of a bachelor male existence: very little money, a pack of that everlasting chewing gum you buy from coin-operated dispensers in the gents, a large number of receipts . . . and some battered Polaroid photographs.

In this day of digital cameras, you could somehow rely on MacParrot to have the last surviving Polaroid. Most of the pictures were pink and quite ingenious. Even as totally bladdered as he was, MacParrot had the grace to hastily shuffle them.

"Ach. Just some holiday snaps," he said airily.

"Of the spine by the looks of it," I jeered.

Mc Parrot ignored me. "Ut's the Loch Ness Monster ahm looking for. Ah've got priff. Photographic priff." He leafed through more principally pink and ample pictures. "There really is a monster."

"I think she found it," said Sheila.

"How many humps did it have?" asked Kevin.

Steven began to sing in a fine tuneless baritone the nursery rhyme: "Sally the camel's got . . ."

MacParrot looked darkly at him. "How did ye know her naem wus Sally? Eh? She's no' been seein' a great southern Jessie like you. . . ."

It took the combined efforts of more beer, and our magnificent singing in chorus, to convince MacParrot that if Speairs was sleeping with his bit of fluff, we all were. The fact that this seemed, in his mind, to be a distinct possibility complicated matters a bit. It might have been easier just to let them fight it out, but Watters had indicated that he'd take this unkindly and might just respond by kicking us out. That was a mighty big lever. According to Archimedes, with a big enough lever you could move the earth—and with one that size even have a fair chance at budging a Scots drunk, although it is asking a lot of the lever.

At least a temporary cessation of hostilities was achieved with the barmaid calling for the intervention of the blue helmets—a concoction of Parfait d'Amour, Baileys Irish Cream and cognac. This is a drink which is not surprisingly vastly unpopular in every civilized country, and most uncivilized ones. It had a remarkable pacifying effect, though, as all the combatants united in demanding beer and agreeing that it was possibly the vilest drink of their experience.

"It compares favorably with chili beer," said Steven, sticking his tongue out.

"British beer is always too bloody warm," grumbled Kevin, doing the oral temperature test. "Back in South Africa they damn near freeze the stuff, because otherwise you might taste it. Chemical-flavor lager."

"Not cold beer. Mexican stuff. It has a chili in it," explained Speairs.

"That's an abomination," I said, speaking as the resident Vindaloo connoisseur. "Chili and beer should only be simultaneous coming up, not going down. And I bet it was lager."

"Yeah." Steven nodded, his face set in a real-ale grimace. "Kind of fitting really."

"I had a cousin in the merchant marine who brought me some Japanese saki once," admitted Sheila.

"And what was it like?" asked Dexter.

Sheila grimaced. "You understand why the beggars committed suicide, but become mystified as to how the hell they ever hit something the size of an aircraft carrier when they did it. It still wasn't as bad as that concoction." She pointed accusingly at the empty glasses scattered among the other debris on the table.

This is the stage of the evening when mixing drinks is even more unwise than usual, because it made me say "Well, let us see the picture of Nessie then?"

So MacParrot did his famous wallet hunt and the "it's been stolen!" performance again. We gave a standing ovation and then Sheila went and ruined it by pointing out that his wallet was still sitting on the table in its puddle of beer.

MacParrot leafed through the entertaining pink pictures of Sally-the-camel and hauled out the second last picture in the pile out for us to all stare at.

His pictures of Sally were taken with a less shaky hand, and in much better light. Even the moon was blurred. That could have been something with three humps sticking up out of the water. It could have been hay bales covered with tarpaulin, sunk in shallow water. It could also have been the pyramids at Giza.

I said so.

"No, Nessie wus definitely a lass," said our Scots instant cryptozoology expert. "No' a geezer."

"He means one of those fountains of steam associated with geothermal activity," explained Dexter.

"Whut?"

I intervened. "I mean that picture is too shaky to be used as evidence of anything except delirium tremens."

"Whut? Weel, there's this one." He produced another picture without the slightest hint of camera shake.

It was also without the slightest hint of a Loch Ness Monster. It did show a series of neat splash rings on the moonlit water, and the back of a boat. For a picture taken using a cheap Polaroid at night, it was a great photograph. For proof of a monstrous dweller in the chilly waters of a Scots loch, it was rubbish.

"She wus startled by the flash. No' me. The camera," he said, forestalling us.

"You mean you flashed her as well?" Steven asked with a grin.

He blushed. He really blushed. You wouldn't have thought it possible but plainly a streak of deep prudery lurked in the Calvinist soul of MacParrot. "In a manner o' speakin', I did," he admitted.

"No wonder she left in such a hurry. The poor beast's probably having therapy." Sheila grinned and appropriated one of my smokes.

Steven reached his large mitt across the beery table and the debris of dead soldiers. "I'm honored to shake the hand of the man who flashed the Loch Ness Monster. I mean plenty of people have seen her, but just how many do you think have flashed her?"

MacParrot's first brush with fame, if not fortune, seemed to embarrass the Scot further. "Ah wus answering nature's call," he explained. "Ye see . . . Ach. we'd just gone for a wee romantic sail in moonlight."

It appeared that MacParrot had, in a fit of drunken gallantry, "borrowed" a rowboat to take his light-of-love for a bit of passion on the ocean . . . well, loch.

"Wuch, is where things went just a wee bit wrong," he explained, while proving that a man can set fire to the filter end of cigarette if he tries long and hard enough. "As ma experience on the water was a wee bit limited. And I might just have been a bit fu'."

"How unlike you!" Sheila's sarcasm can crack rocks, whereas her biceps and forearms are merely limited to walnuts. "Quite out of national character."

MacParrot took the coffin nail out of his face. Squinted at it. Broke the filter off and lit it again. Coughed spectacularly, and continued, oblivious. "Aye. Otherwise I might have taken oars."

George blinked away from the difficult problem of getting his eyes to focus. "How did you get away from the shore?"

MacParrot shrugged. "Ach., it wus tied tae a wee pier. We just pished her off. And then we got a little distracted like."

"The famous Sally?" I asked. It would appear that she was an enterprising lass.

"Aye," MacParrot nodded. "And a bottle of scotch. Ut might have helped if we'd discovered the lack of oars a wee bit earlier." He grimaced. "Ye might say we were adrifting up Loch Ness without a paddle. And out of drink." He looked tragically at his glass. "An' there wasn't any bathroom facilities on board. I had just liberated mesel' from my trouser-buttons at the stern, when I found that I was lookin' down at the monster."

Steven sniggered. "MacParrot's so modest, isn't he?"

So did Sheila. The rest of us of course kept dead straight faces. "So she came for a closer look? And didn't swim off into the night, shrieking?" asked the barmaid Vicki.

MacParrot nodded. "Ah've nivver seen anything like it. It must ha' been forty foot long."

Vicki took a long look at the squat young Scotsman. "That's what I call a grew-some monster."

MacParrot nodded. "Aye. A great long snaky neck and a wide body—wi' those finnys things instead o' legs. I just stood there wi' my fly down. And she just floated there and stared at me. I just had tae get a picture—and when the flash went off she dived."

"So all we have to do is go and expose ourselves on Loch Ness, in the middle of the night, and we're bound to get a glimpse of the holy grail of cryptozoology, the legendary Loch Ness Monster. A plesiosaur that has somehow taken a perverse interest in the undercarriage of small Scotsmen. It's another griffin I tell you, " I said.

"Makes sense to me," said Dexter, grinning. "That's why they wear kilts."

"It's too cold up there to flash, or they'd have a petting zoo for Nessies by now," said George. "We should go and try it out!"

"To flash Nessie. Sounds like a project to me. Shall we go tonight?" said I, happy and secure in the knowledge that Scotland was probably not within reach, even by transdimensional minicab, at one in the morning. The blue helmet was having its legendary pacifying effect and I was thinking about that Zen state where you become one with the top of table.

"It can be arranged," said Watters.

When someone says that, in that tone—especially a pub owner—you should find your feet, stagger to the john and lock yourself in.

Really. It's the wisest course. Do not say "and the fucking pudding. It's five hundred miles! You got a Lear jet out the back?"

Whatever you do, do not say this.

As it happens, I faithfully followed my own advice and said nothing.

But bloody Steven, the UK's gift to determined foot in mouth disease, said "and the fucking pudding. It's five hundred miles! You got a Lear jet out the back?"

Watters smiled. "No, something much faster. Something known only to the inner circle of the Brotherhood of the Angle. I see recruits among you. Believers in fish. Come with me."

I should have followed Speairs into the john instead, where I believe he went to bark at the porcelain. I could have quietly fallen asleep there. Instead I joined the rest of the drunken cavalcade into the nether parts of the pub.

* * *

There should have been, at the very least, pentacles. Sigils scrawled in blood, guttering candles, that sort of thing. Alternatively, high voltage blue arcs of sparks dancing in jagged lines between the insulators, great monstrous switches to be pulled, the air heavy with the reek of ozone.

It was totally out of the best tradition. There weren't even instrument panels full of flashing lights. How were we to know what we were in for?

It was simply a cupboard under the stairs smelling of brass polish, with maybe a hint of ammonia-based floor cleaner. There was a bucket and a mop in it.

James Watters waved us forward with a showmanlike air.

"Wow . . . it's amazing," said Dexter.

"I've never seen anything quite like it," I agreed.

"No you haven't, and yes it is amazing," said Watters. "The churnel tunnel doesn't look like much. But if you just let me adjust the settings before you step through, I can have you in Scotland and on the banks of Loch Ness in the twinkling of an eye. The churnel penetrates the very fabric of reality. Reality doesn't want us there, so it spits us out. We've learned to control where it spits us to."

He seemed to be offended that we found it funny. People are like that. When they own the pub, you stop laughing quickly. He moved and twisted the mop. Nodded. And said: "Well, who is first?"

"First for what?" I asked.

"A trip through the churnel," said James. "Don't all shout at once. Just step into the cupboard."

Now we were all in a fine and plummy state. Even Sheila, and she has a head like cast iron. We'd have probably been good for a session of fishing on the Wandle with vibrating lures. Or climbing Nelson's Column to go and put a copy of the Daily Worker under the statue's right arm. Or harpooning swine in the fleet ditch . . .

But being asked to step into a cupboard under the stairs was a bit of a let down. Had the man no sense of drama? Besides, even if only dimly, we got the feeling that we were going to be the butt of some complex and horrible joke, a feeling reinforced by Vicki saying "Not me. Not again."

"How many of us do wish tae put into the broom cupboard?" asked MacParrot, doubtfully.

"All of you, if you like," said Watters. "Or one at a time, if you prefer."

"And how long before you let us out?"

For an answer James took the key and held it out. "Here. Take it with you. Give it back on the other side."

So in a fit of foolishness MacParrot did. He stepped into the cupboard. Watters swung the door closed.

I expected a bolt.

He opened it again.

The cupboard was exactly as it had been. Only it was empty of a short-arsed swaying little Scot.

"This has immense possibilities!" I said eagerly. "How do you get bank managers to step into it?"

"Clever!" agreed Kevin. "There must be bloody panel at the back!" He marched into the cupboard to look for it, closely followed by the rest of us.

It was very dark and somehow there was enough room for all.

Now, according to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, going through hyperspace is unpleasantly like being drunk, and therefore Arthur Dent will never be cruel to a gin and tonic again. Going through the churnel tunnel was actually more like being eaten. Or rather, more like being digested. And the black tunnel treated us as if we were a bad curry. It didn't help that the process left me feeling like I'd had one too, complete with all the light and sound effects that would go with stomach cramps, if Andrew Lloyd Webber put them into a stage show.

Then the churnel spat us out into darkness, and in a confused mass we pushed our way toward the only crack of light. The door opened and we fell out, en masse. We lay there groaning in a small, somewhat used pile, next to a rubber plant, in an almost generic 1970 lounge-bar.

I say "almost" because there were signs that some confused designer in the process of making the typical chain Irish pub (a concept which is in itself an abomination and a sin against nature) had got hooked up on bad-taste tartan and thistles, instead of green and shamrocks. Possibly the only other evidence we had that we had traveled the severe digestive problems of time and space were the other occupants of the bar. Such sights can only be the result of the distortion of space time and causality.

Staring amiably at us was a man in a blue turban and a kilt. From his appearance, a south Asian of some sort. It is possible that he may have been wearing other garments too, but those were the bits that will remain etched forever in my memory. He also had a long curled moustache that would have made your average walrus die of envy.

"Greetings," he said, bowing. "What can I be getting you to drink, guests? Och of the noo'," he added as an afterthought. "I am sorry. It is being very late. I am forgetting the traditional accent."

"Who the hell are you?" demanded Sheila, finding her way to her feet first.

"And where are we?" I asked, taking in the scene. There were three people playing "fuzzy duck" and ignoring us at a table across from the bar.

"Where is the bathroom?" quavered Kevin.

"He is the Indian equivalent of Manuel," said the fellow standing behind the bar, with a glass cupped in his hands. "Except that he stays sober and is efficient. You're at the Loch Ness Highland Experience Inn. And the bathroom is over there, but I see it is too late."

Kevin was being sick into the potted rubber plant. "That's a plant with an unenviable diet. Still, it seems to thrive on cigarette butts and used beer." He waved at Watters, whom I suddenly realized had come with us through the churnel. "Hello, James. To what do we owe this pleasure?"

"They want go hunting for Nessie." He said that as if it were a perfectly normal statement, like "they're in need of a bathroom" and just as relevant.

"I see," said the barman, unwinding himself from the slump over his glass. "Harpoons? Nets? High explosive?" He was one of those individuals with a lot of spare slump. Yards of it. He was tall and skinny, and, as befitted one of the custodians of the churnel, had a glittering and inscrutable eye. It could also have been his glasses.

"Last I heard," said Sheila, "it was to use guided muscles."

The barman nodded. "Novel," he said, with just a hint of a smile. "Different. Is entry to ancient Brotherhood of the Angle now requiring new recruits to drink a gallon of scrumpy, catch Nessie and make love to Eskimo Nell, and now that they've done the first bit, they've got a little confused?"

He look at the sorry bunch of us, still stunned by our first experience of being rejected by the very fabric of reality. "Drinks, gentlemen and lady? And who is Nessie's first date? She'll be spoiled for choice."

Looked at in this light, it all seemed a little dimwitted, rather like the two guys playing fuzzy duck in an attempt to charm the third, undeniably female part of the game. They were not assisted by the fact that they were both, by now, losing nearly every second round. The woman wasn't.

Sheila shook her finger at the barman. "You're threatening the spectacle of a lifetime. I'm looking forward to watching this. I wouldn't be surprised if the Loch Ness Monster laughs herself out of the water."

"I have it on good authority," said the woman at the table, "that the Loch Ness Monster is a male."

MacParrot looked at her in pure affront. "How can ye say that!"

"My lips move and the words come out." She looked him up and down. "And anyway, it's these two's theory. About bedroom hackle for tying flies with."

"That was salmon," defended one of the male fuzzy duck players, the one with the goatee. "The record for salmon is held by a woman."

"Is it?" asked Dexter.

"Was, anyway," said the other male drinking game loser, with a faint slur and a vacuous smile that went very well with his ponytail. "You should never let facts stand in the way of a good story."

His rival nodded. "It must be the pheromones."

MacParrot looked puzzled. "Pharaoh moans? Ach, Like the mummy's curse?"

"No," said Dexter, "not quite. Scent communication."

"Exactly," said the fellow with the goatee. "That's why fish're attracted. Salmon only enter fresh water to breed. Horny fish that are thinking of nothing but sex, even to the exclusion of food. That's why women catch more."

"It couldn't just be that women are better fishermen?" demanded Sheila, flexing her biceps.

"I really prefer the theory that fish are zoophilists," said the woman, "even if the latter is true. It makes haddock justifiable. Deserving of being poached in milk."

"Time for last orders, folks. Closing time passed a good two hours ago." The barman yawned. "We bend the rules, but Dryck here gets up at dawn. And his practiced accent's going. That means that he'll fall asleep when he's supposed to be working."

The turbaned and mustachioed man nodded. "For religious reasons, you understand. Besides, everybody else has gone to bed. Business is slow. My name is Dryck Spivey, by the way."

I squinted at him. "Meaning no offense, but you don't look like someone who'd be named that."

Spivey smiled serenely. "I was not born with the name, of course. It was given to me by my swami, Aniruddha Tucker—who changed his own name in order to elude the attentions of . . . well, never mind. It's a long story, which perhaps some day I shall recount."

"Quick. Order drinks," said Sheila. "And kick MacParrot if he tries to make any Indian jokes."

"It's your round," I said, getting in before she had time to think. It was, actually, but it usually took a fair amount of solid persuasion to this effect to get her to agree. Armlocks were good, if you could manage it.

In the important business of staving off incipient drought, the sex of Nessie and the rivalry between the groups was forgotten, especially as Dexter was set on making sure everyone was double parked. So too was travel across the secret routes of the Angling Brotherhood. After all, what did space-time have to compete with strong drink? Anyway, it was that stage of the evening when everything is a little surreal, and I have often found myself in places which I have no memory of getting to or plausible reason for being at, like the time we ended up in a campsite in Woking.

Introductions happened in a sort of desultory fashion. "Marc Robertson. And that's Donald Vaughan with the pigtail."

"Lisa Satterlund," said the statuesque woman, taking her gin and tonic. "Do you often just drop in here at about one thirty in the morning or is this a special occasion?"

"They've come to flash Nessie," explained Sheila, as if she had done nothing to encourage this.

"Could work more effectively than the plan these two had to fly-fish for Nessie," she said, gesturing with her glass.

"And you, Lassie?" MacParrot was peering at her cleavage.

She shrugged. "Me, I'm just researching an article on traditional highland hospitality, as provided by your traditional Scots hosts." She looked at the barman and his sidekick. "From Birmingham or the Punjab."

"We're all Scots, at least by descent," said the barman. "I answer to the name of Matthew Duncan, but if you go into your nearest Tartan seller, you will discover that somehow we're all sept and kin. Even those customers from Nigeria, Peru or Melanesia, who are broke from buying yards of checked tablecloth material, definitely not made in China."

"We're all descended from McAdam," said Robertson.

I pondered this. I was at a stage of the evening when I was taking this sort of statement quite seriously. "I've never heard of a McEve."

"She emigrated to place where the climate is better," said the barman. "That's why the sheep are so nervous around here."

His Indian sidekick nodded. "Indeed. It is a beautiful country even if it is being raining too often to be seeing it though that is good for the bar trade. And it has very good mutton."

In the meantime, now lubricated, the rest of the conversation had turned to the arcane and bizarre art of fly-fishing.

"I tie my own, you know," said Donald proudly. "To suit the local target species, and match their local prey animals."

"So what sort of fly do you tie to catch a Nessie?" I asked.

He blinked. "Have to be something Scottish. Resembling their natural diet, but with super-attractant features."

"A haggis fly," suggested Duncan.

"They're a protected species," said Donald.

"What, Nessies?" asked Sheila. "And to think that they were going to threaten them with exposure."

"No, haggises," explained the flytier. "You don't want to be caught casting something that even looks like one. The constabulary take haggises very seriously indeed."

"Surely that's Haggisi, like Hippopotomi," said Dexter.

"A deep fried Mars bar fly," offered Lisa.

Donald snorted the foam off his beer. "There are some things that defy even the consummate flytier's skill. And that is one of them."

"They look like floaters. Don't you guys tie floating flies?"

"Dry flies. Which are what wet flies are before they go in the water," explained Dexter. Kevin seemed to have deserted his rubber plant and disappeared into the bathroom.

"Well," said Marc, "most sightings happen in the area that has the highest plankton counts, so maybe there's a sewage outfall there."

"This is pure pristine Scots water we're talking about," said the barman.

"Indeed it is. Water passed personally by the pure pristine Scots," agreed Donald. "Look, Nessie is a myth."

"Is no'," said MacParrot. "I've seen her mysel', and I've got priff!"

"And who are you?" asked Lisa.

MacParrot had one of those faces that are so ugly that women notice him. Rather like a bulldog. Some people find those cute too.

"Angus Macintosh," he said, making an effort, for her, to de-psittacine his name.

The story got repeated, in between Lisa expertly fending off her two suitors and Sheila taking side-bets with Dexter about their chances. It was quite funny to watch them both playing gooseberry for the other, and her encouraging the game. I could have told them from experience that the bottom line of this behavior pattern was that she fancied neither, and if they played their cards right tonight they could both end up blind drunk, broke and sleeping alone.

Lisa peered at the photograph. "Couldn't you have taken a better picture?"

MacParrot sniffed. "Ach . . . I was only usin' one hand. Ah was . . . busy."

"Never ask a man to do two things at once," she said.

"Aye. This multi-taskin'. I've heerd aboot it. Wimmen dae it." He looked into her cleavage, being of roughly the right height to either develop a crick in the neck or to stare her in the chest. "Male minds are too highly developed for that. Ach. Y'see wimmen, they've sort of generalist minds, no' so refined," he explained kindly. "Ut's like toilet seats. No matter how often ye try to teach them, wimmen cannae learn tae put them back up."

Sheila and Lisa gaped. The rest us of wisely kept our mouths shut and did not cheer. We were drunk but not that drunk.

But he'd planted the seed, alas. Lisa and Sheila decided that there could only be one suitable treatment—and that involved, willy-nilly, the rest of us in a collective Loch Ness Monster-flash.

"You were offering to take me for a little night cruise earlier," said Lisa sweetly to Donald. "You were telling me what a lovely boat you had. And Marc, you were saying what a fine bottle of single malt scotch you have. Let's go and take them with us to try out this new style of monster hunting."

MacParrot seemed to be visited by a momentary lapse into good sense. "Ahm sure it wus just happenstance," he insisted. "Pure chance."

"Ah, but it worked. It drew the monster from its lair. Some of the greatest discoveries of science have happened by pure chance," said Sheila, exerting herself to sound as convincing as possible. "Just think, you may have finally hit on the Great Nessie lure. It may be why plesiosaurs became extinct elsewhere. There could be great Nessie flashing festivals with thousands of spectators. It could be the beginning of the great new tourist boom that Scotland dreams of. You'd be heroes. They'd probably put up a flashing statue."

"Ach. It could a'so be a chance for you to laugh at us," said the Scots reprobate that had got all of us into this in first place.

Lisa smiled sweetly. "That too, Mr. MacIntosh. Carpe diem!"

"Seize the day? It's after midnight," I protested.

"Get in early, then!" said Sheila, pushing us toward the doors.

We were herded out rather like drunken and reluctant cats towards our doom—which took the form of a small cabin cruiser tied up at the end of a pier, outside in the cold night air. We were up in Scotland. If you listened carefully you could hear the sounds of Scots night: sheep running and water freezing. And before us lay the dark waters of Loch Ness.

A word on Loch Ness. Now, every year thousands of tourists peer at the deep blue waters, and sometimes the gray and rain-swept waters, hoping to see the Loch Ness Monster. Perhaps wearing a plaid bonnet and playing "Scotland the Brave" on the bagpipes. There are a steady number of odd sightings and tall tales, going back many centuries. Some have been exposed as hoaxes, and others as inconclusive evidence. It seems that a lot of effort has gone into finding very little, true—but the lake is twenty-four miles long, about a mile wide, and more than seven hundred feet deep. It apparently has a surprisingly featureless underwater landscape, and a lot of effort has been put into searching it.

If the searchers had been watching that particular night they'd have seen a monstrous sight all right, as we headed away from the sleeping village of Drumnadrochit towards the ruins of Urquart castle. Clouds scudded across a gibbous moon as we headed for the black silhouette of the broken castle keep-tower. It was cold. "Look," I protested, knowing that I had more chance of falling pregnant than I had of getting out of those two women doing exactly what they wanted to—or wanted us to do—but trying all the same. "Won't right here do for this charade? We can get it over with and go back in to the warm."

"Many of the classic sightings happened over there," insisted Lisa. "Here, have some scotch."

The pained expression on Marc's face, as we chugged his twenty-year-old single malt straight from the bottle, was worth the chill from the lake and the cold night air. Besides, there was something knight-errantish about dropping your trousers in front of an ancient Scots castle. By general quiet male consensus it had been decided that it was not flashing Nessie, or the unoffending shoreline that was going to happen, but mooning our tormentors.

So we plowed steadily across the wind-riffled silver water, with Lisa taking oddly precise sightings. We should have smelled a rat, but as the scotch went around it would have had to be a rodent of elephantine proportions with a bouquet of 8 on the Limburger scale for us to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. The boasts as to the Nessie-pulling power of various of our wedding tackle was being discussed when Lisa announced that the fateful moment had arrived. The moon was out and she'd taken us relatively close to a small headland just across from the castle. It was an uninspiring spot, with nothing but an old caravan to compete with the castle.

I felt this was an affront our manhood and dignity. If I was going to flash anything it really ought to be a medieval relic not a sleeping caravan.

"Here," said Lisa firmly.

"Now," said Sheila, in her best this-brooks-no-argument tone, which has even been known to influence judges, and simply overwhelmed our weakened wits. It was the single malt's fault. If it had been a young, rough and abusive scotch we might have been wary, or drunk less of it.

Dexter shrugged. "You'd better lead the parade, Mac."

"Ach, let's do it all together then," said that worthy, his throat well lubricated with Marc's scotch. "On the count o' three."

"You take the wheel, I'll count," said Sheila to Lisa.

So we lined up, fumbling with belt buckles at the stern, the boat puttering along, the prop barely turning.

"A one."

"A two."

"A three. Drop 'em!" They demanded in chorus.

The scene was suddenly torn by a terrible and plaintive cry that could have issued from no human throat. . . .

Except that it obviously did. But zipper accidents will have that effect on a man's voice.

That sort of shriek can also affect your steering. Lisa pulled the wheel hard over, and pushed the throttle levers to full.

We did a wonderful job of falling like ninepins over the transom. Now, to be fair, with the wisdom of hindsight, she had probably intended to do the throttle trick from the start. But it is very unlikely she'd have caught Dexter, Kevin or even Donald with that trick—they were all experienced seamen—even with their trousers around knees, mid-bend for the moon, except for the addition of the sudden turn. And if she'd intended the sudden turn, surely it would have been away from the shore?

The water was cold and wet. We were about ten yards off the bank. Fortunately the water was only about two feet deep. In a ragged trouser-hauling chorus line of curses, we made our way in to the stony shoreline along a slippery and slightly squidgy bottom, to the vast appreciation of the pair of women cackling helplessly, especially when it was unsteady going and we all fell over again. Other than that, only fleeing sheep and a little winking red light witnessed our show.

It was either the local red light district (and hence the fleeing sheep) or we'd just put on one of the most spectacular monster shows ever seen on the Loch Ness Live webcam.

Then, of course, the door to the caravan opened and matters went downhill from there. It would appear that serious researchers into cryptozoology have just no appreciation of quality viewing. Among the terrors of the deep and the monsters of legend that have crawled out of it, this one ranked.

A cry of "Avast, me boys, out harpoons!" would have been appropriate. For some obscure reason, the cryptozoologist was seriously steamed, despite being a lot worse dressed than we'd been for his audience. We were merely in part unclothed, where he was stark naked.

Mind you, he did have some beads and a few novel piercings. His English, too, was interesting and informative. Also imported, it seemed, being liberally mixed with what could have been Swedish swear words.

Alas, in amongst the charmingly intemperate and odd words being uttered I distinctly heard "called the police."

A strategic retreat, leaving Kevin and Sheila as rearguard, while we pushed Donald's boat off seemed the better part of valor—especially as I did not like the idea of having the court enjoy the live webcam replays. So we pushed the boat out and refloated it in haste.

"The bus is leaving with or without you." I yelled, once we were on the water.

Kevin and Sheila came running. A wise decision, as I saw car lights bumping towards us.

The new-age cryptozoologist was now trying to get back into his caravan.

The door, it appeared, had swung closed behind him.

"Come back you bastards!" yelled Kevin.

"Can't," said Dexter. "Remember how shallow it was, Kev. We'll chew the prop up. Wade out."

So they did. . . .

And about three feet from the shore, they both suddenly disappeared underwater.

They surfaced, swam splashily to the boat, and we hauled them on board, shivering.

"What the hell happened to the mud-bank?" asked Kevin.

"I don't think we should stay here to find out," Dexter said quietly. He pointed to the scene on the shore. Cloud had covered the moon again. Up against the caravan a large, naked cryptozoologist was impaled by the lights of the panda car. Two of Scotland's finest were approaching with trepidation. The wind carried their voices to us, as it pushed the boat away from the fateful shore.

"Come along quietly, sir," said a very wary Scots voice.

This did not seem to be something the naked man was willing to do. He was being quite vocal about stupid fascists.

"The caller wasn't kidding aboot a naked lunatic," said the other policeman, edging away.

Dexter and Donald quietly unshipped the emergency paddles and we slipped away further into the night, and a sudden blessed rain-squall.

"You know," said Kevin thoughtfully, after the squall passed. "All I can think is that we did it. We found the monster."

"Living in a caravan? Got to move with the times," said I.

The ichthyologist shook his head, giving us all a shower. "Nope. Think about it. A mud-bank can't simply disappear. That was no mud-bank—it was Nessi herself. We must have walked over her back. And now get that motor started. I'm bloody frozen."

* * *

When our shivering, dripping crew returned to the portals of the Loch Ness Highland Experience Inn, we found James Watters and the barman, Matthew Duncan, sitting and drinking Irish Coffee. They were discussing the eternal verities.

Or fish, at any rate. By now, after the Wandle Pike and the Tinta Falls Catfish and the Loch Ness Monster, it was becoming hard to distinguish between the two subjects.

"I see that your enthusiasm seems to be a little dampened," said Duncan. "Where's the trophy then?"

"Still in Loch Ness. It wasn't big enough so we threw it back. We need drink!"

"Where's Lisa?" asked Donald, looking back at the door.

Frowning, Marc said: "I haven't seen her since we got back."

Sheila grinned at the two of them. "Mac invited her to go for a wee moonlit sail. She said that it was the only real highland hospitality she'd come across, so she thought she'd better experience it. I'd guess she's finding out if there really is a monster out on Loch Ness."

"Moonlit? It's raining out there."

Sheila shrugged. "She'll be fine. She's got a little Mac to cover her."

"I hope that he remembered to take oars this time."

I shrugged. "He can always get Nessie to push him back to shore. I wonder if he's got his Polaroid camera with him again."

Marc shook his head sadly. "How come blokes like that get lucky? She drank, and gave away my scotch, all he does is insult her, and he's pulled."

Donald put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "She scratched my boat's paintwork, got my private parts on the late night moonbat show—and we still couldn't pull."

Kevin grinned. "You need better bait. Let alone her, we couldn't even pull the Loch Ness Monster."

"It's the cold," said Marc. "Also, I've heard that plesiosaurs taste terrible."

"Oh, they're strictly catch and release these days," said the barman of the Loch Ness Highland Experience Inn.

"Anyway, plesiosaurs are small fry, and not even a true fish," said Watters. He seemed to have a twinkle in his eye. "I think you're all finally ready. We'll take the churnel again and I shall introduce you to one of the greatest fishermen of all time."

I eyed him suspiciously. "And I suppose he's another member of the ancient Brotherhood of the Angle."

That was definitely a twinkle. "Oh, indeed. You might say he's the founder of the order."

* * *

Eric Flint is the author of many novels and some short fiction. He has also edited a number of anthologies. Dave Freer has written a number of novels and short stories. Andrew Dennis has co-authored books with Eric Flint. This is the first time the three have worked together.

To read more work by these authors, visit the Baen Free Library at: http://www.baen.com/library/

INTRODUCING NEW AUTHORS

The Men in the Mirror

Written by Steven Ray
Illustrated by Dan Skinner

Three days before it all went down, Charles Robbins stepped out of his car in north Minneapolis. Slinging a camera bag over his shoulder, he crossed the wide but almost deserted street and entered the park, looking for a familiar face.

A thin line of trees hemmed the path, dark branches swaying in the same low, cold wind that swirled their fallen leaves across the shriveling grass. But beyond them all was open and clear, short-cropped lawns and soccer fields sweeping toward a far-off line of stately homes. Plenty of room to spread out, plenty of space to surround oneself with and still have privacy.

He found him about halfway around the path's curving course, sitting alone on a park bench, a bundle of papers on his lap. Across the path another bench stood empty. Robbins walked up and sat down.

"Hi," Robbins said.

"Hi," Chuck replied in the same tone. He glanced around. "I don't remember it being this cold."

Robbins smiled nervously. "Memory has a way of editing out the unpleasant details."

Chuck shrugged as if to say I know that and began unfolding the papers he held.

Robbins dropped his bag to the ground, opened it and busied himself setting up the tripod and camera, the heavy macro lens awkward and cold in the bitter air. He popped out and reseated the battery and memory card, even though he had checked and rechecked both at home just an hour before. It wouldn't do to mess this up.

As always, he studied the other man while he worked. Himself. The man he would be in five years. Or ten, depending on how you counted.

He looked good. Oh, the hair was a touch longer, turning to gray, the face more lined. But Robbins had the kind of face that aged well. In a few years all those wrinkles would somehow pull together the unremarkable features he had been born with and give them depth and definition. If the process continued he'd be a real ladykiller at the retirement home.

Of course, the whole reason they were meeting in this park was because he didn't want to wait that long. Neither did he. Er, the other guy. Er. . . .

Robbins shook his head. Such distinctions made no sense. He'd long ago decided to think of his future self as "him" and to call him Chuck just so he didn't go crazy from pronoun overload or infinite logical regressions.

"So what've we got?" Robbins asked, gesturing at the papers clutched in Chuck's hands.

"Instructions," Chuck said calmly, holding up the first sheet of paper so Robbins could focus the Nikon in on it. "It's time."

Autofocus was useless in a situation like this, and Robbins was grateful for the excuse to concentrate on the mindless technicality of framing the shot. His hands shook as he checked the aperture and shutter speed, but if Chuck noticed he gave no sign.

Robbins snapped two pictures in rapid succession, then examined the results on the LCD panel. He nodded as much to himself as to Chuck, and said as calmly as he could, "Okay, we're ready."

One by one Chuck held up sheets of paper, and Robbins snapped two or three frames of each. There were just nine pages total, including a hand-drawn map; a few minutes later they were done.

"Got 'em," Robbins said, straightening. He popped out the memory card and slipped it into an inside jacket pocket; the rest of the gear went back into the bag.

Chuck waited for Robbins to finish, then got to his feet. "Be back here the day after tomorrow, mid-afternoon. Clear your schedule. We'll talk about the next step." Without another word he turned and walked off down the path, coat wrapped tightly around him, hunched slightly against the cold. Robbins watched until he disappeared around a small grove of trees, then turned in the opposite direction and went back to his car. He had a lot of homework to do.

* * *

The next day at half past two, Robbins mounted the steps of a forlorn-looking Cape Cod a few blocks off the freeway. Leaves stirred in a slight wind, rubbing fretfully against the white clapboard siding, a watery sun barely able to raise a shadow on the sidewalk in front.

Taking a deep breath, he rang the doorbell.

Shuffling steps inside, then a muffled voice through the door, high and raspy: "Who are you?"

Robbins took a step backward so he was more clearly visible through the peephole. "Charles Robbins, Mr. Welken. I called earlier?"

There was a pause, and then the sound of bolts being undone. The door swung wide, revealing a short, wiry man with a shock of white hair perched untidily on his head. He looked Robbins up and down and then smiled, showing crooked teeth. "Ah, yes. The reporter. Come in." He turned and walked back into the house, leaving the door open behind him.

Robbins followed him through a cluttered living room, past a dark, outdated kitchen and into a small office at the back of the house. The rooms were tiny and spare, built during a time when the number of bedrooms was more important than their size.

He took a seat behind a desk that looked like it had been picked out of an office building's dumpster, all angular steel and fake wood panelling. As Robbins walked in Welken waved him into a chair set haphazardly among piles of books and overflowing boxes.

"So, Mr. . . ."

"Robbins. Charles Robbins."

"And you're a. . . ."

"Freelance reporter. I explained it all on the phone."

"Yes. . . ." He leaned back and rubbed his jaw, eyeing Robbins with a startlingly sharp gaze. "And what do you want with me?"

"Well, Mr. Welken, as I explained on the phone, I'm doing a story on inventors and aliens, and you seem to be a bit of an expert in both. Everywhere I look, your name keeps popping up."

His eyes sparkled at that; like every closet genius, he liked the idea that he was famous in some small corner of society. But when he spoke, his tone was amused. "Inventors and aliens? Do you work for the Enquirer, Mr. Robbins?"

Robbins shook his head. "I'm a freelancer, Mr. Welkin. I write stories and try to sell them. Sometimes I work under contract; sometimes I work on spec. This . . . is the latter."

He snorted. "I'll bet." An amused smile creased his face. "You seriously expect me to go on record about alien inventors?"

"Not quite." Robbins took a deep breath, trying to calm the nervous twitters that were suddenly roiling in his stomach. "I don't believe in wasting time, Mr. Welken, so I'll be direct.Where is the artifact?"

Welken's smile vanished. He watched Robbins for a very long time, the index finger of his right hand idly drumming on his knee. "I think I should ask you to leave, Mr. Robbins," he said finally.

"You don't want to do that," Robbins said. "There are a lot of people, both in and out of government, who would be interested in my research on you. You've been careful, but not careful enough."

Welken looked slightly alarmed. "What are you talking about?"

"Comments at conventions . . . Articles in small-circulation science journals . . . Short stories with remarkably well-developed physics . . . All written under pseudonyms, of course, but that wasn't too hard to unravel. The trail is there if you look. Completely understandable; I'm amazed you've been able to sit on this secret for as long as you have."

"Get out." But Welken looked nervous, and his words lacked force.

"Mr. Welken, please," Robbins said, leaning forward. Welken flinched. "I don't mean to threaten you. But try to see it from my perspective. I've been researching this stuff for years. Every lead I get eventually points to you. I don't want to expose your secrets, but I have to know."

Welken's index finger resumed its drumming. But the look in his eye had changed. "Even if I could tell you something, what difference would it make?"

Robbins relaxed slightly. "It would justify the decade I've spent studying this, for one thing." He smiled reassuringly at the older man. "Surely you know what I'm talking about. The search for knowledge for its own sake, because you simply have to know. And maybe, too, it will start me off in the right direction. Because once I know aliens exist, I'll have to find a way to meet them, won't I?"

Welken snorted, genuinely amused. "Aliens are overrated," he said. "But yes, I do know exactly what you're talking about."

He eyed Robbins for several long seconds, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he stood. "Okay, Mr. Robbins," he said with a hint of dramatic flair. "You win. But I won't tell you anything. I'll show you something instead. Something extraordinary. Wait here."

He went out. Robbins heard him pull open a door and clomp down the stairs into the basement.

Robbins looked around the office. Behind Welken's desk were shelves piled high with books, magazines and old coffee mugs. The desk itself was clear except for a couple of pens and a largish crystalline square that looked like some sort of hologram. It sparkled and flickered hypnotically if he stared at it too long.

The wall behind him was stacked to the ceiling with filing boxes that were themselves overflowing with papers. A quick glance showed them to be abstracts of research papers, magazine and newspaper clippings, other random bits of data. Perched precariously atop the shortest stack was an old-fashioned rotary phone, the AT&T label faded but legible beneath the clear plastic wheel.

Robbins waited. Before too long he heard Welken on the stairs again, and a moment later he came back into the office, sat down, and tossed something small on to his desk. "Take a look at this."

Robbins leaned forward and Welken leaned back—but not too far. He seemed torn between wanting Robbins to examine the object and hovering protectively over it.

The thing was not very impressive. An asymmetrical square of bluish metal, about the size of a child's letter block. Short prongs or tubes stuck out of it on two sides, while a third held a tiny numeric keypad, the numbers indicated by clusters of dots rather than Arabic numerals.

"May I hold it?" Robbins asked, glancing up.

"Sure. Just don't touch the keypad."

Robbins picked it up gingerly between two fingers and turned it from side to side, studying it closely. It felt slightly warm to the touch, though he could easily have been imagining that.

"What . . . What is it?" He had to force the words out. He knew exactly what it was, but the enormity of the moment still hit him like a nuclear-powered sledgehammer.

"My posterity," Welken said, chuckling. He eyed the object almost fondly. "A time machine."

Robbins looked at him sharply. "You're serious."

Welken smiled broadly at the expression on Robbins' face. "Oh, thoroughly." He stood, reached out and gently took the device from Robbins' reluctant fingers. He held it up and regarded it, as one might examine a surprisingly excellent glass of wine. "And I'd like to add that it isn't easy grafting controls on to a device built with an understanding of physics that we won't have for another century."

"Then how—"

Welken sat back down. "I found it aboard an alien spacecraft that crashed into the Canadian Rockies fifteen years ago."

Robbins gaped. "How did you know it was a time machine?"

"It wasn't. Took me awhile to figure out. I won't bore you with the details."

"But you said—"

"This little guy was the power source for the ship. I have no clue how it works. But what it does is draw energy from spacetime itself, and converts it to something the ship could use. It's like tapping the Big Bang and riding the blast."

"Sounds dangerous."

"Oh, probably. But the aliens seemed to have it worked out well enough."

"How did you turn it into a time machine?"

"I didn't. It turns out that when you draw energy out of spacetime in one place, you've got to give it back in another place—a place that can be distant in space, or time, or both. Since the amount of energy is, as I said, enormous, the aliens usually chose 'both.'"

"Are you telling me that time travel was a side effect of their engine!?"

Welken grinned. "You got it. I think they considered it an irritating engineering problem."

Robbins looked with newfound respect at the little gadget. "So how does it work?"

Welken turned the device around so the reporter could see the keypad. "Pretty simple, really. You key in the spacetime coordinates you want, and it takes you there. Here." He reached behind him, grabbed a small booklet and tossed it toward Robbins. "I wrote a user's manual."

Robbins picked up the booklet and leafed through it. A lot that Chuck had told him became much clearer as he read.

"Time travel" was a bit of a misnomer, because the traveller never truly left his own time continuum. The machine somehow created a bulge in spacetime, a bubble or tube with the traveller inside it, which reached over to the chosen coordinates. That avoided most of the paradoxes normally associated with time travel.

Most, not all. A traveller could still interact with the other time stream to some extent: Talk to people, for instance, even touch them. But he had to return to his own continuum with roughly the same mass that he left with. And the amount of mass was limited: not much more than the weight of an average adult male.

Robbins glanced up at Welken. "So I could change the past?"

"Yes, but I think you'd find it surprisingly difficult," Welken replied easily. He seemed relaxed, freed, finally able to discuss this with another human being. "Time is rather resilient, with lots of alternate paths to the same destination. Assassinate Hitler, for instance, and you don't prevent World War II; another Nazi steps in to take his place. That's no coincidence; it appears to be a law of interdimensional physics. I'm afraid it's a bit devastating to the 'great man' theory of history."

Robbins considered. "Okay, so change is difficult. I notice you didn't say impossible."

"No, but consider three things. One, it probably wouldn't work. Two, the unintended consequences would probably swamp whatever benefit you'd get anyway. And three, you really want to avoid meeting yourself."

"Why?"

"Because that bubble of spacetime contains a lot of energy. And whatever is inside the bubble cannot exist in the same place at the same time as itself. For all practical purposes, when you're inside the bubble you're an antimatter version of yourself. Come into direct contact with yourself in another continuum and—boom."

"Boom?"

"The bubble collapses, releasing all the energy used to generate it. Think matter-antimatter explosion, with the energy released almost equally between the two time streams. You'd kill your past yourself, your present self, and leave a huge crater in both continuums—destroying the time machine itself for a garnish."

Robbins smiled weakly. "So you're saying that would be bad."

"On multiple levels."

They lapsed into silence. Robbins leaned back and stretched, then glanced at his watch. "So how often do you use it?"

Welken looked fondly at the device in his hand. "A few small trips to spotcheck specific theses, all well outside the present day."

Robbins gaped. "That's all?"

Welken nodded seriously. "I don't fully understand how it works, Mr. Robbins. For one thing, you don't experience the effect of whatever changes you make until you return to your own continuum. So you can't test radical changes unless you're willing to risk annihilation. It's one thing for aliens to vent their exhaust into uninhabited space. It's entirely another to meddle with one's own past or future."

Robbins nodded thoughtfully. "Sensible, I suppose. Though I can't believe there are many people who could resist the temptation as you have."

Welken's smile was grim this time. "Which is why I have not alerted the authorities to the device's existence, Mr. Robbins."

"May I . . . May I try it?"

Welken shook his head. "A natural question, but not today, I'm afraid. I don't know you very well, Mr. Robbins, and I'd prefer to check you out and provide a little preflight training before setting you loose in another era."

Disappointment plain on Robbins' face, he sat back. "Another time, then, I hope."

After that there wasn't much more to say. Robbins thanked him for his time, which Welken waved away with mumbled words of deprecation. They stood, shook hands. Welken came around the desk, the time machine held tightly in his left hand. "Let me put this back, then I'll see you to the door," he said, and stepped past Robbins.

The crystalline hologram had a nice weight to it, and a very hard edge. When Robbins brought it down on Welken's skull he gave a soft mewing sound and crumpled, sprawling bonelessly across the floor.

Robbins stooped and plucked the time machine from Welken's outflung hand, stowing it carefully in his pocket along with the manual. Then he went into the kitchen, blew out the pilot light on the stove and opened all the burners. The smell of gas filled the air as he returned to the office and picked up the rotary phone. Pulling a small handyman's tool out of his pocket, he unscrewed the base and rewired the ringer, scraping a goodly length of insulation off the wires in the process. He reassembled the phone, checked for a dial tone and replaced it on its perch.

Moving quickly now, he yanked open the door to the basement and ran downstairs. Ignoring the lab equipment visible through an archway at the other end of the basement, he went straight to the furnace and blew out the pilot light there, too, making sure the gas continued to flow. Back upstairs he paused in the front hall long enough to dial the thermostat up as far as it could go.

Robbins looked around one last time. The air reeked of gas. Welken lay unmoving on the floor, his breathing labored, a small rivulet of red running down his scalp and beginning to pool on the floor. Everything else looked exactly as it had when he had arrived.

He went out and closed the door behind him, careful to make sure it was locked. As casually as he could manage, he walked down the steps, around the corner and another three blocks to where he had left his car.

As he drove away, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the unregistered cell phone he had used to call Welken earlier that day. He hit redial while he merged with traffic streaming toward the freeway.

On the fourth ring, he heard the explosion.

Robbins took a roundabout way home. As he drove he cracked open the cell phone and yanked out the memory chips. When he reached the Washington Avenue Bridge he slowed a bit as he approached midspan, checked the rearview mirror—empty—then cracked a window and flung the rest of the phone into the muddy waters of the Mississippi.

Back at his house, Robbins pulled the car into the garage and waited for the garage door to whump shut before getting out. He hurried to his basement workroom, closed the door, and spilled the contents of his coat pockets on to the table.

From a locked gun cabinet he drew out the Nikon. Switching it on, he flipped through the images, then magnified one until he could read the alphanumerics written on the page. He set the camera on the edge of the table, LCD panel toward him, glowing bluishly.

He paused for a moment to admire the time machine, so out of place in the everyday clutter of mundane things that surrounded him. He picked it up, turning it this way and that in the dim light, considering for a moment the delicious power he held. Not just the power of the device, but the power of choice. Chuck had guided him to this moment, and had told him what to do next. But what if he didn't? Could he change the plan even now, a year before yet five years after it had been launched?

The moment passed. He had his instructions, and if he couldn't trust himself, who could he trust? He consulted Welken's manual, quickly configuring the machine. He double-checked the settings, then checked them again. Satisfied, he carefully keyed in the 23-digit spacetime coordinate glowing so cheerfully from the Nikon. Then he picked up a rubber band, strapped the manual to the awkward little block, took a deep breath, and activated it.

With a soundless but dazzling wink the time machine vanished, taking itself and the manual nine months into the future.

Robbins let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. His heart was beating fast, very fast, adrenaline mixing with the beginnings of reaction to the crimes he had committed. He'd always been careful and reflexively law-abiding: the closest he had ever come to illegality was a few speeding tickets. Now in one day he had lied, murdered, stolen, blown up a house, obtained an illegal cell phone and used a time machine. The stress was building inside of him; he wasn't going to be good for much for very much longer.

But there remained one last task. Hands shaking, he removed the camera card and placed it and the cell phone chips in a small pile on the concrete floor. Next he stripped off the acetate coverings on his fingertips and dropped them on to the stack. Then he melted the lot of it to slag with a butane torch, keeping his face turned away from the acrid fumes.

* * *

The next day Chuck was smiling.

"You did it!" he said cheerfully as they sat on their benches in the park, the biting wind ensuring that it was deserted except for a few desperate squirrels. "Trail wiped away, machine delivered to the correct time and spot." He looked at Robbins with a knowing air. "How do you feel?"

"Slept like crap," Robbins muttered. "Had the damn shakes half the night. Couldn't get Welken out of my head." Reading the newspaper that morning hadn't helped; the story and photographs had brought on a fresh bout of trembling. Though at least Welken didn't appear to have any living relatives; Robbins wasn't sure he could have handled anguished quotes from a grieving widow or son.

"You'll get over it," Chuck said reassuringly. "That was the worst it gets. That's why I rushed you through it, so we wouldn't have too much time to think about it. I don't want to be hamstrung by post-traumatic stress."

"How long does it take?" Robbins asked numbly.

"To get over it?" Chuck cocked his head. "About six months. But it gets better gradually. Every day, a little bit easier. You'll be sleeping like a baby in no time."

"Fabulous." The words came out flat, emotionless. Robbins raised his head and gazed around at the vacant fields. "So what happens next?"

Chuck grinned. "Next, we pull the job. Come." He stood, inclining his head toward the distant houses. "Walk with me."

Robbins grabbed his camera bag and followed, maintaining a respectful distance. It was difficult sometimes to be heard above the wind, but he wasn't going to chance running into Chuck if his future self stopped suddenly.

"Do you remember the timeline?" Chuck asked as they trudged along the path.

"Of course. Nine months from now I find the time machine again. Three months after that I launch the operation. I spend the next five years setting everything up. Then we do the job."

Chuck nodded and looked sharply at Robbins, his clear green eyes gazing into their identical twins. "Good. Just one small change, from your point of view." He favored Robbins with a small smile. "We do the job tomorrow."

Robbins gaped at him. "What? Why?"

But he knew. Or at least, he knew the motivation, if not the actual rationale. That small smile said it all. Robbins had always enjoyed being clever. And clearly, this was a clever moment.

"Because if we pull off the heist two days after you steal the time machine, nobody in your continuum will have had time to put two and two together," Chuck said. "In addition, if we succeed, that will guarantee you rediscover the time machine nine months from now, since you're still in your native continuum."

Robbins frowned. "I don't think it works like that . . ." he began, and stopped. Fact is, neither of them really knew how it worked.

Chuck's smile broadened. "According to the histories in my time, it does work like that. Because the heist is never solved and the theft of the time machine is never discovered. So I'm confident that in my continuum, in another six months I will step into the time machine, come here tomorrow to pull off the heist, and return a very rich man."

This sort of talk always made Robbins' head hurt. But he had to trust him; Chuck knew a lot more about it, besides having the advantage of 20/20 hindsight.

"Okay," Robbins said, throwing up his hands. "I'm the boss. What's the job?"

"In good time," Chuck said. "The others will be waiting for us. I only want to explain it once."

Robbins halted in his tracks. "The others are here? We're going to meet them?"

Chuck nodded, that small smile back on his face.

"But . . ." Robbins cast about for the right words. "Is that . . . safe?"

Chuck laughed. "Wait and see. It'll be fine."

"Because you remember it."

He laughed again. "Exactly."

They walked the rest of the way in silence. A few minutes later they left the park, crossed the street and stopped in front of a large gray-stuccoed four-square.

Robbins had bought the place several months ago at Chuck's behest, but had never been inside. Now Chuck produced a key, mounted the steps, unlocked the door and pushed it open. "C'mon," he said over his shoulder as he stepped through.

Robbins followed and found himself in a small foyer, a wide stairway in front, dining room to the right, living room to the left. Wide baseboards stained a rich deep brown shone warmly in the light from the tall oval windows. There wasn't a scrap of furniture in sight.

"I like what we've done with the place," Robbins said as Chuck led the way along a short hallway to the back of the house, where another set of stairs led to the basement. Chuck didn't answer, just flipped on a light and headed down.

It was a full basement, recently refurbished, though in a way not designed to enhance resale value. Wires covered the bare concrete walls, connecting four flat-panel televisions hung in a semi-circle. They all faced the back wall, where a huge projector threw bright white light onto a screen that was easily seven feet square. Extension cords and cables ran here and there across the floor, plugged almost randomly into wall sockets and power strips.

"What . . ." Robbins began, but Chuck waved it away. "Not now," he said. "We've got work to do." He pointed to a corner. "There's a laptop over there. Get it booted up and hooked into the projector."

This, at least, made sense. The vast energy in Chuck's spacetime bubble sometimes had unpredictable effects on sensitive electronics. TVs were fine, but not computers. So for a few minutes Robbins played A/V nerd, pulling the laptop out of its box and getting it set up.

Chuck, meanwhile, was pulling papers out of his pocket and stacking them on his lap. Robbins knew what that meant, so when he finished with the laptop he unpacked his camera and photographed the pages. Then he transferred the images to the laptop and began arranging them for display on the projector screen.

He glanced at Chuck as he worked. "So what's going on here? We're teleconferencing?"

Chuck smiled approvingly. "Sort of. Four-bedroom house, four others. Each gets his own room, equipped with a two-way video connection. Didn't want to risk cramming us all into the same room."

"Except for you and me, of course. Thanks."

"Couldn't be helped. Believe me."

Robbins hooked a thumb at the screen behind him. "They're not going to try to photograph this stuff through the TV, are they?"

"They'll be taking notes."

Robbins nodded, still vaguely uneasy but unable to see a flaw in the plan. He'd always had a streak of overconfidence, but in Chuck the streak seemed magnified, almost cherished. Robbins hoped he wasn't simply seeing himself the way others saw him, because what he saw wasn't all that attractive. It wasn't just Chuck's easy way with Welken's murder, as if they were discussing a bad bout of acne. Chuck was, to put it bluntly, a smug little know-it-all. Robbins just hoped his planning justified the smugness.

Without warning the house above them rang with activity: the distant sound of feet on hardwood and other, less identifiable noises. Then, one by one, the flat-panels flickered to life.

Sitting next to the projector, Robbins suddenly found himself at the center of a disconcerting circle of attention, four versions of himself staring expectantly at him from the TV screens. It was like looking at one of those artificially aged photos on missing-children fliers, except he got to see a progression: youngest on the left, each successive screen adding a year of objective age and somewhat more subjective. Time wound forward as his eyes moved around the circle, finally coming to rest on Chuck, the oldest, as he stepped in front of Robbins and into the limelight.

"Welcome, everyone," Chuck said grandly, spreading his hands before him. "For most of you"—he inclined his head slightly toward the screens on the right—"this won't be anything new, other than copying down different information than before. For the newer attendees, get used to it. You have no idea how odd it is to carry around six separate memories of this moment."

Behind him, Robbins watched the screens with fascination. He quickly decided, in the interest of preserving his sanity, to name the youngest version Chuck1, followed by Chuck2 and so on until he reached Chuck5, the only version he had had dealings with up until now.

"When I first found the time machine," Chuck5 went on, "I had no idea what to do with it. I couldn't sell it. I couldn't bring back extra mass. And I couldn't recruit any helpers because they'd probably just kill me for the device itself."

At the word "kill" the Chucks on the right nodded in placid agreement, while Chuck1 winced slightly and Chuck2 stared stonily ahead. Apparently it would take more than six months to get over Welken's murder.

"I tried the stock tips route, but somehow the immutability of time streams kept kicking in. I hadn't been rich before, so I couldn't suddenly become fabulously rich now based on any sort of steady accumulation of assets. Either my past self wouldn't believe me, or was prevented from completing the purchase, or sudden expenses cropped up that wiped out the profits."

Four Chucks nodded sagely in almost comical unison. Robbins stared at Chuck5's back in surprise. He'd never mentioned that particular effect before.

"I finally concluded that any wealth would have to accumulate after my use of the time machine in my native continuum. That, in turn, suggested the method of obtaining that wealth.

"But I still needed helpers. And I couldn't trust anyone with my secret. I couldn't see a way around that.

"Until one day I realized that I could make a gang out of myself."

He bowed toward the screens, that little "aren't I clever?" smirk on his face. The Chucks all looked slightly bored.

"So here we are," Chuck5 concluded. He turned and gave Robbins a bow this time. "Let's get started."

Robbins flicked on the projector and called up the first page. On four screens four heads bent over pads of paper, scribbling rapidly.

Robbins watched Chuck5. He paced the room, answering the occasional question in a confident voice. Once, their eyes met. The look of almost manic glee on Chuck5's face sent shivers down Robbins' spine and made him sleep even worse that night than he had the previous one.

* * *

The following evening Robbins climbed into his car and drove southeast, out of the city and into the industrial suburbs along the river. A light snow had fallen that morning, and the remnants sparkled and glittered in his headlights as he pulled off the main highway onto a county road lined with gravel pits and wetlands.

He turned into a long, winding entrance road. It cut through a screen of trees and frozen ponds before opening up on to the parking lot of a warehouse. Robbins drove around to the loading docks and parked near a back gate, the service road beyond wending off into the darkness along the river.

He took a pair of bolt cutters to the chain holding the gate shut, unlatched it, and redraped the chain loosely around the center posts. From a distance it should look securely locked, but it would open easily if he had to leave in a hurry.

Tossing the bolt cutters back into the car, Robbins headed across the darkened asphalt to the warehouse and mounted the stairs to the service entrance. As he reached the top step the door swung open, revealing a grim-looking Chuck1.

When you have a time machine that will deliver you to any coordinates you choose, locked doors and perimeter alarms don't mean a whole lot.

"Everything all right?" Robbins asked, frowning.

"Yes. I just—" Chuck1 stopped. "Well, you'll see."

He backed out of the way, and Robbins stepped through into light and noise.

The warehouse was big. Endless rows of shelving rose forty feet to the ceiling and stretched away into the distance, boxes of all shapes and sizes crowding every available inch. Robotic forklifts glided in and out of the aisles, invisible orders directing them to retrieve packages and deliver them to a conveyor belt that ran down the wall to the left. Windowed offices lined another wall, doors shut, their interiors dark and empty.

Except one. With a nod to Chuck1, Robbins crossed the floor to the foreman's office, dodging forklifts as he went.

The office was square and sparsely furnished, just a desk and a couple of chairs. One wall held some personal mementos while a large oil painting of a sailfish covered another. The desk's telephone, monitor and keyboard had been shoved unceremoniously to one side, clearing a large spread of desktop—a spread currently occupied by Chuck5's backside.

He looked up as Robbins came in, his face splitting into that broad and increasingly disturbing grin. "You made it. Everything go okay?"

Robbins nodded, glancing around. "Everyone accounted for?"

Chuck5's grin widened, eyes glittering. "Like clockwork. Chuck1 watching the back door. Warehouse crew locked in the sorting room, handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded, guarded by Chuck2. Chuck3 watching the front. Chuck4 monitoring the security cameras. You and me in here. Ready?"

"Sure." Robbins tried and failed to sound enthusiastic. The more time he spent around Chuck4 and Chuck5, the more they creeped him out. There was something about both of them that just felt wrong.

Chuck either sensed or remembered the hesitation, because the grin faded and his voice grew brusque. "Let's get it done, then. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can go home." He hooked a finger at the oil painting. "Get that down, then help me."

Obediently, Robbins stepped to the wall and carefully lifted down the massive picture, revealing the rectangular safe behind it. There was no keyhole, keypad or combination dial—just a handle recessed into the dark metal next to an inch-square button, in the center of which a red light blinked serenely.

Robbins stared at it. "What's that? Alarm?"

"An alarm is hooked into it, but no," Chuck5 said behind him, sounding like he was exerting himself. "Biometric lock. Fingerprints."

Robbins turned around. "Then how—"

He stopped, mouth open. Chuck5 had shoved the desk chair aside and was hunkered down, hauling someone out of the legspace: a short, obese man with a gag over his mouth and his hands bound in front of him. Both measures seemed pretty unnecessary, since the man was clearly unconscious.

Robbins forced his jaw to start moving again. "Who . . . ?"

Chuck5, breathing hard, finished freeing his burden from under the desk and paused, looking up. "The owner of the company," he said, jerking his head to indicate the warehouse they were standing in. Robbins looked vacant; Chuck5's expression turned exasperated. "The guy we're robbing?"

Robbins shook his head. "I know. What's he doing here?"

Chuck5's grin was positively feral this time. "Biometric lock. We need his fingerprint." He gave a flick of his wrist, and suddenly he was holding a nasty-looking knife, the blade clean and razor-sharp.

"Are you out of your mind?" Robbins blurted out. "What are you doing?"

A look of mild disgust crossed Chuck5's face. "I can't believe I used to be such a wuss," he muttered. He took a deep breath, exuding long-suffering patience. "Look, I know what you're thinking, so I'll save you the long back and forth. We need this finger"—he held up the unconscious man's right hand, tapping the index finger with his knife—"up there." He pointed the knife at the safe, which was a good six feet off the floor. "We can either try to lift him up, or we can take the finger. I've thought about it, and I chose Plan B."

He pulled a small white towel out of his pocket and laid it on the floor. Then he placed the man's hand on the towel and carefully extended the finger.

"Wait!" Robbins took an involuntary step forward.

Chuck5 looked up at him again, knife resting just above the third joint. "It'll take both of us to lift him up," he said patiently, as if addressing a particularly poor student. "You want to risk us touching just to save this guy's finger? Because I don't."

"But. . . ." Robbins didn't know what he wanted, but he didn't need another blotch on his soul so soon after killing Welken.

Chuck5 eyed him for a few seconds, then shook his head wonderingly. "Oh, for God's sake! Get out of here." He raised his wrist to check his watch. "Go check on the others. I'll take care of this. Come back in ten minutes."

Robbins edged toward the door. As he reached it Chuck5 called out, "Wait!"

Robbins paused, looked back.

"Don't forget to bring one of those forklifts with you."

Robbins nodded dumbly and backed through the door, slowing only to grab a cell-phone sized chunk of plastic off the desk.

That piece of plastic was the only reason Robbins was along for the actual heist. It would have been much safer for the job to be pulled off entirely by time travellers, leaving Robbins with a perfect alibi. But the remote controls for the forklifts fell into the category of "sensitive electronics," and they needed him—that is, someone not surrounded by a hydrogen bomb's worth of potential energy—to operate them.

The biometrics would open the safe. The forklift would lift out the contents, leaving no physical evidence of their presence. It was really nothing more than a high-tech smash-and-grab, but then Robbins was a freelance writer, not a criminal mastermind.

Outside the door he paused, then decided to check on Chuck4 first. But he didn't take the most direct route to the security station. Instead he wandered through the warehouse, taking in the spotless floors, the quiet efficiency of the robots, the myriad goods boxed and ready for transport anywhere in the world that a truck or plane could go.

The unconscious schmoe back in the office had spent his entire life building a business out of the efficient movement of other people's products. But the system was built like a house of cards: a slight hitch anywhere—a late plane, a missing order—could have ripple effects throughout the entire operation. There were redundancies built in, a lot of self-correcting processes. The system was, as Welken might have said, "resilient." But a big enough disruption, early enough in the process, could have massive effects further down the line.

As he passed through a section containing plumbing supplies, Robbins tried to imagine what sort of disruption this brief takeover was going to cause. An hour's lost work wasn't likely to be major. But the loss of the owner—currently alone with his disturbingly bloodthirsty future self—might well change the course of the entire company and many others besides. The rosy tomorrow they had envisioned when they went to bed tonight would have been wiped away by the time they arose tomorrow, replaced by a new and uncertain reality. But the economy as a whole would barely notice; in time, another company would rise to take the place of this one.

Such was the power Robbins held in his multiple hands. Welken had been half right; the "great man" theory was meaningless on the scale of human history. Take out Hitler and the Nazis continue; destroy this company and another takes it place.

But on the level of the individual, the "great man" remained powerful indeed. Take out Stalin, and he has no descendants; take out the owner, and his company fails, disappearing into the ocean of the future with barely a ripple.

When Robbins reached the security station, Chuck4 swiveled around in his chair, a comfortable grin on his face. "Couldn't stomach the blood, huh?" he said teasingly. Robbins didn't answer, so he shrugged and turned to look back at the monitors. "Go puke if you have to. I'll keep an eye on the office and let you know—"

The five-foot length of heavy pipe made a soft chunk sound when Robbins brought it down on his head. Chuck4 slumped down in his chair, a thin line of blood trickling slowly down his scalp just behind his left ear.

Robbins took the others one at a time. Chuck3 tried to run, groping in his pocket for the time machine; Robbins broke his arm with the first blow, snapped his neck with the second. Chuck2 was too distracted by his prisoners to notice anything amiss. Chuck1 looked almost grateful when Robbins ended their brief conversation by pulling out the pipe.

By the time Robbins got back to the office, Chuck5 had the safe open. The owner lay slumped on the ground outside the door, his hand wrapped in the now-bloody towel; his finger had been tossed on to the ground next to him.

"That was a lot longer than ten minutes!" Chuck5 growled, sparing Robbins an irritated glance. "What were you doing?" Before Robbins could answer he waved the words away. "Oh, never mind. We're running late; get that forklift in here and get the safe out."

"No problem," Robbins said, and stepped aside just before the two-ton forklift smashed into the office's glass wall at top speed. That speed wasn't much—twelve miles per hour or so—but then neither was the glass wall. The forklift blew through it and plowed into the desk, which slammed forward and pinned Chuck5 against the far wall.

That wall was made of sterner stuff, having been built to hold the safe; it yielded not an inch. Chuck5 toppled face forward on to the desk, howling in agony, every bone in his lower body shattered.

Robbins pulled out the pipe and gave him a good whack across the head; that put an end to the screams.

Using the forklift, Robbins hauled him out of the wreckage and carried him to a spot near the loading docks, dumping him near the other four.

Robbins backed the forklift up, killed the engine, and thought about what to do next. It would have been easier if there were an even number of them; he could have paired them off. Finally he used the forklift to nudge Chuck4 and Chuck5 to within a couple feet of each other, then picked up Chuck3 and raised him several feet off the floor. Hands shaking slightly, Robbins took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and tilted the forks forward. Chuck3 slid lumpily off and fell on top of the other two. All three vanished with a silent flash.

Mildly surprised to find himself still alive instead of at the bottom of a warehouse-sized crater, Robbins wheeled the forklift around and nudged Chuck1 toward Chuck2 until they, too, vanished.

Robbins shut the forklift down and tossed the remote control away. He half-staggered across the warehouse, finally falling to his knees as reaction kicked in. He tried to rise twice, failed, and finally rolled over on his back and stared into the bright lights hanging from the ceiling above.

Welken's voice echoed back to him: When a time traveller comes into contact with himself the bubble of energy around him collapses, with the energy released almost equally into both time continuums.

But in the case of the five Chucks, none of the continuums was the present one. So Robbins was spared. For now.

Perhaps he had just committed delayed suicide. Perhaps in nine months he would find the time machine, and then three months after that he would disappear in an antimatter explosion while guarding the door of this warehouse. An explosion that would also dig a large hole where his house used to be. A hole that would get progressively bigger over the next four years as new explosions occurred at one-year intervals.

Or perhaps he had just wiped the slate clean, and was now free to chart a different course forward. Perhaps the future was easier to change than the past. Perhaps time travel, and what counted as "change," had a lot to do with your perspective.

Robbins didn't know. But either outcome was preferable to the slow-motion horror of knowing what he was going to turn into and hating it. At least this way he could say he tried.

The reaction weakness passed; his knees gradually stopped shaking. He got to his feet. Keeping his back to the still form of the nine-fingered entrepreneur, he walked over to the loading dock wall and pulled the fire alarm.

With a last look around, Robbins stepped through the door into the welcome relief of an uncertain future.

* * *

Songbird

Written by Jeremiah Sturgill
Illustrated by Alison Williams

The first day I said no and he left, and I thought that would be the end of it but it was not. He came back the next with the same question.

No again. One word, unmistakable. Syntactically unambiguous. Aurally distinct. Contextually obvious. Intentionally clear in every way only this time, he did not leave. He sat in front of my door instead. Later, he pissed on the side of my hut and shat at the edge of the woods. He did not do too much of either, because as far as I could tell he did not bring any food and he was nearly starving from the beginning anyway.

After that first week, his skin was stretched taught over his bones and his lips were dry and cracking. He remained sitting in front of my door. When I set a bowl of water and another of gruel outside for him, his mouth trembled and I almost smiled. "No," I said before he could ask, and I went back inside.

Through a gap between the door and the wall, I watched him eat and drink. He licked the wooden bowls clean and stacked them before returning to sit and stare at my home.

* * *

After I fed him he began to follow me around like a damaged child. Not saying anything, just watching. Stopping when I stopped, walking when I walked. I hate having eyes on me.

I have never been good with people, not even my audiences. It burns, their looks, and I feel like I am blushing even though I know my deep southern skin is too dark for any of us to know for sure, and I want to yell at them to turn and watch the other direction while they listen. I sing, I want to tell them, that is all. No show up here. No show for you to watch, just to listen. Now leave me alone.

That's what I want to tell them, only I never do. And he did not leave me alone. He asked me every day. Just once. And every day I said no.

We grew very close.

* * *

I got tired of him sitting in front of my door early on. He was a boy, a child, a youth, hardly old enough to be conscripted. He was too young for sitting. Sitting is something you have to be old, like me, to do properly. So I walked out one day and gave him the hatchet and pointed to the stack of firewood.

He looked at me like I was the idiot, so I got a piece and showed him what to do; how to split the wood, where to place the kindling. Then I handed him the hatchet again and went inside to sit properly, as only the old can do.

I rested on my pillow and poured some tea. I allowed myself a smile at the sound of cracking wood that began to filter in through the baked-mud walls of my home. It was very pleasant. I composed a song about the sensation: the sounds, the sunlight slanting in from the edges of the closed shutter, the steaming tea, my heartbeat and breath . . .

mmmmm
K'kuhmmkuhmm
muhaaashhuh
mmmmm
K'kuhmmkuhmm
muhaaashhuh
cheh, chuh, chahmuh
mmmmm
muhaaashhuh

And so on. It was a very pleasant song. I sang it often in the years to follow.

I never had so much firewood.

* * *

Sometimes the boy would speak to me even after I told him no, more to hear his voice than anything else I think. He said all sorts of things. I rarely paid attention, but still, it was comforting to hear him tell stories he had heard as a child, or talk of the dreams that seemed to come to him so often in the night.

"Master," he said once. "What are the Twelve Virtues?"

I demonstrated the respectful silence of the Third Virtue, but that did not seem to satisfy him. "Master," he said, "Sometimes I think you are deaf." His voice fell. "Sometimes I think I am crazy."

Thinking, I thought to myself, is not one of the Virtues. I wondered why that was, as evening gave way to night. Perhaps it is because one so often gets things backwards.

* * *

The boy told me why he wanted to learn to sing. "When I was young," he said, "I heard a vasya sing. It was beautiful. It . . . made me want to live forever."

Only there was much he did not say. Where had he come from, to have heard a vasya sing? Even the peasants over the hill have only heard me once, at a young couple's wedding, and even then only because loneliness had strangled me near to death that year, to where the performance seemed a small price to pay for the scent and sound of others. Was he a nobleman's son, or an illegitimate child of the Empress?

"Will you teach me?" he said, ignoring the questions that danced so clearly across my face. In the stillness that followed, he said, "They told me you taught Master When. They said you are the best." His voice cracked. "I want to hear such music again. Please teach me to sing."

I soaked in the music of the breeze until I became calm once more. Master When was never my pupil, and he could not sing. He never learned anything, and you cannot sing if you do not listen.

"There is music enough already," I wanted to say to the boy. "To think you can create more is arrogance, and to worship the vasya is to be deaf. Go to When for lessons in arrogance," I told him in my head, "as it is clear you have already mastered being deaf. Here, in my hut, I listen. Only when it is appropriate do I accompany the world in its never-ending song of joy and sadness and sadness . . . and sadness."

But I said nothing, and soon enough the boy lowered his head and began to cry. The sound was beautiful music; I had not heard anything like it since she left. It made me want to live forever, until I remembered it was I who had left her, and the guilt and sorrow and anger of my past blossomed inside me once more.

Gently, I poured my cup of tea on his head. He stopped, and the air shimmered with something half-forgotten. We were never given children.

The boy raised his head and blinked, his eyebrows moving like caterpillars. A drop of tea clung to the end of his flat nose, and I smiled. Hesitating at first, he joined me a heartbeat later.

The music of his tears had fled our hut, but there were other melodies there to replace it.

* * *

The peasants over the hill live near a legend. They barely know the half of it, but then, they barely know anything. They would shiver with fear and delight to know I once sang for the Emperor. He touched my hand—so generous! Such a privilege!

Perhaps the Empress will someday call to hear me sing as well. Could any man long endure the delight of seeing two lords of heaven in a single lifetime?

I do not think I have to worry about that.

I think of the past often, as days turn from light to gray to black. I look back at my life, and I see the nation I have long lived in as a chorus, a choir. The sounds mesh together here, then pull apart there, and everywhere there are complications. The recent civil war is one such discordant passage, now receding into the past almost as though it had never been. The Sempai have crushed the Hassau, and rice is plentiful again; what good is it to dwell on what might have been? Such fluctuations in power are nothing more than the slow turn of seasons. The only difference is that nothing changes.

Clarity always comes early, far too long before the horizon's edge turns gold again: our nation has no melody. It is hardly even a note. The night is ink-blue when I think it should be black, and for the thousandth time I realize that the boy and I alone are more than the country we live in. We are the audience that hears its note, and the orchestra that sounds it. We are all-seeing, all-knowing, all-living. We are, and a nation is just an idea less substantial than the air we breathe. Who fights to control the air?

And then I find the night is suffocating me. So I think of peasants.

Peasants know how to breathe. Sometimes I give them trinkets for their rice, and sometimes they give me rice simply because they are simple and the earth is plentiful, and I sit in my hut and realize they are more than a note and an orchestra: they know how to listen. They are a sounding-board that resonates with the pure tone of themselves, and if that is not enviable then I do not know what is.

None are poorer than the rich, and the Gods laugh at us all. I can't remember if someone said that, or if I did.

* * *

Late one night, a foolish old man overcome with thoughts of the past hugged a lonely, simple boy to his chest and wept. The boy froze in his arms, a statue, a block of ice. Then he melted and began to comfort the old man. I grew angry at him, comforting the elder when I could not, so in between my tears I stood and cursed and kicked him out the door. He could sleep outside, I muttered to myself. He could sleep.

I continued to weep. I don't remember what happened to the old man.

* * *

He was outside my door the following morning when a party arrived to request my services. The delegate in charge bowed low, offering him something, I forget what. Maybe a leg of lamb, maybe a silken robe. The boy bent over almost double and stumbled back into the door, until he was able to pound on the wood to get my attention. "Visitors," he croaked.

I stepped back from where I knelt next to the wall, peering outside through a crack. My arms and legs trembled. I like to watch. I like to sit and watch and listen to everything. But to be seen . . . is painful, always.

Sometimes, necessary.

I walked out and waived aside the golden urn or bag of incense or wooden puzzle box held out in trembling hands, and I listened to their proposal. I wanted to tell them to leave, but two people go through food twice as fast as one and I had not foreseen the boy's presence. Already my stores were growing low. So I accepted, and burned, and said nothing else. Perhaps they took my silence as wisdom. Fools and the eager often do.

The delegate beamed at my acceptance and bowed in pleasure. Behind him, his party prostrated themselves. "You and your slave will be most comfortable, Master. The finest beds, food, and wine during your visit."

"Slave?" I said. The delegate nodded—yes. He pointed. The boy. "The boy is not a slave," I said, opening the door to the hut and motioning the boy inside. Together, we crouched by the crack in the wall and watched the delegation. They deposited the holy statues or brightly-dyed blankets or fine porcelain tea cups before my door, and then they left. I had the boy bring the offerings in, then return outside to sit his vigil. Perhaps he would get the hint and leave. He was nothing but an irritating sore in my mouth, painful and impossible to ignore. I snorted to myself, and almost without realizing it I began to fill the hut with the sound of splitting wood and sunlight. I interrupted my sitting long enough to let the boy back in.

A month went by before we left for the concert. When the time came, I was glad the boy was still with me. He carried everything.

* * *

The Lord was very rich. With the sort of cleverness that comes only from true patriotism, he had backed both sides in the war. Where everyone else lost, he could only win. The blood of thousands filled his coffers, transformed by an uncaring world into silver and gold. I could feel my stomach boiling from the moment we entered his compound: there were people everywhere, and none of them knew how to listen.

"Master!" said the porter, genuflecting. I grunted and allowed him to show us to our chamber. He kept babbling as he led us, as we stepped inside the room. I told him I did not want to be disturbed, and I shut the door. It helped. His voice ceased, my stomach loosened, and I sat.

The boy looked at me, the pack still on his shoulder. He had a question, but it was not that question. I nodded. He let out a whoop and set down the pack, then was gone to explore the rich man's house.

I stayed behind, and prepared myself for the night. For the wedding, for the feast. For the performance, and their eyes.

I sat, as only the old can do.

* * *

The wedding was beautiful. The Lord was very rich, it had to be beautiful. The food was magnificent. Only two of the twelve courses contained items not tainted by meat. Two was enough.

The Lord's son, the groom, had a round face. Like the Buddha. Like a perfect orange, or an upside-down pear, or a pregnant pig's tight-stretched belly. Looking at him turned my stomach, but that was to be expected. I was not religious, and I never liked pears. He looked at me once during the dinner and smiled. His teeth gleamed like knives. He was his father's son.

After the wedding feast, those guests still able to walk followed me from the great hall to a smaller room. They sat on their pillows, elbows almost touching there were so many of them, and their eyes did not have the grace to look elsewhere. I closed my own to shut them out, and I started to sing—not a song of words, but the kind of song only a vasya can sing. A song of poetry, of life. Magic. A pale imitation of all three, but then, everything is.

I began with the blackbird. The nightingale is more renowned, but only because of an unfortunate poem by a tone-deaf poet. It is the blackbird that I find sings most beautifully, most forcefully, most perfectly. Someone in the audience sighed at the sound, careful to let his neighbors know how pleased he was at the choice. I almost ended the concert and yelled at them all.

But I did not. I was a singer. I continued to sing. I added cicadas, and someone gasped, perhaps in honest surprise, in honest praise, and I glowed at the thought until I remembered that no one is honest in the house of the rich. I shoved thoughts of past mistakes aside, and I made the room pulse with sound instead, as

the blackbird chases off a hawk. It rains, a small drizzle, the sound barely audible above the chirping of the cicadas, the crunch of a rabbit eating. A squirrel runs, chatters, leaps. Night comes; the sound of shade creeping audibly over the audience is itself a minor masterpiece. A peasant household makes dinner. Riceballs, soup, stir-fry vegetables. The sound of the scent of garlic and spices fill the air. The children get in a fight. Father yells at them—"Ayah, ayah! Hayah dah-doh! Ayah, ayah!" In his anger there is love.

One child whimpers. His sister comforts him. "Sheh sheh, hassuh hoh," she murmers. "Sheh sheh." Mother serves the food. The child stops his crying.

As the last dish is finished, the wooden bowl scraped clean by the hungry child, the dog is given a bowl of rice. The mother and father make love. The child stares into the fire as his sister listens.

They drift off to sleep, and one by one the sounds fade until it is just the cicadas and the blackbird, then just the blackbird singing through the night, under a lantern left hanging in the branches of a solemn old tree, then nothing is left but the breath of life and the slow beating of the heart of the universe, then even those are gone as the inevitable silence of eternity fills the hall.

The concert finished, I opened my eyes and was disappointed to see the audience still there. Sometimes I wished I could truly transport them somewhere else with my music; them or myself, either would do.

The nobles waited the proper amount of time, then applauded politely. The host bowed towards the stage, as was tradition, and no doubt would have a parting gift suitable for the Empress herself come the morning and our departure. He had to. It was—tradition.

I hunched my shoulders and smoldered until the last had turned their backs and left, as deaf as ever, leaving me in the room all alone except for the boy who sat with his eyes closed, rocking back and forth on his seat in time to the memory of the beating of the heart of the universe. "Meh," he said, after a moment. "Meh." With each rock forward, he repeated it. Softly, under his breath, "Meh."

It was close. It was not quite the heart of the universe. But still it was a heart, of that I was sure. I left him in the room to his meditation, and went out to the courtyard for my own. The last of the guests were gone. The servants were busy with other tasks, or asleep themselves. I was alone. Happy for the first time in weeks, I closed my eyes and listened to another concert that far surpassed my own.

If only people would learn to listen, I would never need to sing again.

* * *

We returned home. On the way he again asked me to teach him. And I again said no. I sing, I told him. I am a singer. He had come to the wrong man. Perhaps he should have found a teacher.

For about a mile after my response he said nothing. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with the past. I could tell he had been thinking of something. "In my village," he said, trailing off. "Near my village, there were trees . . ."

I thought he was going to tell me about his past. Where he came from, why he wanted so much to sing. Was his family dead? Had the war destroyed his village as it had so many of the others?

I was wrong. Shadows cast by the trees along the trail continued to caress our skin with their cooling, intermittent touch, and we said nothing else for a long, long time.

* * *

We sat inside the hut, taking turns pouring the tea and trying together to match our heartbeats to the pulse of the universe. "Teach me," he said once every day, breaking the stillness. "No," I replied. Then, our conversation finished, we would become still and listen with studied attention to the music that never ends.

And what need was there for more? He wished to learn. I wished to listen. We both enjoyed the company. I did not know where he came from, and he knew nothing of my past. But the present—oh, the present brought us close, as we took in all the subtle rhythms of the world that surrounds us all as water does fish.

What need was there for more?

* * *

I was old when he came. Six years passed, and I only became older. One day, after we finished our conversation, he said something new. He said, "Sing for me, then, Master." I had often sung for us both, when I felt in tune with the world, but never before had he requested me to.

"No," I told him. And as we sat and listened, I said it again. "No." And again, then again. "No. No. No. No." I repeated the word until it lost all meaning. Until it became a sound instead of a word.

It was my refrain, my chorus. A backbeat, a rhythm, a pulse. Not the heartbeat of the universe, mind you—just the heartbeat of me. The heartbeat of my experiences. The sound of my life. I added a second beat after it, and they completed each other like red and gold.

"Meh," I said. "No. Meh. No. Meh. No."

Against them I added the sound of hunger. Or maybe it was loneliness.

Night and day and back again; time ran around our heartbeats in circles, becoming lost and confused against the stability of their drumming. We fed each other through a door, him giving companionship and me giving gruel, and we walked together to chop firewood, and I sang to him my simple song of tea and light and life and wood that I had crafted so long ago.

I sang of eyes burning, stomach clenching, end approaching, strength failing. I sang of stubbornness, youth, joy, hope, companionship. Of poured tea, the clink of glass on plate, four nostrils inhaling steam instead of two, hot liquid sipped and experienced separate, together, complete. I sang of everything.

Through it all was the sound of our two heartbeats, slow and steady, steady, until I finally stopped singing. We sat and listened, eyes closed, as they continued to sound.

Meh. No. Meh. No. Meh. No.

* * *

I am not good with words; I am good with sound. Words are not sound. They are less than sound, they are more than sound. Words are ideas. Sounds are experiences. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. So do I. That was the only time I told him how much I loved him. That is a weakness. But he knew anyway.

He was very strong.

* * *

The boy did not give up after that.

"Teach me," he asked the following day like every other day.

"No," I said.

"Meh," he said.

We smiled together, and drank our tea.

* * *

It was Winter when I began to cough. It did not stop. Drops of blood stained my sleeves, and I sat on my pillow and sipped my tea and thought of everything we had been through over the years. Maybe, I thought, it is time I took on a student. Maybe I already had.

I began to compose again.

* * *

He still asked me every day, but it was Spring before I finished my work. His eyes glowed when I said I would teach him.

"Close your eyes," I said (they were too bright) "and

listen: you have labored

with the Patience of the Warrior Who Challenged The Sky, and you have Persevered with the Heart of The Woman Born In The Shadow Of The Reeds. Now you must Hear with the Ears of the Boy Who Would Learn To Sing. Just close your eyes, and listen.

Do you hear this? This is my song. It is not words. It is different from words. Words share only ideas. A sound is an experience.

Unh. See?
Feh. See?
Kah! See?

You must listen to my song until I finish. Remember back to the first concert you saw me give. Listen to my lesson like that. The slow silence of eternity will let you know when I have reached the end. Then you can open your eyes again, open them and tell me what you think of this song. I think it among my most beautiful. I have been composing it for many months. I hope you agree. Listening to it, I want to live forever.

Do you remember saying that?

Hear me now. I am happy. Hear the sound of my happiness:

Wheh

Hear it grow and shimmer as I tend to the stove, as I bring tea to boil. This is the sound of boiling tea:

Pahdehdehdeh
Pahdehdehdeh

Do you recognize it?

Now hear your breath, the breathing of my student:

Hseh-Whey, Hseh-Whey

Do you see how the sounds belong together? How they compliment each other like birth and death, hope and love?

Hear the sound of tea spilling into my cup. Hear the sound of my happiness,Wheh Wheh Wheh.

Before you, there was none of this. There was only the rahsheheheh of my loneliness, my ignorance of self, my fear of life. And the slowslehh, slehh,of years passing by with everything I wanted and nothing I needed. Or do I have that backwards?

Ah, I have tricked you. There is no difference.

Now hear the smell of green tea. Feel the sound of my heart as I stir in one last ingredient. Can you make out the rattle in my lungs? It has grown so loud:

Kheh-heh-heh

This is your first lesson, to listen, and it is the last. It is the only lesson you will ever need, and you know it already. I am useless. Listen to my heart, my happiness, my new understanding, my tea, the rattle in my lungs, my happiness, my heart. You see? You are a genius.

Now listen to the blood running thin in my veins. Listen to it staining the back of my teeth as I cough; it is worse now than it was before, is it not?

Hear me take a sip. No, a gulp. Hear how it washes the blood away, like the sun washing back the snow? Yes, of course you do.

Now . . . listen, as the world falls away. Listen until all is nothing, nothing but a blackbird singing through the night under a lantern left hanging in the branches of a solemn old tree. Listen as even that sound fades into the breath of labored lungs near failing, then fades further into the slow beating of the heart of an old man. Listen to my masterpiece.

Listen, boy, I only told you once, but you knew all along did you not? You knew even before I did. Know it afterward, too. It is just my weakness that keeps me from speaking. It is a strength to listen so well. The only strength the Gods have given us. I hope you have learned well the one thing I could teach. You have taught me much more.

Keep your eyes closed, Master. I don't like being watched. Just . . . listen. Listen to my happiness. Listen to the silence of eternity. Is it not beautiful?

This song will be over soon, but there are others to replace it. Listen, and sing, that is all I ask.

You will make beautiful songs, I'm sure of it.

* * *

"Master?"

* * *

He will sing well someday. Like a little blackbird.

I try to open my eyes one last time to see him before I go, but it is too late. The song has taken me someplace else. Someplace beautiful. I do not know the sounds to describe it.

Maybe I can learn them.

* * *

Devil May Care

Written by Jason Kahn
Illustrated by David Maier

In his assigned pit in Hell's vast Pain Management Center, Cornelius, Tormenter Second Class, plied his trade with tireless enthusiasm. At present he was in the middle of his morning session, working on a serial adulterer who had been shot, stabbed, strangled and poisoned after all of the women he had been seeing discovered his infidelities at the same time. One look and Cornelius knew he had a fear of small places, which was why he locked the offender inside a small room that slowly contracted until the man was crushed to a pulp. The process would start over after the soul was revived. Cornelius waited until the screams reached a crescendo for the fifth time and then broke for lunch. He retired to his personal alcove where he sat back in his comfy chair and ate some salamander stew while perusing the Daily Apocrypha.

Cornelius flipped through the pages, careful to get a minimum of ink on his reddish skin. A headline read: "Reaper Union Demands Overtime Pay." Cornelius shook his head. Reapers had the worst job, flitting Above Ground, grabbing their assignment and hustling back to Hell. They were little more than glorified escorts, and they had a ridiculous quota to fill each day. Cornelius had started out as a Reaper, most everyone did. Fortunately, he was stuck in that job for only a hundred years or so before moving up.

Unfortunately, while his job had more cachet than that of a Reaper, it had never been good enough for his broodmare. She complained to anyone who would listen that she wished he had a more glamorous occupation, like a Devourer or a Corruptor. But Cornelius had never doubted his calling. His sense of fairness and need to punish the wicked made him a natural Tormenter.

The next headline read: "Samael Calls for Overhaul in Elemental Dept." Cornelius raised an eyebrow. Samael was second in command to Lucifer himself. The Elementals were the demons who caused natural disasters Above Ground: flood, hurricane, earthquake. But they were under Scylla's authority. The demoness also ran the Devourers, the demons who ate the most unrepentant, evil souls after the Tormenters were done with them, which made her very powerful. But she was still a rung or two below Samael. Scylla would not welcome Samael's intrusion into her affairs.

Cornelius sighed and thanked the Void he was not involved in the politics of Hell's Hierarchy. He was about to turn the page when an intern came by with the mail and a roster of the next day's "cases," as the Tormenters called their victims.

Cornelius felt a stab of anxiety when he looked at the parchment. Instead of the normal list of names and accompanying transgressions, there was a single name with a time and place Above Ground. He was going Reaping.

Had he done something wrong? Was he being demoted? Cornelius quelled his rising apprehension and reached for the telephone on his desk. Perhaps his supervisor could shed some light on this. He dialed an inside line—there was only one outside line, and it hadn't been used for as long as he could remember.

"Yes, Cornelius?" came the deep voice at the other end of the line.

"Mr. Moloch, sir? I think there's been a mistake made in the assignments for tomorrow."

"What mistake?" The voice rumbled with mild concern.

"Well, it appears that I'm being sent to Reap someone." Cornelius tried to keep the irritation out of his voice.

"Ah, yes." Moloch's voice registered sudden comprehension. "New program, straight from the top. We're now required to put in a little field work now and then, to keep us fresh. Do you a world of good. Don't worry, someone else will handle your cases until you're back. All right? All right. Thank you for calling."

Cornelius hung up. Field work? This seemed as sensible as when the Devourers were given mandatory sensitivity training for preferentially eating the souls of building contractors. He sighed, knowing he had no choice but to go on the Reap tomorrow. The thought distracted him the rest of the afternoon. Twice he lost focus and allowed a third-world tyrant with a fear of drowning to fall into shallow water, leaving the man soggy but unharmed. And once he even failed to properly heat a bed of hot coals, leaving a triple murderer with a confused look on his face and mildly uncomfortable feet.

At length, however, the workday was done, and a grateful Cornelius filed out of the cavernous Pain Management Center and headed for home, which was a small but well-appointed townhouse in the Plateau area of Hell's middle-class district. His house was just a few hundred yards from a crevasse with a breathtaking view of a lava flow far below. That was why property values were so high, though the schools were not as good as in the really pricey parts of Hell.

The next morning, after Cornelius' usual scalding hot shower, he wrote letters to some of the eighty brothers and sisters of his brood, many of whom still lived at home, much to his broodmare's annoyance. Then he made ready for his Reap. Cornelius stood and calmed his mind, then reached out to grab hold of the psychic winds that whirled unseen through the Void between Hell and Above Ground.

He grabbed a strong current and pictured his destination. In an instant, Cornelius disappeared from his living room and reappeared in the TV section of a Wal-Mart store in Anaheim, California. He changed his appearance to that of a normal human, since his true form sometimes upset the newly dead.

There was a group of people staring at a woman lying on the floor in front of a wall filled with television sets. She appeared uninjured, except for the television that resided where her head would normally be. Cornelius observed as the woman's extracorporeal essence rose out of her body. She stood looking down at herself.

"Well, I certainly didn't see that coming," she said. None of the onlookers could see or hear her, except for Cornelius.

She looked up, noticing him. "What are you dressed up for, Halloween?" Then she looked more closely. "Say, you look awfully familiar."

Cornelius' eyes narrowed as he studied her. Something was wrong, aside from the fact that she could see his true form and seemed to recognize him.

"What is your name, my dear?"

"Sandra, but my friends call me Sandy. Who the hell are you?"

Cornelius knew he had the right person, but this was still wrong. If there was one thing he was good at, it was knowing just how wicked someone had been. But this one didn't have any taint at all. Much the opposite, she gave off the curdled-milk smell of someone who had been quite good. The certainty sank in; she didn't belong in Hell. The thought of punishing someone who didn't deserve it didn't sit at all well with him. Had some clerical error caused this? And why wasn't there someone from Upstairs here, to take her to His domain? Cornelius looked around, sensing none of His representatives. Something was very wrong here.

"My name is Cornelius. I was sent to fetch you, but I fear there has been some mistake."

Sandy didn't seem to hear him. She snapped her fingers. "I knew you looked familiar! I've Seen you, but in my visions you look very different. But it's definitely you."

"You have Seen me?" Cornelius asked.

"Yes, I get visions."

Cornelius stroked his dark goatee. "Might that be why you can see my true form?"

"Could be. What are you trying to look like?"

"It's not important." He shook his head. "You know, your visions didn't seem to help you a great deal back there."

"Oh, I can't See anything about what's going to happen to me, just other people, sometimes places."

Cornelius didn't comment, unsure what to make of this human's claim of clairvoyance. "And what did you See about me?"

"Well, like I said, you look very different. No red skin or forked tail. All white robes and glowing. Very angelic, if you know what I mean. Does that make any sense to you?"

Cornelius almost stopped breathing. He knew with utmost certainty he could not deliver her Downstairs. If she ever uttered a single word of this to anyone in the Underworld, he would be done for. Those few demons who switched sides to work for Him were reviled as the worst sort of deviants, and their brood was considered forever tainted. If even an accusation were raised that a demon was considering moving Upstairs, he would be publicly dismembered to set an example for others. While such spectacles were excellent networking opportunities, he had no desire to be the one getting dismembered. And at the rate gossip spread among demonkind, all she had to do was open her mouth once.

Cornelius pursed his lips. But what to do about it? The girl's Reap had been scheduled. There was already a paper trail that led to him. She couldn't just disappear. Souls had to be accounted for; that was an absolute both Upstairs and Down. But this one didn't belong Downstairs. It must be some sort of foul-up. He needed a safe place to keep her while he cleared it up.

His decision made, Cornelius took Sandy by the elbow and steered her away from the crowd and over to the sporting goods section while paramedics dealt with her body.

"Clearly there has been some error; you do not belong in Hell." Sandy brightened visibly upon hearing that. "But I need to figure out what happened, and what to do with you."

"Well, if you're planning on taking me to your home, there are some people waiting for you. Well, they're not people, but you know what I mean."

He studied her. "They are demons like me? Can you describe them?"

She frowned. "They're bigger, and they've got cloven hooves. For some reason, they seem very . . . hungry."

Devourers. He no longer doubted Sandy's abilities. But why would Devourers be looking for him? Or her? This was getting stranger and stranger.

"Sandy, I'm going to ask you to come with me for a little while and do exactly as I say. I will do my best to figure out what's going on and see that no harm comes to you. You're going to have to trust me, all right?"

She looked at him with obvious reluctance. "So you're taking me to Hell?"

He tried to reassure her. "Only for a little while. I need to put you somewhere safe while I investigate."

She considered for several seconds. "All right. I guess if I'm just a tourist it's okay."

Cornelius declined to comment on the attractiveness of Hell as a tourist destination. He smiled and extended his hand. "Shall we?"

"Okay."

Cornelius reached out for the psychic winds. In an instant, he and Sandy disappeared from Wal-Mart and reappeared in Cornelius' alcove at the Tormenters' complex.

Sandy took a moment to look around. "Nice little office." She loosened her collar. "Kind of warm here, but I guess that's normal."

Cornelius hustled her out of his office into one of his "work" rooms. He waved his hand and an oblong, rectangular box appeared in the center of the sparse room. He looked at her, his brow furrowing. "You're not claustrophobic, are you?"

"Not at all."

"Good, because I'm going to put you in this sensory deprivation tank. No one will be able to see you, and I'll put a different name on today's roster. The only thing is that you're going to have to scream a lot. This is supposed to be torture."

"I can do that."

They approached the coffin-shaped box, and Cornelius helped Sandy inside.

"Uh, how long am I supposed to keep this up?"

Cornelius put his hand on the lid. "Until I get back. Hopefully, this is just some clerical error and it'll take a few minutes to rectify."

Sandy looked at him. "But you don't think so."

He pursed his lips. "I don't know, which is why I want you in a safe place for now." He declined to mention that it was for his safety, as well as hers.

"All right. Just be careful. They look awfully hungry."

Cornelius gave an uncertain smile and closed the lid. As soon as it was shut, Sandy started pounding and screaming with great gusto. Cornelius appreciated the way she threw herself into the role. He hurried back to his office and wrote down a false name on the day's roster, putting "mass pet-murdering tax evader" as her crime and "claustrophobia/sensory deprivation" as the major fear and preferred method of torture.

He was about to leave to start making a few inquiries at the Bureau of Soul Management and Redistribution when he was interrupted by a short, fat demon with a pair of large horns that were grossly out of proportion with the rest of his body. He was accompanied by two Devourers.

"Cornelius, what in the Void is going on!?" the short demon thundered.

Cornelius maintained his composure. "Mr. Moloch, can I help you with something?"

"Yeah. You can explain this!" His boss threw a copy of the Daily Apocrypha down on the desk. The top headline read: "Baal Bungles Several `Deals with Devil,' Souls Go Free."

"I really don't deal with Baal, sir, and I've never made any claims about being good with contracts."

"Not that one, toad!" Mr. Moloch's face began to glow cherry red, and smoke curled out from his nostrils. "Turn it over!"

Cornelius did so, and his jaw tightened. The headline read: "Reap Gone Bad, Soul Missing, Investigation Started." He scanned the first few paragraphs. Both his and Sandy's names were mentioned.

He tried to remain calm. "Sir, I can assure you I completed my assignment and brought the lady to Reaper Processing as per usual. Perhaps they messed up the paperwork over there. They're probably just covering their tails."

Moloch frowned, his expression doubtful. "It's out of my hands now. You need to go with these two." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

The Devourers smiled and came forward to grasp Cornelius by each arm. Insatiable hunger oozed out of them, so strong it made Cornelius dizzy to be near them.

"All right, sir."

The Devourers steered him out the door. His legs felt like jelly and his voice was weak. "I'll straighten this out. Don't worry about the current case, she can stay put for several hours if need be."

Moloch looked down at Cornelius' notes, muttering a few words before Cornelius was led away. "Pets and taxes, eh? She's bad, all right. We'll let her keep for a nice long time."

The two Devourers led Cornelius out of the Pain Management Center and through the cracked, dusty Plateau area, toward the hills where the various members of Hell's powerful Hierarchy lived. Cornelius swallowed and began to worry.

They arrived at a white marble structure with columns and figures carved into the stone. The Devourers' hooves clacked on the steps while Cornelius' tail swished nervously. They walked inside, straight to a large set of brass doors that swung open as they approached. The Devourers shoved Cornelius inside without ceremony, chuckling to themselves as the doors swung shut. Cornelius was left alone to face a demoness he knew by reputation alone.

Scylla sat behind a large desk. She wore a smart flame-red business suit and was twice Cornelius' size, with long, clawlike nails that tapped impatiently.

"Please sit." Her voice was all sweetness and light. A chair moved of its own accord behind Cornelius, who sat, grateful to be away from the Devourers. Cornelius heard a faint grrrr from beneath the desk, and he wondered what was hidden there.

"So, my dear Cornelius." Scylla paused to adjust her hair, which was done up in an ornate bun. "Let me cut to the chase: Where is the Seer?"

"Well, ma'am, I picked her up as scheduled and left her at Reaper Processing." Cornelius stuck to his story. "But if you don't mind my asking, I got the impression from my short contact with her that she . . . didn't belong here, if you get my meaning."

The growls from under the desk grew louder as Scylla smiled menacingly. "Let's not concern ourselves with such details, shall we? I'm going to ask you once again: Where is the Seer?"

Cornelius blinked. If Scylla wasn't concerned that Sandy didn't belong in Hell, then she wanted her for a reason, which made this a far more difficult situation for him to untangle. But with the information Sandy had, though Cornelius would deny it until he was pink in the face, there was no way he could hand her over to a member of Hell's Hierarchy.

Growing more and more uncomfortable under Scylla's baleful gaze, Cornelius tried to keep the quaver out of his voice. "As I said, you'll have to check with Reaper Processing as to her current whereabouts."

Scylla's eyes glazed with anger as she half stood and slammed her fist down with a thunderous boom on the desk. The growls from the unseen beasts turned to savage barks. Cornelius' nails bit into the arms of his chair.

"She's the most powerful Seer in five hundred years and I will have her! Now where is she?"

Cornelius thought for a moment. Why would a powerful demoness like Scylla need a Seer? She obviously wanted to know something about the future, but what? He thought about what he knew of Hell's Hierarchy, and then something from yesterday's Daily Apocrypha hit him.

"You're going to make a move against Samael," he breathed. "And you want to know how it turns out."

Scylla gave a scream that echoed around the room as the barks became even more threatening. "Of course I am, you stupid son of a succubus! I can't stand that busybody constantly sticking his nose in my business. And the Seer is my insurance policy. So I will have her, and you will tell me where she is, or you will be thrown into the Pit."

Cornelius gave an involuntary shudder. The Pit was the deepest well of Hellfire in the Underworld. The wickedest of wicked souls were sent there to circle the flames for eternity. Sometimes demons were thrown in for some grievous act, to burn up and return to oblivion and the Void. Cornelius, however, remained silent. Handing Sandy over to Scylla also meant death, along with the public disgrace and humiliation to him and his entire brood. At least the Pit was a clean death, and perhaps he could still manage to escape and spirit Sandy away. The vague outline of a plan formed in his mind.

Cornelius swallowed with difficulty, and his words came slowly. "I'm afraid I can't help you."

Scylla's eyes narrowed and the barks lowered to menacing growls. "Very well. We'll find her without you."

The doors swung open and the two Devourers entered. They hoisted Cornelius out of his chair.

"Throw him in the Pit." Scylla waved her hand dismissively, muttering to herself as Cornelius was led away. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted that idiot Moloch with this."

Cornelius didn't bother trying to struggle. The dizziness returned as soon as the Devourers came near. They dragged him down the marble steps and along a different path toward the Plateau.

Before long, Cornelius heard a great moaning up ahead. They were nearing the Pit. The noise came from all the souls whirling around the great fire. He focused on what he did every day as a Tormenter and zeroed in on the type of punishment a Devourer would fear most. Then he waited.

Cornelius could now make out the bare, stunted trees that rose around the rim of the Pit. He judged they had come close enough. "You know, I'm very sorry to have caused so much trouble. But I'm most sorry about the awful mess I'm leaving behind."

He could see the edge of the Pit now. The wailing from the souls inside was louder, and the heat came in searing waves. The two Devourers looked at each other, their expressions humorous.

"Don't worry," one said. "We'll find the girl without you."

"Oh, it's not that." Cornelius tried to sound apologetic. "I mean the severe soul shortage we're looking at."

They had reached the edge. Cornelius could see just over the lip the magnificent, terrifying fire that had raged for Eternity, and would keep burning until the end of time. He saw the vague forms that swirled like leaves in the wind, their mouths open in endless, mournful wails.

The Devourers paused at the edge, their eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, it's just that the Tormenters are working with a new computer system to manage all the cases that come through. There are still several bugs that need to be worked out and it's created an enormous backlog. I was helping to move things along, but I'm afraid in my absence the flow of souls for you Devourers to eat will slow to almost nothing in very short order."

The Devourers began to look concerned. Nothing worried a Devourer more than the prospect of having nothing to eat.

"What do you think?" one asked the other.

"Scylla would've said something." He seemed none too sure.

"It seems to me that Scylla has been rather preoccupied with other matters lately," Cornelius offered.

That seemed to strike the right chord, because the Devourers frowned and exchanged worried looks. For an instant, they forgot about Cornelius and relaxed their grip on his arms, which was just what he had been waiting for. Cornelius whipped his arms back and slammed them into the backs of the Devourers. For an instant the two demons tottered on the edge of the Pit, a mixture of helplessness and panic on their faces. Then they fell in. Cornelius watched their forms become smaller and smaller, their screams another note in the terrible chorus of souls before they vanished into the blazing fire.

Cornelius raced back toward the Tormenters' complex. He greeted various coworkers in the halls, acting normal despite the odd looks he received. His sigh of relief upon reaching his office, however, was cut short. Moloch was already there.

"I heard you were back." His face clouded into a scowl. "Now what in the Void's name is going on, I've been hearing . . ."

Cornelius cut in. "Yes, yes, it was all just a simple misunderstanding. It's all been straightened out. But before I get back to work, I could really use your assistance with some faulty equipment I was using the other day. Would you come this way? Thank you so much, sir."

Moloch looked at Cornelius suspiciously, but didn't resist as he was ushered into an empty workroom. "Well, okay. I guess if there's an equipment malfunction, I should know about it."

"Of course you should, sir. That's why you're in charge," Cornelius said. "Now, let's take a look at this machine here."

Cornelius waved his hand and a rack appeared before them, standing upright. It was complete with shackles and levers for pulling and bending bodies in unnatural ways. Cornelius led his supervisor right up to it.

"I was working on a grossly overweight embezzler, and you can plainly see that it's impossible for this rack to accommodate . . ." Cornelius stopped mid-sentence and pushed Mr. Moloch toward the apparatus. The short demon could do nothing as manacles closed on his wrists and ankles with a sharp clang.

"Cornelius!" His face started turning bright red again. "What is the meaning of this!? I'll have your hide."

Cornelius sighed. "I am sorry, but I really have no choice."

He left Moloch there, closed the door behind him and cast a quick silence spell so no one would hear him screaming. It wouldn't last long, though. Cornelius took Moloch's threat quite seriously. He knew several former coworkers whose hides adorned his office.

He looked down at the phone on his desk, hesitating for a moment. He disliked taking this route, but leaving Sandy in the Underworld wasn't an option. Cornelius dialed the outside line.

After a brief, awkward conversation, he hung up and went to the room where he had left Sandy. To her credit, she was still screaming. Cornelius opened the lid and assisted Sandy out of the sensory deprivation chamber.

Cornelius explained their situation in as few words as possible, knowing Moloch would be free at any moment. "So, shall we?" He offered his hand once again.

"Let's go," Sandy said.

In another moment, Cornelius had caught the psychic winds and the two disappeared from Hell's Pain Management Center.

They reappeared an instant later outside a Sizzler Steakhouse in Lansing, Michigan. Cornelius changed form to appear once more like a normal human, and they walked in. Cornelius explained to the hostess that he—the woman couldn't see Sandy—was meeting someone, and they walked through the main seating area. Cornelius spotted the person at the same time that Sandy gave a small gasp. They joined what appeared to be an elderly, well-dressed man in a booth by the window. Cornelius could tell by the way his nose tickled and his eyes watered that this person was from Upstairs. Demons were allergic to their kind.

The "man" gave them a kindly smile as they sat.

"You're beautiful," Sandy breathed. Cornelius knew what she saw, the glowing light, the robes. He was at a loss to explain humans' gushing reaction toward these beings.

"Thank you, my dear. You may call me Aaron." The man patted her on the hand. "Well, we've all had an interesting day today, haven't we?"

"Oh, yes," Sandy said. "Cornelius took me to Hell, but I didn't see too much." She sounded disappointed.

"Well, I'm sure that was for the best," Aaron said. "After all, that's not where you're meant to be, is it?"

"No way," she affirmed.

"Speaking of which, thank you for your timely phone call." He nodded to Cornelius. "We were getting a bit concerned. You're a rare fellow for your kind, if you don't mind my saying so."

Cornelius wasn't sure how to take that. "I had my own reasons for getting her out." He shrugged. "Besides, she shouldn't have been sent down there in the first place. Why didn't He send someone for her?"

"Oh, He most certainly did," Aaron said, still with that quiet smile. "He sent me, but I was delayed in transit. Some rather seedy looking characters with large appetites waylaid me."

Cornelius felt sure he knew who they were. "Nevertheless, you'd think He would be able to do something about this sort of thing."

Aaron gave Cornelius a look filled with hidden knowledge, and a touch of amusement. "What makes you think He didn't?"

"You know, I didn't come here to be insulted," Cornelius replied gruffly.

"Of course not. None intended, I assure you. You have nothing but our deepest gratitude. As a matter of fact, you have a standing invitation Upstairs anytime you like."

Cornelius looked at Aaron, wondering if he was joking. He didn't care what Sandy had Seen, he wasn't about to give up his calling. "That won't be necessary."

"Yes, well, it's something to think about at any rate." Aaron winked. "And now, my dear, are you ready?"

Sandy nodded and turned to Cornelius. "Thank you so much for helping me, Cornelius, you've been a dear." She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

Cornelius sat there stunned, her action matching nothing in his experience.

She turned back to Aaron, who held out his hand to her. "Okay, I'm ready." Just before their hands touched, she turned back to Cornelius. "I'm really sorry, but you'll like it here after you get used to it." She looked wistful for a moment. In the next instant, they were gone.

Sorry? What was she sorry about? Get used to what? Before he could digest Sandy's words, two other gentlemen sat down across from him at the booth. They were both young-looking, with polo shirts and slicked back hair. Cornelius took one look at their eyes, which seemed like hungry black holes that threatened to suck him in. More Devourers.

"Scylla is rather upset with you," one said. "She still wanted to throw you in the Pit."

"But Samael intervened on your behalf," the other added sourly. "He judged you to be grievously insubordinate to your manager and guilty of consorting with His representatives, but he lessened your sentence."

"So what is it?" Cornelius asked.

They both smiled. "You'll find out. Enjoy your stay."

They got up and left, leaving a worried Cornelius alone in the booth. Thinking he might as well return home and face the music, Cornelius reached out for the psychic winds, only to discover he could not. He tried again, but something was blocking him. Then he realized—this was his punishment. He was being exiled to live in the human realm. That was what Sandy meant. Cornelius sat back in shock as the enormity of his punishment hit home. No more Pain Management Center, no more inflicting suffering on the wicked. At least he had avoided being charged with the far more serious transgression of attempting to do His work.

He caught the attention of a waitress and ordered a steak, raw.

She looked at him. "Do you mean rare, honey? We don't serve raw meat here."

"Yes, of course," he quickly amended. Why did humans insist on ruining perfectly good food? While he waited for his meal, Cornelius' mind raced. How long would his punishment last? Where would he go? What would he do? He was distracted by a young couple that sat down nearby. Cornelius looked at the humans. While the man perused a menu, the woman sat absolutely still, as if she was afraid to move. She wore dark glasses, which did nothing to hide the bruises on her face. Cornelius could taste her fear. The husband, meanwhile, gave off a smell Cornelius was all too familiar with.

The demon considered. Perhaps he could continue his work after all. There were plenty of cases here Above Ground to keep him occupied, and the change in scenery might do him some good. He studied the couple while a renewed sense of purpose filled him. He would start with this one. Cornelius smiled; he already knew exactly what the human feared most.

"Excuse me," Cornelius said, gaining the attention of another waitress. "Where would one go in these parts to bury a person?"

The waitress' eyes turned instantly sympathetic. She leaned down and touched Cornelius on the hand. "I'm so sorry, honey, did somebody die?"

It dawned on Cornelius that he'd have to adjust his normal routine. Her mistake was understandable, of course.

* * *

COLUMNS

Jim Baen
October 22, 1943 - June 28, 2006

Written by David Drake

Jim Baen called me on the afternoon of June 11. He generally phoned on weekends, and we'd usually talk a couple more times in the course of a week; but this was the last time.

In the course of the conversation he said, "You've got to write my obituary, you know." I laughed (I'll get to that) and said, "Sure, if I'm around—but remember, I'm the one who rides the motorcycle."

So I'm writing this. Part of it's adapted from the profile I did in 2000 for the program book of the Chicago Worldcon at which Jim was Editor Guest of Honor. They cut my original title, which Jim loved: The God of Baendom. I guess they thought it was undignified and whimsical.

The title was undignified and whimsical. So was Jim.

James Patrick Baen was born October 22, 1943, on the Pennsylvania - New York border, a long way by road or in culture from New York City . He was introduced to SF early through the magazines in a step-uncle's attic, including the November, 1957, issue of Astounding with The Gentle Earth by Christopher Anvil.

The two books Jim most remembered as formative influences were Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C Clarke. The theme of both short novels is that a youth from a decaying culture escapes the trap of accepted wisdom and saves his people despite themselves. This is a fair description of Jim's life in SF: he was always his own man, always a maverick, and very often brilliantly successful because he didn't listen to what other people thought.

For example, the traditional model of electronic publishing required that the works be encrypted. Jim thought that just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make. His e-texts were clear and in a variety of common formats.

While e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, Baen Books quickly began earning more from electronic sales than it did from Canada . By the time of Jim's death, the figure had risen to ten times that.

Jim didn't forget his friends. In later years he arranged for the expansion of Fire-Hunter so that he could republish it (as The Hunter Returns , originally the title of the Charles R Knight painting Jim put on the cover).

Though Clarke didn't need help to keep his books in print the way Kjelgaard did, Jim didn't forget him either. Jim called me for help a week before his stroke, because Amazon.com had asked him to list the ten SF novels that everyone needed to read to understand the field. Against the Fall of Night was one of the titles that we settled on.

Jim's father died at age fifty; he and his stepfather didn't warm to one another. Jim left home at 17 and lived on the streets for several months, losing weight that he couldn't at the time afford. He enlisted in the army as the only available alternative to starving to death.

Jim spent his military career in Bavaria where he worked for the Army Security Agency as a Morse Code Intercept Operator, monitoring transmissions from a Soviet callsign that was probably a armored corps. One night he determined that 'his' Soviet formation was moving swiftly toward the border. This turned out to be an unannounced training exercise—but if World War III had broken out in 1960, Jim would've been the person who announced it.

Jim entered CCNY on the GI Bill and became a Hippie. Among other jobs he managed a Greenwich Village coffee house, sometimes acting as barker as well: 'Come in and see tomorrow's stars today!' None of the entertainers became tomorrow's stars, but that experience of unabashed huckstering is part of the reason that Jim himself did.

Jim's first job in publishing was as an assistant in the Complaints Department of Ace Books. He was good at it—so good that management tried to promote him to running the department. He turned the offer down, however, because he really wanted to be an SF editor.

In 1973 Jim was hired at Galaxy and If magazines when Judy-Lynn Benjamin left. He became assistant to Ejler Jakobson, who with Bernie Williams taught Jim the elements of slash and burn editing.

Unfortunately, this was a necessary skill for an editor in Jim's position. The publisher wasn't in a hurry to pay authors, so established writers who could sell elsewhere preferred to do so. Galaxy and If published a lot of first stories and not a few rejects by major names. Material like that had to be edited for intelligibility and the printer's deadline, not nuances of prose style.

Apart from basic technique Jim had very little to learn from his senior, who shortly thereafter left to pursue other opportunities. Jim's first act as editor was to recall stories that his predecessor had rejected over Jim's recommendation. When in later years I thanked him for retrieving the first two Hammer stories, Jim responded, ''Oh, David—Jake rejected much better stories than yours!" (Among them was Ursula K LeGuin's Nebula winner, The Day Before the Revolution .)

Ace Books, in many ways the standard bearer of SF paperback publishing in the Fifties, had fallen on hard times in the Seventies. Charter Communications bought the company and installed Tom Doherty as publisher. Tom hired Jim to run the SF line. The first thing the new team did was to pay Ace's back (and in some cases, way back) royalties. By the time the famous SFWA audit of Ace Books was complete, the money had already been paid to the authors; a matter of some embarrassment to the SFWA officers who were aware of the facts.

Ace regained its position as an SF line where readers could depend on getting a good story. (To Homer, that was the essence of art; not all writers and editors of more recent times would have agreed.) As well as pleasing readers, the Ace SF line made money for the company; unfortunately (due to decisions from far above the level of publisher) SF came to be the only part of the company that did make money. Tom left Ace in 1980, founded Tor Books, and hired Jim to set up the Tor SF line.

Which Jim did, following the same pattern that had revived Ace: a focus on story and a mix of established authors with first-timers whom Jim thought just might have what it took. It worked again.

In fact it worked so well that when Simon and Schuster went through a series of upheavals in its Pocket Books line in 1983, management decided to hire Jim as their new SF editor. Jim thought about the offer, then made a counter-offer: with the backing of two friends, he would form a separate company which would provide S&S with an SF line to distribute. S&S agreed and Baen Books was born.

Jim used the same formulas with his new line as he had at Ace and Tor, and again he succeeded. If that were easy, then past decades wouldn't be littered with the detritus of so many other people's attempts to do the same thing.

Even more than had been the case at Ace and Tor, Jim was his own art director at Baen Books—and he really directed rather than viewing his job as one of coddling artists. Baen Books gained a distinct look. Like the book contents, the covers weren't to everyone's taste—but they worked.

Jim had the advantage over some editors in that he knew what a story is. He had the advantage over most editors in being able to spot talent before somebody else had published it. (Lois Bujold, Eric Flint, John Ringo and Dave Weber were all Baen discoveries whom Jim promoted to stardom.)

Furthermore, he never stopped developing new writers. The week before his stroke, Jim bought a first novel from a writer whom Baen Books had been grooming through short stories over the past year.

The most important thing of all which Jim brought to his company was a personal vision. Baen Books didn't try to be for everybody, but it wa s always true to itself. In that as in so many other ways, the company mirrored Jim himself.

When Jim called me on June 11, he told me he was dying. I thought he was simply having a bad interaction among prescription drugs. Though the stroke that killed him occurred the next day in hospital, Jim was right and I was wrong—again.

After that opening, Jim said, "I'm just going to say it: we've known each other all these years and you seem to like me. Why?"

That's a hell of a thing to be hit with out of the blue. Jim had always known that he was socially awkward and that he not infrequently rubbed people the wrong way, but it wasn't something we discussed. (And it's obviously not a subject on which I could be of much help.)

If I'd been a different person, I'd have started out by listing the things he did right: for example, that I'd never met a more loving father than Jim was to his children (Jessica Baen, 29, Jim's daughter with Madeline Gleich, and Katherine Baen, 14, Jim's daughter with Toni Weisskopf). Being me, I instead answered the question a number of us ask ourselves: "How can you like a person who's behaved the way you know I have?"

I said that his flaws were childish ones, tantrums and sulking; not, never in my experience, studied cruelty. He agreed with that.

And then I thought further and said that when I was sure my career was tanking—

" You thought that? When was that?"

In the mid '90s, I explained, when Military SF was going down the tubes with the downsizing of the military. But when I was at my lowest point, which was very low, I thought, "I can write two books a year. And Jim will pay me $20K apiece for them—"

"I'd have paid a lot more than that!"

And I explained that this wasn't about reality: this was me in the irrational depths of real depression. And even when I was most depressed and most irrational, I knew in my heart that Jim Baen would pay me enough to keep me alive, because he was that sort of person. He'd done that for Keith Laumer whom he disliked, because Laumer had been an author Jim looked for when he was starting to read SF.

I could not get so crazy and depressed that I didn't trust Jim Baen to stand by me if I needed him. I don't know a better statement than that to sum up what was important about Jim, as a man and as a friend.

—Dave Drake

Toni Weisskopf and Dave suggest that people who wish to make a memorial donation purchase copies of THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN and donate them to libraries or teenagers of their acquaintance.

Comments and remembrances may be left at:

Baen's Bar (http://bar.baen.com) in the "In Memorium" conference or
The Universe forums (http://www.baensuniverse.com/bbs) in the "In Memorium" forum.

Doing a Slow Turn

Written by David Brin
THE POISON OF CYNICISM

Lately, like a lot of other Americans, I have been trying to understand our national affliction called "Culture War."

How is it that a great nation can be at the height of its prosperity and cultural achievement—with crime rates dropping and IQ scores rising—yet wallow in an apparently bottomless spiral of deteriorating civility and political contempt? Having given the world a whole new layer of intelligence—the Internet—and countless other great, unprecedented things, we now hurl simplistic barbs at each other with playground immaturity, glowering in a foulness of bitter clichés and broken confidence.

Yes, there is violent foreign conflict and ever-worsening debt. Both readiness and resiliency aren't what they should be, in a world of rapid change. And freedom itself seems to be under storm clouds of threat. Still, aren't each of these problems partly rooted in Culture War? Far more fundamental is a declining trust in ourselves, in our traditional prowess at negotiating with each other, bargaining in good faith.

Oh, it's easy to cast blame for the acrimony in American political life, ascribing it to "the other side" . . . whichever end of the hoary left-right political axis you deem hateful. Indeed, I agree that one end of that axis has been especially noxious lately, promoting Culture War as a deliberately divisive tactic. (link: http://www.davidbrin.com/realculturewar1.html) But then, aren't we all complicit, whenever we create strawman images of every opponent, refusing to recognize subtle differences among them. Differences between the many types of liberal, or conservative? (Both ideologies claim to be all about respecting individuality!) Or when we fail to acknowledge that some opponents are sincere, perhaps even having intelligent things to say? In trying to penetrate this mystery, I've tried to view Culture War from many angles. For example, as a plague of self-stimulated addiction to self-righteous indignation. (link: http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html) Or as a reflex spasm by older styles of romanticism against the rebel worldview of pragmatism and science.(1) (link: http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle1.html) I have even tried to see it as a defense mechanism, by our paid professional protector caste, against a rising Age of Amateurs. (link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BY2PRQ/002-0125361-2995236)

And yet, time and again, what I find is that all of these other perspectives just put icing on a bitter cake. The core source of Culture War appears to be something far simpler.

CLICHÉS... AND A RESPONSE

Listen to partisans of all stripes—left, right, up, down or weird—and try throwing away whatever details of policy you may agree—or disagree—with. Get down to the emotional subtext and most of the angry rants boil down to a theme that's remarkably similar, all across the spectrum. What you are bound to hear, sooner or later, is some variation of the following venerated saying:

"A cynic is an optimist who finally snapped out of it, and realized how awful people really are."

Venerated? Heck, it's one of the great clichés of all time! Try it out and see how reflexively your close friends nod when you say those words. Almost as automatically as when you add:

"Isn't it a shame that human wisdom hasn't kept up with technology?"

Or this one—

"What a pity that our neighbors are such sheep, unable to see truth that stares them in the face. A truth that our side (sadly) has to uphold, as a brave minority, against all odds."

Oh, I admit it. I've indulged in all of these clichés myself, on occasion. Anyone who denies ever doing so is claiming not to be human! After all, who can resist the attraction—the almost druglike satisfaction—of feeling contempt-for-the-masses?

Can you name a political or social or religious movement that does not strive to make its in-group feel special? In-the-know? More in tune with "the way things really are"? More with-it than all those hapless, clueless cattle out there?

And yet, aren't citizens of a scientific enlightenment supposed to question clichés? Even . . . especially . . . those that seem suspiciously convenient? The ones that make us feel good?

In other words, the seductive notions that may have suckered us?(2)

So, let's take a contrarian look at the Contempt Reflex, for a change. Scan those three clichés again, only this time try out an answer–

"What is a cynic who snaps out of it even farther ? Enough to realize that, despite the grotesquely stupid, self-delusional and abysmally corrupt aspects of human nature . . . things are getting phenomenally better? And have been for some time?"

I mean, which is truly more amazing? That the Enlightenment is under threat from collusive cabals of conniving aristocrats, aggressive imperialists, snooty bureaucrats and extremist nutjobs? Or the fact that the same utterly predictable types, that ruled every other urban culture for 4,000 years, have been trying to accomplish this in America ever since the republic was founded? Only to be staved off repeatedly, by a new kind of civilization—one that somehow kept redesigning and renewing itself, using both cooperation and joyful entrepreneurial competition, showing an almost infinite capacity for resilience in the face of repetitious human nature?

Where is it written that we must always see the glass half-empty? Can citizens of this permanent and ongoing revolution shrug off cynicism long enough to be inspired by the part that is half-full?

TRY AN EXPERIMENT

Here is a little demonstration that I've been recommending to people for years . . . for so long that it's become known as Brin's Exercise in Reluctant Humility.

Go to a busy street corner, preferably one with a four (or twelve!) -way stop signage, where people negotiate traffic rules each second, with little glances, nods and hand-signals. Stand on the corner, take a deep breath, and start doing a slow 360 degree turn, taking in everything from shopping centers to offices to schools and housing. And, then . . . And then . . . while you are turning ever-so-slowly . . . really open your eyes.

Notice all the things that are working! The quiet, efficient flows of people, goods, information and services coming in, and waste going out—almost like the complex systems of circulation in a living body. Take in the hidden competencies—emplaced by a myriad professionals working in the background—that make all the switches turn on time and fill the restaurants with food. Notice, also, the countless little moments of volunteer/amateur decency, without which these professional efforts could never succeed.

Do not let any patch as small as one square degree pass your view without comment, or noticing something that you always took for granted! Not even a bare patch of concrete or grass, because those, too, are marvels with stories behind them.

Unleash your imagination, realizing that each system that you see uses countless interlocking machines, most of which function without reliance on fallible human supervision, each containing innumerable parts, each part having been made in some faraway place by skilled hands, then shipped and assembled and combined into coalescing structures that were designed to be taken for granted. Yes, even by klutzes who claim to hate machinery.

Oh, but don't get lost in the gimmicks. (After all, I don't want to be strawman-labeled as a horrid technophile.) So also watch people! Like that fellow over there, who could have stolen something just then . . . but didn't. That exchange of unspoken courtesies. That moment when some people patiently took turns. That moment of reflex citizenship.

All right, I admit that I'm a Californian. People may have rougher edges in other places, like New York. Still, that only makes it more important to do this exercise, in cities and towns where a smattering of grating moments tempts you to dismiss everyone and everything as rotten. Because, in fact, most things aren't! Most people aren't.

If you finish the turn having counted less than a thousand miracles, start over! All you have proved with your low score is that you are—in effect—quite blind.

THE DEEPER ROOTS OF CONFIDENCE

Does all of this seeing-the-glass-half-full make me a pollyanna? People accuse me of being a flaming optimist, because I have a naively positive view of human nature.

How absurd!

No, friend. I am a flaming optimist because I understand just how wretched human nature really is! I am well-qualified to know this, partly as a student of all sciences, as a professional builder of alternate worlds, as a person whose third and fourth cousins were all murdered by unprecedented rationalization and human savagery . . . and as one who wakens every morning surprised that barbarians or tyrants have not yet burned my home, taken my wife and kids, tied me to a pyre for my heresies, and ruined my proud civilization—the way they behaved in every other.

Not yet.

Oh, don't imagine that I only see good things when I do the Slow Turn exercise! If you watch from any street corner, you will see examples of nastiness, selfishness and utter stupidity. But we are already well-tuned to notice such things, for very good evolutionary reasons. Often, bad events and behavior need attention and vigorous response. We can afford to let good behaviors slip into the background. But must we lose all awareness that so much is working well, in the background? There is no better example of losing the forest for the trees.

Hence the ferocity of my optimism, oh friends and co-rebels. Hence my deep and abiding disdain for cynicism.

Because cynicism isn't helpful. Fundamentally, it is a self-doped drug high, nothing more. And if something isn't helpful in this fight, I have no time for it.

SWALLOWING THE BITTER REALIZATION

What lesson can we take away from the Parable of the Streetcorner? That we should be smug and satisfied? Hell no(3). We appear to have come halfway from the nasty darkness of anarchy and feudalism toward a brighter era of decency, when our kids (or their kids) may be mature enough to solve all of the dilemmas that confuse us today. If things stay at this halfway point, the whole world will be doomed. Those who say "this is good enough" would murder us all.

No, we have one hope. That hope is to continue pursuing the game plan of Ben Franklin and the pragmatic wing of the Enlightenment, a campaign of relentless self-improvement—of belief in improvability—that has also been called the Modernist Agenda(4). This plan—combined with a little faith and some tolerance—got us to where we are today. It's a program that's worked so far.

Indeed, we cannot properly fight for it, or improve it, without conceding—avowing—that it has worked. Fantastically. Epochally. Better than any other program for living and working together.

Like everybody else, I am drawn to cynical contempt-for-the-masses-around-me. Masses who seem so dimwitted . . . who support imbecile politicians . . . who don't know or care where Rwanda is or what happened there . . . who actually think we are at "war" . . . who raise such dopey, XBox-addicted brats . . .

. . . only then I do the exercise. I go to that street corner, start turning . . .

. . . and every time I finish one of those 360 degree rotations, noticing the myriad marvels all around me, the incredible courtesy and skill and competence that it takes to (ironically) make a civilization that is proof against the individual incompetence of countless fools . . .

. . . I find myself forced to make a concession. To accept that my inner drives must be wrong, at least at some level. To grasp that (as the best scientists say) I might be wrong. And that is when I mutter, grudgingly—

"My neighbors . . . couldn't possibly . . . be as stupid as they look."

THE IRONY OF CITIZENSHIP

Yes, they look awfully stupid. I'm sure your neighbors do, too. (As you and I surely look stupid to them.) Indeed, perhaps, as individuals, most of them really are! Stupid, I mean.

But when they are taken together, combined, made free to interact under loose rules that encourage decent cooperation and accountable competition, while restraining the worst of the old-vile impulses, something happens. Together, we all get smarter than individual human beings ever were, or ever deserved to be. (http://www.amazon.com/gp/productB000BY2PRQ/002-0215361-2995236)

In the new science of Complexity Theory, this is called an emergent property. And, friends, you live in comfort, wallowing in information and freedom, because of it. Yes, even the freedom to be complacent and ignorant and self-indulgent and self-righteous and contemptuous of all your neighbors. Neighbors who feel the same way about you. Because, somehow, our immaturities often tend to cancel out. While those vital qualities of competence and skill that each of us contributes . . . well, those often tend to add together. They tend to combine, emerging into a sum far greater than the parts.

This is, ultimately why moderates and pragmatists and decent, hard-working people—parents and citizens and students—need to start appreciating everything we take for granted, rejecting the cynical nihilism that we are taught in every self-indulgent movie and by every oversimplifying political fanatic.

Civilization is a word you seldom hear, but we had better start standing up for it.

Because all the ranters out there are genuinely crazy and clueless! All the shortsighted dogmatists who hate complexity have no idea what it is that they are prescribing, when they offer their all-encompassing explanations and simplifying nostrums.

What they are offering is to take it all away . . . the synergies and complexities and compromises and emergent properties . . . and to replace this marvel with various versions of the same old song. The one that dominated all our ancestors. Rule by "wise" philosopher kings.

By platonist philosophers of all kinds. Pick your poison. Left, right, libertarian, religious, nostalgic, tribal, western, eastern or weird. Can we not learn to recognize the frantic contempt that all of these prescribers have in common? Dig deep and it's all the same thing. Dolts who are terrified of complexity and want things simple again. Village idiots who demand kingship—for the common good, of course. Who would kill the very goose that gives a flood of golden eggs.

Oh, yes. I can see the irony. These statements that I have just made are—contemptuous!

Well? I never said that every cynical remark is wrong. Indeed, it's blatantly obvious that some of our neighbors are fools, after all.

So? All this shows is that I'm not gullible, nor do I base my optimism on a naive trust in human nature. In a sense, I am a the deepest cynic of all! For I accept the lesson of Locke and Madison, that no individual can be trusted. No prescription or dogma. Including those I clutch hardest.

No, don't listen to them, neighbors. And especially, don't give in easily to the sweet allure of contempt.

Only one thing has ever worked—consistently and miraculously. And I remain stunned every day that it does.

Us.

(1) A habit of cynicism.

(2) My own trademark aphorism CITOKATE (Criticism is the only known antidote to error) arose when I noticed how this all-too human tendency often made me quite happy, even when strong evidence showed me to be dead wrong.

(3) What is the excuse given by many activists of the left, for never mentioning progress that's already been achieved? In civil rights, in womens' rights, and in a myriad other fields? Countless progressive calls-to-action have been answered, over the years, by a sincere willingness of citizens to mend old mistakes and correct bad, old habits. Yet, it is somehow never allowable to congratulate the people for any of these proud accomplishments. Only further chiding and criticism. The apparent reason? I'm told that praise might let up the pressure to achieve more. And more progress is desperately needed.

In fact, I partly agree. More progress is needed. And the best way to get it is not rebuke, but encouraging justified pride in what the people have achieved, so far. The choice to emphasize rebuke is probably the biggest reason for the plummeting status of the wordliberal.

(4) I am not referring to effete architectural styles of the 1920s, but another meaning for the word "modernism." One that was eclipsed long ago, but that deserves a return to prominence. A confident, can-do belief in the value of practical, incremental improvement. More on this, anon.

© 2006 David Brin. All Rights Reserved.

* * *

David Brin is the author of many novels and short stories.

Terraforming: A Bumpy Road Ahead

Written by B. B. Kristopher
Illustrated by Paul Campbell

I grew up watching Marvin the Martian and Bugs Bunny fight it out over the Illudim Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Along the way, I also had a run-in with Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, the earlier works of Robert Heinlein and a whole host of works that depicted Mars as a vital, life bearing world. Venus often followed along side, usually as a world of swamps and tropical jungles.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it wasn't right. I'd been exposed to enough science before I started kindergarten that I knew the other worlds in the solar system were barren, lifeless places. But like any child, I didn't let a little thing like reality distract me from dreams of walking on other worlds rich and flush with life.

I'm a long way from those Marvin the Martian cartoons, but some part of me still longs for a Mars you could run across without a space suit and an oxygen tank. I follow the terraforming discussions the way some people follow their favorite football team.

What I see doesn't make me happy.

These days, most terraforming discussions center around Mars, and the discussions can get pretty heated. People argue about ethics. They scream about protecting any life forms that might exist on Mars. They go on about how easy or how hard it would be to terraform the planet. They put forth ideas and theories, some of which are even intelligent.

What I have yet to see is anyone admit just how massive an undertaking terraforming any of the bodies in our solar system would be. This is disturbing because any attempt to mount a terraforming effort that does not realistically consider all the challenges involved is ultimately doomed to failure.

Since most of the current terraforming discussions focus on Mars, let's start by taking a look at what would be involved in making Mars Earthlike.

One of the most popular suggestions is to start by bombarding the planet with large, fast-moving asteroids. This, proponents suggest, would heat the planet up. They argue that polar strikes could melt the carbon dioxide ice caps, releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere which would result in a greenhouse effect which would trap sunlight and heat the planet. Others suggest that a large enough strike could even restart the planet's geological processes.

Using asteroid bombardment would seem to make sense. After all, an asteroid impact can deliver more force than all the nuclear weapons on Earth combined. The problem is, that's still not much energy on a planetary scale. There are two basic scenarios here. One, a single large impact at the poles would result in the entire polar region becoming molten and most of the CO2 would end up trapped in the rock as the lava cools. Alternatively, small impacts could be used to melt both polar caps, releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, which, if the bombardment were performed at midsummer, the CO2 would stay in the atmosphere for about eight months to a year.

The fact is, the Martian atmosphere is already ninety-five percent CO2, and every Martian winter, nearly a quarter of the atmosphere falls on the poles as snow. Even if you managed to get the CO2 in the ice caps into the atmosphere, there wouldn't be enough time before the winter arrived for the greenhouse effect to take hold, and it would all snow back out. Worse, since we're not sure how much of the ice caps are dry ice (frozen CO2) and how much is water ice, it might not even take that long, because the temperature on Mars rarely gets above the freezing point of water.

Surface bombardment to kick start the greenhouse effect would be an ineffective waste of energy at best, and at worst would result in trapping precious CO2 and water in newly formed rock from which it couldn't be released without melting the rock.

As for a heavy bombardment to restart the planet's geological cycle, the idea would have merit on another planet, but on Mars there is a reason to reject the proposal outright. In order to explain why, it's necessary to take a quick look at the history of Mars and understand how it got into the shape it's in today.

Imagine you have a glass coffee cup, a glass coffee pot and a large glass saucepan, all full of boiling water. If you leave them sitting on the counter for about half an hour, when you come back, you'd find a coffee cup full of room temperature water, a coffee pot full of warm water and a saucepan full of hot water. The reason you get this effect is that the water in the coffee cup has a higher ratio of surface area to volume. Since all the water's heat is lost at the surface, a higher percentage of the water in the coffee cup is giving off heat than the water in the coffee pot or the saucepan.

The same principal holds true for planets. They lose all of their internal heat at the surface. Since Mars is a very small planet, roughly fifteen percent of the volume of Earth but only eleven percent as massive because of differences in density, Mars lost the internal heat generated during its formation a long time ago. Hundreds of millions, perhaps even one or two billion years ago, all geological activity on Mars simple stopped. There was no more sea floor spreading, no more subduction, no more marsquakes and most importantly for the future of the planet, no more volcanoes.

Up until that point, Mars was probably incredibly Earthlike. It had vast seas, a thick atmosphere and, quite probably, life. Once that last volcano erupted though, it was all over.

When a volcano erupts, it releases three major gases — carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and water vapor. All three of these are greenhouse gases. At first, water could still enter the atmosphere through evaporation. The problem is, when water condenses and falls as rain or snow, it has a tendency to take CO2 and SO2 out of the atmosphere with it. Slowly, over thousands or even millions of years, the natural cycle of evaporation and rain leeched both gases out of the atmosphere, and as they were leeched away, the temperatures on Mars began to fall. Eventually, the planet got very cold, the rate of precipitation outstripped the rate of evaporation, and the level of water vapor, the last greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere, began to fall. The temperature sank even further. The rain turned to snow and a blizzard started. This blizzard lasted for millions of years and carried the bulk of Mars's atmosphere to the ground with it. In the end, Mars's atmosphere was nothing but a thin envelope of CO2, but the bulk of the original atmosphere and water (not all, but the bulk) is still locked up in ice sheets below the surface of Mars.

Now, if current theory is right, if all of those atmospheric gasses and all that water is trapped in the upper layers of the Martian crust, the last thing you want to do is hit Mars with enough force to restart the planet's geological processes.

To give you an idea of the force involved, let's consider the Earth for a second. At some point in the distant past, and the number varies from around four to around one point five billion years ago, depending on who you ask, an object roughly a tenth the mass of Earth struck the planet at a closing velocity of roughly thirty-five times the speed of sound. Just for reference, Mars has about eleven percent of Earth's mass. In other words, Earth got hit with an object the size of Mars traveling at mach thirty-five. Not only was it not sufficient to turn the entire planet molten, but if you believe the one point five billion year old number, which is supported by some pretty compelling evidence, it wasn't even enough to wipe out all life on Earth. What it did do was cause the eruption of almost every volcano on the planet, boiled away massive amounts of ocean and blew off a divot that we refer to today as "the Moon."

The Moon, coincidentally enough, is about one tenth the mass of Mars. That being the case, if you were to take the moon and toss it at Mars at thirty-five times the speed of sound, it wouldn't turn the planet molten. It would almost certainly turn vast tracts of the surface molten, trapping a large portion of the remnants of the Martian oceans and atmosphere in the rock that would form as the planet re-cooled. It would also blow huge chunks of the Martian surface into space where they would either escape and become a hazard to Earth and anything we put in space, or form a debris field which would make access to Mars that much more difficult. The gravity of Phobos and Deimos would likely prevent them from accreting into a new moon, so, eventually, the debris would fall back to the surface.

There is also something else to consider. When the Earth got hit, the interior was still hot. It could absorb the impact more readily that Mars will be able to, because the interior of Mars is solid. It's entirely possible an explosion large enough to make Mars molten would instead shatter the planet. And that doesn't even consider how long it would take the surface heat to dissipate. It could take thousands of years before the surface was livable again, all for no real gain.

Now, at this point, you might be asking, why bother restarting the geological processes in the first place? Well, restarting the geological processes isn't actually necessary to make the planet habitable. It's only necessary in order to keep the planet habitable. If you can reheat the interior of the planet, you get the CO2 cycle back, which means that the planet can keep itself warm again by putting CO2 back in the atmosphere through volcanism. The other major benefit is the magnetosphere. We'll come back to this in a moment.

I just said it wasn't necessary to restart the geological cycle in order to make Mars habitable, but let's take a quick look at what is necessary. There are two major steps in turning the surface of Mars into an environment that you can survive in without a space suit or some kind of sealed habitat.

The first is to warm the surface of the planet. A lot of methods have been suggested for this, everything from the asteroid bombardment I mentioned earlier, to hanging giant mirrors in orbit. Margarita Miranova, grad student at the California Institute of Technology, recently suggested dumping large quantities of octafluoropropane, a colorless, nontoxic gas with a faint sweet odor into the atmosphere. Octafluoropropane, better known as R218, is used in refrigeration and manufacturing. It's also a persistent, highly effective greenhouse gas. If we pumped enough of it into the Martian atmosphere, it would kick off a greenhouse effect which could, in theory, melt the atmosphere out of the Martian soil. It would take an awful lot of the stuff, it would be incredibly slow, and there is another problem. The latest data from the Mars Express indicates ice as far down as one point eight kilometers in places.

If you want to free all the water and atmosphere you've got to heat the ground down to about two kilometers. The greenhouse effect alone won't accomplish that. Sinking a massive network of underground pipes and running a heat carrying liquid through them could do it. The temperatures in the heat exchange system of a nuclear reactor regularly get up to several hundred degrees. If the coolant exiting the heat exchange was then pumped down into the pipes, you would get an artificial geothermal process which could heat the ground, but again, it would be a slow and expensive process.

There are other tricks that can be used as well. You can pump liquid water out of the heated ground and spray it into the atmosphere where it can be heated by microwave towers. The microwave towers can be powered by building solar towers which generate power by heating the air inside a large greenhouse and letting the resulting convection currents drive turbines. Not only does this power the microwave towers, but the heat generated by the process is dumped straight into the atmosphere. You can even build fusion reactors in orbit to serve as miniature suns. Whatever methods you employ, the process will be slow and expensive. It will also be highly labor intensive.

Once you're done cooking the atmosphere out of the ground, you get to step two, making the atmosphere breathable. There are three ways to go here, and two require the large scale introduction of anaerobic bacteria into the Martian ecosphere. The first method is to introduce a bacteria that takes in CO2 and releases O2. The problem is, unless you've restarted the geological processes, you'll be stripping your atmosphere of C02, which it needs. The second option is to introduce an organism that eats iron oxide (rust) and excretes O2 and iron. Since the entire surface of the planet is covered with iron oxide, you would get a lot of oxygen this way. You'd also get a surface covered with conductive iron dust, which is going to play all kinds of hell with your electronics. The third is to split your water into oxygen and hydrogen via electrolysis (the same method used to produce oxygen on nuclear subs). This method leaves you with a lot of surplus hydrogen that can be used for fuel, but unless you've restarted the planet's geological processes, it's not that great an idea.

Yes, we're back to restarting the geological processes, because in addition to releasing greenhouse gasses, which can be done artificially, heating the planet's core also would allow the planet to develop a magnetic field, which in turn gives the planet a magnetosphere.

The magnetosphere is an important feature of any planet you want to make habitable. The magnetosphere largely prevents the direct interaction of the planetary atmosphere and the solar wind. Without it, the solar wind would strip away the upper layers of the atmosphere. Among other nasty effects, this can lead to the breakdown of water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen and the stripping of the hydrogen from the atmosphere, preventing the reformation of the water, which can lead to some nasty chemical reactions in the atmosphere that can destroy your ecosystem. The magnetosphere also helps to protect the planet from various radiation hazards including cosmic rays. It helps shield communications hardware from solar flares and coronal mass ejections (although not perfectly, and under the right circumstances, it can actually worsen the effects). Like the volcanic out gassing of CO2 and SO2 mentioned earlier, a magnetosphere is not necessary to make a planet habitable, but it is necessary to keep it that way for an extended period. It is also extremely beneficial in reducing radiation hazards from solar phenomena.

So, if you want to terraform Mars, and you want it to stay terraformed, you have to reheat the interior of the planet. If we eliminate the idea of tossing a largish moon at Mars, or a smaller body accelerated up to a much higher velocity, there is only one thing we know of that could reheat the interior of a planet.

Gravity.

Or more specifically, differential gravitational stressing of the planet. To better explain this, let's take a look at two of the moons of Jupiter, specifically, Io and Europa. Both formed about the same time as Mars, give or take a few hundred million years. Io is about twenty percent more massive than Earth's moon, while Europa is about thirty-five percent less massive. Remember that the Moon is about a tenth the mass of Mars. It is also considerably younger than Mars, Io, or Europa and like Mars, geologically dead. If we follow the logic that smaller bodies cool more quickly than larger bodies, Io and Europa should be frozen solid.

Io is the single most geologically active body in the solar system, and Europa, where the temperatures found on the surface are more commonly associated with liquid oxygen than liquid water has a massive, moon-wide subsurface ocean and exhibits signs of cryovolcanism (volcanic activity in which liquid water and ice take the place of molten lava and rock). They are kept warm through a mechanism called tidal heating.

Every astronomical body, be it moon, planet, star, or black hole has an invisible line around it called a Roche limit. Inside a body's Roche limit, no object that is held together only by the force of its own gravity can survive. It's torn apart by the object whose Roche limit it has fallen below. It is important to note that the object torn apart is always the less massive of the two, because the more massive object has a larger Roche limit, so it destroys the less massive object before entering the Roche limit of the less massive object.

Io and Europa don't actually pass below the Roche limit of Jupiter, but both of them get close to it at perigee (the closest point to Jupiter in their orbits), then move back away from it until they reach apogee (the furthest point in their orbits). The difference in the stress Jupiter's gravity puts on these two bodies between perigee and apogee is so great that it keeps both bodies warm inside. This process is called tidal heating, and while there are other factors that contribute to the heating of both worlds, they are far less significant than their simple proximity to Jupiter's Roche limit.

This same mechanism could be applied to Mars through two methods. The first is to move Mars close enough to a more massive body that the tidal heating effect kicks in.

There are problems with this approach. The first and most obvious being, how do you move a planet? Well, as it turns out, we happen to know the answer to that. In fact, if you want to get really, really technical about it, we've even done it.

All those probes we've sent to the outer solar system, like Voyager 1 and 2 and Cassini-Huygens have made close flybys of Jupiter. In the process, a tiny amount of the kinetic energy locked up in Jupiter's orbit of the sun was transferred into the spacecraft. The amount of energy involved is so small that our sun will go cold long before the shift in Jupiter's orbit is measurable, but the process scales well. If you were to use a much larger relative mass, and to fly that same mass by over and over again, the gravitational interactions would begin to move Jupiter closer to the sun. Fly the mass by on the other side of the planet, and you transfer the energy into Jupiter, moving it further away from the sun. We know the process worked for two reasons. One, the math involved has been tested repeatedly. Two, the current location of the Jovian planets and the existence of the asteroid belt instead of a fifth terrestrial planet in the inner solar system can only be explained by this process occurring in the early solar system.

Unfortunately, moving Mars would be the simple part, and there are other obstacles that couldn't be overcome. First, there are only two real candidates for where to put Mars, either in Jupiter's or Earth's orbit.

With Jupiter's orbit, in order to get Mars into a position where the tidal heating can occur, you would have to drop it right smack in the middle of Jupiter's radiation belt. Sure, you'd heat the planet up, but you'd also render it completely sterile and incapable of bearing life.

With the Earth's orbit, you'd have to get rid of the Moon and the process would disrupt the oceanic tides and cause all kinds of trouble with earthquakes and disruption of satellite orbits, and just make space near Earth a nightmare to deal with. Not to mention that moving planets in and out of Earth orbit is insanely dangerous.

Then there is the really big problem. In order to put Mars into orbit around another body, you would have to accept a retrograde orbit (Mars would go around the planet in the direction opposite the spin of the planet). Retrograde orbits invariably decay, and since you would have to put Mars close to the Roche limit to begin with, that decay would quickly drag Mars in below its Roche limit which would tear it to pieces, every one of which would eventually fall onto the planet.

In short, moving Mars is out.

That being the case, the only real option for restarting the core of Mars is to build a gravity source to cause the tidal heating. In other words, to build a planet of equal mass, or slightly larger and place it in such a way that Mars regularly makes close approaches to the new planet's Roche limit.

This has several things to recommend it. Because you would be dealing with masses small enough to manipulate directly, you wouldn't be forced to accept a retrograde orbit, so the new body would never fall on Mars. It would also be much faster and safer than trying to move a planet. It would also take considerably less energy.

The process itself is relatively straightforward. There is enough mass in various belts out beyond Neptune to build several planets the size of Mars. In fact, it's highly likely that there are several bodies out there the size of Mars or larger. But it's the smaller bodies that are of interest. They're easier to move, which means they would be easier to drag back to Martian orbit. Mars' existing moons, Deimos and Phobos are both small asteroidal moons that would make the perfect starting place. Phobos needs to be boosted to a higher orbit anyway because it is slowly falling towards the surface of Mars, and it's going to hit eventually.

Again, the process is going to be long, expensive and labor intensive, but it could be done in a few centuries, which is about the same about of time it would take you to cook Mars's atmosphere out of the ground. It also has the added advantage that the same tidal forces which would reheat the interior of Mars would also help build the dynamo which would create a strong Martian magnetic field by stirring the liquid iron core of the planet. In the end, what you would get is a binary planetary system where one of the worlds looked a lot like Earth.

If Mars is that much of a challenge, what about other planets or moons in the solar system?

Mars has one major problem: the lack of internal heat. Venus doesn't have that problem. Venus is extremely geologically active. Venus, however, has three major problems, and in order to explain them, we need to take another brief trip into the distant past.

At some point in the past, and unlike the event which formed the Moon (we have no way to date it) Venus was struck by an object that was close to, if not greater than, Martian mass. Unlike the Earth, however, where the collision was to spinward (i.e. the collision wasn't dead center but off to the side in the direction the planet was spinning), the collision with Venus occurred antispinward (the collision was offset in the direction opposite of the planet's rotation). The collision was so hard, the direction in which Venus spins was reversed. Venus not only spins in the wrong direction, but it takes longer to complete one rotation than it does to complete an orbit around the sun. Because of the incredibly low rate of spin, Venus has no measurable magnetic field. If it has one at all, it is too weak to extend from the core of the planet all the way to the surface.

Venus's second problem is its lack of a moon. If Venus had a moon, than the slow rotation wouldn't be as much of a problem, because the orbit of the moon would perturb the liquid core enough to generate a magnetic field. Venus's third problem is its location. If Venus were where Mars is, it might very well be a garden, but its proximity to the sun killed it over the last billion years or so.

The thing is, a billion years, a billion and a half years ago, Venus probably didn't look that different from Earth. The atmosphere was probably about four times thicker, but very Earthlike. There were oceans, Earth type plate tectonics, and much like Mars, there is a high probability that there was life. Unlike Mars, we'll never know one way or the other because any traces would have been destroyed as Venus has resurfaced itself over the last 50 million years.

But our sun is a main sequence star, and as main sequence stars burn, they swell. Because their energy output is a function of their surface area, over the course of the last billion years, the total solar output has increased by about thirty percent. As that happened, the temperature on Venus began to rise as the greenhouse gasses captured more and more energy. The natural precipitation cycle of water slowed the process down until the planet reached the point where temperatures stopped getting low enough for it to rain. Once that happened, there was no way to remove any of the greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, and the planet was caught up in the runaway greenhouse effect. The oceans slowly boiled off over several million years and by the time they were all gone, the temperature on the planet began to reach levels where CO2 and water were literally being baked out of the rocks. With the change in the chemical composition of the rocks, the increase in pressure due to the fact that the entire mass of the oceans and a good deal of the mass of the crust had entered the atmosphere, and the incredibly high temperatures, the surface of the planet became soft and somewhat flexible.

To make matters worse, the pressure pushed the water vapor, the lightest of the gases making up the soupy new atmosphere, to the top where it was unprotected by the thick clouds. In the upper reaches of the atmosphere, UV radiation broke the water apart, and without a magnetosphere to shield the planet, the solar wind stripped most of the hydrogen away. The oxygen and what hydrogen was left reacted with the sulfur dioxide to form sulfuric acid, and the planet was slowly transformed into the hell it is today.

Terraforming Venus where it is would require a way to shield it from the sun and the solar wind. If you could accomplish that feat, you would just need to wait until the planet had cooled off significantly, then dump a volume of water approximately equivalent to the entire hydrosphere of Earth into the atmosphere, then wait about three hundred million years while the planet completely resurfaced itself.

Moving Venus to a different location presents the same difficulties as moving Mars would. It can be done. The process is relatively straightforward. The tricky part is that if you did attempt it, you would very likely knock Earth out of its orbit. It's far too dangerous and would result in no tangible benefits. I don't want to say terraforming Venus can't be done, but I will say that we know of no way, based on current science, to terraform Venus in a realistic timeframe.

As to other candidates that have been put forward from time to time, Io sits in the heart of Jupiter's radiation belt and anyone on the surface would receive a lethal dose within minutes. Europa is, despite the tidal heating, insanely cold, so cold that at certain times, liquid oxygen could exist on its surface. It also sits on the edge of Jupiter's radiation belt. The lethal dose would take longer, but the radiation levels are just too high. Titan has the same temperature problems as Europa, without the tidal effects that keep the oceans of Europa liquid.

Which brings us back to Mars.

If we want another planet, Mars is still our best bet. The key is to take a different approach. You won't have any open oceans or wilderness, but what you could have, in fifty to a hundred years from now, are thriving cities, productive farms, parks, pastures, factories and anything else you need. All you have to do is give up the notion of making the entire world habitable at once.

Instead, you build domes and arcologies (cities enclosed in a single building). Build domes twenty miles across and you can make the planet habitable a hundred square miles at a time. If built right, the whole thing would act as a shield against radiation and electromagnetic interference from the sun. The iron and carbon needed to make the domes is readily available on the surface and in the atmosphere. If you don't want to thin out Mars's atmosphere, you can just dig it out of the ground and scrape it off the poles.

It's not as sexy as terraforming. It doesn't capture the imagination the same way the idea of transforming an entire planet does. What it does do is present us with projects that can be completed in a decade or two. It lets the people paying for it, be they investors or taxpayers, see the results of their spending.

Ultimately, I'm in favor of terraforming. I like planets. But realistically, it makes more sense to crawl before we try to run a marathon, and even a relatively simple terraforming project is a marathon. Building domes on Mars, on the other hand, is a simple, practical solution that can be built with today's technology and science. Call it a starter project.

* * *

Copyright: How Long Should It Be?

Written by Eric Flint

I ended my last essay by presenting the general principles needed to answer the question, how long should copyright terms last?

For those of you who didn't read or don't remember what I said, here it is:

First, authors need to have enough protection to enable them to be able to make a living as full-time writers.

Second, that protection has to be long enough to provide them with a motivation to write for the public, and see doing so as a possible profession.

But that's it. Those are the only two legitimate concerns. Any term of copyright which exceeds that minimum necessary length, as Macaulay put it in the quote I cited in my last column, has no legitimate purpose. Once you cross that line, a necessary evil has simply become an evil—and the farther past that line you go, the more evil it gets.

Now let's get into the details.

The first thing I need to establish are some facts. I need to do that because I've found that many people, including many authors, have very unrealistic notions about how long copyright actually protects anything. What happens is that they look only at the law—ignoring all social and economic realities—and say to themselves, "Oh, wow, anything that gets written—including anything I write myself—will be protected by copyright for seventy years after I die."

Uh, no. In the real world—except for intellectual property owned by giant corporations—here is what really happens:

The longer copyright lasts, the less likely it is that 99.99% of anything ever written will ever get reissued. What excessively long copyright terms actually do is destroy writing. They don't protect writing, they ravage it.

Why?

Well, it's simple—if you look at writing as a professional craft, subject to economic imperatives like any other form of work, instead of a legal or philosophical abstraction.

Here is the cold, hard reality. I call it the ninety-nine percent rule:

99% of all writing falls out of print within ten years after it is published. In most cases, within five years. That's because the standard rule of thumb in the publishing industry is that 80% of all sales of a book take place in the first three months after publication. And the remaining 20% usually drops off steeply. Within a few years of a book being published—faster than that, in the case of most shorter pieces of work—it is simply not economically viable for a publisher (or a book distributor or retailer) to keep the book in print any longer.

90% of all writing that falls out of print will never be reissued, under any circumstances—even with good copyright laws. That goes up to 99% with bad laws like the ones we have today.

The reason, again, is economic. For all the paeans of praise showered on "immortal literature," the cold, cruel, hard fact is that the overwhelming majority of writing is pretty ephemeral as far as the public is concerned. This should come as no surprise to anyone, because the fact is that whatever else it may be, fiction writing is first and foremost entertainment—and entertainment, with a few exceptions, has always been subject to the dictate that the public wants novelty. They don't want to hear the same story over and over again; instead—with a few exceptions—they want to keep getting new ones.

For every piece of writing that stays before the public for centuries—such as Cervantes' Don Quixote—there are literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of writing that vanish with the wind. That's even true with books, much less short pieces of writing. Most books—"most," as in 99.999% of them—are not and will never fall into the same tiny category Don Quixote does. They are ephemeral. They will arrive, enjoy their day in the sun—such as it may be, which varies a lot—and then they will pass away. Most of them forever.

That's the reality—and that is the reality which determines the lives of professional authors, as professional authors.

And that's also the reality that should—and did, until fairly recently—determine the length of copyright terms.

So. What shouldbe the length of copyright terms? Let's approach the problem by bracketing it. Ranging shots, so to speak.

The original copyright terms set in the Statute of Anne of 1709 (fourteen years) and the modification placed in the original U.S. Copyright Act of 1790—which provided for a fourteen year extension after the first fourteen years had elapsed—has turned out to be too short.

Why? you might ask—given that I just got through pointing out myself that 99% of all books will fall out of print before fourteen years elapse, anyway.

Well, it's because averages are only that—averages. Remember that the purpose of copyright is first and foremost to provide a means whereby some authors can become professional authors. So what you now have to do is consider what percentage of writers can ever manage to do that?

And here we run into another ninety-nine percent rule. Or ninety percent rule, at least. The big majority of people who get something published will never be able to make a living as writers. Indeed, most of them won't ever generate a significant income at all from writing, even one that could substantially supplement their income from their principal means of livelihood.

I can't give you exact percentages, because I don't have them. So far as I know, nobody has ever done a systematic survey and study of the issue. What I can do is give you some rough guidelines, based on my own experience as a professional writer and what I've learned from talking to many professional writers, editors and publishers.

As I said in my last essay, writing is very much like acting. It's a profession that has no entry bars of any kind. You do not, as a doctor or lawyer does, need to take any schooling to practice the trade, nor do you need to pass any formal examinations or get any official certificates entitling you to engage in the profession. Furthermore, although certainly not to the same degree as acting, writing is a relatively glamorous profession.

So, lots of people take a crack at it. Lot and lots and lots of people. Of those people who take a stab at it, about 90% never have any success at all.

But some do. Perhaps 10%, sooner or later, will get something published—or, if they're actors (or singers) get a small gig somewhere. But they never manage to do it with any regularity or frequency at all. Eventually, most of them stop trying altogether and move on in their lives to something else.

Of that large number of—"extras," I will call them—perhaps 10% manage to get established as regular practitioners in the trade. Not regularly enough or prominently enough to ever make a living at it, except as a sideline, or even derive a significant amount of money from it. But they do get enough work for writing to become a significant part of their lives.

Of that ever-diminishing number, perhaps 10% will manage to enter the ranks of what you can call genuinely professional writers and actors. They may still—probably won't, in fact—make enough money to do it as a full-time, exclusive occupation. But they make enough money to practice it continually and get published (or hired as an actor) with great regularity. In writing, we call this being a "midlist" author. In acting, it's (usually) called being a "character actor."

Finally, of that—now very small—number of people, perhaps 10% are able to make enough money at it to engage in writing or acting or singing as a full-time, exclusive occupation.

For the social purposes for which copyright exists—or, at least, should exist—it is those last two categories of writers who are the key. As Macaulay explained in the passage I cited in my last essay, it is these two categories of writers who will produce most of what society considers valuable and wants to protect. Not protect the works, mind you—but protect the ability of those two classes of writers to devote that much time and effort to creating them.

That's the core of it. When it comes to establishing the proper lengths of copyright terms, there are no other considerations beyond whatever is necessary to provide those two classes of people with adequate protection. None.

Copyright terms longer than fourteen years are simply not necessary for writers who fall into the broader categories. Or "lower" categories, if you prefer, but I'm trying to avoid any terms that might imply that I'm sneering at anyone. The fact that someone who tries to write but only manages to get one or two things published in a lifetime—if that—has no bearing whatever on their worth as human beings. I know plenty of people I think very highly of, including my mother and my wife and most of my close friends, who have never published anything at all. And, on the flip side, I know some very successful professional authors whom I would cross the street to avoid because I detest them.

Yes, certainly, it's possible that a short story written by someone who only wrote a handful in a lifetime might get reissued more than fourteen years after it was written, and thus have fallen into the public domain under the original copyright laws.

So what? That person obviously doesn't in any way depend on such completely unpredictable, infrequent and erratic income. Once a short period has elapsed in which it has earned any predictable income—and fourteen years is more than enough for that—it doesn't need to be protected any more than someone who wins a decent jackpot in a slot machine in Las Vegas in the year 1970 needs to be guaranteed that they will win a similar jackpot fifteen years later, and then fifteen years after that, and fifteen years after that.

A lot of people—especially writers—have a very hard time understanding this. That because they confuse "copyright"—which is a utilitarian, social concept—with one or another form of what's called "natural property." (Briefly, and a bit crudely, "natural property" is the notion that something is "property" by virtue of its innate essence.)

"I wrote it, damnation! Therefore it is my property and I should get paid for it!"

That's the attitude, in nutshell. The mistake involved is that they are confusing their property with the legal mechanisms that would be necessary to make that property actually worth something in monetary terms. To put it another way, they think that simply because something is their property that they should be guaranteed that it would be worth something in monetary terms, should it be put up for sale.

But that's nonsense. Like everyone else, I own lots of things—my property, you betchum—that I couldn't sell for a dime. To give an example, I own a fifty-year-old grammar school report card that somehow managed to remain in my possession all these decades. It contains some charming notes from my fourth-grade school-teacher. Charming to me, anyway. Perhaps someone else wouldn't take the same pleasure in seeing an obviously exasperated teacher having checked every single one of the boxes that says "Performs below his capacity!"

Well, I think it's a hoot. One of my most favored mementos. But how would people react if I tried to get a law passed guaranteeing that any half-century old report card put up for sale on eBay should get money?

Obviously, in that sense, anyone's writing is their property—regardless of how much time has elapsed. That's why, if a publisher reissues the story, the publisher will put the author's name on the byline—even if they don't pay the author a dime for the right to do so, since it's in the public domain.

By the way, as an aside, most commercial publishers would pay the author something, anyway. Laws are laws, economic realities are economic realities, and public relations are public relations. The cost of buying the rights for a long out-of-print story by an obscure writer is so low that most publishers will gladly do it just to avoid, if nothing else, the hassle of trying to determine whether the work is in the public domain and/or the potential backlash they'd get from public opinion if they didn't. I've reissued over twenty volumes of stories by old authors, either as the sole editor or working with other editors, and I can tell you that in no instance did we try to determine if something was in the public domain or not, if the author was still alive.

To give an example, when I began my reissue of Christopher Anvil's writings for Baen Books, we bought the right to publish anything Anvil had written of a science fiction or fantasy nature up to the time of the contract. (He's since written new stories which we bought separately—one of which, as it happens, appears in this volume of Universe.) In the course of my negotiations with Anvil, he expressed the concern that he thought some of his works might have fallen into the public domain because he wasn't sure if he'd renewed the rights to a few stories. His concern was that he didn't want to be misrepresenting anything in the contract, since we were paying for all the stories. I told him I simply didn't care, and neither did Jim Baen. Neither one of us was going to go chasing after stories that might have fallen into the public domain, when we are reissuing the work of a living author. Leaving aside any ethical issues, it simply wouldn't be worth it in purely cold-blooded commercial terms. It takes time and labor—often, lots of it—todetermine if something is in the public domain. Why bother, when it's so much cheaper and easier to just pay the author—and thereby also avoid any risk of triggering public antagonism?

Perhaps the best way to make this clear, is to put it in the bluntest, harshest way I can. Why in the hell do some authors think they are entitled to an elite privilege that no one else in society gets?

Let's take a waitress, who works her whole life as one. She is entitled to her pay, and her tips. And, when she dies, she can leave to her children whatever—usually little—there is in the way of material possessions that her life's trade enabled her to accumulate.

What she can't do, however, is demand that even after she retires, she is entitled to a percentage of the tips from "her" table. Even though the income from those "tip royalties" would undoubtedly be more substantial to her—a lot more substantial—than whatever money a writer who produced a handful of stories would ever get for a story being reissued more than fourteen years after it was written. (Much less twenty-eight years, if they renewed it.)

Now let's look at the other end of the question. Bracket the problem, as it were, with another ranging shot.

Why would someone like—to give a current example—Stephen King or J.K. Rowling need more than fourteen years of copyright protection?

For the tiny handful of writers in that superstar category, fourteen years is plenty. Long before those fourteen years have elapsed, a writer like King or Rowling has made so much money that—assuming they don't have the brains of a pigeon—they will have invested it in a multitude of projects which guarantee them an income (and assets for their heirs) that are completely unaffected by copyright at all. Whether it's real estate, stocks, bonds, whatever.

True, some very successful writers are very improvident. So what? That is their problem, not society's. Why should society be burdened by excessive terms of copyright just to make sure that Megastar Author So-and-so doesn't have to face the same (paltry) risks that any very wealthy person who invests badly does?

Dammit, as close as I think we're getting these days, we still don't have a Multi-Millionaires and Billionaires Guaranteed Income Law. Not for oil tycoons, not for any tycoons—except superstar authors, and (more to the point) giant media corporations with intellectual properties like Walt Disney Corporation.

No, the real problem comes with authors "in the middle"—authors who fall into those two categories I talked about. I'll call them, for lack of a better term, midlist authors and lead authors who are successful but not Literary Superstars.

For those two critical classes of authors, the ones who provide society with the backbone of its literary output, fourteen years of copyright protection simply isn't enough. That's because, for many if not most of those authors—and this varies from one decade to the next, given the ups and downs of publishing practices—the income from a large backlist is in fact very important to their ability to keep practicing their trade.

There's another old saying among science fiction writers—again, I can't remember offhand who said it—that "you know you're a real pro author when the income from your royalties exceeds the annual income from your advances."

True enough, most books will fall out of print before fourteen years are up. More precisely, most editions will fall out of print before fourteen years are up. But many authors in these two categories—not all, but a very high percentage and probably a majority—will see many of those works reissued in a second or third or fourth edition. Editions which, in many cases, will come long after the works were originally written.

So, for them—and they are the two critical classes of authors, when discussing the issue of copyright—fourteen years simply isn't long enough.

Twenty-eight years, which was the first extension given by Congress in 1790, was . . .

Close. Not quite right, but close. Close enough, that I would personally far rather go back to that 28-year period than live with our modern "life plus 70 years," which is insane.

The problem with a twenty-eight year term, even leaving aside the issue of having to get an extension (which I'm opposed to, because it makes determining copyright so complex that it's a massive nuisance for everybody), is that it keeps skirting the edge of being too short. Speaking as a full-time author, I could certainly live with it, but I suspect the problems it would generate would be continuous enough and frequent enough that it would leave the whole issue a running sore with authors and—the real danger—keep reopening the issue so that the minions of "natural property right" could once again wedge their foot in the door.

Of course, right now, they've wedged their big flat bloated elephantine bodies through the door and they've taken over the whole damn joint. But my purpose here is to establish what ought to be the proper length for copyright—and one of the considerations there has to be doing whatever is necessary to keep the natural right leviathans from surfacing again at some point in the future.

Macaulay came to the same conclusion, a century and a half ago, and I think he was right. He proposed a straight, simple forty-two-year period of copyright protection. I'd simplify that to forty years, because Macaulay's forty-two was just an archaeological remnant from the fact that current law in his time was 28 plus 14 with an extension. But whether it's forty or forty-two is a minor issue. Either one would work fine.

Macaulay also included a proviso that if the author was still alive when that forty-two year period had elapsed, copyright would automatically continue until his or her death, which I also support. The purpose of that proviso, from my viewpoint, is mainly to keep the behemoths under control—because they will seize those few instances were a living author is being deprived of income because one of his or her works has fallen into the public domain as their fig leaf for demanding a return to "natural right" concepts of copyright.

Here's how Macaulay put it:

Sir, there is no controversy between my honourable and learned friend and myself as to the principles on which this question is to be argued. For the existing law gives an author copyright during his natural life; nor do I propose to invade that privilege, which I should, on the contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously against any assailant. The only point in issue between us is, how long after an author's death the State shall recognise a copyright in his representatives and assigns; and it can, I think, hardly be disputed by any rational man that this is a point which the legislature is free to determine in the way which may appear to be most conducive to the general good.

For a professional writer, especially if you include that "or life" provision, forty or forty-two years of protection is plenty—and, while it poses a certain burden on society, the burden is not really that great.

The reason it isn't that great is due to something that I think few people understand properly, except those who—like me—have done a lot of work trying to get old stories reissued.

The real economic obstacle to getting old stories reissued, contrary to what most people think, is not money. Publishers routinely, as a matter of course, shell out money—lots of it—in order to obtain the rights to publish a story. And the monetary value of old stories is so low that it's a pittance compared to what publishers routinely pay to get the rights for new stories.

If you want to know how low it is, Baen Books paid the same money—$6500—to obtain the right to James H. Schmitz's entire estate as it paid me for the rights to my first novel, Mother of Demons.

If that strikes you as absurd, well . . . it strikes me that way, too. But that's honestly how it works. It's just a fact that with a very small number of exceptions—Robert Heinlein's estate, for instance—the monetary value of a writer's work drops like a stone the minute he or she either dies or it simply becomes widely known that he or she is no longer actively writing.

Why? It's not because of publisher machinations. It's because—remember what I said above?—the public almost always wants novelty. It's just a fact that, with a few exceptions, reissues don't sell very well. So, they're not expensive to get. From the standpoint of a commercial publisher, it's practically pocket change.

Of course, new authors—with a very few exceptions—don't sell well, either. But the difference with a new author is that they might sell well, with a future book, whereas an author who's dead or permanently inactive is not going to do so.

Jim Baen put it to me this way, some years ago, when I commented to him that I thought it was a bit grotesque that he paid me the same money for my first novel that he paid for the rights to the entire estate of James Schmitz. (Mind you, I wasn't offering to give him any money back! I was just making a philosophical observation.)

I don't recall his exact words, but Jim's response was essentially this:

"Eric, almost no first novel is worth a thin dime, in cold-blooded money terms. Most first novels lose money for a publisher. But publishers—smart ones, anyway—aren't really buying 'first novels.' What they're really doing, when they pay an advance for a first novel, is taking a gamble that the author will someday be writing books that bring in a lot of money. It's an investment in an author's future earning prospects, not the purchase of a book—and you simply can't invest in the future writings of an author who's dead or isn't writing any more. There are a few exceptions, like RAH, but not many."

The real problem with reissuing old stories is not the money involved. It's that copyright terms that are too long—and the modern laws are grotesque, in this respect—make the labor and cost of determining who owns the rights so laborious and time-consuming that it simply isn't worth it for most publishers, most of the time. A long out-of-print story won't be worth more than perhaps a couple of hundred dollars in advances, and usually less than that. So how many publishers and editors are going to be willing to spend hours of their labor—which means money, indirectly—in order to track down who owns the rights after many decades have passed? Keeping in mind that in many cases nothing remains of the author's whereabouts or who his heirs might be.

"Last known address, somewhere in Iowa. That was thirty years ago. And his last name is . . . oh, swell. Johnson. Tell you what. Let's call Eleanor Wood on the phone and see if we can get the rights to reissue another Robert Heinlein story. That'll take five minutes."

That's how it works, in the real world. That's why I said, at the beginning of this essay, that excessively long copyright terms do not protect the work of authors—they destroy it.

* * *

All right. I'll end my discussion of copyright terms here, at least for the moment. I'll probably return to the issue again—and again—in later columns. But I've covered enough of the issue to provide us with the proper basis from which we can move on and discuss the issues involved with so-called Digital Rights Management.

What you will discover—which is precisely why I approached the problem by starting with copyright in general—is that the very same issues will keep re-emerging.

DRM, among other things, is a reversion to the "natural rights" position that Macaulay—and the founders of the American republic—rejected long ago. Instead of trying to deal with the challenges and opportunities of the "digital era" by applying the sturdy and long-tested utilitarian principles regarding copyright, DRM tries to deal with them by imposing ever-more-burdensome restrictions on society's ability to use and enjoy the creative output of its authors and artists.

I will close by—once again—urging everyone to read Macaulay speeches. (It ain't hard to find them, folks. Just click here: that article

For those of you who are still skeptical concerning my claim that Macaulay said everything important there is to say on the issue of "digital publication" a century and a half before anyone ever heard of it, I invite you to consider the fact that—way back in 1841—he was able to predict what would happen in any society that made copyright protection too burdensome for the society as a whole.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. A century and a half ago, Macaulay predicted—with perfect accuracy—exactly what would happen if the music recording industry in the late 20th century reacted to new technological developments by getting their stooges in Congress to pass ever-more-burdensome laws forcing—or trying to force—their customers to accept their Royal Monopoly.

Read it and weep:

I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot . . .

Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.

* * *

The Editor's Page October 2006

Written by Eric Flint
The Prospects for Jim Baen's Universe

Jim Baen, the founder of this magazine, died three months ago. Between that and the fact that we've now had enough initial experience with Universe to have a much better sense of the prospects for the magazine than we did when we launched it at the end of last year, I think it would be appropriate for me to use this issue's Editor's Page to let our readers know what our current plans are.

Jim was replaced as publisher of Baen Books by Toni Weisskopf. I met with Toni at the recent Worldcon in Los Angeles to discuss the prospects for the magazine and, most importantly, to decide whether we'd continue with Jim Baen's Universe after the first year was over. When we launched the magazine, Jim didn't want to commit to more than one year's publication. Six issues, in other words. Given that there were so many as-yet-unknown variables involved in publishing an electronic magazine based on the business model we're using, I completely agreed with him. We simply had no way of knowing ahead of time, without any experience, whether a magazine like this could make it commercially.

We had a lot of theories, when we started, but theory is a treacherous beast if it's not muzzled by facts—and we had no facts. True, we could use Baen Books' experience with Webscriptions, selling e-ARCs and distributing the e-magazine The Grantville Gazette as something of a guide. But none of those really served that well as a model for a magazine like Universe.

That's the reason, if anyone has ever wondered, that we've been selling subscriptions only in the form of a fixed one-year package. Regardless of what month you start your subscription, what you're going to get is the first six issues, starting with the June 2006 issue—as opposed to a standard subscription system, where your subscription starts with the current issue and runs one year from that time.

We couldn't use that standard method, because that had the potential of opening a huge black hole of financial obligations for us, in the event we had to close down the magazine because it was commercially unviable. We were sure we could manage one year's publication, but beyond that . . .

We simply didn't know. Jim was willing to lose money to find out whether a magazine like this would work. What he wasn't willing to do—this was the one and only unilateral instruction he ever gave me concerning the magazine—was come to the end of that first year and discover that in addition to having lost his initial investment, he was now looking at tens of thousands of dollars he had to repay his customers to cover the subscriptions they'd never be getting because we had to shut down the magazine.

Launching Universe was a dicey proposition, to be blunt about it. An electronic magazine has one great advantage over a paper magazine. Unfortunately, it also has two great disadvantages. Whether the advantage would outweigh the two disadvantages was an open question, when we started.

The advantage is obvious. Electrons are not molecules. In the nature of things—this is quite literally a direct result of the laws of thermodynamics—an electronic magazine doesn't have to haul around behind it the huge dinosaur tail of distribution costs that a paper magazine does. Our production costs are no worse than those of a paper magazine—leaving aside the fact that we pay better rates for stories than other F&SF magazines—and once we get past the production stage, all the other expenses are a small fraction of what they are for traditional publishing.

True, we have some costs for maintaining and upgrading the web site that a paper magazine wouldn't have, or at least wouldn't have to the same degree. But that's a pittance compared to the costs of printing, warehousing and distribution.

I don't know the exact figures—I'm not actually sure if anyone does, on an industry-wide basis—but the cost of distribution for even a book publisher is about 50% of the gross income generated by commercial publishing. For magazines, it's even worse. The lowest estimate of the distribution cost I've ever heard is 60%, and it goes up from there.

Of the two disadvantages, the first and biggest is just as obvious. At least, to anyone who isn't living in a fantasy world. The market for electronic publications is tiny, compared to the market for paper books and magazines.

Despite all the sky-is-falling rhetoric you'll often hear about the "death of literacy" and the inevitable (and fast approaching) doom of traditional paper publishing, the truth is quite different. Traditional, old-fashioned paper publishing is and remains a huge section of the market for art and entertainment, which is a very big market. The fact is that the income generated by paper publishing exceeds the income generated by the much more glamorous motion picture industry.

In that context, the market for electronic publishing is miniscule. Far less than 1% of the total, overall. Even in science fiction, which has a disproportionately large share of the electronic publishing market, I doubt if it's more than one percent.

That poses an obvious and major challenge for an electronic magazine. You've automatically eliminated at least 99% of your potential market, before you've even published your first issue.

Of course, that's a very one-sided portrayal of the problem, since the publishing market is so gigantic that even 1% of it—if you could get that one percent—is plenty to make a publishing project viable. In fact, you can get by with much less than one percent. To put things in perspective, even authors as wildly popular as J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown don't tap into more than, at most, five percent of the total market.

So, that first disadvantage is not as bad as it seems, taken by itself. When we started this project, Jim asked me to come up with some estimates of how many regular subscribers we'd need to put the magazine on a stable financial basis. I crunched the numbers several different ways, and the figure I always kept coming up with was six thousand, give or take a little.

That figure is still accurate, by the way, in the light of the experience we've now gotten—except that it has to be modified by the experience we've had with the Universe Club. The Club has been very successful, much more so than we ever expected when we started. (Well . . . giving credit where credit is due, with the exception of Walt Boyes. Walt is the magazine's staff member who proposed the Club in the first place, and he predicted from the beginning that it would do extremely well.)

The Club generates about half of the magazine's gross income, over and above the money we'd collect from simple subscriptions. Granted, there are some expenses for us involved with the Club. But the Club is still a major source of net income for the magazine. It's fair to say, I think, that it's become the financial anchor for Universe.

That means, in turn, that we don't actually need six thousand steady customers. Instead, we need somewhere between three and five thousand. The reason for that wide range is that we still don't know one major variable in the equation:

How many people who joined the Club will keep renewing their membership each year?

We can make educated guesses, but until we get the experience of another year or two under our belts—or three or four years, better still—we simply won't know.

If you look at the matter from that perspective, it doesn't seem so bad. Even as small as the electronic publishing market is compared to the overall publishing market, it isn't that small. By now, several hundred thousand people are reading fiction electronically on a regular basis, perhaps even a million or two. And—one very bright spot in the equation—a disproportionate number of them are science fiction fans.

Unfortunately, we now run into the second of the two big disadvantages of electronic publication. To wit:

How do you make people aware that your product even exists in the first place?

For all the costs and burdens that the distribution system places on paper publishing, it automatically brings with it one great and beneficial result:

The books are there, on the shelves in bookstores all over the world, where customers can see them. Tom Doherty, who runs science fiction's largest publishing house Tor Books, puts it this way: "Every book on the shelves is a billboard."

Electronic publishing has no such equivalent. We don't get saddled with the costs of paper distribution, true enough, but we don't get the benefits either. And trying to come up with a substitute is difficult.

Yeah, sure, we've got our own web site, which is publicly accessible through the internet. So what? There are gazillions of web sites on the internet. Having a web site, from the standpoint of promotion and advertising, is equivalent to an author or publisher having onebook on the shelves—one copy, I'm talking about, not one title—in the entire world. All other things being equal, the number of people who will notice it is simply too small.

What's the solution to that problem?

Well, we don't know yet, really. We've been grappling with it since the beginning of the magazine, we're still grappling with it, and I'm quite sure we will be grappling with it so long as the magazine is in existence.

Which, finally, brings me to the basic point of this editorial.

The guesses, estimates and theories with which we began this project, last year, turned out to be . . .

In the ballpark. Not exactly what we expected, but close enough that we can keep going. Our subscriber base is growing somewhat more slowly than we hoped, true enough. We now have about 2400 customers, still short of the three thousand that is our rock bottom minimum to keep the magazine going perpetually, and less than half of the six thousand that I initially told Jim we'd need. On the flip side, though, the big success of the Universe Club took most of the sting out of that.

And—the subscriptions keep coming in. More slowly than we'd like, right now, granted. After a big surge in June, when the first issue came out, we've been getting about a hundred new customers a month. But even at that pace, we'll reach three thousand by the time we complete our first year of publication.

That's good enough that Toni made the decision that we'd keep the magazine going. For at least a second year, until we see what happens to the Universe Club. That's now the big imponderable factor in the financial equation. In a nutshell: What percentage of people joined the Club the first year purely as a one-time gesture of support? And what percentage will "re-up" at the beginning of the next year?

We simply don't know the answer to that yet. But we're definitely going to find out.

In the meantime, every new subscription or Club membership makes it that much more likely that we'll be able to make Universe a permanent feature of the science fiction and fantasy landscape. We could abandon the Universe Club entirely—not that we have any intention of doing such a stupid thing—if and when we reached a steady subscription base of about six thousand customers.

I am and always have been, by temperament, one of those people who figures the glass is half full. So the way I look at, as of today—with only our third issue appearing, and having 2400 customers—the glass is already almost half full.

Fine. 40% full, if you insist on being morose about it. As far as I'm concerned, the operative word is still full. Filling, for sure. Not even a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist can deny that.

I will add this, also:

Of all the methods the human race has ever devised to promote and advertise a publication—be it book or magazine, paper or electronic—the best and surest was, is and will always be simple word-of-mouth. So we'd much appreciate it if those of you who are already readers of this magazine—assuming you like it, anyway—would do what you can to let your friends and relatives know about it.

And anyone else. If you're planning to attend a science fiction convention, for instance, and would be willing to do a bit of promotional work—it can be something as simple and quick as putting some free handouts on the free literature table—let us know and we'll send you whatever material you'd need. If you have a website of your own or a blogsite, please consider letting your viewers know about the magazine.

I'd say that the fate of science fiction magazines—indeed, electronic publishing itself—is in your hands, but . . .

That's not actually true, although there's a grain of truth in it. And I'm not quite that shameless.

Not . . . quite.

* * *

I'll end by giving people some specific details of our plans.

First, because the glass is still only half full, we're going to have to make some adjustments in the magazine itself. The main one is that we've got no choice but to tighten our budget, and the way we're going to do that is the simplest:

We're going to start shrinking the size of the issues. The first two issues were a whopping 200,000 words in length, which is about two and half times the size of an average digest magazine like Analog or Asimov's except when they do their annual double issues. We're going to scale the size of each issue of Universe down to about 120,000 words. That'll still be 50% longer than an average science fiction and fantasy magazine. We're also going to have to cut back on the amount of art we buy for each story, from our current average of three illustrations per story to one or two. The cost of the art work is a big part of the budget. Not as big as the cost of the stories themselves, no, but it's still significant and we need to trim it down, at least for a while.

We will not be cutting our pay rates to authors and artists, however. It was my opinion, and Toni fully agreed, that cutting the rates would simply undermine one of the main purposes of the magazine to begin with. That said, I will be somewhat more conservative about commissioning stories than I was in the beginning. In this first year of the magazine, in terms of costs, the ratio of money spent on commissioned stories compared to unsolicited stories coming in across the transom was 6:5. I'm going to have to cut that ratio down to about 4:6 in order to meet our budget for the second year. In short, I'll be cutting back on the number of stories I commission or pay at commission rate, but it's not going to be a drastic cut.

Because of existing commitments, of course, we can't suddenly cut the magazine from 200,000 words to 120,000. What we're doing instead is tapering down the size as we go along, with the goal of being at 120,000 word length by the time we start the second year in June 2007. We will not be eliminating any of the existing features of the magazine, we'll simply be trimming everything down proportionately. The end result is that, starting with the second year of the magazine, the "standard" slots for stories and articles for each issue will be:

Five science fiction stories;

Four fantasy stories;

Two serials (down from the existing three);

Three introducing slots, down from five—and we'll shrink it down to only two if one of the stories is especially long;

One classic story, down from two;

One fact article, down from two;

Three columns, two by me and one "open" slot. Alternatively, we might run two classic stories or two fact articles.

The SF/fantasy ratio just reflects what's actually happened. We've always run more heavily with science fiction as opposed to fantasy, just because that's how it works out. It's not due to any pre-conceived schema on our part. We simply don't get as many good fantasy stories as we get good science fiction ones.

The two ongoing serials will be "Fish Story" and David Brin's "The Ancient Ones." We'll add a new short serial if a good opportunity comes up at any point, as it did with John Ringo's "Travails With Momma" and Kevin Anderson's Slan Hunter. (This short novel is Kevin's sequel to A. E. Van Vogt's famous novel Slan. We will be serializing it across three issues beginning with the next issue, coming out in December.)

The above framework is more in the way of a guideline than any sort of rigid scheme. The key is simply that we can't allow any given issue to exceed the budget. With an electronic publication, it's really the cost that determines "length." Words by themselves are meaningless any other way, because we don't have the physical constraints of a paper edition and the limitations of paper distribution.

The second thing we're going to do—have done, actually, since it began with this issue—is make individual issues as well as individual stories available for sale. We've been planning to do that from the beginning, it's simply taken time to get the software worked out to handle it.

As time goes on, we'll add some curlicues to that, making it easier for customers to upgrade their purchases if they decide to do so. To give an example, a customer who chose to buy just one issue could then take out a full subscription at a discount.

The third thing we're going to do is shift from using PayPal as our exclusive payment method to using a regular merchant handling service, except for micro-purchases like individual issues and stories. Again, that's something we planned some time ago, but it got delayed due to a number of factors—and then got delayed again by Jim's death. But we'll have that up and running as soon as we can.

The fourth thing we're going to do—which we also planned from the outset—is start to make steeply discounted subscriptions available to certain categories of customers. Specifically, the blind and handicapped, students, people in developing countries, and soldiers on active duty. But it will take us until the end of this year to get all the software in place to handle that.

The fifth thing we're going to do, again by the end of the year, is shift from our current "buy a one year package" quasi-subscription to a traditional subscription system, where a person starts with whatever the current issue is and gets one year's worth of issues from that date.

Finally, we'll be producing the first paper anthology of the magazine's stories. The title of it is The Best of Jim Baen's Universe, 2006, and it will appear in July of 2007.

* * *

I won't close by saying so far, so good, since the same thing can be said by anyone falling off a skyscraper and still only halfway to the ground. But what I will say is that, so far, it's good enough to see if we're actually falling—or rising. Whatever else happens, Universe magazine will definitely be around for a while.

THE END

For more great books visit

http://www.webscription.net

Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 1 Num 3

Table of Contents

STORIES

All the Things You Are

The Old Woman In the Young Woman

Every Hole is Outlined

A Time to Kill

The Man Who Wasn't There

Little Sips

Great Minds

The Power of Illusion

Protection Money

Baby Girl

Femme Fatale

Gnome Improvement

A Hire Power

CLASSICS

A Matter of Fact

SERIES

Travails With Momma, Episode 3

Fish Story, Episode 3

INTRODUCING NEW AUTHORS

The Men in the Mirror

Songbird

Devil May Care

COLUMNS

Jim Baen: October 22, 1943 - June 28, 2006

Doing a Slow Turn

Terraforming: A Bumpy Road Ahead

Copyright: How Long Should It Be?

The Editor's Page October 2006

eBook Info

Title:

Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 1 Num 3

Type:

Novel

Identifier:

1932-0930-03

Identifier:

978-1932-0930-01

Identifier:

10.1125/Baen.1932093003

Publisher:

Baen Books

Creator:

Eric Flint

Subject:

Science Fiction

Rights:

2006 by Eric Flint

Date:

2006-10-01

Language:

US English (en-us)